Lights.ie is the Irish branch of Europe's leading marketplace for lamps and lights that originated in 1999. Their customers, both private individuals and companies, are absolutely spoilt for choice as the website lists upwards of 100 brands with nearly 50,000 total products available.
Thankfully for its customers, Lights.ie went to great lengths to make sure that searching for and finding the right lights is as easy as possible thanks to a number of user friendly features.
Despite this, some individuals or companies may still find it difficult to find the right products, especially if they don't know exactly what they're looking. Lights.ie are well aware of this, so to remedy this issue they have a dedicated customer service team available from 8 till 5, Monday to Friday.
Overall, they've created a very attractive and thoughtfully designed marketplace that any business could be envious of. So, without further ado, let's take a look!
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Navigation
Website navigation consists of a mega menu that contains the main categories and subcategories. There is an image on the right-hand side for each category, and in the case of Light Bulbs, there are even images showing different types of bulbs in the menu.
On mobile, the menu appears just under the main banner, and subcategories can be accessed by clicking on the main category. Notice how the user account and wish and comparison lists are accessed through the this menu, while the cart and another link to the wishlist remain at the top of the screen.
When hovering over certain categories, you'll see graphical depictions of that help to visually explain the subcategories within. In this case, the graphics show the various base types available for light bulbs.
Homepage
On top of the homepage, we can see a banner with the most up-to-date offers promoted by the company (clearance sale in this example). Next to it, there is a side menu with top categories and a possibility to browse by room type (e.g., living room, bedroom, etc.).
Below, we can see some basic information regarding delivery and returns, as well as price match guarantee and customer ratings. All of those are clickable and lead to static pages with more information on the topic. On mobile, this element takes the form of a slider and appears further down the page.
As we scroll down the homepage, we can see more banners that lead to articles (such as Lighting Trends) or product categories. Below is a slider with clickable logos of the top brands featured on lights.ie.
Below, we encounter a Trends and inspirations element with three blocks leading to promoted brands or categories. At the verybottom, we can find some information about the company.
Footer
The footer includes everything you’d expect to find there, such as contact details and a menu leading to all of the static pages, including FAQ and legal info. Payment methods and shipping carriers are also highlighted in the footer, as is the newsletter signup feature where one can subscribe as either a private or corporate customer.
Brand Listing
On the brand listing page, we see a few promoted top premium brands, with all the brands in alphabetical order listed below. On desktop, you can go directly to the brands beginning with a specific letter by clicking on that letter. On mobile, you can use the search bar to start typing the brand’s name in order to find it.
At the bottom of the brand listing page is a slider with recommended products.
Brand Page
Brand pages feature a list of products from that particular vendor that can be filtered by category, material, the type of room it’s designed for, and other parameters. The filters are on the top of the page, whereas the left-hand side menu lists all of the brands so that users can switch easily between them.
Category Page
Category pages for both the main categories and subcategories have extensive filtering options. Products can be filtered using a wide range of parameters, including style, color, shape, material, what kind of room they would fit into, and many others.
Products can be added to the wishlist by clicking on the heart icon on each product image listed on the category page (also on the product page and even in the cart). The wishlist can be found in the top right corner (also a heart icon), and one does not need to be logged in to create it.
Clicking on one of top subcategories 'Pendant Lighting' takes the users to a similarly structured pages with a more refined search and even more sub-subcategories.
Notice how the amount of items in the search is constantly updated with each refinement.
Wish List
When opening the wishlist, the user will see a list of their favourited products, each of which can be toggled to compare later. Users can add their favourite items to the cart at every moment, which is an excellent conversion boosting feature.
The items that were toggled in the previous step can then be compared side-by-side in the comparison list UI. However, this feature is only available on desktop, likely because it would be difficult to present the information in any useful way on a small screen.
Product Page
At the top of the product page, there's a slider with product pictures (both on desktop and mobile), and a few short mentions of the delivery, returns, and price match guarantee policy below the add to cart button.
Notice that right below the price, there is a badge displaying the energy efficiency of the viewed product (in this case A++) - an important metric in the lighting industry.
It is worth mentioning that red is used for both the Add to Cart button and also to highlight the discount percentage, making those elements easy to spot and eye-catching.
On desktop, the Add to Cart widget with price and the CTA is sticky, meaning we can see it all the time on the right-hand side while scrolling the page.
On mobile, you need to click a plus icon in order to reveal the product description and technical specifications on this page. Having these elements hidden helps keep the page's appearance shorter when initially loaded.
Below the basic product information, there are other items from the same series and recommendations based on your browsing history.
At the bottom of the page, we can see product reviews and a list of other items that we have viewed recently.
Cart
Cart preview UI appears while hovering over the cart icon in the menu.
Below the cart summary, you can see a carousel of recommended products which acts as a not-so-aggressive upselling feature.
Notice that there is an indication as to the stock levels for each item in the basket. That's certainly one way to encourage users to buy now.
If the cart is empty, you will see a slider with recommendations, which is a great feature to encourage customers to place something in their baskets.
Checkout
The checkout process looks very smooth. You can easily switch between the private and corporate customer UI and choose to checkout without registration. At this point, users are also encouraged to subscribe to the newsletter by being offered a discount on the current order, together with a voucher for their next order.
Then enter an email, name, and last name, and proceed.
Static Pages
About Us Page
On this page, users can learn more about the company's background and values.
They even included a timeline of their company history. Perhaps not many customers will ever see or care about this, but it is nice to see a company that is proud of their history nonetheless.
Trends
Lights.ie does not have a blog, but there are pages with blog-like content such as this one. It consists of 7 sections.
The first one is 2022 Lighting Trends, and the others (Sustainable Lights, French Romance, etc.) can be accessed either by scrolling down or clicking on the shortcut buttons on top of the page.
Each picture here features at least one product, and by clicking on the plus icon, we can see a widget with the product name and price. We can also move on to the product page from here.
This feature works flawlessly on both desktop and mobile.
Customer Service
The customer service page has all the relevant information regarding payment methods, delivery, returns, and a frequently asked questions section.
Customer reviews
This page features customer reviews (over 3.5K!), as well as a short instruction on how users can review both the products and the shop’s services.
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Summary & suggestions
Lights.ie have certainly gone to great lengths to illuminate their customers' buying experience by providing them with comprehensive search and filtering possibilities which is an absolute necessity when you offer such an enormous range of products.
However, not every customer wants to search for products in that way, so to cater to people from the other side of the spectrum, they also included visual paths to finding the right products through the use of content-rich collection/feature pages.
All-in-all, it’s a very impressive website that could be considered a UX/UI benchmark for any other businesses in a similar industry and with a similarly-sized product catalog.
As far as suggestions go, it’s pretty hard to find a sales-improving feature (that they don’t already have) that would make sense for their industry. Unless, of course, somebody has identified a market need for lightbulb subscriptions, but we have our doubts.
UX deliverables guidelines
When it's time to upgrade your storefront design by using a more custom solution, here a few things to help streamline the process:
- All layouts should be designed mobile-first, desktop-second (but you will need both)
- Using pre-made components shortens the implementation time
- Layouts should be presented following the user journey in an orderly fashion
- All actions and menu or navigation states should be included
- All brand or icon assets should be in SVG format
- UX design hand-over using Figma.com or a similar service is recommended
- UX questions & answers sessions should be included
- Follow up adjustments or corrections should be anticipated
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