Ramekins Redesign
Ramekins is a multifaceted business with events at the center of everything. The Ramekins property hosts wedding ceremonies, corporate events, a cooking school and bustling catering business. One of the driving forces for Ramekins success is its catalog which showcases all the events and cooking classes happening at Ramekins. Recently they decided to eliminate the catalog to reduce cost and their environmental footprint. Ramekins needs to focus more on their digital strategy to guarantee success.
Project Overview
Website (in development)
- UX Strategy
- User Research
- Information Architecture
- Branding and Design System
- Visual Design
- Digital marketing strategy
Click to view protoptype
Product Designer
Ongoing Contract
1 Person Design Team
1 Person Developer Team
Problem Statement
Without a catalog for users to browse offerings, how might we create a better experience for the users who now have to visit the website for details and bookings?
Solution Statement
The current website hasn’t been updated in 19 years. We need to update the experience to provide better photos, descriptions and tools that help the user understand the Ramekins story and feel confident about booking a room, an event or cooking class quickly an efficiently. By doing this we can continue to drive the digital strategy and delight users with new experiences at Ramekins.
Research
Empathizing with Ramekins and their brand
Through the years, Ramekins has largely been natural grey table cloths, concrete walls, wooden tables and earth tones that enhance beautiful flower arrangements and gorgeous dinner platings.
Gorilla Research
Aside from their Easter Bunny centerpieces and fresh painted eggs the only other decorations were the food and the platings. They did this masterfully.
Current Website
The purpose of the email was to market a cooking class for Phyllo dough.
I noticed the following:
- User interface was not pleasant
- Lack of Cohesion for quick scanning
- Lack of summary and context
- Higher than average cognitive load by displaying too many list items
- No Call to Action buttons to help users make purchases
- Varying typeface
Current Navigation
Global Menu System
KEY FINDINGS
- Visit is unclear since drop-ins are not conducive to Ramekins business model. Recommended to change to “About” with a dropdown menu that houses history, contact information and organization details.
- Classes currently represent the events and class schedule. Upon clicking you arrive at a calendar where community events like the “Fourth of July Celebration” are lost in the sea of classes. Suggested to break classes and events into separate listings.
- Private cooking classes should consolidate with classes dropdown.
- Weddings, Venues and Catering naturally fit under a new category called “Events” or Plan your event.” Current business goals suggest to keep these separate and consider a consolidation down the road. *See Proposed Navigation under Next Steps.
- Stay should remain a separate line but consider changing to Inn
- Shop is actually “Gift Cards” and to reduce the cognitive load, suggested to add both jobs and gift cards to the universally recognized bottom footer while still advertising gift cards throughout site.
Current Userflow
Book your wedding
KEY FINDINGS
- Weddings were easily accessible from the home page
- Hidden Navigation and CTA (shown in the image to the right)
- Wedding Guide is easy to miss
- No clear “Book Wedding” CTA or instruction
- Hidden Wedding Sub-Menu thrown in with the already standardized sub menu housing “book, plan stay” CTAs found on other sub pages. Mostly looks Like an HTML error.
- Wedding Guide is a lengthy PDF which forces the user to scroll through and then hit back button
Book your Cooking Class
KEY FINDINGS
- Calendar is a nice touch but it would be better to give the user a choice between list view and calendar view.
- Events are not separated from Cooking Classes which puts a stress to sift and discern between cooking classes and events. (pictured right)
- Past events and classes are still fully clickable and visible on the calendar
Competitive Analysis
KEY FINDINGS
Website
I reviewed regional catering competitors of Ramekins
- Similarly, most catering companies focus heavily on weddings
- Competitors had better storytelling and succinct copy
- The verbiage “events” make sense for most caterer’s global navigation because they do not have any additional revenue sources that could confuse the user
- Some catering companies offer more information on the planning process
- Most companies had features like testimonials and photo galleries
- Video integration was really well done
Ideation
Sketches
Wireframes
I took the bones of the website and I considered what was missing.
- Rotating images that support the aesthetic and do not overwhelm the users with information
- Welcome signifiers that help the user understand why they are there
- Scan-ability and Hierarchy
- Call to Action and navigation buttons to guide the user through the website
- Consistent Navigation that does not get lost depending on which web page you are visiting
Visual Comp
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Verdict
After several meetings, I compiled the favored features to the business needs and arrived at final design. The owners preferred a combination of the modern feel with the elegance of the wedding design.
Solutions (Coming Soon)
Solutions are coming very soon. In the meantime, please enjoy the prototype. Thank you!
Click to view protoptype
Next Steps
Ramekin’s site is in development. Currently I am managing the development of this website at the designer level.
Proposed Navigation (Future Iterations)
Global Navigation
A Consolidation of Catering, Weddings and Venues into an Events drop down was considered to streamline the global navigation to read, Events – Culinary School – The Inn – About –
Two reasons this was not implemented:
- Weddings are the sole source of business for Ramekins and it was deemed necessary by the business development team to keep that in the global navigation.
- Ramekins hosts several Community Events including fourth of July, Mother’s Day and Easter Brunch. After exhausting hierarchy options, it was decided that using the word “Events” in the sense of booking or (hosting) an event synonymously with purchasing tickets to attend an event was too confusing for the average user. So for the time being, Weddings, Venues and catering services will not be referred to as an event.
Reasons to consider this down the line:
- Ramekins has a goal to focus on extending Corporate Event bookings to its culinary School. Creating an entire day for Corporate businesses to conduct team building exercises. The office can compete in cook offs or simply learn some new kitchen tricks. As Ramekins evaluates it’s core goals it might make sense to include this in “Book your Event> Corporate Team Building”
- Business Goals are expected to change, and further iterations will reflect those changes. Recent Analytics have shown that most users are coming from outside marketing efforts like ad space and Eventbrite. As Ramekins evolves under new ownership there will be less focus on community events and less of a need to drive users to purchase from the website.
Next Steps would be to monitor Google Analytics and trial a further consolidation of “Weddings” under an Events dropdown. Due to Technology constraints and business needs it was determined to leave weddings as a single global nav option. Until we can assess business goals and future website navigation needs.
Other Projects at Ramekins
Marketing Strategy
Along with the design of Ramekins websites, I have been managing the marketing strategy for the company in place of the recently departed marketing team.
Cornerstone
I am also nearly finished with the design of their sister site, Cornerstone.