Blending the imaginative with the analytical to create experiences that communicate.

Capturing The Spirit

11/12/2023
Client: Mountain Aloha
Summary: Website Redesign for a Massage & Bodywork Studio in South Lake Tahoe.

My friend Lauren had been wanting to redesign her old school website for about a year before we connected at the coffee shop one morning and she asked if I'd be interested. Being a glutton for redesign, I said I would love to help. Lauren has run one of the most well-known and beloved massage studios in South Lake Tahoe since 2001.

She had tons of clients, incredible search rankings and she had just transformed a multi-room space into a haven for massage, bodywork and general upliftment.

Her website however, was stuck in the 90's – a straight-up 5-page static html site with a flash animation that no longer animated. It got tons of traffic and bookings but it was hosted on a server she couldn't access and hadn't been updated in years. To go along with moving to a new space and expanding her business, Lauren wanted a site that would be more current design-wise, more "her" and in general easier to maintain and update.

We assessed various platforms but in the end decided that Squarespace would be the right choice. It's versatile enough for me on the design side and user friendly enough for her to jump in, make edits to text or choose photos from the library.

Lauren is all about authenticity and she wanted her unique vibe to come through in the website.

This meant lots of back and forth on colors, fonts and layout but the result was a site that stayed true to the Mountain Aloha brand and Lauren's personality. A lot of squarespace sites end up looking kind of stock – they look like "squarespace sites." But if you dig in a little deeper, paying more attention to the palette, establishing repeatable blocks and refining styles, you can create something more unique.

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