Café Juliet

Project Overview
Café Juliet is a Muslim-owned local café in Staten Island, New York that opened in late 2023. As the café became more popular, the business lacked a dedicated website to showcase its brand, menu, and atmosphere online.
To support their growing customer base, I designed and coded a responsive website from scratch highlighting Café Juliet's identity while providing customers with an accessible way to explore the menu and learn more about the business.
Role
Tasks
Tools
Time
Why does Café Juliet need a website?
Café Juliet was open for a few months and started gaining more customers, so they would like to build a website that revolves around their existing brand while addressing their customers’ needs.
How did we want to address this?
Create a responsive website that allows customers to easily access Café Juliet’s menu and learn more about the café’s atmosphere.
What did I do to improve the café’s digital presence?
- designed and coded a fully responsive website using HTML and CSS, ensuring accessibility across digital platforms
- implemented text-based menu listings to improve readability; compared to scanned menus commonly found on competitor sites
- analyzed research insights to create user personas and moodboards and guide the digital interface and design decisions
Measurable outcomes & improvements
- created ~7 responsive screens and an improved brand design to align with the café’s atmosphere, maintain consistency, and improve readability
- conducted 2 surveys with ~50 participants and competitor analysis to identify 5 key usability issues to improve with this site
- made the café’s menu directly accessible in 1 click to customers compared to several searching through images and other sites
Understanding the café’s users & competitors
Before designing the website, I conducted a competitive analysis on different café websites on Staten Island to understand common patterns and usability issues.
Here is some key information I found after researching some competitor websites:
- establish a responsive layout to make sure users can access the site from different digital devices
- maintain clear, consistent branding to strengthen the brand identity and user trust
- avoid hard-to-read menu formats, like images
Additionally, here’s some insight I gained after conducting surveys with overall coffee shop customers:
- customers value a calm and cozy in-store atmosphere, I can reflect this feeling onto the website
- accessibility across devices is crucial to appeal to all audiences through all platforms
- strengthening the café’s online presence will help attract new customers
My ideation & design process
I guided my design decisions based on the analytics from user surveys and competitive analysis. With this information, I created several deliverables prior to the main site:
- mid-fidelity wireframes
- moodboard, updated style guide, and a refined logo
- clear information architecture map
- created 2 personas representing an existing Café Juliet customer and a potential new visitor
Impacts, constraints, and growth
Designing and coding this website independently was a great learning experience and helped deepen my understanding of the full UI/UX design process from research and ideation to design and development.
I also presented this project at my college’s Undergraduate Research Conference and showcased the design process and research behind the website.
Successes
- designed a fully functional and responsive website from scratch using HTML, CSS, and Figma
- modernized the website’s design system and branding
- provided Café Juliet with a dedicated website to expand its online presence beyond Instagram and delivery platforms
What I learned
- design decisions have a direct impact on user experience, even if we don’t realize it as it happens
- conducted UX research for the first time: user surveys and competitor analysis
Challenges
- independently learned the UX and website design processes
- creating a customer-centric design and using user research to guide design decisions
Next steps
- create a prototype to showcase the latest version
- conduct usability testing with staff and customers to gather actionable feedback
- propose website to café owners and inquire about publishing
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