Building a One-of-A-kind Digital Experience for Hkliving

Ever wonder why we hear the motto, “Consistency is key” so often?

It’s because it can be applied to virtually anything. Think about it — whether you’re embarking on a new fitness journey, building a brand, or creating a stellar digital experience, being consistent is the only way to guarantee success.

Globally renowned interior brand HKliving acknowledged this pearl of wisdom. In preparation for a digital future, they approached us to improve their brand consistency and develop a future-proof website that would take their digital experience to the next level.

Refreshing the brand

HKliving is known for creating accessible collections inspired by traditional designs. Their product portfolio is always evolving, which means you’re bound to find what you’re looking for, regardless of the season or style. But having such a diverse portfolio has its fair share of challenges. For one, it was difficult to establish a consistent brand identity that could cater to HKliving’s changing collections.

When we got our hands on the brand, the first step was to create a solid brand foundation. HKliving prides itself on its values of heritage, authenticity, and accessibility. Based on these values, we solidified the brand strategy and refreshed the brand personality.

With the brand foundation in place, it was then time to define brand guidelines. HKliving had lots of brand elements: two typefaces, multiple brand colors, and various photography styles. What they didn’t have yet were design principles to help create a more consistent brand experience.

We tested different elements and created mockups to see what was working and what needed work. After some thorough mixing and matching, a set of design principles was introduced. This includes a defined color palette, digitizing the brand’s vintage, hand-written typeface, and segmenting photography styles. Together, these guidelines help HKliving improve brand consistency while accommodating their dynamic product portfolio. You can find out more about the brand refresh here.

Building a new digital home

In this day and age, a website is one of the most important touchpoints of the customer experience (CX). As a key player in the interior B2B market, HKliving wanted to improve their CX and build a website that raises the bar for the furniture industry. After revamping the brand identity, we set out to do just that.

The goal was to create an inspiring, future-proof, and customer-centric website with an integrated e-commerce store. The site needed to be visually appealing and easy to navigate at the same time. It had to reflect HKliving’s craftsmanship while offering a seamless shopping experience.

Time to get creative

HKliving’s website is the brand’s main digital entry point. The site needed to appeal to a diverse target audience, which includes retail buyers, supply chain planners, shopkeepers, and interior designers – just to name a few. Each type of buyer is unique and has their own set of objectives.

We broke down HKliving’s target groups and created customer personas to ensure an enhanced shopping experience for each and every one. The personas gave us insight into the objectives of each buyer, which helped build a site structure that pleases all.

Many of HKliving’s products belong to multiple categories. We had to organize the products and collections in such a way that the site structure gives a logical overview and helps navigation and orientation. Customers should easily find what they’re looking for, regardless of where they are on a particular page.

A superior online shopping experience

Most e-commerce platforms are built with a focus on function. As a result, design often takes a back seat. HKliving’s site had to be functional, but it also needed to showcase the brand’s eye for exceptional design. Combining form and function was key.

One of the distinctive features of the site is the horizontal scrolling panel. We chose horizontal scrolling because it offers site visitors the choice to browse through all the different content (which can be expanded or condensed) or navigate directly to what they’re looking for.

Catalogs are a key business tool in the furniture industry, and HKliving wanted to bring the experience of flipping through a physical catalog online. We designed a digital catalog on the website where visitors can browse products, get inspired, and directly add items to their shopping cart.

The website is built using a modern JavaScript framework for the front end. The front end pulls data from a cloud-based CMS called Prismic and cloud-based e-commerce platform  BigCommerce. Different sorts of data like client, payment, and product information are retrieved from various sources and integrated into the e-commerce store. But our work doesn’t stop here. Click this link if you want to know all the ins and outs of HKliving’s new website.

Our work with HKliving began with the brand’s commitment to becoming the best digital version of itself. By focusing on both usability and aesthetics rather than one over the other, we created a unique, inspiring, and customer-centric digital shopping experience for HKliving’s customers. And we won’t be stopping here — there are still many more milestones to reach with HKliving!