Wonderful Wedding Cakes
UI redesign for custom cake shop website and mobile app
Imagine planning a major life event such as a wedding, first birthday or retirement. Naturally you would expect a spectacular cake coming along with that, right? Now imagine being told by several people that Wonderful Wedding Cakes is THE place to go on Long Island to make that dream a reality. But when you go on their website, you get lost in a sea of boring text and spend close to 5 minutes just trying to find the contact information. Well that was what was happening and that's exactly why they reached out to me. They needed a fresh new website and one that is responsive on mobile as well. One that showcased their products, made ordering easy and wouldn't confuse their potential customers.
Wonderful Wedding Cakes is a custom cake shop. They aren't your typical walk-in bakery, they make upscale cakes that are made to order. They have been featured in popular wedding publications such as The Knot, Weddings, and Modern Bride, and are the winners of Long Island Best five years in a row. They needed help. Here is start to finish how I did just that.
Type of work
UI / UX design
My role
Team of one. Researcher
and designer.
The challenge
Take an existing website and make it more visually appealing, easier to use, and more intuitive to the user. As well as create a custom contact form making a more streamlined ordering process for a made to order business model.
Researching the competition
When starting my research, I knew I wanted to do some competitive analysis on other similar websites just to get an idea of how those looked and what functions they had. I found that most of them looked pretty similar. From there, I knew wanted to create something different. I wanted it to grab you when you first get to the landing page, something that makes you say "wow" and want to keep digging in to see what else they have to offer.
When doing research, I found that a lot of the custom cake websites look very similar.
Mapping out the flow
Task Flows
I created user flows based on common tasks that the target user would do on the site. This was to ensure that every page needed was included and we would eliminate unnecessary pages, less is more. This is an example of one user flow to access the gallery page. It was important to me to make sure that there were several different ways to get to important pages, such as gallery, contact and order page.
I started sketching out various screens starting with the landing page to see which layout made the most sense.
Style Guide
The original colors used in the logo, were a chocolate brown and pink. I decided to keep those colors to keep the familiarity of the brand.
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I did, however, change the typeface of the logo. The original script was very formal and in certain instances hard to read. So I went with a simpler script which still keeps the upscale, formal vibe. For the remaining fonts I went with a simple, easy to read sans serif.
Old typeface
New typeface
Mid to High fidelity mockup
The mid fidelity wireframes became pixel perfect and with color added they are brought to life,
Landing page featuring a call
to action button
After clicking on hamburger menu, a drop down will appear
The specialty page featuring some of the most ordered items
The gallery page separated
by type of product
Before / After
Here is a side by side comparison of the old website vs new. Please click and drag on the center arrow and swipe left and right to reveal.
Prototype
Final design
With high competition and a constantly growing number of mobile apps devoted to the theme of food and baked goods, the first impression cannot be just nice and clean. The successful app, in this case, should instantly appeal to the emotional and aesthetic sides of user perception and be simple to use to engage the user from the first seconds and let them interact according to their personal preferences. That’s the balance I strived for in the case of Wonderful Wedding Cakes.
“Design is intelligence made visible."
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— Alina Wheeler, author
