Vert Rebuilds First Watch’s Website

Here at Vert, the interactive team works together to deliver goal-focused solutions that are easy to discover, a pleasure to navigate, ridiculously functional, and creatively engaging. The team designs a custom web experience through research, design, and development. Through our interactive team, Vert is able to deliver creative web solutions to clients by improving and growing their business by using technology to impact arguably the most important touch point for consumers.

To make this happen, our team works cohesively from the beginning to identify the challenges and goals in order to provide website redesign services that drive results. “The groups at Vert all work very very closely together,” says Jason, Vert’s Vice President of Interactive Design. “The Vert team works in such a way that ensures goals set by the Discovery/IA are brought through each phase and end up in the final product.” At many agencies, the UX/IA team may be very distinct from the Design team, which is also separate from the development team. This can allow for creative ideas to be lost as they move from one phase and team to another. At Vert, we have talented generalists that work with specialists along the lifecycle of a project to ensure strategy formed at the onset of a project persists through to the launch of a website.

For the past several years, Vert has worked with First Watch in different capacities and has had a successful partnership. So, in 2020, when First Watch’s website needed a brand refresh and a back end enhancement to give their team more flexibility as well as a more customized control to serve their marketing and business needs, they turned to Vert. First Watch’s brand had evolved and their customer behavior was fundamentally changed after the pandemic. They needed a solution that answered these challenges that will ultimately push their business forward. In this refresh, Vert created a new design and built dynamic components that made it easy for users to understand which location was nearest to them and access easy jump-offs to online ordering and getting in line. 

To respond to First Watch’s needs, Vert created a personal experience across the site that is based on a user’s location, making it a pleasure to navigate. To make it ridiculously functional, the First Watch 3.0 site integrates direct online order capabilities with each location. The site also enhances in-store traffic experiences with wait-time estimations by pulling in nearby location wait times to help move users to other First Watch locations during peak times. Vert was able to utilize a digitally accessible web experience to influence foot traffic at physical locations in real time by showcasing nearby First Watch locations that may have much shorter wait times for customers.

The wait-time feature creates an enjoyable experience for the customers, both on the site and physically in First Watch restaurants. To further increase the customer experience, the interactive team enhanced the menu. The menu is now more scannable and includes a per store OLO integration, which makes the ordering experience quick and simple.

The web rebuild brought an immediate increase in revenue for First Watch. With 100,000+ users visiting the site everyday and 11% more page views per session, the site rebuild has been a successful project for the interactive team at Vert. 

Along with First Watch 3.0, the interactive team has many other successful projects. The team also executed a complete overhaul of the current website and its structure for an iconic southern brewery brand – SweetWater Brewery. The information architecture of the SweetWater Brewery website was redesigned to be simplified in order to create the best user experience. As a result, this helped customers in finding the information, or the beer, that they were looking for. To be more creatively engaging, the interactive team brought a new look and feel to be more representative of the lively brand and also made it highly optimized for mobile devices. 

The interactive team at Vert is dedicated to creating a website at the center of the marketing ecosystem. “All of our team members are constantly challenged to understand the strategy and goals behind decisions made,” says Marissa Monivis, Vert’s Full Stack Web Developer. “Whereas many groups may just design and build something because it’s simply on brand or looks good – our team goes one step further to ensure all decisions are rooted in strategy and data.” 

“The difference maker for me was how Vert’s approach to evolving the FirstWatch.com customer experience wasn’t singular or focused purely on online ordering improvements… their solution spanned everything from digital commerce, to backend speed + security and even recruitment. The Vert team is exceptional at focusing on business goals as the north star, even with extremely complicated or highly technical projects, and our 450+ locations are better because of it.”

Matt Eisenacher, SVP Brand Strategy & Innovation | First Watch Restaurants

Need a website? Vert can give you goal-focused solutions that are easy to discover, a pleasure to navigate, ridiculously functional, and creatively engaging. Check out some of our past work here.