Performance led design for retail – the Summit difference

As the UK’s only retail-focused digital marketing and ecommerce specialists, we understand that your website must achieve a balance between usability and commercial reality.

Summit builds online properties that meld form and function perfectly. We meet your users’ expectations while simultaneously improving conversion or margin, increasing sales and enhancing engagement. We call this approach performance led design: the delivery of measurable value without any aesthetic sacrifices.

 

We were looking for a strong partner to help us create the best solution for our online store. Summit was the only company that had a truly market-focused solution and delivered exactly what we needed.

RYAN THOMAS, General Manager at Comet

Performance led design for retail – Summit expertise

Summit combines aesthetics and performance to deliver strong sales

To ensure that you maximise ROI through our performance led design, we:

  • Develop user personas - Understanding how and why your customers buy is invaluable, so we create personas for each of your customer types to ensure your site satisfies their differing needs and achieves higher conversion rates
  • Adopt a user-centric approach - We involve your existing and potential customers in the design process, to gain insights into what they expect to see and do on your site – and then apply this learning to increase incremental sales

 

  • Use wireframes and prototypes - To create effective checkout funnels that maximise conversion and reduce friction in your customers’ journey, we use wireframes to plan the route and then make them interactive (prototyping) to match planned usability to reality
  • Create strategies for multichannel retail - To ensure your customers experience performance-led design in every channel, we deliver uniformity across all of your digital properties to flatten the learning curve and gain higher conversion rates
  • Understand human psychology - Depending upon your customers’ position within the sales cycle, they will react differently to various colours, button sizes and calls to action. We use this information to guide us when designing your site(s) to ensure we include the sales triggers that maximise your returns and deliver greater ROI
  • Apply best practice for accessibility - The website(s) we design for you will conform to W3C and WAI guidelines to ensure higher Google rankings, easier navigation for people with disabilities, and quicker and easier deployment across multiple platforms (e.g. mobile, tablet, TV)
  • Use data and analytic insight - Using data provided by our own proprietary technologies and third party solutions (e.g. Google Analytics) gives us significant insights into your customers’ behaviour and informs our design
  • Adopt SEO techniques - Our designers work closely with our SEO experts to keep optimisation at the forefront of the aesthetic effort and ensure your site performs well in search engines, without compromising usability

Performance led design for retail – Summit technologies

To help you gain competitive advantage, we use the following technologies:

  • Analytics tools - We use analytic and data capture tools such as ClickTale and Morae to record historical information, to conduct user testing on your pre-launch sites, and to identify potential improvements post-launch – all with the intention of increasing your sales and ROI
  • Multi-variate testing - With the help of tools such as Google’s Website Optimiser, we develop multi-variate tests to finely hone the details of your new site(s) and reduce or remove all impediments to conversion
  • Axure - Using this wireframing and prototyping tool allows us to move quickly from initial concepts to working prototypes, to refine the routes that your customers take, and to maximise conversion
Performance led design for retailSummit's technology expertise can give you a competitive advantage

Performance-led design in practice - Carpetright

Design Challenge

Their challenge

Following Summit's relaunch of the Carpetright website, the key challenge was how to convert visitors into customers, given that the nature of the product range is such that most purchases are likely to take place in-store rather than online.

Design Solution

Our solution

We researched the customer decision-making process and identified opportunities to improve product presentation and provide advice online. We designed and built a brand new 'Style Guide' section for the site to accomplish this, inspiring visitors to the site to take action.

Design Results

The results

There was a 12 per cent uplift in sample requests following the Style Guide's introduction. Visitors to the Style Guide section of the site are four times more likely to purchase online and three times more likely to request a sample than ones who don't. Over 50 per cent of sample requesters go on to purchase in-store.

Further reading:

If you are interested in working
with us, call Andy Brown

on 01430 876 876 x401

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