A Happify Case Study: Creating Kinder Kids
As a web designer who works mainly with small businesses, it's rare that many of my client's websites need a full design or re-design.
Instead - having created their websites with DIY builders like Squarespace, Shopify and WIX - they need some help getting their site to match up with their vision.
This means helping them with things like clarity, structure, design and systems…
…which are so desperately needed to show exactly what they have to offer to potential customers. Not to mention ensuring that it takes work off of their plate, rather than putting more on it!
My Happify Your Website service exists exactly for this reason - it's fully customisable to your small business website's particular needs and concerns while guaranteeing big changes with a quick turnaround time and budget-friendly price.
Let me take you through this Happify Day for Kat from ‘Creating Kinder Kids’ as an example of what I can do for your small business website.
Clarity on the Homepage
Clarity
Kat's website was extremely text-heavy, with little hierarchical structure. At first glance, customers were greeted with a wall of text on the homepage - a bit difficult to digest!
It also launched right into event offerings and a map of the 'Kingdom of Kindness', assuming that customers would know exactly what the business was about with little explanation.
We remedied this by bringing in a clear hook to the business, lots of additional context and introducing call-to-actions (CTAs) to find out more and book an event, giving customers helpful guidance and instruction.
Layout
Improving layout on the services page
On a webpage level, there were few images, while all of the text was in one style/section, with a lack of visual variety to guide the eye.
We brought in lots of lovely images in different shapes and sizes to really showcase her service and break things up, as well as colourful buttons, blocks and icons. This helped to make the content much more engaging and enjoyable to read!
The overall website's structure was also a bit too simplified, making it difficult to find much-needed things like the benefits of Kat's service, and her business's values and mission.
We decided to add these parts to the About page as well as giving each event its own dedicated page to illustrate how that particular event benefitted attendees.
Brand
The 'Creating Kinder Kids' brand is so unique and interesting, that it was really important for us to highlight as much of it as possible!
We did this by bringing out elements of the 'Kingdom of Kindness' map, as the visual identity of the brand, woven throughout the website:
Tweaking the business logo
Using key colours as a clear visual guide for customers - dark pink as attention/highlights, buttons and blue as the end of page CTAs
Handwritten font for a personal feel.
Improving readability on the about page
With these changes, the website feels much more inviting as a whole and now fits the playful ethos of the business.
Social proof/customer recognition
There was a distinct lack of social proof or customer recognition on the website originally - and not because the business didn't have any!
We corrected this right away by incorporating videos and photos of the events in action, and adding testimonials to events pages so that people could hear about others' experiences as they learned more about the events.
Adding a 'as featured in' logo section of festivals and events high up on the homepage also helps to gain the trust of potential customers.
Systems
A huge issue Kat had with her previous website was that it simply wasn't fit for purpose for an events-based business.
Originally, she operated everything manually, making it heavy on the admin for the customer and herself:
Improving the systems
Customer enquires using generic form
Kat sends invoice
Customer pays manually
Kat blocks out space
Kat emails for information
Customer responds with information
Kat records information
As some of the events Kat organised were more complicated than others, we developed two systems: one for simple events and one for complex events.
We created purchasable products for simple events (with a set amount of spaces) so that customers can book with ease, and unique enquiry forms that allowed for more detailed information gathering and conversation for complex events so that Kat can easily respond to customers.
In both instances, all customer data is now gathered on purchase, meaning no more nuisance back-and-forth emails!
All in all, we made SO MANY incredibly valuable changes to the Creating Kinder Kids website for potential customers and for Kat, so that she can be proud of her virtual storefront and the systems behind it.