/ CASE STUDY

Beau Beauty

Designing a brand identity and website for an independent beauty salon.

Overview

Beau Beauty required a logo design, business cards, a price list and a responsive web design in order to be prepared for their opening day. In order to put a brief together for this project, I put together a short questionnaire to help better understand the business, and what it was they were trying to achieve.

Through the questionnaire, it became obvious that the owners were consummate professionals in the beauty trade, with a combined experience of over 30 years. One of the owners had came from a lecturing background, while another had previously owned a different beauty salon, and we decided it was important to give the business an image of clean, modern professionalism through the design.

In addition to this, they wanted the design to look approachable, as a small and newly operating business, we wanted to stay away from hints of exclusivity that some salons prefer, and instead create a brand that looked friendly and welcoming.

Discovery

With the information garnered through the questionnaire, I worked closely with the owners to sketch and bring to life a batch of logos, before refining and finalising some custom lettering to create the final design.

The hand lettered logo, along with the added love heart helped tie in to the approachable image that the business required. I suggested the use of a soft gradient for the background of all stationery, which gave a 'blush' feel, almost as if some soft, pink makeup had been brushed onto the card. The owners loved this idea, and after looking at a few variations and making some small tweaks, we arrived at the designs below.
After creating the logo, I selected two complimentary typefaces and a colour scheme to form the foundation of the websites style guide.

Responsive Web Design

For the website, Beau Beauty required a responsive design, as many of their users would be viewing the website on mobile as well as on desktop, often accessing the website through social media channels such as Instagram.

I asked a small group of clients what their goals were when visiting a salon website and found that the majority either wanted to view a service, and / or book a service.

With the 'book a service' in mind, we set up an online booking system that we could link to from the site via a button that was placed easily in view at the top. This meant that users that knew what service they wanted to book could quickly do so as soon as they entered the website.

I also included a two column service list that appears as a single column list on mobile for easier viewing, as well as contact and location links at the bottom of the page, making sure that all information that would be important to users is readily accessible in one place.
I created a clean layout and added some micro-interactions to ensure a smooth experience for users.

Resolving Problems

After the website was launched, I asked Beau Beauty to converse with their clients to consider any issues they were running into through using the website. One issue that seemed to appear quite often was difficulty reading the price list on mobile.

Because the price list was so extensive for a beauty salon, resizing it to fit for mobile meant much smaller text in order to avoid excessive scrolling, however lots of older clients still had difficulty reading it. To solve this, I implemented an accordion style menu that allows users to select a sub section price list and view the respective prices. This not only created more space allowing for larger text, it also meant less scrolling, and smaller amounts of information for clients to digest.

Measuring Success

Prior to the launch of the website, many clients were booking through Instagram and Facebook Messenger, which was difficult to manage and maintain. Launching the website helped Beau Beauty receive an uptick in clients, with an average of 6 new clients each week, and a rebooking percentage of 90%. On top of this, beaubeautysalon.com now ranks number 1 on Google for Aesthetics in their local area, and number 4 for Beauty Salons, while still climbing.