Case Study
MANQA Food
MANQA is a small food start-up that hired me to design and develop their e-commerce site as well as create photos of their products.
Project Brief
Develop a beautifully crafted e-commerce showcasing their brand philosophy, healthy products and that would allow their clients to make purchases in a fast and reliable manner.
Exploring Solutions
One of the biggest challenges for new start-ups can be taking their product to market. When developing a strategy for their site, I wanted to understand their current needs but equally importantly what they thought needed down the road.
As part of this strategy, I felt it was essential to go with a system that would grow with the company’s needs. Given the budget, time constraints, and the client requirements, the best option was to create a site built on WordPress and Woo-commerce.
This allowed them to have a robust system that could easily be upscaled and provided them with additional services like keeping track of their inventory.
Onboarding
During an exploratory meeting, the client and I discuss what they were looking to accomplish, timelines, budget, and any concerns. Based on that, the following plan was designed for the project.
1
Planning
A series of onboarding meetings to better understand the product, the brand, and philosophy. During those meetings, we reviewed the research they had done on their brand and products. I proposed a project timeline and a sitemap that would serve as a roadmap for the project.
2
Photography Brief
As before, we had a series of calls to review the style of photos they liked and disliked.
This allowed us to develop a theme and a photographic style that would be used for their products.
3
User Experience
Following the sitemap’s approval, I developed a user flow and wireframes to help create an initial walk-through of the user experience. Once those were approved, they served as a guide for what visual and written content would need to be created.
4
Design Brief
To better understand what the client wanted their website to look like, we review their brand manual, created a mood-board and compiled a list of websites that they liked and disliked. After that I designed a series of mockups to show the site’s look and feel, and after some revisions, a final design was approved and served as the template for the site.
5
Development
The project’s web development phase was pretty straightforward as it was done using WordPress and WooCommerce.
Creating a Look & Feel
Incorporating MANQA’S brand design into the website played a critical role in the design.
Their brand has beautiful hand-drawn illustrations that serve as inspiration and I included them as design elements across the site.
It was essential to balance all the different components, drawings, photographs, and content to ensure a cohesive design that represented the brand’s identity clearly.
Product Photography
From the photography point of view, I took a similar approach to the planning of the site. The client and I created a mood board, went over the style of photography they like/dislike, developed a shot list, and set a very detailed production schedule for each photography session.
Over the course of six days a total of 32 products were photographed.
Final Result
After a six-month process, the website officially launched to the public, and the client was thrilled with the final result. Below are some screenshots of the website, but the full experience can be found online.
