The Objective
Design & Contract Interiors help source and supply contract furniture for cafés, restaurants, pubs, clubs and office environments.
Our brief was to refresh the website and give it a modern feel, we had to opportunity to design a new logo to help reflect a more modern approach for their brand.
The website had to be simple to use, encouraging users to the product pages and to get in touch.
The CMS, ExpressionEngine also needed to upgrade, so it made sense to restructure the website completely, drawing on the new technology available as well as security and bug fixes.
The Solution
Design & Contract Interiors have been a client of ours since our infancy, this gave us a wealth of knowledge to draw upon. We understood how the website worked and had years of Google Analytics data, we knew the most popular pages, visitor numbers and the devices used to view the website.
Our understanding of the company and product range helped us manage thousands of products. Care was to be taken to ensure all old photography and content worked with the new layouts and structure.
It simply was not feasible to refresh every single product.
Nine Four are easy to work with and grasped our desired wish list very successfully. Paul, our contact, was always available during and after the new website project. The work was carried out within our limited budget with no unexpected add ons. As a small business owner I would highly recommend Nine Four for the services they provide.
Architecture and Re-structure
During the re-structure, product ranges were re-worked and re-categorised. Where possible copy was re-written adding rich keywords to help internal searches and improve the on-page SEO as well as the search engine listings.
The product listing pages became more search friendly, introducing easier to use filters allowing users to quickly find the right products.
This new approach gave the client a new platform to add fresh product ranges to.
Design
Taking a mobile first approach we designed a bigger, more modern and spacious design. The aim was to drive users to the product pages and to get in touch. The larger simplified design helps users focus on the products and works very well on smaller devices such as phones and tablets.
Where possible, the photos and images were increased in size to create a stronger impact, to ensure users could see more detail on the project and product pages. A new, fresher font “Open Sans” was chosen, care taken to increase the white space around elements, letting each part of the page breathe and helping the users eye focus more easily.
Bigger more prominent calls to action were used, driving potential customers to get in touch.
The home page was reworked to include large project photography, sending users to case-studies for recent projects. Each case-study has the option to list related products and services used, with links back to the associated pages.
The home page also saw a new gallery of top-level products followed by a simple search mechanism.
All pages finish with a new footer, boasting a call to action, and mini site-map driving users to other areas of the website.
