Refresh for Success: The Far-Reaching Values of a Holistic Site Redesign

A site redesign is a prime opportunity to take a step back and see things in a fresh light. It is an opportunity to refine your brand in order to speak more directly and more effectively to your target audience, a chance to integrate your message into the very essence of your online presence.

Ultimately, a website refresh is a whole cascade of opportunities, but few online businesses take full advantage of the opportunities that a redesign can offer.

Waterfront Gourmet knew that a redesign could be so much more than just a few alterations to image and layout; they saw it as a chance to revamp their brand and get in touch with their viewers.

Of all the choices they had, they chose to work with 1Digital® Agency because they know that we take a holistic approach to a redesign, capitalizing on opportunities of which others sometimes are not even aware.

Getting in Touch with Customers

Waterfront Gourmet operates four restaurants throughout Philadelphia and offers catering services as well. Their specialty is providing fresh, healthy original menu items to their customers, and they knew that this was the market they had to reach.

They wanted to present their offerings in an artisanal light and make their menu and site imagery more approachable. They knew that this was one of the keys to reaching their target market – people who are as passionate about food as they are.

Waterfront Gourmet wanted to break down the walls and get closer to their customers in appearance and voice. Their owner offered some rationale on the decision to create a redesign, “We wanted to make our website more approachable, more appealing, and more inviting to our customers. We also wanted to give more emphasis to the fact that we offer many healthy menu items in our restaurants including vegan and plant-based dishes.”

To meet their branding and voice requests, 1Digital® Agency redesigned aspects of their homepage, about page, and menu pages. We chose professional imagery that was more in line with the flavors Waterfront Gourmet offered and cast a more personal, original light on the setting of the site design as a whole.

Waterfront Gourmet’s original design was text heavy, bare and angular. Our redesign softened some hard edges, set the food as the background – the foundation, even – of the business, and overlaid everything on top of that.

Their message is simple and up front: everything Waterfront Gourmet offers is always fresh, always amazing.

We called attention to a few things that mattered, such as freshness, originality, and healthy offerings. We also took advantage of the opportunity to offer easy access to the other areas of the site from one convenient location – just see the menu easily accessible at the top of the redesigned page.

In addition, the language incorporated into the scheme of the site allowed Waterfront Gourmet to focus just as much on the experience provided by its unique menu items as on the unique profile of flavors they offered.

Their catering page, for example, was updated to pay into the value proposition that a delicious, enjoyable meal is a cornerstone of a lunch meeting – perhaps as much as business. This positioned Waterfront Gourmet as a unique provider of a fleet of solutions instead of only a location one might go to get a quick, delicious bite to eat. It cast an entirely new light on their value proposition.

Consider the simplicity and poignance of the redesign we created for their catering page shown above. We emphasized the experience that the real business is a great lunch and put the spotlight on the importance that catering plays in the success of a meeting. At the same time we capitalized on another opportunity to bring more awareness to the many healthy offerings on Waterfront Gourmet’s menu.

In addition, they wanted their website to represent the atmosphere of their physical locations. “We needed a complete solution for our design, from the professional images on our website through the colors in the layout down into the very words on our page. It had to be not only about fresh, delicious food but also about a totally unique dining experience. 1Digital® pulled it all together seamlessly,” reflected the owner of Waterfront Gourmet.

A New Voice

Waterfront Gourmet also needed a fresh voice to better represent their image and the products they served, as well as to speak to their customers. They felt that their aging content needed a refresher to serve the younger market and reach more people.

That’s exactly what we at 1Digital® included in the scope of the redesign as part of our holistic approach. We crafted slogans, renovated the original content, and crafted unique, more personalized descriptors and addresses for their website visitors.

But there’s more to a website redesign, including a content refresh, than speaking your customer’s lingo – much more.

Leaving No Stone Unturned

There’s no silo effect here at 1Digital®. When we tackle a job, we get boots on the ground and take an in-depth look at our clients’ websites. With a redesign, we investigate every aspect of a business and look for creative and innovative ways to address complex issues.

On its surface, a redesign for Waterfront Gourmet was simply: to offer a format and an interface that was more attractive to visitors and more approachable in its voice. While doing this, 1Digital® analysts saw opportunities to enhance their website for SEO value, lead generation, and even for cross selling and upselling opportunities.

For example, a staple of Waterfront Gourmet’s business is in catering, and 1Digital® helped to create a site map that calls direct attention to all of the different settings for which Waterfront Gourmet can offer catering solutions. Paired with keyword rich, vibrant content, this drastically helped to boost Waterfront’s SEO. As we updated the pages in their site map with original content on the types of original menu items they serve and catering solutions they offer, we provided search engines with fresh information to draw targeted traffic to their website.

1Digital® didn’t stop there – anywhere we see an opportunity for your business we capitalize on it. During the redesign of Waterfront Gourmet’s About Us and Contact Us pages, our designers took full advantage of an opportunity to cross sell and upsell different products offered by Waterfront Gourmet.

A fresh, healthy meal goes mighty nicely with a cup of signature coffee, and our designers saw that experiential connection as a glaring opportunity to cross sell. Right on Waterfront Gourmet’s About Us page, there is a section calling attention to this unique product. If there’s a chance to add value to your organization or increase your sales, we go for it with gusto.

We like to think of ourselves as innovators and creators when we approach a challenge. As the owner of Waterfront Gourmet had to say, “1Digital capitalized on opportunities for growth during our redesign that we didn’t even know existed. They went above and beyond a simple visual redesign. We have a new image, a new voice, and a new presence.”

Happier Customers = Higher Traffic, Higher Sales

As a result of their holistic redesign, Waterfront Gourmet began to see success on many fronts. Customer traffic to their locations increased and sales blossomed. The redesign had significantly farther reaching effects than further refining their image.

The homepage is one of the most important pages on any website, as it will often get the most traffic and will dictate whether customers retain interest and traverse the site or bounce. A webpage that is not intuitive or does not resonate with a target visitor’s expectations is likely to result in a high bounce rate. After Waterfront Gourmet’s redesign, their bounce rate drastically decreased:

In the month and a half after Waterfront Gourmet’s redesign, their bounce rate from organic traffic, direct search, and social channels plummeted over 50% from the immediately previous month. At the same time, users from those channels rose. The results were clear – traffic was up and bounce rate was down.

We also mentioned that our redesign to the menu page incorporated newer, clearer professional imagery intended to appeal more closely to members of the target market. After our menu page redesign, WaterfrontGourmet.com enjoyed more than a 40% increase in new users and nearly 40% growth in sessions as compared to the same time period from the previous year. To keep it in perspective, the top two landing pages on their website were the homepage and menu page, and both of them saw positive results.

New users and sessions were also on the rise for both the homepage and menu page. In fact, new users and sessions were up, both as a absolute and percentage increases:

As far as visitors and sales to their restaurant locations was concerned, Waterfront Gourmet saw even more development on that front. “Foot traffic to our restaurants increased. Revenue increased. There’s no doubt that 1Digital’s® lead generation strategy as part of their redesign had something to do with it. It almost felt like a guaranteed success,” they offered in a statement.

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That’s part of the magic of working with 1Digital® to tackle that new eCommerce peak. Our team of experts takes a creative and daring approach to every challenge and looks for new ways to improve your business. That could be as part of a redesign as created for Waterfront Gourmet or even as part of an SEO campaign. It’s a holistic approach and it can have benefits for your organization that reach far above and beyond the challenge being directly addressed. Waterfront Gourmet’s owner said it best:

“Working with 1Digital® Agency was worth every penny.”