Arhaus, a premium home furnishings brand, needed a digital experience that captured the richness and warmth of its stores and catalog. At the same time, they were migrating to a new CMS platform – creating an opportunity to reimagine the site from the ground up. The existing website lacked flexibility, emotional depth, and modern usability – particularly across devices – falling short of reflecting the brand’s artisanal quality and welcoming tone.
HOW MIGHT WE
reimagine Arhaus.com as a more personal, inspirational, and curated experience that delivered on the brand promise of artful living through curated design?
What we Did
We conducted user research & a brand assessment
We began with customer research to understand perceptions of Arhaus and uncovered emotional drivers – like inspiration, personal style, and storytelling – not reflected in the current site. In parallel, we assessed competitors to identify best practices and audited the taxonomy to improve content organization.
We co-created design concepts
Through co-creation workshops, we developed multiple UX and visual design directions that captured different facets of the brand. Concepts like “Personal Space,” “Your Journey is Our Journey,” and “At the Core” explored metaphors for in-store shopping, catalog browsing, and personal style evolution – each tied to core brand attributes like “curated,” “inspired,” “classic,” and “surprising.”
We defined a modular UX framework
We translated these ideas into wireframes built around a modular design approach. Each component was designed to be reused flexibly, allowing content creators to mix and match modules to create rich, storytelling-driven pages or efficient product-focused experiences.
We developed a style guide & responsive design system
From these components, we built a responsive design system that scaled beautifully from mobile to tablet to desktop. This system not only improved accessibility and consistency across devices, but also empowered internal teams to maintain and evolve the site efficiently.
We redesigned the website UI
The redesigned website brings the Arhaus brand to life – transforming a plain, utilitarian experience into one that feels rich, curated, and aligned with the brand’s artisanal, inspirational identity.
The Result
The redesigned website brings the Arhaus brand to life – transforming a plain, utilitarian experience into one that feels rich, curated, and aligned with the brand’s artisanal, inspirational identity.
Arhaus.com’s web traffic and on-site engagement have grown significantly after the redesign and CMS re-platforming. The site now attracts roughly 1.6–1.7 million visits per month, which expanded user interest and reach.
Increased Session Duration
The Average Session Duration increased to about 3 minutes 55 seconds per visit – a strong engagement time for retail.
Users are spending longer on the site engaging with product imagery, descriptions, and design inspiration before leaving.
Increased Conversion & Sales
The redesign has translated into measurable improvements in conversion and online sales performance.
Conversion rates on Arhaus.com are estimated around 1.0%–1.5% of visits converting into purchases, which is strong for high-end furniture e-commerce.
Increased User Engagement
According to Arhaus’s VP of eCommerce, user engagement metrics improved dramatically after the new site launch:
“Measuring how many pages people were going to and how long they were staying on the site, a lot of those metrics got far better when we moved over to [the new CMS]…”