“A hardworking site that has a lot to do and does it all beautifully.” —juror Ben Hughes

“Simple, clean design. Great product photography.” —juror Harold Jones

Overview: “Make it easy to sell and pitch your products. Your website is currently doing exactly the opposite.” Not the sort of response you want to hear from a customer survey. But such fighting words were just the inspiration that led lighting company Zumtobel to redesign its website. In collaboration with Anton & Irene, a design studio in Brooklyn, New York, Zumtobel crafted a new site, one where lighting designers, architects and sales agents can easily peruse the company’s extensive catalog. And with lighting specification information no more than three clicks away on the site’s elegantly designed platform, zumtobel.us just became a whole lot brighter.

•Nearly 4,000 product files were organized and loaded into the site’s content management system (CMS).
•Since the redesign’s launch, sessions have increased by almost 250 percent.
•A team of six—four from Zumtobel and two from Anton & Irene—completed the project in four months.

Comments by Karianna L. Haasch:
What was the thinking behind the navigation structure? “The redesign needed to meet three criteria: It must be easy for customers to use; it must be beautiful; and specification sheets must be available in three clicks—three to four clicks is the industry standard. So the site’s navigation is designed around our products—all products are accessible from the homepage. Inspirational application stories bring the products into context and link back to the product pages.”

What software, back-end technology and programming languages were used? “The entire site is built in HTML with a responsive approach. A lot of time was spent perfecting the front-end code to make everything work superfast and utilize smooth transitions to enhance the browsing experience. In addition to the site, a custom CMS was built in Python to simplify the process of updating and adding new content.”

Were there any specific demands that made the project easier or harder? “The sheer size of the project and the limited amount of resources posed significant challenges. Internal sources estimated that the project would take one year—time that we did not have. We were losing website traffic and customers, which called for an immediate solution. To tackle the task, team members worked in parallel, with at least four people working on separate tasks at all times. This way, we completed the project with unprecedented quickness.”