Challenge
With a brand refresh around the corner, Stoats approached us as their agency partner to help design and build a new website in line with their new vision, positioning and goals.
Built in 2013, the existing Stoats website reflected the brand positioning at that time, as a fun, energetic, young start-up brand. But the world had moved on and Stoats as a business had grown up. Our task was to deliver a website that would engage consumers, deliver direct sales and drive brand loyalty.
Solution
As an FMCG brand with an amazing story to share, building a beautiful website for Stoats was not going to be difficult. But the website had to work much harder than that. A core requirement of the brief was to build in e-commerce functionality – which meant we had to understand the reasons why a consumer would choose to shop directly with Stoats, balancing vibrant creative with strong UX.
Working with our sister agency Union Digital, we followed our web design process, from carrying out a full technical and content audit of the existing site, to developing user personas and journey maps to define our approach. This meant building an engine that set no restrictions on the design or user experience, allowing us to present the products in limitless ways.
Then followed the design phase – where we collaborated closely with Stoats’ package design agency, who were leading on the brand refresh, to ensure the essence of the new brand was reflected fully in vibrant and playful visuals.
Along with a new, grown-up brand, we needed a tone of voice that was less start-up food truck and more global business. In collaboration with Stoats, we developed copy across all areas of the website, from the about us page to product descriptions. Working with their new positioning, ‘Hearty and Wholesome’, we developed a style that reflected their home-grown and natural beginnings but also nodded to their new status as a big player on supermarket shelves. Stoats have always had a playful, fun voice, so our job was to hold onto some of that colour in a more mature way. The result was a brand with the right balance of soul and flavour.
