Description:

Natural Paint Co are a New Zealand owned and operated paints, oils and stains manufacturer who create high quality, plant-based products. Their business model is disruptive to an industry which has remained relatively unchanged for over 70 years with heavy usage of petrochemicals and toxic ingredients.

We were approached to create an innovative e-commerce platform that made shopping for paint online a frictionless and enjoyable experience.

The brief was to create a simple and engaging interface that celebrated Natural Paint’s paint colours, stains and oils in a manner that allowed the user to become fully immersed in the experience. Alongside this, we needed to ensure that it was as easy as possible to order test pots and of course, order larger quantities of products.

The concept was to completely rethink how paints, stains and oils could be showcased in an e-commerce format. When people buy paint, they are primarily buying colour. We made the decision from the outset that colour browsing was going to be the most important feature of the site. There was no need to show images of paint cans on every single product page. Rather, the entire hero section of each paint colour was to be ‘wall-to-wall’ colour.

Alongside the core e-commerce functionality, we decided to create an immersive ‘discovery’ section which would create a flowing narrative to explain all of the amazing aspects of Natural Paint Co’s origin story, ingredients, sustainability credentials, quality guarantees and partnerships.

Through several rounds of prototyping, we created an ultra-simple colour browsing experience which allows users to seamlessly browse Natural Paint Co’s entire colour range, curate their favourites and order their chosen products.

The system is centred around a simple card system which enables an identical browsing experience on mobile, tablet and desktop. Through the use of side scrolling, we ensured the cards took up a very small amount of screen real-estate to allow the full screen colours to be the hero of the page.

The conversion rate for customers who had bought test pots and then went on to make larger purchases, was one in three. With this in mind, we made test pot ordering the key call to action on the colour page - ensuring it was as easy as possible for users to sample their favourite colours. This feature has been a huge success since the launch of the new site in December of 2020, with a 296% increase of test pot orders.

Alongside the core shopping experience, the 'Home' and 'Our Difference' sections were designed to reflect Natural Paint Co’s focus on both sustainability and high-quality products. These pages included rich imagery of New Zealand nature and high-quality photographs of the Natural Paint Co team and their amazing customers.

The final result is a joyfully immersive shopping experience that is smooth, informative and highly trust building for a company that operates 100% online. Since the sites launch, Natural Paint Co has successfully raised $1.4 million of investment to help continue their disruptive growth.