Yale Digital Online Store
Yale has been the world's favourite lock since 1843, and has a rich history behind the familiar name. Today Yale leads the way in product development and innovation, and remains probably the most famous lock brand in the consumer market.
The Brief
Historically, much of Yale's reputation has been built by innovating and pioneering new products. In today's competitive market this is even more important and Yale has created a new generation of electronic locking solutions, including digital door locks, smart alarms and digital firesafes.
To help take this new generation of products to market, we were asked to create an online store that would not only provide an e-commerce solution that allows customers to buy products online, but also provide all the background technical and sales information around the products. This helps customers understand even highly technical new products, and enables the site to actively work as a selling tool for Yale.
Our Solution
Our first task was to create a name for the site that builds on the value of the Yale brand, but also communicates the type of products on offer. Yale Digital differentiated the site from the more traditional Yale products, but used the familiar Digital name established for products such as cameras and telephones when making the transition from conventional to electronic formats.
Combined with this we created he strapline 'Yale Digital. Clever Stuff.' to convey both the intelligence and functionality of the offering, and at the same time the exuberance and excitement of the technology. The simple hand-written typeface also continued this juxtaposition by contrasting with the powerful styling of the site.
We wanted to give the whole site a wow factor that would show the customer that these products were revolutionary and inspiring. The black skin used just oozes sophistication, and creates the perfect backdrop for such design-led products. Keeping the Yale yellow as a carefully used highlight maintains the brand link, accentuates the impact of the colour and delivers subtle but powerful emphasis wherever it's applied.
The site itself is split into two parts - the information based section that delivers strong sales messages and detailed product information, and the online store itself that enables customers to quickly find and purchase their products. By using a simple carousel at the foot of the site, the customer is able to easily step between these parts of the site whenever they want.
The functionality of the site was critical if the shopping experience was to live up to the products and overall look of the site. The design makes it as easy as possible for customers to buy, and features a basket that is always visible. Wherever they are, the customer is only ever one click away from checkout - without having to hunt around the page for a 'checkout' button. The online shopping basket instantly updates as customers add products, and this means they don't have to wait for the page to reload (which takes time), and don't lose their place in the store.
The site features an easy to use Alarm Package Builder that lets the customer simply enter the number of rooms in their home and then gives them a choice of product packages that are customised to meets their needs. This provides support and information for the customer, and creates an upsell opportunity for Yale by introducing potential purchasers to additional functionality in their alarm packages.
Behind the scenes the site was built to deliver a fast and seamless experience, utilising a proven external payment system that takes care of security and statutory protection on Yale's behalf. The system also ties in to external systems to arrange deliveries and installation with the minimum of fuss and effort.
More about our technical approach to this website
Put simply, a slow e-commerce website = lost sales.
We use Ajax technology to rapidly load in data on demand, without the user having to wait for the page to reload. It also means they can continue to interact with the page whilst part of it loads, rather than just watching a blank or partially rendered page. Using Ajax also reduces the load on the server, making the best use of the server's resources to handle more customers at a time.
For the checkout process we used a proven external payment processing provider reduces the costs and headaches involved in handling payments directly.
The typical downside of this set up is that the checkout pages can feel incoherent, less professional and reduce customer confidence. We overcame this by embedding the externally-hosted payment pages within our pages, ensuring a consistent visual style, so the customer won't even notice that the payment processing is being outsourced
We also created a powerful back-end, including ability to integrate with an existing order fulfillment systems via Web Service, and efficiency-increasing custom features like automatically locating the branch nearest to the customer.
As an online store Yale Digital provides a simple but effective counterpoint to the main Yale site, and delivers an expandable platform for the brand's ongoing commitment to Digital security.
Visit Yale Digital now
