Website re-design for identity the salon
Many moons ago I designed a website for a new hair salon called “identity the salon” (all lowercase). In fact it was the very very first website I ever did do. Over the years I tweaked and improved it, but the basic design stayed more-or-less the same.
Recently the salon moved to a larger premises, and the timing seemed right to go for a new, fresh design for the website too…
(More pictures can be seen on my web design portfolio page.)
Design
This website design project was a complete re-design in the truest sense – the colour scheme has changed from grey, pink and white, to black and white, with a hint of purple. The font has changed from Courier New to a mixture of Lucida Bright (headings and big text) and Lucida Sans Unicode. These basic changes alone give a totally different feel to the website.
The website is now left justified as opposed to centred, a hundred and sixty pixels wider. This again gives the website a very different look and accommodates the larger screens of internet users these days.
I also wanted to use more images of the new salon throughout the site. This will tie the website in with the “bricks and mortar” part of the business.
The homepage has a Flash animated header. I decided to use this on the homepage to give a bit more of a wow factor, as this is very likely to be the landing page for most visitors. The header is static on the other pages, as I’m sure it could get distracting/irritating if the animation happened on every page.
The only part of the original website design that I have “recycled” is the white tiled background that was once filled the screen.
Structure & Layout
I wanted to make the pages shorter than they were on the old website. This meant splitting some of the pages up, and generally just structuring the content in a more intelligent, more efficient way.
I decided to use a big footer that contains a constantly scrolling list of announcements and news items, links to the legal pages, Copyright information and a link to the website’s Facebook page. The scrolling announcements adds a bit of movement to each page, and helps keep the content fresh and interesting. The omnipresent Facebook icon ties the salons Facebook page closely with the website. Social Networking sites such as Facebook are an important part of client interaction for any business these days, and running them in conjunction with your website is an excellent was of communicating with your target audience.
The navigation menu is similar to the old website in that there are five main “sections” that the pages slot into. So the structure is very similar in this respect. It worked well in the old website design, so why not reuse something that was a success. The main difference in the navigation is more a design issue – the drop-down menu drops down one line and the links go horizontally across the page rather than continue vertically.
Content
Aside from the content that you would expect – price lists, contact details, product pics, etc. – there is some interesting additional content. Several pages contain a live Facebook stream of posts from the Salon’s Facebook page. This adds new, and current content on a regular basis, and an element of interactivity.
I’ve also included a “shareThis” bookmarking service on each of the appropriate pages so that people can bookmark and share content with their friends on whichever social networking site they choose. Again this level of interactivity with your audience is modern and a great benefit to businesses.
Privilege club members have a password protected area of the website that allows them to access the special features their member status allows them. Features include an online booking feature and exclusive deals and offers.
