Case Study: Bellerose Salon

Female entrepreneur and owner of Bellerose Salon, Thi Tran-Kelley needed a new website with e-commerce. Her previous website expired and she lost the original domain. And with the difficulties of Covid-19 her business severely suffered. A majority of her clients are referrals and others have found her on Yelp, Google or social media. In order for clients to receive information about Bellerose Salon's services they were required to contact the salon directly to learn more of their services. Not having a website was not conducive to her business.

Thi wanted a website for her clients so they can visually see the professional services she offered and pricing, prior to March 2022 she shared all her services verbally. She asked me to help create a new experience with a menu of services, pricing, descriptions, and e-commerce for her clients.

I designed and developed Bellerose Salon's website from end to end focusing on their salon services and pricing. I worked directly with the business owner acting as Principal Product Designer.

Scope & Constraints

I designed the website in Webflow because Webflow allows full customization and has the ability to visually work with code. I designed 20 unique pages, of the 20 pages 10 were Bellerose service pages, a frequently asked questions page with interactions, a consolidated price list for easy reference. I also created 35 products in e-commerce and customized the product page, cart and check out.

The project was expected to be completed in 7 weeks. Expected launch date was March 21, 2022, I exceeded expectations and launched on time.

Objectives

Create a new website for Bellerose Salon offering a list of current salon services with a price list, frequently asked questions, e-commerce and social media integration.

Role

In my role as Principal Product Designer, I was in charge of rebranding, designing and developing the end to end design of Bellerose Salon's website in Webflow. Due to the extensive services Thi offered I created shorter interactive pages by adding clickable tabs and several beauty images to pull in the client.

BelleRose Salon's homepage is the face of Thi's company and the main reason people are interested in her services. People want to feel good in their skin and we wanted to share this feeling with the digital platform. I partnered with the business owner while leading the entire design process.

Users and audience

Bellerose Salon is a service spa that focuses on skincare among other things. The array of services offered include facial treatments, eyelash extensions, permanent make up, waxing, tinting and light therapy. Peoples complexion can be taken from beyond fabulous to artfully refined.

Bellerose Salon services is for aesthetic consciousness people. Thi's clients are primarily women. 90% Female, 10% Men. Ages are between 14-68. Clients visit Bellerose Salon from all over the Bay Area: San Jose, Los Gatos, Oakland, Monterey and Carmel.

Personas

I created 4 Persona’s using sketch and free images from Unsplash. I also conducted interviews with the owner of Bellerose Salon and researched past customers reviews and potential clients that are using similar services.

Some of the questions I asked were: What are your customers like? Male or Female? What type of salon service do they come in for? Income range? Where do they live? Education? and What goals are they looking to fulfill?

Discovery

I gathered the stakeholders for a meeting to discuss the project. During this time we realized we would need to create a new domain and build an informational website containing the breakdown of Bellerose Salon's services. I created a list of actions using excel to keep our communication open. Most of the content Thi shared was using Apple notepad. Her technical skills were very limited and we found something that worked for both of us. My initial focus was to understand all the services offered so I can easily categorize them on the website.

Competitive Analysis

I pinpointed Bellerose Salon's direct and indirect competitors. I also analyzed their competitions online presence and assessed their website functionality. I looked at things like: How easy is it to navigate their website? What type of service information will benefit clients? i.e. images, content, FAQ's.... What is the best way to say less by showing images but get the point across?

Research

I reached out to Thi, owner of Bellerose Salon, to understand her target market. What type of clients come into the salon for services. What are they looking to achieve? Where do they live? Age? I needed a full understanding to create the salon's personas and to identify her ideal clients.
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While organizing the research I visited online reviews and blogs to get more insight on the clients experience. Identified strengths and weaknesses by using the information to focus on specific areas that Bellerose Salon can capitalize on. I noticed that most salon websites were messy and lacked important content. We solved it by adding an FAQ page and a breakdown on the service page of what each service entailed. We even added in stock products that are sold at the salon for clients t.

Creating the customer profile

With the data from the study I was able to uncover that her clients were between the ages of 16-60. And they were all concerned about their appearance and looking healthy. Clients would even bring in the children if they were suffering from skin issues. The array of services that Bellerose Salon offered catered to everyone.

Empathy map

I surveyed Thi and clients to understand Bellerose Salon's target customer. With the data from the study I noticed that clients that use her service have one thing in common. They want to feel good about the way they look and gain confidence.

I created 4 empathy maps: Single Millennial, Female in her 40's, Female in her 30's and a Male in his late 40's.

One of the pains they experienced is the services can be time consuming and expensive. However the gains are phenomenal. Client confidence grows, they are happy with their improved look and their skin and look begins to change within time.

Empathy Map: Male in his 40's with thinning hair.

Empathy Map: Female in her 40's with wrinkles and fine lines.

Empathy Map: Millennial Female with flawless skin.

Empathy Map: Female in her 30's with fine lines and curated eyebrows.

Slider & Tabs

The slider on the homepage gives the clients a visual of how their skin and lashes will look. It helps grab visitors attention and to keep them intrigued for a longer period of time.

The Tabs section in the services page provides an informative information about the services like benefits, pricing and frequently asked questions.

Home Page Slider

Easy to navigate tab service section for detailed descriptions.

Outcome

Shortly after launching the website Thi experienced a boost of interest for her salon services. And within the past month of launching she has added 10 new clients.

Conclusion

I love the feminine simplicity of Thi's website. I made smart choices in creating a vision that fits Bellerose Salon's business perfectly. Thi provided a few sample inspirations and we discussed them in detail so we can nail down the exact look she desired.

If I could change anything it would be to find a more simplistic way of receiving content specific to this project. There were many limitations on the client side due to technology. Images were not defined clearly and e-commerce products were very messy. However, I managed to stay within the project details and didn't navigate too far from that. I found creative ways to filter through the hardships and learned something new along the way. I enjoyed the process of creating this website and learning more about the industry. As a result, I expanded my knowledge within Webflow even further and always pushed my limits. No project is ever the same. Best of all we launched right on target!

Thank you for reading my case study. If you have any questions regarding my work send me an email.

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