https://www.gardenofestherpasta.com/

"You are amazing. It's nice that I can always count on you. That quality is hard to find."

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- Esther Chin, Founder, Garden of Esther

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Within six months, this website was the FIRST Google result for several search terms.

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How?

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Esther worked hard on the ground and I worked hard on the site and blog. Partnership!

Esther had been having great success at her local farmers markets and although she had a bare-bones site, she was ready for a more professional look.

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Since she is selling food, Esther needed some top-notch photography.

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Her landing page is actually a scrolling gallery of her pasta shapes and flavors.

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(Note her logo in the bottom left corner.)

Garden of Esther has a terrific origin story and we wanted visitors to have access to that right away.

Next, we wanted visitors to see the wide array of pasta she makes. There are quite a few of them, so the challenge was to feature them all at once.

Within just a few months, Esther had so expanded her offerings that we had to rearrange her Our Pastas section.

At first, Esther was only selling her pastas at local farmers markets. Therefore, it was important to make sure potential customers were always knew where and when to find her. This section was designed to make it quick and easy to add and subtract markets as her business grew and changed. We've had as many as eight and as few as three markets featured here.

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We switched to a dark background to give greater visual contrast between sections - especially important on mobile devices.

As Esther grew her business, she expanded into the wholesale market. Her Where to Find Us area has two sections - one for retail/farmers markets and one for restaurants and stores.  

Testimonials and reviews are key when you're selling food. Esther had done a great job collecting reviews in person and through her Facebook page, so I had dozens to choose from. We layered them over a scrolling gallery of her pastas and the raw ingredients. She grows most of her herbs herself and sources many of her ingredients locally and we wanted to demonstrate that with pictures.

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The plain white background makes the colors of the pastas and herbs really pop.

The bulk of Esther's site is on one long scroll-able landing page - another acknowledgment of the mobile audience that doesn't want to flip from page to page.

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But one of Esther's business goals with her new site was to allow for e-commerce - she wanted her customers to be able to order their pasta ahead of time online (and then pick it up at the market of their choice).

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"Order Ahead" gets its own tab and page (many pages, truth be told) where customers can browse the week's selection and purchase with a credit card from any device. Esther is notified via email every time an order is placed (and all of its details).

Esther also committed to an active blog which she asked me to manage. She sent me photos and brief descriptions and I turned them into blog posts for her. I posted over 180 times since we launched the site in January of 2019.

Esther also had plans for a monthly newsletter, but to do that she needed subscribers. We've added a subscribe button to the footer of her site and integrated it with Mailchimp so that everyone who signs up here is automatically added to the Mailchimp account we use to create and send the newsletters.

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The birthday coupon was meant to entice visitors to sign up.

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The Google Review button makes it easy for her pasta-loving audience to leave her a Google review - key for small, local businesses.

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And we chose a palette of calm greens to coordinate with the leaves of her logo and to echo the "garden" in Garden of Esther.

And here is the first newsletter (click on the image to see the entire thing). For now, Esther is primarily building awareness of her brand and reminding her dedicated subscribers that they can order ahead of time on the new website.

Esther's response to the first newsletter?

"Awesome job! "

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Next, Esther asked me to create a flyer for her to use in her wholesaling efforts.  Using Canva, I made this two-sided template. As she changes her pasta selections, she can add and subtract new photos and captions herself.

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Is this website design? Not exactly. But it is helping women entrepreneurs achieve their goals - which is all part of my business.

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Since then, Esther asked me to create several other media pieces, including these two-sided flyers:

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And this one-sided flyer, designed to be used as a full sheet or as something she could cut in half, depending on her audience:

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As her business grew, we seized additional marketing opportunities. I wrote and designed this "advertorial" and advertisement which appears in a printed guide to her local hometown.