Client: Miki Takahashi
Industry: Baroque Vionlin
Website: mikitakahashiviolin.com

The Challenge

When Miki reached out, she already had a bilingual (English/Japanese) website - but it wasn’t serving her audience or her business as well as it could.

As an internationally renowned baroque violinist and educator, Miki needed a website that could:

• Provide clear pathways for very different visitors - from concertgoers and potential students to concert promoters and workshop hosts
• Highlight her upcoming performances and make it easy for people to find concert information
• Showcase her Baroque Discovery Day workshop and provide organised details about her ensembles, solo work, and recital programmes
• Function smoothly across devices, especially mobile. During the review, I discovered half the menu disappeared on mobile, which is a nightmare for user experience!
• Give Miki a way to update content herself, without needing constant tech help.

Her ideal audience was beautifully diverse, spanning young violinists (16–35) interested in studying baroque violin at Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, to concert audiences primarily aged 45+, as well as local music lovers in the West Midlands.

What We Did

We approached this as a full VIP Day website upgrade, focusing on simplifying, streamlining, and future-proofing the site:

• Reorganised and simplified the menu structure, creating clear pathways for students, audience members, and collaborators
• Added an intuitive concert calendar so visitors can browse upcoming events by date or list view
• Designed and built a brand-new Baroque Discovery Day workshop page, complete with an enquiry form
• Optimised the entire site for mobile and tablet, ensuring all menus and content display beautifully across devices
• Provided a Zoom training session so Miki feels confident updating her site moving forward

The Result

Miki’s upgraded website is now a polished, mobile-friendly online home that reflects the sophistication of her artistry and makes life easier for her fans, students, and collaborators.

She now has:

• A professional, bilingual site that’s easy to navigate
• Clear, organised information tailored to each audience group
• A system she can manage herself, giving her independence and flexibility

What I Learned

This project was a wonderful reminder of how crucial it is to design for the audience. A website isn’t just about pretty design - it’s about helping real people find what they need, whether they’re browsing from a concert seat, a music conservatoire, or their phone on the go.

It also reinforced how important mobile optimisation is - no matter how elegant a site looks on desktop, if it fails on mobile, it fails overall.