For decades, Deuter has been a trusted companion in mountain and outdoor sports. In 2020, a new corporate design was developed for this passionate company headquartered in Augsburg. The rebranding objective was to reinforce the visual presentation of the brand’s values, which comprise a dash of mountaineering madness, courage, inventiveness, reliability, and, of course, a love of nature.
Building on this, the website also needed to undergo a makeover to present Deuter’s values to the users clearly and comprehensibly. As part of a paid competitive tendering process, we transposed the new corporate design into a digital style guide. To this end, we developed a design system in accordance with the atomic design principle and created a user-friendly UX/UI design for five relevant pages in an interactive mobile and desktop prototype. Naturally, everything was designed so that it could easily be integrated into the existing technical system.
- Information architecture
- User experience design concept
- User interface design concept
Getting the “why” out there
For us, creating a new website is more than just translating the existing style guide into digital components. It was important to us to understand the brand from the ground up, including its digital presence. With the aid of branding techniques, such as Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle, we investigated the core values of Deuter and made the insights we gained the focus of our digital platform concept.
Natural highs and outdoor enthusiasm through an immersive user experience
“Deuter gives you the freedom to do what you love.” The plan was to convey the company’s vision right from the outset, by making accessing the website an emotional experience. An authentic video that shows athletes using Deuter products awakens the user’s desire for adventure. Here, users identify with real-life videos and images of outdoor experiences. Alongside this, a vertical product banner shows the Deuter products presented in the video and thus shortens the user flow by creating a direct path to conversion.
The products themselves are displayed in a minimalist fashion, almost starkly, with a lot of space to create an impact, instead of pushing e-commerce functions to the foreground. Important information on the product, such as colors, sizes, pricing, etc., was deliberately positioned at a distance from the images, and focused accessibility measures ensured that they were accessible to a broad target group. In addition, the mobile first concept includes an easy-to-use sticky navigation bar for the most relevant shop navigation points, such as the shopping cart and filtering and bookmarking functions.
Stories help users connect to the brand
Real-time content formats from social media boost the site’s ability to address a younger demographic. We shine a spotlight on personal stories from famous personalities and mountaineers with posts that provide smart links for the products which are only visible once you take a closer look. The hashtag #deuterisforever invites users to share their own Deuter experiences. On the product information pages, embedded Instagram feeds tell the stories of the customers and their outdoor experiences with the products and encourage users to become part of the community.
