The brief
Salon Sites was a templated website provider targeted specifically at the hair and beauty industry. For businesses that didn’t have the budget for an agency, nor the time or understanding to use a complicated website builder, Salon Sites offered a shopping basket system that would allow customers to build their very own website in just a few clicks.
Salon Sites offered a series of basic designs that customers could choose from, and then customise to make unique to their business. I was tasked with the design of the Salon Sites website, as well as the template designs that the company offered to its customers.
The process
The primary goal for Salon Sites was to make their website as user-friendly as possible. They wanted to give their customers a ‘self-service’ feel, by providing a website that was as easy to use as any other popular e-commerce platform. This meant that my design had to be created with simplicity and clarity as a main priority.
Salon Sites also wanted to avoid their customers feeling as though they weren’t getting a unique product with a Salon Sites template, which is why my design placed a large focus on the customisation functions of the site. The company offered many optional extras to their customers, and I created custom icons for each of these to add a ‘more-for-your-money’ feel to the order process.
I used Adobe Photoshop to create designs for each page of the website, and worked closely with a web developer to discuss exactly how the site would function, ensuring that the plans I had made for an efficient, easy to use platform would be implemented in build as well as design.
I also had to design the templates that were offered to Salon Sites customers. This involved market research and looking at websites of some of the industry’s leading salons, to determine what was important for these businesses to showcase. I had to create a series of designs that ranged from basic portfolio sites to more complex e-commerce builds, ensuring that there was an option for all customers, no matter what their budget was.
The solution
The finished Salon Sites website was clean, crisp and stylish, with an easy step-by-step layout that would help customers quickly understand the ordering process. The homepage of the website went the extra mile, by including an embedded instructional video that visitors of the website could view to get a 2-minute explanation of how the website works, as well as an infographic which broke down each individual step of ordering a Salon Sites website.
As well as the design of the site, I also lead the marketing design for Salon Sites, including printed advertisements, social media graphics and a promotional flyer in the shape of a laptop that would be posted out to local salons and other establishments that the company wanted to target.
