Posted November 11, 2013
If you've been at Mass Street Music's physical store at all this year, you've probably noticed a few changes. This local Lawrence store is celebrating 30 years of business with a major makeover: they've remodeled its store, its brand and its website.
The Brand
We were thrilled Mass Street Music came to Philsquare to have us develop their new site. Since the website wasn't the only thing they were changing, they worked with Chris Millspaugh to refresh the MSM brand which included a new logo, new colors and fonts. So, we went to work with the new brand guidelines to give Mass Street Music a new web presence. This Lawrence store has a great reputation for customer service and provides a real homey and welcoming feel to those visiting the store. The new website needed to reflect the community feel and quality products. “We're a unique music store and definitely not the 'big box store' guys, so we wanted to better reflect our physical store on the web and some of the things that make us stand out: the specialty gear, the one-of-a-kind vintage instruments, our deep knowledge base, and the customizations and special orders that we are known for providing” said Anne Tangeman, MSM’s Web & Marketing Manager.
The Content
The first thing Phil considered in the development process was the organization of content. On the new homepage, you're presented with a beautiful image of an instrument, the MSM logo and ways to immediately jump into their store or find out what's going on with the store (news). The menu is concise: you can shop, you can find out more about repairs, click over to news or find out more about the store and the staff.
Other layout highlights:
- If you know what you want, the search icon is right there at the top and expands quickly into a search bar so you can go to exactly what you need or brows store items.
- The shop landing page allows the MSM staff to feature different instruments or accessories and buying options other than new (used, local, vintage).
- The repair shop page allows the store to feature projects and the staff's expertise. One of the things that really brings the community and homey feel to the website are the great photographs that capture the personality and quality of the store.
If you are planning a brand refresh or changing your website, we recommend hiring a photographer to get some great images of your products, your store/office and your staff; images give your company more personaility and make a website more interesting.
The Online Store
Philsquare was excited to explore a new realm of development: the online store and responsive layouts. Not only are collections and item pages beautiful on standard size screens, they adapt to mobile and tablet screen sizes. And the menu adapts and changes based on screen resolution and what users on each screen size will need to see. For example on mobile views, Phil determined the shopping cart and "search" were the most important for mobile users and put those at the top of the menu when it drops down. “The new site was a big change for us and Philsquare led us through the whole process in a great way, explained everything really well and moreover was very patient with us while we made decisions. Also Phil's foresight was invaluable, for example making our site truly optimized for mobile and iPad as well,” said Anne about the benefits of working with Philsquare for their online store.
The Future
Anne and the Mass Street Music team have great plans for the new site:
“Our old site was very static and didn't allow us to show all that we really are. We have such a great repair department too and we've highlighted that more on the new site, and will be showing more of the unique repairs they do. Also the music community in Lawrence is very special and we are striving to give people solid content and reasons to come back to our site and store, beyond just instruments. The new site is easy to use and has allowed us to focus more on what we love - music gear and talking about the instruments, and less on I.T.”
Working with Philsquare:
“Phil's inherently good design sense works hand in hand with functionality really, really well. Also I have to add that we chose Philsquare after looking in the region and nationally for a firm. We really wanted to use a local developer but would have chosen one out of the area if it was best for the store. After talking with several developers, we felt Philsquare was clearly the best choice.” - Anne Tangeman, Mass Street Music Web and Marketing Manager.
Check out the new Mass Street Music website and let us know what you think!
