THE QUESTION: While focusing on providing an excellent customer experience, how can I provide tropical-inspired floral designs to Wilmington, while working full-time in another role?
THE PROBLEM: There are no florists in Wilmington working predominantly with bright colors, tropical flowers, and luxury blooms.
THE STRATEGY: A) Develop sleek branding and a ridiculously streamlined experience to justify the price of the luxury florals we’re providing. B) Plan unique and engaging in-person events that allow for only one or two employees to run efficiently. C) Create an easy online request system, exciting social media, and thorough customer funnel to retain interest from events.
Website Development - Wireframe to Final Design
Customer Personas:
Website Key Features:
Easy ability to order: ‘Shop’ clearly labeled at the top in the menu bar, ‘Flowers’ placed first. Takes you all floral offerings. Because Tropic & Vine is a small company, the floral offerings are limited and intentionally all placed on one page for easy viewing.
Event/Other offerings clear on front page: Tropic & Vine specializes in alternative floral experiences. This includes Build Your Own Bouquet, Vase Arranging Classes, Event Florals, and Mini Bouquets for Events. All these are located on the front page, with brief descriptions and a link to submit an inquiry.
Future In-Person Markets/Events: Updates are most frequent on Instagram, so a link is placed on the front page for the user to go directly to Instagram to find out when the next event is. Upcoming events are also mentioned in the revolving banner at the very top of the page. To sign up for classes, users simply go to Shop > Floral Workshops and can easily purchase a ticket.
Event Experience Development - Wireframe to Execution
Event Key Features
Simple flow of traffic: Guests are guided from the flower station, to the greenery, past other products (like dried eucalyptus bundles, greeting cards, vases) to the bouquet wrapping station where they select their ribbon of choice, their flowers are wrapped, and they can pay.
Flowers at the front: They’re the show-stopper and step-stopper. Placing the flowers at the front gets passerby who aren’t sure about buying a bouquet to stop and get a free sniff.
Ribbon selection: There’s a lag after the guest builds their bouquet as the flowers are rung up in the POS system. This was creating an awkward lull, so I added a ribbon selection station for the guests to choose which ribbon they’d like while the flowers are being wrapped in paper.
Complementary greenery: Tropic & Vine doesn’t charge extra to add greenery to a bouquet. While researching, I learned that because flowers are typically used at grocery stores as loss-leaders, many consumers are hesitant about the high prices of florist flowers. To offset this increase in cost (though, it’s really just an appropriate cost given the wholesale price + markup + labor), I added the greenery in complementary to complete the bouquet. Greenery is one of the more inexpensive parts of floral design, so this doesn’t take much out of the overall margin.
