Rare Birds Music
Rare Birds Music is a new and used instrument shop located in Chicago. The business owner previously sold all his inventory through Reverb and just used his website for information, but he ultimately wanted a way to make online sales without losing a portion of his profits to an online platform. To accommodate his needs and boost his business profits, I redesigned his website to be cleaner and more user friendly, and added an e-commerce platform for online sales without the use of Reverb. The primary actions we wanted the user to take were to either explore the shop, view the trade page, or get in contact, so I organized the homepage with these specific user goals in mind.
The client wanted their shop to be easy to use while still filtering by multiple categories at the same time. To accomplish this I created a filter system that lists out all available categories that have obvious selected states so the user can select/unselect any categories desired to create an infinitely loading shop page personalized to their specific interests. This keeps the shop fresh, easy to use, and ultimately very effective at getting users to view and purchase the products they are interested in. The client also requested a quality meter for every product on both the shop feed and individual product pages. They sell products in a variety of conditions, not just new, and they want to be very upfront about that.
Having a well designed product page is essential to a sales-focused website, as this is most often where the user will make a decision to actually spend money. With his expertise in the field, the client knew that the best way for his business to make sales was to encourage users to make offers on products if they don’t believe his price to be fair. Rather than force the user into being willing to spend a set amount of money on a product that’s value can be wildly variable, he wanted to show that he is flexible and happy to work with them. For this reason I chose to keep the “Make offer” button in the primary button position, rather than the traditional “Add to cart” option.
Having a related products section on any product is another great way to encourage the user to continue exploring the site and, hopefully, spending money. This section is tied specifically to the category where the original product is found and helps the customer find other options if the product they clicked on doesn’t turn out to be what they want.
Trading instruments is a large portion of Rare Birds’ business ventures and had secondary focus only to the shop page. I had done some illustrations for this client prior to this build, and he wanted to make sure that these illustrations were included in the updated website design. We settled on using them in the trade section of the homepage, and it really gives a friendly and handmade touch. This is a small business owned and run by one person, so keeping that small business aesthetic was important.