New eCommerce Website Design & Launch for Sugimoto Tea Company!
Website Redesign for Tea Company Sugimoto
Sugimoto Tea Company is a family-owned loose leaf tea and matcha purveyor that has been selling responsibly sourced and sustainable products for several generations. They came to efelle because their website was not working well for their customers.
Project Objectives
In addition to great, quality products, Sugimoto Tea has incredible in-depth knowledge of both tea and tea making and their website did not allow them to properly share that with their audience. On top of that, the eCommerce side of their site was completely separated from the rest of the website creating a disjointed user experience. On the practical side of things, Sugimoto wanted a way for wholesale customers to easily find information, place orders and have access to wholesale specific discounts.
Design Notes
Our design team sought to create an immersive, streamlined experience to truly tell the story of the Sugimoto brand. With a new logo, we based our color and font choices off of their new branding. Through the website design, we were able to convey the long-standing history and experience of the Sugimoto brand, but also their commitment to continuous innovation. 
Throughout the product category pages, you'll see useful filtering options on category pages and robust product pages offering key information such as geographical origin and preparation instructions. All of this was made possible with a powerful eCommerce platform, BigCommerce, which provided the flexible structure upon which we were able to build this custom experience. Sugimoto’s BigCommerce theme has a number of built-in snippets of custom code that allows them to display information about their products elegantly with text formatting and icons already built-in.
eCommerce Development
It was important to the Sugimoto team that they had the ability to conduct robust content marketing and for this, they needed a place for that content to live on their site. To achieve seamless integration of product and non-product content, we utilized FusionCMS to create gorgeous content pages with a flexible layout system allowing for a number of different tailored looks with built-in SEO structure.
Using a CMS, they are able to present their content in a clear and informative manner, giving users the opportunity to dig deeper to learn more. This is especially important to Sugimoto so that they can provide content on how to prepare their different teas, the origins of their brand, and more. With flexible sidebar content areas, cross-linking to various parts of the site is a snap and the user always knows where they are and how to navigate around. We also added a modern blog to the site with easy social sharing built in to help Sugimoto share their high-quality products and unique recipes with their American audience.
Through BigCommerce, they're able to create a separate wholesale portion of the site. With their wholesalers, they are able to create separate logins and gated pages with different packages and pricing. This is a great out of the box feature of BigCommerce that makes it easy for businesses working both B2B and D2C to have flexibility through their website.
All of these elements work together for the Sugimoto team so that they can concentrate on what they do best, sourcing and providing quality products and sharing their generational knowledge with their customers. We hope that you will sit down with us, pour yourself a cup of tea, and enjoy this beautiful site!
To read the full portfolio entry, click here!
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