Castorama Russie : Revitalising homes

A distinctive impression is created from standard feature.

The Site

Castorama Russie, a country division of France-based home improvement materials retailer Castorama, makes distinctive use of its home page space.

Castorama Russie’s home page is used a shop window, with the main content area given over to a matrix of product and offers banners, some animated. Left navigation provides links to the online store’s various departments (Tools, Building Materials etc) while a set of four tabs runs across the top of the page. The default tab is Home, which is associated with the initial display. Other headings are: Shops and services, Tips and materials, and ‘Best offer’.

Clicking a tab refreshes the whole of the main display on the home page, but leaves the navigation elements unchanged. Each department featured there has its own landing page that is independent of the tabbed set (none of them is highlighted as active when the page is open), though it may have links to them; for example, from featured products to Best offer or Shops and services.

The Takeaway

Castorama Russie has taken an off-the-shelf navigation feature, a tabbed display, and used it to create a distinctive home page experience. The key is the combination of an unusually all-encompassing display – most are built into the page as a panel; the absence of a discrete home page template – it isn’t treated as a magazine-like cover; and the separation from departmental navigation – the tabs aren’t, as would be normal, a way of previewing section content (they more resemble pumped-up utilities).

The overall effect, underpinned by the inherent quality of tabs to bring content to the user (as opposed to a link, which takes them to it), is of a home page that can be refreshed with alternative themed material. It’s somewhat of a design trick but that, like the set up the site, is appropriate to the company.

First published on 19 January, 2010