RMIT UNIVERSITY

Wesal’s Beauty Project Industry Applications Project ISYS2358

Hula Kahlal S3236327 Hula Kahlal – S3236327 ISYS2358

Contents

Table of Figures:

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Executive Summary The aim of this project is to encourage new small businesses to rely mainly on technology rather than word of mouth to market their business and communicate with customers. This is done through building a website from scratch for Wesal’s Beauty, a new home-based beauty service business. The aim is to enable business customers to gain more information about the business, book an appointment online and attract more new customers. DreamWeaver was the main software used to build the website due to its ease of use and useful features.

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This project mainly focused on solving the issues that the client (i.e. the business owner) faced when operating the business; hence, the emphasis on ensuring in each major step taken that the business is within the scope and meets the client’s needs and wants and provides appropriate solutions for the business issues, which was a major evaluation method for this project. The project was also evaluated by comparing the website to other beauty service businesses’ website to ensure that it reflects the beauty industry standards, and ensuring that the website design is of professional quality, and this was done through a meeting with a professional web designer. Apart from a few technical problems, the process of meeting the goals of this project was fairly easy and smooth, and the designer was able to achieve those goals within the time- frame set in the early stages.

Introduction Wesal’s Beauty is a new home based beauty business owned by a beauty service diploma graduate, Wesal Karim. Wesal’s beauty business covers almost all types of beauty services such as facial treatments, hair removal, make-up, manicure and pedicure and body massage. Wesal also offers a variety of packages for those who are interested in getting a number of treatments done in one visit, as well as bridal packages for brides and bridesmaids. Wesal offers her beauty services at a cheaper price than the market price, considering her business is still new and home-based which means she has less expenses than other beauty salons in the market. Customers who wish to know more about the business’s services and benefit from them can only call Wesal on her personal cell phone number to book an appointment.

In the past few months, Wesal’s Beauty business has been growing at a great pace, which exposes the owner, Wesal to new challenges just like any other successful business faces. Wesal’s main issues are as follows:

- She sometimes forgets to write down appointments in her diary due to the high number of customer phone calls

- She often gets phone calls from customers who only wish to know more about the services and the prices and not necessarily book an appointment

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- Although, the business has attracted a good number of customers, it hasn’t yet achieved the desired number of customers the owner originally aimed for

Therefore, the aim of this project is to mainly resolve these issues by designing a website for Wesal’s business that includes the following information by just one click on a link:

- A brief introduction to Wesal’s business and a small profile about the business’s owner

- A page that includes all the services offered by the business and the prices

- Contact details

- “Book an appointment now” link

- Brief introduction to the products that Wesal uses

This website should be able to provide solutions to Wesal’s main issues by first enabling customers to book an appointment online instead of calling the business owner, which is seen to be beneficial for both customers and the business owner. Also, customers can also have a read about the business’s history and the variety of services offered and the prices all on one web page. Secondly, the website will be an easier way to market the business by simply being published on the web.

By the end of this project, Wesal will hopefully be able to keep track of her appointment records, cutting down the number of phone calls received and finally help achieve the desired number of customers.

Methodology In order to solve the business’s issues, it was decided that creating a business website would be the best solution. The business website would include all details about the business history, the services offered and the prices, the product brand that the business owner adopted and a brief history about the company, and the business owner contact details. The main feature of the website however, is the “Book an Appointment NOW” feature, which enables business customers to book an appointment online, without having to call the

5 Hula Kahlal – S3236327 ISYS2358 business owner on her personal cell phone. The business website would also be included in the business card, to ensure that the aim of marketing the business is achieved.

The first step towards working on this project was finding useful software that includes a variety of features to build the website. After spending sometime searching for softwares and taking advice from professionals, it was decided that Macromedia DreamWeaver MX 2004 was the best option available for its ease of use and useful varied features.

The second step was looking at different beauty service websites to have a wide range of ideas on how this website should look like and the appearance features that would most likely engage customers to read more about the business and actually trying the business services. After the search was done, a rough idea was developed and discussed with the client to start building the website. The following figure is the first rough idea developed and the base of the website:

Figure 1 - Rough Plan of the Website

Using DreamWeaver, the basis of the website had been put as Figure1 showed above.

After a number of discussions with the client, the website has been modified a number of times to match the client’s needs and wants and more information was provided regarding the products that the client uses when performing services and the business itself.

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It was decided that it would be a better idea to provide the link to the company’s website to enable customers read more about the products than providing detailed information on Wesal’s Beauty website. Therefore, a brief introduction about the products was put under About MaryKay page, providing a link to MaryKay’s website for more information.

The necessary permission was obtained from the director of MaryKay company in Sydney to provide information about the company and the company’s web address.

The main modification was including the “Book an Appointment NOW” link within the Contact Us. Clicking the “Book an Appointment NOW” button navigates the user from the Contact Us page into another page, where the customer is required to fill out customer details to book an appointment and submit the query online. When the customer submits their online appointment, the client will get an email to their personal email, notifying them with the new appointment, including all customer details submitted.

The online booking page includes a number of mandatory fields, and without filling the required information, the customer is unable to submit their booking. The purpose of adding mandatory fields is to enable the client to have all the information she needs about the customer and the service the customer is requiring beforehand.

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Figure 2 - Booking an Appointment Online

The final stages of building the website was deciding the colour scheme, images to use, font styles and sizes and the overall look of the website.

The colours used were mainly white and light pink and the font was dark maroon. The reason for choosing those colours is because most of the images used from MaryKay’s products were different pink shade colours and white background. The business card and brochure are also of the same colour scheme. After a number of consultations with the client, the images used reflected the sense of relaxation and healthiness, by using images that contained water, flowers, candles and models with light makeup.

The images used in “About MaryKay” page aimed to reflect the variety of products that MaryKay offers, such as makeup, skin care products and other body care products. Those images were also chosen after consulting the client and obtaining permission from MaryKay director in Sydney to use their product images.

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Challenges faced The first issue faced was not being able to follow the time-frame that was set in the earlier stages of this project. The project was started weeks later than the time-frame due to client’s commitments and travel to Sydney. The period between the timeframe timing and the actual start of the project was used to explore a variety of beauty salon websites, reading about the products that MaryKay offers and searching about the software options that were available. Although the project work started late, but the project didn’t lag behind and web designer was able to catch up on the original timeframe.

The second issue was finding a free DreamWeaver download, or finding someone who owns a copy of the paid version of DreamWeaver. Adding to that, the slow internet connection that hindered the process of downloading the trial version of DreamWeaver. Until finally the web designer downloaded the 30-day trial version using the labs provided at RMIT University.

The third and last issue faced was minor technical difficulties when building the website, which were all solved through reading DreamWeaver manual, searching for information on Google and asking professional in the field of web design.

The project work can therefore be described as an easy process with minor obstacles that were easily resolved.

Evaluation of the Project The first method of evaluating the project was the regular meetings conducted with the client to check if the website actually reflects the client’s needs and wants and solve the issues that the client was facing.

The regular meetings and feedback from the client enabled the web designer to narrow down their ideas into more useful ideas that directly solve the client’s issues. For example, the consultation sessions about the choice of images, the colour scheme, the wording of the information and the general appearance of the website helped the web designer to gain deeper knowledge about the beauty service industry from a professional (i.e. the client) and therefore, having specific ideas of how the website should appear to attract customers and

9 Hula Kahlal – S3236327 ISYS2358 encourage them to try the services provided by the business. By doing so, the aim of marketing the business and attracting new customers was achievable.

In the process of the website development, the client was always seen as the most knowledgeable person; hence the strong emphasis on regular meetings and consultations to evaluate the project and ensure that each project aim is achieved. The information included in the website is purely the information provided by the client, with a number of modifications. Both the client and the web designer ensured that the information to be provided leaves no gaps or concerns of new customers, and thus, eliminating customer calls that the client gets almost every day. Finally, the “Book an Appointment NOW” link was one of the most important features on the website, and the solution to the main issue that the client faced (i.e. forgetting to write down new appointments and eliminating customer calls for appointments). This feature is made prominent to customers and an easy process to book an appointment. It is also made easy for the client to keep track of her appointments by simply checking her email address.

The second method of evaluating this project was comparing the website to other beauty service websites to ensure that the wording of information, the colours and images used were of the same or similar nature.

The final method of evaluation was conducting a meeting with an experienced web designer to ensure that the appearance of the website and the general layout reflect the industry that the business belongs to and the purpose of the business. A number of suggestions made by the professional web designer were taken into consideration and discussed with the client and reflected in the designing of the website.

By using each of those evaluation methods, the web designer ensured that each intended outcome of the project is achieved and the client has no gaps of concerns.

Conclusion This project mainly focused on the use of technology as an alternative for physically contacting the service provider to obtain information. New small businesses tend to depend on word of mouth for spreading the business and the physical communication with customers. This was clearly seen in the case of Wesal’s Beauty business, where the business

10 Hula Kahlal – S3236327 ISYS2358 owner mainly depended on friends and family to market the business. This in turn resulted in the increasing number of customer calls and visits without prior appointments.

Hence, the purpose of this project was mainly marketing the business and its services and competitive prices, and enabling customers to book appointments online without having to ring the business owner. The process of building the website was rather smooth and easy, with only minor obstacles that were easily resolved, making the achievement of the project objectives easier than expected. The web designer has put a strong emphasis on regular meetings with the client, considering them the most knowledgeable person in this project. The purpose of those meetings was to get as much information as possible to build a website that reflects the client’s needs and wants, and to ensure that the website actually solves the business’s issues.

Recommendations Since the business is a small home-based one, with relatively small number of customers, there are no major recommendations to be made. However, the client needs to gain the proper knowledge on how to update the website in case there’s a change of any piece of information provided on it. Also, the client is recommended to regularly check her email address since all appointments are now directed to it. Otherwise, there are no major recommendations that the client needs to take into consideration.

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Appendices

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