Brand & Identity

Define the Brand Voice

• Determine some key characteristics of your brand voice. I’ll explore words / phrases / feelings & emotions that define Someday Boutique, and we will work together to create a transparent, authentic, and unique message that you feel proud and honest to get behind.

• We will keep in mind your customer demographic, a.k.a. buyer persona: Who are you trying to reach? What do you offer that others can’t? How should it make them feel?

• This voice will be our positioning for use-case implementation (website, etc.)

• Define a short “don’ts” list: “Our brand voice is not too serious. And the Kardashians can pound sand.” Just kidding… kind of ;)
  

Logo Design
(Although you have a logo already, I wouldn’t define this as just a ‘redesign.’ There is opportunity here to push the creativity and personality which should be developed from the ground up.)

• Five (5) designs of your logo to get started, using different fonts & typography variations. I don’t believe logo marks need to be a ‘must’ but I’d like to try a few here if they come to me…

• Three rounds of edits

• Delivery of all formats for various use case materials (JPEG, PNG - in low and high res - and EPS vector files)

• Your final set of files will have secondary logos in vertical or horizontal formats if needed
  

Color Palette

• Specifications for the colors in your logo, plus a secondary palette that coordinates.

• We will also expand this into the website colors: background, graphics, and overall tonal photography.
  

Typography

• The brand fonts and typography - I’ll suggest quite a few based on my initial mood board - I think we’re on the same page!

• Fonts will have use-case designations as far as header, body, call-out, quotes, etc. Typography will be a mix of serif, san-serif, and display fonts, each with its own personality. I plan to source fonts with a forward-thinking attitude, but with polished and efficient designs so they coordinate and do not compete.

Website Design & Development

Although we are working with one domain, we essentially have two website platforms: Squarespace and Square (so confusing — they need to pick another shape!!!!)

I’m going to start with Squarespace below, for the ‘main’ website design & development.

Site Architecture / User Experience (UX)

• After a review of your current Squarespace, I’ve concluded that you need a complete website build from the ground up (happy to show you / walk you through why!). This approach will honestly take less time, rather than work with the current one.

• I will create a password protected Squarespace staging site, and template / organize the following pages (below is a rough outline and we will fine-tune as we go along).

Main Navigation:

• Home

• About / Story

• Location / Visit Us

• Testimonials / Gallery / Blog (something that you can EASILY update that keeps things fresh, if you like this idea…)

• Contact / Say Hi

Footer Pages (these need to live on both sites):

• Shipping & Return Policy

• Privacy Policy

• Terms & Conditions

Above pages will / can contain internal and external links, forms (if desired), newsletter / blog snippets (if desired), social integrations, CTAs, etc.

Design User Interface (UI)

• Overall look and feel: Typography, photography, graphics, banners, styles, color palette, sizing, spacing, buttons, flow, etc

• Site styles: Define the look and feel into the style sheets

• Photography / graphics: Boutique photos, team member photos, location imagery, as well as curated stock photography as needed - all edited and optimized in Photoshop to create and highlight / hero photos, banners, etc.  I have subscriptions to many stock photo sites to access textures, filler imagery, etc.

• Copy / content: Format copy / content / typography lock-ups into the site design

Copywriting

• We’ll have a collection of brand statements, taglines, quotes, and call-outs from the “voice” phase to build upon for the website. This will keep the brand story in check, and also give it legs.

• As far as body and content text, let’s chat about how extensive you’d like support with this :)

• Boilerplate for terms, privacy, etc., will be lifted and customized.

Revision Rounds

• Two (2) design rounds of edits / revisions

• Three (3) development rounds of edits / revisions

• Please note, minor revisions and edits are expected, and will not be considered a ‘full rounds.” However, it is expected that these are limited in terms of ‘one-offs,’ as the act of opening and closing the project at hand adds to the overall time of project scope.

Back-end (boring but essential) Stuff

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Overall use of best practices for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) during the design and development of the website

• Site title and description: relevant, readable description of your site for search engines.

• Page descriptions: each page on your site will have a unique SEO description. The text will be short and readable (50-300 characters), and describe the content of the page.

• Page and title formats: visual and content review of how page titles appear in browser tabs, social shares, and search engine results.

• Location and business information: this will be added to your back-end site info

• URL slugs: checked and verified

• Keywords: researched and implemented

• Google Analytics: set-up connection

• Alt-text to images: images will have alt-text coded behind them for SEO and compliance

Mobile Optimization

Overall use of best practices for mobile during the design and development of the website. However, it will be developed for desktop first, and then optimized before launch.

• Site will be developed to be fully responsive on phones, tablets, etc.

• Style and simplify mobile navigation

• Optimize CTAs and their location based on common eye and swipe patterns on mobiles

• Test performance optimization

• Photography and imagery reviewed on mobile, mobile images formatted and uploaded when necessary

• Overall sit spacing will be reviewed, tweaked, edited, etc. for mobile experience

• “Top-down” approach checked and ensured

• Cross-browser tested

Additional Design and Development Essentials

• Browser icon / favicon

• Social images tagged / created within navigation pages to populate with share links, social posts, etc.

• Custom designed 404 Page (page not found, directs back to home)

• Outbound links always go to new tab / window

Website Launch Actions and Checklist

• Broken inbound and outbound links are checked and fixed, content errors addressed, etc.

• Hide orphaned pages (drafts, etc.)

• Direct domain name (through current registrar) to finalized Squarespace staging site

• Setup hosting plan (if different from current)

• Source to outside friends / family members to review for flow and content mistakes

• Ownership transfer to your account. I will stay on as a contributor to make edits and maintain the site

• Minor updates for 30 days after launch (hourly rate for updates and site additions can be discussed)

Square E-Commerce Site Integration

Separate Square Website Design (‘SHOP’ page)

• Let’s chat about this and how it’s going - it doesn’t seem to work at all for me (even the one item seems unavailable).

• After doing some digging on how to integrate these two sites, it seems like the current set-up is probably the way to go — HOWEVER, the sites as they are now are a big disconnect for me (I think its mostly the design, but it definitely needs an elevated and more seamless integration - I will do additional research).

• We could table this for a hot minute, focus on the Squarespace site, then circle back. Let’s discuss!