MarryMe.com Website Design

Oriental Trading Company wanted to reinvent their wedding business by separating the existing brand in to a more niche experience.

  • The goal was to reach beyond the traditional Oriental Trading customer (Mother's of the Bride, ages 40-60).
  • The target bride was female, ages 23-35, budget-aware and strongly influenced by social media focussed brands.

The brand strategy included the creation of a quarterly catalog, new product line, and an online experience for the user to shop and engage with the brand.

  • This was an 18 month project. Following launch, my support continued through CMS template development and content creation.
  • My role for this project was to break down business and IT requirements and research into intuitive user-focused visual experiences.

Research & Discovery

The approach was to start with the success of the competition and design from there as opposed to using the current OTC experience as a starting point. This strategy required a large amount of effort geared towards discovery. We took great lengths to understand who the prospective customer was and establish user stories to inform our development. I wrote scripts for and analyzed sessions using UserTesting.com.

Preliminary Test Scenarios:

  • Assess the user's understanding of the partnership between the brands when redirected from the Wedding experience of OrientalTrading.com to MarryMe.com. Including verbiage that may resinate more. (See Example - Option C Won)
  • Evaluate user's behavior while organically completing the task of purchasing items for their wedding including the use of social sites, interaction with paid media, Google and competitor brands.
  • Have existing OTC wedding customers identify functionality and aesthetic opportunities by comparing the two experiences.

Findings:

  • Expressed preference for the more modern Marry Me aesthetic.
  • Products were easier to locate on OrientalTrading.com. This led to additional time was spent reworking the taxonomy and visual representation of product categories with in the content of MarryMe.com.
  • Clear understanding of redirect from OrientalTrading.com to MarryMe.com if verbiage and new branding appeared prior to transfer.
  • The user was most always familiar with the Oriental Trading Company brand but referenced the brand for products such as school supplies. If aware that OTC sold wedding decor, the perception was the items were cheap and dated.

Test Variants for Redirect Test

Three test variants used to determine messaging when transitions from orientaltrading.com to marryme.com
Image showing the steps we took to track the user journey.

User Journey

In tandem with the research phase, I participated in workshops for journey mapping with the Product Owners.

Mapping combined with testing revealed a clear purchase path and gap in the competitor experiences. These two findings set development into motion.

Driving Friction Point:

  • The bulk time was spent on comparison shopping, rarely finding inspiration and purchasing all items for the event from a single site or retailer.

Solution:

  • Create MarryMe.com as a one-stop-shop for any bride. Accomplishing this with bespoke imagery, a well organized taxonomy, intentional site merchandising, and social content development with a focus on the DIY bride.

Early Mockup for Banner Welcoming Users from OTC Emails

Banner asset showing a girl smiling while catching confetti. Banner reads Welcome. We are so excited you are here.

Code Development

My role in development was focused on building content templates, web asset standards and facilitating team member training.

The existing semantics, best practices and workflow served as the basis to the new site considering the OTC team would also maintain the new site.

Development Tasks:

  • Collaborated with product owners and Branding to create wireframes.
  • Provided code specifications and technical implementation support for IT partners.
  • Developed CMS Template Library with 20+ reusable HTML/CSS modules.
  • Wrote and executed UAT scenarios in collaboration with product owners and developers.
  • Instituted new photography standards including ratio templates, formatting standards, and engagement optimization best practices.
  • Facilitated training workshops to aid in code and content implementation.
Marry Me hero banner showing happy wedding couple and a sale message for 60% off

Launch Ready Homepage Design

Screenshot of MarryMe.com Homepage at time of launch

Content Development

Development of the living Style Guide began with the logo and color palette created by the branding team. Easy access to the documentation served as the knowledge-base for the marketing team and internal designers and vendors, allowing for consistant creation and delivery of user focused web experiences.

Additionally, to generating the Style Guide, a bulk of the design sprints were spent producing visual interfaces and leading frequent executive workshops.

Assets Produced:

  • Style tiles to gather feedback on preliminary style direction.
  • Competitor visual comparison presentations.
  • High-fidelity prototypes to review with Omni-Channel stakeholders.
  • Marketing, social, and email asset mockups and templates.
  • Web content assets such as web banners, homepage design and Site Merchandising modules.
  • Test variant assets used for UserTesting.com and A/B tests.

Design support continued post-launch with a focus on testing to optimize conversion and content maintenance.

What an incredible chance to innovate and create something special!

Creating a brand from the ground up was an huge undertaking and allowed me the chance to truly collaborate with the entire company from the executives to the warehouse workers.

  • I learned that, although visual design is very important, usability will always be more important to the user.
  • I was able to exercise a number of skills including branding, graphic design, ux design, user testing, merchandising, social media management.
  • I am super proud that we were able to create a product that the user enjoys.

Let's Connect

I'd love a chance to collaborate or have a friendly chat.

m.anndailey@gmail.com

^