Case study · Retail & food

Patons: getting nuts about nuts.

Did you know Melbourne’s very own Patons delivers the largest range of chocolate-covered macadamia confectionery and flavoured nuts in the world? Yum! Our team sank their teeth into a new website build for this iconic Aussie brand.

Sector: Retail & food
Service: Website design and development
Channels: Website

Website projectDigital experience

The challenge

What needed to change.

Patons makes chocolate coated macadamias and flavoured nuts in Melbourne, and its website has to do two very different jobs. For retail customers it is a destination hub, a place to learn more about Patons nuts and seeds and to find recipes worth cooking. For trade clients it is a B2B platform, presenting services such as product development, packaging and manufacturing to businesses looking for a partner.

Serving both audiences without confusing either was the brief. With two more brands in the family, The Gourmet Nut Co and Suncoast Gold, the range was also too broad to browse without help.

Approach

How the work took shape.

We started with the audiences rather than the pages. Retail shoppers and trade buyers arrive with different questions, so the sitemap and user experience were designed to separate the two from the first click, each with its own path through the website. Our UX designers mapped those journeys before any visual design began, so the structure would hold as the product range and recipe collection grew.

Two decisions shaped the design. First, icons would be used throughout to identify services and product categories immediately, so a visitor could orient themselves without reading a line of copy. Second, every product and every recipe would carry structured attributes, so the whole catalogue could be filtered rather than scrolled.

The other brands in the Patons family, The Gourmet Nut Co and Suncoast Gold, would each get their own space within the website, presented as mini websites so each brand kept its identity while sharing one platform.

The shift

One website, two audiences, and a structure that lets each find its way without noticing the other.

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The work

The work, up close.

The finished website separates retail and trade cleanly. A retail visitor moves from products to recipes to stockists. A trade visitor moves from services to a conversation about product development, packaging or manufacturing. Each brand page functions as a landing page in its own right, so Patons, The Gourmet Nut Co and Suncoast Gold can each be promoted independently while living on the same platform.

The UX designers designed a sitemap and user experience that is clearly separated to cater to both retail and trade customers. Icons are used throughout the website to help identify services and product categories at a glance, and the design gives the product photography room to do its work.

Separate pages serve as mini websites for the other brands in the Patons family, giving each its own front door without splitting the business across several websites.

The outcome is a handy, searchable website that directs users to the product or information they seek, whether they are retail or trade audiences. The entire Patons product catalogue, across all three brands, can be filtered by product type, brand, pack type, dietaries and stockist location.

The recipe collection can be filtered by meal type, cooking time, difficulty, brand and serving yield, so a visitor can find something to cook to suit the time and the ingredients they have.

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