Style Sourcebook is a leading innovator in homeware design and one of the most innovative shopping solutions we’ve ever come across. On their website, interior designers and fans of redecorating can create free mood boards using products from the largest database of homeware and retail design products in Australia.
Background
Like many great ideas, Style Sourcebook was invented out of necessity. The creator was looking for tools to help her design her own house interior and couldn’t find any good online tools, so she designed one herself.
Style Sourcebook eliminates the need to browse on multiple websites to find the perfect items to bring your interior design dream to life. Many famous stores have already signed up to be a part of Style Sourcebook, including Temple and Webster, Dulux, and Meir.
You can choose from the huge variety of products from different stores which are all conveniently placed together in one single site. After you’ve finished your mood board, you simply click on the items you want to buy, and you’ll be taken to a page where you can make a purchase. The website has something for everyone, including a diverse range of products and prices (e.g. you can choose a $15 chair or a $5,000 chair).
Methods
We built the site in Laravel with flexibility in mind. The Style Sourcebook website was originally built in WordPress, but as the site continued to grow, it wasn’t able to handle the large number of products on the site. We rebuilt the site to accommodate the 30,000 listed products, and now it has over 80,000 products with the capacity to continue growing. The front end was built in Vue.js, a JavaScript framework.
Style Sourcebook now allows users to search by categories (styles, room type, designer) and syncs to major retailers. We implemented Algolia search, a third party search service that quickly indexes making it easy to find what you’re looking for.
The updated site leverages off Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing, which we chose because of how large the Style Sourcebook website is. Prior to remaking the website, it was slowing down in part due to its hosting architecture. We broke the architecture up and spread it across a few different services running on Amazon so that it can cope with big data sets, heavy loads and heavy traffic. As one of the largest sites we’ve ever done, a lot of engineering was done on the back end.
Results
The new Style Sourcebook website is filled with exciting and interactive features. You can drag and drop into mood boards and use a speedy search feature to find what you’re looking for in no time.
The design of the new site follows the original design. The original Style Sourcebook branding was clear and well-formed, and we were able to retain the original look and feel.
Users now have the option to create accounts and save their mood boards for the future. These mood boards can be shared on social media and interior designers can create accounts to showcase their work through examples and portfolios displayed through mood boards.
In the end, Style Sourcebook is left with a beautiful, updated website with increased capabilities and the potential for future growth while customers continue being able to enjoy an online shopping experience like no other.
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