Ecover
A cleaner website for this green cleaning giant’s rebrand
Project overview
Having worked with Ecover for more than five years, we were excited to help them bring their website in line with their brand new visual identity. As we created the previous website using Granola, our WordPress starter theme, we modified the theme to match Ecover’s updated branding and also took the opportunity to better optimise the new site.
The end result is a cleaner site, that is 80% smaller and more than four times lighter than the previous iteration – saving 3.4g of carbon emissions per page load. As Ecover themselves put it, it’s a brand new site for ‘the same old fight’ – living clean, and their website now even better reflects this.
0.93 ↓
C02 per page view (down from 4.33)
1.7MB ↓
page size (down from 7.8MB)
60% ↑
Full load improved
Discovery
As we have been working with Ecover for a long-time, we have established a deep understanding of their brand, which encompasses their mission and purpose, much aligned with our own. Discovery for this project therefore centred around reviewing the new visual identity together, taking this as inspiration for the new website design.
Ecover has worked with Wholegrain for many years, which meant that they really understood our brands and had the experience to spot problems before they happened. This proved vital when incorporating our new brand identity across 8 websites, in multiple languages, each with different product SKUs – in a short time period.
Alastair Little , European Digital Manager, Ecover
My particular favourites are how the new homepage design translates on mobile vs. desktop and how the menu select button transforms into an Ecover bottle if you hover over it for a moment.
Alastair Little – European Digital Manager, Ecover
Continuously updated code
In order to make the changes to the existing site, which we created in 2018, we modified the custom theme we had created, including implementing new updates to Granola. Ensuring we continue to keep updating the codebase with each iteration of site helps us to achieve a much faster page load, and to lower carbon emissions.
New fonts added
The new identity included the use of bold new typography, which wasn’t included in the original theme, so we added this, ensuring that we also optimised the fonts so that the addition didn’t compromise the improved efficiency.
Ongoing WordPress maintenance and support
As part of our long-term relationship with Ecover, we have been providing ongoing maintenance for every iteration of their website since we first redesigned it in 2014, to ensure that their online presence remains reliable and secure. We also provide ongoing support, which includes regular reviews so that we can suggest options for continuous improvement across all of their websites.
In addition to their deep wells of patience with the client, it’s the small touches that set Wholegrain’s approach to this project apart!
