Café English

When we started working together, Café English was a small language school with an ambitious owner at the helm. The school didn't have a dominant online presence and a coherent image. New students came mainly through referrals, which is a great achievement, but it's not scalable, and you can't base a strategy on it. We aimed to establish a predictable customer acquisition process and increase operational efficiency through our collaboration. To achieve this, we needed to develop the value proposition for the language school. Then, based on this, we developed the corporate identity, website, and other supporting marketing materials.

Clarify

Together with the owner, we defined the brand's key attributes, ideal target audience, and market environment. A critical step was to narrow down the target audience. Café English offers premium services for those who demand the best and are willing to pay for them. For B2C companies that really want to build a brand, this is always a difficult decision. It can be easy to feel that by narrowing the target audience, they are losing some of their market, but in fact the opposite is true. A real value proposition most often comes from specialization: if a company can make a credible case that it offers the best solution for a particular need for a particular audience, it suddenly becomes very easy to sell. Café English's value proposition is that it builds students’ confidence by giving them fluency in English. It achieves this, unlike other schools, by mentoring students with native-speaking teachers, using fun methods, and focusing only on speech.

Design  

We began the design process by researching the competition and identifying national and international best practices. After narrowing these down to those that fit our strategy, we discussed them with the owner. First, we developed the corporate identity, highlighting coffee as a key element of the visual identity derived from the brand name. The key words for the style are friendly, approachable, confident, inspiring, and playful. We kept the existing logo because it had established brand awareness, and changing it wasn’t professionally justified. We complemented the colors and refined the nuances. Next, we focused on the website design, starting with the user experience (UX). This involved gathering all the content with the owner and developing the website's structure. Interviews with clients were invaluable, allowing us to gather insights while also producing reference videos. Videos play a crucial role on the website, bringing visitors closer to the unique learning experience in a virtual space. We produced an explainer video for each key topic and introductory videos for all teachers, along with promotional videos for the website and marketing campaigns. Finally, we designed the website’s user interface (UI) based on the previously developed design. Initially, we used individually edited stock photos, but as Café English created more of its own imagery, we replaced them.

Implement

We designed the website in Adobe XD and developed it using Webflow. Webflow is a flexible and reliable tool that makes the site efficient to operate and expand. This flexibility is essential as the website continuously evolves to meet the needs of students and the goals of the owner. We incorporated numerous automations to help the language school operate more efficiently. The school’s unique approach includes no traditional courses, allowing for continuous learning and enrollment. Students can purchase their own passes online and then book appointments for various types of lessons using the booking system. Payments and invoicing occur automatically, reducing the administrative burden on the school staff. In addition to digital solutions, we collaborated with the interior designer to ensure that the school's space reflected the value proposition and brand identity.