On Monday we launched the new Van Michael Salon Website. We are very happy to say it is a great site to add to the InnoShare portfolio. The design looks great and the functionality is just amazing - we are really pleased with the way it came out. About 2 months ago Van Michael came to us asking to refresh their look. They are undergoing reconstruction across all of their locations to bring some more earth tones and less dark colors, really brightening the place up. The Salons are looking sharp, so check out your local Van Michael to see when your favorite one will be renovated, you will not be disappointed. They even have new chairs that give you a massage while you get your hair washed while you listen to calming music. With the whole atmosphere of Van Michael evolving, they wanted us to evolve the site as well, and we were up for the challenge.

Here is the result - 2 months of hard work from InnoShare
www.VanMichael.com

Check out the amount of work that went into building this site.

We obviously wanted to add more color to the design and Van Michael came back with some great ideas. We put together a solid interface and really pushed ourselves to up the ante for what you can do with a website, and still hit a large audience. The first part were the image scrollers, Van Michael is the largest salon in the country and we thought default scrollers were too basic for this design. The new scrollers fit really well into the design, but aren't distracting to the end user.





The first challenge was the navigation a fully dynamic Flash accordion navigation which can be updated by Van Michael as well. This allows them to add new navigation and new pages without contacting a web company to update their Flash movie saving them time and money.

Second, a good gallery which uses a lightbox-style interface really showcased each of their stylists really well. The great part is that Van Michael can easily edit these images using a backend system called Plogger. The Plogger system gives them the ability to not only add new stylists, but also names and a little background information as well.

The third level navigation also makes the site very fluid. Scrolling down to the content area instead of just roughly jumping to it, or forcing you to load a new page.

Last but not least, Van Michael needed a blog to update information and really showcase their work. They regularly update their blog with education information, trends, styles and company information, so check it out.
www.vanmichael.com/blog/

We want to thank Van Michael for giving us this opportunity to rebuild their new website. We had a great time working with them and they really gave us some great freedom to build a great site. We look forward to what Van Michael has in store next.