Integrated Ideas were recommended to Beth Chatto Gardens by another client of ours to discuss and pitch for a potential new design and build of a website and shopping cart, a new stock inventory for their plant collection, and support their digital marketing team.
Following a long chat with the head of Marketing Research and Development and taking on board their comments on the current site - being large, containing lots of information with the opportunity to buy online. Yet it is in a nutshell is wieldy, it’s hard to find plants and purchasing is quite difficult.
We were keen to offer then a ‘lighter’ fully responsive e-commerce site which would only feather the Beth Chatto Plant Collections and provide a smooth and seamless online purchase process.
Designing something simple, functional and which fits with the Beth Chatto brand.
The problem
According to their Google Analytics, visitors to the site were leaving early, most likely due to the difficulty in navigating around the site or searching for their desired plants. They needed simplicity.
They also needed to reach out to a newer, younger audience for sustainability, targeting as they called it ‘time-starved, cash-rich customers from the age of 20 to 55 who do not have the time to visit the Beth Chatto Gardens but wish to access the Beth Chatto brand and some of its products.
The solution
In order to be able to compete in their competitive landscape (excuse the pun), a new website needs to be developed to be robust, easy to navigate, have a smooth purchase system and grab the attention of new visitors to learn more and in turn buy more.
The new site should contain not only the seasonal plant collections and border packs as requested but also their bespoke garden service. Offer ideas and solutions to various garden sizes, shapes and weathers for those who know what they need as well as new starters who need that helping hand. This was to be offered by an online ‘instant’ garden where time starved consumers and new entrants into gardening can select, order and with for their ‘garden to arrive’ on their doorstep. This was to be taken one step further
The completed site should fully integrate with the existing online ordering system.
The design
Using their new brand marque as part of the design we were able to bring some interest to the page, give it a bit of brand style and life.
Breaking down the page to offer simple, clear options for the user to navigate through to their desired area of the site depending on their requirements. A few design routes were offered to allow A-B testing to take place (once the site is live) as to the look and feel which was most popular with the end-users.
A full sitemap and user journey mapping session which took place allowed us to determine the key areas which needed close attention and how we would best design and build the site to give it that really simple, easy to use feel.
The conclusion
After looking at the current site, taking notes and our ideas on what we felt was required, we provided Beth Chatto with a comprehensive solution and proposal alongside these initial designs for discussion, but advice too on how they should perhaps at this stage of the process take look at the wider picture of it all rather than just the additional Plant Collection site as above.
The outcome was that further thoughts would need to take place internally on the whole Beth Chatto digital marketing setup, their websites and how they attract customers, so the project was temporarily put on hold.
bethchatto.co.uk