Byqr

Byqr was the first speed pedelec brand from the Netherlands: conceived, designed and produced here, and pitched as a serious alternative to the car for commutes of 10 to 35 kilometers. The agency Scheepens created the brand (name, positioning, logo and campaign) and designed the website. The founders then asked me, as a freelancer, to build it for the launch in March 2021.

Scheepens' design only covered desktop, but the site had to work just as well on a phone.

I worked directly with both Scheepens and the Byqr founders. Because the design only existed for desktop, I first designed the responsive version myself, working out how each section should stack and scale on tablets and phones while keeping Scheepens' look intact.

The site is a one-pager, so I built it by hand in HTML, CSS and JavaScript instead of starting from a WordPress theme. That meant the design didn't have to bend to fit a template, and the page stayed light. The photo carousel of the bike is a small slideshow written from scratch: it advances on its own, pauses while your mouse is over it, and has dots for jumping to a photo.

In August, Byqr came back for a second version that turned the page into a place to collect leads:

• Reserve and test ride: reserving a bike and requesting a test ride each open a form that slides in from the side of the page.
• Newsletter: partway down the page a small badge slides out, animated with GSAP's ScrollTrigger. Click it and it unfolds into a sign-up form. ScrollTrigger also fills in the navigation bar once you start scrolling.
• One list: a small PHP script on the server passes every form to the client's Mailchimp list and tags each contact with where they came from (reservation, test ride or newsletter), so Byqr could follow up with each group separately.

A responsive, hand-coded launch website for Byqr. It opens on the key visual and a reservation bar with the price, then walks through the bike's selling points: a real 45 km/h, a ride smooth enough that you barely need the gears, sustainability, and a belt drive that needs no maintenance. After the August update, the reservation, test ride and newsletter forms all fed into one Mailchimp list.

The launch went well: the site had 858 unique visitors in its first week. The client loved the result, especially because it was built to measure rather than squeezed into a WordPress template.

It confirmed something for me: I prefer building to measure. Writing it myself gives me full freedom over the design and lets me bring more of my own skills into the work.