Rebel UK
Rebel UK are a sports brand from Wigan heavily associated with the functional fitness community, they provide quality fitness apparel at affordable prices without skimping on the durability and stylishness of their range
Having been founded in 2016 by a separate entity I worked with the current owner to freshen up their existing brand but also identify any areas for improvement with regards sales funnels on the website whilst also giving this a full redesign. As the brand had grown significantly over the last few years the brand looked and felt like it need to be modernised and polished to represent the hard work that had been put in to establish its self as one of the UK's most recognised functional fitness apparel retailers.
What Rebel lacked was brand direction, they had no recognisable brand structure in place that could transcend from the website to social media to the pop up stores they were involved in across the UK's many CrossFit competitions, the identity was old and tired with many visible flaws, but the identity had become recognisable, not just as a name but also the design.
The website was in desperate need of some TLC, I immediately noticed areas for opportunity when conducting an audit of the user journey. We used Hotjar to monitor user heat maps, click points and scrolling patterns as well as sales funnels to identity drop off points. The homepage in particular was performing terribly with 100% of users dropping off here.
As mentioned Rebel lacked brand direction, we established their competitors, how they define success, who were their customers amongst other questions, from here we could build on the brand, as mentioned Rebel has been active for around 4 or 5 years so the name and identity was already known, the key was also not to completely change direction, use what was already there in terms of the identity but sharpen it up, make it a lot slicker.
I developed a set of brand guidelines to be followed this set out colours, font styles, imagery (they already had some great imagery) brand identity usage et al, these could also be adhered to on social media campaigns going forward.
With regards the redesign of the current identity I wanted to stay true to the original but improve it in certain areas. The font used on the original had no impact, it was difficult to read from distance, it was cramped and the circular shape the identity used interfered with the legibility. I decided to keep the basic quirks of it, the reversed 'R' the 'B' and the circular shape, however this would be altered to allow breathing space for the letters. I used Gothic Medium for the text, a clean geometric font that wasn't too bold but was bolder and had more impact than the original, I kept the reversed 'R' but removed the standing leg to create a bespoke letter, I also kept the 'B' but again tinkered to create a custom symmetrical letter.
I wasn't sure on the circular shape at first, but again it was part of a recognisable identity so recreated this in a more simplistic fashion, this version wouldn't interfere with the text in anyway and would give 'REBEL' breathing room to sit within and protrude out of the right hand side.
Rebel already used the maroon/red as its main colour that could be found in the current identity within the circular shape, I decided to keep this and build a pallet around it, adding an off black, and two shades of grey as tertiary colours, it wasn’t extensive, but it was simple and clean. I selected two fonts to base the brand around, ‘Viga’ would serve as the font for headers, prices, main navigation and buttons, Gothic A1 was used everywhere else, body copy, sub navigation and sub headers, ‘Viga’ has a sporty, collegiate feel to it, where as gothic compliments it well with its simplicity and legibility at smaller sizes, the added bonus is that these are google fonts, so there’s no issue with compatibility but also utilising them across social media campaigns won’t be an issue either.
The homepage was the biggest problem, 100% drop-off rate and heat map and click results that showed where the majority of users spent there time there was little to no encouragement for them to proceed to the next stages in the journey, the navigation was tucked away under one ‘shop’ mega nav, the main header banner/carousel showed pointless images with no CTAs, key pathways into products or category pages were further down the page, a redundant ‘contact us’ form dominated the bottom of the page, and a small block of text within a parallax image block took up valuable reel estate with little SEO impact.
After analysing the hotjar data I set about redesigning the user experience whilst also implementing the newly designed brand guidelines, and whilst the UX was a key factor the whole aesthetic of the site needed improvement too.
The new Rebel brand is a step up to something more professional in it’s presentation, its sharper and much more crisp, but stays true to what is already recognisable, I think it’ll go hand in hand with taking Rebel to the next level of UK exposure not just within functional fitness but fitness apparel in general.
The UX improvements will hopefully drive sales through the usability and sales funnel improvements, key sales channels now sit within the immediate eye line as users land on the page, the navigation has been fleshed out to show all categories at the top as opposed buried away, the search feature is simpler to use, the cart and checkout pages are cleaner with gift card and discount fields positioned for a better user experience, tied in with the new brand guidelines I think it gives Rebel more credibility and creates a brand that a customer can trust and aspire to shop with.
