News
Pureology Launches Hybrid Website for Consumers and Salon Professionals
Tuesday, March 24 2009Chicago-based Elevate Studios Creates Online Community for the Professional Colour Care Brand
NEW YORK and CHICAGO (March 24, 2009) - Pureology Serious Colour Care, a leader in providing professional hair colourists and their clients with the highest quality, premium products and education, is extending its level of excellence into the digital world with the renovated Pureology.com and Pureology.com site for professionals. The hybrid virtual presence is part of the company’s global brand re-launch taking place this month. The websites feature new Pureology brand imagery with a dynamic homepage and expandable interactive framework to supply the salon community with up-to-date resources to learn about the brand and help increase salon business.
Pureology enlisted Chicago-based interactive marketing agency Elevate Studios to create the new websites. Elevate Studios’ responsibilities included online strategic and creative development as well as technical coding and website execution.
“Consistent, informative and engaging information providing is essential for brand survival in today’s marketplace,” said Lawrence Bak, principal and executive creative director of Elevate Studios. “So, we’ve created an online domain for Pureology that’s literally a fusion of two independent voices for two different audiences, both essential to the brand.”
Key features of Pureology.com and Pureology.com site for professionals include:
Original Content
The consumer-focused site, Pureology.com, features a unique and dynamic hair profile/product recommendation tool. Additionally, the site displays which products are most favored among notable stylists and lets consumers provide their own ratings and testimonials.
The Pureology.com site for professional includes business-building tools and educational components to aid with adopting or retaining Pureology products in a professional salon environment while building confidence in recommending the product line to clients. Additionally, the Pureology.com site for professionals incorporates a community section where professionals can engage in dialogue regarding industry topics.
Recognizing how essential social networking is for both its consumer and professional customer base, both sites feature sharing capabilities via links to Facebook, Digg, Delicious, Yahoo, Stumbleupon and Mixx.
Back-end Technology
Knowing that Pureology needed a website that is robust, scalable and extendable, the design team chose Microsoft .NET as its platform, allowing for a seamless compatibility with existing Pureology brand applications. In order to create a simplified site update process that can be performed by internal marketing teams, Elevate Studios used Sitefinity as its content management system and built a number of custom modules and controls in C#.NET to integrate into the Sitefinity console.
Front-end Technology
The design team built several front-end elements from scratch, including custom plug-ins for jQuery, which allow the incorporation of custom visual effects in the browser such as popup dialogs and flyouts. In order to achieve a structurally sound website, the entire front end was created with standards-compliant XHTML and utilizes easy to update CSS for layout.
Hardware
To ensure maximum site updating flexibility and consistent messaging across the two domains, the design team recommended a Windows hosting platform with MS SQL server and IIS. Using Helicon ISAPI Rewrite allows the site to support friendly URLs (non .aspx) and Junction enables file sharing across the two domains.
For more information about Pureology, please visit www.pureology.com.
About Pureology
All Pureology formulas offer an industry first: Longer Lasting Hair Colour - GUARANTEED!® For more information visit http://www.pureology.com. Please note, Pureology products can only be guaranteed authentic when purchased from a salon. We request that you do not credit drugstores, “beauty websites” or other unauthorized retailers.
About Elevate Studios
Founded in 2003, Elevate Studios is a private, full-service, interactive marketing agency based in Chicago. Core agency expertise includes website design, online advertising, user interface design, application and interactive development, eCommerce front-end integration and media integration. Elevate Studios has designed interactive campaigns for the standard-setting brands of Redken 5th Ave NYC, Pureology, AirTran Airways and Milwaukee Electric Tool. For more information, please visit http://www.elevatestudios.com.