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BlackAndMilk

Alt-team built the best website for an interior design studio. It's good-looking, fast, and SEO-friendly.

The website has:

  • 100% performance according to PageSpeedInsights;

  • High-resolution images on pages;

  • Long video on homepage;

  • SEO support by our specialist;

  • Good SEO results;

  • Conversion growth.

About project

BlackandMilk is one of our loyal clients, and we have worked with this interior design agency for several years. We developed the online store on CS-Cart for this company in 2017. Tagging on banners, similar to the modern Instagram shoppable images, was a key feature of their previous interior design website. In 2022, the client decided to delete all products from the website. As a result, our task was to make a new decorator website with a completely new web design. 

3 months

Project takes 3 months to be completed

Storyblok + Gatsby

Design Integration, SEO consultations, Website migration from CS-Cart to new Static website (Gatsby, Storyblok)

Outsource IT specialists

backend developer, front-end designer, SEO specialist and content-manager

60
before
Pagespeed
98
after
~98
PageSpeed
~50
Number of pages
> 300
Total spent hours
4
Number of specialists
Design mockup
1
/
3
Main banner
2
/
3
Storyblok admin panel
3
/
3

Working team

Back-end developer

Architecture and development. JamStack + Gatsby + Vercel

Front-end developer

React + Gatsby + Storyblok

SEO expert

consultations during the development process + SEO strategy for the 3 months

Content manager

content migration from the old website to a new website

Aim: What does Interior Designer Studio want to achieve using the website?

Turn-key development process

This company is one of the famous Interior Design Agencies in London, UK. The client is very busy with their own work, and it is hard for them to control the steps in the website's development. Our task was to organize their website migration process while keeping the client informed at all times.

Responsive web design

Attractive images of the interior design of the houses and apartments bring the agency new clients. Web site pages should have stunning portfolio photos on every device potential customers use. It's crucial to have perfect, ideal pictures. It shows the decorator’s expertise, philosophy, and professional approach to every little thing.

Strong compliance with mockups

There is an in-house designer on the team of London decorators. This designer prepared the mockups for our front-end developer. The task of the front-end developer was to integrate all design pages, taking into consideration every detail the designer used on the mockups.

Website traffic growth

It’s a middle-sized Interior Design Studio in London targeted at the luxury property segment. The preferred clients for this agency are the owners of property in London who need to make serious changes to their big flats and enormous houses in the UK. They don’t need millions of users on their website immediately, but the website traffic should be twice as much as it is now, and the traffic is supposed to increase step by step under the control of the client.

VC project discussion

As we mentioned before, the client values his time. The ability to have 3–4 video calls during the project realization was essential for the client. It’s not a common practice for us to discuss the project details during voice calls, but we have already worked with this partner, and we know him very well and are aware of his style of work. So, it was nice to have these video calls and make a brief resume of the tasks after each discussion.

Challenge: What we had to face

We can’t tell that this project was complex for our team. Otherwise, there are some specific problems we faced during our work on this case.

01
Quality of the images
The main client’s demand was to keep the quality of all images on the new website at a very high resolution. The images should be sharp, and no pixel should be visible on the website. This was a significant challenge for us because Gatsby compresses images for web use, resulting in significant image quality loss.
02
Migration Issues
We didn’t face many problems during the migration process, as it’s not a new service for our specialists. Our team has vast experience working with their old CMS, CS-Cart, and the new CMS, Storylok, is also not new to our team. We have already worked with Storyblok on our previous JamStack projects. The process of content migration demanded that the content manager be very attentive.
03
SEO part
First, the client wanted to try out our SEO service, so he only purchased 20 hours of it. It was December 2021. During one month, our SEO specialists performed a brief SEO audit, created the SEO plan for several months, and fixed some critical SEO issues in December. So, our SEO specialist spent only 20 hours on this project in December 2021, and the website traffic increased by 20% in January 2022 (we compared the January 2022 data with the October 2021 data).
04
Migration Stage
They had the old website on CS-Cart CMS. Our developers made the new website using the JamStack approach with Storyblok CMS. Our SEO specialist controlled the developer’s development process to be compliant with all SEO demands. Their old website contained more than 100 pages. Most of these pages were product detail pages. The client decided to refuse to sell furniture on their website. They wanted to concentrate only on the services of interior design and architecture, project management, procurement, dressing, and styling. One of the main problems connected with SEO was keeping the website traffic at the same level despite the migration process and the lack of product pages on the new website. This is the story for the separate article, and you can read the full story on how to migrate from one CMS to another without losing website traffic.
05
Cooperation with the client's team
Alt-team is a friendly and consolidated team of specialists. We get used to working with each other, and we are quick to understand each other. Working on the BlackandMilk project, we met many clients' in-house specialists: the designer, who coordinated the mockups and the compliance with them, the main interior designer, who consulted us about the website content. We need some time to get along well with the client-side team members. It’s not a new situation for us. We have already had the experience of working closely with the client’s staff. But every time, we need at least 10–14 days to start working in harmony with a new specialist on the client’s side.

Results: What we have in the end of the project

We can’t tell that this project was complex for our team. Otherwise, there are some specific problems we faced during our work on this case.

It took around 4 months from the project idea discussion with the client to the launch of the new website.

The first stage takes around 2 months (August and September)—we discussed the project with the client, built the process plan, and developed the SEO plan for activity after the project was launched.

The second stage takes around 1 month (October)—we built the new website on JamStack architecture.

The third stage takes 1 month (November)—the client checked the web design and how we moved all content from the old website to the new one. We made some fixes to the web design.

The fourth stage: we launched the website and started our SEO work.

New website on JamStack architecture
Good Speed on mobiles
Ideal Speed on desktops
Updated web design
New semantic core for the website
The SEO plan for the next 3 months

Our team about this project

The migration process was quite easy for our team because we have already worked with this website before. During the previous work, all preparations were made.

I enjoyed working on this project because the client was very fast with answers. It was really good collaborative work because the client was very accurate in their demands.

SEO expert Elena Tikhonova
Elena Tikhonova
SEO specialist

This client had the website with store elements before. Besides the website the client sold the products connected with interior design. Then the client decided to refuse from selling designer’s furniture on their website. 

Getting this news we offered to develop the website using JAMstack technology. The Storyblok has been chosen as a CMS system for this project. This is one of the best headless CMS that allows to make all content page settings very flexible. 

The website Blackandmilk works many times faster and many times more stable then the previous website version based on CS-Cart CMS. 

The website page loading speed is exorbitant. Even if the website has thousands of visitors at the same time, the website will work perfectly and fast. 

We continue our cooperation with Anatoly’s team and we wish him and his team great success in business and many orders. 

Ildar Bibaev
Ildar Bibaev
Tean lead

As a developer, I would like to provide a positive review of the client. The client was a pleasure to work with and showed a strong commitment to the success of the project.

The client was very clear in their communication and provided detailed requirements, which made it easier for me to understand their needs and deliver high-quality work.

They were also very responsive and available to answer any questions or provide feedback, which helped to ensure that the project stayed on track. The client was respectful of my expertise and trusted my judgment when it came to technical decisions, while also providing valuable input and insights.

They were open to suggestions and willing to consider different approaches, which made the development process collaborative and rewarding. Overall, I would highly recommend working with this client to other developers.

Their professionalism, communication, and commitment to quality made the project a success, and I would be happy to work with them again in the future.

Anton Kurakov
Anton Kurakov
Front-end developer

Client about Alt-team

Thanks a lot for the effort. Guys, thank you so much! It’s been a long journey but I like how it looks

AnatolyBaM
Anatoly Alekseev
Founder of BlackAndMilk

Build a fast and attractive website for an interior design studio

Our email is manager@alt-team.com

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