Melanie Casey is an artisan jewelry designer with a burgeoning business. In addition to designing and producing all of her own jewelry in her studio outside of Boston, she also runs a showroom and bustling ecommerce store, sustained by nearly 100,000 Instagram followers. As her business and demand for her jewelry grew, it became clear that Melanie needed a new website to help her better fulfill demand for her products, but also tell a compelling story about her brand, set the right expectations for her customers, and enable data-based decision making for her business.
Last week, Melanie Casey unveiled her newly redesigned website, melaniecasey.com, designed by Cake & Arrow. The project called for compelling storytelling, careful attention to the uniqueness and quality of the Melanie Casey brand and product, and a clear business-minded approach to design. We think we hit the nail on the head.
Choosing the right ecommerce platform
Early on we determined that Melanie Casey’s new site should be built on Shopify Plus. This one was a no brainer. A scalable and adaptable ecommerce platform that enables extensive customization and growth capacity for businesses, the Shopify Plus platform makes it easy for Melanie Casey and her team to manage sales, conduct promotions, analyze data to make better business decisions, and customize and update the site without the need of developers. Shopify Plus also tests well with customers, which was a top priority for Melanie and team.
Using photography to tell the brand story
When a customer buys a Melanie Casey design, they aren’t just buying it for how it looks, but for how it is made. All Melanie Casey designs are hand-crafted by Melanie and her team of goldsmiths in her studio. Effectively telling this story adds value to the jewelry and the brand, but also creates loyalty and trust with customers.
Using state-of-the art photography, we were able to showcase Melanie Casey’s intricate and delicate designs, calling attention to the craftsmanship that goes into each piece of jewelry. We also opted to feature photography showing Melanie and her team working in her studio to remind customers that when they buy a Melanie Casey design, it is not being mass produced in nameless generic factory, but made to order and handcrafted by Melanie and her small team of goldsmiths.
Creating a better experience for customers
Melanie Casey cares deeply about her customers. Because much of her sales come from engagement rings, she knows that the purchases made on her site are incredibly meaningful. Helping customers find exactly what they are looking for and setting the right expectations not only around what the jewelry will look like in person but when it will arrive is essential.
To ensure a better experience for customers, we focused on a few key elements. The first was the browsing experience. The old site operated more like a catalog of all of Melanie Casey’s products. We wanted the new site to feature a fresh browsing experience based upon customer shopping behavior so we decided to organize the browsing by collection, such as engagement and gifting, giving customers a way to browse the collection not just by product, but by occasion, enabling customers discover new items they may have otherwise missed and helping them find the perfect piece for the occasion.
When studying Millennials, one of our research hypotheses was that to deliver value at the highest levels means resonating with Millennial values, that is, the important and lasting beliefs that influence their behaviors, attitudes, and priorities. Our research identified three key values driving Millennials: Community & Authentic Connect, Interdependency & Social Good, Transparency & Autonomy. Through a sequence of ideation, design, and user testing we were able to validate that insurance products that resonate with these values ultimately deliver more value (and higher level value) to Millennials than traditional insurance products, fundamentally changing the way they think about insurance.
We also wanted to make it easy for customers to understand the product quality and policies. On all of the product pages, we used both up close photography of the jewelry to showcase detail and craftsmanship alongside in-context photography to ensure customers had a sense of the size of the jewelry and what it would look like in person.
We are incredibly proud of Melanie Casey’s new site. Taking into account what we knew to be Melanie Casey’s vision for her website and her business, we were able to design a beautiful site that will help Melanie grow her business, continue to produce an amazing high-quality product, and make her customers feel like they are the proud owners of something truly special! Check it out: melaniecasey.com
