Overview

Visa Wellington on a Plate is a wildly popular food festival in the Wellington region, designed to boost the hospitality sector in the otherwise slow month of August. There's dozens of events, hundreds of burgers and plenty of drool-worthy dishes to choose between. Our job? To make finding, discovering, saving, sharing and rating those offerings easy, and even fun.

We have supported this event since since 2014, from a simple website based on a spreadsheet of burgers, to integrating an external event management system, all the way to a grand scale redesign and rebuild in recent times.

Each year we work to do continuous improvements to keep the site responsive to the growing needs of its users and the evolving Festival. It's a huge challenge to prioritise what's most needed and wanted on a not-for-profit's budget.

The Art of Balancing

Balancing all the functions and filtering, along with the nuances of the Festival, and our audience's needs is always tricky. That's why we take all the feedback we get each year, the user observations and requests, and the data of how the site is used, to inform the next year's improvements.

A dynamic map, and literally thousands of simultaneous visitors, we have ensured the performance of the site is fast and responsive. The analytics speak for themselves—thousands of users accessing the website before, during and after the festival, and hundreds signing up every day.

We have reviewed the UX of the filters on both mobile and desktop and, separately, improved the way they work. Now, narrowing down your favourite burger (with side), and finding it again, is easy.