Some discovery meetings are just more fun than others. I can testify that having a discovery meeting at an elegant wine bar has got to be near the top of the list. So, when I heard about a newly reopened Muskego wine bar that was looking for a company to build them a website from the ground up, I was excited to get in on it.

Walking into Soiree just has a way of making you feel fancy. Cozy but elevated, classy without pretentiousness. That was my first impression when walking into the discovery meeting at Soiree to talk with Nicole about her vision for their new website.

They’ve had websites in the past but ran into a pitfall that’s all too common for small business owners: although they’d paid in full, they didn’t technically own their website, they were licensing it. Marketing agencies often pull this bait and switch, luring small business owners in and then locking them into a monthly contract. Want to stop paying the exorbitant monthly fee? You lose all rights to the site.

We started off with the requirements. What exactly are we building. These are normally oriented with a goal in mind. What is the purpose of the website. What should it do. That informs what pages are required, what content is on those pages, and what type of audience those pages need to reach.

I was also delighted to hear about her personal journey launching Soiree. It was a real “if you build it, they will come” mantra for her and it really worked. By the time we were done with discovery, the wine bar was filled with patrons.

Design Direction and Scope

Project Brief

Based on our discovery meeting we set up some preliminary goals:

• Showcase Soiree’s elevated menu.
• Tell the story behind the business.
• Allow customers to inquire about private events and venue rentals.
• Capture the atmosphere that makes visiting Soiree feel special.

We set up a timeline. We’d get the bulk of the work done in June and July, with final touches starting in August, and a launch done before September timed re-opening (they were planning to be closed for August for construction to build out their new venue space).

Design Brief

The design phase is easily one of my favorite parts of any project.

Rather than jumping straight into mockups, I begin by creating a design brief that translates everything we learned during discovery into a clear creative direction.

The adjectives clients use to describe their business become more than just words—they influence typography, color palettes, imagery, spacing, and overall visual style. Every design choice should reinforce how visitors feel when they interact with the brand.

Just as importantly, I never want clients to feel like design decisions are happening behind closed doors. Instead, I curate several design directions that fit the project’s goals and present them in an easy-to-understand design brief. This gives clients confidence in the process while ensuring we’re collaborating toward a shared vision before a single page is designed.

— COLOR

The Build

The build on Soiree’s site went incredibly smooth since we had established a really nice high-fidelity wireframe beforehand. Nicole was really happy with the wireframe and we were too. But we didn’t twiddle our thumbs just because we had extra time! We spent that time refining it even further.

Take the intro for the menu page, as an example. The wireframe had a perfectly acceptable version of it.

But we thought, why stop at acceptable. Let’s make it a statement piece to represent just how cool Soiree is (and shameless plug, check our Soiree if you haven’t. It is a really nice wine bar and their old fashioneds are delicious). So, we elevated it.

It was a great design choice and not the only adjustment we made. We continued polishing the site, bringing all our UX experience to the table to make it one-of-a-kind.

Notice the hierarchy in the finished navigation, compared to the flatter wireframe version. The logo is largest, since that’s what builds instant brand recognition. Next is Contact — the one action we want visitors to know is available right off the bat. Menu items come last in visual weight, since they’re purely there to help people navigate. These are the type of design decisions that take a site from “okay” to “wow”.

iXiun Menu Plugin

What you might know about iXiun if you’ve read some of our previous posts is that we like to keep our invoices light for customers. Sometimes that means putting in the work to build things yourself. This website build provided us with that opportunity.

The hump we had to get over was this: Soiree’s menus rotate out seasonally. WordPress allows easy editing through their Gutenberg Editor, which is one of the reasons we chose WordPress as our CMS. The problem is that while it is easy for a non-techy person to edit words here or there, asking them to easily duplicate, delete, or create blocks is a whole different beast. We didn’t want to leave Soiree in a place where they’d need to call us every season just to update their menu. We’re happy to help when needed, but we also think it’s fair to build clients tools that don’t require paying us for routine edits.

The Results

Put Nicole’s review here

Check it out yourself at replace once deployed!