A premium user experience

About Occhio

Occhio is a German luxury lighting design brand renowned for its perfectionism, high quality, and pure design aesthetic. Prior to this project, Occhio had an inspirational web presence but no direct online sales channel, relying on showrooms and partners for sales.

About the Customers

Through research, we identified two primary customer personas. One group values superior quality and distinctive design, while the other is status-driven and eager to showcase success. Despite their differences, both personas seek inspiration and confidence before purchasing high-end lighting solutions.

The Problem

No Online Shopping & Lofty Brand Expectations – Occhio’s existing website did not allow direct purchasing, leading to customer frustration and lost sales. At the same time, the company’s redefined brand demanded an exceptional digital experience, setting a high bar for design, content, and performance.

• No E-Commerce Occhio had no direct online shop. Interested customers could not buy online, causing drop-offs and missed revenue opportunities.
• Outdated Web Presence The old website no longer aligned with Occhio’s new brand identity and luxury positioning, offering a subpar user experience.
• High Brand Standards The brand’s insistence on perfection and stunning visuals had to be balanced with usability and web performance; a difficult trade-off between form and function.
• Complex Product Catalog Occhio offers a wide range of modular, configurable lighting products spread across different systems. This made product discovery and understanding difficult for users on the old site.

The Goal

Launch a World-Class Online Experience – Our mission was to build an engaging new Occhio website with e-commerce capabilities that meets business goals and delights users, without compromising the brand’s luxury image.

• Align with New Brand Identity Relaunch the website to reflect Occhio’s refreshed brand vision and premium design language.
• Enable Online Sales Introduce a full e-commerce platform to allow customers to explore and purchase Occhio products directly online.
• Improve Discoverability Make it easy for customers to find the right product by providing intuitive navigation and inspiring content that guides them in their buyer journey.
• Unified Platform Seamlessly integrate content and product data from multiple legacy systems into one smooth experience, especially for configuring Occhio’s modular products.
• Optimize UX & Performance Meet Occhio’s high aesthetic standards while ensuring the site is user-friendly and fast, providing rich visuals and features without sacrificing performance.

Contraints

Three legacy systems, one brand obsessed with perfection, and a green button that caused weeks of negotiation.

• The new site had to pull data from three separate systems: a legacy Drupal CMS, an aging PIM with no modern API, and a newly implemented Salesforce CRM. Keeping content, product data, and customer data in sync across all three — without surfacing that complexity to the user — was a significant technical constraint that shaped every content design decision.
• Occhio's brand team and CEO held exceptionally high aesthetic standards. Functional UX patterns that contradicted the visual direction — including standard e-commerce conventions like high-contrast purchase buttons — required extensive diplomatic work with the agency and C-suite before they could be implemented. The green CTA button alone was months of conversation.
• Performance and brand were in direct tension throughout. Occhio's identity is built on rich, high-resolution imagery. Every optimisation decision had to be negotiated against a brand standard that treated compression as a compromise.

In the discovery phase, we conducted extensive market research and on-site user studies to inform our direction. I visited Occhio’s Munich flagship stores to observe and interview customers and sales staff. This hands-on research helped us empathize with our luxury lighting buyers and validate our assumptions.
We discovered clear patterns in customer motivations and pain points, which directly shaped our design strategy.

Key Insights

• Two Core Personas We identified two key customer types – one being a design-conscious connoisseur who values quality and timeless design, and the other a status-driven achiever who wants to showcase success. Both personas expect a premium experience; they want to feel inspired and informed before committing to a purchase.
• Need for Inspiration Customers often start with vague ideas. They crave inspirational content (e.g. beautiful room photos, style guidance) to envision how Occhio’s products could fit into their lives. This inspiration builds the emotional confidence needed to buy luxury items.
• Visualization Challenges A major pain point was that shoppers struggled to imagine the products in their own space. Without seeing a fixture in context or at scale, they felt uncertain. This gap often kept them from moving forward in the funnel.
• Information Overload Occhio’s catalog is expansive – many product variants, configurations, and technical details. Customers found it hard to get an overview of available options and compare them. This could lead to decision paralysis.
• Fear of Wrong Decisions Given the high price point, customers feared making a mistake (choosing the wrong product or configuration). They desired guidance and reassurance during the buying process to feel secure in their choice.

Approach

From the outset, we partnered with specialized agencies to ensure top-quality execution. I coordinated closely with Martin et Karczinski (Occhio’s brand design agency) to translate the refreshed brand identity into the digital space, and with Inviqa (technology consultants) to implement a robust platform. We embraced an agile methodology – working in sprints, iterating on feedback, and continuously aligning the design with technical feasibility. This approach allowed us to remain flexible and responsive to insights throughout the project.

Scope & Key Decisions

Given the ambitious 6-month timeline, we focused on high-impact deliverables. Early in the design phase, we decided to pivot away from an overly ornamental approach – replacing heavy full-screen renderings with a more functional yet elegant design that improved performance. We prioritized building out critical features: a new navigation scheme, a configurable product detail page, and interactive tools like AR. These choices ensured we delivered a polished experience that was both beautiful and effective. Every feature was evaluated against Occhio’s core question: “Does it inspire confidence and delight for our luxury customer?” If not, we refined or cut it to keep the experience streamlined.

Key Feature 1: Inspirational, User-Centric Navigation

An intuitive navigation system catering to different user approaches (browse by room, by product type, or directly search). This feature helps both the design-savvy user and the goal-oriented shopper find what they need easily, greatly improving product discoverability.

Key Feature 2: Modular Product Configurator

On each product page, users can customize their chosen light (e.g. select finishes, sizes, configurations) and see the result in real-time. This interactive configurator simplifies complex product options and makes the selection process engaging – leading to more confident buying decisions and fewer surprises after purchase.

Key Feature 3: Integrated Online Store

We implemented Occhio’s first end-to-end e-commerce functionality. Users can seamlessly go from inspiration and product discovery to checkout on the same site. The shopping cart, wishlist, and checkout processes were designed to be straightforward and reassuring for luxury shoppers (including options for consulting with an Occhio specialist). This new online sales channel started capturing revenue that was previously untapped – within the first year, online orders comprised around 5% of Occhio’s total revenue, with significant potential to grow.

The new Occhio website and online shop have been a resounding success. The relaunch resulted in a highly engaging, visually stunning website that seamlessly merges Occhio’s refined brand aesthetic with a modern user experience. Customers responded enthusiastically to the richer content and features – they now spend more time exploring products and feel more confident in making purchases online. The addition of e-commerce not only filled a critical gap in the customer journey, but it also unlocked a new revenue stream for the company. Importantly, all these improvements were achieved without sacrificing Occhio’s brand values; in fact, the digital experience has only strengthened the brand’s reputation for innovation and quality.

• Industry Recognition The project earned top industry awards, including a Gold – Annual Multimedia Award 2020 and a Splash Award 2020 for digital excellence.
• Higher Conversion Rate More website visitors are converting into customers than before, thanks to easier shopping and better-informed users (exact figures are confidential, but conversion saw a significant uplift).
• Increased User Engagement Users interact with the site’s content and features at a much higher rate. Time-on-site and product page views per session have grown, indicating that the experience is both captivating and informative.
• Growth in Visitors The website has attracted significantly more traffic post-relaunch, driven by improved SEO from the new site structure and an uptick in organic sharing of Occhio’s inspiring content.
• Newsletter Sign-ups Up More visitors are signing up for the Occhio newsletter and product updates, boosting the brand’s CRM and remarketing efforts (a sign that the site is effective in building ongoing interest).
• New Revenue Channel Online sales now account for roughly 5% of Occhio’s total revenue, where previously it was virtually 0%. This share is continuing to grow, demonstrating the long-term business value of the e-commerce launch.

With this relaunch, Occhio successfully transitioned into the digital commerce space while elevating its brand. The company now provides the same level of excellence online as it does in-store, setting a strong foundation for future growth in an omnichannel world. The case study stands as an example of how thoughtful research, user-centric design, and cross-team collaboration can transform a luxury brand’s digital fortunes.