Case Study · Beauty & Salon
A salon website built to be found.
Kathely is an extension and colour specialist in Yaletown. Her work is the kind people research for weeks before they book — and none of it existed anywhere a search engine could see. Everything lived in an Instagram inbox.
The problem
A business with no front door.
Tape-in and K-tip extensions. Platinum and dimensional colour. Scalp treatments. This is considered, expensive, specialist work — the kind a client reads about for a fortnight before she trusts anyone with her hair.
All of it ran through Instagram DMs. Every enquiry started at zero: what the methods are, how long a session takes, what it costs, how to look after it afterwards. The same eight questions, typed out by hand, one client at a time, forever.
The deeper problem wasn't the workload. It was that none of it was findable. Someone in Vancouver searching "tape-in extensions" or "balayage for fine hair" could not reach her, because there was nothing to reach.
- No website — the business existed only on a platform she didn't own
- Every enquiry answered by hand, in a DM thread
- Invisible to anyone searching for the services by name
- No page for any single service to rank on its own
- Method, timing, pricing and aftercare re-explained every time
- Nothing for an AI assistant to read, cite or recommend
- No structured data — search engines had no idea what the business was
- Reach entirely at the mercy of one algorithm
Instagram is a rented platform. A website is the one you own.The argument that started the project
The approach
Four decisions that shaped the build.
Custom from scratch — no template, no page builder. Every page ships as pre-rendered HTML, so a crawler or an AI assistant reads the full content on arrival instead of waiting for JavaScript to decide what exists.
A page for every service
Eight service pages instead of one list. Extensions, K-tip, tape-in, blonde, colour, scalp treatments and the stylist masterclass each got their own URL, gallery and FAQ — so each one competes on its own terms for what people actually type.
A template built to answer
Every service page runs the same nine-section structure, drawn straight from the questions arriving in her inbox. A visitor lands with doubts and leaves without them — before she has to type a word.
A journal that meets the search
Ten articles on what clients genuinely ask — how long tape-ins last, balayage or highlights on fine hair, whether extensions cause damage. Written to be found, and written well enough to be quoted.
Structured for machines
Twenty-one schema types across the site — HairSalon, Service, FAQPage, Review, ImageGallery, GeoCoordinates — plus a clean sitemap and Open Graph on every page. Search engines don't guess what the business is. They're told.
Hover either frame to travel down the page.
Anatomy
Inside a service page.
A service page has exactly one job: take somebody who is curious and make her confident enough to book.
The nine sections aren't a design flourish. They're the same nine things that came up in every DM conversation, in roughly the same order — so the page now has the conversation on her behalf, at three in the morning, with someone who would never have sent the first message.
It opens with a promise and then, unusually, tries to disqualify the wrong client. Setting expectations early costs one paragraph and saves an hour of misdirected consultation.
Hero
The service, a one-line promise, and a booking invitation.
Is this for you?
An honest qualifier that filters mismatched enquiries before they cost anyone time.
What's included
Consultation, formula, bond protection, toning, cut, aftercare.
The process
Five numbered steps through the appointment itself.
Timing & investment
Session length and upkeep, broken out by method.
Results gallery
Real before-and-afters from the chair. Restraint, then evidence.
FAQ
Eight questions, expandable, marked up as FAQPage schema.
From Kathely
A personal note in her own voice, and a second invitation.
Related services
The natural next step, linked before she has to look for it.
Every screen
Built for the phone first.
More than seven in ten beauty clients arrive on a phone, usually from an Instagram link. The desktop layout is the courtesy; the phone layout is the business.
The journal
Ten answers, written to be found.
The agreed scope called for five articles. Ten shipped — each one aimed at a question already arriving in her inbox, and each one a door into the site from a search she previously had no way of appearing in.
- How long do tape-in extensions really last?
- K-tip vs tape-in: which is right for your hair?
- Balayage vs highlights for fine hair
- The best hair extensions for fine or thin hair
- Do hair extensions damage your hair?
- Why highlights turn brassy — and how to stop it
- What does a scalp treatment actually do?
- How to care for tape-in extensions so they last
- How to prepare for a hair extension consultation
- Choosing a Vancouver hair extension specialist
What shipped
The whole thing, in three weeks.
| Pages | 23 live — homepage, about, portfolio, eight service pages, journal index and ten articles |
|---|---|
| Build | Custom Astro site, statically pre-rendered, no template or page builder |
| Structured data | 21 schema types including HairSalon, Service, FAQPage, Review and ImageGallery |
| Portfolio | Before-and-after gallery grouped by service |
| Enquiries | Contact form landing straight in her inbox, with analytics recording every submission |
| Discovery | Sitemap, Open Graph, and Google Business Profile setup |
| Deliberately excluded | Video production, automated booking, a product storefront, social media management — named as out of scope from the first conversation |
Booking stayed exactly where her clients already were: Instagram and the inbox. A scheduling integration was quoted, scoped and left out on purpose — it can be added the day she wants it, and not a day sooner.
Where it stands
What we're not going to claim.
The site is live, with analytics in place and an event recording every booking enquiry. Search visibility for a new domain builds over months, not weeks — so we aren't going to quote you a traffic figure or a booking uplift yet. There isn't enough behind one to be worth reading, and a number you can't verify is worth less than none.
What we can show you is the work. hairbykathely.com is live, and every claim on this page can be checked by opening it.
Still running it out of an inbox?
If your best work lives on a platform you don't own, let's talk about what it takes to have somewhere people can actually find it. Thirty minutes, no pitch deck.
Book a free consultationOr call (604) 789-0831 — Pacific time.