Into The Wild Design Alexis - Denise - Ryan - Tommy

Seventh Son Brewing Co.

Seventh Son Brewing Co. is a local brewery located at 1101 N. 4th Street in Columbus, Ohio. They’ve been operating here since 2013, and are currently brewing 53 craft beers (mostly ales and IPAs) that can be purchased at 31 retail locations and 95 bars and restaurants. There are about 20 local breweries in Columbus, so Seventh Son Brewing Co. is operating within a fairly competitive industry. The company is very interested in creating a good environment for its customers in its physical space, and we believe that their website could better reflect this mission.

Within the past three years, Seventh Son Brewing Co. has taken the craft beer industry by storm while rapidly increasing its presence all around the Columbus area. As the company continues to grow, visitors to their website will grow, as well. Our goal is to redesign the brewery's website to better represent Seventh Son Brewing Co.’s brand and improve the website's navigation and appearance to reduce the loss of future customers.

Research Method

To acquire a comprehensive set of user feedback on the design, navigation and usability of seventhsonbrewing.com, we conducted a survey using Qualtrics. Our target sample number for February 18th was 30, but we hope to raise the number throughout the course to around 80-100 people. Qualtrics Survey software allowed us to create and distribute our survey in a fast manner via word of mouth, email and online social media networks. We decided that this method was an ideal choice for the type of research we were conducting and for the time frame of this project.

Participants

We spread our survey through our immediate personal networks (friends, family, co-workers), social media pages and the class list for this course. We also contacted Ohio State's beer and wine course professor to access the class list. In addition, we circulated the survey hyperlink among the people in various organizations, clubs or activities we are involved in. We asked survey takers to look at the website before or during the survey and then answer 21 questions regarding their personal attributes, the website's design and the website's usability.

Our goal was to acquire survey responses from a diverse set of people, as the leisure activity of drinking beer is enjoyed by a vast array of people around the world. The nature of Seventh Son Brewing Co’s business was helpful for our data collection because we didn't necessarily have to target our survey to any hyper-specific group, other than those who were somewhat interested in beer and were above the legal drinking age of 21. A large portion of our respondents came from our personal Facebook or Twitter friends, but we also had responses from different people of other demographics by distributing the survey to older co-workers, family members and other professional or personal acquaintances.

Surveying: The Good & Bad

While we were able to gain valuable information from this research, there were a few adjustments we want make when we perform our research again in the future.

  • While the survey questions allowed us to generalize what the best course of action would be when redesigning Seventh Son Brewing Co.'s website, there were not many questions specifying much detail about those taking the survey. This information would have been helpful when drawing further conclusions about our target audience.
  • Additionally, we would conduct a user-testing survey. To do this, we would launch a survey that opened with a link to seventhsonbrewing.com and subsequently asked respondents to perform a series of tasks on the website. Upon either completion or frustration, the participants would be asked to respond to a series of open-ended prompts detailing their experience while executing the list of tasks.

Research Findings

Within one day of launching our online survey, we collected 32 survey responses . The average age of participants was 24.75 years old, which means we were able to accurately hit our targeted age range. In addition, 59 percent of participants indicated that they were either “very interested” or “extremely interested” in craft beer while 31 percent said they were “moderately interested.” While these responses did not tell us much about the design of the website, they ensured that the data we gathered from the rest of the survey would effectively lead us to make valid decisions when redeveloping Seventh Son Brewery’s website.

Are You Familiar With Seventh Son Brewery?

Our survey showed that 63 percent of participants were at least slightly familiar with Seventh Son Brewing Company, while 38 percent had never heard of them before. This variety of familiarity is useful because those who are unfamiliar with the company viewed the website with an unbiased eye, while those familiar with the company provided insight into whether the website conveyed the image and message of the company.

Would You Return to Seventh Son Brewery's Website?

After visiting the website, the majority of participants listed that they were “slightly likely” to visit Seventh Son Brewing Company. This indicates that our client has a product that is attractive and has the potential to turn a profit. However, 28 percent of participants indicated that they were slightly to moderately unlikely to return to the current website and not one user said they were extremely likely to return. In order to be a valuable asset to the company, this website must be used as a tool to not only draw in new customers, but to keep past customers coming back.

Was Navigating The Website Easy?

When asked how easy it was to navigate through the website, 41 percent of participants responded with “somewhat easy,” while 22 indicated they had encountered some difficulty. With this in mind, 41 percent of the survey takers stated they would recommend that the information on the site be reorganized.

Was The Website Attractive?

Participants also indicated that the site was not visually appealing, which is a problem for any website, regardless of the market because an unattractive website could turn away potential customers. Our survey found that 66 percent of responses stated that the company’s website was moderately attractive and 19 percent stated that the website was slightly attractive or not attractive at all. In order to be successful, the majority of responses should be at “very attractive” or better.

Does The Website Reflect The Brand's Image?

It feels slightly impersonal. There's nothing eye-catching and having visited Seventh Sons before, I feel like the website does not evoke the same personality as the brewery."

Website Users

The average user of the Seventh Son Brewing Co. website is identified as someone between the ages of 21 and 45 years old. They have disposable income and an interest in local or craft beer. Since the average user’s economic status is middle to upper class, we can assume that they have steady access to technology and are relatively familiar with browsing the Internet. As the site represents a local business, we can also assume that many of the site’s visitors are previous customers of Seventh Son Brewing Co. or potential future customers. These potential customers have heard of the business either through word-of-mouth or by reading local food and beverage reviews.

Problem Statement

After reviewing the survey data and problem areas highlighted by our participants, we have identified the key areas that need our attention when redeveloping Seventh Son Brewery’s website. These areas include:

  • The organization of information (Navigation menu, social media links, hierarchy of text and the categorization of beer)
  • Improving the site’s visual appeal (Color scheme, unreadable text and lack of images)
  • Matching the website theme to the company’s brand image

Solution Statement

  1. Choose a font that is not all uppercase and stay consistent with that font all throughout the website
  2. Reorganize textual information on pages in a way that involved less scrolling and the use of hierarchy like on the “Find Seventh Son Beer” page and the “Beer” page
  3. The text “Food Truck Schedule” page is all one-size font and the text is uppercase. This is hard to read because it uses no hierarchy and the links on the page look as if they are apart of the normal text and get clicked on by accident.
  4. Change the name of the “Find Seventh Son Beer” page to reduce confusion when looking for the location of the brewery.
  5. Create a consistent layout between all pages
  6. Improve and add additional social media links and incorporate social media feed on website so that people can use the website as a source to be constantly updated about the brewery
  7. Add images of products and more images of Seventh Son Brewing Co.’s bar to enhance the dynamic of the webpage
  8. Create a better way to view pictures on the “Rental Info” page so that customers can get a better understanding of the space they are renting
  9. Eliminate unnecessary pages: The “hours” page could move into header/footer and the “Contact” page is unnecessary because their contact information is displayed In the header
  10. Combine pages that share the same relevance like the “Rental Info” and “Retail Kegs” could be combined into one page
  11. Create a webform for the “contact” page
  12. Add article titles to press page and eliminate links by incorporating the article content on the page instead of having to open multiple windows to see reviews
  13. Organize the “Beer” page by categorizing the types of brews. We can do this by adding drop down menus within the navigation bar.
  14. Make sure the website matches thematically with the image the company is trying to convey.

Next Steps

  • Add questions to survey that better measure user needs
  • Recruit additional survey respondents
  • Create inventory of existing site content
  • Solidify re-designed site architecture/vocabulary
  • Solidify re-designed navigation architecture/vocabulary
  • Finalize color scheme
  • Create first prototypes of re-designed website
ANY QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS?
Created By
alexis winters
Appreciate

Made with Adobe Slate

Make your words and images move.

Get Slate

Report Abuse

If you feel that this video content violates the Adobe Terms of Use, you may report this content by filling out this quick form.

To report a Copyright Violation, please follow Section 17 in the Terms of Use.