The new rooms designed and fitted by newrooms are so beautiful we knew immediately that their new site had to be image-led.
Minimalist design, aspirational products
To allow the photographs of the rooms to really shine we felt it was important for the design of the website itself to take more of a minor role. This thinking resulted in an elegant, stripped back design where the images were allowed to take centre stage.
The bespoke, dream kitchens and bathrooms that newrooms delivers are of the very highest quality and so the website had to feel aspirational rather than retail. We purposefully steered clear of any design elements which might water down the simplicity and luxury of the newrooms brand.
Taking control
Very early on in the project we realised that it was essential for the newrooms team to be able to grow their digital portfolio themselves. Going into the future we wanted them to be empowered to catalogue their work and update their website without having to come back to the design studio every time.
So began a journey as Adam and Jamie learnt first how to photograph their work to its best advantage and then how to curate their online image galleries. None of this would have been possible without a powerful and user-friendly content management system – which is why we chose the WordPress system.
Tags and user experience
The customer should always be at the heart of any website build. How will he or she want to use the system? What will make their user experience as positive as possible?
Influenced by how increasingly web-savvy customers use websites such as Pinterest.com and HousetoHome.co.uk, it was this line of thinking that introduced the idea of filtering product photographs by key attributes. Only want to see ‘contemporary’ designs? How about kitchens that include a granite workbench? Not a problem.
The kitchens section has been built around a powerful system of tags and filters. It allows website visitors to filter the kitchen case studies by style, finish, material or even appliances. As the number of case studies increases, this feature will become more and more useful.