The Fig Cooking School

E-Commerce Website

 
Four people in their twenties are standing and laughing at something. They are all wearing navy blue aprons with the Fig Cooking School logo on them. This is the cover picture on the Fig Cooking School Website.

The Challenge

The Fig Cooking School is a gourmet cooking school bringing home cooks from Connecticut, New York, and Massachusetts together over amazing hands-on cooking classes. Their website serves two important purposes. First, since most new customers encounter the site first, it is a living advertisement and information hub. Second, it serves as an e-commerce platform and booking service for Fig’s legendary classes.

We’ve been with Fig since their inception, so we were lucky to be starting with a great product for their latest site. But when they scaled their business with a move to a new location, there were a lot of opportunities for the site to grow with them. The new site needed to be as fun and clever as their classes, and exude the warmth and welcoming that set Fig apart, while balancing this with a sleekness and professionalism that would show high-end clients they could trust Fig to cater to their every need during corporate events. With their move bringing an influx of new customers, the site needed to tell every aspect of the Fig brand story. Finally, as staffing and number of events increased, they needed an upgrade to their e-commerce interface to streamline the booking process eliminate the possibility for error.

Industry
Food, Hospitality

Services Provided
Website
Copywriting
Photography

Based In
Milford, CT

An empty plate, ready for a new website.

Testimonial

"When I ask new guests how they chose Fig, they invariably say, 'I Googled the options and you guys were clearly the best.' We owe so much of that impression to our website and branding."

Heide Lang

The Fig Cooking School

Taryn, a guest at the Fig Cooking School, is whisking something, laughing, and looking directly at the camera. She is wearing a Fig Cooking School apron. An industrial stove is visible behind her.

The Solution

To ensure that the website conveys the warmth and excitement of the Fig experience, we designed a highly visual platform for their business, centered on striking photography of luscious food and engaged guests. Carefully curated copy sets the tone for Fig’s professional and friendly demeanor, in addition to providing new guests with abundant information about the school and boosting SEO.

A new specialized team building landing page led to over a 75% increase in corporate event revenue, and attracted clients including Subway, Pandora Radio, Bic, Bigelow, Medtronic, and Victorinox, who also became a corporate sponsor of the school. For public classes, the integration of Fareharbor Lightframe Software ensures a seamless booking experience for guests, and allows the Fig team to effortlessly assess their upcoming classes, allowing for painless staffing and preparation.

Home

A dynamic home page allows guests to access popular topics of immediately, without the impracticality of a long scrolling page.

A rotating GIF of the Fig Cooking School home page parts. The main page is a picture of four 20-somethings enjoying a cooking class. The second, titled 'Hands on Classes' is of a hand chopping mushrooms with a chef's knife, the next, titled 'Kids Workshops' is a group of kids holding kitchen utentils, the next titled 'Team Building' is of a work group in Fig aprons standing outside the Fig Cooking School, and the last is called 'Get in Touch' and shows the outside of the Fig Cooking School.

Upcoming Classes

The Upcoming Classes page uses beautiful photography to enhance Fig’s innovative, international, and seasonal menus. A calendar view allows guests to plan around their schedule while incorporating the full photographic suite and all event details.

A webpage titled 'Cooking Classes' with a grid of various classes being offered at the Fig Cooking School.
An animated GIF of a calendar of upcoming Fig Cooking School classes. Every two seconds an overlay comes up showing details for a class called 'Apres Ski.'

December Landing Page

A holiday landing page adds a whimsical touch and allows easy access to certificate purchase during peak gifting season.

An image of the alternative holiday homepage for The Fig Cooking SChool. Food ornaments are scattered on a marble backdrop with a headline that says 'FIg Spelled Backward is almost Gift. Coincidence? We think not.' with links to enter the website or buy a gift certificate.

Signup Interface

The Fareharbor Lightframe Signup Interface creates a seamless in-site booking experience for customers, increasing conversions.

A lightbox is up on a website allowing guests to sign up for a class called Apres Ski without leaving the website.

One-Time Announcement Box

A one-time popup for new visitors highlights Fig’s exciting accolades, including being the only Connecticut cooking school on Yankee Magazine’s Top-10 list!

A popup on the Fig Cooking School website announces that Fig has made the list of best cooking classes in New England.

404 Page

No whimsical website is complete without a cheeky 404 page, and this one is no exception. Check it out for yourself at figcookingschool.com/dfjklf – we’re not saying we ate it, but nobody’s seen it in a while.

404 Error page for the Fig Cooking School website, featuring a scraped plate with melted ice cream on it and the words: Nothing to See here... The page you're looking for doesn't exist, and if anyone asks, it never existed. Try using the links below to get where you need to go. There are then two buttons for the Home and Classes pages.

Fig GIFs

One of Fig’s principal missions is to expose guests to cultures and cuisines they are less familiar with. However, while the wide variety of menus excites potential customers, they’ve historically found that, in practice, new visitors gravitate towards foods with which they have prior experience. Rather than give up on such an important part of the school’s philosophy, we turned our attention to how we could convey the feeling of classes we knew visitors would love before they experienced them. Our solution? In addition to sourcing enticing photography to pair with each menu, we began developing cinemagraph (moving photo) GIFs to pair with menus that had historically been undersubscribed. The experiment was an immediate success, with GIF-ed classes seeing faster signup acceleration than even traditional favorites.

A GIF of Temple Bar in Dublin, Ireland with rain dripping down the front in a constant loop.
A still image of two people sitting at a Parisian bistro having drinks.
A GIF of candles sitting on a counter, one of which has a constant looping whisp of smoke coming out of it
A still image of bolognese sauce in a red Dutch oven with a wooden spoon laid across the top, and a blue napkin and some herbs strewn on the concrete counter.
A GIF of a ski chalet with constantnly falling snow over it, and a bright lens flare over the top. There is snow on the roof and snowy trees in the background.
A still image of a cut-open pomegranate on a marble counter.

Results

Since its previous redesign in late 2014, and with constant attention and improvements, Fig’s website had seen a steady traffic increase year over year. With the launch of the new site in December 2017, Fig saw a 78.2% increase in unique visitors in 2018, as well as a 58.6% increase in overall traffic.

Due to the intimate nature of Fig's classes, Fig was closed for the majority of 2020, reopening in July, 2021, which is why our current traffic measurements only go to 2019. Look out for updated growth metrics in 2022!

From 2014 – 2019, figcookingschool.com has averaged…

+ 27.7%/yr

Site Visits

+ 43.9%/yr

Unique Visits

+ 39.2%/yr

Page Views

From 2017 to 2018 The Fig Cooking School saw…

+ 81.3%

Bookings

+ 63.7%

Customers

+ 121%

Revenue

Unique Visitors 2015-2019