Nottingham Lighting Centre
Building a scalable online presence for Nottingham Lighting Centre
Refining online retail through a custom Shopify design and build for Parkside Tiles
SectorRetail
Timeframe6 Months
ServiceEcommerce Design & Development
The Project
Creating a digital foundation for commercial tile specialists, Parkside Tiles
Building a best-in-class Shopify experience for the commercial tiles market
Parkside, a leading supplier of commercial tiles and part of the Topps Tiles Group, approached Imaginaire with a clear goal: to expand its digital footprint and strengthen its presence in the commercial market. Their audience required a fast, frictionless way to discover, evaluate, and request samples of tile products online.
Our brief was to design and develop a Shopify site that not only reflected Parkside’s premium brand but also delivered the kind of efficiency and technical precision their industry expects. This meant prioritising usability, data accuracy, and seamless ordering functionality.
Building a platform that empowers architects and developers to specify products faster
The finished Shopify website delivers a balance between form and function. Combining clean, design-led visuals with technical precision and usability. Parkside’s new ecommerce experience now acts as both a brand showcase and a powerful sales tool, helping specifiers, architects, and contractors to quickly source the right products for their projects.
The strategy
Ecommerce design for speed, precision, and usability
Our strategy centred around creating a highly functional ecommerce experience tailored for trade and commercial users. The key challenge was to make complex product data accessible and actionable, allowing users to filter, compare, and order samples with ease.
We began by analysing user behaviour from focus groups of architects and specifiers. Their top priority was speed – the ability to find suitable finishes and technical specifications quickly. From this insight, we designed a user journey focused on minimal clicks, instant feedback, and easy access to relevant documentation. We structured the site around clear collection hierarchies and a robust filtering system that allows users to search by colour, material, thickness, appearance, slip rating, sustainability, and suitability for different applications.
Additionally, the new design needed to complement Parkside’s sustainability focus. A gated document library was introduced for registered users, allowing access to EPD reports, sustainability data, and technical specifications, all pulled dynamically from product meta data.
The strategy
Ecommerce design for speed, precision, and usability
Our strategy centred around creating a highly functional ecommerce experience tailored for trade and commercial users. The key challenge was to make complex product data accessible and actionable, allowing users to filter, compare, and order samples with ease.
We began by analysing user behaviour from focus groups of architects and specifiers. Their top priority was speed – the ability to find suitable finishes and technical specifications quickly. From this insight, we designed a user journey focused on minimal clicks, instant feedback, and easy access to relevant documentation. We structured the site around clear collection hierarchies and a robust filtering system that allows users to search by colour, material, thickness, appearance, slip rating, sustainability, and suitability for different applications.
Additionally, the new design needed to complement Parkside’s sustainability focus. A gated document library was introduced for registered users, allowing access to EPD reports, sustainability data, and technical specifications, all pulled dynamically from product meta data.
- Create a fast, intuitive product browsing experience with advanced filtering
- Integrate quick-add sample functionality directly from collection pages
- Build dedicated landing pages for slip ratings (PTV) and other technical attributes
- Introduce a logged-in document library for sustainability and EPD resources
- Implement a “Get some help” form
- Collaborate with Parkside’s in-house developers to sync orders and stock data with their ERP
- Provide customer account functionality for repeat users, offering extended sample limits and quicker delivery options
The solution
Combining beautiful design with technical capability for the trade market
The design phase focused on achieving a clean, architectural aesthetic similar to high-end brands in the B2B ecommerce industry. We created a modern, content-led interface that showcases product imagery and material finishes while keeping the experience fast and functional.
Each product page was built to house extensive technical data including slip resistance, material composition, and sustainability metrics, presented in a clear and accessible layout to offer specifiers all the information they need to make confident decisions without leaving the page.
A seamless sample ordering process was also implemented, enabling users to add up to five samples at once, compare technical attributes side by side, and proceed to checkout as a guest or logged-in user. Logged-in users benefit from faster sample delivery and access to the document library, reinforcing the value of account creation.
To support Parkside’s sales and marketing team, the site was built with future scalability in mind. Dynamic SEO meta tags were included for all product and collection pages, alongside structured landing pages for campaigns around key search themes like “PTV 36 Tiles” and “Sustainable Tile Collections”.
Ongoing development support
User Friendly PDP Redesign
As part of our ongoing development retainer with Parkside, we partnered with their team to redesign and enhance key areas of the website's Product Detail Page (PDP) experience.
Parkside's extensive product catalogue presents a unique challenge. Many ranges contain large numbers of colours, multiple finish options, varying sample availability rules, complex size combinations and product information that applies differently across individual variants. The existing PDP structure made it difficult for customers to understand these relationships, particularly when navigating the differences between sample availability and full product availability.
Creating a more dynamic product experience
A key objective of the project was to make product information more relevant to the user's selections.
Rather than displaying static, range-wide content, the redesigned PDP dynamically updates information based on the chosen colour swatch, providing customers with a clearer understanding of what is available for the specific product they are viewing.
This creates a more accurate and personalised browsing experience while reducing confusion around product options and availability.
Improving availability communication
One of the most complex challenges involved communicating the relationship between colours, finishes and sample availability. The redesign introduced clearer visual indicators and dynamic messaging to help customers distinguish between:
- Finishes available within a product range
- Finishes available as samples
- Finishes available to order but not available as samples
By surfacing this information more clearly, customers can make informed decisions earlier in their journey.
Streamlining the sample ordering journey
The sample ordering experience was redesigned to remove friction and improve confidence throughout the process.
Customers can now more easily:
- Browse available colour options
- Understand sample availability at a glance
- Download supporting product documentation
- View larger swatch imagery and tile formats
- Request samples with greater certainty
The result is a smoother journey from product discovery through to sample request.
Supporting product discovery at scale
The new PDP experience also introduces improved handling of a wide range of product data, including:
- Colour and finish variants
- Range-specific product attributes and icons
- Sustainability certifications
- Product documentation and technical resources
These enhancements help customers access important information more quickly while supporting the depth and complexity of Parkside's catalogue.
Building for long-term scalability
Beyond the user experience improvements, a significant focus of the project was ensuring the platform could effectively manage increasingly complex product data structures.
The redesigned PDP architecture provides greater flexibility for managing large numbers of sizes, colours, finishes and product combinations, allowing Parkside to showcase the full breadth of their product ranges without overwhelming users.
Through ongoing development support, we delivered a more intuitive, scalable and data-driven Product Detail Page experience that better reflects the complexity of Parkside's catalogue. The redesigned journey helps architects, designers and customers explore products more effectively, understand available options with greater clarity and request samples with confidence.
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