Virgin Wines website evaluation & iteration
Virgin Wines approached the BSc UX Design course for the second year running, this time asking students to evaluate and redesign three distinct areas of their site. As project coordinator, I worked with the student teams throughout, shaping the research approach, reviewing progress at each stage, and helping them build towards a client presentation.
The brief
The client wanted students to explore three pages: the checkout flow (from sign-in through to order confirmation), the Wine Tastings / Live Events page, and the About Us page. Virgin Wines had recently completed a rebrand, and wanted fresh thinking on the user experience of each section, both on desktop and mobile.
This created a useful design challenge from the outset, with the majority of site visits coming from mobile, but many purchases being made on desktop. Every design decision had to work across both platforms, often with quite different interaction patterns to navigate.
My role
I coordinated the project across five student teams, each working on solutions for all three site sections. My job was to align them around a shared research approach early on, run regular reviews as the work developed, and ensure the final output was coherent enough to present confidently to the client, CEO Jay Wright. Projects like this are always a balance between giving students the space to make their own decisions and making sure the work stays grounded and credible.
Research & discovery
The teams started with an audit of each section via Nielsen's heuristics, which quickly surfaced some clear areas for enhancement. Competitor analysis gave students a useful benchmark. User journey mapping then helped trace the emotional ups and downs of moving through the Virgin Wines site, clarifying where friction was building up, particularly in the events booking flow and the transition from browsing to purchase. Virgin Wines ecommerce team provided quant insights from multiple analytics platforms.
Outcome
The teams presented their work to Virgin Wines senior leadership at their offices in Norwich. The client responded positively to the range of approaches and the rigour behind the thinking — particularly around the complexity of the checkout experience and how the teams had handled the mobile/desktop split. It was a great result, and a good reminder of how much students rise to a brief when there's a real client in the room.
View case studies for this project on our graduates' portfolio websites: