Saint Gobain Info-site
Client Project | 2022
Overview
Saint-Gobain is a renowned company with 350 years of history, and they manufacture and distribute materials and services for the construction and industrial markets (specializing in glass).
The Goal
On a journey to expand its business canvas, the client wanted to tap into the B2C (interior) consumer segment along with their current user base. The vision was to inspire, inform and encourage these users to view glass as an alternative to common construction materials by highlighting the various types of glass applications and benefits of using glass in an interior space.
Challenges
This project was a redesign of their existing website and this had a lot of content that needed to be re-segregated and categorised to optimise a user's experience. While the goal for the project was primarily to educate the user about glass, it also had an e-commerce aspect to it. Some of our biggest challenges were to figure out an effective navigation system, develop a clear content strategy and to emphasise the right information at the right place to make the platform more accessible to users.
Approach
The project kicked off with a UX Discovery Workshop followed by secondary research that helped us narrow down our user segments, feauture ideas and ultimately the design direction. Below is a peek into the outputs that were generated in this phase.
We requested a walkthrough of their workflow so it could better inform our design process.
As part of the workshop, we also did a SWOT analysis of the existing website that they had to get an idea of what features they were interested in retaining, what was working and not working.
Post the discovery workshop, we did a competitor analysis to help us discover what user experiences are standard in the glass and interiors market, what we are doing right and can improve upon or avoid all together in a UX perspective.
We then built personas based on the user segments defined in the workshop. For this case study I will be presenting just 2 of the 5 persona we created, along with their respective user journeys.
Information architecture
Once we got a deep understanding of the requirements and validated them through secondary research, the next step was to build an IA. This IA went through a couple of iterations post feedback from the client. Below are some snippets of the finalised Information Architecture. .
Wireframes
We decided to take a mobile first approach with the wireframes. The idea behind this approach is that users are increasingly accessing the web on their smartphones, hence, the focus is on creating a seamless, intuitive experience for users on smaller screens, while ensuring that the desktop experience is also effective.
Below are the UX wireframes for the product detail page and related flows.
UI support
UI support for this project involved a detailed knowledge transfer and walkthrough of everything we had worked on so far along with being present on UI client presentations to support the UI team. We also produced a fully prototyped output together to give the client a better idea of the interactions on the platform.
View Prototype
View Prototype
Impact
Our primary goals were:
Promoting exploration and creating an assistive journey: For a platform like Saint Gobain, where users are primarily here to gather inspiration and view ranges of products, ensuring the best possible exploratory experience is essential. We did this by:
Cross linking various pages like blogs to trending product pages and product pages to other similar products, essentially cross selling products and services that SG has to offer to entice the user to spend more time exploring products on the platform; having featured sections like trending products and innovative applications, etc to capture the users interest that can then be directed to product pages
Having suggestive content and recommendations to help guide the decision making process
Having an easy to access FAQs and enquiry section, not just on the header menu but also in other relevant sections of the website
Working towards user delight: There are many factors that influence user delight, a delightful experience will entice users to stay on the platform for longer and explore. We did this by:
Using a consistent and relevant tone of voice that reflect in CTAs, having a personilsed touch has proven to make the user experience of any platform delightful
Having relevant, minimal and well designed micro-interactions and tools like an advanced visualiser, comparison generator, vendor locator etc. to explore possibilities of a product, application or space that can pleasantly surprise users and create a more engaging journey
Building strong content structure: This is the most crucial and essential feature for any platform to work. Ensuring that relevant content is provided at relevant points of the journey can make or break the entire project. This also will aid in the overall navigation and discoverablity of products on the platform. We did this by:
Reworking the overall information architecture to ensure relevant flows to achieve user goals by prioritising the information to be shown at each stage
Working on the header menu to make it less overwhelming and relevant to individual user types is the most important part of this project, it will determine the ease of navigation
Using breadcrumbs to allow the user to navigate the platform with ease
Ensuring clean layout of pages with bite sized information to avoid overwhelming the user and leading to cognitive overload, allowing the user to navigate and make decisions easily
Conclusion
I can confidently conclude that we have made monumental improvements to the platform that the client had shown up with but having said that we are also aware that there always room for improvement and constant evolution to improve the user experience of this platform. The first step towards this goal could be working on the content to build better consistency.
Want to collaborate?
Let's talk
Let's talk
© Nikhita Suzanne Design Portfolio 2025
© Nikhita Suzanne Design Portfolio 2025
Apart from
work ...
Apart from
work ...
Hello!
This website is best accessed on a desktop screen, please switch devices for a better experience.