The challenge
Cake Creations needed a website that brought its menu, business information, and ordering options together. My goal was to help customers find what they needed while preserving the bakery’s local identity.
I led the design work from research and information architecture through wireframes, prototype testing, and responsive visual design.
Customers needed confidence before choosing a cake
I used interviews, competitive analysis, personas, and journey mapping to identify recurring friction in cake discovery and ordering.
- Confidence in quality: customers wanted reassurance about what they were choosing.
- Planning a visit: customers needed to anticipate the available products.
- Local connection: supporting the business was part of a broader connection to the community.
I compared five bakery competitors - three direct and two indirect - across product information, ordering options, and brand presentation. Missing menus and unclear availability helped identify opportunities for a clearer browsing experience. I also developed a provisional persona to guide the questions and assumptions I would test.
Prioritizing discovery, trust, and ordering
I compared user needs, business goals, and technical considerations to prioritize features. Product discovery came first in the roadmap, followed by reassurance about quality and ways to contact the bakery.
- Help customers choose: organize products into categories with photography and availability information.
- Build confidence: make room for the bakery’s story, featured products, and customer testimonials.
- Support ordering: provide clear ordering instructions and a mobile calling option.
These were design priorities. The roadmap’s click-tracking metrics were proposed measures, not recorded results.
The sitemap documents the planned page structure, including product browsing, account access, and checkout. It places location and hours within About, consistent with the usability finding discussed below.
I moved from sketches to low- and mid-fidelity wireframes in Adobe XD, focusing on the essential pages and navigation before refining the visual design.
View planning and wireframe artifacts
How research changed the design
Old navigation / prototype
I expected users to find location and hours in the footer.
View early wireframes → (opens in a new tab)5 of 5 users searched About
Every participant looked under About for the bakery’s location and hours.
Revised information architecture
I added a dedicated “Location and hours” section to About in the high-fidelity prototype.
View sitemap → (opens in a new tab)Usability testing
I asked five participants to complete navigation tasks in the prototype.
Finding 1
5/5 users searched About for store information. I had expected them to use the footer for location and hours.
Change
I added a dedicated “Location and hours” section to About in the high-fidelity prototype.
I used affinity mapping to organize the observed patterns and prioritize revisions. The five-person study identified a navigation expectation; a follow-up study would be needed to measure whether the revision improves task completion.
Final experience
What I learned
This project reinforced that information architecture problems often surface through small behavioral cues. Users repeatedly looking in the same unexpected location became a stronger design signal than my original assumptions about where store information belonged.
Next, I would test whether customers can find store information in About and complete the end-to-end ordering flow, recording task completion, navigation errors, and points of hesitation. Before testing, I would replace placeholder content and review small text and accent-color contrast. Keyboard navigation and screen-reader behavior would need evaluation in an implemented website.