Liz Earle are a forward thinking brand with a message to be proud of. They are focused upon their commitment to ethical and sustainable sourcing of botanical ingredients, and they continuously strive to reduce their impact on the planet. Not only did they want a customer to buy their product, they wanted to engage and educate them on why their philosophy is so important.
Our task was to create an elegant solution which could infuse both aspects harmoniously within a single purchasing journey. We spent a lot of time thinking / sketching / debating on how best to do this without creating a disjointed experience for customers.
Our solution was to pepper elements of their message within the product pages. We introduced the idea of incorporating their 'How to guides' and putting emphasis on ingredients at the purchase level, which proved very successful.
Liz Earle was named as one of the best online shops in 2018, and given a top ranking score of 94%, in a survey of more than 10,000 by consumer group Which?
Because the UI was editorial focused there was a worry that templates and screens would become repetitive and loose impact quickly. For this reason there was a big focus around creating a diverse range of modular, flexible components.
Designing a modular UI ensured that we could add variety across screens with extensive combinations and layout possibilities. These layout decisions could be content driven rather than template structure based which enhanced the editorial aesthetic and made sure the pages felt fresh and unique.
The design system also needed to be robust enough to work for the company for future expansion to multiple territories. To make sure this was possible we spent a lot of time designing components be able to cater for different types and amounts of content. We also focused on how we could use image treatments to give the impression of breaking the grid in the modular design.
