The Challenge
Christ Alone co. is a faith-based minimal lifestyle fashion brand. They are on a mission to create high-quality products that will help their current and future customers express their faith in Christ and Christ alone. The company initially started off selling apparel via Teespring, after experiencing a taste of success, they decided they wanted to transition into being an actual brand. This transition wasn’t as easy as they anticipated, they experienced a lot of challenges that made them question the direction the company was heading.
Some of the challenges were; inconsistency in messaging, poor site design, and low average order value. They reached out to me intending to have a new website designed. However, after the 2-hour strategy session we had, I quickly realized that we had a much bigger issue to solve before even thinking about creating a custom site. I had to help them company clearly define who they were.
Services
Web design and Development, Brand Strategy, E commerce.
Location
California, United States.
Year
2019 to Ongoing
The Strategy
Let’s face it, nearly everything in the marketplace has a substitute. There are various companies out there that are trying to achieve the same thing; the question is “why would your target audience come to you instead?”. This emphasizes the importance of branding because the last thing you want to do is compete on price. The first part of this project was helping Christ Alone co. identify their unique selling point. We started by laying out some brand attributes. The culture of the brand, who are they in terms of beliefs and values? Customer profiles, who do they want to attract?
One of the things that came up in this session was the fact that the founder had a vision of attracting people, especially young people, who felt judged because of who they were, and because of this, aren’t allowed to express their faith. We’re talking bikers with tattoos etc. Voice type, in what tone do they want to speak to their audience. There were a lot of other attributes that were covered in this session, but the answers lead us to make really good decisions, from choosing the models, and the Copy on the site.
Brand Showcase
TYPOGRAPHY
Aa
600 700
Montserrat
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600 700
Montserrat Alt
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300 400
KARLA
Color Pallette
#000000
#4abdac
#54595f
The Result
Not only did this project result in a well-designed eCommerce website, the brand now has a clear direction for the future and are progressively moving towards it (my definition of success). The site also has a great deal of consistency, from the colors to the typography. This consistency will aid in brand awareness campaigns. We were able to craft a compelling about us page (our story page) that is far much better than having a page that just tells your potential customers that you sell really good “stuff”.
The tone on some of the products was changed based on the message the brand was trying to convey. With a more apparent understanding of the brand’s attributes, every product added isn’t just another SKU, but a message ready to be expressed.
Takeaway
Put in the effort to make your brand stand out, don’t just assume your product is distinctive enough. In this case, almost every fashion brand sells high-end apparel, however, if you take the time to identify your USP, who you are trying to reach, and align your visual representations accordingly, you will be way ahead of your competition.
This project is currently ongoing, the brand is revising its product line based on the feedback they received from their customers. This merely the beginning.
