Who is TriMech?
TriMech is one of the nation's leading providers of 3D design and rapid prototyping solutions. TriMech not only sells 3D printers, scanners, and software — they also offer technical support, training, consulting, and staffing services.
The Challenge
After falling behind in the digital space, TriMech was looking to refresh and elevate their website to be more competitive in the market. TriMech also wanted to introduce an ecommerce solution to their site to accommodate their rapidly expanding product and service catalog.
The goal was to position TriMech as the complete engineering resource — an expert in their field, an industry thought-leader, and a resource to their customers beyond the sale.
Discovery
After reviewing TriMech's user personas and the project brief, I led a creative discovery workshop with the client to better understand our users' goals and motivations for using the website. I consolidated all of our findings into 1 collective user persona that we could focus our efforts towards.
Our user persona helped us define what problems the new website needed to solve.
From there, we discussed the personality of our collective user and how they compared to the personality of TriMech's brand.
By comparing the brand to our user persona, we revealed opportunities for TriMech to connect with customers more effectively.
Defining the Look & Feel
With the workshop findings in hand, I began pulling together images to create our moodboard. Using TriMech's existing color palette as inspiration, I explored a balance between dark and light, leaning heavily into clean, geometric lines. My goal was to elevate the brand to feel progressive and professional, yet still approachable and trustworthy. We wanted TriMech to stand out from the competition and embody expertise.
The moodboard helped align the team on the new visual direction.
Once the moodboard was approved, we moved on to the style tile. This is where things started to come to life in a more tangible way, and the team could visualize what the website would feel like. I took a few different approaches to see what elements the client would gravitate towards, specifically exploring conservative vs. edgy. We ended up with a combination of both — modern, but not too trendy.
Creating a style tile set the groundwork for designing the full website.
Elevating the TriMech Brand
Fast-forwarding a few weeks, the sitemap was now solidified and the team had wrapped up the wireframes. (Now comes the fun part!) I worked closely with our UX designer to translate our first wireframe, the homepage, into a high fidelity design. After a few iterations, we nailed down the styling: bold, dark, and elegant.
I continued expanding this new look across the website. I prioritized functionality every step of the way, ensuring that the content was easily digestible and accessible for our users.
The E-Commerce Experience
The e-commerce section of the site was a particularly fun challenge. With an expansive catalog of both hardware and software, we created a scalable solution that would streamline the user's journey from search to checkout. I made sure to consider products that could be bought directly from the site, as well as items requiring users to request a quote.
Consistency is Key
Along the way, I developed a comprehensive style guide to ensure consistency from screen to screen. Having this set of common styles and components allowed me to move quickly as more pages were added to the site.
The Result
Distinguishing TriMech from the Competition
The refreshed website differentiated TriMech from their competitors and solidified them as an industry leader. With every design decision made intentionally, we were able to construct a brand that felt as big as the company.
A Scalable E-Commerce Solution
We successfully created an e-commerce solution that will serve the client as their product and service catalog grows.
Collaboration = Efficiency
Because we received buy-in from the client at every step, the team was able to get sign-off on deliverables very quickly. This kept things moving and we were able to hit our target deadlines.
Takeaways
It's important to keep in mind how easy it is for users to get from point A to point B. What's important to them? What goal are they trying to achieve? Finding the right balance between content and users' needs is key to successful experience.
