Spyder is, sexy badass
Discovery & Overview
Understanding the brand. Understanding the user.
Spyder is one of the most iconic brands in skiing, over the last 30+ years, they’ve stayed true to their roots and focused on offering downhill skiers the best apparel available. As snowsports enthusiasts bringing a strong history with retail and outdoor-industry clients to the table, we were really excited to partner with Spyder to design and develop their new site. We kicked things off by sending a team to Spyder’s headquarters in Boulder, Colorado for a face-to-face discovery meeting where we were able to connect with people behind the brand, see their product design process first-hand and learn what was and wasn’t working for them. As is usually the case with retail clients, their primary concern was an intuitive way for the user to filter through their product line. They also wanted a way to keep things fresh, without requiring a lot time creating and managing content. They also provided us with some great demographic info and analytics info from their existing site to help inform our strategy for the redesign.
User Experience &
Information Architecture
Social content from athletes
One of Spyder’s biggest strengths is their roster of athletes. It’s a diverse group of some of the best skiers on the planet, each one with a unique style, specializing in their own niche of the sport. We chose to leverage this on the homepage by aggregating not only Spyder’s company news into the homepage, but also Tweets and Facebook updates from their athletes. This adds diversity to the homepage and instantly boosts the amount of fresh content on the site.
Suggested Product
To help the user put together a complete outfit, we introduced an area within all of the product detail pages that dynamically merchandises items based on color, style, fit and most importantly attitude.
Visual product navigation
Spyder offers a large array of product with multiple categories, designed for different types of skiers, of all ages and genders. We designed a large, highly visual dropdown navigation to make it intuitive for users to find exactly what they’re looking for, as quickly as possible.
Efficient docking UI
To maximize efficiency for the user, we created two docked “fly-out” navigation elements for both the main navigation and timeline sections. The menus are visually triggered once the user scrolls below the main header. Unobtrusive but always available, the user can navigate anywhere on the site without scrolling to the top of the page.
Product Filter
Spyder offers a vast amount of product styles and SKUs. We streamlined the sorting and shopping experience through the use of a responsive live product filter. The product filter allows the user to instantly find their appropriate size, color and style all within a specific product with ease.
Merchandising though out
We wanted to create a site that tied the product together and allowed the client to merchandise appropriately. We created templates for a series of touts on the homepage that let the client showcase products to drive traffic. Once on a product detail page, the site dynamically offers coordinating products to match the skier type and colors. A similar system is used on athlete profile pages, showcasing and linking to an athlete’s favorite products.