LAVINGIA
Website Development + Product Photography
Project Intro
Lavingia Jewels had stores in Tanzania and Zambia, but its online product experience was limited to Instagram and WhatsApp. Customers could discover products, but browsing was fragmented and heavily dependent on direct messages.
The project was to build a catalogue led website that made product browsing easier, supported enquiry led sales, and gave the internal team a better way to manage product content.
Context + Problem
Instagram was the brand’s main visual platform, but posting was inconsistent and product photography quality varied.
There was no organised catalogue where customers could browse collections properly before contacting the business. This created friction in the customer journey. Customers often had to message the team for more photos, videos, prices, or product details, while staff spent time manually answering repeat questions and sending additional images.
The challenge was to turn that scattered browsing experience into a structured catalogue while also building the internal workflow needed to maintain it after launch.
My Role
I led the website structure, copy, product presentation, and photography workflow.
My work included:
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Website design and WordPress customisation
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Website copywriting
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Catalogue structure and product organisation
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Product photography setup
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Image editing workflow design
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Product naming and file organisation
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Team training for uploads and content updates
Design Goals
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Work as a product catalogue rather than a checkout-first ecommerce store
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Reduce friction between browsing and enquiry
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Organise products by gemstone, metal, and collection
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Present jewellery clearly on mobile
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Create direct routes to WhatsApp, calls, Instagram, and store visits
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Make catalogue management easier for the internal team
Approach
I started by studying how Tanzanian consumers were already shopping online. Even outside jewellery, many customers were hesitant to complete higher-value purchases fully online and preferred to browse first before speaking to a business directly.
For jewellery in particular, customers often wanted to inspect products more closely, ask questions through WhatsApp or phone calls, and in many cases visit the store before purchasing. That made a catalogue-first website the right approach. The goal was not to force online checkout, but to make the browsing stage easier and help customers move naturally from discovery to enquiry.
The wider funnel worked like this:
Paid Ads → Instagram / Website → WhatsApp / Calls / Walk-ins → Enquiries and Orders
Instagram supported discovery and existing audience visibility, while the website gave users a more organised browsing experience with structured collections, simple navigation, and detailed product imagery. I structured the site around how customers were likely to browse: by gemstone, metal, and collection. This reduced the number of steps needed to explore products. Instead of relying entirely on Instagram scrolling or WhatsApp conversations, customers could browse collections independently before contacting the team.
For photography, I built a repeatable studio workflow covering macro lens use, lighting setup, shot angles, editing presets, file naming conventions, and upload processes so future collections could be managed consistently.
Process
We photographed more than 200 jewellery pieces, with each item captured from multiple angles. For detailed shots, each final image was built from over 10 stacked images to improve sharpness and capture small gemstone and metal details.
I also created a Photoshop script and editing workflow that reduced production time by around 40 percent while maintaining consistency across the catalogue.
The workflow included:
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500+ final images delivered in under 3 months
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Editing presets and retouching guidelines
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File naming and folder structure
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Product upload workflows
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Image standards for future collections
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Team training for website and catalogue updates
Results
The website launched as an organised product catalogue with clear categories, consistent product pages, and close-up imagery across each collection.
In the first three months, the site recorded over 1,500 unique visitors with an average session duration of 3 minutes 15 seconds, suggesting users were actively browsing products rather than leaving quickly.
The site also gave paid ad and Instagram traffic a more organised browsing experience. Users could discover products through ads or social content, browse collections through the website, then continue the conversation through WhatsApp, phone calls, or store visits.
Based on WhatsApp enquiries, phone calls, Instagram DMs, and store-reported walk-ins, offline enquiries increased by around 40 percent. Customers were asking about specific pieces they had seen online, showing the catalogue was helping move interest into action.
Orders were completed through WhatsApp, calls, and store visits, with the website and Instagram acting as the primary browsing touchpoints.
The website also made the process easier for the internal team. Customers could browse products more independently before contacting the business, while staff spent less time manually sending product images and more time handling high-intent enquiries.
After launch, the internal team could manage uploads and catalogue updates without needing external support for every change.
