I have been wanting to redesign our website essentially since we relaunched on Shopify in the summer of 2015. My Christmas present to myself was to take some time over the holidays to do just that.
You can imagine how productive I was over the holidays. I like to think it was productively, unproductive—a necessary reprieve from HLO to let my brain rest and get some inspiration moving forward. It was fantastic, but my website wasn't under the tree.
So a little late, but I do believe better for it, we launched our new site over the weekend. The over-arching problem I wanted to address with this redesign was creating a more navigable site architecture and navigation. We have so much great product, but I felt like it was all hidden behind two or three clicks. Our old site was fairly inflexible and it made it difficult to find ways to make all our inventory easily visible.
Our new site addresses this with a significantly more robust homepage, mega-menus int the drop downs, and options for sidebars on product and collection pages.
But we made some other improvements too! Here are a few of my favorites:
Improved Product Pages
We brought the critical information (description, sizing, personalization options) on the product pages up tot eh top of the page to minimize scrolling. We also added tabs below the products with reviews and a section for Questions and Answers so we can create a repository for any and all questions we have on each product.
Larger Product Images and Streamlined Inventory
In addition to making some visual updates to our inventory management, we did some early spring cleaning and removed products that weren't performing, or just weren't our favorites. This is honestly a painful process since every item represents so much brainstorming, design time and photography to bring to life! But clutter is never a good thing and it needed to happen. We have so many new products in the pipeline and it was time to make room!
Room to Grow
While it's not visible today, our new site gives us a great foundation to grow and add additional features to our online shop. The flexibility we have with this design is tremendous and we can't wait to put it to good use!
So... What do you think of our new home? Please let us know your reactions and if you have ideas for how we can improve it even more!
