Charnwood Stoves specialise in the design and manufacture of high quality wood-burning stoves. Charnwood had two separate websites; one was the main brand site, and the other was an eCommerce site for their spare parts and accessories. This project had the goal of updating the look and feel of the brand site and incorporating the eCommerce site elements to create one website that fulfilled both functions.
Our designers worked closely with Charnwood’s Creative Director to review and refresh the digital identity for this project. Inspired by their history and high-end editorial design, we created a minimal and clear identity that let their stunning photography lead the layouts.
One key objective of the project was to improve layout and performance on mobile, as this was one of the areas that wasn’t working so well on their old website.
By developing clear and well structured mobile templates and fully responsive designs, we improved the overall user experience and helped contribute to a 12% reduction in bounce rate across the site.
Early on it was decided to make the most of Charnwood’s beautiful photography, with large spaces for images alongside minimal typographic elements. When making a luxury purchase customers need to be able to visualise how the item would enhance their home and life, and by ensuring that the photos did the talking in the new designs we allowed this aspirational feel to pervade the site.
In addition, we carried out typography research and testing which resulted in using a typeface linked to the company history, and complemented their distinctive and clean branding whilst not detracting from the imagery.
The eCommerce section of the site was complex, as accessories and spare parts could be purchased online, whereas stoves could only be purchased through selected dealers. This meant reviewing user journeys based on which products users wanted to buy and how users would locate spare parts for a stove, especially as each stove had a high number of available parts and accessories available for them.
Following best e-Commerce practices we created product pages with a stronger visual hierarchy and a better display of information, with each stove linking to the relevant spare parts filtered page enabling users to navigate easily from either the stove itself or the dedicated spares section using search or filters.
We redesigned Charnwood’s stove calculator in order to create a better user experience, allowing them to discover their personal stove output requirement based on the room size information they entered. From there, the user would be forwarded to the stoves that would suit their requirements, giving them confidence that a particular stove would be right for their needs.
We add new projects to our portfolio as we finish them, so check back regularly to see what we’ve been working on.