Nine bikes, forty thousand configurations

The problem

Boréal builds nine frames and lets you choose the geometry, the groupset, the wheels and the finish. The old shop exposed all of it at once, in the order the database happened to store it, with the finish, the most emotional decision, on the last screen after eight technical ones.

Their inbox was full of the same three questions, all of them answerable by the site if the site had been arranged around the buyer rather than around the stock table. Roughly a third of configurations sent to the workshop were impossible to build and had to be corrected by hand, over the phone.

What we did

Three steps: size, then build, then finish. Size comes first because it is the only choice that cannot be changed later, and because getting it wrong is the one mistake the workshop cannot absorb.

Impossible combinations are removed as they become impossible rather than refused at the end, and every option that changes the price says so at the moment it is chosen. The technical drawing redraws itself as you go, so the screen always shows the bike you have configured and not a stock photograph of a different one.

We also drew the interface parts of the identity that were missing: a type scale that holds a five digit price next to a two digit tooth count, and a colour set where the finish swatches are the only saturated things on the page.

What it changed

Completed orders rose twenty two per cent on the same traffic. Pre sale emails about sizing fell by about seventy per cent. Configurations arriving at the workshop are now buildable as sent, which recovered roughly a day a week for the person who used to correct them.