Living up to the international recognition Sommer Swim had produced was no easy task. Loved globally by celebrities like Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner, the swimwear label knew that their website needed to reflect this new found growth. As a part of their growth strategy, Sommer Swim knew their digital experience needed to be optimised and enhanced to provide their customers with a seamless and on-brand journey.
Sommer Swim collaborated with Clue to rebuild and redesign their existing website on Shopify, and expand their marketing efforts. My role was to redesign the whole site from the ground up, taking advantage of fantastic photography and a well proven brand elements that have led to their growth so far. We also wanted to introduce many features that would enhance the current customer experience, leaving users satisfied and delighted with their purchasing journey.
After meeting with the client and gathering requirements, I began my research process. This often includes a competitor analysis, brainstorming sessions and mood-board creation and experimentation. With the existing brand assets and photography, this process was a painless experience. It was very clear early on in the process what direction we would be taking.
The first deliverable for this project was a high-fidelity homepage design, to discuss direction and gain alignment with the client. After approval, I went away and designed the rest of the mockups including all major screens including product pages, collection pages, the blog, modals & popups, the checkout experience, and much more. These pages were optimised for conversion, allowing customers to seamlessly flow through the browsing and checkout process.
After meetings with the client and final approval, I worked with our developers at Clue to implement the new design in Shopify. On my end this involved a quality assurance (QA) process to ensure the design was reflected in the live build. I was also tasked with general product management and setup on Shopify.
A pivotal factor of this build was to ensure the team at Sommer Swim could update and change their content seamlessly without our intervention. Pages were set up as templates, and data was easily accessible to their team. Many plugins and add-ons were implemented to enhance the customer experience.
There were a number of client requests that could not be fulfilled by Shopify's base features. Although the base experience on Shopify is great, plugins, add-ons and apps are needed to fill the gaps for specific needs.
Firstly, we used Forsixty's Instagram UGC (User Generated Content) app to make clickable and shoppable galleries from social content. This was a must as there was an abundance of user generated content across social channels that could be utilised.
We also introduced the Loyalty Lion app top the site, so we could offer a loyalty program to customers. With Loyalty Lion we could allow users to build up points in exchange for discounts and other prizes. In addition to these two apps/plugins, there were a number of others added to the site. Many of these were for the marketing team to receive useful marketing data and to manage campaigns.
There were multiple design challenges associated with the plugin/app selection process. Many apps do not have robust design customisation features, and many more also didn't allow for custom code. This meant we had to try and balance the feature set, and the brand elements. These issues were mostly mitigated at the selection process, where we tested various apps and got approval from the client to proceed.
The great thing about this project is that the website had the potential to receive a new face-lift every time a new collection would release. This would include new photography, video, colours and sometimes even fonts. Every new collection the customers could look forward to being immersed in the updated look and feel. This backed by the theme base allowed for a consistent premium experience regardless of the collection.
The project left the client with a sturdy base to continue to grow their brand. They received a premium eCommerce website full of features and customisability, and an improved premium look that aligned with their future business goals. The updated site combined with the fantastic efforts from the marketing team resulted in significant increases to site traffic, organic search traffic and revenue.
Working on a project with already existing assets was a huge plus. It let me really expand and test ideas quickly with real content, so that I could land on a solution quickly.
Keeping things simple was the key take away from this project, as I quickly realised that it is better to let the fantastic content speak for itself rather than to distract or draw attention away. This is not an easy feat though, design that is simple and unnoticed can be the most difficult to create. The end result was a simple but brand-forward design that achieved it's goal of a seamless eCommerce experience.
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