Background

When Stovax first approached Unified, they already had a good idea of how they wanted the site to look. They had, however, struggled to find a company they could rely on to turn their ideas into reality. Having selected the Immediacy CMS, Stovax thoroughly researched a number of partners and chose to work with Unified due to the depth and breadth of experience and skills in a range of areas.

One of the priorities was to ensure that the "Product Finder" and facility to find the closest retailer of Stovax products worked smoothly and intuitively.

Problem

The design of the navigation presented a new challenge, particularly trying to ensure that this very graphical approach worked across a range of browsers. Given the diverse, global customer base that Stovax had identified would be using the new website, it had to be widely accessible yet retain compelling visual features.

Integration with the product and retailer database couldn't be accomplished just by using the standard Immediacy plug-ins and it was clear that all information drawn from these bespoke databases needed to be displayed within the site design.

Solution

The initial design presented by Stovax to Unified was ratified using part of our InSite methodology - in effect we reverse engineered the design into wireframes so that we could run usability testing on a number of aspects of the new site (particularly the product finder and "Find a retailer" features).

Using a random selection of people within our usability lab, we identified a number of changes to the layout and use of the two main site features which improved the ease with which visitors could navigate through the site.

Our skill and ability to deploy unusual designs and layouts were tested but we kept true to the original concept that Stovax had presented us with. Working closely with the in house technical team, we integrated the product and retailers database so that there was no impact internally and we ensured that the information flowed smoothly across the various landing and product detail pages.