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Harringtons of Vermont
Competition Accessories
Motherwear
National Wholesale
Country Casual
Melissa Guerra
Real Goods
Chinaberry
CM Hospital
Media Image Group
Home Infatuation
Wrapped Hersheys
Golden Walnut
HansenTV
Isabella
Bullock & Jones
MIC Globe
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Project: Real Goods
Overview: New owners of Real Goods requested a redesign of their website with very specific directions: decrease the download time of the site as much as possible while maintaining as much of the look and feel of the current site as possible. Our solution was to eliminate as many graphics and images from the site as possible, replacing them with colorful type and strategically-positioned images (with plenty of white space) to produce a sleek, modern look that downloads fast. By the time we were done the load time for the site decreased drastically and very little was lost in the overall effect of the design. Special requests are never a problem for SiteForm!
Our original mission was to re-design and re-structure the Real Goods website, uniting four distinct functional areas (the consumer catalog, the renewable energy catalog, the Institute for Solar Living and a brand new informational area) into one site with common navigational theme. We were also asked to improve the shopping basket, checkout, back-end order processing and other site functions. We recommended the site become more marketing oriented through partnership affiliations, co-branding, promotional codes and two email marketing programs. The site was completely re-designed and re-engineered to accomplish this.
The design is purposely simple, with clear navigational elements and lots of white space to immediately focus the visitor's attention to the products. The products have been organized into logical departments (and sub-departments) and can also be found using the search feature on the left side of the site.
The product pages have been combined with the sub-departmental product lists reducing the number clicks needed to reach a product. When each of these product/department pages is first viewed a weekly-featured product is displayed (their merchandising department determines which products will be featured). Most of the product images have a zoom feature that opens a pop-up window containing a high-resolution image of the product.
In addition to their mainstream consumer catalog, Real Goods also has a more technical, renewable energy catalog for hard-core environmentalists. This section of the site was designed with a different color scheme to prevent any customer confusion. However, the navigational elements remain the same, so the visitor does not have to figure out a new way to explore the site.
Real Goods is the major supporter of the non-profit Institute for Solar Living and has a section on the site featuring information on the Solar Living Center as well as its educational programs. Because this section of the site is educational rather than product-based, the navigational elements were again modified with a different color scheme while the focus is centered on information rather than products.
Finally, we created a new area for Real Goods devoted exclusively to information. This area contains renewable energy articles, facts and information which are tied back to relevant products in the Real Goods catalog site. In conjunction with this area we created a Readers' Forum; a bulletin board where customers and could exchange ideas and opinions.
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Consumer Goods
Renewable Energy
Solar Info Page
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