Case Study: Website Design for The Loft
A Simple and Cohesive Design for a New Coworking Space for Women
Getting a new website can be really exciting. But building a good website? There’s a pretty steep learning curve...
Many small business owners start piecing a website together, only to find out it’s a way more complicated process than they were anticipating. The project can end up dragging on for however long you let it (i.e. possibly forever). I’ve definitely been there and it’s not a great feeling.
One of these 3 things tend to happen:
They finish the site and are a little embarrassed by it
Procrastinate so hard that the project gets put on the back burner for months (or years...)
Or they hire someone and the website gets done within weeks.
Another option is to go with a premium website template from a designer. For non-web designers, this could be the perfect option, but can still risk their website not looking cohesive and professional since they will still ultimately be DIY-ing it.
Whether you end up hiring a designer or going it alone, there are a few things that need to be prepared first, like your content and strategy.
Website Goals
The company's goals are the most important thing to know before building a website because it determines the entire strategy for the design.
The main website goal for a physical business like an ice cream shop would likely be to provide the street address and business hours. If potential customers Google that business’s name and town, they should be able to go on the website and find that information easily.
A secondary goal for that kind of website might be to get customers to sign up for an email list. This way the business can send customers promotions and new product updates so they’ll come back more often.
This website design was for The Loft, a new female-only coworking space. Their goals for their website were to showcase their brand, promote their unique services and get new member signups.
Website Branding
A website design always starts with gathering up the written content, photos, graphics, and brand guidelines. Also, a short list of websites that you admire and want your new site to be similar to is really helpful.
The Loft owners provided the logo, favicon (an image that goes to the left of your web page title on the tab at the top of the screen), their preferred brand colors, and their own photos. Here is the brand board that I put together for The Loft:
The fonts, Times New Roman and Lato, weren’t provided by the business owner so I chose them based on the two fonts used in their logo so that their brand stays consistent. Using 1-2 fonts ensures that the branding for the website stays cohesive instead of looking a little messy.
Designing and building out the home page
After the branding is put together and approved by the client, the wireframe is designed and to see where the basic elements of the page will go like the copy, graphics and photos will go. These elements are placed strategically to be visually nice to look at while also directing the viewer to where you want them to (AKA the user experience).
After the wireframe is done, building out the website is next.
We want potential customers to know exactly what the company is and who they serve in the first section of the website before any scrolling down needs to happen. Luckily The Loft has their tagline “Women’s Coworking Space” is right in their logo so it is immediately obvious who they serve.
If the tagline is not in the logo, this can also be accomplished by adding text with an explanation in the first section of the homepage.
Following through with the strategy
For accomplishing the website goals (they wanted people to take the virtual tour and to get excited to become new members), the strategy was to simply put these in the heading for anyone to easily find. The link is put in again at the bottom of the page in the footer in case people want to look through the whole page before committing to watching the tour.
The rest of the page is further explanations of who their business is for, the benefits, a prominent testimonial, and pricing information. All of the elements on the page are kept on-brand and visually attractive and informative.
