Vanesa Nicolosi - Branding Strategy & Site Design

By Janet 
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Vanesa Nicolosi, a personal trainer who moved back to Madrid from Dubai in 2020, had been promoting her business through social media when she decided it was time to take the next step. 

In the midst of the pandemic, she started working with Mari to rebrand and reestablish herself and her business in the local community. In these branding sessions, Mari helped Vanesa define her unique value and offering in the personal fitness field. Together, they analyzed Vanessa’s current clientele profile and identified new potential client groups, finding what they called” ‘the ideal customer” for Vanesa in today's digital age. For the visual rebranding, Mari established a color palette which was inspired by the content Vanesa was already sharing on social media.

In preparation for the new site design, Mari and Vanesa spent time looking for inspiration for the site, deciding what kind of layout would be best, and even preparing photos to be featured throughout. When the task of the site design reached my desk, I was given access to a document outlining all pertinent info that should be shared on the site, testimonials, and photos of Vanesa and her clients. 

It was clear to me after reading through the material for the site that Vanesa’s goal was to connect with her clients and empower them through her work. With this in mind, I set out to design a site that would be inviting and comforting to potential clients seeking a compassionate leader in their fitness journey. 

Vanesa wanted an easy-to-access site, with one main page and a separate one outlining her services and her pricing models. The home page would be the first opportunity for a first impression, so I went with a picture of Vanessa, working with a client virtually. You can see Vanesa, in a plank position, smiling and cheering on her client from her living room. This image seemed to be the best visual representation of Vanesa’s work and her bubbly personality. I edited the image to emphasize her form and make her the focal point. Laid over this image are three words that describe Vanesa, “Fun, Professional, Flexible”, and a mission statement.

As Vanesa’s relationship with her clients is at the center of her work, client testimonials are sprinkled throughout the site in the form of block quotes and are featured in their own section titled “My Girls''. For this section, I created a collage with photos Vanesa has collected of her working with clients. 

The final step in designing Vanesa’s site was making the site bilingual and accessible to English and Spanish speakers alike. Vanesa already has a global clientele and wants to continue this trend. After laying out her information on the page, we set out to translate all site content and find the best way to present the information for clients. The homepage is in English, but a tab in the site menu offers the option to continue to the Spanish version of the site with a dropdown menu showing you the pages available in Spanish. This took some trial and error, but after consulting with Vanesa and reworking some things, we felt confident we made this site accessible to her bilingual clientele.

We wrapped things up with Vanesa by setting her up on Google with a business profile so that her clients can easily find her through web searches and made sure all content on her site was easy to find through search engine optimization (SEO) in both English and Spanish. Mari also gave Vanesa an introduction to  Google analytics, a tool she can use to track how her clients are finding her and what they're looking for. 

Check out the site!

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Vanesa was very hands-on throughout this whole process and it was very easy to work with her to bring her new site to life. 
¡Gracias, Vanesa!