A new online presence for Tokyo-based startup Bespoke, maker of the Bebot chatbot technology currently helping tourists in Narita Airport, Tokyo Station and in cities, stations, airports, hotels and hostels all throughout Japan, as it strengthens its brand and continues to expand nationally and globally.

The site is of course designed mobile-first, boasting excellent mobile compatibility and thoroughly tested across a wide range of devices, since the diverse user base making use of a wide range of mostly mobile devices to consume the content. The site also features inline calls-to-action in embedded and pop-over demo request forms, as well as interactive elements such as swipe testimonial and article cards and toggle accordions and the like.

The project was a great fit for me as it required a lot of bespoke (excuse the pun) illustration, which is something I really enjoy doing, plus the fact that it’s built on my favourite platform of choice, Jekyll. What really proved challenging on this one though is the multilingual aspect. The site is available in six (count ‘em) languages, three of them using East Asian character sets, so to optimise the display of text and to maintain the integrity of the layout was a big task. Also, the myriad translation string files which were being iterated upon by staff had to be checked and cross-referenced against what was on the development server to make sure all was perfect before launch.

As mentioned above, the amount of custom artwork for this project was fairly sizable with header illustrations required for each page in the home, products and solutions sections, as well as other icons and graphical devices required in the bodies of the pages themselves. As a part of making the site look great on mobile, I actually built the graphical representations of chat snippets in HTML and CSS so I could better control their appearance on smaller screens.

So altogether a very positive experience on this one, with the wonderful staff at Bespoke playing a massive part in the smooth lifecycle and launch of the project, with great input from their marketing team in content forming and copywriting which were all second-to-none. Oh, and typeface is Circular Standard by Laurenz Brunner released through Lineto – you may recognise it from Spotify who also use it throughout their marketing and branding.

Need a beautiful, mobile-friendly, multilingual website for your own company or venture? Don’t hesitate to get in touch.