When I looked at Cumbrian quarry company Burlington’s new website in October I felt it had too many mistakes on it to make customers reaching the company through the internet feel entirely comfortable about buying from them. It has improved a lot since then, with the latest changes just being completed this month.

Even the colour scheme is improved, to my eye. Out is the green and beige and in is black and grey. Used well, black has a lot of impact and a feel of quality.

The site has become simpler. For example, an ‘In Your Home’ area introduced last year has been dropped. It recognised that home owners are interested in looking for their own stone, but do they need a separate area? Burlington thought not.

When I last reviewed the site, the ‘Support’ page contained the message: “Our team of dedicated support technicians are here to help you in any question / problem you may have with our products. Before requesting a call back or emailing a question please check our faq.” Only I couldn’t find any frequently asked questions to check and the ‘team’ of dedicated support technicians mentioned only Steve BrockBank (with two capital Bs), whose picture and email address were the only entries under ‘Support Team’. Unfortunately, that has not changed.

You can see the management and sales team of the company by clicking on ‘About Us’ and then on a third tier ‘Meet the Team’. Is that better than having the familiar ‘Contact’ click-through? As I said while reviewing the designers’ sites last month, you ignore the growing conventions of internet use at your peril because innovation can quickly become irritation.

There are headings for roofing, flooring, cladding, landscaping and interiors, plus another one to see the new showroom that Burlington opened at their Kirkby in Furness headquarters earlier this year (see NSS May issue).

The information under the headings provides a good selection of photographs of uses of the stones sold by Burlington. There is a section for each use of the stones called ‘gallery’ (eg ‘stone walling gallery’), although not all of them have anything in them. Burlington say pictures are still being taken and up-loaded. Those that are already there show Burlington’s stone to good advantage.

Among the options available under each of the headings is ‘Technical Support’. This was a little haphazard when I last looked at the site. It has improved for most of the categories, although flooring seems to contain a lot of duplications for no apparent reason. It would help if some were removed to avoid the confusion.

It is good to see, under ‘Company Policies’, emphasis on the moves being made by Burlington towards carbon reduction and sustainability.

This is a better site than it was when I last looked at it and it is clearly being maintained – clearly because there are plenty of entries in the news section and the latest is from just last month (June). If it is being looked at frequently it will evolve, because someone maintaining a site is usually looking for ways of improving it.

When I last reviewed this site I was a bit disappointed with it and gave it a rating of a rather grudging 71%. It has not quite reached the excellence that a major player such as Burlington might be expected to achieve, but it is a lot closer than it was. This time my rating is an improving 84%.