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.

Heide Lang Owner, Fig Cooking School

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.

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

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

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

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!

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.

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.