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Chaplins
The Story So Far
In 2016, we started a long and trusted relationship with Chaplins when we launched their first ever e-commerce site. Six years on, not only had the client team grown considerably, but their demands and those of the customers were driving a radical upgrade to their website - we needed to deliver a rich, new digital experience that would bring Chaplins’ customers even closer to their favourite styles.
The Challenge
To design and build a new website with a premium feel across the board, oozing style and exemplifying best-in-class UX across all devices.
Unified Approach
BigCommerce was the platform of choice, and would suit Chaplins perfectly - putting full control into the hands of the internal team, but requiring little technical focus from them and the SaaS platform handling technical updates and some maintenance for them and us.
We captured Chaplins' design-led brand with specially selected typography, a muted colour scheme, large, impactful imagery, and lots of intricate details and design flourishes.
Look and feel
When one visits the Chaplins showroom in London, you're immediately present to some of the most beautiful brands and design pieces from Italy, Europe and worldwide that have been carefully chosen by the team at Chaplins. The ever-changing roomsets on display help drive decision-making to the customers who visit.
We wanted to capture this with the design and user experience on the website. One key theme was to allow the beautiful brands, their products, and the brand imagery to be the star of the show, and the website take on a more reserved tone - but not to the extreme of being bland and like some of their competitors - they appeal to a high-end clientele and sell higher end, luxury products.
We followed our normal process - customer understanding, brand guidelines, competitor and market research, moving on to moodboard and eventually delivering a Style Guide that would ensure consistency for all elements across the website, not just for launch but for any further website work either content by the client, or enhancements to the website by us.
“Unified have supported us through every phase of our ecommerce journey, helping us re-platform to a new site and transform us into a multi-channel business.”
James Press - Head of Web & Marketing - Chaplins
An intuitive and user-friendly PIM
A user-friendly PIM (Product Information Management) was key for the team at Chaplins and Akeneo was our first choice.
Not only has Chaplins a vast range of products available, but unlike their competitors, they aim to offer all of the available configuration options online to the customer. Not only is this demanding on the visitor UX, but also a challenge to manage and update internally.
We worked with Chaplins to architect a product data structure to allow efficient management of the 100s of thousands of product options - for example, using shared fabric ranges across a brand's product offering.
Selecting the best e-commerce integrations
In addition to BigCommerce and Akeneo, it would be good to mention the use of Shogun and ShipperHQ.
We wanted to deliver a magazine-style editorial on the site, allowing hotspots and direct linking from articles to products. Shogun was the obvious choice here, with a native integration to BigCommerce and an easy-to-use CMS interface for the Chaplins team.
Chaplins provide their own delivery service - ShipperHQ allowed them to calculate accurate shipping across the UK, including special London rates and more.
The website was delivered during Covid-19 lockdown, and their large London showroom was reduced to appointment-only - so Chaplins wanted a booking system to take care of visitor requests. We implemented SimplyBook, allowing appointment booking and internal calendar scheduling with ease.
Client Quote
“As well as offering up dynamic solutions to complex problems, they are a true pleasure to work with, offering great customer support whenever needed.”
James Press - Head of Web & Marketing - Chaplins
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