UX writing & design
This is a case story about creating a website and brand for a startup called Book Bunny Cafe, the first rabbit cafe in America! In this role, I...
1. served as the sole UX Writer
2. conducted and synthesized market research
3. designed and built starter website
4. managed social media and crowdfunding content
I was thrilled to co-create this new startup and get the Book Bunny Cafe team up and running prior to their venture capitalist funding. Here's the story.
Our client has always been passionate about animals—especially rabbits! As a business graduate looking to break into the restaurant industry, our client was eager to meld her professional skills with her love for adorable bunnies, and so we together created the idea of...
Book Bunny Cafe, the first rabbit cafe in America
Much like a cat cafe, this rabbit cafe would feature rabbits (instead of cats) for cafe-goers to play with and adopt. But in order to make my client's dream cafe a reality, we would first have to conduct lots and lots of market research.
Mockup image of Book Bunny Cafe
We knew that creating a beautiful and functional website and social media presence would not be enough to launch this lofty (and fluffy) endeavor. I focused on building out a web presence and optimizing site SEO.
But first, our UX Designer did some research. Our team then conducted a survey to assess:
A.) what do residents like about cat cafes?
B.) what are prospective customers missing from current cafe venues?
C.) what might draw local patrons to a coffee shop in Minnesota?
After my designer crunched some words and numbers, I took our team data and built out all our social media pages, company website, and a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign to mirror the business approach of the first rabbit cafe in Vancouver, Canada.
Startups are complicated. They require extensive planning, yet they demand flexibility. A new company must be adaptable and change its game plan to address unexpected pitfalls…or new opportunities.
My client’s loftiest goal? Funding. In order to become a successful startup, this business would need to garner attention on its social media platforms and prepare for its first crowdfunding venture accordingly.
And the best way to grab online attention? A good game plan that includes excellent search engine optimization (SEO) to allow readers to find us, targeted market outreach to attract a broad audience, and engaging storytelling that inspires potential patrons to donate to the startup.
My client asked me, “what’s the difference between regular writing and UX writing?” Excellent question!
UX Writing is a form of writing that is clear, concise, and straightforward at all times. It guides readers through a website or app in order to help them accomplish a goal. And while the writer's goal is not to advertise a product or increase sales, good UX writing can certainly boost business goals when used effectively.
Copywriting, on the other hand, should influence a reader’s thoughts, feelings, and responses about a product or service. With this in mind, and knowing our project demanded both strategic UX writing and copywriting, I carefully crafted written content for the fundraiser and launched our product on targeted social media outlets.
By the end of the weekend, our team was contacted by two local media outlets that published features on the cafe.
This targeted campaign resulted in a HUGE boost for our fundraiser. Within two weeks of launching, we exceeded our initial goal of $1,500.00 in crowdfunding.
This project also allowed for some playtime as our team iterated on design concepts. We landed on this delicate bunny design that evokes feelings of calm and nostalgia. Paired with a stack of books, it became the perfect logo for all our marketing materials.
A few of our iterations are here:
Good content is important, but it must also be placed correctly on the page in order to be optimized.
If it's placed too far down on the page, a search engine may miss it. The optimized page content I created for Book Bunny helped to boost SEO.
Title tags let a browser know what text to display in the browser's tabs and title bar.
So I ensured all the title tags on each page of BookBunnyCafe.com were correctly positioned and consistent with thoughtful keywords.
Plenty of people search for rabbit restaurants and bunny cafes.
Or rabit resterants and buny cafees.
And so I incorporated lots of terms (including misspellings) into our code so patrons could easily find us.
While I will continue to aid Book Bunny Cafe as they navigate their way through the funding process, I leave my team with intuitively functional webpages, thriving social media accounts, and over $2,300.00 in starting crowd funds to help them attract the attention of potential investors in the future.
It was a joy and honor to help Book Bunny Cafe hop into the spotlight, and I can’t wait to work with the team again when the cafe doors open in a few years!
