Everyone Loves A Crappy Site
So here’s a brand whose message is fun, funny, a little edgy, at times almost dark — and still somehow uplifting. Life Is Crap offers an unusual take on the mostly little mishaps that grace everyone’s existence at one point or another.
There’s a light-hearted quality to the simple illustrations that highlight a wide range of life’s “crappier” moments, from painful (mountain bike face plant) to annoying (broken high heels, your golf game, poorly trained pets…), with a touch of wryness on the side (“Out of Merlot. Life is Crap.”).
Keeping wth the brand’s tagline — “Life is Crap, and Laughter is the Cure!” — every piece is designed to provoke a smile, and reminds us keep it all in perspective.
And the message resonates. Throughout the current slow economic period, the brand’s relevance and popularity has been on the rise. After a couple years of consistent growth in online and retail sales, the company knew it had outgrown its existing ecommerce web site — an old WordPress-powered front end tied to a separate third-party cart.
We redesigned the site and launched this spring on a new platform. The new site, built on the BigCommerce platform, sports an updated interface, streamlined taxonomy, support for multiple brands, fully integrated ecommerce and enhanced email capabilities. With a number of new features designed to improve user experience and make shopping easier, it’s no surprise to see user engagement take a dramatic jump:
- average time on site is up over 50%,
- average pageviews have doubled,
- and the bounce rate is down by half.
The way I see it, this has gotta be our crappiest project yet. And I couldn’t be happier.
