By any heuristic standard the Last Bookstore LA website has some issues. The navigation is unnavigable, links function in different ways, no search bar, different fonts and aesthetic styles on each page, different ordering processes for different products, and a composition style that could only be generously called busy. My research testers universally disliked the nav, product listings, and checkout process. Armed with this I launched into the rebuild with a rampant fervor to turn The Last Bookstore into a clean bookselling giant of the type to keep Jeff Bezos up at night.

However as I worked on it something about my direction didn’t feel right. The site always had a alternative “punk rock” vibe and seemed more interested in drawing customers into the brick-and-mortar store rather than sell books online. I did more research into the customers and most importantly the owner. I found a great documentary about him and realized he’d rather never sell a book online again than have a website that didn’t reflect the image of his store. The message was more important than the function and therefore became the function.

And so I scrapped all the work I had done up to date and started over with a drive to deliver a selling website that also satisfied the message, event promotion, and community building the owner wanted. Honestly I feel pretty good about the results.