Web design and online school on Squarespace for Jagat Kaur, a yoga instructor

In this post, I’m sharing a case study of the project I worked on in 2022 for Jagat Kaur, a yoga instructor.

Let's see:

• What was Jagat's situation when he contacted me?

• Which aspects of your brand and website we worked on for your project.

• And what were the main results? (I’ll give you a hint: in the two months following the launch of the new website, the client generated five-figure revenue and received very positive feedback from her students.)

Table of Contents

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Client:

Jagat Kaur, Kundalini Yoga instructor.

Business model:

Online training with Kundalini Yoga courses focused on women and fertility.

SERVICE:

Visual identity design (essential branding), minimal viable website design, and setup of membership and online school features on Squarespace.

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The original context

When Jagat contacted me, she had a website she’d built herself on Squarespace that wasn’t working at all and that she wasn’t using. Jagat was paying for an annual Squarespace subscription that was simply going to waste because she wasn’t getting any return on her website. So, just by having the website, she was losing money.

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A screenshot of what the original Jagat website looked like.

At that time, Jagat offered two limited-enrollment courses, each held once a year (a format he still follows today). The biggest challenge was how he managed his school:

• I sold the courses via Instagram and WhatsApp, accepting payments through PayPal.

• I also managed the courses via WhatsApp. That is, communicating with the students, posting links to the Zoom classes, answering questions, and providing support—in short, everything involved in managing a group of students in an online course. And I handled it all via WhatsApp!

The result was total chaos. She spent hours glued to the phone answering questions and managing students, which left her feeling overwhelmed all the time and meant that these students didn't have the best experience.

And here I want to clarify something: I always say that, to start with, the important thing is to take the plunge and confirm that your business idea works and that you can sell it. And that’s something I stand by.

But there comes a point when you're making sales, you know that what you're offering works, and you have to make decisions—because otherwise, your business won't be sustainable, either emotionally or financially.

So, with all of this in mind, our goal was to enhance Jagat’s brand image and the overall course experience—both for the students and for Jagat’s administrative team.

The solution to the problem

Jagat's project required us to work on several fronts, ranging from branding and business objectives (and the website) to setting up and managing an online school.

The client wanted to stick with Squarespace as her website platform because of its ease of use, so we decided to take advantage of the Members' Areas feature that became available that year.

Related: How to Sell Online Courses with Squarespace [Updated for 2023]

The various elements we are working on in the project:

Visual identity.

We decided to include the design of a core brand identity in the project because, up to that point, Jagat basically had no visual identity for its brand.

Essential branding involves defining a color palette and a set of typefaces for the brand, and creating a typographic logo (i.e., one consisting solely of text). In Jagat’s case, we decided to incorporate the illustrations she creates herself into the branding—both in the logo and as part of the website design. This allowed us to create a distinctive visual universe for the brand that quickly and effectively communicates its personality and values.

Website, online school, and lead and student management.

Following our strategy call, during which we reviewed our business objectives and how the website can support them, we decided:

Create a new offer: a membership at a very affordable price

This would serve as an entry-level product for interested customers and also generate recurring monthly revenue for Jagat.

Prospective students who have signed up for the membership program are more likely to later enroll in one of Jagat’s training courses if they are satisfied with the program.

In addition, students who have taken one of her courses and want to stay in touch and continue learning with Jagat have the option to join the membership program and take classes with her every month. This was something they asked for a lot, so we addressed a real need among her audience.

We define a customer journey for website visits

That allows for a gradual introduction to Jagat and its offerings:

• A free class as a lead magnet to encourage sign-ups for the mailing list. This class gives you a chance to experience Jagat’s teaching style, as well as his approach to Kundalini Yoga and fertility. On the page where the video of the free class is shared, we include a call to action to sign up for the membership, so we can capitalize on the fresh interest of anyone who took the class and enjoyed it.

• In addition, subscribers are reminded via email of the option to join the membership program (if they haven't already signed up), and we continue to nurture our relationship with them through the newsletter that Jagat sends out regularly.

• We created landing pages for each of her courses, so that when someone messaged her on Instagram, she could direct them to a specific page on her website containing all the information they needed, instead of having to exchange messages back and forth.

  The training sessions are held once a year, so we've included a form on the pages for people to sign up for a waiting list while registration isn't open.

We set up the email marketing client within Squarespace

To do this, we used Campaigns (the platform’s email marketing client) to streamline the management of the mailing list. This way, everything was organized and managed from a single place: your website, your courses, your membership, and your mailing list.

We set up the courses and membership within Squarespace

As well as their dashboard using the Member Areas feature, which allows you to:

• Manage the entire purchasing process, including creating training accounts, processing payments, and more, all within the Squarespace site itself.

  This also allows students to create their own personal account at the time of purchase on the website, where they can manage their payments, courses, billing, and more.

• Having all content hosted on the website, protected and accessible only to those who have purchased a membership or courses.

• Manage the content for these training sessions directly from the website, taking advantage of Squarespace's user-friendly interface and ease of creating content pages.

  Class videos are uploaded directly to the website, so everything is in one place and there’s no need to use a third-party service (such as Vimeo or Wistia).

In addition, we've added a help section to the courses and membership dashboard to reduce the number of support requests.

We create templates to make it easier to publish recurring content

Such as the monthly membership content or the modules for the various courses.

And, of course, we design an attractive and functional website

Based on the branding we developed initially.

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Tangible results of the website redesign

As you can see, this was a large and very comprehensive project, but the investment of time and resources was well worth it. After all that work, the results were very tangible:

• The client has full control over managing and publishing her website (including both regular pages and courses and membership sections) if she needs to or if she prefers to do it herself rather than delegate the task.

• The students' user experience has improved significantly (several former students have praised Jagat for the new format), from the moment they first visit the site to review information on the course and membership sales page, through the purchase process, course enrollment, and access to content.

  This improved user experience increases both the actual and perceived value of the offering. And that translates into more sales.

• By having students sign up on her Squarespace website and managing mailing lists through Squarespace as well, it becomes very easy to segment them by the products they’ve purchased and communicate with them via email campaigns. This makes it easier to follow up with them after they’ve made a purchase, send reminders, or notify them of updates to the courses.

• The client no longer uses WhatsApp to share training materials or provide support, which saves her a lot of time and reduces the associated stress. She now manages her training programs in a more relaxed and focused manner, and the perceived value of her offerings has increased significantly.

• Between the launch of the membership program and one of the courses (the least expensive one), the client generated five-figure revenue in the two months following the website’s launch and received very positive feedback from her students about the new experience.

  The business's profitability increased significantly because managing it takes less time and is done in a much more organized manner

  And this increase in profitability and free time opened up new possibilities: a few months later, the client launched two masterclasses as digital products and a podcast.

Conclusion

I hope you found this case study interesting, and that it helps you better understand why I say that I don't (just) do web design, but rather:

I develop management systems for your business to improve brand positioning and increase profitability.

If we had focused solely on making the website look nice, that’s all we would have achieved: a website that looks nicer than the original, but nothing more.

When I work on a web design project on Squarespace, I don't just provide a beautiful design—I also bring my strategic business and marketing expertise to help ensure that your website helps you achieve your business goals.