Transforming a Small Business Website to Increase Sales and Satisfaction
Carriage House Lavender
Carriage House Lavender is a small-business lavender farm located in Oregon. They distill lavender oil themselves and sell various handmade products such as soaps, lotions, and candles.
Their goal is to expand the business, increase engagement and boost online sales.
Team:
Collaborated with business owner and head of marketing
Role:
Product Designer
Timeframe:
Feb 2024-Jun 2024
Contributions:
Challenge
The products aren't selling online. In-person they sell out, but online they struggle to make a sale.
Solution
Transforming the visual design: improving readability and accessibility, and creating a more cohesive & updated aesthetic. Improving the content design: consistently reinforcing the unique value proposition and using language that appeals to users.
Outcome
Improved customer satisfaction and exceeded stakeholder expectations, sales have increased and the site is setup for success for both mobile and desktop. Click here to see the live website.
conversion rates increased by:
124%
Bounce rates decreased by:
18%
Details
The products aren’t selling online
The website receives a fair amount of traffic, but hardly anyone completes a purchase. They want to grow the business and a major part of that plan hinges on boosting online sales.
Let’s start by figuring out where the current website falls short
Why do users leave the site? What stops them from buying? And what do other similar businesses do differently?
I developed a research plan to investigate including competitive research, gathering user feedback through surveys, and conducting usability testing.
The research clearly outlined 3 main tasks to tackle
Almost all of the feedback could be tied to visuals, information architecture, and content.
Reading between the lines to better understand what the feedback really means
We need to build trust and make them think less. Currently, every action requires a high mental load, it’s not clear what we offer and why it’s unique, and the outdated design makes the site feel untrustworthy.
Insights were prioritized based on the potential for the greatest, fastest impact
Now I know what needs to be fixed, but what do we do first? My hypothesis was that updating the visual design first gives us the best shot at improving our first impression and decreasing bounce rates.
Constraints to keep in mind:
This is a very small operation, whatever changes I recommend need to be very practical and sustainable for them to maintain in the future.
The website needs to stay in Wix, so we are limited by it’s capabilities which is especially notable in mobile.
Building upon our existing foundation
We aren’t starting from scratch, let’s take stock of our strengths and how we might better leverage them in this redesign, we already have:
A well-established logo that is not used at all on the current site
A style guide with branding colors and fonts, also not used on the site
High quality photography of the farm
A lot of content already written
Customers that want to support a small business
Exploring numerous new landing page concepts before landing on the one
I sketched out many ideas created several mockups and continued to iterate.
I narrowed it down to 4 home page designs and sought feedback
There was something different I liked about each of these designs, peer feedback helped me make the decision to move forward.
Ultimately, it came down to the desired impression
I chose Option 1 because it was deemed the most trustworthy and approachable, it made people curious about the farm and felt more natural.
The design still needs refining from here, but it’s a great start.
Now, to make it more readable and accessible
We knew from initial user testing that our readability and accessibility was a huge issue on the current site, so I prioritized WCAG AAA compliance.
The light overlay in my first design doesn’t pass WCAG guidelines, I tried a few different methods but ultimately decided to use a dark purple overlay. With this color the text is readable but the image still shines
The current navigation was really difficult to see and did not pass WCAG, in the new design I intentionally put the menu in a filled bar above the photo, it’s much easier to see and works better with the varying headers on each page.
Choosing the best complimentary color
There are two colors in the current style guide, the primary purple and an accent dark purple.
I wanted to add a complimentary color to this palette as well to use as an accent.
Some of the product packaging has this gold diamond pattern, so I initially planned to incorporate a gold or yellow color.
I played with some options but instead of feeling complimentary, it was clashing.
Thankfully, I soon learned they were eliminating this gold packaging because the labels were too expensive. Back to the drawing board I went.
Since we are leaning into a more natural style, I drew inspiration from beautiful photos of the farm itself and chose to play with green.
After playing with different shades and luminosities I chose this updated palette.
This green is a great compliment to the primary purple, plus it’s bright and bold, which was important to the business owner.
I also added a lighter shade of the primary purple, which is helpful for some areas where the primary purple feels a little too bright
Convincing the stakeholders to trust me and to choose the most change
While some stakeholders may prefer a high-level overview, this owner likes to delve into the details and they weren’t big on change, so I knew I needed to make a strong case.
Although I prepared a backup option that was more like their current site just in case, I was determined to convince them to take the leap and go with my design.
I also needed to persuade them to let me implement the changes in Wix (originally the owner planned to make updates himself because he was hesitant to entrust his site to someone else).
I meticulously explained every decision, earning credibility and gaining the stakeholder’s trust which fortunately paid off, they were very impressed with my design!
A couple of minor changes before shipping it
After talking with the business owner and marketing leader, we decided to change the logo from a square to a circle and added this green outline.
This map was a surprisingly divisive detail- stakeholders and users had very mixed reactions to it.
Some loved it, some wanted to click it, some hated it. It was clearly drawing too much attention away from the products, so we changed it to a photo of the farm’s original sign which feels very on-brand
Time to go live!
I implemented the changes in Wix myself, just in time for their huge marketing push in May!
Results
There’s already been a huge impact on customer behavior after the updates.
conversion rates increased by:
124%
Bounce rates decreased by:
18%
Increase in overall product sales
Improved customer satisfaction and first impressions
Created a responsive design that works well on mobile, where the vast majority of customers interact with the site.
Enhanced accessibility
Setup the business for success by providing guidelines for future changes
Curious? Click here to check it our yourself, it really is an awesome farm!
Next Steps:
Focus on information architecture updates, especially in the Shop structure
More usability testing
Lessons Learned
We do what we can, with what we have. My recommendations needed to be deeply practical for this small operation, some ideas just aren’t feasible or sustainable for them right now.
A little acknowledgement of their challenges and their history goes a long way in building relationships with stakeholders. When I showed that I understood the hard work they’ve already put in, it was much easier for them to trust me and accept my recommendations.
All stakeholders are different, presentations need to be tailored to fit what kind of information they need to be able to make their decision.