The Barre studio experience online
Working as Co-founder with Sophie, we created an on-demand fitness platform for barre and dance cardio classes. Starting with brand identity and strategy, I moved into UX and UI for the website, before building it with no-code tools. Successfully up and running with monthly subscribers, we work on marketing and expanding the features as we grow.
Visit the site
Creating the brand identity
Sophie felt it was important to find a balance, somewhere between the neon and all-cap italics of many fitness studios and the dainty pastels of dance. Barre is from the ballet world, but it builds strength and is a tough workout. We decided to go for elegance with the palette and secondary typeface, but used a modern primary typeface and went big and bolder with our sizes in application for the site.
Promoting the platform & subscribing
Sophie’s on-demand workouts are a subscription service, with the content accessed via the website. This means the site has some public-facing marketing pages, some members-only pages to access the content once logged in, and pages to sign up and subscribe.
Introducing and explaining the platform
The home page presents Sophie and the platform, progressively going into more detail into different aspects of the product. Details about the classes offered, Sophie’s experience, benefits of barre as exercise, as well as what’s included with the platform build trust.
A focus on interactions
To tie in with the world of dance and barre, it was important to include movement in the design. Through interaction and motion we transition smoothly between content and draw attention to the sign up CTA.
Member’s area with class library and personalised dashboard
Without an existing platform in place, the only way to access data was via a manual request to the development team. Add to that the privacy and data protection laws, and we had no way of seeing the information we needed to house.
Class library
The library is where members can find all of Sophie’s classes. Details like duration and body parts worked help to scan, with filters and sort options zeroing in on the type of workout they’re after. The can also favourite classes and find them on their dashboard.
Video classes
Powered by the webflow CMS, each class has it’s own page to watch the workout. Full details about the class are provided, including links to equipment used where Sophie can promote her affiliate sponsors. Classes that work the same body parts are shown on a recommended rail to aid discovery.
Optimised for mobile
With the majority of Sophie’s advertising and brand building happening on social media, many user’s first visit to the site will be on mobile. Whilst watching the workouts on a bigger screen is better, many may cast from their mobile, or be using an ipad or other device if traveling. It was crucial, therefore, that the site worked and looked great for all sizes and devices.
Built using no and low-code tools
I built the site in Webflow, with the support of other third party tools to facilitate the additional functionality required. User authentication and gating content with Memberstack, Stripe handling payments and subscription management, with Airtable as our central database. Zapier connects them all together, keeping everything running smooth via automations.
