Kizomba Fusion was a relatively new start up (2 years old) with a local business approach that initially aimed at organising monthly dance events in Reading, UK. Until this point they were relying on social media campaigns to advertise their events. As a result, most of data provided by them was Facebook related.
However, as they have grown, they started looking into other revenue streams and decided to launch weekly classes across 3 different cities. On top of this, they have also launched a new product for first dances within the Wedding market which would also have to be predominant in their website.
Achieving a final product that can represent their vision, follows their branding approach, that clearly states their three product offers and has an easy going (non corporate) feel to it. The message has to be clear and feel local for each of the three cities. As they also wanted to include some of their value added services I have build a Sitemap to give them a clear idea of where I was heading to.
I started by creating a user story that would portrait the exact target audience.
After doing some social media research and personally interviewing some of their students, I have found out that the dance community is highly bias towards social dance status, this means that visual representation of their influence (pictures of them teaching large crowds, testimonials and online feedback) had to be included first in order to generate credibility.
The Hero image was divided by a testimonial in order to achieve that as soon as the user looks at it. Images of groups of students and online feedback were also shown at the beginning to increase a perception of credibility and knowledge.
Making all locations feel “local” was difficult.
According to the dance school the Kizomba community is small. This means that most likely, despite of living in different cities, some students may know each other. As a result, before and after showing the different locations where they teach I have designed a gallery showing people from different social background that have attended their events in a hope that the user will recognise some faces a build a sense of familiarity. With the data provided, I have also noticed that the pictures with more engagement rate on their facebook page are either humorous or group ones.
As a result I have included a group picture of one of the localities where they teach so the user builds an emotional connection with his own locality.
This engagement was tested with 5 dancers to ensure that the users would positively respond to it. If they had enquired about any of the content that would be seen as a reenforcement that the approach was correct.
Due to product awareness, Kizomba Fusion insisted to use Wix as the website backbone. As such I was limited on how I would emphasise it on the Private Classes tab.
As a result, under that tab, I have moved the Wedding First Dances to be shown as the first product. I have also chosen the most engaging picture for the wedding product and purposely left the other two less visually attractive.
The font and generally aesthetics within the product tab also follow the trends of what these kinds of websites are currently offering.
After the project has been finished, I provided them with some additional SEO consultancy services in order to be able to maximise customer engagement and retention.
As a result, after 2 months, they now have around 20 students per site and an average of 80 dancers attending their monthly parties. To visit this website please click on the link below