Sharing my take on experience design, based on ten years of owning a brick and mortar in Brooklyn. (Tipsy | Wine + Spirits Shop for those of you who didn’t know that I have two companies. Give us a follow!)
Shopping for wine should be fun. Full stop.
The problem: Too often, shoppers are stressed and confused because they aren’t confident in their knowledge and they don’t want to make a mistake. Can tech help? I guess. But honoring that customers are humans striving for empowerment and personal touch helps even more.
We tackled this dilemma with low tech user-centered solutions:
1. Develop a store design based on people’s dominant knowledge/preference (varietal instead of region)
2. Stick with displays that make help shoppers make sense of the product or help them focus (lowest to highest price in each section)
3. Create labels that offer the most useful info that consumers care about, including short, plain English descriptions, pairing suggestions, info on natural/organic status, and symbols to represent women or POC owned/made. (Pro tip: this also helps with staff training.)
4. Build in moments of delight. We use markers that infuse humor (“guilty pleasure”/“YOLO”/“will keep you warm”) and they work.
5. Hire people with restaurant experience so they are used to speaking with folks in lay terms and are welcoming instead of exclusionary.
The result: People continue to shop with us even after leaving the neighborhood and it’s not uncommon to hear people chuckle in the aisles when they notice some cheeky labels that are intended to add fun instead of stress.
Creating experiences is one of my great joys. I’d love to hear from you all what makes an experience (shopping/travel/conference/meetings) special or fun.
Wanna support us? Shop online at shoptipsy.com or come see us in Clinton Hill. We also create kick ass tasting events for corporate groups.
Three Furies is a certified woman-owned business, brand, and content strategy agency with deep experience in the legal marketing sector, including digital marketing analysis, brand and digital design, communications strategy, and advertising campaigns. We also produce bespoke wine tasting experiences for client development and employee resource groups through our sister company Tipsy.