Introduction
Late last year Comrz entered into discussions with long-standing Affino user, and the world’s leading distributor of extreme sports video - X-treme Video, headquartered in Biarritz, France. After several changes in design over a number of years, the existing site was starting to look a little disjointed, and the slightly confusing environment and resulting consumer experience was surely impacting negatively on the retail potential of the site.
After some early exploratory talks, Comrz was able to make a number of cause-and-effect observations and recommendations on the mechanics and consumer psychology of the existing site. Comrz proposed to do a complete overhaul from the ground up - updating structure, look and feel and functionality. As with all Comrz projects, this was never going to be a one-sided affair, and it involved key collaborators at every level from both sides.
The Collaboration
CEO Franck Bywalski and Webmaster Pascoe de Glanville headed up input from the X-treme Video side; key consultant for Comrz was Stefan Karlsson, with design by Stuart Hayward and principle implementation by Rao Kancharla.
At the forefront of the considerations for this upgrade was the overall user experience, and how consumer psychology would best influence the consumers’ behaviour on the website - what would attract and hold their attention, and what would facilitate more sales from the three product / services areas - High Definition Video Cameras, DVDs and Video-on-Demand.
The project was conducted very much as an open dialogue, with numerous questions raised by Franck and Pascoe, and a variety of solutions proffered by Comrz - supported by well-documented, scientific rationale. Throughout the exercise we considered all aspects of retail psychology - in how the consumer was drawn into the site, and how obvious and easy it was to make a purchase immediately or at a later stage. The thinking was actively evolved and fine-tuned throughout the project process.
The Design
Good design is always a marriage of aesthetics and functionality, and a big part of this project was to make use of all of Affino’s latest functionality - Video Walls, scrolling Carousels, slick Single Page Checkout, Wishlists and other more hybrid technologies such as linking from DVDs to Video-on-Demand equivalents.
The new Home Page is a great example of applied design, and really brings to fore all the key elements of the site - the content, the 3 stores, the video media and the precise attention to detail and high production values. The styling is very much in line with Stefan Karlsson’s and Stu Hayward’s ’professional elegance’ brand-centric / brand-reinforced ethos as exemplified by sites such as Aido and Comrz.com of course (reference - Comrz Website Design Methodology). For X-treme Video, we subtly included adapted chevron motifs - as seen on signs for acute / hairpin bends = extreme!
At the base of this article, you can page through several of the key screens from the site.
The Implementation
4 key personnel were involved in the implementation, the lion’s share was done by Comrz’s Senior Developer Rao Kancharla, with some Skin generation and hands-on input from Stefan Karlsson. Pascoe de Glanville adapted and applied the Skins to the site structure, and Bruce Williams adapted and updated much of the existing content.
For sake of expediency, this was a ’Hot’ implementation; that is to say changes were made directly to the live site, foregoing a separate stagings instance and a database reset / restore. Disruption to ongoing services was minimal, but as always there were a few snags that needed sorting, nothing of which though hampered ongoing site transactions or led to any period of downtime.
The new site is now in its infancy, and there are most likely still a few niggles that have yet to surface. The improvement in the website’s retail environment though is immeasurable. X-treme Video now most definitely has a cutting-edge site in every department, to match its cutting edge brand credentials. We invite and encourage all of you to experience the very best of extreme sports entertainment (retail and otherwise) on the X-treme Video website ...
