I made The Naked Soap Company website

I attended the Collective Markets earlier this year located in Civic Park, right across from SA’s well known Tea Tree Plaza. This is where I came in contact with The Naked Soap Company, a small business dedicated to hand making eco-friendly soaps and skin-care products.

Elise is the owner of the company and runs the business with her family. I had the privilege of meeting Michelle (Elise’s sister) at the market stall and mentioned I help locals like herself develop their websites.

Fast forward several weeks later and I was in a Zoom call with Elise understanding what her primary goal was for the new website. Elise explained to me how their previous website wasn’t hitting the mark and wanted an update.

Why was the previous website not hitting the mark?

The previous website, as seen in the images below, made sales but it had a poor user experience. After viewing it myself I noticed that the website had slow load times, was designed with an average template and didn’t fully represent the quality of their products. These sorts of issues are not just aesthetic but practical issues since Google ranks on all of these factors.

A screenshot of the old website home page for The Naked Soap Company.

The website would take its time to display product images which can make users frustrated and deterred from staying on the website.

Products taking their time to load on the old website for The Naked Soap Company.

Any score below 90 on pagespeed insights is considered average and below 50 is rated as very poor. This old website had a terrible performance score of 20 with the other scores not up to scratch also. The only score above 90 is the SEO rating, however, an entire website’s SEO factors in performance so the 91 is not as great as it seems.

Original scores for the old website tested on Google Pagespeed Insights Tool.

I buckled down and started working on the first draft of the website. A very strong point of The Naked Soap Company is their packaging and branding. I personally loved the packaging and wanted stronger representation for it on the website. I also loved their tag line, the idea that the products are good not only for our skin but for the Earth too.

Instead of designing a classic massive image at the top of the screen, I wanted to merge the above elements together and create a unique hero banner. I focused on representing the brand colours throughout the home page and getting the products involved as much as possible. I sent the first draft off and awaited feedback.

The screenshot of the first draft for the new website.

The Feedback

Elise was kind and direct with her feedback. There were aspects she liked but didn’t think the general design represented their brand well. Elise felt the design looked more cutesy rather than clean and crisp. I had to go back to the drawing board and perform some redesigns.

Elise also provided direct feedback on changes she wanted which included removing all rounding, changing section positions, changing the font for the hero section etc.

I began revising a new draft to send to Elise. I worked all day and night the next day addressing each feedback point and redesigning sections. Elise liked the second revision and felt it represented the brand a lot better. From there we fiddled with minor changes and came to a final design that Elise was happy with.

Final design of new website for The Naked Soap Company.

Working together with Elise, we were able to work back and forth to create an even better design than the first draft. The website has now been published and is making more sales than the previous website.

Why would the new website make more sales?

There is no guarantee to say a new website will generate more sales. However, the previous website had poor ratings and poor user experience. This combination doesn’t promote high Google rankings and user retention for your website. To improve these ratings can only benefit the reach and usability of your website.

I worked hard on user friendly designs, maximised every rating tediously and have almost maxed out every score.

Updated scores for the new website tested on Google Pagespeed Insights Tool.

Elise and her family are an awesome team and have genuinely great products. It has been a pleasure to work with them and design a website that helped take their online presence to its next level. Their testimonial of our work was left on our Trustpilot reviews.

5 star testimonial by Elise, the owner of The Naked Soap Company.

I work for the best interest of my client and to see Elise happy with the final result makes me feel proud.

Now it’s time for me to shower and use my body scrub from the gift pack I purchased!