Allens e-commerce website

Allens Hire e-commerce website

UX design ui design Website Ecommerce mobile

Brief

Allens Hire is one of the biggest catering equipment hire companies in the UK. Their site needed an upgrade and I was tasked to finalise UX, work with their brand designer to establish a new look and feel for the site and to design the final UI.

Challenges

The company's brand designer (with a background in print) mocked up a couple example pages and I was then tasked with adapting this design for screens. It was up to me to make the website mobile responsive and ensure it was accessible. Picking up someone else's design is never easy - most of the components I had to redesign from scratch and the fonts chosen were not suitable for web - but I navigated these challenges and eventually the original designer, the client and I were very satisfied with the end result.

Working within a defined style can actually make design decisions easier - comparable to designing a layout using a grid - but nevertheless there was lively debate around every aspect of this UI. Reviews needed to be managed very carefully or they would've devolved into design by committee sessions (every designer's nightmare). The client had strong opinions, and so did my Bluegrass stakeholders, so solid rationale was critical. Thanks to my robust process of soliciting stakeholder input early, working to build trust and consistent, clear communication, the design project went very smoothly.

Solution

Here are exports of the Figma design, starting with the homepage.

Location input

Product availability and pricing is based on event location and date. We needed to collect this data from the customer up front in order to display accurate pricing across the website. I created this animation to show the UK distribution hubs and communicate this message to customers.