Liquid WRLD

Many small apparel and accessory brands today operate the majority of their businesses online, and for good reason. Platforms like Instagram offer myriad features for marketing and communication. According to this Hootsuite statistic, 50% of Instagram users have visited a website to make a purchase - after seeing a photo and/or video of a product or service on Instagram. LiquidWRLD is an accessory brand that specializes in working with heat-reactive materials, generating unique products that are sure to catch the eye of any followers of the designer streetwear theme. Indeed. We believe LiquidWRLD to be a prime example of the well-adjusted small business - one that knows exactly who its customers are and how best to capture their attention.

Culturally, LiquidWRLD is an alternative streetwear brand, so the layout of their site relies heavily on an artistic simplicity, putting the products in full view, and letting them speak for themselves. Our goals here were as follows:

• Display a uncomplicated gallery of products

• Plan for the complete buyers' journey

• Include a raffle page

• Capture the overall aesthetic of the brand and present it at-a-glance

Luckily, Wix's e-commerce features handled the entire buyers' journey for us. The longer, arguably more tedious practice of coding up a products backend, a payment processor, shopping cart has already been done... But that is not to say that there is no place for custom e-commerce logic, nor that using a site builder is always better.

That said, one of our team's strengths is our ability to understand our options, while working within our customers' requirements. We know how to pick a correct tool for the job, and we know how to use it effectively. Here, we have chosen a simple gallery layout; clicking on any product will open an individual page with more details and images. Users can add items they're interested in to their cart, then checkout once they're ready.

Many successful streetwear websites lean towards minimalism or abstract designs, so we stuck to a clean black background with red accents. A collage of photos taken for the brand and its products appears underneath the gallery - to further express the company's personality.

A raffle page has also been created; this is a special item where shoppers can enter in a draw to win prototype merchandise.

Although Wix wouldn't be our first choice for a platform, building this site was a lot of fun. Wix allows us to drag-and-drop front-end elements and media anywhere on the page, so there was a considerable amount of freedom to design the way we wanted. The flowing liquid background in the hero was created using stock footage from pexels.com, as well as some creative video editing in Hitfilm Express to adjust the colours and fade into the site's black background.

Crucially, however, making the decision to stick to a simple, minimalist design, with carefully-selected colours for text and images, meant we could get away with using a simple tool like Wix. So we could make it look classy, not tacky (like a lot of other drag-and-drop websites).

The collage underneath the store was puzzle-pieced together in Figma - nothing much really in terms of technique. All the credit here goes to the photographer, for taking such excellent shots that fit the site's and the brand's aesthetic.

Wix also separates mobile and desktop views, so that creating a responsive site doesn't have to be a balancing act.

Overall, we are very proud of what we have been able to accomplish for LiquidWRLD, and believe that the site showcases their incredible products in a unique and eye-catching way.