INTRODUCING FRENCH BEDROOM
Wind & Kite and French Bedroom
Wind & Kite began working with French Bedroom in 2024, providing Magento support for their established website.
While working on the site, it quickly became clear that the site had a huge amount of technical debt, causing issues.
As part of our ethical practice in any work we do, we did a cost analysis on resolving issues on the current site vs rebuilding, and found a rebuild to be a more cost-effective solution.
For best performance, Wind & Kite proposed Hyvä themes to provide French Bedroom an exceptionally fast base to build from, and a faster development system giving them the ability to adapt to change at pace promptly in the future; something that was important to them with their expanding selection of collections and pieces.
To create this new site, a complex scoping exercise was completed to determine the optimal way to showcase French Bedroom’s exquisite, high-quality products to end-users and an unrivalled D2C experience for their global customer base.
End-to-end designs were produced, and feedback was gathered from French Bedroom’s entire team before starting development efforts.
In June, we were delighted to launch the new and improved site, with a fresher, editorial, magazine inspired eCommerce site, enhancing the site's aesthetic, providing their customers an improved user experience and better functionality to showcase French Bedroom’s beautiful products and stunning imagery.
Discovery & Design
Wind & Kite conducts a design and discovery stage in every new project we take on.
Within this process, we produce a series of in-house led designs where we work closely with the client to produce stunning visual representations of the finished product, which are critiqued at every stage.
We work closely with the client to find their pinch points, and to establish a strong brand story and colour palette within the site that is consistent with their brand values.
Re-defining CMS
During discovery with French Bedroom, Wind & Kite looked at how each department worked with the site, and found some serious pinch points for the marketing team; the content management system used in Magento was long-winded and error-prone, resulting in a site that was slow to change.
The marketing team used WordPress for blog-based content, meaning two systems to maintain. Wind & Kite reviewed options and proposed a solution to migrate content away from both Magento and WordPress into something that the marketing team could thrive in: Storyblok.
Storyblok
Storyblok made it simple for French Bedroom to build high-specification, editorial pages using a wide range of content templates that Wind & Kite built bespoke for French Bedroom, to be highly responsive and user-friendly.
Given that French Bedroom produces its editorial imagery in-house and already has an extensive back catalogue of exquisite photographs, we wanted to ensure that they could effortlessly change their site content depending on season or collection, showcasing these images and their beautiful products.
Keeping It Fast
However, high-quality imagery can lead to large file sizes, resulting in slower page speed for users. Within Magento’s default Page Builder, it is only possible to select a mobile and desktop image. Wind & Kite wanted to have images for every possible device size to showcase the imagery in the crispest way possible without losing any quality between devices.
With Storyblok, Wind & Kite was able to produce this for every content block and content page built, resulting in a fast site with beautiful visuals without the need for tedious manual resizing required by the French Bedroom team.
Joining up Magento
Wind & Kite created a best-of-class Magento module to join Storyblok with Magento in a seamless way, which has since been open-sourced for the whole community to use.
Alongside an easy-to-use system to create templates for new Storyblok components (‘Bloks’) quickly, Wind & Kite created an integration with Magento’s GraphQL API to allow content creators to quickly search and select any product in real time, all within Storyblok.
View on GithubInteractive content with Hotspots
Hotspots are points on an image that users can click to see further details.
Wind & Kite built a custom extension to Storyblok to allow content creators to add hotspots to any image in real-time.
Joining this to the bespoke product picker allowed beautiful lifestyle images to be joined up with real products for an intuitive, interactive experience for customers. Storyblok allowed French Bedroom to create these and upload them to the website in minutes.
Telling the French Bedroom Story
Home Page Design
Wind & Kite wanted to highlight the story of French Bedroom, and the care and effort that their team put into everything they do, so we wanted to give that the justice and care on the home page that it deserved.
We featured
The stunning videography of
French Bedroom and their story…
…their passion for interiors and the importance of a bedroom, where all of life's moments occur…
…., and the wonderful storytelling of what their brand embodies.
The team at French Bedroom are passionate about ensuring that every customer creates the room and home of their dreams.
“Furniture should be timeless, and made to last.”
So we showcased their social media section “Designed by us, Treasured By You” enabling their customers to show off their exquisite furniture in their homes, and further enhance the value held by French Bedroom that:
The French Bedroom Blog
French Bedroom has an extensive blog on their website, including pieces on lifestyle, French design and interiors, and styling tips.
As they have been in business for almost 20 years, they have amassed a large collection of articles.
We migrated and tested all the blogs from WordPress over to Storyblok, and by using Storyblok, it allowed each article to be an individual page in its own right, using all the new components across the rest of the site to build beautiful blogs without limitations.
This provided French Bedroom with a highly crafted, curated collection of blog pieces that could be effortlessly unique for each category and blog article.
Building the next generation of User Interface
Product Listing Pages
Wind & Kite crafted the Product Details pages specifically to showcase the furniture and photography of French Bedroom, so we designed these pages to have an editorial magazine styling. We tailored the experience by device size, while keeping the content of the same high-end quality.
For Desktop Customers
Large magazine-style hero image greets the customer and sets the tone for the page
With large, beautiful graphics driving the page, and easy-to-view details throughout.
For mobile customers, the gallery is easily swiped right at the start of the page, giving a familiar experience to customers, while driving customers towards key details and purchase.
Wind & Kite worked with French Bedroom to create a “Request Sample” selection. Product samples allow customers to hold a physical part of the product at home to make sure the aesthetic matches their room before purchase.
We built a clear sample system directly into the page, which allowed the customer to make a quick purchase of the right samples without needing to leave the main product page.
We wanted to continue to highlight the people behind the brand, so for the product description, we coined it “Georgia’s Note”, taking inspiration from the woman who designed and crafted French Bedroom.
We wanted to reaffirm to the customer that Georgia was the face and heart of French Bedroom.
Intelligence Search and Algolia
Personalisation is built deeply into the French Bedroom site with the help of Algolia.
Algolia acts as the personal shopper for the customer, helping them find products tailored to them from data tracked across the store.
Everything from the search results, product lister page orders, and recommended products is tailored to the customer, giving them an experience unique to them.
Wind & Kite developed a 'first of its kind' Hyvä extension to implement Algolia smoothly across the site. As standard, Algolia results are fetched in real time, which can result in performance issues if not handled properly.
Wind & Kite implemented a 'skeleton' system to hold space for search results before loading them in, producing a seamless experience for the end customer.
Making Magento fast with Hyvä Themes
Wind & Kite always has a clear focus on performance, and we have continuously monitored site performance throughout to ensure that it remains consistent. Upon retesting one month after the “go-live” date, we are proud to confirm that all pages have passed core web vitals.
Hyvä Checkout
Wind & Kite know that there is no point building a beautiful website if the checkout is going to let the client and customers down in the end. To solve this common problem, we recommended that French Bedroom use Hyvä Checkout.
We created a seamless one-step checkout process for customers to ensure a fast, frictionless checkout experience, which we knew would improve French Bedroom’s conversion rate and ensure their customers remained happy and satisfied.
We also implemented Apple Express Pay with one-click checkout, integrations with RVVUP, Klarna, and Omni Finance, to provide choice and convenience for their customers, with the added benefit of building trust with these well known finance leaders.
Wind & Kite built a postcode look-up for customers to enable the checkout experience to remain speedy and efficient for them, without the need for repetition in forms, reducing frustration and time spent.
Futureproofing
French Bedroom was given additional training and support from Wind & Kite to ensure they could manage content in-house without the need for additional support and costs, keeping maintenance costs low.
The Results speak for themselves.
Hyvä states that by implementing their theme, French Bedroom would expect to see a 24.94% increase in conversion rate, a 36.40% increase in revenue, improved user navigation experience, and a reduction in maintenance costs.
Below are some of the impressive improvements that French Bedroom has seen in the 3 months since moving to Hyvä:
Client Quote
"Working with Wind & Kite has been a truly collaborative experience. They took the time to understand our brand, our challenges, and our ambitions, and translated them into a website that allows our imagery to take centre stage, whilst offering industry-leading UX and functionality. The results speak for themselves: faster and easier for our team to manage, and a seamless experience for our customers."
Georgia Metcalfe