Redesign of Aesop.com Wins HOW International Award

The luxury e-commerce experience Work & Co designed and developed for Aesop.com won top honors in the HOW International Design Awards. The show has recognized excellence on a global scale for nearly 25 years.

Behind the 10-month engagement was a team of senior designers, developers, QA analysts, and product managers who partnered closely with leaders at the Melbourne-based skincare company.

Dever Thomas, Design Director at Work & Co told HOW that a “chief consideration in our creation of a new Aesop.com was making the online experience a true extension of the Aesop brand in person.” Some key aspects of the new experience:

• A “shoppable navigation”. The underlying framework offers a simple, fluid shopping experience that flexes to let loyalists quickly restock and help those new to the brand dig deeper for product information.
• Content strategy mirroring high-touch service offered by store associates. Aesop’s skincare experts are trained to offer individualized recommendations. To bridge e-commerce with that highly consultative store experience, we developed a content strategy that seamlessly integrates educational content within the product page.
• Scalable componentized system. We opted for a componentized system that would work across many pages. This decision slashed dev time considerably, while also resulting in a more flexible end product. Now Aesop’s internal team is iterating and adding seasonal content and new product photography.

We designed and delivered front-end development for the new global e-commerce platform in mid 2017 and it launched in the US first, followed by a global rollout into Australia, Europe, Canada, and Asia.