The new Prior Engagements website needed distinct branding, straightforward navigation and consistent photos of each product for customers to plan their purchase online. To convert casual visitors to clients, we needed to include a reliable and trustworthy way to purchase or request a quote for the rental items.
Addressing the company’s branding concerns first, we analyzed the Prior Engagements corporate identity to see what updates we could implement. We identified signature elements of the existing branding to carry forwards to the new look and feel, a dominant script typeface and a branded purple. These elements were synonymous with the public’s vision of Prior Engagements and identified the company as part of the wedding industry. Keeping the logo typographical and straightforward, we selected new typefaces, a stylish script, Adorn, and a geometric sans-serif, Gotham. Staying true to the existing brand, we used purple as the primary logo colour and paired it with a new teal.
Using this refreshed logo as a guide, we began designing the updated website. We took inspiration from the swashes in the Adorn typeface and the spherical geometry from Gotham, adding details like rounded photo treatments, a dotted background and calligraphic swirls. We implemented parallax – a scrolling animation where the background moves at a different speed than the foreground – into the header for a sense of depth and dimension. These unique touches differentiated Prior Engagements from their competition and granted extra credibility to the company’s corporate event component.
A pain point of the original website was navigation. We addressed this by designing a simpler menu, with a full dropdown to list the different product categories. If customers were looking for something specific, they could find it directly from the homepage with a minimal amount of clicks.
To allow users to compare products, we shot quality consistent photos of many of Prior Engagements’ rental items. We used a lightbox for smaller items, shooting each of them at constant exposure camera settings and a standardized frame and angle, with necessary adjustments to ensure each item looked great within a circle frame on the website. In post, we consistently edited the photos’ exposure and cleaned up any blemishes or dirt that were a result of the photography process.
We determined the website would often be the starting point in a customer’s user journey; they would evaluate service offerings on the site and then get more information from the company to allow them to make a decision. Since the planning process is so involved, part of the service draw for Prior Engagements is their expertise and advice. For this reason, we implemented a quote form instead of an e-commerce shop. We included four line illustrations representing different types of events for added customization.