The Prod­uct

The con­cept is an ener­gy sup­ple­ment with a very high con­cen­tra­tion of car­bo­hy­drates encap­su­lat­ed in hydro­gel, which in turn caus­es it to pass through the stom­ach with­out deal­ing with the prob­lems that ordi­nary sports drinks and ener­gy sup­ple­ments pose. When the hydro­gel pass­es through the stom­ach it dis­solves when it reach­es the intestines, and then the car­bo­hy­drates can be absorbed quick­ly and effi­cient­ly by the body.

The result is a high­er and faster ener­gy sup­ple­ment with few­er prob­lems.

Curi­ous? Check out the video explain­ing the concept.

Design

When we came up with a design for the site, we ground­ed it in the guide­lines that F&B had devel­oped for Mau­rten and its products.

The visu­al guide­lines were very black and white, sparse­ly fla­vored with col­or, typog­ra­phy char­ac­ter­ized by the Ger­man type­face DIN and lots of fine pho­tos from Nor­way’s cool nature where the Swedish elite run­ners Isabel­la Ander­s­son and Mustafa Mohammed were fea­tured.

From our side, we have put a lot of focus on build­ing a robust frame­work with a range of mod­ules, all based on a cou­ple of dif­fer­ent grid sys­tems, adapt­ed for dif­fer­ent large screen areas. This makes the site easy to use but also easy to work with. Fea­tures as focal points, used in image crop­ping of the same image for dif­fer­ent for­mats, and a tight­ly con­trolled typog­ra­phy make the edi­tor’s work eas­i­er and faster while pro­vid­ing a neat and con­sis­tent result.

What is impor­tant in e‑commerce?

When it comes to the e‑commerce solu­tion, there is a lot involved to give cus­tomers a good buy­ing expe­ri­ence. We have cho­sen to focus on these points in this project

• Mobile-friend­ly
• Clear prod­uct pre­sen­ta­tion with nice pic­tures and the few ingre­di­ents in focus
• Clear and sim­ple shop­ping bas­ket and check out process
• Easy pay­ment
• Email con­fir­ma­tions and receipts
• Oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate an account for even eas­i­er pur­chas­es next time

Then there is also a series of things that must work behind the scenes, where some of the most impor­tant include:

• Inte­gra­tion with busi­ness systems
• Per­for­mance
• Struc­tured data for good index­ing at Google
• Tax rules for dif­fer­ent mar­kets and scenarios
• Ship­ping costs
• Trans­la­tion of materials

The list can of course be made even longer…

It has been a plea­sure to work with every­one involved and the nice peo­ple at Mau­rten. Although we are gen­er­al­ly spoiled with nice cus­tomers, it is this type of project that makes it fun to run a com­pa­ny that can par­tic­i­pate and be of assis­tance in many areas.

Devel­op­ment

We need­ed a Con­tent Man­age­ment Sys­tem (CMS) and a flex­i­ble and cus­tomiz­able e‑commerce solu­tion and the choice fell on Craft and Craft Com­merce.

Dur­ing the years we have always opt­ed for sys­tems that give us full free­dom regard­ing the end result. It is impor­tant that we can con­trol HTML, CSS and JavaScript the way we want, and Craft has proven to be a real­ly good alter­na­tive. Above all, the sys­tem offers a great deal of flex­i­bil­i­ty, a nice inter­face for the edi­tors and a very good lan­guage support.

Com­bined with Craft Com­merce, you also get an inte­grat­ed web shop from the same man­u­fac­tur­er. In many cas­es and in oth­er con­stel­la­tions, there are dif­fer­ent ven­dors of the CMS and e‑commerce solu­tion, and some­times this can cause prob­lems. Here the e‑commerce solu­tion becomes a nat­ur­al part of the sys­tem instead.

Results

Well, since elite run­ners start­ed using Mau­rten’s prod­ucts in 2016, for exam­ple the lat­est win­ners in all the major marathon races start­ing in Berlin and New York in 2016, to Tokyo, Boston and now most recent­ly in Lon­don and New York 2017 have all trained and comptet­ed using Mau­rten sports nutri­tion. Pret­ty impressive!

Although we were forced to learn more about VAT and Sales Tax, export rules and account­ing than we would nor­mal­ly con­sid­er healthy for a dig­i­tal design and tech­nol­o­gy agency, we look for­ward to future chal­lenges, new mar­kets and products.