The Little Care Package is a mission-driven startup that sells custom care packages for foster cares, hospitals, and other areas of need. Beginning in January 2024 as my first-ever Parker Dewey micro-internship, I had the privilege of working with The Little Care Package’s CEO & Founder Brandi Dorsey, a foster mother herself, to design a website and brand identity that honored the business’ unique needs and ultimate goal of providing comfort and care to every person away from home.
Made With Love Using:
Logo & Brand Design
Although designing a logo and brand identity were originally not part of this project’s scope, I wanted to offer these services to Brandi to help both the design of the website and the marketing of her small business.
Early on, Brandi and I discussed incorporating the care package into the logo to best represent the company’s unique product. I took this a step further by also including The Little Care Package’s customized teddy bear as a mascot. My initial sketches had the bear popping its head out of the box, hugging a small version of the box, and possibly in the form of just a silhouette, but I ultimately went with keeping the bear inside the box, visible through a heart-shaped window.
For the color palette, I went with yellow and pink because they are associated with happiness, childhood, and compassion, choosing less saturated shades of these colors to look more professional and evoke “a feeling of peace” per Brandi’s request. For typography, I paired a friendly serif heading font (Biorhyme) with a readable sans-serif body font (Manrope).
Customer Purchase Experience
One of the most challenging parts of creating this website was designing the user’s purchase experience. Unlike other e-commerce websites that simply sell single products, The Little Care Package is unique in that it sells fully customizable packages with 4 elements. After doing a lot of research, I found that the best two options for the shop page were to either 1) create a custom order form or 2) use a shopping cart.
For the order form, it quickly became apparent that we would invest more time and money into customizing it the way we initially envisioned, either through code or using a third-party form builder app. There was also the issue that, if someone wanted to purchase multiple care packages, they would have to go through all steps of the order form multiple times and potentially make separate transactions for each.
Ultimately, we went with the shopping cart. Using the Wix Store, I created 5 care package products (one for each Little/stuffed animal) with different options/variants that the user can choose from. This would allow the user to easily add multiple care packages to their cart and then check out when they are ready.
Although I am mostly happy with the final product, I still think this purchase experience can be improved. If Brandi ever wants a website update or migrate to a better e-commerce platform like Shopify, I would love to incorporate both an order form and a shopping cart to make the user’s purchase experience as easy as possible.
Mobile Highlights
Kind Words From The Client
“I wholeheartedly recommend Ana for her outstanding work in creating The Little Care Package website. Throughout our collaboration, Ana demonstrated an exceptional level of professionalism, dedication, and expertise. From the initial concept discussions to the final execution, she consistently impressed me with her ability to translate my vision into a beautifully-crafted website.
Not only did Ana exhibit a keen understanding of design principles and user experience, but her creativity and attention to detail truly elevated the project to new heights. She was proactive in offering suggestions and solutions, always striving for excellence in every aspect of the website’s development.
Ana not only met but exceeded my expectations in every way. I am immensely grateful for her hard work, talent, and dedication, and I have no hesitation in endorsing her for any future projects. Ana is a true asset, and I have no doubt that she will continue to excel in her endeavors.”
– Brandi Dorsey, CEO & Founder of The Little Care Package
