Level Crossing Brewing
Background:
Level Crossing Brewing serves the Salt Lake City community with their award winning beer, carefully crafted wood fired pizza and inviting taprooms. The brewery recently opened their second location, and aims for continued growth within the state. The Level Crossing website plays a crucial role for the business by directing customers to their online food orders, displaying operational taproom information and hosting the details of their extensive beer list.
Project Summery:
The Level Crossing Brewing website is in need of a redesign. The page suffers from messy navigation and site architecture. The site responds poorly to varying screen sizes and the user interface lacks cohesion with the brand.
The goal for this redesign project is to build a user experience that simplifies user flow, boosts online sales and aligns with the Level Crossing brand.
Getting Started:
Heuristic analysis and user testing identified some key issues of the current Level Crossing Brewing website:
The site is not mobile responsive, which led to certain links becoming inaccessible
Unbalanced font and image sizing
Accessibility difficulties due to color selections
User testing showed that site navigation was not intuitive, and users had a difficult time finding important call-to-action links such as; Brewery location information and hours, events, online food ordering, and the online merch store
The stakeholder, Level Crossing Brewing’s, needs for this project include a design that is easy to navigate on both desktop and mobile, where the user can easily find important information such as location and operating hours, and which will boost online food ordering and merchandise sales.
(Current Navigation)
(New Navigation)
I worked on the site navigation and information architecture before starting the wireframe. While taking both user and stakeholder needs into account, the site information was simplified into fewer pages. Two call-to-action buttons were created for the food and merchandise stores for easier navigation. A competitive analysis gave inspiration and insight into what is offered by other websites in the brewery industry.
Simplicity was foremost in mind during the design phase. My aim was to use a limited amount of tactful copy mixed with large and inviting images. Level Crossing Brewing visitors are often most interested in buying a drink, so emphasis was placed on showcasing their award winning beer. Users are invited to explore the catalog of brews just past the hero section of the home screen. A sub navigation was created within the “Beer” section to ease the browsing experience.
Much of this project’s visual design system was informed by the brewery’s existing brand guidelines. I strived to strike a balance between the traditional tone of the logo and color palate with their whimsical catalog of the beers. My 10+ years of experience as a professional photographer was put to use as I created fresh photographic imagery for the site, which created a cohesive feel.
