Diams.com - An e-commerce makeover

Branding

  • Artistic direction
  • Charter and documentation
  • Positioning

Design

  • Design system & styleguide
  • Interaction design
  • Visual design

Marketing Strategy & Communication Campaign

  • Communication strategy
  • Competitive analysis
  • Strategic audit

Project management

  • Change management
  • KPIs and performance monitoring
  • Measurements and reporting

Web Development

  • CMS Drupal & Wordpress + Symfony
  • E-commerce platforms

Brief

Diams.com was created in 2004 in Lausanne by a fervent gemologist. It became the premier Swiss website for the sale of diamondsmeteorites and jewels. It stands out thanks to its transparent pricing and ethical and social values.
Antistatique was brought on board to help the website’s team overhaul their e-commerce platform. We were given the task of improving the overall user experience, from browsing to purchasing, and from multi-marketing management to communication with clients (email transactions). We made the necessary technical arrangements and optimized the system as part of an effort to continually enhance the platform.

Study and analysis

And who may you be, my dear Sir or Madam?

To have a better understanding of our client’s business as well as the people using the platform, we set up a workshop to create personas. We used these archetypes of future users throughout the project. They helped us when it came to making decisions on design and implementation. They also helped us recruit participants for our user tests. You can see the fruits of our labor above: portraits of our target audience!

Do you speak global or just local?

This is a website that exists in several languages, performs transactions in various currencies and is accessible everywhere. That means we needed to think about international markets, localization and making information accessible. We tried to come up with all possible scenarios. An American expat who speaks English connects to the site in Switzerland, but wants to see the prices in Euros. A mulitilingual Swiss German connects to the French version of the site while on vacation to check up on her order status. We drafted up these scenarios, which became an epic for our dear developers. We had to make sure we had covered everything! These design choices had an impact on the technical features, content preparation and management of the rest of the project.

Wireframes – Warning: work in progress!

Once we had identified our audience and outlined the system, we had to draft up the architecture for the content and visual design. Sometimes we work with low-fidelity mockups (quick constructions and high-level pages). Other times we collaborate with our client to create rapid prototypes. For this particular project, we opted for “traditional” wireframes, because we wanted to be able to visualize the content of pages, different componentsgrid and interactions. Wireframes allowed us to display the elements that are necessary to build a positive e-commerce experience: expertisecertificationsquality, and customer reassurance. Below, you can see the wireframes for the homepage, a category page and product details page. This is the heart of a customer’s e-commerce experience. We therefore designed these pages carefully and constantly improved them as the site evolved.

“Diamonds are a designer's best friend.”

We had already learned a lot about our client’s trade. We now needed to combine that with our e-commerce experience. We also wanted to explore graphic settings of the platform so that we had the full picture and could help out our client’s web team. We created a series of moodboards, which allowed us to examine different graphic settings that correspond to the brand’s valuesproducts, and personas we had created earlier. Here’s a sample of our work.

Proposed solution

We decided to work with Magento, an e-commerce platform that can support multiple languages, boutiques and devices. Magento is a major player on the Open Source e-commerce market and offers advanced features that allow companies to grow easily and extend their reach to new markets.

International markets

Our platform not only had to meet the requirements of the Swiss market, but also European and international markets, including France, Germany, Mauritius and the United Arab Emirates.
We took special care when configuring the parameters for an international audience and custom-developed certain tools so that we could accomodate language and local settings, local taxes and delivery fees.

Multiple languages and devices

The site is multilingual. We custom-developed certain elements to simplify the translation management process when translating products for different markets.
Customers have the option of purchasing products in several currencies.

Multiple boutiques

We configured the various boutiques on the same Magento forum to help manage the different markets. While the catalogue for these markets are almost identical, it is possible to make exclusive offers.

API & Web Services

Diams.ch already had an app to search for diamonds with specific criteria. This app is connected to the Diamond Exchange.
Our job was to incorporate this app using Magento’s API and Web Services so that customers could directly purchase a diamond offered by the app.

Customer relations

We also needed to look after the company’s relationship with its clients. The Diams team needed to be able to trace customer purchases accurately and regularly, and keep track of their messages and browsing. We helped them choose a new Customer Relationship Management tool and integrated it into the Magento platform.

Rich discoveries

We loved exploring the world of diamond, meteorite and precious stone sales. Ramon, who is the founder of Diams, had so much passion for his art – a passion he transmitted to us in our meetings and discussions. We would have loved to take a little trip to Tahiti to discover how black pearls are cultivated… but only to have a better understanding of our client’s products, of course!
Take a little tour of the site and treat yourself or someone you love to a little sparkle in their life!

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