• Bang & Olufsen
• Bluewater
• ckIN2U
• De Beers
• Lenscrafters
• Pout

Bang & Olufsen produces original, groundbreaking, electronic consumer goods that take ideas to the limit for both customers and the industry. A progressive attitude is the hallmark of the B&O brand and Story was commissioned to develop a web presence that lived up to their high expectations. They required an innovative web portal that made their vision come alive and communicated with confidence and clarity who they were and the products they have to offer.

The result was www.bang-olufsen.com, a groundbreaking web portal that entertained, informed and re-enforced the B&O brand through innovative and dynamic design techniques. The portal consisted of several thousand pages of text and hundreds of images, providing an estimated 33 hours worth of information for surfers to browse through and attracting more than 10,000 visitors a day. The portal had a proprietary content management system developed in its entirety by Story and included an on-line store where Bang & Olufsen customers could purchase telephones and branded accessories.

Labelled the "most beautiful website in the world" by the Financial Times the site is recognised as a benchmark in the history design of web design.

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• • Homepage
  • The site received widespread recognition in the press and was "site of the week" on the highly regarded site designinteract.com:
    
    “Simplicity and essence are two important ingredients in the Bang & Olufsen philosophy and the principles have been brought to life on the site. The visual design is refined, the images are clear and clean, the colours are balanced and sophisticated; everything comes together perfectly to reinforce the brand.
    
    The spare environment results in straightforward, linear presentation of the products and the company outlook. As deep as the information is, a flat-looking interface avoids the appearance of an overwhelming content hierarchy. The standard rollover navigation is intuitive and the content is nicely balanced and easy to access with a horizontally-scrolling, multi-level navigation.”
    
    
    
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• • Alternative homepages
  • Other elements incorporated within the site included campaign management tools offering intelligent content and customer profiling, an email system, newsletter function, interactive product presentations, electronic postcards, search facility, site map, print page facility, send article to a friend and bespoke appointment tool.
    
    
    
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• • Product pages
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• • Intelligent Content
  • Customers choose B&O above the competition because of the magic of their products. The problem was how to recreate this magic online? The answer was interactive product presentations. Every time B&O launched a new product Story created a product presentation - the result was an integrated campaign; billposters, magazine adverts, emails and the website all tied into one consistent sales message.
    
    By tracking users as they toured the Bang & Olufsen site, made purchases or downloaded a document, we were able to build a profile of who they were and, more importantly, which products they were interested in. If a visitor spent a lot of time looking at B&O televisions, the next time they visited the site they were presented with their favourite model on the home page together with a link to the appropriate interactive product presentation. Likewise, if a customer downloaded an instruction manual for a particular product, we would assume they owned this product and push a compatible product on the homepage again linking through to the interactive product presentation. These product presentations were phenomenally successful and quickly became one of the most popular areas of the site.
    
    
    
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• • Interactive Product Presentations
  • The simplest things are often the best and this proved the case with product presentations. After we had wowed them with the online presentation the final question was “would you like to sign-up for a demonstration?" A staggering 700 people signed up each month. Of those 700 sign-ups per month, 8% made a purchase. And the average B&O purchase is £2,800. So 56 people a month or 672 a year spending £2,800 resulted in a revenue stream of £1.9 million pounds a year through this feature alone.
    
    
    
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• • E-commerce
  • Having realised the portal, www.bang-olufsen.com, Story developed an on-line store for the site in 2002. Planned, designed and executed by Story the site was a forerunner of the now widely utlised model of fulfilling all its Internet orders through its existing stores, rather than by operating dedicated warehouses for its online shoppers. This fulfilment model has the dual advantage of cost efficiency and placation of a franchise network of independent retailers.