[ 08 · Mallet studio · 2023 ]
Unigum — The Safe Side
A safety-equipment site organised head to toe, for 3,500 companies.
Unigum distributes protective equipment to Italian industry. At Mallet studio, in 2023, I designed the UI for every page of a site that has to answer a technical question and never takes an order.
- Role
- UI Design — all pages
- Year
- 2023
- Tags
- Web · B2B
- Links
- unigum.it ↗
[ 01 · Context ]
Unigum sells personal protective equipment and safety services to Italian companies. The site states 75 years in business and more than 3,500 client companies, and it is published in Italian only.
It is not a shop. Small buyers go to UNISAFETY, a separate e-commerce, and the full product list sits in an external catalogue. This site carries the competence instead: standards, training, lab revisions, fit tests.
[ 02 · Role ]
UI design for all the pages, at Mallet studio in 2023. The structure was informed by data Unigum shared with us, which I can no longer access, so this study sticks to the interface.
Mallet studio closed after the project; the footer credits Alias2k, who carried it on, alongside Mallet.
[ 03 · Problem ]
One site serves two readers who arrive from opposite directions. A safety lead arrives with a risk and a norm to satisfy. A purchasing lead arrives with a category and a budget. Unigum's own workshop pages address both by name.
Underneath sit nine product categories, nine services, seven industries, a workshop archive, news and four awareness campaigns. The header has no search box, so the structure has to do the finding.
[ 04 · Decisions ]
- 01
Products split by body zone, not by brand
Head, eyes, hearing, airways, hands, feet, plus fall protection and two clothing families. That is how a risk assessment is written and how a kit is issued, so a visitor can walk the worker instead of the price list. It gives up brand and price browsing, which is what a shop does well. The SKUs stay in the external catalogue, linked from every category page.
- 02
Sectors as a second entry, crossing the taxonomy
Seven industry pages open with the risks of that industry, then map them to equipment. A pharmaceutical visitor reads chemical, biological and ATEX risk before seeing a single product. The cost is duplication, because the same glove appears under a body zone and under four industries. The gain is that nobody has to translate a risk into a category on their own.
- 03
Safety culture in the main navigation, commerce out of it
A card game, a memory game and two awareness campaigns sit at top level, next to Prodotti and Settori. They hold a slot that a quote form or a cart could have taken. Buying is pushed to UNISAFETY and to the catalogue, so this site stays a reference tool and every page ends in a phone number rather than a checkout.
[ 05 · Outcome ]
The site is live at unigum.it: seven top-level sections, nine product categories, seven industry pages, four campaigns, one language.
The numbers it shows are Unigum's own, taken from the homepage: 75 years, more than 3,500 client companies. The research data behind the structure is not mine to quote, so I am not claiming a result here.
[ 06 · Credits ]
- Federico Vietti — UI Design, all pages, Mallet studio, 2023
- Site footer: "Powered by Alias2k & Mallet studio"
- Built on WordPress
[ Contact ]
Let’s talk
Open to product design roles, and to good collaborations.