Background
Neptune is one of Santa Fe's premier small event spaces that primarily serves weddings.
Problem Space
Users need to easily gather useful information before contacting the venue for booking.
Challenge
How might we redesign the site to make information easier to access? This project had a time limit of 80 hours.
01 RESEARCH
Goals
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Understand how people go through the wedding-venue-shopping process
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Identify patterns in what shoppers are looking for on a wedding-venue website
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Understand how the current website is operating and uncover pain points
Methods
Stakeholder Interview: To understand how the website is currently serving the stakeholder and discuss possible areas of improvement
4 Individual User Interviews: To understand the experience of couples who recently arranged their weddings
Direct Observation: To observe users navigating the current Neptune website to see what is working well and what could be improved
Competitor Analysis: To learn from other wedding venue websites.
Competitor Analysis
Neptune's website already has a lot of desirable features not present on competitor sites.
All venues are unique and offer varying levels of customization. Customization and uniqueness are two of Neptune's selling points.
Some competitors offer information on pricing, but only one competitor goes into as much depth on pricing as Neptune.
Stakeholder Interview Findings
Users generally contact the stakeholder via the contact form or by phone. This begins the planning process.
Almost everyone wants to visit the space before committing. They either do this by coming themselves or having a friend or family member visit.
The stakeholder often gets asked whether her space is "full-service" even though her website states that it isn't.
It's important that the website reflect the Santa Fe aesthetic.
User Interview & Observation Findings
Users appreciate up-front information on pricing when researching wedding venues. They often come to a site having already established a price range.
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On the Neptune site, users find the pricing information confusing.
Users like pictures and videos and are specifically looking to get a feel for the space. Pictures emphasizing people are less helpful.
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On the Neptune site, users are able to get a great sense of the space through video and photography.
02 DEFINE
Persona
My persona led to a POV exercise that resulted in the following how-might-we questions.
How might we...
make it easier to research venue options?
give users the most accurate depiction of the venue?
How might wes defined the problems I need to address in my design.
Feature Requirements
Must Haves
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Contact form & info
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Services & pricing
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Vendors & caterers
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Location information
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Parking instructions
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Space details
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Services details
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Pictures of space
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Video of space
Nice to Haves
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Parking instructions
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FAQ section
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Info on additional costs
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Link to third-party reviews
Surprising and Useful
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Testimonials
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Google 3D view
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Documentation of past weddings. Perhaps feature pictures from social media on the site.
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Explore: Things to do in Santa Fe
Site Map
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New pages and areas targeted for major revisions are highlighted in green and blue.
User Flow
Creating a userflow helps with visualizing the basic steps a user will go through from visiting the site to getting in touch with the venue.
03 DESIGN
Sketches
Sketches are the first step to organizing key features.
High-fidelity Wireframes
I re-designed each page of the Neptune website. Below are some of the bigger changes I made. The original site can be viewed here. My redesign can be viewed here.
1. Tweaks to the Contact Form
The new design:
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Improves spacing between text and form fields, so it's more clear what information goes in what boxes.
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Tidies up alignment of elements.
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Increases legibility by replacing teal text with black text.
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Incorporates drop-down menus for date entry to reduce user error.
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Introduces sample text in all form fields to increase clarity.
2. Emphasized Google's 3D View
Before
After
Direct observation during the research phase revealed that users don't click on the link to view the Google-camera 3D view. This is a missed opportunity, as one of the primary things users are looking for from a website is to get a sense of the space.
The new design emphasizes the 3D view by providing a screenshot on the website and giving Virtual Visit its own tab on the navigation bar.
3. Re-organized Information on the Services and Pricing Page
The original design includes detailed information on services and pricing. User interviews suggested that this is a huge plus for Neptune as it promotes transparency and reduces the time spent researching different spaces.
Direct observation, however, suggested that the information is organized in a confusing way. Users often scrolled up and down between the Pricing Section and the Ceremony OR Reception/Full Day Ceremony and Reception Section.
The redesign places all this information in one place. Hierarchy is created by bolding and increasing the size of the font for important information. This allows users to skim from one package to the next and more easily compare their options.
04 TEST
Usability Testing
I ran four participants through my Figma prototype, observing them as they completed a series of tasks.
Testing uncovered the need for some minor changes and revealed the opportunity for an additional feature.
Minor Changes:
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Cleared up wording in certain areas to increase clarity.
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Added the "more information" button, so users have the option of getting more details on the site before contacting the host.
Additional Feature:
One of the participants had recently gotten married but had a simple ceremony with very few people at City Hall. She was entirely unfamiliar with the steps to organizing a wedding. Most people get this information from friends/family and research online. I think Neptune could add value to the user-experience by providing guidance on this point, perhaps in the form of a simple checklist.
Conclusion and Reflections
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The visuals on the Neptune website are already serving their purpose effectively. Some slight tinkering with alignment and sizing tightens up the design.
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I was able to understand the different general wedding packages that Neptune Event Space offers and display that information to users in a way that is easier to digest.
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I added two new sections designed to address the most prominent needs of users. An FAQ section gives visitors to the site information on things like parking and max occupancy (this information can also be found elsewhere as well), and a Virtual Tour page draws users' attention to Google View, which is a powerful tool for showing off the space.