Nuts.com

Nuts.com is a family business founded over eighty years ago in Cranford, New Jersey. Employing sixty staff and turning over more than $20 million per year, the company is “more than just nuts”; it sells thousands of products including dried fruit, sweets, spices, coffees, teas and much more. Their success is built on a passion for quality food, a deep connection with their heritage and good old-fashioned customer service.

Although successful, their site had grown organically over time, and had lost any design consistency and become difficult to navigate. Over a two-year period, I and other colleagues at Clearleft assisted CEO Jeff Braverman and lead programmer Ben Shakal in improving their site, ensuring the unique, customer-centred personality of the company wasn’t lost in the desire to simplify and streamline.

Initially focused on fixing obvious usability problems, we later spent short three-month sprints refining different aspects of the service. One of the first sprints involved modernising the design of home, listing and product pages, making them more appealing to users and easier to use. Later work focused on the checkout process and bespoke gift creation tools. Each sprint involved reviewing previous changes, and iterating the design based on usage of the site and feedback from users.

The final sprint focused on implementing a new brand. I worked with Pentagram in New York and Jon Aizlewood in Brighton to ensure the new identity would work as well online as it does off.