Freemans has launched its new website, delivering a state-of-the-art online customer experience. Flow was pleased and proud to help them on the project.

Freemans understood that the right user experience would increase visits, sales and repeat business. But to deliver those benefits with minimal risk you need a user-centred design process. So we started our engagement with Freemans by creating a user-centred design project plan, then got started on the first step - research.

Research

Paul Heath was Flow's lead consultant on the project. I asked him about the research phase. "The research told us what users think and feel, and the kinds of experiences they encounter when they are shopping online and offline. We also undertook a competitive analysis of the fashion sector and an expert evaluation of the Freemans site."

"All of this data let us understand and priotitise the project requirements effectively. But it also let us innovate new ways for customers to interact with the site. During the concept phase, our understanding of our customers' ideal shopping experience let us create a really intuitive new method for browsing."

Collaboration

Getting team members to work face-to-face makes a huge difference to the quality of the outcomes.

Paul Heath, again: "Yes, collaboration is hugely important. In fact a Freemans designer worked at our London office for six weeks. That lowered design barriers and gave them a head-start on implementation. We also ran concept development workshops involving a cross-disciplinary team of business managers, technical staff and designers."

And a final key ingredient for successful design: iteration. No design team can get all the details of a design right first time. So we created a prototype site that was tested with target users and enhanced by further rounds of design refinements.

The new Freemans user experience

The new site offers...

• Strong visual appeal, thanks to our visual design partners, Splendid
• Inspiration, in the form of catwalk videos and additional trend pages
• Cross-links to help customers find related, relevant products more easily. For Freemans, these targeted cross-sells and up-sells increase the value and size of baskets.
• Intuitive navigation, which fits the customers' model of an ideal shopping experience and reduces the number of clicks needed to buy a product.

Working with Flow

Our key client at Freemans was Jo Brook, the Web Channel Manager. She was very satisfied with the results. "In what was an extremely tight lead time, Flow were integral to the project team and continually challenged our thinking about navigation & design. We listened to our customers and as a result have made some fantastic improvements to the site."

Project details

The experience: Freemans website
Lead consultant: Paul Heath
Interaction designer & researcher: Mimi Iakovidis
Account manager: Karen Wall
Visual design: The visual designers was Charmaine Watkiss (from Splendid) and Martin Gledhill (from Freemans). They were assisted by Beau Ginbey.