The Problem:
Wildflower Macaron is small, speciality bakery business that developed during the Covid Pandemic in 2020. In order to reach customers, the client highly relied on Social Media to sell her product. This method was time consuming and not reliable.
The Solution:
Create a user-oriented website with abilities for customers to order speciality macaron boxes and custom orders, allowing the client to no longer use Instagram as the main way to sell her goods.
Role:
UX Researcher
UX Designer
Tools:
Adobe XD
Adobe Illustrator
Miro
Squarespace
User Research
Our user research consisted of a competitor analysis, a survey of 25 people and the creation of a userpersona.
After our competitor analysis to see how other locally owned bakeries and patisseries sell and market their product, our team created a google form survey of 9 questions to understand their purchasing habits with Wildflower Macarons, how easy it it to pay and pick up their order and what features they would want to see in a website. A total of 25 people were surveyed over a period of a few days.We organized our findings into an affinity diagram in order to create our user persona and empathy map.
Empathy Map of our User Persona
Definition & Ideation
Problem Statement
Wildflower Macarons is a small locally owned business designed to share a love for macarons by selling macarons in the Twin Cities. We have observed that other local businesses do not provide a simple and easy to use online resource to learn about and purchase macarons.
How might we create a simple and easy to use website to promote Wildflower Macarons, inform people about macarons as a delicious and fun dessert, and streamline the process for a busy small business owner to sell and fill macaron orders?
Our brainstorming process began with an I Like, I Wish and What If exercise which was then sorted into a value prioritization matrix to figure out what were the most important features to include in the website.
We then created a storyboard to understand the user's journey.
Value Proposition Matrix
Prototyping, TESTING & Iterating
To ensure the website was easy for our client to maintain, we decided to use an existing website hosting company. We decided to choose Squarespace because it has beautiful website templates that are professionally designed through their in-house UI/UX and design team. We selected a template that offered a minimalistic design, emphasis on imagery, able to connect to the client's social media account and was easy for the customers to navigate for purchasing the product.
After we created the website, we allowed our client to test out the ordering system. The client's products can be customized and have a variety of additions. Through this, we discovered a way to streamline the ordering process through changing the way the macarons were ordered. We also were able to simplify the "pick-up" option for the customers as well.
Final Prototype and Final Thoughts
Our client has been using her website since the summer of 2021 and she is so delighted that she is able to keep track of orders and payments in one spot. Her customers are thrilled that the website is a one stop experience to order and pay for their macarons.
Creating a website that not only helps the client, but the customers as well, is absolutely satisfying. We are so excited all of the success our client is having!
Next Steps:
• Continue to use website hosting platform's updates to simplify the website
• Accommodate the client when she has a brick and mortar storee.
