Website redesign
Giving value to a company.
For this project I found myself redesigning a design store’s website, which also does light design projects for homes, retail and restaurants.
Empathise
This company has existed since 1969 and was founded by Giuseppe, an entrepreneurial electrician who, starting from scratch, founded a solid and structured company. From ’69 until today the company has been divided into three sectors: electrical installations, sales of design articles and lighting design. Obviously these three sectors are often interconnected, but they can also be considered separately.
For example, an architect could ask for the project, the installation and the supply of design articles. A customer can only come to the store to purchase a single item.
When the company was founded, the main focus was on electrical installations, and lighting design probably did not even exist. Today, however, the lighting design is the healthiest, the spearhead of the company.
Over the years the competition has made itself felt more and more, especially from the web where the most famous lamps brands (Flos, Artemide, Foscarini) sell online. The strength of this company lies in the consulting service and in the inspections to better advise the customer.
In the redesign of the site I have considered this aspect with extreme attention, the purpose of the site is in fact to bring new people to call or to book an inspection to get in touch with the company and discover their professionalism.
Define
The current website
After talking with the customers I made a detailed analysis of the site. As you can see it is very old, probably more than 15/18 years old. The logo on the top left is not contextualized with the rest, the characters are very small, difficult to read. There is a picture in the center with a large chandelier, but it is no longer in line with the items that the company currently sells. It could be a picture of a general design shop and not a lamps shop.
To date the company works extensively in collaboration with architects and interior designers to provide architectural lighting with light cuts, ground or ceiling recessed spots and indirect lighting effects. We need to highlight this aspect, to communicate the way the company works today.
There are small images at the bottom but even these are not very visible, creating almost chaos. The dominant color is black, very elegant and professional, the color of luxury. The company today aims to increase its clientele and acquire customers who care about quality, but do not seek luxury. Perhaps it is necessary to give a lighter and less configured image towards appearance of exceptionality and magnificence.
I didn’t understand why the person who designed this site made the middle page white and didn’t think to use white fonts on a black background. Then these photomontages of lamps, and then organic compositions put here and there give me a very chaotic sensation. Confusion: basically I do not know where to look. Too many elements in one context! 😳
When I opened the list under ‘lighting’ I found this list of items that I found to be poorly readable although, then I found that they are the most important items and should be highlighted.
Throughout the site as you can see there are many elements enclosed in a single page and this creates an excess of chaos and takes the attention away from the points that need to be highlighted.
One thing that I found positive is the fact that there are no large amounts of text, this is appreciable, the company says what it does and what it offers without taking too long.
The goal of the site is to bring the company to sell more, those who enter the site after seeing what the company has to offer must be encouraged to make an appointment for a consultation. I started from the fact that the company does not work with customers who make impulse purchases, but with people who are looking for ideas for their long-term projects, such as a house or a store. The user who comes to the site has already done research in online stores or architecture magazines. It is necessary that the site communicates trust, professionalism and leads the person to ask for advice.
By analysing the competitors I noticed that there are many architects who are also light designers, while the lamp stores focus only on selling objects. For me it has become very important through this analysis to reveal that the company operates in three areas: installations, design objects and lighting design.
Ideate
I designed Sitemap and user flow giving a logical and intuitive order and following the basic rules of information architecture.
In the Sitemap I identified three families:
- the home where to present the light design projects, the show room and the electrical systems
- the contacts section
- a brief history of the company
Important is the call to action: make an appointment, which will be repeated under each section of the site.
In the header I ordered:
- the logo
- the home
- the projects
- a brief history of the company
- contacts
I identified the User flow, in which a customer:
1-Enters the home, according to the service he is looking for
2-Goes to the dedicated section
3-Sees images and projects made
4-At the end of the page sees the possibility to book an appointment in the store or an inspection
5-In a few steps completes the request
6-Receives a notification on his cell phone and email confirming the appointment
7-Partecipate to the appointment
Prototype
In this passage I redesigned the site thinking about P.A.S.E.
It is the acronym of:
-P: practical
-A: action
-S:social
-E:emotional
It represents the business emotion of the potential customers/users that land into a platform.
The customer who is looking for beauty, the care of their spaces is definitely a customer with an emotional business energy. The site must be designed for them, with beautiful images that give a feeling of harmony. To this type of customers we also find Apple and Tesla customers for example. They have attention to detail and passion for beauty. It is also important to point out that with the new lighting systems you save energy, not so much in terms money (this is a fact that interests more practical business energy) but in terms of safeguards of the planet. I designed the website with a lot of white space, and huge images. I didn’t want to add too much test, because emotional people are not going to read if it’s too long.
For the Style I decided to keep white as the basic color, to give light and lightness to the site, removing the idea that the company is luxury or sophisticated and for a few. I was inspired by the composition Pine, with green tints. Green is in fact the color of the company logo. The greenery also relaxes a lot, calms down and recalls nature. It can positively influence an emotional business energy.
The final result is very different from what the site looked like before, here you can find some pictures but I suggest you to see the video where I added all the interactions. A green sphere that acts as a guide moves in space creating lines similar to electrical circuits that define the various elements. Scrolling through the site you will discover all its services.
Conclusions
To reach this result I studied some marketing strategies, following my mentor while describing some websites with his characteristics. It is interesting to understand how marketing, UX design, and research are so intertwined. In addition to considering the aspects of a good user interface you need to analyze the final goals you want to achieve with your website.
- Who are they?
- What do I want from my site?
- Do i want more customers?
- Do I want to increase sales?
- What is my message?
- Why choose me and not another?
The deeper and more detailed the analysis is, the more you will be able to give those who request a site, a product that can strengthen their companies.
Thank you!
