There are certain clients I work with where I can truly feel their passion, love, and motivation for what they do for pets AND their communities. Dominique was one of those clients.
Dominique came to me with the goal of being able to increase their website’s visibility on Google. She had done some of her own overhauls on their website and noticed a slight uptick, but really wanted to take things to the next level.
Once we started chatting, I learned some of the things that were really important to her. Gathering this sort of important is one of the most important aspects when I head into a web design because I try to do everything I can to mold my client’s personality, goals, dreams, and visions into their website. Because, it’s not just a touchpoint for a potential new client. Your brand/website is everything that you AND your business represents.
With her new logo, branding, and website, she wanted to capture the fact that her business is there for both pets AND their people. The only trouble we had was...Dominique knew she wanted a black and white logo. She had changed her colors around before and wanted something new, but she still wanted a black and white logo.
So, it was up to me to take the information I had from her and to really dig deep into what I knew about her, her community, her clients, her vision, and turn it into a cohesive brand that stood out beyond an updated, modern logo.
I’d LOVE to walk you through our process.
Step 1: Gathering the Inspiration
If you’ve read some of my other client spotlight blog posts, you probably know that one of my favorite questions to ask my clients is:
What adjectives would you use to describe your brand?
Dominique described Purrs & Grrrs as personalized, modern, tech-savvy, animal lovers, family-oriented, neighborhood feel, trusting, safe, and professional.
So, to get started in a visual direction, my first step is gathering inspiration on Pinterest, looking through some stock photography, and just really getting in the mindset of my client when it comes to the vision for her brand. Of course, we always take into account client preferences, color psychology, and pet industry research when it comes to branding and design. And since Dominique knew the important factors to her: modern, community, black and white with a little something extra, I let my creativity go free with this one!
Here’s what we came up with:
Dominique wanted a new look that clearly shouts Purrs & Grrrs Dog Walking & Pet Sitting and I think we were well on our way with this mood board.
Everything was very purposeful with this brand - we had the modern touches with the green and gold. We kept the black and white, but slightly softened the black to capture the friendliness and community-oriented vision Dominique had. With the pet industry, you can DEFINITELY have modern touches (obviously, that’s what I’m here to do is modernize your brand). However, you want to be careful and make sure your brand still captures the softness of a pets’ love, loyalty, and innocence. And that’s what we did above.
Step 2: The Logo
We created a much more modern and professional looking logo to upscale the brand to a new level. Here is the before and after:
Step 3: The Web Design
Working from her inspiration board, her preferences, and her values of community, I felt my creative side take over! Molding together the modern touches and the warm friendliness of the brand was SO much fun. This is what we came up with:
Easy navigation was a BIG one for Dominique, so her home page was clear and to the point!
I knew, somewhere in this website, we had to incorporate pieces of her town/community. So, I created an extra page on her website JUST for her community events she likes to put on. I also created heavy header banner images on each page to add friendly touches and introductions to each page.
If you want to see the full website in action, head here.
Step 4: Client Feedback
I also wanted to share Dominique's feedback on our work together because I thought she shared such important topics and issues that SO many pet businesses are facing. I KNOW I have the ability to help solve those problems, which is why I do what I do. Thank you SO much to Dominique, her husband, and Purrs & Grrrs for a wonderful experience!
"We LOVE working with Mikaela! We had come in contact with a few other pet marketing companies in the past as we were navigating this process, but there was something about Mikaela and her business that resonated with us personally. We particularly enjoy that she provides a personal experience and product for each of her clients, vs. using templates that look like several other pet care companies out there.
Mikaela's project process is also incredibly intuitive and easy to follow. The whole experience was seamless - from the initial contact questionnaire on her website to the proposal/contract/invoice to the website work itself. When it came to the website work, we had only a general idea in mind and didn't provide too many specifics in terms of color/design, however, she tapped into her creativity and intuition from our conversations and was able to produce a product that definitely resonated with us and put into words/pictures what we were unable to describe. We are so excited that we chose her to help take our business to the next level!"
Tell me about the "wins" your business has experienced since we started working together:
"We officially launched the new website about a week ago, and initially did so "silently" so as to test things out and review it for any needed updates (which is a great benefit of having a site built on Wix - we can still make edits ourselves!). On the 1st day we published the site we received a new client. In the past 7 days, our Google Analytics are showing a sharp uptick in views and our current clients are loving the integration with our software. I've also noticed we're showing up on the 1st page of Google for our local neighborhood, and within the first 5 listings - something that we hadn't had happen in the past. I'm looking forward to comparing our analytics further once we hit the 30-day mark from launch to see just how much improvement the new site/SEO optimization has created!"
Anything else you'd like to share?
"You're wonderful and we'll shout it from the rooftops to everyone we know :) Thank you again for creating such a beautiful website and for boosting our SEO presence. We know this is going to be huge for our family business and help us scale things to a larger place than we could have done on our own. Thank you!"
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