In our Luxury Website Design series, we review the online presence of internationally renowned, luxury brands. We look at what their websites get right, what they might be lacking and how they achieve premium branding throughout. By tracking the latest online trends, we hope to provide you with luxury web design inspiration for your business.

We’ve recently analysed what Gucci’s premium website has to offer. Since then, we have branched into high-end sportswear with Nike and internationally renowned London store, Fortnum & Mason. Today, we delve into luxury fashion accessories with internationally renowned, British brand Mulberry and their online offering.

KIJO is a luxury web design agency that specialises in custom-built sites for high-end brands. With offices across the UK, we work with brands in London and beyond to create truly unique online platforms. Take a look at our work and if you like what you see, please contact us.

Mulberry

Mulberry is a British lifestyle brand that prides itself on quality products built to last. A home-grown brand, Mulberry was first imagined by Roger Saul as he sat at his kitchen table 1971. What began as a collection of leather belts has since developed into multiple handbag lines, jewellery and clothing collections.

A grounding in all things natural is still prevalent. From the messaging and design of the website, it’s clear that Mulberry is building on their traditional, rural English foundation to create a long-lasting, sustainable legacy.

Is Mulberry a High End Brand?

Yes. Mulberry is considered a luxury, British brand that manufactures high-end leather goods. It is the curator of the British “it” handbag. 50% of their bags are produced across two Somerset-based factories.

Mulberry Logo

Rooted in English culture and heritage, the company name and Mulberry logo were inspired by the mulberry trees Roger Saul would pass on his way to school. His sister designed it. The Mulberry logo with the Mulberry tree stresses the importance of family and the growth of a fundamentally British brand.

Up until 2015, the tree appeared with the name of the brand as a primary logo. Currently, it’s the name alone that takes the primary logo spot (as you can see pictured on Mulberry’s Large Check Merino Wool Scarf above), and the infamous tree is used as a secondary logo.

KIJO’s Mulberry Online Website Review

Mulberry Online: Special Features

Rating 2.5/5

In contrast to other brands we have looked at, Mulberry’s special features don’t include a suite of apps or new augmented reality technology to suggest exclusive luxury. Instead, Mulberry provides an open and detailed view into every element of their production process.

The Sustainability section of the website is wholly dedicated to explaining the company’s sustainable sourcing and eco-friendly manufacturing. The pages interlink to take you through the production process. Every page includes close-up images of machines and craftspeople in action. The B Corp page is dominated by an artistic video showing how their signature Mulberry bags are made.

These dedicated sections of the site underscores just how far Mulberry is from fast fashion with complete transparency. The pages assure customers of the quality and value of every piece. Providing information on this area is valuable as modern consumers are increasingly driven by ethics. However, the text-heavy pages create a very one-dimensional experience for the user. A bolder design intertwined with the customer purchasing journey would deliver a greater impact. Including links to products, further animations and interactivity would create a more dynamic experience. 

It’s not cheap or easy for a business to be sustainable in this way. Mulberry has made a solid start demonstrating this to the customer. However, the delivery and blocky design lacks finesse. When exploring luxury web design for inspiration, think about how your products are created. Is ethical trading and sustainability an important part of your company ethos? If so, how can you design your website to make this clear to consumers and bring them one step closer to the online checkout?

Although not a groundbreaking detail, Mulberry does make good use of photo animation across their site too. Every product photo flicks quickly to fashion photography, with models displaying the product in situ when the user rolls over them. Not only is this useful for quickly understanding the size of the accessory, but the frequent use of editorial photography creates a sense of luxury.

Mulberry Online: User Experience

Rating 3/5

Mulberry’s homepage is a brilliant example of less is more. As Mulberry’s predominant products are handbags, it makes sense for their homepage to be more streamlined than larger fashion houses. It’s a reminder to shape your website to what you sell, rather than follow the crowd.

There isn’t one large navigation panel. Instead, when you hover over ‘Women’, a specific menu appears beneath. Further, more specific options are shown off each menu item. It’s a logical and simple breakdown of their products. A horizontal navigation bar also appears on each page. When searching for women’s bags, you can navigate to any bag style from any page. Providing dual navigation helps streamline the customer journey. This means users don’t have to trawl through a huge navigation bar every time.

On the product pages, there is a ‘Sort By’ drop-down menu. You can filter products based on price or colour, but you can’t apply multiple filters. There’s no option to filter by product or material type. The lack of advanced navigation options makes it tricky to find something specific quickly. This is uncommon for a site of this stature and a big limitation for the user.

Mulberry: Visual Design

Rating 3/5

The homepage greets the user with two half-page images followed by further carefully curated photography for each main collection as you scroll. There is an information bar at the very top of the page, but it isn’t particularly special. 

The product pages themselves aren’t striking either but they do include some great details. You can easily change the configuration from 4 products per row to 6. When you hover over an image you see an alternative view or a model wearing the piece. Lastly, the site speed is perfectly fine, but if an image is yet to load, the Mulberry logo acts as a placeholder. These are nice touches, but the overall design is fairly unremarkable.

At the top of the product pages, there are a few lines of copy, but the text is incredibly small. It is larger on the individual product pages, where a text box with 5 tabs, ‘Description’, ‘Details’,‘Material’, ‘Delivery’ and ‘Contact Us’, provides additional information on each product. However, the text box is small and the information cramped. For a page with such a large amount of white space, Mulberry could arguably make better use of it.

Mulberry Online: Mobile Optimisation

Rating 3.5/5

The mobile view of the site is very similar to the desktop view. The web designers have perfectly optimised it for the smaller screen. Resized images, adjusted page configurations and small navigation panels work perfectly on a mobile screen. While they don’t have an app or any exclusive mobile features, beyond this we cannot fault their mobile optimisation.

The mark isn’t 5/5 simply because there isn’t an app.

Mulberry Online: Retail Integration

Rating 4/5

On every product page, there is a ‘Wishlist’ button you can use to add an item to your wishlist. Once you have a Wishlist, you can send this to a friend or family member via email, Facebook or copy the link! This is a unique feature. 

The website serves a very practical purpose of streamlining in-store services. You can easily book repairs or personal shopping appointments. The user simply fills out and submits the required forms on the dedicated pages. The repairs process is impressive, and the website provides an easy to follow step by step process. Once you have figured out what the problem is using the visual guides, you can easily fill out a repair form online to get the process started.

Key Takeaways from our Mulberry Online Review

The key takeaways from our review of the Mulberry website are:

• Luxury through simplicity: Mulberry’s minimalist web design conveys a confidence in their heritage and craftsmanship. It also emphasises a subtle elegance. A minimalist aesthetic is typical of luxury brands. Why? Because it conveys luxury effortlessly.
• User experience: While the website is intuitive, there’s definitely potential to enhance filtering options for a more refined shopping experience, and something we’d probably recommend doing if KIJO were to enhance the UX of Mulberry online.
• Sustainability focus: The brand’s eco-conscious messaging appeals to ethically-minded consumers. This is a growing demand of customers across many industries. Therefore, its understandable why Mulberry are weaving this solidly into their brand identity drawing attention to it via their web design. It makes good business sense.
• Mobile optimisation: The website is well-optimised for mobile, though a dedicated app is lacking. Focused, eCommerce-enabled apps are a brilliant way of being able to enhance your customer experience – the brand Nike do this excellently. This is something Mulberry could look to invest in.
• Content-first approach: The website prioritises quality storytelling over complex interactivity. This is good. However, now the website has a key, solid foundation, its arguably time for the web design to consider enhancing interactivity and animation. Doing this will no doubt improve engagement.

More to Come from Mulberry Online

Mulberry’s online offering provides luxury web design inspiration for smaller brands that produce fewer products or have a keen focus on ethical production. The subtle modern web design is understated and classic, crucial for Mulberry to appeal to their broad, multi-generational demographic. The emphasis is on longevity, not fast fashion. This makes sense for a producer of durable, leather accessories, that with the right care could last a lifetime.

They have made great strides in recent years to develop a long-standing brand identity and legacy. While their website isn’t a showstopper yet, it definitely embodies quality over quantity and the KIJO team are excited to see how it develops in the future.  

If you’ve seen something in the Mulberry design that has inspired you, but aren’t sure how to adopt it, contact the KIJO team to discuss your website requirements. Let’s connect over your app or website design vision, and together, we can work on realising it.