AVWoodsy – eCommerce
Intro.
AVWoodsy is a startup offering premium Montessori wooden toys, including climbing frames, rocking chairs, and puzzles. The brand targets parents who value both safety and aesthetics and seek a luxurious, high-quality experience. For this project, I developed an international webshop reflecting the exclusive brand while providing users with an intuitive, scalable online experience.
The webshop was designed to support AVWoodsy's premium positioning and maintain the flexibility and user-friendliness needed for rapid growth. By combining visually appealing interfaces with a seamless customer journey, the brand is presented consistently, strengthening brand identity and customer satisfaction.
Problem Statement.
Challenges for users
- No webshop existed yet: no digital sales channel or order process.
- Too many product options caused choice overload in configuration.
- Need for a smooth, clear flow on mobile and desktop.
- Unknown brand: limited data for optimization and validation.
- International availability required (language, shipping, performance).
Goal for client
- A user-friendly, premium webshop that is easy to manage.
- International scalability and fast time-to-market.
- Clear product presentation with consistent branding.
- Solid baseline for SEO and performance for discoverability.
Solution.
Simplified configurator and manageable product variants
The original product configurator gave users an overwhelming number of choices (sizes, 14+ color combinations, wood types, screw colors), resulting in choice overload and high management effort for the owners. Through co-creation, I narrowed the configuration to its core: a maximum of 7 carefully selected color combos and 2 wood types, with no hidden costs. Buttons and visual cues matched selected combos, reducing cognitive load. This made comparison easier, shortened decision paths, and created clarity in the UI. For management, this meant fewer variants, a clearer product structure, and quicker updates. The simplification balanced curated brand options with conversion-friendliness, perfectly fitting the premium feel: curated choices instead of endless options.
Minimalist UI with mobile-first flows
To capture the ‘luxury Montessori’ positioning, I opted for a minimalist style with generous white space, a deep blue base, and subtle, soft accent colors, intentionally avoiding childish graphics. Product pages have clear hierarchy: strong photography, concise benefit-led copy, evident specs, and prominent, consistent CTAs. Navigation and filters remain light and predictable. The mobile-first approach ensures smooth interaction on small screens: logical scroll paths, collapsible sections, sticky CTAs where suitable, and focus on touch targets and contrast. This reduced friction in the flow, maintained a grown-up and refined brand experience, and made the site instantly usable for primary discovery channels (like social media), which are mostly mobile.
SEO basics and performance as foundation
With low brand awareness, I established the technical foundation for discoverability and speed: semantic headings, clean product URLs, meta and alt tags, internal linking between category and product, and optimized images. Combined with lightweight theme choices and performance tuning, this secured a solid baseline. The information architecture is set up to allow expansion (new categories/markets) in a controlled way, with clear templates and consistent components.
Result.
The webshop went live with a manageable product structure, sharp and brand-consistent design, and a simplified configurator that noticeably reduced customer choice overload. Thanks to WordPress and WooCommerce, owners could independently add and update products, speeding up development and lowering management effort. Although A/B testing was limited due to the startup’s early phase and low brand awareness, there was already a visible uptick in orders after adjustments. The site was also directly prepared for international growth.
Reflection.
The main takeaway was the importance of simplifying complex product choices for both user experience and business management. As a young startup, gathering hard data and running A/B tests was challenging. A mobile-first strategy proved effective for the target audience, who frequently discover and purchase via mobile. Choosing WordPress and WooCommerce delivered the low-threshold independence required post-handover.
After 2 years, AVWoodsy shifted its focus from luxury wooden toys to luxury living experiences.