Guilberts Chocolates

Project Overview

Guilberts Chocolates needed an online shop that felt as considered as the chocolates themselves.

The Bristol chocolatier has a long-established reputation for handmade chocolates, gifts and confectionery, but its existing website was beginning to work against the quality of the brand.

The visual presentation had become dated, the mobile experience needed improvement and the buying journey contained unnecessary friction.

The redesign had a clear objective: create an ecommerce website that felt more premium, made products easier to explore and gave customers a simpler route from choosing a chocolate box to completing an order.

The Challenge

For an ecommerce business, design and functionality cannot really be separated.

The website had to communicate the craftsmanship behind Guilberts’ products while also functioning as an efficient online shop.

Several areas needed attention.

01 Give the products more presence

The existing website didn’t make enough of the thing customers were actually there to buy.

Chocolate is an inherently visual product. Colour, texture, packaging and presentation all contribute to the buying decision, particularly when the product is being purchased as a gift.

The redesign therefore needed to give photography considerably more prominence and create a calmer environment around it.

02 Make shopping easier on mobile

A growing proportion of customers were browsing and buying from phones and tablets, but the existing experience wasn’t sufficiently fluid on smaller screens.

Navigation, product selection and checkout all needed to work naturally without requiring customers to pinch, zoom or fight with awkward controls.

Mobile wasn’t treated as a reduced version of the desktop website. It became a core part of the design from the outset.

03 Simplify the route to purchase

Once somebody has chosen a product, the website should make completing that purchase straightforward.

The existing checkout created more friction than necessary, so the buying journey was reconsidered from product selection through to payment.

Customers needed to be able to:

• Browse product categories easily
• Understand products and pricing quickly
• Add products to their basket without confusion
• Check out as a guest where appropriate
• Choose from familiar payment methods
• Complete a purchase comfortably on mobile

The objective wasn’t to add more functionality.

It was to remove obstacles.

04 Improve speed and technical performance

High-quality product photography is essential for a chocolatier, but large images can easily damage website performance if they aren’t handled properly.

Images were therefore optimised carefully, balancing visual quality with loading speed.

The wider website structure and code were also reviewed to reduce unnecessary overhead and create a faster, more dependable shopping experience.

05 Strengthen search visibility

The redesign was also an opportunity to improve the way the website communicated its products to search engines.

Page structure, URLs, metadata, image information and product content were reconsidered around commercially useful searches rather than treating SEO as something separate from the website itself.

That included opportunities around searches for luxury chocolate gifts, handmade chocolates and locally relevant Bristol terms.

The Approach

The new Guilberts website was created around four principles: make the products desirable, make the shop easy to understand, make buying straightforward and make the experience work equally well on every screen.

01 Let the chocolates do the selling

The visual design became more restrained so the products could take centre stage.

The new direction uses:

• Large product photography
• Generous spacing
• Refined typography
• A warm, premium colour palette
• Cleaner page layouts
• Less visual competition around products

The result gives the chocolates, packaging and gift collections room to create the visual impact.

Rather than trying to manufacture a sense of luxury through decoration, the design allows the quality of the products to provide much of that character naturally.

02 Create clearer product journeys

Navigation and category structure were reconsidered around the way customers actually shop.

Some visitors know exactly what they want. Others are browsing for a gift, looking within a particular price range or deciding between different collections.

The website therefore needed to support both direct product searches and more exploratory shopping.

Product pages were also given clearer hierarchy, with photography, descriptions, pricing and purchasing options presented in a more predictable order.

03 Reduce checkout friction

Checkout is one of the most important parts of any ecommerce website.

By the time somebody reaches it, a significant amount of work has already gone into attracting them, helping them choose a product and persuading them to buy.

The redesigned purchasing journey removes unnecessary complexity and gives customers clearer payment choices.

Guest checkout, familiar payment options and a more straightforward sequence all help reduce the number of decisions somebody has to make before completing an order.

04 Create for every screen

The ecommerce experience was designed responsively throughout.

Particular attention was given to:

• Product browsing on mobile
• Touch-friendly navigation
• Product imagery at smaller sizes
• Basket and checkout usability
• Readable typography
• Page speed
• Clear purchasing controls

The aim was not simply to make the desktop website fit onto a phone.

It was to make shopping on a phone feel natural.

Beyond the Shopfront

Much of what makes an ecommerce website successful happens behind the visual design.

The Guilberts project also included work around performance, search structure, content management and ongoing administration.

Images were optimised to load efficiently while retaining the visual quality necessary for premium food products.

The website structure was improved for search engines and customers alike, while the content management system allows products, collections and supporting content to be updated without compromising the design.

That flexibility is particularly important for a business where seasonal ranges, gifts and new products change throughout the year.

The Result

The redesigned website presents Guilberts as both a traditional Bristol chocolatier and a modern ecommerce business.

Products have greater visual presence, navigation is clearer and the route from browsing to purchasing is considerably more straightforward.

The site also gives the business a stronger platform for future product ranges, seasonal campaigns and supporting content.

Most importantly, the website now connects the two things an ecommerce business needs to do well:

make people want the product, and make it easy for them to buy it.

A good ecommerce website should make the product irresistible and the purchase effortless.

Results & Impact

Following the redesign, Guilberts reported improvements across several important ecommerce measures:

• Conversion rate increased by 25%
• Bounce rate reduced by 15%
• Mobile traffic increased by 30%
• Mobile conversion rate increased by 20%
• Organic search traffic increased by 40%
• Abandoned-cart recovery contributed an additional 12% in recovered purchases

Together, these improvements indicate that the redesign affected more than appearance. The combination of clearer product presentation, a simpler purchasing journey, stronger mobile usability and improved search performance contributed to a more effective ecommerce experience.

Design Details

• Responsive ecommerce design
• Product-led visual presentation
• Mobile-first shopping experience
• Simplified checkout journey
• Multiple payment options
• Search-friendly site architecture
• Optimised product imagery
• Improved page performance
• Flexible content management
• Ecommerce SEO
• Supporting editorial content

Ecommerce Design Is About Removing Doubt

Online customers cannot pick up a chocolate box, examine the packaging or ask somebody in the shop a question before buying.

The website has to fill that gap.

Photography has to communicate quality. Product information has to answer questions. Delivery and payment need to feel clear. And the purchasing process should create as little resistance as possible.

For Guilberts, the redesign brought those elements together in one consistent experience.

The website still reflects the heritage and craftsmanship behind the business, but now works much harder as the shop itself.