WHSmith probably needs little introduction. A well known high street brand looking to expand their offering to include wedding stationery. We were tasked with creating a sub-site that would specifically concentrate on wedding stationery such as invitations, table plans, RSVP cards and so on.
With there being so many variations and varieties of wedding stationery, we felt it best to ‘show’, rather than tell. The most obvious example for this is the home page, where there is content (for SEO and marketing purposes), but it’s discreet and doesn’t get in the way of all the colourful imagery used. The clean design to help this stand out and really help emphasise the variety that is available.
With many eCommerce sites, highlighting the benefits may seem like a small thing, but can make a huge difference in terms of sales. We accomplished this by applying subtle, yet noticeable banners on every page of the website. These include elements such as offering free delivery, quick dispatch and free samples.
We learned early on that for products such as wedding invitations, customers prefer to “try before they buy”. This meant they’d prefer to see the actual, finished product, before committing to an order. The solution to this was to highlight the benefit, prominently on every page.
This would then link to a category page, where all the free samples were listed. But that wasn’t everything, we also added a banner with CTA to all applicable products, highlighting that free samples are available for that design.
So we decided to split the page into two sections: the top half would contain all the product elements related to purchasing, so the images, price, any customisable options, benefits and free sample offers.
At the bottom, we’d have the specifications of the product, with product descriptions, delivery and returns information and common FAQ’s. This all then comes together so that customers can easily see what they’re getting when they first land on the page and then get more information at the bottom.
With the need for making purchases as simple as possible, and over 60% of traffic coming from mobile, it’s imperative to make the checkout process as easy and fluid as possible. We took a few key steps to ensure this. Firstly, a progress bar to show how far through the checkout customers are, making it easy to see how far they are from completing their purchase.
To minimise distractions and keep customers concentrated completing the purchase, we also removed the navigation bar from the top. But that wasn’t all, in the space instead we added some trust symbols via the means of showing accepted cards and the payment provider.
Next, we boiled the checkout to only the essential, name, address and contact details. Once these were filled in, you’d be taken to the order review section, before being taken off to enter the payment details. To make this even simpler, we also incorporated an address lookup. This was based on the postcode and made checking out a much simpler process, especially on mobile.
What they have is a dedicated channel, where they can offer the full range of wedding stationery.
This builds value for them as it shows they are offering a dedicated channel, that’s separate from their main website, that they can advertise and direct their target traffic to. All built on a robust, customisable system to provide a tailored experience for their target customers.
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