A website for how Crown Furniture’s buyers actually choose
Crown Furniture is an Australian commercial furniture brand built on quality and craftsmanship, supplying furniture for aged care, healthcare and hospitality environments.
Its buyers are specifiers, designers and procurement teams. They compare, shortlist and share before anyone signs an order. The old website made all three hard.
This account draws on WP Creative’s published Crown Furniture delivery record. Reported outcomes describe that engagement; they are not a forecast for another website.
The result, in three numbers
About +49% reported traffic.
A rounded result in the published case study.
About +21% reported new users.
The public case does not identify the underlying analytics definition or comparison window.
About +145% reported engagement.
This is the case study’s label, not a sales or conversion measure.
These are rounded, provider-reported historical results. The public case does not define its engagement metric, identify the analytics tools or publish the comparison dates. They do not establish a sales increase or the effect of one feature.
The commercial problem
The furniture market is crowded, and a commercial buyer’s first impression of a brand is usually its website. Crown’s was working against the product.
The brand looked dated online
The site did not reflect the quality of the furniture.
Hard to browse
Mobile and tablet were an afterthought. Finding the right range took too long.
Pages were slow
PageSpeed scored below 50 on desktop and mobile.
The backend was clumsy
The marketing team struggled to make campaign changes.
The call we made
We started from a commercial question: what does a specifier need to do on this site to move a project forward?
The answer shaped the build:
The published case describes collaboration with a branding expert, UI/UX mockups and simpler navigation. I am describing the published delivery scope, rather than assigning sole design authorship to one team. The backend was rebuilt so the marketing team could run campaigns without fighting the CMS. Speed was treated as a requirement, not a nice-to-have.
After launch, an ongoing care plan kept the site stable and gave the marketing team support to adapt it for new campaigns.
“Design for the way your buyer makes the decision. In B2B, that’s rarely one person, one visit, one click.”
Nirmal
Search
that gets a buyer to the right product fast.
A personalised moodboard
, so buyers can save, compare and share collections with their team. That suits how commercial projects are usually chosen: by a group, over weeks.
Product videos
that show the furniture properly and give detail a photo cannot.
What changed
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| PageSpeed | Below 50, desktop and mobile | Above 80, desktop and mobile |
| Mobile and tablet | Not optimised | Responsive across devices |
| Shortlisting | No way to save or share | Personalised moodboard |
| Product video | None | Engaging product videos on key pages |
| Campaign changes | Hard in a clumsy backend | Simplified backend the team can use |
What I learned
1. Build features for the buying process. A moodboard is not decoration. For a buyer shortlisting for a project, it is the reason to come back.
2. Premium brands lose trust slowly online. A slow, dated site does not lose one sale. It quietly lowers what buyers think you are worth.
3. The marketing team is a user too. If the backend is hard, the site stops changing. Then it starts ageing again.
Is your website built for how your buyers choose?
Three questions I’d ask any B2B manufacturer before a redesign:
- Who is in the buying group, and what does each person need? A designer wants inspiration. A procurement manager wants specifications. A facilities manager wants proof it will last. One generic homepage rarely serves all three.
- What happens between the first visit and the order? If the answer is “they email PDFs around”, your website could be doing that job for them.
- How fast can your marketing team change a range page? If every change needs a developer, the site will lag every product launch.
Work with me
Selling to specifiers or procurement teams, and your website still acts like a catalogue? Let’s talk about building it around how they buy.