Namibian Hardwood: Designing a website in 72 hours

‍The challenge

Incentivized by its incredible success and several upcoming industry events, Namibian Hardwood wanted to revamp its NL website, transforming it into a sleeker and cleaner e-commerce platform that would bring forward the company’s values and the quality of its products.

With all these pointers and needs in mind, Namibian Hardwood reached out to JMR’s team of experts to create said new website. The twist? Other than the main challenge of aligning Namibian Hardwood’s core values and style with the design aesthetics of the Dutch audience, the JMR team had a three-day time crunch to complete this project.

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Our approach

As the project only required the design and prototype of the website, our team opted to develop the prototype through Figma. This way, we could share this prototype directly with the client and allow their internal development team to implement the website themselves. All design choices were taken with an existing WordPress template in mind, previously chosen by the client.

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With all these considerations in mind, the project went as follows:

1. We aimed for a more premium and minimalistic website look, which is directly correlated to the product’s premium quality.
2. We opted for a soft-gradient background from a deep black to a smoky and cozy brown, reminiscent of the warmth often provided by fire;
3. Different elements, such as animations, were added to add extra value to all featured products;
   
   • The products themselves were featured against a simple white background, allowing them to pop from within a rectangular shape;

4. The logo was featured in a simplified form on the header and in its full form on every page’s footer to celebrate the brand’s identity and its core values;
5. Clash Display became the official website typography due to its eye-catching lines and elements;
   • Easy to read and great for both large and small bodies of text, this typography served as a personification of the business: strong and bold yet extremely reliable.

6. All UX/UI standard procedures were respected, making the website easier to read and interpret for the human eye;
   
   • Text was logically displayed from left to right, according to the eye’s natural reading direction;
   • Top-level menus were developed for intuitive usage and better separation of each category.
   • The previous cart fold-out element was replaced with a more intuitive and straightforward version.
   • A product list widget was added to the cart page to facilitate upsells and cross-sells.
   • The previous long version of the checkout page was replaced in favor of a single, 1-step page;
   • The blog and recipe sections became interactive and dynamic to achieve a more attractive look.

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The results

This project resulted in a high-end, user-friendly e-commerce website design with a modern twist and a minimalist look and feel. The prototype, shared with the client in Figma, was ready to be implemented by Namibian Hardwood’s internal team of developers.

Not only did the platform become much more appealing to the eyes of the average user or consumer, but it also provided a much more intuitive interface and overall shopping experience.

Despite the 72-hour time limit for this project, JMR’s design team delivered a well-thought-out and well-rounded project, ready for implementation.

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