Brand & Product · 2026
A French coaching studio that runs itself between lessons.
French, Actually is one to one online French coaching for adults in the UK, taught by Ceyda. I built the brand, the site, and every system behind it: booking, payments, a student portal and an admin that lets one coach run the whole studio.
Context
Most adults who take French lessons already understand a lot. What they cannot do is answer a question at the bakery, on the phone or in a meeting without the French disappearing. French, Actually is built for that gap: fifty-minute sessions with one coach, explained in English and practised in French, around the conversations the student actually has coming up.
It is a small studio with one coach, and the coach should spend her time teaching, not chasing calendars, invoices and reminders. So the brief was never just a website. It was a studio that takes a stranger from a search result to a free conversation, a paid programme and a booked lesson, with nobody copying anything into a spreadsheet.
The challenge
The challenge
Online French is a crowded shelf: marketplaces with thousands of tutors from ten pounds an hour, and language schools with decades of name. A single coach cannot win on price or size. The site had to feel personal and specific from the first line, answer real questions well enough to be found, and make paying for a programme feel as calm as booking a free call.
How I built it
One coach, a whole studio behind her.
A brand that sounds like the lesson
The name is a sentence people say, and the mark is its comma: a red seal that works as a favicon, an email stamp and a sticker. Navy, rouge and warm paper, a clean sans for English and italics for every line of French, always with its meaning beside it. The voice is British, plain and short. No hype, no dashes, no promises the coach cannot keep.
Prices on the page, a free conversation beside them
Three programmes, 8, 16 or 24 sessions, with the total and the price per session in plain sight. Every card offers the same two doors: pay now through Stripe, or talk to Ceyda first for twenty minutes, no card needed. The booking calendar reads the coach's real availability and creates the Google Meet link on its own.
My lessons: students book, the database keeps count
After paying, the checkout email becomes the account. Students sign in with a secure link or Google, pick their own times, move or cancel inside the notice window, and see the coach's written note after every session. Credits, instalments and validity are enforced in Postgres, so two students can never take the same slot and a failed card never freezes lessons already paid for.
Field Notes: content built to be found and used
The guides answer what learners actually type: why you understand French but cannot speak it, how to stop freezing, how to make an appointment by phone, what level France asks for in 2026. Each one opens with the short answer, then a real conversation, a phrase table and one exercise to try out loud. Structured data, a share card per guide, llms.txt and IndexNow make them easy for search engines and AI assistants to read.
An admin for operations, not for copy
The copy lives in code, where it cannot drift. The admin is for running the studio: applications and conversations, programmes and prices, the weekly plan of sessions with Meet links, promotion codes and refunds. Every booking, payment, failed instalment and message lands in a team email and a Slack channel, in the same house style as the site.
Site in context
Paper, navy and a comma.
Built for the phone first: the first screen is always text and a way to book.
Every guide gets its own share card, drawn from the same content as the page.
Field Notes: one French sentence per card, in navy, rouge and paper.
What I shipped
Deliverables
Outcome
One coach, no spreadsheet.
The studio opened in September 2026 with everything in place on day one. A visitor can read a guide, book a free conversation, pay for a programme and book their first lesson without anyone touching a calendar or an invoice. Ceyda's week is lessons and notes; the rest happens on its own and reports back to the team inbox.
Vraiment.
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