Make the problem tangible
Rather than leading with generic agency messaging, the experience frames outdated design as a business problem: lost attention, trust, inquiries, and customers.
Current product work01 — Hero
Papaya Studio
A conversion-focused website for a web design studio.
- Role
- Product Designer / Founder
- Project Type
- Personal Project
- Focus
- UX/UI · Brand Identity · Conversion Design · Lead Generation
- Tools
- Lovable · AI-assisted development
Brand design · UX/UI · Conversion strategy · AI-assisted development
Papaya Studio is a personal project exploring how a web design studio could turn its own website into a sales tool. I designed the brand, website experience, messaging, and lead-intake flow around one goal: help potential clients understand the value of a redesign and make it easy to take the next step.
02
The idea
Connect better design to business outcomes
Small businesses often know their website feels outdated, but they don’t necessarily understand what it’s costing them or what a redesign would actually change.
Instead of positioning Papaya Studio as another portfolio of pretty websites, I wanted the experience to connect design directly to business outcomes.
The challenge
How might I turn a web design portfolio into a conversion experience that helps business owners recognize a problem, understand the value of redesigning, and take action?
That question shaped the site’s messaging, information hierarchy, service presentation, and booking experience.
03
Design strategy
Three principles shaped the experience
Show before explaining
Visual redesign examples let visitors immediately understand the transformation Papaya Studio offers instead of relying entirely on service descriptions.
Reduce friction to inquire
Instead of immediately asking someone to schedule a call, the site offers a free redesign preview and collects project information through a short guided flow.
04
The website experience
Designed to sell the value of better design
The homepage moves visitors through a deliberate narrative: identify the problem, visualize the transformation, understand the services and process, build trust, answer objections, and finally convert.
Instead of treating each section independently, I designed the page as a continuous sales journey.
01
Problem-first messaging
The hero immediately communicates the business consequence of an underperforming website.
02
Visual proof
Before-and-after redesigns demonstrate the service before asking visitors to commit.
03
Business context
Supporting statistics connect website performance and design decisions to customer behavior.
04
Clear process
The four-step process makes the service feel predictable and easier to understand.
05
Objection handling
FAQs address common concerns around SEO, mobile optimization, timelines, domains, hosting, and ongoing support.
06
Repeated conversion opportunities
Calls to action appear throughout the experience without requiring visitors to commit to a sales call immediately.
05
From visitor to qualified lead
Designing the conversion flow
Rather than sending every visitor directly to a generic contact form, I designed a four-step intake experience around the information needed to understand the project before responding.
Breaking the form into smaller steps reduces the amount of information presented at once while progressively qualifying the lead.
Step 01
Understand the business
Business context first
The flow begins with the minimum information needed to understand the prospect: business name, industry, and current website.
Industry selections make common answers faster while still allowing businesses outside Papaya Studio’s primary categories to continue.
Step 02
Understand the goal
Design around outcomes, not deliverables
Instead of asking clients what pages or features they want immediately, the second step asks what they want the redesign to accomplish.
Visitors can identify priorities such as more bookings, stronger SEO, a premium visual identity, mobile optimization, e-commerce, or improved performance. This gives the designer context around why the project exists before defining what should be built.
Step 03
Qualify the project
Set expectations early
Timeline and budget are collected before contact information so project fit can be understood without requiring a discovery call first.
Selectable ranges make potentially uncomfortable questions easier to answer and help establish scope before the inquiry reaches the studio.
Step 04
Capture the lead
Ask for contact information last
Only after the visitor has described their business, goals, timeline, and budget does the experience request contact information.
An optional open-ended field gives users space to share references, must-have features, deadlines, or context that didn’t fit the structured questions.
06
Why a multi-step flow?
Less friction. Better context.
A traditional contact form places every question in front of the user simultaneously. I separated the experience into four focused decisions, using visible progress indicators and selectable answers wherever possible.
The goal was to balance two needs: keep the inquiry experience lightweight for the visitor while collecting enough information for the studio to respond meaningfully.
Progressive disclosure
Only information relevant to the current step is shown.
Low-effort inputs
Selectable goals, industries, timelines, and budgets reduce typing.
Progress visibility
A persistent four-step indicator tells users exactly where they are and how much remains.
07
Visual direction
Premium without feeling corporate
Papaya Studio’s visual system was designed around the businesses the studio targets: hospitality, restaurants, nightlife, beauty, and other visually driven local brands.
Deep burgundy backgrounds, warm cream typography, editorial serif type, vivid pink-to-orange gradients, and cinematic imagery create an identity that feels expressive and premium while still functioning as a service website.
Aa
Editorial typography
High-contrast serif headlines create personality and hierarchy.
Warm dark palette
Burgundy and cream create a more elevated alternative to traditional agency black-and-white.
Gradient accents
Pink and orange are reserved for interactive moments and important calls to action.
Cinematic imagery
Rich photography reinforces the type of visual transformation the studio sells.
08
Key product decisions
Designing around the sales journey
Lead with the customer’s problem
I positioned the homepage around what an outdated website costs a business rather than opening with a description of Papaya Studio.
Demonstrate before asking
Redesign examples appear early so visitors can see the potential outcome before reading through services or pricing.
Sell outcomes, not just design services
Messaging connects design decisions to customer trust, inquiries, bookings, performance, and discoverability.
Replace a generic contact form with guided qualification
The four-step intake experience collects business context and project fit while keeping each interaction focused.
Delay personal information
Contact information appears at the end of the flow, after the user has already invested in describing the project.
09
What I learned
What this project taught me
Papaya Studio pushed me beyond designing individual screens and into thinking about how an entire website supports a business objective.
The biggest shift was designing the experience as a sequence rather than a collection of sections. Every interaction needed to answer a different question for the visitor: Why does this matter? What could my website become? What does the studio actually do? Can I trust the process? What happens if I’m interested?
Designing the intake flow reinforced the same principle on a smaller scale: asking for less information at each moment can create a smoother experience while still producing a more useful result for the business.
10
The connection to Papaya Pro
One problem led to another
Building Papaya Studio exposed another challenge: designing websites wasn't the hardest part of running a small studio—consistently finding, evaluating, contacting, and following up with potential clients was.
That problem became the foundation for my next project, Papaya Pro, a sales workspace designed specifically for freelance web designers and small agencies.
Papaya Studio explored the customer-facing sales experience. Papaya Pro explores the system behind it.
