Building My Mom's Salon Website: From Idea to Live Business

Some projects start with a client brief. This one started at the dinner table.

My mom, Baby, runs Beauty and Nail Centre — a nail salon in Pointe Aux Canonniers, Mauritius. For years, the business ran entirely on phone calls, word of mouth, and walk-ins. It worked, but it was clear that having a proper online presence could take things further.

So I decided to build it myself.

Why Build It Instead of Using a Template?

There are plenty of website builders out there — Wix, Squarespace, WordPress themes — and for many small businesses, they work fine.

But I wanted something different:

• Full control over the design and performance
• No monthly builder fees eating into a small business budget
• A proper online booking system that fits how the salon actually operates
• Something I could maintain and improve over time without limitations
• A chance to apply my skills to something that genuinely matters

The Tech Behind It

I built beautynailctr.com as a decoupled application — a modern architecture that separates the frontend from the backend.

• Next.js powers the frontend, providing fast page loads, SEO-friendly rendering, and a clean user experience
• Express handles the backend API, managing bookings, services, and business logic
• PostgreSQL stores everything reliably — appointments, service details, and operational data

This setup gives the website the performance of a modern web app while keeping the backend flexible enough to grow with the business.

Designing for Real Customers

Building a developer portfolio is one thing. Building a website that real customers will use every day is a completely different challenge.

The salon's customers are not developers. They are people looking to book a manicure, check available services, or find the salon's location. The experience needed to be simple, fast, and clear.

I focused on:

• Clean, inviting design that reflects the salon's personality
• Easy navigation so customers find what they need in seconds
• Mobile-first layout because most visitors come from their phones
• Fast loading times because nobody waits for a slow website
• Clear calls to action so booking feels effortless

Every design decision was made with the end user in mind, not with what looks impressive in a developer portfolio.

The Deployment Journey

Getting the site live was its own adventure.

I worked through DNS configuration at Dynadot — setting up ProtonMail MX records for professional email, CNAME records for the www subdomain, and root domain forwarding to make sure everything resolved correctly.

The frontend is deployed on Cloudflare, taking advantage of its global edge network for fast page loads no matter where visitors are. The backend runs on Render, and the database lives on Neon — a serverless PostgreSQL platform that keeps things reliable without the overhead of managing a traditional database server.

Getting the deployment pipeline right meant solving real infrastructure problems — environment configurations, connecting services across different platforms, and making sure the whole system worked together seamlessly.

Setting Up for Growth

A website alone is not enough for a local business. People need to find it.

I focused on making the site discoverable through organic channels — submitting sitemaps to Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and Yandex Webmaster to make sure search engines could index the site properly.

For analytics, I set up Microsoft Clarity to understand how real visitors interact with the site — where they click, how far they scroll, and where they drop off. These insights help me improve the experience based on actual behaviour, not guesswork.

I also made the site AI-friendly by adding an llms.txt file and optimizing content for AI crawlers, making sure the business shows up not just in traditional search results but also in AI-powered recommendations and answers.

The goal was simple: when someone in Pointe Aux Canonniers searches for a nail salon, Beauty and Nail Centre shows up — whether they are using Google, Bing, or an AI assistant.

What This Project Taught Me

Building for family is different. The stakes feel personal.

This project reinforced a few things I already believed but experienced more deeply:

• Understanding the user matters more than choosing the fanciest stack. The technology should serve the business, not the other way around.
• Small business websites have unique constraints. Budget, simplicity, and reliability are more important than feature count.
• Deployment is half the battle. Writing code is one thing. Getting it live, stable, and performing well in production is where the real work happens.
• Building something for someone you care about pushes you to do your best work. No shortcuts, no "good enough."

A Project I'm Proud Of

beautynailctr.com is live, serving real customers, and helping a small business grow its presence online.

It is not the most complex project in my portfolio, but it might be the most meaningful.

Not every project needs to be a SaaS platform or a startup MVP. Sometimes the most rewarding thing you can build is something that helps someone you love run their business a little better.

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Visit the website at beautynailctr.com