Prime V Booth
Website Redesign For a Wedding Photography Company
Overview
Prime Visuals Wedding Photography is a wedding photography company out of NYC, serving clients in the tri-state area. They offer photography services for engagements, weddings, and private events.
The founders expressed a desire to expand their business and services by offering a 360 Photo Booth rental at events. They saw this as an opportunity to create a fun, innovative, and memorable experience for guests - while growing the business.
Challenge
The founders wanted a way to offer this new service as a standalone package without confusing website visitors or taking attention away from what they’re known for and do best - wedding photography.
Solution
Redesign the Prime Visuals website and offerings so that the 360 Photo Booth service seamlessly integrates with the site and attracts both brides who want to add this service to their wedding and people who want to book the photobooth for other event types (such as birthdays or corporate events).
Constraints
Because this is a new service Prime Visuals has yet to offer, I was limited in the content and social proof I could use. The founders haven’t purchased the 360 photobooth yet (at the time of writing this), so I had to rely on placeholder images and leverage social proof from their other services.
Research
Research Goals
The research phase started with me first having a conversation with the co-founder of Prime Visuals to better understand and align with their vision, goals, and current process for attracting clients to the website and booking services.
The next step was putting together a research plan with the goal to:
- Understand what people look for, and value most, when hiring photography services for their wedding or private event
- Gain insight into the objections, questions, and concerns people have around adding a 360 photo booth to their event
- Understand the motivations and desired outcomes that lead to someone booking a photo booth service
- Analyze the current competition and take note of any patterns and opportunities to better service clients
Because I was redesigning the website and adding a new service, I spent some time analyzing competitors (see full competitor analysis here) in the 360 photo-booth space, as well as those in wedding photography - before moving on to user surveys.
What Motivates People To Book Photography Services?
I created a survey, using Typeform, with 8 questions (primarily open-ended) geared towards gaining deeper insight into the motivations, expectations, and questions/concerns people have around booking photography services for their wedding and/or private event.
11 participants completed the survey, each person falling into 1 of 3 categories:
- Experience booking/working with a photographer at a wedding or event
- In the process of planning a wedding or private event in the near future
- Familiar with photo booth rentals
Research Findings
Pain Points
The 2 most common pain points mentioned were pricing & space issues.
- 4 out of 11 (36%) participants mentioned budget concerns
- 3 out of 11 (27%) participants mentioned space being an issue. They needed to know space requirements in advance and how/where the photo booth would fit at their event
Needs & Expectations
Transparent pricing:
"Price is important. This is not something I can include in a photo on my wall or in an album. It seems to function the best with social media, which may not be my focus so I need the price to be easily accessible and transparent."Seeing how it works:
"I would like to see how the technology works, would definitely need to see previous experiences from past clients, maybe photos and testimonials.”Feedback from past clients:
"I’d want to see reviews of people who have booked it for their event in addition to a live action feed where you could see some sort of “scrolling photo reel” in the way Instagram is set up of peoples photos.."Ease of use:
"It would be nice to have someone from the company guiding the guests how to use it/pose, as there might be a learning curve with guests."
Define
Who Are We Speaking To & Designing For?
This was the question I needed to answer before moving forward. While the photo booth service could be for any type of event, my client expressed his desire to keep the website relevant to his target audience: brides and event planners looking for a wedding photographer.
With this in mind, I created a persona around a bride in the process of hiring photographers and vendors for her upcoming special day.
Mapping Our User’s Journey
We know who we're designing for. The next area of focus was mapping out the path our persona would take to learn about the photo booth service and inquire - without feeling confused or overwhelmed.
Design
Before jumping into Figma I created a moodboard and a few wireframes to share with my client to get approval.
During this process, the #1 question that led my design decisions was:
“How could I make it as easy (and desirable) as possible for my user to show up and practice mindfulness today?”
These sketches then turned into wireframes using Figma.
From Wireframes To UI Designs
With my client’s approval, I moved on to the next steps of building out a simple brand style guide and breathing life into the wireframes by adding the UI elements.
Before Photos (Screenshots of Current Site)
For reference, here's how the Prime Visuals website looked/currently looks before the redesign.
Test
Conducting Usability Tests
7 people in total participated in this usability test via Maze.co’s remote testing tool.
Each participant was given the same task: Learn more about Prime Visuals’ new service, 360 Photo Booth, and submit an inquiry about renting a booth for an upcoming event.
Test Findings
- 57.1% of participants completed the task using the expected flow (Home → Photobooth Page → Contact Page → Confirmation Page)
- Participants rated the photo booth inquiry experience an average of 8.4 out of 10 for ease and straight-forwardness (lowest rating being a 6)
- 57.1% of participants (3 of 7) expected to see more info/visuals about the photobooth - including the equipment in use, final photos, and locations
- 100% of participants found the site to be clean and well organized
Insights
Put an emphasis on the visuals: Potential clients need to see the photo booth in action to have a clear idea of how it works and what the experience will be like for guests.
Don't Underestimate Social Proof: 42.9% of participants clicked on “View Portfolio” on the homepage before completing the task - suggesting their expectation to see the quality of work at past events before booking Prime Visuals.
Reflections
Challenges
The biggest challenge for me during this project was designing for a service that didn’t exist yet, and finding placeholder content that still allowed users to see the vision of the product.
Because this is a fairly new service, there wasn’t many royalty-free or unbranded photos or videos of people using a 360 Photo Booth, so I had to improvise. Also, because the clients have yet to purchase the photo booth and offer it at events, this redesign update will be on hold until they do.
This ended up being helpful to my client because a few people already expressed interest in booking their service after participating in the survey and usability test.
Future Roadmap
The next steps involve replacing any placeholder images, gifs, and videos with real content once the client has these elements available.
I also plan on working with the co-founder to implement this design into their website platform (currently using WIX). For now, the project is on hold until they purchase the necessary equipment to rent and operate the 360 photo booth.