Willow Branch Flowers and Design

Challenge

Willow Branch Flowers and Design has won Knot.com awards for multiple years running. That recognition builds a reputation among couples and event planners in the area, but the old site didn’t reflect what the studio had become. A floral design business is a visual sale, and couples searching for a florist are making a decision based on the portfolio before they ever pick up the phone. A site that loads slowly or buries the work behind dated design sends the wrong signal at exactly the wrong moment in the decision process. The gap between what the studio had earned in their market and what the site was showing was costing them opportunities with people who should have been calling.

Solution

We rebuilt the site on Gatsby with Sanity.io as the CMS. Gatsby’s static generation keeps the site fast so photography loads quickly and visitors stay on the page long enough to see the work. The gallery and portfolio are front and center in the layout, because that’s where the buying decision gets made. Sanity gives the Willow Branch team a simple interface to update galleries, services, and seasonal availability on their own schedule. The combination of performance and editorial control was the main goal of the build.

Results

The new site matches the quality Willow Branch has built in their market. Photography loads fast and the portfolio is easy to browse from any device. The team updates their own content without outside help, which means the site reflects seasonal offerings and new work as they happen. Couples searching for a florist in the Lake Norman area land on a site that shows the full range of the studio’s work. The site now does what a multi-award-winning florist’s site should do: show the work first and make it easy to reach out.