One of the things you dis­cov­er when doing com­pet­i­tive research across a retail ver­ti­cal mar­ket is how skilled our indus­try has become at usabil­i­ty — and how much fur­ther we could go in branding.During the 1990s, when web design was in its infan­cy, most busi­ness web­sites were brochures: heavy on brand­ing, with almost no inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, and lit­tle if any thought giv­en to the user. Today the oppo­site pre­vails: we are mas­ters of antic­i­pat­ing our cus­tomers’ needs, but some­times for­get to tell our story.

How do you improve on a good thing?

When Bet­teridge Jew­el­ers hon­ored our design stu­dio with their account, we took quick note of the superb func­tion­ing of their site’s ecom­merce engine. Although no site of more than a cou­ple of pages can ever be per­fect, Bet­teridge came clos­er than most.

Their exist­ing site ticked all the box­es: Fast, accu­rate search; check. Plen­ty of detailed infor­ma­tion about every item in the inven­to­ry; check. Log­i­cal site struc­ture with clear labelling; check. Help­ful, high-qual­i­ty pho­tog­ra­phy, copy, and micro­copy. Flu­id­ly respon­sive design. Opti­mal speed and per­for­mance. Bet­ter than aver­age accessibility.

Giv­en how good the site was already, what could we as design­ers and devel­op­ers do to make it better?

We began by study­ing com­peti­tors’ sites. Dozens of them. A few were equal­ly per­for­mant, most weren’t. But almost every site we looked at had a com­mon prob­lem — a prob­lem, we began to real­ize, that our client’s site shared. For all its superb func­tion­ing and near-seam­less inter­ac­tiv­i­ty, our client’s site didn’t imme­di­ate­ly con­vey the Bet­teridge sto­ry. Its mechan­ics were impec­ca­ble, but its brand sto­ry was easy to miss. Good design is often invis­i­ble. Good brand­ing shouldn’t be. Brand should be felt, in every word, image, and action.

The soul of a family business

Bet­teridge has a real sto­ry to tell. A fam­i­ly busi­ness, launched in 1897 on two remark­able blocks of down­town and mid­town Man­hat­tan, it has been hand­ed down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion. The com­pa­ny relo­cat­ed its head­quar­ters ear­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry to Green­wich, Con­necti­cut, where Bet­teridge became an insti­tu­tion. Peo­ple who bought their engage­ment rings at Bet­teridge had chil­dren who bought theirs there — and grand­chil­dren who even­tu­al­ly did the same — often buy­ing from sales peo­ple who had worked with their fam­i­lies for decades.

As the company’s local rep­u­ta­tion deep­ened, they expand­ed to new mar­kets. But always grad­u­al­ly, and with a craftsman’s care. Always with an eye on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and a pref­er­ence for the slow and steady.

Unlike many jew­el­ers of their size, Bet­teridge cre­ates as well as curates — they not only sell oth­er com­pa­nies’ fine jew­el­ry, they also cre­ate their own. In a secret work­shop below the company’s flag­ship store, pas­sion­ate crafts­men design bespoke pieces that get hand­ed down through generations.

As design­ers our­selves, we found Betteridge’s com­mit­ment to the per­son­al and the bespoke inspir­ing and com­mend­able. We thought it was their unusu­al lev­el of care and thought­ful­ness that kept their cus­tomers com­ing back. And that new cus­tomers would relate to these val­ues, too — if we could prop­er­ly con­vey them.

The Ghost in the Machine

This is no ordi­nary jew­el­ry retail­er. They could have no ordi­nary site.

More­over, the client’s own knowl­edge (gleaned from hours of one-on-one inter­views) told us, and our own research con­firmed, that in jew­el­ry, brand is everything.

Why does brand mat­ter so much in this cat­e­go­ry? Con­sid­er that less than five per­cent of most jew­el­ry com­pa­ny sales hap­pen online. Of course the site must be per­fect. It goes with­out say­ing that trans­ac­tions should be seam­less. But that’s table stakes.

To con­vince a poten­tial cus­tomer to actu­al­ly come in and talk to a sales­per­son, a jew­el­ry web­site must do more than just work per­fect­ly. It must seduce. It must talk to the cus­tomer in an authen­tic voice. It must con­vey the brand on every page of the site. If it doesn’t do that, there’s no rea­son to come in. And if you don’t come in, you don’t buy. When retail­ers with a sol­id prod­uct for­get to build an online brand, they can keep the cus­tomers they already have — they just won’t attract new ones. We aimed to help our client attract new cus­tomers, while remind­ing the exist­ing ones why they love (and their fam­i­lies trust) Betteridge.

Thus, almost from the first moments of research and dis­cov­ery, we deter­mined that every page of this new site — even the most pedes­tri­an of func­tion­al pages — must tell the Bet­teridge brand sto­ry. Work­ing close­ly with the Bet­teridge man­age­ment and cre­ative teams, we con­ceived of small inno­va­tions (such as “brand squares” that show up amid search results) that unob­tru­sive­ly, delight­ful­ly, and con­sis­tent­ly make the Bet­teridge brand sto­ry part of every interaction.

The old site offered a mod­el ecom­merce expe­ri­ence. The new site does, too — but adds to it the per­son­al touch­es that invite vis­i­tors to slow down, breathe, and expe­ri­ence a more per­son­al shop­ping experience.

Looking ahead

Maybe it’s all those decades of lis­ten­ing to their cus­tomers that made the Bet­teridge peo­ple such thought­ful col­lab­o­ra­tors. We were also for­tu­nate to work with Madis­on­Mott, a con­tent con­sul­tan­cy that helped us find words to express the Bet­teridge spirit.

The new site soft–launched on Fri­day, Novem­ber 17. And now that this major redesign has set the table, we look for­ward to work­ing with Bet­teridge and its con­tent part­ner for years to come.

By embed­ding our­selves in the client’s cul­ture, mon­i­tor­ing the site as close­ly as any in-house design team would, and propos­ing and test­ing new ideas over time, we hope to con­tin­ue sub­tly improv­ing the Bet­teridge online cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and deep­en­ing the company’s emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with its customers.

Vis­it the new site.

Our responsibilities on this project

Research; user expe­ri­ence design; infor­ma­tion archi­tec­ture; con­tent strat­e­gy; inter­face design; front-end code; pat­tern library development.