Dream Of: Haircare solutions formulated for Indian hair types

Each product came from a gap in what you could buy for Indian hair.

Instant Refresh is a tinted dry shampoo. Most dry shampoos leave a white cast on dark hair, and very few are small enough to carry around. Indian hair also gets oily and builds up fast because of the pollution, the weather and everyday stress.

Fresh Start is a clarifying shampoo scrub. A lot of women only use shampoo, and shampoo doesn't get all the buildup off the scalp. That buildup can make things like dandruff worse.

Soft Landing is a leave-in conditioner and serum. It's not just for wash day. You can use it on day 2 or 3 to keep your hair shiny, and it works well with the dry shampoo.

Smooth Route is a lightweight hair mask for frizz.

I talked to about 30 women, 25 to 40, across Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, about their hair and every product they'd tried on it.

I expected to hear about frizz and oily hair, and I did. What surprised me was how many of them had given up on finding products that worked.

A lot of products promise results after a few months of use. When they didn't see those results, they were tired of being disappointed, so they stopped trying new things.

So the store couldn't just explain the products. It had to give them a reason to try one more time.

Here are 3 decisions I made on the first iteration, and why.

These are the screens from my first version. Each frame scrolls, so you can go through the whole page.

Homepage

The homepage starts with the 4 products, then why they're made for Indian hair, the story behind the brand, and before-and-afters from real customers. Shop The Range is near the bottom.

Shop The Range

This is decision 2. You pick the hair type that sounds like yours, and it shows the products for it along with a quote from a woman with that hair.

Product page: Instant Refresh

Instant Refresh was the hardest product to sell, because people don't trust dry shampoo on dark hair. The page starts with “Other dry shampoos, instant regret,” then shows before-and-afters from 3 women, then compares it to other dry shampoos, and then the ingredients.

The other 3 product pages

These follow the same layout as Instant Refresh: what the product does, reviews, a comparison with other products, and the ingredients.

Shop and About

The site that's live at dreamof.in now was rebuilt by someone else after my version. Some of my work is still there, like the before-and-afters, the comparison with other dry shampoos and most of the FAQ.

Shop The Range was taken out. The live shop page is a product grid.

Bundles were added later, 6 pairs like dry shampoo + leave-in. That's the day 2 and day 3 combo the products were made for, but the live page only shows prices and doesn't explain why the pairs go together.

I don't have sales numbers for either version, so I can't say which one works better.

Design for returning customers. My version was built for someone seeing Dream Of for the first time. Someone coming back needs an easy way to reorder and to find the next product to try.

Explain the bundles. The pairs already exist on the live site. They need a line about when to use each one, like wash day vs day 2 or 3.

Test shop by hair type against a product grid. I think it helps people find the right product, but I didn't test it. Showing the same 4 products both ways would tell us.

I thought my job was to explain 4 products clearly. After talking to 30 women, I realized they already knew a lot about their hair. They just didn't believe new products would work anymore.

So the store had to show proof early, before asking them to buy anything.