Toronto Cupcakes

Toronto Cupcakes

Toronto Cupcakes

An abstract image associated with User Research
An abstract image associated with User Research
An abstract image associated with User Research
Client
Client
Client

Toronto Cupcakes

Anewgo

Anewgo

Industries
Industries
Industries

Small Business: Bakery

Small Business: Bakery

Small Business: Bakery

Year
Year
Year

Apr 2020 - May 2020

Apr 2020 - May 2020

Apr 2020 - May 2020

Overview

Overview

Overview

For one of my projects at GWU, my team members and I chose to redesign the Toronto Cupcakes website.


This beloved, small business in Toronto sought to expand their business by creating an online storefront. Unfortunately their website's lack of visual appeal and poor usability resulted in a confusing ecommerce experience.

Our goal was to increase engagement a trustworthy website with strong visuals, a clear brand identity, and intentional information architecture.

For one of my projects at GWU, my team members and I chose to redesign the Toronto Cupcakes website.


This beloved, small business in Toronto sought to expand their business by creating an online storefront. Unfortunately their website's lack of visual appeal and poor usability resulted in a confusing ecommerce experience.

Our goal was to increase engagement a trustworthy website with strong visuals, a clear brand identity, and intentional information architecture.

For one of my projects at GWU, my team members and I chose to redesign the Toronto Cupcakes website.


This beloved, small business in Toronto sought to expand their business by creating an online storefront. Unfortunately their website's lack of visual appeal and poor usability resulted in a confusing ecommerce experience.

Our goal was to increase engagement a trustworthy website with strong visuals, a clear brand identity, and intentional information architecture.

Understand our users

User Interviews

Understanding the Users Through Interviews


01. Understand user pain points when navigating the Toronto Cupcake website
02. What types of things do our users expect to see and do if they visited a cupcake bakery website?


Plan


  • Heuristic Evaluation of the current Toronto Cupcake website

  • 5 usability test on the current Toronto Cupcake website

  • Survey participants from the general public about their expectations when visiting a bakery website

  • Stakeholder interview with the Toronto Cupcakes lead web designer

An abstract image associated with UX Strategy
An abstract image associated with UX Strategy
An abstract image associated with UX Strategy

Above: Categorized usability feedback, with each color representing a unique participant

Understand our users

Stakeholder Interview

For our stake holder interview, we interviewed Michael Mancuso, the lead web designer for Toronto Cupcakes. When asked about their reasoning behind certain design decisions, Mancuso explained that Michelle Harrison— the owner— places heavy emphasis on her quality of her products; this causes her to invest more in ingredients rather than her storefront and branding. Nevertheless, when first creating the Toronto Cupcakes website, Harrison had some design requests. She wanted a "clean looking website" with very few distractions. She wanted users to get to their destination with minimal clicks.


After discussing with Mancuso, it seemed like many of the obvious visual design flaws on their website could be tied back to their web team's desire to improve their search engine optimization. Additionally at the time, Toronto Cupcakes did not have a physical store location. Without a storefront, business was driven by word of mouth, with their customers being made up of (mostly) corporate and local community clients. Although their business was exclusively virtual, the team did not want a complicated ecommerce page they would have to maintain.


Takeaways

  • Web visuals are highly important to users and leave a lasting impression of the brand and product quality

  • Information architecture, especially the navigation system, needs restructuring

  • The overall interface of the website was not accessible, especially for users with poor eyesight or varying levels of color blindness

For our stake holder interview, we interviewed Michael Mancuso, the lead web designer for Toronto Cupcakes. When asked about their reasoning behind certain design decisions, Mancuso explained that Michelle Harrison— the owner— places heavy emphasis on her quality of her products; this causes her to invest more in ingredients rather than her storefront and branding. Nevertheless, when first creating the Toronto Cupcakes website, Harrison had some design requests. She wanted a "clean looking website" with very few distractions. She wanted users to get to their destination with minimal clicks.


After discussing with Mancuso, it seemed like many of the obvious visual design flaws on their website could be tied back to their web team's desire to improve their search engine optimization. Additionally at the time, Toronto Cupcakes did not have a physical store location. Without a storefront, business was driven by word of mouth, with their customers being made up of (mostly) corporate and local community clients. Although their business was exclusively virtual, the team did not want a complicated ecommerce page they would have to maintain.


Takeaways

  • Web visuals are highly important to users and leave a lasting impression of the brand and product quality

  • Information architecture, especially the navigation system, needs restructuring

  • The overall interface of the website was not accessible, especially for users with poor eyesight or varying levels of color blindness

For our stake holder interview, we interviewed Michael Mancuso, the lead web designer for Toronto Cupcakes. When asked about their reasoning behind certain design decisions, Mancuso explained that Michelle Harrison— the owner— places heavy emphasis on her quality of her products; this causes her to invest more in ingredients rather than her storefront and branding. Nevertheless, when first creating the Toronto Cupcakes website, Harrison had some design requests. She wanted a "clean looking website" with very few distractions. She wanted users to get to their destination with minimal clicks.


After discussing with Mancuso, it seemed like many of the obvious visual design flaws on their website could be tied back to their web team's desire to improve their search engine optimization. Additionally at the time, Toronto Cupcakes did not have a physical store location. Without a storefront, business was driven by word of mouth, with their customers being made up of (mostly) corporate and local community clients. Although their business was exclusively virtual, the team did not want a complicated ecommerce page they would have to maintain.


Takeaways

  • Web visuals are highly important to users and leave a lasting impression of the brand and product quality

  • Information architecture, especially the navigation system, needs restructuring

  • The overall interface of the website was not accessible, especially for users with poor eyesight or varying levels of color blindness

Ideation

Feature
Prioritization

Feature
Prioritization

Feature
Prioritization

An abstract image associated with UX Strategy
An abstract image associated with UX Strategy
An abstract image associated with UX Strategy

From the opportunities that have been found in the user interviews, I created a priority matrix to consider which opportunities I will implement into design improvements.

results

User Flow

Results

Wireframes

A bold, chic brand

High contrast with pops of bright pink ensure Toronto Cupcakes leaves a lasting impression with users. Using high quality images, we decided to minimize the text and let the cupcakes speak for themselves.


Shop for cupcakes in less time

Users now can add cupcakes (single, half dozen, or dozen) from the popup page.

Conclusion

Takeaways

You can view our website here

While my team had some challenges when designing the new website for Toronto Cupcakes, we learned a lot and grew as designers. We specifically had a difficult time with the product photos the company sent us. We had to individually re-edit each cupcake, which can be seen in our final coded prototype. 


Moving forward, it would be interesting to look into incorporating third-party review from sites like yelp. It would also be interesting to translate the Toronto Cupcake website into an app, for a more user-friendly mobile experience. 

© Kaitlyn Miyamoto 2023

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