Jan 20
Website for Curate Entertainment — A Case Study
Curate Entertainment pitched us its vision of representing itself as a sophisticated and high-end brand of skilled DJs and entertainers. Our mission was simple, to tell a compelling story to the potential clients of Curate through an immersive and memorable experience on its website. From the design of the website to each color chosen for the elements, every piece had to play its part in delivering an attractive experience for everyone who visits the online home of the brand.
Based in Florida, Curate Entertainment targets high-end wedding parties to provide entertainment services. Our major clients belong to the upper class, especially women who are soon to be married. We envisioned portraying the story of Curate in a refreshing yet elegant manner.
Here’s how we went about it.
Research Methodology
Dissecting the old website: Our research started with us going in and out of the previous website and finding out the strengths and weaknesses in its design and structure. The criteria for analysis primarily lay with UI/UX and how easy was it for customers to gain, retain and deliver information.
To understand the mindset of both Curate and the end-users of the website, questionnaires were designed to gather information as part of the research.
Visual Direction
For any company to thrive, it needs to have a certain emotional attachment to its customers. From Apple to Red Bull, each company sets a mood for its customer through its branding. To decide on what is the mood that we wanted to set with the visitors and how we wanted Curate to be perceived, certain keywords were shortlisted. Luxury. Clean. Sophisticated. Wedding. Fun. Party.
For all the people who visit the website, these words describe the part of the subconscious we wanted to tap into. But to set the mood, we need to first express it for the other person to reciprocate.
The human face and body are the two best channels to express the mood of a person in the physical world. Equivalently, in the digital world, pictures do the same task. To set the mood, a collection of pictures was assembled. The mood board had to be in line with the shortlisted keywords.
Coloring the Subconscious
Colors give life to any brand’s identity. Unconsciously, we start to associate colors with different brands. From Coke’s red to Pepsi’s blue, each color makes its way into the clients’ minds for long-term retention and identity. Once the mood was set, it was time to pick up the colors that portray it properly. The following mixture was concocted to portray the theme of Curate.
Cream Silk and Pastel Pink lie on the light end of the color spectrum and help fulfill the luxury and sophisticated wedding feel of Curate’s brand identity. Brown Sugar & Eerie Black help fulfill the mood of cleanliness and a solid party. Sister colors of Cream Silk & Eerie Black are often used by high-end brands such as Zara, Versace, etc. to portray their element of exclusivity.
The branding attempt on the previous website indicated that the team wanted to convey a theme of being a posh and premium wedding entertainment company. Within this broad outline, lies the element of bringing fun and energizing entertainment. Discussion with the Curate team helped us unearth this theme.
While the previous website focused primarily on pictures to represent its soul, we began to think of new ways to create a digital expression for Curate. We broke down the entire experience that we wanted to provide the visitors into two pillars, immersive and modular.
Immersion is Key
When the website is opened for the first time, there is a phrase waiting for the visitors:
Curiosity is what made humans accomplish great feats. This page leverages the same instinct inside everyone’s mind. Beneath the phrase lies the button of “Explore”. Humans gain and retain information better when they engage in something instead of a one-way information pathway. The purpose of this button is to push every visitor to engage with the website so the brain becomes attentive and ready for what’s about to come, just like a video game’s “Start” button.
Animating With Purpose
For any brand to succeed, getting into the mind of its customers is key. For Curate, the key decision-makers who finalize the bookings are brides. To make the homepage familiar to them, we designed it in a way that scrolling through it feels like walking down the aisle. Here, animations played their pivotal part. Each scroll results in showing the next piece of information progressively, just as if the bride took her next step on the aisle. On the homepage, the customer is also greeted with a soothing wedding instrumental.
The fluid movement of sparkles and tiny circles filled with the brand’s primary Pastel Pink color are all chosen with the bridal inspiration in mind.
The text and media all appear in a symmetric transitory manner that makes the website alive and engaging. In an age of shrinking attention spans, the purpose here was to not let any potential customer lose interest.
Setting up the main scene
We knew from the get-go that we wanted to do a scroll transition that makes you feel as if you’re walking towards something. An important part of the experience was the camera flow when scrolling from one point to the next. To do this, we leveraged the power of THREE.js — which is a JavaScript library that lets you render 3D scenes on the browser. We attached the mouse wheel event (touch event in mobile devices) with the movement of our main camera. Scrolling up and down moved you forward and backward in the scene, respectively.
For some additional wedding vibes, we wanted to add tiny floating particles throughout the scene. The best way to implement that was to use THREE. Points, as it lets you add hundreds of objects to the scene without compromising the overall performance. These floating particles were designed to resemble confetti falling from above.
The AIDA Model
The entire experience is designed in a way that it takes the customer through the marketing funnel to an ultimate purchase decision. To implement this, the entire website is packaged into 4 modules.
Module 1: About Us — Makes the visitor aware of the brand
Module 2: The Experience — Develops interest for the brand in the mind of the customer
Module 3: Our Services — Guides through the decision points at hand
Module 4: Are You Ready? — Guides the customer to take the action of booking Curate
Instead of bombarding the user with all the information at once, which becomes too much to process, we decided to break down the experience into the above-mentioned 4 modules that lead to each other in order.
The Curate Ecosystem
Per the AVA (Awareness. Visibility. Availability.) principle used by marketers, we incorporated maximum touchpoints for the visitors. The supplementary modules of Blogs and Contact Us operate as navigator paths for customers who already have expressed their interest in the brand. The paths include touchpoints from multiple social media platforms that help increase its AVA and grow the brand digitally.
Conclusion
The novel experience developed for Curate Entertainment is currently available at https://www.curateentertainment.com/. You can immerse yourself in Curate’s world by visiting the website now.
