Design & development
for Brewbabu

Introduction

Brewbabu is was a small UK-based business that specialised in selling hand-crafted teas and coffee blends. The company wanted a new website to showcase their products available for online purchase, as well as to tie-in with a wider strategy aimed at spreading their reach to more potential customers.

Sadly, as of 2024, the shop is no-more. The challenging economic climate led the owner, Alison, to take the difficult decision not to renew the lease and keep the shop going. A shame, as it was the best place in town!

This was my first freelance gig, for which I was hired to design, develop, and manage the entire project.

Solution

The first step, as usual, was to create some wireframes - and to do that I used illustrator, for some reason... don't judge, like I said it was my first freelance gig! I spent time mapping out the layout and functionality of the site, and once those were approved I moved on to the visual design phase, creating full-scale mockups of the site's main pages. As is expected of a designer, I worked closely with the Brewbabu team to make sure the design was always optimised for their needs and was visually appealing to their target audience.

Once the design was signed-off, I moved onto the dev phase, settling on building with Squarespace for it's easy CMS and e-commerce capabilities. I created the site's pages and integrated the e-commerce section, opening up the business to online revenue, focusing on building out an easily-navigable and intuitive experience to allow customers to browse the extensive product range. As part of this process, I even met with the team and assisted with photographing the products to ensure the visuals fulfilled my vision on the online store.

One of the challenges using Squarespace was ensuring that the site was optimised for mobile devices - something that, at the time, wasn't so easy to accomplish with its rudimentary tools. As more and more people browse the internet on their phones and tablets, it's important that websites are mobile-friendly, so spending time making sure that the site was responsive and that it looked great on any device was paramount.

After the site was built and launched, I provided training for the Brewbabu team so that they could manage the site themselves. I walked them through the Squarespace CMS and showed them how to update the site's content, add new products, and process orders. I also provided ongoing support to ensure that the site continued to run smoothly.

Outcome

Overall, the project was a resounding success! The new website improved Brewbabu's online presence and reach, opened the doors to online purchases for their customers, and generally provided a central hub of information about the business.

The use of Squarespace as a CMS allowed for an efficient development process, and the training provided ensured that the Brewbabu team was able to manage the site themselves.