CASE STUDY:
BRUNNER
Brunner UK: Levelling up the contract furniture specialist’s website
The furniture company Brunner, which supplies businesses all over Europe with contract furniture to transform their workspaces, recently approached Lvl-7 with a sizeable task: to overhaul the Brunner UK website so that it was faster, more responsive, and easier to use than the existing site.
The brief.
The brand specialises in producing visually striking state-of-the-art furniture, so naturally the Brunner team wanted a website that epitomised their sleek and stylish appeal. The original UK site encountered several issues that meant it wasn’t as effective at gaining new business as it could have been. So our expert team got to work. Here’s a brief overview of how we took Brunner UK to a whole new level.
Speeding up the site.
Every page of Brunner had plenty of high-quality images, the hefty file sizes of which were causing the site to lag. Web pages with sluggish loading times are guaranteed to turn users away from a site, so high up on the agenda was to make the site run as fast as possible.
To reduce loading times, we optimised all the images so they would keep their quality but be a more manageable file size. After we had decided on a uniform layout for all the product pages, we created a template that we used to resize the images. We then compressed all the images using lossless compression, which was necessary because crisp and clear imagery was integral to the site’s success. Our changes have increased the site speed drastically; the PageSpeed score is a brilliant 98, which guarantees users’ time on Brunner won’t be hindered by slow-loading pages.
PageSpeed Score: 98
PageSpeed Score: 98
We’re very proud of this one 👆🏼
Designing the new navigation.
Creating an intuitive navigation menu was another challenge facing the Lvl-7 design team. On the original site, the menus were disorganised and, crucially, imageless, which made finding a specific product needlessly frustrating. Brunner has a lot of products, spanning multiple categories, and we wanted them all to be easy to locate in a simple menu that utilised visuals. We have designed the main navigation menu so that whenever the user hovers over a product, the thumbnail image on the right-hand side of the menu changes to that product’s main image, offering them a preview of the product before they click through to its page.
We maintained nothing short of impeccable communication with our clients. We always listened to their desired direction for the brand every single step of the way, offering customised project management with round-the-clock 24-hour support from start to finish so that we could help them realise their ambitions. Not only did we arrange weekly meetings via video call throughout the entire project to discuss and receive feedback, but we also used WhatsApp messaging to respond to any urgent queries instantly at any time during the week. By setting up continuous communications between parties, we ensured that our client and all the members of the Lvl-7 team stayed well-informed and up-to-date on every creative decision.
Shining a spotlight on the new products.
With so many great products to show off, we wanted to make sure the product pages burst with life and boasted visuals that invited people to spend time taking in all the beautiful designs.
Stunning product imagery is the bedrock of the Brunner site. For each product we have chosen a detailed main image that takes up the full width of the page, allowing users to view the product in all its glory and understand how it would look within a space. Each product page also has a horizontal scrolling gallery, which enables users to zoom in and take a closer look at the products.
Because the imagery was the centrepiece of each page, it influenced other creative decisions, including the choice of colour scheme. Brunner uses colour minimally. The understated dark grey provides the perfect backdrop for the brighter, vivid product imagery.
When presented against this subdued colour, the beautifully lit photography takes the spotlight, demanding the viewer’s attention. As always, our designers’ goal was to create a website that was the perfect encapsulation of the brand identity; the minimalist design echoes the sleek, stylish design of Brunner’s furniture, and exudes the brand’s high-end feel.
To add more visual interest, we added animations to each element of the pages. Each block of text fades in and slides down when a user loads a page, and the images fade in as they scroll further down the page. Subtle yet significant touches like this give the user small moments of joy and surprise as they explore the site, enticing them to continue scrolling, and the smooth animations are a perfect fit for Brunner’s brand.
Optimising the site’s SEO.
Another main issue with the previous site was that it wasn’t optimised for mobile, a common problem and a key reason businesses enlist the help of a digital marketing agency (after all, most people will conduct a search on their mobile device, so it’s mobile UX is something most businesses can’t afford to neglect). We made sure every element on the site, including the links, images, animations, and navigation menu, were all as seamless on mobile as they were on desktop.
By implementing the above strategies, and tracking our progress using the best analytical tools, we have ensured that Brunner UK, like all the sites we have had the pleasure of working on, is fully optimised and conforms to SEO best practices. Our hard work will allow the website to not only climb the results pages but also, once clicked on, catch and keep a visitor’s attention. We will continue to use analytical tools to assess its performance and enhance its visibility.
It was important to our clients that they could update the site’s content themselves should they want to. With this in mind, we structured the back-end to be very user-friendly and enabled them to carry out quick and easy front-end edits as well. We then travelled to Brunner’s offices in London to carry out on-site training with the team so we could be sure they knew their way around the CMS. As part of our service, we have also provided Brunner with how-to videos, which they can refer to for further guidance. Thanks to Lvl-7, the Brunner team can now easily add fantastic-looking pages with new images and text whenever they introduce a new piece of furniture, and they can quickly update existing pages, too. They are well-equipped for the future.
On to the next project.
We loved working with such an interesting company with a global reach. It always makes us proud to create a site that the client is ecstatic to have as the face of their brand. Take a look around the new Brunner UK website yourself and see what we have done with the place.
We are of course always awaiting the next challenge, and we can’t wait to partner with exciting companies who want to take their online presence to the next level.
Whether you want a website redesigned, one built from scratch, or any other digital marketing service, we at the Lvl-7 team, composed of experts in SEO, UX design, content marketing, and business strategy, would love to hear from you.