Re-imagining eCommerce for an international handbags brand with a social cause.
Laga Designs International, Inc. is a handbags manufacturer. The company was started in an effort to provide employment and income for those affected by the 2004 earthquake / Tsunami in Indonesia. They came to me for getting their old website re-designed and migrated over to WordPress.
I outlined number of issues with the old website. Content was not being managed properly, they had two different websites promoting same products and a WordPress a couple of blogs being run separately. All of those websites were outdated and not generating any real business for the client.
They were using Shopify to sell their products but the store did not look convincing enough to establish authority and trust among visitors. That trust building is vital when selling online. It was not looking like a Modern day brand or eCommerce store; it was looking more like a plain 90's website.
The old website lacked call to actions and was not even engaging the visitors. Conversion rate was low and product images were not convincing. Apart from those the website took ages to load and no emphasis was being put on on-page SEO.
The Old Website
I identified the following goals for the new redesigned website:
Apart from these overall website goals I also defined some target audience specific goals and solution which is explained below in target audience section.
The client already had some research done and was clear about how the new website should look and what elements should be placed on different pages. I researched a few more competitor websites and came up with some unique ideas to out shine our competition. Combining our ideas made it clear in which direction we need to go.
Various Competitor Websites
Various Competitor Websites
I defined a broader target audience for this project because it was about selling hand bags and women of all ages could be interested in that whether they buy it for their personal use or as a gift for someone.
I recommend the development of a completely new website, built from the ground up, with an emphasis on conveying the cause of Laga Designs International, Inc. that is to provide employment and income for those affected by the 2004 earthquake / Tsunami in Indonesia.
The website will be designed to:
After finalizing target audience goals and client requirements, I started working on design of the new website.
This was a unique project for me as for the first time I was working on a website that had a social cause. I highlighted the social cause of Laga (to provide employment and income for those affected by the 2004 earthquake / Tsunami in Indonesia) throughout the website to build trust among audience.
The Old Website
I started the design process with building wireframes first, that helped me in validating different ideas of products and other pages. Wireframes helped in making things clear without investing extra time on fonts and colors.
The Old Website
For this re-design Laga was not interested in logo revamp soI had to stick with existing logo and derive the color scheme from it. I ended up finalizing very light and subtle color scheme based on their existing logo.
For the typographic treat, I selected a modern sans-serif font that I used throughout the website for body text. For headings I choose a bold but complimentary serif font.
Final result of the design process was great, have a look below
Home Page Design
I developed the website on WordPress CMS. I spent extra time crafting the back-end experience that makes editing the website as easy as editing a word document.
For shop I used WooCommerce that helped me keep the main website and store in same place and it also became super easy for the client to manage the backend and add / edit products.
I made the new website 100% mobile friendly and cross browser compatible. The new website is looking great on all devices and browsers. Name the device and I have got it covered.
I minified the code, optimized all images, leveraged browser caching, reduced server response time and passed W3C validation test. All that effort resulted in super-fast website.
With 8 years of experience in building WordPress websites, I have built an extensive website quality and SEO checklist. I used the checklist to further perfect the website.
That's not all, I have a complete list of things that I take special care of when developing WordPress websites. Click here to find out.
The new website brought in great results for the client. Some of them are highlighted below:
I enjoyed working with Laga Design International, Inc. in reshaping their website. I am very happy with the end result that the new website is over delivering and generating a lot of business for them.