Skin Studio
Skin Studio began as a website project and grew into a broader digital commerce initiative for a medical aesthetics brand in Honduras. I shaped the strategy, platform direction, site structure, and payment approach, taking the business from “we need a website” to a solution that supports content, trust, and online transactions without long-term developer dependency.
Project Type
Website & Custom Commerce Solution
Role
Designer, Strategist, and Implementation Lead
Timeframe
3.5 months
Tools
Squarespace, Figma, Supabase, Render, PowerTranz HPP, CSS
Scope
UX/UI Design, CMS Strategy, Content Architecture, Payment Research, Implementation Oversight
Company
Skin Studio
Project Context
The brief looked simple at first: launch a professional website. The real challenge was building a digital system that could support content, trust, payments, and growth in a region with platform limitations.
What the client needed:
- A professional web presence that reflects the quality of the clinic.
- Easy day-to-day content management without relying on a developer.
- SEO and analytics foundations that support ongoing growth.
- A reliable way to accept online card payments despite local platform limitations.
Discovery & Platform Strategy
A core part of the project was deciding what should be custom and what should not. The best outcome was not the most engineered one. It was the one the client could actually sustain.
Fully Custom Build
Maximum flexibility, but higher implementation and long-term maintenance cost for a small team.
Shopify
Strong commerce tooling, but heavier than needed for a service-led business and less natural for the content model.
Squarespace
The best balance of content management, SEO controls, analytics, reliability, and independence for the client team.
Recommended
Why Squarespace
Squarespace gave Skin Studio the strongest balance of content control, SEO support, analytics, reliability, and ease of use. It also let the business update services, promotions, and website content independently, a critical requirement for long-term sustainability.
Scope & Website Foundation
Once the platform decision was clear, the work focused on a site structure that felt polished to customers and manageable to the business.
My role
- UX/UI design
- Website strategy
- CMS evaluation
- Content architecture
- Squarespace setup
- Content implementation
- Brand styling
- Custom storefront design
- Payment solution research
- Technical implementation oversight
Website work
- Structured the service catalog and organized treatment offerings for easier browsing.
- Built the website in Squarespace and applied the Skin Studio brand direction throughout.
- Created a mobile-friendly experience with clear hierarchy for services, promotions, and trust signals.
- Optimized page organization so the client could keep content current without developer support.
The Payment Challenge
The hardest part of the project was not the marketing site. It was enabling a real purchase flow in an environment where the obvious payment tools were not viable.
Constraints that shaped the solution
- Stripe was not supported for the client’s context in Honduras.
- PayPal was evaluated, but costs made it a poor fit for the business model.
- PowerTranz was recommended by the bank, but there was no native Squarespace integration.
- The final solution needed to feel seamless for users while remaining maintainable for the business.
The approach
Because PowerTranz had no native Squarespace integration, I designed a custom storefront and embedded it inside Squarespace with code blocks. It connects to a backend on Render, uses Supabase for product and transaction data, and sends customers through PowerTranz Hosted Payment Pages with 3D Secure authentication.
This kept the customer experience coherent on the front end while working within the regional payment infrastructure available to the client.
Technical Architecture
A no-code content platform paired with a custom transaction layer, so the business stays operationally simple without giving up commerce capability.
01 · Frontend
Squarespace
02 · Storefront
Custom storefront embedded via code injection
03 · Backend
Render
04 · Database
Supabase
05 · Payments
PowerTranz HPP with 3D Secure
Outcome
The project gave the business a stronger digital foundation and proved that the right platform strategy can make custom functionality sustainable.
What changed for Skin Studio:
Skin Studio can manage content independently without ongoing developer maintenance.
The website has a clearer SEO-friendly structure and built-in analytics visibility.
Online card payments are now possible despite regional processor constraints.
The architecture can scale with future services, promotions, and commerce needs.
The business gained a more reliable digital foundation with less operational friction.
Lessons Learned
UX extends beyond interfaces. Good design often means choosing the right system, understanding the business constraints around it, and creating something maintainable after launch.
UX Includes the Platform
Good UX is not only about interface polish. It is also about selecting the right platform for the business behind the interface.
Maintainability Wins
The best solution is often the one that stays maintainable after launch, not the one with the most technical freedom upfront.
Constraints Shape Strategy
Regional infrastructure constraints can reshape product decisions, so strategy and implementation need to stay tightly connected.