Case study · Barbershop · Brentford, West London
A barbershop, not a salon.
The owners of Crew Barbers had been told by every previous designer to 'soften it up' - softer fonts, friendlier copy, more pastels. They didn't want any of that. They wanted a site that read the way the shop felt: editorial, sharp, no-nonsense, with chair-side pricing instead of a sterile menu. I shipped it in five days at a 0.9-second first paint.
- first paint
- 0.9s
- Lighthouse score
- 99
- built and shipped
- 5 d
- all-in cost
- £499
The brief
Crew Barbers is a two-chair shop on the edge of Brentford with a specific identity: editorial, masculine, no booking-system bells and whistles, no 'salon' language. Their existing website was a generic Wix template that looked like every other independent barber within 10 miles. They wanted something that stood out - not loud, just confident. Built fast, shipped fast, no monthly fees.
Approach
How it was built.
- 01
Editorial design language: large editorial typography, asymmetric grid, lots of negative space. The shop's actual personality, on a screen.
- 02
Chair-side pricing block: a literal two-column grid (chair 1, chair 2) showing services and prices the way the shop would chalk them on a board.
- 03
Copy: written together with the owners over a single afternoon at the shop. Short, sharp, no filler. Read it once, you remember it.
- 04
Photography commissioned for the project: the chairs, the products, the team, the shopfront on Brentford High Street. Used at full resolution because performance is good enough to allow it.
- 05
No booking system: just a phone number and a "walk in" button. The owners wanted real conversations with real customers, not yet another booking platform.
- 06
Performance: 0.9-second first paint, Lighthouse 99 across categories, fully accessible, no JavaScript bloat.
Outcome
Live in five days. Indexed within 48 hours. By the end of the first month, the site was ranking in the top 5 for 'barber Brentford' on Google and pulling steady traffic from rugby weekend visitors searching for haircuts before TW1 home games. The bigger win: walk-ins from people who'd seen the site and decided this was their shop based on the writing alone. That's what custom does that templates can't.
- Astro
- Tailwind CSS
- Sharp
- Web3Forms
- Netlify hosting
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