Bona: Bona’s resilient restoration: breathing new life into the legacy brand
(01)Project overview
Why this platform needed to evolve.
Bona is a global, family-owned brand specializing in premium floor care for installation, maintenance and restoration across residential and professional markets. This engagement focused on modernizing Bona’s global digital platform and CMS infrastructure to better support scale, accessibility and long-term brand trust.
Rather than treating the website as a visual refresh, the work addressed architectural debt, fragmented workflows and systemic limitations, aligning Bona’s digital experience with its century-long legacy of craftsmanship, sustainability and performance while preparing the platform for future growth, global audiences and campaign-driven demand.
Project details
- Client
- Bona
- Headquarters
- Malmö, Sweden · Englewood, CO, USA
- Agency
- Crescendo Collective, LLC
- Industry
- Consumer goods, eCommerce, lifestyle
- Engagement
- Brand strategy, Brand identity, Digital transformation, Platform design, Website design
- Role
- Creative direction, Design leadership, UX strategy, Digital strategy
Key outcomes
- +48Product sales lift during the campaign windowMicrofiber Mop campaign
- +60Increased sessions to the campaign experiencePet System campaign
- +45Organic search traffic to campaign pagesMicrofiber Mop campaign
(02)The context
When growth outpaces the systems meant to support it.
Bona’s brand equity was strong, but its digital ecosystem had accumulated significant architectural debt. As new product lines, campaigns and regional needs were added, the platform became increasingly rigid: built to sustain momentum, not future expression.
From a creative standpoint, that debt showed up in subtle but meaningful ways.
- Campaigns required workarounds instead of activation
- Brand expression varied by entry point
- Creative consistency depended on effort, not structure
The system technically functioned, but it no longer supported the way the brand needed to operate. The opportunity wasn’t simply to modernize the platform. It was to pay down architectural debt in a way that restored creative clarity, translating Bona’s physical-world precision into a digital environment that felt calm, confident and intentionally designed.
(03)The challenge
Maintaining coherence while everything scales.
The challenge wasn’t a visual refresh. It was coherence at scale.
Bona needed to support multiple product categories, ongoing campaign activation and future growth without fragmenting the brand experience. The risk wasn’t stagnation. It was dilution.
The platform had to
- Support multiple audiences without fragmenting the experience
- Enable global teams to manage content safely and efficiently
- Improve product discovery without oversimplifying complexity
- Meet accessibility standards as a baseline, not an exception
- Scale for campaigns, product launches and future growth
What I did
- Audited the digital experience across brand, UX and content
- Identified points of fragmentation across products and campaigns
- Defined where the platform constrained creative flexibility
- Clarified what needed to stay consistent and where expression could flex
(04)The strategy
Architecture designed for the next hundred years.
The strategy centered on building a unified creative system, aligning brand expression, user experience and platform design into a single, intentional foundation. Rather than designing for individual pages or moments, the work focused on repeatable clarity.
Navigation was rebuilt around real user intent. Content models were designed for reuse across regions. Accessibility, performance and governance were embedded into the foundation rather than layered on later.
What I did
- Defined a creative framework to guide visual and experiential decisions
- Established design principles balancing consistency and adaptability
- Aligned stakeholders around a shared creative vision
- Made sure the system could support future growth without reinvention
Platform pages
The Bonafide Advantage (2023): Visual editing, animation and post-production contributions by David Keyes. Copyright © Bona. All rights reserved.
(05)The execution
Aligning global workflows with brand integrity.
Four decisions carried the platform: a clean CMS foundation, discovery built on intent, accessibility as a requirement and one design system across every region.
(01)Eliminating legacy friction across the global platform
CMS migration removed legacy constraints, enabling safer updates, improved performance and less operational friction for global teams.
(02)Discovery for the modern craftsman
Discovery was treated as a bridge between homeowner needs and professional-grade solutions, supporting natural language queries, product identifiers and intent-based browsing.
(03)Inclusion as a foundational system requirement
WCAG 2.1 standards were treated as foundational requirements, shaping layout, interaction and content structure across the platform.
(04)Protecting brand integrity at global scale
A unified design system protected brand integrity while allowing controlled flexibility across regions and campaigns.
(06)Leadership and collaboration
Clear direction across brand, product and technology.
As creative director and UX director, I owned the vision end to end. Brand expression, UX strategy and platform execution were aligned under a single direction to avoid fragmentation.
That took close collaboration with marketing, product, engineering and leadership teams. Decisions were made quickly, documented clearly and tied back to shared principles. Creative ambition was balanced with operational reality.
The result was momentum without chaos. Teams moved faster because the system removed uncertainty.
The Bona Difference campaign (2022): Copyright © Bona. All rights reserved.
Campaigns
Bona Pet System campaign
The Pet System campaign balanced emotional storytelling with education around safety, sustainability and performance. A campaign microsite, video content and paid media worked together within the core platform, and it became one of Bona’s top-performing initiatives by engagement without breaking the system beneath it.
Campaign-level results
- +37Product sales lift during campaign window
- +60Increased sessions to campaign experience
- +43Click-through rate improvement
- +28Average session duration increase
- −35Bounce rate reduction
Bona Microfiber Mop campaign
The Microfiber Mop was an underperforming but versatile product. The campaign reintroduced its everyday value through a simplified landing experience, motion-led storytelling and targeted media, and showed how a clear UX foundation could materially improve performance for a simple product.
Campaign-level results
- +48Product sales lift during campaign window
- −30Bounce rate reduction
- +45Organic search traffic to campaign pages
- +35Click-through rate improvement
- +20Session duration increase
(07)The impact
Digital infrastructure worthy of the legacy.
The outcome was not just a better website. It was a system that changed how Bona operates digitally.
- Campaign launch timelines shortened
- Brand consistency improved across regions and products
- UX clarity increased for both homeowners and professionals
- Platform performance and stability improved measurably
Metrics were a result, not the objective.
Client praise
“On the Bona digital transformation, David brought clarity and structure to a complex global platform. His UX-driven approach helped modernize the experience and strengthen performance across campaigns and product launches.”
Oscar CarlesonSenior Brand Director, BonaReflection
“This project reinforced a simple truth. The best digital experiences feel effortless because the systems behind them are disciplined.”
(08)The closing
Designing for longevity.
This engagement turned Bona’s digital presence into a scalable brand system that supports commerce, storytelling and long-term growth. It stands as a model for how legacy brands can evolve without losing their soul.
About this case study
This work was not about refreshing a brand that had endured for a century. It was about designing digital infrastructure worthy of carrying that legacy forward, quietly, reliably and without compromise.
Further reading
