Overview

Eyrie is one of the best known vineyards in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Its founder, David Lett, was known as ‘Papa Pinot’ for bringing that grape to the region in 1965. The 1975 Eyrie Vineyards Reserve Pinot Noir won tenth place among Pinot Noirs in a blind tasting at the Wine Olympics in 1979, making it one of the first American wines to win an important award at an international competition. The vineyard has a very respected product, but their website is more like a family album than an e-commerce site.  

In order to take advantage of the fact that wine is an industry that has grown by at least 2% every year for the last decade, and in Oregon alone by 17%, I created a project that would address the website's problematic blocks of text, disorganized and buried press section, difficult navigation between eight sections, and clunky check-out process.

Scope of Project

A 2-week sprint

Role

Researcher, Interaction Designer, and Visual Designer 

Value of Project

I’m from Iowa and both of my parents grew up on farms. I believe in the value of family farms as true emblems of authenticity in an increasingly homogenous age.  From a business standpoint, wine consumption has risen by 12% in the last decade, with much of that growth coming from the millenial market.  One buying trend in the millenial community is for high-quality, specialized products, a category into which Eyrie undoubtedly falls. Eyrie as a brand stands to benefit from appealing to the millenial market, particularly through improved e-commerce. 

Process: Research 

I began by researching the industry to see what motivates this 33 billion dollar-market. I looked particularly at the differences between the wine industry in the Willamette Valley and in the Napa Valley. Oregon sells 1 bottle of wine for every 70 that California sells, so, to increase profits, one step would be to imitate what is done by some of the larger and more commercially viable Napa vineyards.  I looked at 10 wineries in the Willamette Valley and compared the features they had with those of 10 of their counterparts in the Napa Valley.  Of the 11 features that I researched, including the presence of a wine club, the possibility of hosting private events or attending tours, and a history of the winery, Oregon wineries on average had 7 of the features, while those in Napa averaged 8.  Eyrie's website has 9 of these features, including a wine club, so the goal will merely be to make it more visible. 

Card-sorting

I conducted a combination card sort/interview with 4 subjects, all of whom had visited vineyards before. I wanted users to determine in what order they would set the navigation and where each of the website's features should be found. All users agreed that 'About Us' should be first in the navigation, and 'Connect' (social media) last, though there was not a consensus about if 'Shop' or 'Visit' should be second or third in the navigation. 2 users were unsure if the feature 'Wine Club' was social, or a subscription. All users agreed that the vineyard's history was important even if they weren't interested in learning about winemaking, which currently has two navigation tabs on the Eyrie website. Most users agreed they would rather visit a winery than buy wine online. 

Sitemap

I designed a more streamlined sitemap based on the card sort, giving 'Shop' priority in the navigation over 'Visit'. Even though the goal of the redesign was to promote e-commerce, I wanted to know where everything on a rebuilt site would go. 

Persona

Based on the card sorting, I selected a previously-designed persona, Laura, a millenial, who has high tech empathy and frequently shops online. Her love of authentic buying experiences makes her an ideal consumer of the Eyrie brand. 

Time for a Storyboard

Between my first design and third designs, the most noticeable changes developed when I separated the e-commerce into two sections: Shop and Wine Club, Shop being the place where a user can find all of the vineyard's wines and merchandise, and Wine Club where they can find out about Eyrie's Wine Club.  I had initially titled 'Winemaking' as 'Vintner's Corner,' but altered this when users disliked the word choice and the double line title in contrast to the other single line titles in the navigation. I decided to include multiple links to social media on the homepage given that the target audience is millenials. Most importantly, I decided to include a login for members of Eyrie's Wine Club, so that they can easily log into their customized experience from any page.  

Usability Testing

I decided to test users on three essential tasks:

• Shopping for wine                     "Find out about their 2014 Pinot."                   
• Checking out                            "You're buying the wine for you."
• Joining Eyrie's Wine Club        "You get a 5% discount."

Wine Club User Pages

I wanted to customize the user's experience by building out what members of the Wine Club would have access to. Currently, the carousel gives users the option to:

1. View Past Orders
2. View Upcoming Shipment
3. Review Wine
4. Shop

Prototype Videos

Problems Solved

Currently, a new user to the Eyrie website who wanted to buy a bottle of wine would have to go through 7 screens just to have a bottle of wine in their cart, and would potentially have to enter their billing and shipping information twice. My rebuild allows a user to do this in in 5 screens.  The current website has the user enter shipping and billing information on two separate screens, whereas this is done on the rebuild in 1.  Additionally, after a user makes a purchase on the new site, they can simply click to have their information remembered for future visits.  My proposal and design for a customized user experience was enthusiastically reviewed by users in the target age range of my chosen persona, all of whom also appreciated the simplified billing.  Although I don't think that Eyrie is in the market for a website redesign, I believe that their business would benefit from an easier checkout process and the promotion of their Wine Club.     

What I Learned

I have no background in visual design and, although I’m frequently on the internet, I didn't realize until this project that I had never really thought about what makes a good website in terms of its navigability.  I had never thought about how one page should lead to another logically, and it took me several iterations to have something that was logical to more than me.  

I didn't sketch for this project as much as I should have, thinking it would somehow come together in Sketch, the program. Paper sketching is not a luxury, but a necessity.

Grids are sacred and cannot be faked.