Site Launch - PrintLab

3 min read

Caution! This article is 8 years old, and our opinions may have changed.

This past week we have launched a long anticipated website for a company called PrintLab. PrintLab are a creative brand that supplies 3D printing products to schools and businesses around the world, whilst being open to collaborations with product partners and resellers to create the best end-to-end solutions.

We have been working on this site for almost 8 months now, due to the size of the client we decided it would be best to take every step possible to make sure the end product meets the clients high standards. This included wire framing, initial sketching and ideas, designing every one of the many pages, and also designing responsive versions of the final website. This helped us to show the client exactly what we was thinking every step of the way, from start to finish we are pretty pleased with the outcome.

Who are PrintLab

PrintLab specialise in 3D printing, distributing 3D printers to customers and markets all around the world. In the last 2 years alone, they have shipped a staggering 3000 3D printers to over 27 countries. After their recent success, they are taking the business in a different direction, allowing customers more access to 3D printing services without having to buy an actual printer.

With 19 Sales Partners spread across 19 Countries.. PrintLab are a pretty big client for ourselves.

About the build

For this build we got the chance to try our hands at some new development techniques which made strong use of the diverse capabilities of Craft CMS. We have been using Craft for quite some time now as we feel it gives us a lot more flexibility within the build than Wordpress or other limited content management systems..

“I particularly enjoying building this site as it was the first time I got to try some features in Craft that I have not used before. This was predominantly in the Build Your Lab section of the site. This area is a place for users to login and receive completely custom quotes for building a printing lab specific to their needs.”
Tom Pickering

Account Area

PrintLab also have a bespoke Account Area within the site, users can sign-up and create their very own profile which has more features to help with the users overall PrintLab experience.

Form picks up what Country you are currently in, and finds your local partner from which any enquiry will automatically be sent to them.
Promotional codes can be assigned by and admin which can be used throughout the build your lab section on the site.
Your Resources allows you to save, and re-visit some of your favourite resources on the site.
You can add your own Story, which is your personal experience with your PrintLab products and services.
You Can also share your own Resources, this is particularly useful for teachers and people who wish to share their expertise with the software and products.

As PrintLab have resellers and distributors all over the world, the currency, pricing and availability of the products needed to be dynamic depending on the location of the user. Once the user has selected their country, they can add products to their order and submit their enquiry. This all takes place in a lovely, clean and crisp segmented area of the website.

The Result

We feel that the overall website is pretty darn sweet! But don’t take our word for it, Go check it out: www.weareprintlab.com

We are not finished yet!

Print lab were so happy with what we produced in their website that they decided to do something a little special for us. After the website went live, we had a meeting with them to catch up with their progress and to answer any questions they have with regards to the CMS or front-end features. We had just expanded the studio (again) and they mentioned that we could do with adding some bespoke prints to it. They offered to create anything we wanted to help give the space more character.

We spent some time looking for what we could have, from Minions and Simpsons characters to more practical things like plant pots. But we felt we had to do something a bit fun. Plant pots would be good but let’s be honest, they wouldn’t turn heads. In the end, after much debate within the studio we decided to get some Starwars Buddahs created, as some of us are big Starwars fans these will fit well in our Studio.

Why not checkout PrintLabs social media?

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

We do have some pretty awesome clients,

Thanks PrintLab!

Written by

Mike Ashurst

Designer

Hiya, I'm Mike - Web designer at Shape. My articles usually consist of design related stuff.