Berdels is a brand based in Santa Cruz California. They started in 2015, and I have been working alongside the owner since its inception. THe last project that I proposed to the owner was a full redesign of their website. Unfortunately, we were unable to come to an agreement on how they wanted the layout and design to look, but the proposal was something that I spent a good time on using InDesign, as well as learning the ins and outs of Shopify as well as Squarespace for SEO and CSS purposes.
Website Proposal
When I started this proposal, I was designing it from my view as a consumer that does not live in the immediate vicinity of their brick and mortar locations. When looking at their website, there is a constant lack of updates, and I wanted to show them that there are ways to make their site function in a way that allows them to build that presence and make the expense worth it.
They have a very strong social media presence in the idea that they are active constantly, but they are not activating any click through rates due to the slow activity on their site as it is. Beyond that, their posts were consistently the same post with different copy, and there are other ways to activate their media channels.
Proposed Adjustments
When digging into the technicalities of what sets a website apart from others, there were a few things that I noticed that would improve Berdels’ own site. After looking into each of their direct competitors or competition that exists on the California coast, there were subtle differences that became more apparent. Everything from the title scroller, to the way that they listed their products, to just their landing page.
After digging into the superficial differences, I proceeded to do the market research to understand what an expenditure would look like for improving the website and social media traffic to the website. As of the time that I wrote this proposal up, they had no expenditures for advertising, which was in part to the fact that they had no way of accurately linking product to their webstore.
We concluded the conversation with the idea that they need to improve a lot of things on their backend, but they were not ready to push that total ad spend or capital to refining their site and social presence. They acknowledged that there was a gap in their online presence, and were open to the idea of fixing, and since I have sent the proposal, they have improved aspects, but they are constantly updating and refining their processes to find what works best with them. It was a great experience and great way for me to learn more about the backend design for websites in both ecommerce and standard web design practices like SEO and CSS.