Custom Website Design for PNW Based Furniture Craftsman Watson Furniture

Watson Furniture Launches Custom Website Design to Show Off Their Sustainably Designed Furniture 

Nestled on Bainbridge Island in a forest of trees with views of Rainier, Watson Furniture is rooted in thoughtful and soulful design, inspired by their surroundings.  Their thoughtfully designed furniture is refined to simultaneously be timeless, functional, and full of understated beauty. They uphold strict environmental ethics throughout all facets of their business, from facilities to processes and practices. 

Website Design 

The team at Watson is full of designers themselves, so we were excited to begin this collaborative venture with their team at our Kick-Off meeting. There, we boiled down the primary goals of the website to be the following: 

1. To better tell the brand story of Watson

2. Improve the user experience on the site with an easy to navigate architecture and responsive design.

3. To inspire interior designers to consider and use Watson

With this in mind, we began working on the homepage design, starting with the idea that subtle motion would create intrigue, which inspired several portions of the page. The masthead begins with a video and the simple title “Rethinking the Office.” From there, we included lifestyle imagery with calls to action to several parts of the website, including their products, process, and project profiles. Also on the homepage is a direct call to action about the sustainability and company profile about Watson’s history. This choice was made because the brand is so important to Watson and really plays into how and why they design the way they do. 

From the Homepage, we began designing other portions of the site. We created several robust templates on the website, for everything from the product lines to product finishes, with the entire site being interconnected in the backend, making it easy for users to explore through the site based on design attributes or functionality. 

A crucial part of the site design was navigation. Upon improving the user experience, it was important for users to be able to explore the site at their leisure, while also encouraging them to pick up the phone and call the Watson Furniture team. Navigation played a big role in this, so we created a simple top navigation with four categories, and broke it down further into areas like: 

• Shop By Collection
• Workspaces Based on Needs
• Spaces for Inspiration
• Inspiration Galleries
• Designer Profiles
• Price Lists and Configurations

And many more. This robust navigation and menu allow users to find all the resources available to them as if they were in the Watson showroom. 

Another area we show off the work of the Watson team is under the Inspiration section of the site, where we feature designers and their collections, as well as Project Profiles, where users can see Watson Furniture in action at real-life locations. Each project has a custom page with photos, as well as products used, and information specific to each project including the space type, size, and more about the place it's located. 

To help users find the products pictured in the lifestyle images, we also developed custom hot-spots that pull up the product on the image to help users find exactly what they want. 

Website Development 

With such a custom design, it was only fitting that the Watson Furniture website was built on a system that could handle such robust design and development needs. The site is built on FusionCMS, which allowed us to have robust asset management, along with customizable templates, embedded Pardot forms, hotspot functionality, and video backgrounds throughout the website. 

We developed the site to also maintain a great site speed to go along with the user experience and made it easy for the Watson team to make updates. 

A robust experience of the website is found through the surface finishes type. The finishes integrate with the product pages and exist on their own page with additional filtering capabilities so that users can search for a combination of product style or application. Each product comes in a number of finishes, so users can sort by product to see what finishes are available and where the finishes occur on each piece. The finishes page also includes an overlay component that gives full finish details without having to leave the page. 

We’re beyond excited about the launch of this site and the fact that it can show off the amazing creations of the Watson team. As they continue to build beautiful new furniture, we’re honored to continue our partnership with them. 

You can read more about the build in our project portfolio, as well as be sure to check out the brand new site. 

Custom Website Development Custom to Your Business

Each business is unique, and it’s important that your website shows that off. At efelle, we’re happy to partner with our clients to make their values shine through their website. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you.