From homemade fixes to growth-geared webshop

Execution, growth and bootstrapping > Beautiful code and future-proof webshop

After several years as a lean startup, Hairlust had accumulated quite the pile.

Their visual profile did not match their brand, the webshop system was complicated to work in, and it was not geared for the international expansion they were already well into.

“We wanted to ensure a top-notch and localized solution in all of our local markets, and we didn't want it to feel like we were cutting corners.

We had done most of it ourselves, and in the end, our websites needed a huge boost in quality on all fronts.”

- Rasmus Serup, CEO & Co-Founder at Hairlust

In short:

The time for patchwork solutions, messed up codes and design issues was over. Now Hairlust needed a growth-geared, localized webshop with a complete redesign and new infrastructure.

Therefore, it was essential for Hairlust to secure the right partner.

Fortunately, we had no problem with the specific needs - on the contrary. We love it when our clients set high expectations for us. Because we do exactly the same ourselves.

“It was important for me to make it clear before any collaboration started that we would be extremely ambitious - and they could expect high demands. Once everything was confirmed and we spoke the same language, it was a perfect match.”

- Rasmus Serup, CEO & Co-Founder at Hairlust.

The handshake was given. Expectations were aligned. Now it was our turn to prove they had made the right choice.

Top 3 focus areas in the process: Aesthetics, international expansion and usability

We will spare you from Tolkien-length texts about beautiful code and pixel-perfect design.

Instead, we have boiled it down to the three things we focused on most during the process.

1) The visual expression

The design and overall feeling of the previous webshop did not match Hairlust’s actual target audience and brand. We needed to ramp up the "appeal" while ensuring we hit the target audience right in the heart.

Here is how we did it:

• Visitors had to understand the concept within 0.2 seconds.
• It needed to be ultra-intuitive to navigate the site.
• Minimalist design that hit the bullseye for the entire target audience – across genders.

2) Localized webshop

Hairlust had to have a webshop geared towards international markets. And that was one of our primary focus areas throughout the process.

“At that time, we had 10 country accounts connected to our Shopify Plus solution, all of which had to work together and be future-proofed.”

- Rasmus Serup, CEO & Co-Founder at Hairlust

This is easier said than done, because there are a lot of details to consider when expanding internationally – everything from making sure your webshop appears local to understanding legal issues, e-commerce culture, and logistics.

So in addition to a complete redesign, it required an infrastructure that Hairlust's local country managers could work in themselves.

And that leads us easily and elegantly to the third focus area in the process ⬇

3) User-friendly webshop

If you ask Hairlust, the choice to have local country managers has played a crucial role in their success (you can read much more about this in our interview with Rasmus Serup right here).

Therefore, the third focus point was to make their webshop user-friendly for everyone at Hairlust - and not just Rasmus Serup, who had previously worked on their webshop alone.

“We're very involved in developing new content for our websites, and it had to be easy for marketers to update and localize our country sites. That's why it was important that someone without coding experience could modify and optimize our sites without messing with the setup.”

- Rasmus Serup, CEO & Co-Founder at Hairlust

Today, Hairlust has a scalable setup that is flexible and easy to work in.

It requires exactly zero coding background to add text, change images or add a section so that all their employees can adjust and change the website.

Today, Hairlust has a webshop that matches their sky-high ambitions - here's what Rasmus Serup have to say about the collaboration: