Web design for local salon

Branding and Website Redesign

Project Overview:

Ashima’s Salon, located in Plano, Texas can have near 15 walk-in clients waiting on their busiest days. The owner shared her frustration that clients are having to wait long periods of time in the waiting room. Currently, clients call in and talk to any available staff member and book an appointment.

Mobile and desktop websites are a common way for similar salons to book appointments. Ashima’s Salon’s current website has some issues that make it difficult to convey a clear action to book an appointment. Some major issues were:

Lack of content hierarchy
Multiple clicks to view services
No clear action for main call to action “Book Appointment’

Role:

Lead UX

Research

Duration: June 2022 | 10 weeks

Tools:

In-person workshop

Figjam whiteboarding

Figma Jamboard

Dotted Grid Journaling

Challenge:

Due to overbooking, clients are waiting long periods of time in the salon waiting room. The business is concerned because this leads to clients walking out the door without any services and drives them to competitors. Due to the overbookings, the staff is working longer hours to make sure appointments are completed.

Walk-in customers are also deterred once they see the full waiting room. This is a daily problem for the salon and it needs to be fixed asap so the salon can recover its losses thus far in the year. The salon is unable to direct users to a more efficient booking system nor manage how many people are booked to avoid the overbooked issue.

Process:

Solution:

The salon already has a website but it only directs salon customers to the salon phone number to make an appointment. There is no option to book appointments online. The only way to book an appointment is to call in. To help streamline the booking process for staff and clients, creating an option to book online is key. Since the turnaround for the project needed to be fast I used the design process to work through the problem and the usability heuristics to audit the current website.

The salon owner shared that the current website was created by a developer through a website builder (WIX). After auditing the website it was clear that the hierarchy of info on the website was embedded. The home page was distracting and lacking the information to book an appointment and mention of the salon’s most popular services.

I was able to simplify the homepage so the customer could achieve the goal of booking an appointment with minimal clicks and an easy workflow. As Covid-19 is still a national issue, customers value the salons’ policy and protocol therefore that information was kept on the homepage but placed further down with a accessible anchor link on top of the site.

Salon customers are now able to book an appointment online and the salon staff are no longer overbooking. This allows for a better salon experience for clients and the staff which in return will provide more business with happy returning clients and a staff that is not overworked due to overbookings.