Introducing Emparty 1.0 — A New Marketplace for Event Booking
Celebrating a new chapter in the Emparty journey.
Today marks a huge chapter for our team as we officially launch the new Emparty marketplace website. This new design makes it easier than ever to discover, build, and book birthday parties with premier venues in the San Francisco Bay Area. We’re excited to share what’s new and why we’ve made these changes.
A Brief Background on Emparty
The Emparty journey didn’t begin with the notion that there should be just another marketplace to help people find events and activities. Rather, it originated from personal experience in attempting to plan celebrations for friends and family, coworkers and businesses. After discovering that lengthy contact forms and slow communication channels blended between emails, phone calls, and texts dominated the booking process, we knew there had to be a better solution.
Emparty was founded with the simple belief that planning celebrations should be clickable, buildable and bookable. Above all, we wanted to help people create unforgettable celebrations.
Our initial efforts began as a simple experiment with a handful of interested businesses in the Bay Area, a Wordpress template, and a spirit to disrupt the disjointed event planning industry. As we quickly grew with both partners on the marketplace and consumer demand, we knew that improving the experience for businesses and consumers alike was going to be a requirement.
With a goal in mind, our team went to work.
Key Features of the Emparty Website
We’ll likely expand on the details of the design inspiration at a later date but until then, we’ll stick to the new and exciting features included with the new website.
A Well-Rounded Design
The new Emparty website features a clean, cohesive design that introduces some new flavors to our color palette. These muted pastels are a nod to the playful nature of Emparty as an event marketplace. You can preview how we’re applying a more playful look to Emparty — and giving a nod to an unsung hero— with our pineapple hero image to welcome visitors.
What’s also new on the Emparty website are beautiful display cards highlighting key details regarding partner venue information. It’s easier than ever to scroll through multiple event listings to find activities that match your interest. Event category type, age ranges, starting pricing, location, and a clean business description are all provided before clicking into the vendor listing.
Another key improvement includes the venue-specific pages, as shown with Bay Club Redwood Shores in Redwood City. These newly designed venue pages beautifully demonstrate a feature image highlighting the venue or activity associated with the venue. Also included on the page are category event types, a map showing the specific location of the venue, party packages available for booking, and available add-ons like pizzas, birthday cakes, decorations, and more!
Advanced Features: Date & Location Filtering
Perhaps the most exciting feature included with the new Emparty website is the ability to filter by date and location. As venues ranging from Gilroy (Gilroy Gardens) to North San Francisco in the Presidio (Batter’s Box SF) continue to join the Emparty marketplace, we believe that the ability to discover venues in specific areas will be essential in providing a positive consumer experience. We’re excited to share that current filtering will be available in three areas to start: San Jose / South Bay, CA; SF Peninsula, CA; and San Francisco, CA.
Also included in filtering is the ability to select a specific day for an event. This is a tremendous enhancement from our original system as users can now explore specific date availabilities before hopping into the checkout funnel.
Our team is beyond excited about these new developments, but this isn’t the end. A number of improvements will continue to rollout over the coming weeks and months as we continue to improve on the design and experience of the Emparty website.
Share Your Thoughts With Emparty on Social
We would love to hear your thoughts on our new website: the good, the bad, and the ugly. You can tag us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to share your feedback.
Thank you for joining us on our journey over the past few months. We’re incredibly proud to help you discover, build, and book your next celebration.
Sincerely,
The Emparty Team
A special shoutout to the team behind the new Emparty website! Thanks to our chief product officer Kenny, chief technical officer Anand, product manager Dan, and engineers Michael, Jihao, Bill, and Ben! All the meetings, late nights, and pixel-perfect attention to detail are greatly appreciated.
