1300 382 777Grace Loves Lace | Customising An Effortless User Booking Platform
- Website Development | React | Laravel | UI/UX Design
Digital8 recently had the opportunity to design a brand-new user booking platform for luxury Australian bridal boutique Grace Loves Lace. The websites booking platform now presents an attractive, engaging and smooth user experience, allowing Grace Love’s Lace customers to express interest in the brand and make a showroom booking with ease.
Post project, Digital8 remains Grace Loves Lace’s developer of choice as we continue providing support and maintenance to the launched forms and across the GLL website.
The Problem
The Grace Loves Lace website booking form was lacking customisability, scalability and also had user experience issues within the final payment step of the booking flow. This led to issues with form submission scalability and the ability for customers to complete the final payment required to book.
Accordingly, the Grace Loves Lace team decided it was time for the form to be modernized and rebuilt so it could better align with their overarching business objectives.
Understanding the Business Objectives
To effectively address the website booking problem, the Digital8 productions team came up with the primary business objectives for the project during early discussions with Grace Loves Lace. These included:
- To enhance the booking forms customisability to allow diverse responses from clientele with different wedding dress style preferences
- To reduce the likelihood of customers exiting from the booking form
- To improve user experience when completing the booking form to allow a seamless and engaging customer experience which would drive increased bridal dress bookings for Grace Loves Lace
Our Process
1. Scope
For this project, the Grace Loves Lace team had their scope laid out from the get-go, due to the pre-existing form structure that could conveniently be utilised and redesigned. With the foundation already laid, this allowed the Digital8 productions team to commence the design and development stages extra quickly and efficiently.
Additional scope was also provided by the client, with a request to test and monitor conversion results from the booking form throughout the project by using key events within Google Analytics 4.
2. Design
During the design stage, the Digital8 productions team and developers dedicated extensive research time to consider the user experience of the current form flow, so they could visualise and implement a more advanced solution that would meet GLL’s business objectives. This involved considering elements that could be improved that the customer would be experiencing when navigating the form, including transitions, ease of use, benefits of animations, the relevancy of information displayed and ultimately, how each of these elements could combine to become more engaging and user friendly.
Once the design research was complete and proposed solutions were discussed and approved by the client, the developers kicked off the design phase with a key focus on creating smoother and more attractive transitions that encouraged the user to fully complete each step of the form until completion. The development team also integrated with GLL’s internal booking management system (Booxi) enabling it to pull through additional relevant data, including dynamic questions that could be defined by the GLL team (such as wedding dress preferences). This allowed customers to specify their preferred wedding dress styles when completing the form and in turn, enables the GLL customer care team to be able to fully tailor their response to customer bookings/enquiries.
As part of our proposed solutions, our developers also made sure the final payment step of the booking flow was crafted strategically to feel like a natural and simple continuation of the booking process, rather than a potentially bothersome interruption that would reduce form completion rates.
3. Development
Development was also completed alongside the design stage to ensure coding was able to support the new design changes and bring them to life.
Regular meetings with the client were held throughout the design and development stages to ensure the GLL team were actively communicated with, kept updated on the project and had full ability to ask questions and provide feedback. The GLL team took an active role during these feedback rounds to communicate their updates and requests to Digital8, allowing everyone to remain on the same page throughout the project.
Once the final feedback round from the client had taken place, our Digital8 developers moved into deployment.
4. Deployment
The booking form (built in React) needed to be integrated into Grace Loves Lace’s Shopify site. Digital8 supported the successful deployment of the form by hosting the bundled Javascript (and css) code within the Amazon S3 bucket before the client’s digital team then pulled this directly into the GLL Shopify site.
The backend of the form was also hosted by our Digital8 developers within a Lambda function before then being deployed to the clients Shopify site.
The Challenges
The primary challenges presented by this project included; time sensitive challenges as the productions team battled juggling multiple high priority project deadlines whilst ensuring the GLL project remained a top priority, as well as x limited testing ability of the booking form during design and development.
Expand on limited testing ability of the booking form during design and development.
Our Solutions
The Digital8 productions team worked diligently to overcome these challenges by setting aside regularly scheduled project time, allowing for optimal project progress (whilst still being able to manage competing priorities).
Additionally, the Digital8 development team came up with the idea of working closely with the Grace Love’s Lace team during time slots when they were available to support with final testing of the booking form. This allowed for increased testing ability and ensured the new booking form was working effectively, ultimately going through to Grace Love’s Lace’s CRM.
Outcomes
Grace Love’s Lace brand new booking form was sucessfully launched in June, 2024. Since the launch, our Digital8 developers have continued to provide support and maintenance to the launched forms and across the GLL site.
The Digital8 productions team met Grace Love’s Lace business objectives for this project by:
- Enhancing the main booking forms customisability by allowing diverse responses, enabling clients to highlight up to 5 of their preferred wedding dress styles within the form
- Reducing the likelihood of customers exiting the booking form by implementing more relevant information and attractive, smooth flowing transitions targeted towards the Grace Loves Lace customer
- Improved user experience by implementing engaging design features and reducing frustrating interruptions, thereby allowing a seamless and engaging customer experience resulting in increased bridal dress bookings for GLL
With collaborative communication and innovative design and development solutions, the Grace Loves Lace project resulted in creation of an effortless user booking platform, the perfect tool to connect future brides with Grace Loves Lace as they prepare for their dream wedding.
View the Grace Loves Lace Website Featuring The New Booking System
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