The dark side of Digitec Galaxus
Digitec Galaxus is one of the first online retailers in Europe to offer a dark mode across all of its web stores and apps.
Customers of Galaxus and Digitec can now store in dark mode: The online stores are now also available with a dark background and light text. The community had to wait a long time for this moment: For years, they have wanted the feature, a Discussion and boasts more than 1500 upvotes. In addition, there are hundreds of comments under editorial contributions.
"We are pleased that we can finally fulfill the wish of our clientele," says Tobias Grundmann. As Product Owner in the online store at Digitec Galaxus, Tobias is partly responsible for the new feature. "Dark Mode has been an issue for a long time, both in the community and internally," says Tobias. "Over 30 percent of our users use Dark Mode on their devices - and the trend is rising." The growing user numbers were the decisive point for the team around Tobias. In addition, the company wants to play a pioneering role in online retail when it comes to dark fashion: "It's exciting to implement something so new. Hardly any other online store in Europe has so far implemented a dark mode both on the website and in the app," says Tobias. In the summer of 2022, the team tackled Dark Mode at Digitec Galaxus.
A major undertaking
The fact that it took a while before work on Dark Mode could begin had its reasons. The implementation was a major undertaking, says Tobias. After all, a project like this involves the entire store, different teams, and brings with it numerous technical challenges.
That's because there are thousands of places on the Galaxus and Digitec websites where colors are defined. "Some of these places always behave the same way, such as the text," explains Leonardo Hauschild, Lead UX Designer at Digitec Galaxus, "but for other elements, the color assignment depends on the context, such as the compare and remember buttons on the individual product pages. This quickly becomes very complex given the size of our stores." Because colors are critical to the user experience, it was important to find a solution for efficiently coordinating and assigning colors. This is the only way to ensure a coherent appearance of the online stores, even in dark mode.
After months of development and work on the color palettes, the time has come: Dark Mode is available throughout Europe in all Galaxus online stores, at Digitec, and in the apps (from version 4.4).
