Ecommerce Website Design for a Creative Business

Hand Drawn Maps is a boutique illustration service based in East Kent, specialising first and foremost in bespoke maps for all occasions.

The previous Hand Drawn Maps website wasn’t ideal for them as a business; the design didn’t allow their stunning products to shine, and it lacked vital functionality.

They have long been established as the choice for custom map illustrations, but they were keen to expand into a fuller stationery website, complete with invitation sets and prints.

We stripped the site down to allow the designs themselves to breathe while making it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for; making the site brighter, more user friendly and all round more useable – a key measure in website design for SEO.

We integrated a shop into the new website, so that customers that aren’t looking to commission bespoke work are able to buy non personalised products and prints. We are big believers in passive income alongside commission work, and by expanding their offerings and introducing a product line, we’ve aimed to increase Lydia’s income without increasing her workload. We developed everything to be fully responsive; we know that up to half of their visitors are viewing the site on mobile, so it’s essential their experience is just as good as a desktop user. One of the major targets we had for the new site was to speed up page loading times across all platforms, and we concentrated on optimising images and scripts across each page to achieve this successfully.

The site now has a refreshed and modern look, complete with enhanced content fully optimised for every media device, desktop through mobile. This allows customers to view their portfolio, request a quote and buy prints and gifts through the site directly. The CMS allows the client to observe visitor and customer analytics, so they can feed this information back into offering the service and products that their customers are looking for. We fully designed and developed the site using WordPress, concentrating on accessibility and responsive design to give an inclusive and interactive user experience.

We’ve loved working with Lydia and Hand Drawn Maps, and are looking forward to working on the upcoming projects we have lined up with them. If you’re interested in an ecommerce website that ranks well and looks great, please get in touch to see how we can help.