the short

At the request of a family member, I began work on redesigning, adding e-commerce functionality to, and relaunching the website of Surh Cellars, a small batch wine business working out of Napa, California. Although this winery already had an existing website, the design was out of touch with modern wine website aesthetics and there was no existing e-commerce functionality. Through collaborating with Surh Cellars' owner, I was able to create on online platform that better serves the needs of its users.

Design

As the winery already had a logo and a set of in-use graphics, I had to design around the existing graphical language with an emphasis on color and font choices. I chose to focus on a simple color scheme, pulling out the oranges, reds, and cream colors from the logo and wine labels in order to maintain visual cohesiveness. I also chose header and body fonts that match the font and overall feel of the pre-existing graphic content.

Due to the client's specific requests, I shaped the design of the website around furthering the current brand and allowing for ease of use, given that the winery had, up until this point, little to no online presence. Although this design is functional, I plan to make additional changes in the near future to make the layout and stylistic choices more elegant.

building

Although the winery did not have much of an online presence, it already had an established routine and set of skills used for doing business, which ultimately provided a number of restrictions to the way in which I could build out the e-commerce functionality. As the winery uses Converge, a product of Elavon, I used a number of systems including FoxyCart and Shippo to handle transactions, as well as services such as Mailchimp and Webflow to build other functionalities. Due to the juggling of multiple platforms, I initially had some difficulties with staying organized, however was able to pull everything together after reading enough documentation and finding an efficient organizational system.

Although at times difficult, especially when working alongside classes, this project taught me many valuable skills in management and resourcefulness. I am glad that the winery can now handle more transactions online, and I hope that this step will greatly improve sales going forward!