Biasicom is a major electronics and household appliances retailer from northern Romania, holding a continuously growing number of stores in the region. After a successfully local activity since the mid 90's, Biasicom launched its eCommerce website in late 2010, which now sells more than any other of their stores.

SELLING APPLIANCES

More and more technology goes into all the appliances we buy and use and choosing a dishwasher or an oven is becoming harder and harder. Unlike with other electronics like TVs or notebooks, most of the buyers don't keep up with the latest technologies, so the goal of the design was to overcome this obstacle and to present the products with plenty of details and by this educate the buyer into making an informed choice.

DESIGNING FOR DETAILS

The Category Tree

With a fairly large category tree, we've chosen to organize all products into 5 major categories which we've presented in a graphical manner, each its own category tree of which we show the 4 most important subcategories. This way, the user see the whole menu in the first page fold and quickly scan through it for the category he's looking for and get to the products in the minimum time.

We chose to use this type of display to clear up space in order to have a bigger area to showcase the products and their details. This also helped us to focus attention when trying to select a product category without having to scroll down the entire page. The result we were looking for was to have instant access to any category at any time regardless of the browsing pattern of the users.

The Homepage and The Product Listing

The goal of the homepage is to present the buyer with the current special offers, as well as to hint to the range of products the store has to offer them. We used larger image thumbnails for the product display to give visual feedback to the users without making the text information stand out too much.

After choosing a category, the buyer would still presented with the task to choose a product out of hundreds of available models. In order to narrow his search, the buyer can use the advanced layered navigation which filters the products almost instantaneously through Ajax calls.

The Product Details

This is the area we wanted to stand out the most. The philosphy was to bring the product to the user, to focus on the features and capabilities of each product and to present them in a simple yet attractive form.

The ideea was to keep the potential client on the site, providing all the necessary details on the product. This way the client would not leave the website to search and find more information on the product. The whole website was designed with the product focus in mind, keeping all the distractions at a minimum. We've also kept the product page free of any calls to action that would drive the buyer away from the page.

The result

The feedback got from buyers indicate a great satisfaction with the shopping process, the range of products and the way they're presented, and the percentage of repeat clients greatly increased.

Through the detailed presentation of the products, Biasicom managed to increase the sale of its high-end range as the buyers understood what they're getting for the price they're paying. Now most of the clients say that Biasicom became the first place they go to when considering buying a household appliance primarily due to the way products are presented.