Get an eCommerce Design Makeover
After retiring from a career in business administration, Marji Bitterman decided to reinvent herself last year, opening her web store Beads and Dangles, which specializes in Pandora-style beads and charms. Recently she felt the store needed its own reinvention, so she found a designer to give it a new look.
BEFORE AFTER
To present a cohesive business image, Marji started by coordinating the color and style of her web store with her logo and business cards. Her designer Kelly McCormick accomplished this by first changing the colors on the header, footer and sidebars to match.
Next, she added music and a splash page. The two women loved the new look, but they both decided the page was too impractical. “The feedback I was getting was that online shoppers want to get started right away,” says Marji.
“Shoppers don’t want to be bogged down with big animation first,” Kelly adds. “We also had SEO concerns. The home page is now full of keywords, which you can’t have with a splash page. In addition, Flash isn’t compatible with the iPad and iPhone.” Still, they didn’t do away with the entire concept altogether. They added the splash page’s banner, logo and pink-and-white striped background to every page on the web store.
Kelly also featured a rotating gallery of Marji’s major categories, as well as a video that’s linked to Bead & Dangle’s YouTube channel, which incidentally has the same branding as the web store. “The video will also boost SEO since the web store now has incoming and outgoing links connected to YouTube,” explains Kelly. “In addition, they'll give her web store value because people will come back to learn from newly posted videos.”
Finally, Marji added UpFront and 100% Satisfaction Guarantee logos, “so that people would trust my product. If they don’t know me, at least they know that I’ll do whatever I can to make them happy.”
To hear Marji and Kelly’s top tips for creating good, consistent branding, check out our next post.
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