HS French Flint
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The brief
Reimagining and repurposing the brand and eCommerce experience
HS French Flint, a glass retailer with over two centuries of history, was originally established to import the newly invented 'flint glass' from France in 1824. Today, they continue to import glass not only from France but also from various European countries, the USA, and Asia. ~
The current eCommerce site was outdated and lacked the an intuitive navigation that accelerated purchase pathways, but for end customers and staff. Moreover, the existing CMS recorded more than three hundred abandoned baskets in 2017 alone. After conducting a usability assessment, I was asked to deliver a new visual identity and website.
UX Audit and Review
To fully understand the limitations of the existing design, I did an initial evaluation to identify improvement areas, prioritise, and find focus. I decided to test tasks and aspects of user experience relating to usability, navigability, visual design, and information architecture. This involved writing up the aims of the audit to pinpoint the most critical elements of the site for testing, and determining how to measure them.
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Testing with Stakeholders
Considering time and resources, I shared my initial findings and insights with stakeholders, including the CEO and Sales Director to define the site's main goals for both users and stakeholders, they were somewhat unsurprisingly: to find, discover, and purchase products. Additionally, in my evaluation the site was lacking in learnability and navigability. Therefore, I focused on the site’s information architecture.
Prototype Testing
Using Axure, I reimagined the HS French Flint website, altering its information architecture, navigation hierarchy, and product categories. I then conducted a retest of my prototype with participants and frontline staff from HS French Flint. After interacting with the prototype, HS French Flint requested my assistance in updating their existing brand and designing a new logo.
The outcome
Developing a New Identity
Spending time at the HS French Flint head office helped me to understand the business and brand. I drew inspiration for the logo typeface and final design from a customer invoice. Moreover, feedback from participant P6M, who questioned the business's age and wondered why the current logo did not include a 'business established' date, also influenced the design.
HS French Flint UK Store
Initially, and with considerable ambition, I attempted to not only redesign, but rebuild HS French Flint from the ground up using an OpenSource MVC framework, Ruby On Rails, and SOLIDUS (a Ruby gem), for the CMS. For the front-end, I used JavaScript, jQuery, HTML, and CSS. The decision to develop the site natively was driven by HS French Flint's need for complex pricing variants based on quantity and type. However, the choice to use RoR was based on a misunderstanding of budget constraints, which ultimately proved to be unrealistic from both cost and maintenance perspectives - on my part.
Pivot to SquareSpace eCommerce
Since launching the SquareSpace eCommerce site in early November 2017, I continued to support HS French Flint with domain-related registrations, CMS training, and documentation. In 2018, I assisted management in developing a solution to implement a price change across all products by exporting and importing the product database.
Reflections
Other projects
Vilda
