Case Study(this) - the Rook & Key

The Actual Person Behind This All, (“Rook & Key”)

Introduction:

The Client in this Case was the (fictional) CEO and Manager of The Rook & Key Bookstore and Coffeehouse; they were looking for both a rebranding and a website to go with it, to advertise their newest storefront in Carmel, CA, and to sell their well-known coffee online.

Problem / Client Needs:

For the rebranding, they would need a logo, as well as business cards, letterheads, envelopes, and some promotional product mockups, since part of their business model includes selling gifts. For the website, aside from the obvious hosting and domain, they want a full storefront where they can sell their books, as well as a place they can sell their coffee and very rarely, a particularly exceptional rare book. Alongside the website, they are also interested in establishing a Social Media presence on a few of the larger Social Media platforms, and a connected blog and mailing list for repeat customers to be updated about in-store events, sales, and new items. Google Analytics and Mailchimp were suggested as ways to keep track of their users.

Solution: The domain was set up easily, and the hosting service made it very simple to install WordPress and Divi, as well as Google Analytics, WooCommerce, and Yoast SEO. Further plugins can be found and installed easily for future web techs.

The colors for the design were taken from the common colors used to decorate their storefront: dark wood, red leather, green wallpaper, and light cream colored paper. We quickly settled for a color theme of #591521(red), #111C1D(green), #F4EEE3(cream), #D7A15C(gold), and #160D1E(dark wood/redblack). Fonts were chosen through Google Web Fonts, and it was felt that Cardo and Josefin Sans would represent the store’s Old Book style well.

The store was meant to be the landing page, with no distractions for the user. Coffee and book sales could be pushed via rotating banners at the top, with featured product listings at the bottom.
The footer contains the newsletter call-to-action, as well as vital site links and links to all involved Social Media accounts.

After the initial site was planned out, Social Media accounts were set up. Given the large list of image-heavy Social Media accounts, it was decided that they would start out with Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, since those are the sites that support longer text posts alongside their images, and thus, could advertise to their target audience of book lovers, as well as inform the public about new books/items without always having to add a picture of the book. (Copyright can get a little dodgy here, apparently.)
(Links here have been removed, and the accounts will be taken down in February 2023, so as not to run into any legalities about falsely representing a business. Screenshots are used instead.)

An account on Buffer was set up to help simultaneously post to all Social Media accounts. Next, a Mailchimp account was set up, and we received a list of e-mail addresses to send the first newsletter to. A couple of campaigns were sent to both draw interest and test the system.

The Instagram ad for the new coffee blend

After the mailing list tested out positively, the rest of the products were added, and the blog updated to reflect the Winter Sales.
The site tested well, and WooCommerce was working out well.
The site was “turned over” along with the branding materials. The client seemed to be very happy.
(Here are some images of the branding materials.)

Result:

Overall, things went relatively smoothly – there was some difficulty at first with the company’s usage of the ampersand in their name, and acquiring relevant accounts, and I don’t expect that to get easier for them. I would recommend finding an identity and sticking with it, that way traffic, SEO and Social Media doesn’t become more difficult. Not to mention the possible legalities surrounding correct use of a business name. Any conflicts can be taken up with their lawyers.
The initial adaptation to WordPress was supposed to be fairly simple, given how simplistic their CMS is, but there is where I ran into the first problems. I am used to the flexibility of being able to hand-code any page I want and use PHP includes for ease of editing, but neither WordPress nor Divi allow for that unless you write custom code on each page, and even then it’s no guarantee. The main logo was supposed to be featured front and center on the main page, but due to the inflexibility of the CMS’s, I was forced to put in the actual body of the page. This was a large disappointment, but it taught me to scale back my ambitions when it came to the site. SEO remains problematic for the same reason, but installing Yoast SEO did help a little. Admittedly, I was surprised that a few of the things were as simple as they were, such as using a Social Media aggregator and maintaining a mailing list.
Despite my complaints, though, I believe the project was overall a success. I am confident that I can perform a basic setup for anyone looking to set up a site, with all the relevant engagement aspects involved. I will continue to do research into the elements involved to become more skilled in them.

Case Study - The Rook & Key Bookstore & Coffeehouse

Introduction:

Problem / Client Needs:

Result: