Building a website fit for purpose

Honest advice from the start

Chinese supermarket Wing Yip set up its first online store in 2004, enabling customers who couldn’t reach one of its supermarkets to still buy its products.

Even though the website had been regularly updated, by 2016 it was showing its age. Wing Yip wanted to provide an updated and modern shopping experience for its customers, while optimising the picking and dispatching of orders for its staff.

Initially, Wing Yip wanted a new website built on Magento 2. But after taking a closer look, Lesniak Swann suggested redesigning and redeveloping the site, based on the existing platform

We presented the idea at our pitch, immediately showing our willingness to challenge a brief when we feel it can be improved, as well as our determination to put our clients’ best interests at the focus of our work.

Our combination of strategy, creativity and dependability – alongside our technical expertise and proven track record – won Wing Yip’s support. We soon got to work.

Identifying the issues

Using data from Google Analytics, our technical experts spotted several issues on Wing Yip’s website that need improving or resolving.

On-site search reports revealed potential improvements in the site’s structure and categorisation.
Device analysis emphasised the need to prioritise mobile users.
Exit rate analysis suggested visitors to recipe pages could be better engaged.
Page load times exposed lags in key sections of the site.
Segmentation confirmed the existing delivery page was unsuitable, and the click-and-collect page needed better promotion.
User experience research found landing page corrections, incorrect product links, and blank top-level category pages.

Solutions to each of these problems were incorporated into our new wireframes and design.

Understanding the audience

With a focus on creating a mobile-friendly, easy shopping experience, we identified three key audiences for Wing Yip site visitors.

Novice: customers who don’t usually cook oriental food and need advice on what to buy.
Expert: customers familiar with oriental foods who know what they’re looking for.
Trade: restaurants, takeaways, mobile caterers and other food outlets.

By taking time to consider the most important website elements for each of these three groups, we were able to approach the wireframes with a clear understanding of the user journey and functionality.

Building the wireframes

Wireframes act as a visual guide; they represent in simple terms each page’s layout and are key to building a website that achieves its objectives.

Navigational menus and interface elements were included in the wireframes, giving Wing Yip – and our graphic designers – a clear understanding of what each page does.

From there, our design team ‘dressed’ the page, bringing in Wing Yip’s brand guidelines and considering how best to combine fonts, colours, imagery and other graphic elements to ensure a welcoming and intuitive user experience.

A new look

Providing a visual refresh was a key part of Wing Yip’s project, so our team implemented a range of elements designed to enhance the brand, build customer loyalty, and make the website easier to use.

After our revamp, Wing Yip’s site now features:

A mega menu that helps users quickly find the products they’re looking for.
A refined delivery page and an easy-to-navigate, accordion-style FAQ page.
The ability to create product landing pages to support specific marketing campaigns.
A promotional banner area on the homepage and category pages that can be personalised with relevant offers once a user logs in.
Iconography in the mega menu that provides consistency across the website.

Back-end brilliance

Delivery modules

We were able to link-in to the systems of delivery firms DPD and UPS, so orders and delivery labels could be created directly from the Wing Yip website, saving time for both customers and the Wing Yip packing team. We also implemented a product matrix module, which automatically manages delivery prices based on the customer’s address.

Quote module

To save further time for Wing Yip’s staff and encourage larger transactions, all orders can now be paid for online. Previously, payments for orders over £500 had to be taken by phone.

Testing and monitoring

Our code is fully covered by unit level tests. We use automated testing to reduce the cost of development and ensure quality and reliability.

Phase 2 includes a Recipes Module and integration with SAP

Deployment strategy

At the start of the project, we invested time in creating a deployment strategy. This ensured a smooth transition from the development server to the production server. We can now launch changes to Wing Yip’s website in minutes, eliminating long periods of downtime.

Lesniak Swann is a great agency to work with and feels like part of our Wing Yip family. They work tirelessly to provide us with the best results and will consistently go above and beyond what we've asked for. With a very knowledgeable team, they constantly come up with solutions to help improve what we're doing. We would highly recommend working with them for design, ecommerce and PPC.