A few of the client’s preferences for the site’s look-and-feel were to convey:
- Southwest heritage and healing tradition.
- A western look crossed with the aesthetic of old-English and Neal’s Yard (British merchant of organic natural health and beauty products).
- Ancient wisdom, modern science, and natural healing.
- A New Mexico sense of place (lavender is a fairly regional product).
Once I distilled the lists of the customer’s needs, business’s goals, and client’s wants, I had my primary aims for the site’s design:
- Portray “natural” and “healing” (two big things the target audience wants when shopping at Frolicking Deer), and to reflect New Mexico and the Southwest.
- Appeal to the main target audience (older women and college-aged people) with straight-forward simplicity, photography, color and texture palettes, and typography combinations.
- Convey trustworthiness and credibility to boost online sales and customer loyalty.
Mobile Navigation
Instead of all menu items being under the ambiguous hamburger icon (3 horizontal lines stacked), the most-used navigation items are easily accessed from 60px, icon & label, touch points.
Tap More for a slide out menu of all navigation choices. The slide out menu includes the primary and secondary nav. items (pulled from the main navigation menu on desktop), and the tertiary nav. items (pulled from the top navigation row on desktop), plus the search field.
Many usability testing results from the web industry reveal the various weaknesses of using a hamburger icon as the sole way to access the site’s navigation (deep.design/the-hamburger-menu). A preferred solution is to use tabs (as shown here) and any additional nav. menu items can be accessed via a More link.
Product Details
Interactivity on the product details page:
Wishlist
Adding a product to My Wishlist:
Another way to set Frolicking Deer apart from competitors is through a blog where the owners can demonstrate their uniquely extensive expertise of ancient wisdom, modern science, and natural healing. Both owners are very knowledgeable in lavender topics. Also, a great amount was passed on to them from the long-standing previous owners of Frolicking Deer. They are both highly educated ─ Her: M.S. geology, Master Gardener Certified, Him: PhD geology (earth and environmental science), soil geochemistry, water chemistry, mycorrhizae, micronutrient (a concept of building and growing the soil along with the plants).
60% of businesses who blog acquire more customers, according to a HubSpot survey. Also, a blog fuels SEO and is the place to share sticky stories, humanizing the brand and letting the brand’s personality shine.
Blog Post Opened
Interactivity of the blog page with a parallax scrolling effect on the feature image:
The 6 tabs on this page are mapped out to tell a compelling, intriguing story of the Lavender Farm:
Visitors with questions are conveniently provided with FAQs first, and then the contact form (allowing visitors to avoid waiting for an email reply, and the owners from having to answer the same questions repeatedly).
