Empowered Medical Aesthetics Co. 👩‍⚕️

Background

Empowered Medical Aesthetics Co. also known as Empowered by BAE, is a medical esthetician company located in Midland, Ontario. Founded by Katelyn Burden, RN, Empowered focuses on putting clients first. Every client who walks into her spa has a different goal in mind. Katelyn listens to each individual's needs, and provides natural enhancements through medical aesthetic services.

Project

Katelyn was looking to improve her web presence by having a fully custom website developed that showcases her brand and her vision. She wanted a website that would unify with her already existing digital assets, while also pushing the boundaries on what a website is capable of. This is that journey.

Navigation

I always make the navigation of any website my first priority. If the user can't figure out how to traverse the site, it doesn't matter how beautiful the site is. Additionally, Empowered has a lot of pages, from contact, to shop, to privacy policy, and more.

I placed the “Menu” button in the top left corner of each page. It's the first link a user will see when looking for the navigation. This button is the perfect way to get users to see all of the links available to them.

I then decided to make a full page flyout navigation to house all of the pages for the site, as I wanted the menu to be fun and unique. By adding a whole slew of animations and hover effects, I achieved just that. Check out the video below showcasing this menu.

Reiterating what I want the viewer to do

Most viewers who want to book an appointment or contact the business will, by default, look for the Contact page. However, Empowered's goal is to get businesses to book appointments. For the site, I added an option to book an appointment along the top navigation bar, and also added a sticky button to the side prompting the viewer towards appointments. If the user visits the Contact page, I split this page to once again tell the user what I want them to do. See this in action in the video below.

More features

Ecommerce solution

Empowered wanted the ability to sell products online, and to be able to use their store as a one-stop-shop for her business. To accomplish this I integrated Woocommerce with the custom website, this gave them the flexibility to add all of her products, and any additional plugins or features they may need

Scheduling platform

Empowered was using a scheduling platform that they knew needed to be on the new website. I integrated the scheduling platform for them so their business could continue to function as normal, without having to change their order of operations.

Final comments

GoDaddy

I am constantly trying to provide a better experience for my clients. As such, I regularly test new hosting providers in my attempt to find the best one. I decided to try GoDaddy for a few of my clients, as many of my clients have their domains registered with GoDaddy as a platform.

The reviews for GoDaddy hosting are overall very positive, with some outliers. However, my experience has been less than ideal. I immediately transferred Empowered to a new platform, as their site on GoDaddy was taking an extra 6-14 seconds of load time just waiting for a response from the server. That's not the download time. That's just the initial response, which is far too long for any website.

If you are considering hosting your site on GoDaddy I would recommend against it as the results are unreliable.

Results

This project allowed me to really test my client-side programming skills. From making custom galleries, to a before-and-after slideshow, I got to play around with all sorts of elements. And the results show. The site has a very unique look and feel.