Designing a calm, honest website for one-to-one online English tutoring, where the price and the next step are never more than a scroll away.
Overview
Polina teaches English one-to-one, online, to school students and adults. She needed a site that explains how her lessons work, shows what they cost, and turns interest into a lesson request. I designed and built theClass end to end, from the brief to a live site with a working request form at theclass.space.
01 · Discover
1
Client brief
A landing page with About me, Prices & packages, Contact, and a request form.
6
Tutor sites audited
Independent tutors and small tutoring agencies, desktop and mobile.
2
Audiences
Parents booking for school students, and adults coming back to English.
Key insights
I compared the brief with what competing sites did well and badly, and grouped the gaps into four themes.
Prices hidden behind “get in touch” made parents leave before they ever asked.
Generic multi-subject templates made it unclear what the tutor actually taught.
Parents wanted to see the method and how progress is reported, not just credentials.
Long booking forms with fields that didn’t apply added friction before the first conversation.
02 · Define
Persona
Marta, 41
Parent of a 14-year-old, Toronto
“His English grades dropped and I don’t really know why. I want someone patient who can explain things, and I want to know what it costs before I call anyone.”
Goals
A patient tutor, a clear plan, regular updates on progress.
Frustrations
Hidden prices, vague methods, long forms, slow replies.
How might we
…help a worried parent understand the method, the price, and the next step in under a minute?
03 · Ideate
Four pages, one action
Home, About me, Prices & packages, and Contact. Every page ends with the same “Request a lesson” button, so there is never a dead end.
Pricing as a ladder
$45 single, $160 monthly, $420 per term. The more regular the lessons, the less each costs, and the middle plan is marked “Most chosen”.
A form that asks only what matters
Name, email, optional phone, level, package, and notes. Each request is validated and saved to a Neon Postgres database.
04 · Design
Paper
#F5F7FA
Ink
#1B2547
Highlighter
#F4E26A
Type & highlight
Aa Aa
Bricolage Grotesque for headings feels warm without looking childish; Inter keeps prices and form labels easy to read. A single highlighter stroke marks one phrase per page and is the only decoration.
About & prices: answer the first two questions
A quick-scan card shows what Polina teaches, who, where, and in which languages. Prices sit on their own page and are previewed on the home page, with an FAQ below.
Contact: one short form, one promise
Direct contact details sit next to the request form, with a clear promise of a reply within one working day. This addresses the slow-reply frustration from research.
05 · Test & iterate
I reviewed each version and tested the request form from submission to a saved row in the database. Validation correctly blocked a request without a package, so every lead arrives with a plan attached.
4
feedback rounds
2
form fields removed
Copy and the form assumed several subjects, but Polina only teaches English.
Rewrote the copy for English only and removed the Subject field.
The form asked for a lesson format, but every lesson is online.
Removed the field and stated “Online only” on About and Contact.
The languages list included Russian, which Polina doesn’t speak.
Languages now read English and Ukrainian.
The hero photo showed a notebook of maths equations.
Replaced it with an English vocabulary notebook and sticky notes.
