Designing a signature global ecommerce experience for an iconic New Zealand brand.
Redesigning Fisher & Paykel Appliances' ecommerce platform to support their global strategy, enhance customer engagement, and streamline the online shopping experience and complex product decision-making across multiple markets.
Context.
Fisher & Paykel Appliances, a global home appliance business, recognised the need for a comprehensive redesign of its ecommerce platform. With increasing online competition, the complexity of product decisioning, and new ranges due to be released, they needed a platform to better showcase their products’ design and engineering quality.
Fisher & Paykel Appliances, a global home appliance business, recognised the need for a comprehensive redesign of its ecommerce platform. With increasing online competition, the complexity of product decisioning, and new ranges due to be released, they needed a platform to better showcase their products’ design and engineering quality.
Challenge.
Most customers look to purchase multiple appliances when building or upgrading their kitchens and laundries. As well as improving the online journeys to enable multiple products to be purchased, the platform needed to support an extended purchase decisioning journey that often included both online and retail interactions. Fisher & Paykel Appliances sought to overcome these challenges by designing a coherent and adaptable ecommerce experience that could meet the demands of each market and also require minimal market localisation.
Most customers look to purchase multiple appliances when building or upgrading their kitchens and laundries. As well as improving the online journeys to enable multiple products to be purchased, the platform needed to support an extended purchase decisioning journey that often included both online and retail interactions. Fisher & Paykel Appliances sought to overcome these challenges by designing a coherent and adaptable ecommerce experience that could meet the demands of each market and also require minimal market localisation.
Opportunity.
The redesign presented an opportunity to align the digital platform with the company’s global brand aspiration, enhance customer engagement, streamline its product system and optimise the purchase decisioning process. The redesign would enable Fisher & Paykel Appliances to strengthen its brand presence and improve performance by creating a unified and extensible global platform.
The redesign presented an opportunity to align the digital platform with the company’s global brand aspiration, enhance customer engagement, streamline its product system and optimise the purchase decisioning process. The redesign would enable Fisher & Paykel Appliances to strengthen its brand presence and improve performance by creating a unified and extensible global platform.
Approach.
The DNA team collaborated closely with Fisher and Paykel’s leadership and product teams, working iteratively to understand the client vision and goals, and ensuring the new experience would be adaptable to diverse market contexts while maintaining a cohesive product strategy and user experience.
The project was staged over several months to define the brief, conceptualise the experience and strategy, validate the design for international markets, develop the detailed digital experience design and hand over the design system and assets to internal and international development teams.
The DNA team collaborated closely with Fisher and Paykel’s leadership and product teams, working iteratively to understand the client vision and goals, and ensuring the new experience would be adaptable to diverse market contexts while maintaining a cohesive product strategy and user experience.
The project was staged over several months to define the brief, conceptualise the experience and strategy, validate the design for international markets, develop the detailed digital experience design and hand over the design system and assets to internal and international development teams.
Validation.
To validate the proposed design and gather user feedback, we conducted remote user testing in key markets, including the US, UK, and Australia. The testing was pivotal in optimising the design experience to ensure it met customers’ specific needs and expectations across different regions.
To validate the proposed design and gather user feedback, we conducted remote user testing in key markets, including the US, UK, and Australia. The testing was pivotal in optimising the design experience to ensure it met customers’ specific needs and expectations across different regions.
Bringing to life the concept of designed perfection.
Working with Fisher & Paykel Appliances leadership and project teams, we developed a digital experience framework to represent the priority user flows of the site through product categories and product pages.
User flows were brought to life with a visual prototype of the experience across desktop and mobile page designs. The experience framework also included a content specification, a detailed information architecture and a definition of the components used across multiple market sites.
Signature experiences.
We recognised early on that it was important to design a digital experience that aligned with the brand aspiration, product and retail experience. Achieving this meant not only covering the basics brilliantly but also elevating the design in unique and innovative ways.
Mobile customer journey.
It was critically important that the digital experience would be coherent across multiple screen sizes. With metrics on mobile use of their website increasing every year – the designed experience needed to work just as well in small screen sizes through every stage of the customer journey. A key touchpoint from insights was that the customers often researched on desktop screens and then used mobile in retail stores. The digital experience needed to support this customer journey.
Design system and components.
To meet critical timeframes, Fisher & Paykel had internal and international development teams start implementing the new platform before the design was completed. We worked closely with internal teams and developers to progressively roll out priority design components and assets for the build.
Components across multiple responsive breakpoints were designed and handed over in a series of design drops and milestones. We worked through the design of a significant backlog of components that included the core ecommerce pages and an extensive number of components to be used more generally to build inspiration, service and corporate content across the platform.
Towards the end of the design programme, we handed over the design system to internal design resources to continue through the complex build across multiple site instances.
Outcomes and impact.
The redesigned ecommerce platform resulted in a consistent and coherent experience that aligned with Fisher & Paykel Appliances’ global business objectives. This was achieved by rationalising its product system and hierarchy, enhancing customer engagement and streamlining the purchasing process across multiple regions.
As Fisher & Paykel Appliances continues to grow its markets, the adaptable platform and language variations will enable them to enhance customer satisfaction further and maintain a competitive edge in the global market.
Client: Fisher & Paykel Appliances
Project: Global Ecommerce Platform
Deliverable: Digital Experience Design
Timeline: 9 months
Platform: Salesforce Commerce Cloud