The Client

Back in the February of 2022, Rachel reached out to see if I could update the existing e-commerce site she had built herself utilizing GoDaddy’s website builder platform. Rachel and Fair Maven is an Eyelash Extension studio located in Red Deer, Alberta. She has also used her background in chemistry and science to develop her own lines of skincare products. 

Rachel is an internationally trained eyelash artist and as our conversation continued about the goals she had for her business, we quickly determined that having an e-commerce store was not the best avenue for her. Although her eyelash extensions were what “paid her bills”, she wanted to create more focus on her skincare products and have a place to properly advertise them to potential distributors.

With those keys in mind, we set out on streamlining her web hosting services and creating a new website that was more in line with her vision and goals for the business.

Conceptualize

Conceptually, I was quite excited about this website creation. It was an industry I had not worked in before and the target demographics were something I hadn’t ever created anything more either. The challenge for me would be to “loosen up” a bit and create something more fluid than any of the sites I had built before – but still produce a functional and creative design.

The full name for Rachel’s business is actually Fair Maven | Derma • Lash • Pro, which gave me a great idea of how to organize the layout of the new site. With the attention needing and wanting to be paid to her skincare products (the Derma) the organization of her business name would be the foundation for the design of the site as well. With women being her primary target demographic, I needed the site to be informational, modern, feminine and elegant.

Create

To start the project and by ourselves some time to get the design perfect, I built a temporary Placeholder or landing page to allow customers to still learn about Fair Maven and book appointments. From there, I start by pulling out any relative branding information from the available/provided resources. This includes colours, font choices and overall look and feel. From there I designed the Eyelash Extensions page to provide a general aesthetic for Rachel to approve prior to building out the rest of the site. After a couple of meetings over coffee, we were able to agree upon a look that would match her personality and still provide a viable website for generating traffic and rankings within search engines.

From there it was just a matter of creating the rest of the pages to match the design. Rachel wasn’t too keen on having too much information on her Fair Maven site, but after explaining the importance of content and building a sense of “expertise” for her visitors – we worked together to expand on the content for a few of the pages, mainly the eyelash extensions and eyelash training pages. Testimonials were pulled from Google, Facebook and text messages Rachel received and placed on the appropriate pages. 

The homepage was the final task as it serves as an executive summary for the rest of the site. I included lots of CTA (call-to-action) buttons to direct people to different areas of the website. The imagery provided was all converted to high contrasting black and white to create a modern and elegant feel. A soft pink accent colour was used to bring the feminine element required. 

The final creative decision was to avoid building a “Contact Us” page by creating a custom footer that included a custom contact form and all relevant contact information required. This would help keep the costs within budget by keeping the page count down. The footer was supported by a custom header including links to email, phone and social media channels.

Communicate

The final design is probably one of the designs that I am most proud of. I love the overall look and playful feel of the site. The information is presented in a clear, concise manner – with SEO-friendly text hierarchy and bold and modern colours with soft accents. The inclusion of animations and hover-over design elements bring out the playful but professional nature of Rachel and her company.

The design is very modern, mobile-friendly and should rank well within search engines. The final piece of communication was to integrate Google Analytics and Search console into a Fair Maven-owned Google account. I couldn’t be happier with the overall functionality and design elements we have created with this design. Use the link above to check out Rachel and Fair Maven’s new website!