Client
Solar da Levada and Quinta Lago dos Cisnes are probably the most iconic event venues in the North of Portugal, they praise themselves for a very complete service. From mesmerizing locations, great food and drinks, picture-perfect decoration and party animation turning any event into an unforgettable experience.
Besides the wedding venues, they also own a public bar and store, Bamboo and Coconut. Meet our most romantic client, which offers sophisticated and striking experiences designed for the most exquisite customers.
Challenges and objectives
This project actually started with a small challenge: creating a simple website with a structure that would suit three different venues. For the wedding venues, the website allowed the user to book a visit and check availability, it also had a simple private area where brides and grooms could see useful information. The bar website didn’t require any of these features, the focus was more on the venue adjustable schedule and menu.
At that time this solution was enough for the company's needs, but it opened up the opportunity of enabling the brides and grooms to organize every aspect of their event through the private area. With over three hundred events happening every year this tool presented the opportunity to digitalize the wedding management process for the company and, at the same time, a flawless experience for couples.
No one knows better the struggles that couples face when planning a wedding than our client. So we started by asking them all about that. After getting some insights from the organizer's side, we decided to conduct our own research to understand the problems from the bride's and groom’s view. Here are the most common pain points we noticed:
After understanding users’ pain points and expectations, we decided that the next step for our team was to organize the extensive content, and put it into categories. We tried to work it to be logical and intuitive for the couple.
Flow starts with filling the information about them and building all the details from there. There are multiple sections which are customizable: wedding style, timeline, ceremony, staff, guests, catering, decoration, party selection and upgrades. Each one of these categories offers a wide range of options for any taste and personality.
No questions will be left unanswered because our experienced client thought of all of the things the couple might need: the information that concerns the decor environments, nearby churches, tips for external suppliers, suppliers, graphics, information book, accommodation map, organizers and room plans… and much more!
Our biggest UI goal was to make it very simple and clean as the content was very extensive and heavy. When this happens we focus on keeping the design minimalistic to avoid unnecessary distraction:
- Neutral and soft colours;
- Bold highlights;
- Clean outline icons.
Here is where all the process begins. The admin starts by adding a new wedding, inserting the contacts and data of both the bride and groom. Then, the couple will receive an email to define their login data and start planning their day in the private area. All their choices and preferences will appear in the back office for the organizer to see and manage. All processes can be exported in pdfs to be delivered to the team in charge with only the information they need.
Planning a wedding surely isn’t a piece of cake. So, to help our client optimize their business we first had to understand how they worked and the difficulties experienced. We understood that previously they mostly gathered information with Google forms and overall worked in a more traditional way. It was time to digitalize things, so we decided to create a well-thought-out back office. The advantages of it:
- Storage & Recovery — organizers get structured data about all customers. Filter, archive and recover to get the most out of it;
- Simplified flow — bride and groom make all their choices online whenever they want and organizers receive the information. Just like that, no need for long meetings and google forms;
- Statistics and Management — important statistics, insights and numbers help to have better overview and control over all events.
- Supplies Control — after the bride and groom made their choices, the Wedding Day’s team gets the list and amount of items (e.g flowers, products, fireworks) needed and can send them to suppliers directly from the back office.
This project is a great example of what we do. Starting with the identification of the problem, understanding users, doing research, we create a process and define a solution.
By bringing this product to life we managed to take the wedding planning experience to a totally new level. It makes the life of the wedding organizators much easier and helps to have more control over every detail. Brides and the grooms now can not only have a smooth and stress-free process, but even enjoy every moment of it.
