The Wedding Social Club
The Wedding Social Club (TWSC) is a small, independent business offering wedding planning and consulting services across the Balearic islands.
Their clients are mostly foreign couples seeking to plan their destination weddings.
The Goal
How might we help couples-to-be find the inspiration and information they need for their perfect wedding day in the least stressful and most informative way?
In this case study, I’ll walk you through my process and how I designed a quiz that quickly showed what kind of wedding would be available based on the requirements of the happy couple.
Research
I looked at various online chat groups about weddings in the Balearic Islands to find out what fears and goals users were having when trying to organise their weddings.
Not knowing where to start
Many couples simply did not know where to begin as they felt they had so much to do and so much to choose from.
They were looking for help and advice from a community of like-minded people who have either done it before them or are currently researching their wedding.
Simplifying the choices
The sheer amount of decisions needed to be taken by a couple choosing all the aspects of their wedding can leave you needing help knowing where to begin.
Offering a simpler way to streamline the vendors on offer based on location and dates is one way to reduce cognitive overload.
I needed to learn more about the goals and pain points of potential clients when looking at using a wedding service for a destination wedding.
I conducted a feature inventory of various wedding planning companies to see what services they offered and how they were presented to users.
Key Findings
What is available on their budget
Although certain venues, features and requests were wanted, many times this was not in line with the budget with which to execute those demands.
Having a way to manage expectations based on the budget and offer services in line with what they can afford to pay would be helpful and time-saving.
Interviews and Surveys
I created an online survey and targeted potential users of a wedding planning service in various chatrooms and wedding forums.
Budget
Cited as the biggest factor in whether they can continue using a certain wedding planner or not. Many users wished they could get this information much earlier in the process to save time.
Personal Touch and Trust
For such an important, personal, and one-time event as a wedding, it was vital to have a good rapport with the wedding planner before going ahead with the booking.
Having explored the general views of couples researching their destination weddings with competitors, I wanted to speak with previous clients of TWSC to understand what made them choose this service and what could have been better. I also conducted an online survey to focus on what potential tools would be most desirable to include in TWSC web design.
Two interviews were conducted and recorded online with previous brides who used the services of TWSC.
Their answers were recorded and transcribed before being analysed.
Key Findings
Portfolio and Testimonials
Being able to see previous weddings and hear from previous clients was one of the most important aspects of deciding which wedding planner to use.
User Persona and User Journey
Obstacles they face
Not being able to find concrete information easily and wasting time.
From the data collected during research and interviews, I wanted to visualise a person who would use a wedding planner and their goals, motivations, obstacles, and journey through using TWSC.
The goals, perceptions, and emotions of the persona as they interacted with TWSC were imagined and represented visually.
Key Findings
Their Goals
To have somebody they can trust who can bring their vision to life. To better understand what her budget can deliver in relation to her vision.
Content First Design
Now that I better understood the user’s motivations, I wanted to create a mini-style guide that would unify TWSC's voice & tone and better target the needs of the people browsing the site.
Based on the research conducted, I came up with 3 key voice characteristics that would sum up TWSC.
This mini guide would ensure that TWSC is meeting the needs of its users with the correct language at the correct time.
Mockups
Based on the data collected it was time to improve on some of the existing UX.
Next, I created screens for onboarding a new user to TWSC. The business owner wanted to offer something unique so I came up with a quiz that could offer the user quick, concrete information about the type of wedding they could have based on their preferences.
Quiz page 1 - General information and contact details
Quiz page 2 - Budget and guest numbers
Quiz page 3 - Venue types
Quiz page 4 - Decoration preferences
Quiz page 5 - Meal preferences
Quiz page 6 - Optional extras
End quiz page - Personalised brochure and option to arrange a consultation call at the click of a button
Key Findings
Offering a unique feature
The business owner wished to stand out from the competition and offer a feature that was both unique and useful to the user. In this way, a quiz could give a snapshot of the kind of wedding on offer based on budget and guest numbers as well as providing introductory information about the clients for the first consultation call.
Scope to give more information
The stakeholder was keen to add more features that would provide information for those seeking a destination wedding in the Balearics. For those couples whose budget would not stretch far enough they could download a “little black book of contacts” to use to help organise their event.
Time-saving tool for the business owner
Dealing with lots of enquiries that would never lead to future business was something that the owner wished to automate to help free up time to focus on other aspects of the business.
Testing
Continual testing needed
As styles and features come in and out of fashion in digital design, it’s important to keep testing to ensure TWSC is relevant and easy to use.
Having designed a new onboarding quiz and refined some of the existing UX, it was time to test with users, get their feedback and identify any pain points before further iteration.
Testing was conducted online with participants having to choose their favourite content design features and give their feedback.
Key Findings
The layout should be visually appealing
A website that is easy to scan and navigate to the relevant information while looking professional and polished.
Although much of the tidying up of the existing content and information architecture on the website made for a simpler user experience, the main ideas that I had to improve onboarding were ultimately not utilised.
The onboarding and free information offered to the users was more a promotional and time-saving exercise for the business owner and success in her eyes was measured not only in increased site traffic, but in filtering out leads that she normally would have to respond to herself to say that they couldn’t accommodate their budget, leaving her more time to deal with the leads that she wanted to close.
Final Thoughts
What I would have done differently
The main thing I learned while working on this project was to respect the wishes of the business owner and that ultimately, they had the final decision on what to implement on their site.
My wish was to completely automate the onboarding process for the user that would deliver a tailored initial wedding plan to their inbox, but there was pushback on this that I had to respect. Sometimes the technology and patterns are not as important as the business owner’s wishes relative to how they want to work.