John Lewis to relaunch website

John Lewis is to relaunch its website tomorrow with a refresh created by its in-house design team.

The department store group’s homepage will sport a more ‘aspirational’ look, with a redesigned front area and category pages, according to John Lewis head of Web selling David Walmsley, who has headed the project, working with John Lewis design manager Sue Goh.

The retailer’s in-house design team, which consists of a mix of graphic designers, ‘image-makers’, product designers and a technical development division has been working on the site for the past six months.

‘Although we have a strong e-commerce site, we found that customers wanted something more aspirational that relates to the in-store experience,’ says Walmsley.

One of the key changes will be to layout, from a ‘liquid layout’, meaning that on-screen graphics stretch to fit individual computer resolution, to a fixed width design that ‘guarantees the look of the page’.

The new look will feature more of the vibrant green used in the John Lewis logo, with less of the grey around the navigational areas.

Images will be better integrated with the text, while the search and shopping basket elements have also been revamped.

Walmsley explains that customers have been instrumental in the development of site navigation.

‘We got customers to actually define the navigation by using a navigation card sorting system,’ says Walmsley.

The website’s last visual overhaul was three years ago.