Small Business Website Development for Hazel's Buddy

Hazel's Buddy is the premier candle-making experience in scenic Middletown, NY. While having items for retail purchase, their main focus is on the experience of making a candle yourself. The experience of candle making is amazing. I personally got to see people making their candles for the first time, and they all had a fun time. I've had different clients in the past, but this is the first time that I've had one who was a small business. Especially one that didn't have a website. I was truly excited to have a blank slate to work from. This was a double-edged sword, though, as I had to create a branded website without a previous site of theirs to work from.

I had the store owner walk me through the business's operations. We had so many ideas for features to help her support the business. However, being a new business, it was difficult to figure out where to trim the fat. We decided to focus on the number-one moneymaker for her, which was events. The website would introduce her business to the local community and would direct them to participate in one of her many events. This also leaves her ample room in the future to grow her website as her business expands.

I decided on a simple website with the ability to customize. While WordPress is a widely known tool, even non-developers know it, using it has many hidden costs. It has a lot of power to customize anything and everything, but that also increases the likelihood of user error. This was a large concern for the client, as they weren't tech-savvy. Therefore, finding the right Content Management System (CMS) where she could worry about content, and I can worry about how things look. I chose to use a CMS that is both developer-friendly and specialized in customization. Statamic is a great option to fulfill all my needs for this project. Not only is it built on top of Laravel, a framework in the PHP community, but its closed ecosystem also made it secure right from the jump.

Building out the UI was the easy part, since the design was primarily focused on serving as a splash page. The majority of my focus was on integrating Stripe payments and building a custom event and reservation system. One of the most important aspects of any good design is the story you're telling the end user, how you teach them about your services, and how they obtain said services. That's why the splash page focused on educating people about the experiences you can have, then reviewed upcoming events, and finally let you reserve a spot.

This website was a lot of fun to build, and I'm quite happy with the end result.