Salt City Smithery is a company offering classes for jewelry and metalsmithing in Salt Lake City, Utah. Their silversmith website redesign aimed to present a website with products and events in an intuitive and user-friendly way. Their metalsmith company specializes in crafting exquisite silver jewelry and hosting related classes to teach students how to craft their own jewelry. The owners wanted to upgrade their website to serve as a hub for showcasing their products, promoting upcoming events, and engaging their target audience. Through thoughtful design and seamless user experience, the goal was to improve user experience by attracting and captivating users, while fostering a sense of appreciation for the art of jewelry making.
Silversmith Website Redesign
Although graphically rich, the original website was slow and caused users to struggle to find specific information about events, leading to frustration and disengagement. The website’s visual design lacked cohesion and failed to evoke the elegance and uniqueness associated with custom silversmithing. In some sections, there was poor contrast between font colors and the background making it difficult for visitors read. In addition, the owners were not allowed to update their own website, causing additional ongoing expense.
The new vision took their silversmithing website redesign to a whole new level. We added video snippets demonstrating the process, made the contrast better for user experience, upgraded their gallery to highlight titled student and instructor pieces, added testimonials, and a shopping cart suitable for their one-of-a-kind products. A filter was added to the shopping cart to make it easy for customers to find their perfect product. We increased the ease of use within the website administration, so the owners could manage their own website, and not have to pay a third party to do so. We also decreased the steps necessary to add and update metalsmithing classes.
Before
After
Case Summary
Overview:
We met the owners of Salt City Smithery on Instagram! They were frustrated with their web designer, and wanted someone to teach them how to update their own website. Their designer intentionally made them dependent on his updates, but his response was not timely, nor pleasant. This often caused them to miss key event promotion deadlines, and as a result, they were unable to advertise their own classes and website. We discussed moving the website to my hosting, so I could take over maintenance and teach them to update the site themselves.
Built on a Divi theme it was unnecessarily complicated with updates requiring duplicate work in the ticketing and shopping cart areas. I quickly realized the number of places requiring manual updates when they added, edited, or removed classes made the process much more complicated than should have been required. Issues with User Experience were uncovered as well. The customer journey was slightly convoluted, especially on mobile devices. The owners also wanted to add blog functionality to their site. In the end, and even though the site was only a year old, they decided to scrap their investment with the original designer, and start from scratch with a new silversmith website redesign using CyberCletch.
Results:
The redesign involved a comprehensive website to showcases the silversmith company’s exquisite silver jewelry collections and provides information about upcoming events, such as workshops, exhibitions, and sales. The website features an extensive catalog of products, allowing users to explore and purchase unique pieces of silver jewelry directly from the platform. It aims to provide an immersive and captivating experience, reflecting the craftsmanship and artistic essence of the silversmith brand.
Also, their website did not appear on the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) with important keywords for their industry. Although we did not provide SEO services on this website redesign, all our websites are built “search engine ready” which means we use best practices for user experience and search engine indexing. We also tweaked their Google Business Profile as a bonus service.
Conclusion:
The clients got more than they expected! We designed a visually cohesive and aesthetically pleasing website and mobile experience that reflects the elegance, craftsmanship, and uniqueness associated with the quality silversmithing services they provide. We provided their users with interactive product experiences, enabling them to view intricate details, and make informed purchase decisions about events, classes and products. They are set up to highlight guest instructors now as well.
We provided the client with training and video tutorials. Although they have limited experience with the technology behind websites, they are able to easily update their own website on their own timeline. This includes, events, guest instructors, products, the gallery, text updates, and an announcement banner at the top of their home page.
The added bonus? As of this writing their website was in first place on the Google search results page for multiple important keywords in their city. They are now ranking above their competition!