Design UK helped iconic global swimwear brand Speedo to take its first foray into ecommerce by developing the information architecture and design of its popular website. More recently the agency refreshed the design to further enhance the user experience.
The Challenge
We set out to create an e-commerce solution and also reinforce the Speedo brand, its values and story. Hugely innovative in terms of R&D and swimwear technology, Speedo is very well respected in the serious swimming arena but the site also had act as a showcase for additional collections including fashion, sport and wellbeing.
The initial challenge was to understand the broad customer base for Speedo, and cater to the different uses of the brand from fashion, to club swimmer to professional Olympic competitors. Our preliminary research included a series of one-to-one interviews with consumers from each group.
With such a broad product range appealing to a wide variety of different customer types, it was essential that users could instinctively find products based on their different lifestyle needs.
Our Solution
The creation of simple, straightforward categories gives customers the choice of how to interact with the site; either by product, range, activity or technology according to their gender and age. The site’s structure and guided navigation approach is logical, instinctive and answers every shopper’s needs whether a performance swimmer or beach-goer.
Visually we enhanced the site’s usability and brand message with strong, clean designs. These included a bright, fresh colour palette and plenty of white space to allow key content to stand out, as well as clever use of typography to clarify core messages. Speedo’s excellent imagery is perfectly suited to reinforce their messaging and to signpost product ranges.
Once completed, we tested our designs with Design UK’s in-house eye-tracking facility. The results from this allowed us to fine-tune a few small elements to further improve the user experience.
Recent Enhancements
Our work gave us unparalleled insight into the Speedo brand and its complexities. As a result in 2008 we were tasked with refreshing the design for Speedo’s online brand pages, ‘Explore Speedo’.
As an extremely influential brand, Speedo needed a platform to showcase an extensive range of information which would answer the content requirements of a variety of international user groups. Our designs gave them a clean and flexible template with multiple promotional areas and intuitive navigation across extensive content from history and corporate responsibility to sporting event information.
Such was the success of these designs that in September 2009 Speedo took the decision to carry them across the full Speedo online offering. Speedo.com now has a refreshed contemporary look and feel which effortlessly lets it direct visitors across multiple content and a complex product offering. It showcases a brand synonymous with performance swimming whilst very clearly placing itself within the fashion and lifestyle arena.
"Design UK helped us to create a whole new online experience meeting the needs of both consumers and supporting our Brand, Athletes and Retailers. We are very pleased"
Lisa McSorley, Chief Digital Officer, Speedo International Limited
