Custom Design for Custom Beds

The Challenge

Francis Lofts & Bunks has identified a need in the industry—to maximize space in one’s home. Whether it is an apartment, condo, or house, we can always use more space. Francis Lofts & Bunks offered a unique solution, allowing customers to keep adult-sized beds and save space with modern loft and bunk beds.

Despite the brand’s success, they struggled with outdated branding and lacked a user-friendly website. Their website was originally hosted on an out-of-the-box solution to hosting their online store but as Francis Lofts and Bunks grew, they struggled to find the customization they needed from the templates and themes their previous platform offered.

The Kickoff

To begin our work with Francis Lofts & Bunks, we sat down with one of the co-founders to gain a deeper understanding of the overall message he hoped to convey to customers. From this fruitful discussion, we reflected on the brand’s logo, website, and overall brand positioning. All of the information gathered served as the foundation for how we developed the logo, structured the UX design on the site, and began to build a new website with a powerful API-first content platform called Contentful.

Our Approach

Previously, the majority of the Francis Lofts & Bunks site was developed through a common eCommerce platform—but as the business grew, the Francis Lofts & Bunks team had trouble maintaining the site and began to encounter limitations. 

One of the key brand differentiators of Francis Lofts & Bunks was the ability to design and manufacture custom loft beds. “Not only do we custom-make every bed but people can add accessories, change colors, and it’s designed to be interactive in that way,” shared Michael Garrity, Marketing Director. Although their previous platform provided powerful eCommerce functionality, it became clunky and cumbersome for customizable and variant-level work. 

To solve these issues—and provide the Francis Lofts & Bunks team with a powerful website—LaunchPad Lab opted to develop the site using Contentful’s content platform, allowing for a custom, easy-to-use digital experience. Our approach created a highly-integrated front and backend site with Contentful. The Contentful framework streamlines customization and ensures ease of use for Francis Lofts & Bunks. It also offers an easy, well-organized dashboard to edit the site directly.

Design

We began by first designing the logo and creating a style guide to encourage consistency across the brand. The logo itself includes a representation of their two primary products in a slightly abstracted form. The hexagonal shape of the logo represents a 3D space and how both a 3D loft and bunk bed can fit inside this “room.” The hexagonal motif is repeated in several areas throughout the site to increase cohesion.

The typography pairing helps add a contemporary, high-end feel. In terms of the color palette, the navy was selected to evoke a sense of stability and elegance, which is contrasted with yellow to show joy and energy. Lastly, the various images throughout the site show how seamlessly these beds can fit in a wide range of spaces.

Technologies

Contentful is the powerful technology behind Francis Lofts & Bunks. As an API-first content platform, Contentful is a back-end CMS where the content repository is separated from the presentation layer—or the front-end design. A headless CMS like Contentful serves as a multichannel solution for publishing dynamic content in minutes, customizing the user experience, and streamlining day-to-day maintenance. 

By using Contentful, Francis Lofts & Bunks was able to prioritize their SEO efforts. Compared to their previous platform—where they had one product page for all—the new website has a thoughtful architecture, beginning with an overarching loft bed page and then breaking down to “twin,” “queen,” and so on. This architecture has made a dramatic improvement with SEO-driven traffic for Francis Lofts & Bunks.