Website for a bridal salon: the YES DAY case study

A good website for a bridal salon has one main job: bring the bride in for a fitting, without a phone call. For the YES DAY salon in Prague 2 we built a catalogue of almost two hundred dresses with filters, online fitting booking and, behind the site, a custom admin where the owner manages appointments, brides, rentals and contracts. This case study describes where we started and how the project went.

Starting point: an established salon, a dated website

The owner was taking over an established bridal salon and wanted to bring it back to life. The salon had beautiful dresses, but the website felt dated and brides got lost in it. The dresses were hard to browse, and brides wrote or called to book a fitting.

The salon then ran on a notebook and e-mails: fitting dates, notes on brides, rentals and contracts. This is how the owner described the brief herself:

I'd love a website that feels like the salon itself, where a bride can browse the dresses and book a fitting on her own. And on top of that my own admin, where I have appointments, brides, dresses and contracts together.

A salon lives from meeting in person at the fitting. A bride has to try the dresses on, look at them and talk them through with someone who knows them. So the site is not meant to sell instead of the salon, but to bring the bride in as easily as possible, at the moment she has made up her mind.

What the salon needed

Three things came out of the brief, and they had to work together:

• A website that does the salon credit and feels as elegant as the salon itself.
• A dress catalogue you can actually search, not just a long photo gallery.
• One place to run the salon: fittings, brides, dresses, rentals and contracts, instead of a notebook and e-mails.

One more condition mattered. The owner did not want to pay for several third-party tools that do not talk to each other. So we designed the site and the admin as one system: the dresses in the catalogue are the same dresses in rentals and contracts.

The dress catalogue on a bridal salon website

The heart of the site is a catalogue of 197 dress models. Each model has its own page with photos, and a bride can narrow the catalogue down to what she is looking for:

• Style of the dress.
• Size.
• Service: rent, buy or sale.
• Price: a slider sets the most she wants to spend.

From every model a fitting is a few clicks away, and favourite dresses can be attached straight to the booking. The salon knows in advance what the bride wants to try on.

The look is built on deep chocolate brown, cream paper and gold only for the details. Headings are in classic Baskervville with italics for emotion, filters, prices and forms in Instrument Sans so they stay easy to read even on a small phone screen. The site feels like the salon, yet is as easy to search as a shop.

Booking a fitting without a phone call

Booking is connected directly to the salon's admin. The bride sees free slots based on how the salon sets them, and after she books:

1. 1The appointment lands straight in the salon's calendar.
2. 2Both the bride and the salon get a confirmation by e-mail.
3. 3The day before the fitting the bride gets a reminder.
4. 4The dresses she marked as favourites are attached to the appointment.

When a ready-made booking tool is enough and when a custom one pays off is covered in Custom booking system or off the shelf. For YES DAY, what happens after the fitting decided it.

The admin: the whole salon in one place

We put the admin together around how the salon really works: fitting, choosing a dress, the sale, the rental, alterations and the return. Each step has its place in the system and the owner sees it on one screen.

• Booking calendar: fittings, pick-ups, returns and days with the seamstress.
• A card for every bride with all appointments, notes and chosen dresses.
• Dress catalogue and stock: models, photos and prices, rental and sale.
• Sales and rentals in an overview sorted by wedding date.
• Contracts in one click from the data in the system.

How the project went

We split the project into four steps. It did not start with design, but with the bride's journey.

1. 1The salon through the bride's eyes. Where she hears about the salon, how she picks dresses and when she decides to come for a fitting. That set the order of pages and where booking appears.
2. 2A catalogue you can search. We turned almost two hundred models into a catalogue with photos and filters.
3. 3An admin that follows the business. The system mirrors the salon's real steps from fitting to returning the dress.
4. 4Fine-tuning with the owner. We refined the site and admin based on her feedback, from copy to the columns in the sales overview. Finally a custom domain, SEO and structured data.

You can browse the whole project in the YES DAY portfolio, including a demo of the admin.

What to take from YES DAY for your salon

A website for a bridal salon does not need its own system from day one. But if the business runs on fittings, rentals and contracts, it is worth thinking about from the start. A few things hold in general:

• Booking should be visible wherever the bride is deciding, above all next to every model.
• The catalogue needs filters that match brides' questions: style, size, rent or buy, and for how much.
• One system for the site and the business saves copying between a notebook, e-mail and a spreadsheet.
• Contracts and documents built from the data in the system save time and reduce mistakes.

What such a project costs depends on scope. A site with an e-shop or booking starts at CZK 39,900 with us, and a custom admin is priced by what it needs to do. Indicative prices are in How much does a business website cost and on our pricing page.

Run a salon and want brides to book on their own? Get in touch, we will go through how you work and build a free demo.

Related project

YES DAY

Bridal salon · site with booking and a custom admin

Full case study ›