Eames.com - A Global E-commerce Marketplace

The Challenge

Eames.com was initially conceived as a way for one of our existing e-commerce clients to sell their own used and vintage Eames furniture; an alternative to the likes of Ebay and other more furniture design-specific sites. However, during the process of scoping out what would have been a fairly straightforward e-commerce site, the client had the idea to provide the ability to sell through the online store to anyone who wants to. 

As well as being able to sell through the website, it also made sense for the site to become a great resource for all things vintage Eames. The goal became that Eames.com should be the place to go to online for information, guides and tips about vintage Eames furniture and designs. This resulted in the concept for the Eames Wiki featuring information on the multitude of Eames furniture and other designs, manufacturing history, labelling, colours and a library featuring a growing collection of printed articles and materials all about Eames, which have been published since the 1940s.

The benefit of the Eames.com Wiki, is that all this detailed content helps the website rank well in search.

The Approach

There are many considerations when building a website with a global audience, especially where e-commerce is concerned. 

Backend and technical development

On the technical front, careful thought around visitors’ location and currency had to be considered. The ability for the website to scale and deal with growing global traffic was also vital to its success. 

Enabling anyone around the world to set up an account from which they can easily buy and sell through the site and how that’s administered required attention. 

Being able to organise the site’s extensive content and link it in a controlled way with the e-commerce product listings was also vitally important to optimise and maximise the marketing opportunities for the website.

XD and UI design

Where all technical considerations had been defined, being able to deliver a great user experience through well thought out user interaction design was key. 

With the added complexities of multiple seller accounts and administration of product listings, alongside the variety of non-e-commerce content to consider the layouts for, it was crucial that a consistent and intuitive user experience was created. 

This was achieved using a design system for the website, both on the frontend and the backend administration. Due to the expansive use of product icons throughout the site, we created a special web icon font. This helped improve performance over the use of hundreds of individual icon files.

The Results

Despite the website featuring a large amount of high quality visual content, its overall performance is very high. Page loading times are fast, meaning that visitors are able to view content quickly.

The SEO performance is excellent, which is crucial to the success of the sites ongoing digital marketing and will ultimately lead to greater sales as a result.

Ongoing development

As Eames.com continues to grow with further content added to the Wiki and increased e-commerce traffic and sales, we provide ongoing support to develop new site features that ultimately benefit the growing user base of the site.