Brand Website Redesign 

A project I led while working at DentsuMB - an advertising agency.

In Taiwan, Mitsubishi Electric has 6 divisions: Home Appliances, Air Conditioning & Ventilation Systems,Factory Automation Systems, Elevators & Escalators, Energy Systems and Semiconductors & Devices.

There are only “Home Appliances” and “Air Conditioning & Ventilation Systems” are B2C departments, and these two divisions are also my longest serving clients while working as a project/account manager at DentsuMB. 

Goal: This project was to redesign the homepages of Home Appliances. 

Why did we need a website redesign

  1. In Taiwan, people have grown a habit of checking out home appliances at local stores, and seeing and feeling it in person. Because home appliances always cost a lot, seeing them with their own eyes will give them much confidence in purchasing one later on. So there was no high-demand for online resources for home appliances.

  2. However, with the growth of e-commerce more and more people look for product information online. They may still purchase products at local stores but users would like to do some research about products and compare prices online.

  3. Even though Mitsubishi Electric doesn’t have their own e-commerce platform, building a good online impression is important. Providing official and legitimate information about products is the first step in winning customer’s trust and then promoting and selling products.

How & What to redesign 

We heard so many people complaining about how difficult it is to use Mitsubishi Electric’s website but we don't know what and how exactly the website frustrated them.  In order to know the answers to these questions, we decided to conduct a focus group.

  1. We recruited 10 users who had an experience buying either a refrigerator, dehumidifier or air conditioner among brands of Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic, and Hitachi in the past 3 months.

  2. We asked them to browse our old version of website and major competitors’ (Panasonic and Hitachi).
    We asked them questions like 1) how they felt about the overall website design, 2) what information they were looking for and 3) how easy/difficult it was and why.

The result of the focus group: 

  1. Customers use the brand website to collect the most complete product information which includes a product’s size, color, features, appearance.

  2. It’s easier to compare similar products on a brand’s website.

  3. Clear navigation, complete product information, easy-to-use, easy-to-understand are the 4 major expectations users have when it comes to using a brand website to check out products. 

→ Providing users an easy way to collect official product information is  the goal of a brand website.

As the project lead, I gathered, synthesized users’ feedback and also took client’s experience with local dealers into consideration. 

  1. There are 5 product lines in the household appliance department, refrigerator, dehumidifier, fan, vacuum and blanket warmer. 

  2. I proposed redesign suggestions about content strategies and information architecture to my client. 

  3. I also consulted design and engineering teams for schedule planning in order to align with ongoing and upcoming marketing campaigns, and also made sure the project scope was within the agreed budget. 

  4. It took more time on the first product line’s design, the refrigerator, because the first was to set the standard and the rest categories basically just followed the established design patterns. 

  5. This project took place over a time span of 4 months and cost around $700,000 to complete the redesign.

Design Solutions

I also worked with a production house to make 8 videos about product’s features and some videos include how-tos. The average number of views is 29K.

The Result 

  1. The local dealer’s feedback was positive. They said with the clear website information and the creation of how-to videos, they can easily show to the potential users when they have some questions about the product. Dealers said potential users can easily grasp the idea with the help of photos and videos.

  2. The average session duration is increased by almost 3 times, meaning users find the information they want to know and take their time consuming the right information on the webpages longer than before redesign. 

  3. Seeing the success of the Home Appliance division in webpage redesign, the Air conditioning division asked our company to redesign their webpages as well. 

Check out Mitsubishi Electric’s Webpages here