Overview
NJC Basketball Coaching is a Melbourne-based youth basketball program offering individual, group, and holiday camp sessions across six venues in Eastern Melbourne. The client had an existing site that no longer reflected the standard of their coaching program. They needed a complete rebuild: something visually credible, easy to navigate for parents and young athletes, and straightforward enough for the client to manage without ongoing developer support.
The Problem
The existing site was undercutting the business. It lacked the visual credibility expected of a premium coaching program, had no clear structure across the three distinct booking types on offer, and gave first-time visitors no compelling reason to trust or convert. For a business built on reputation and word of mouth, the website needed to pull its weight as a genuine conversion tool.
The Approach
I designed a visual system built around a bold, confident sports aesthetic that stayed approachable for a youth audience and their parents. Typography, colour, and layout were chosen to establish credibility immediately, with photography treated as a primary design element rather than decoration. Components were designed with content flexibility in mind from the start, so the system could accommodate future changes without breaking.
The three booking types, individual sessions, group bookings, and holiday camps, were each structured as distinct user journeys to reduce friction and make the path to conversion as direct as possible.
On the build side I used Next.js for performance and scalability, with Sanity CMS configured as the content layer. The schema was designed deliberately so the client could update coaches, venues, programs, and imagery independently after handoff without risking layout or visual consistency.
The Challenge
The core design challenge was making a small business website feel premium without overengineering it. Every visual and structural decision had to serve a parent making a quick judgment call about whether to trust this program with their child. At the same time the CMS setup needed to be robust enough that the client could confidently own their content long term. Balancing visual rigour with practical handoff readiness was the constant tension throughout the project.
The Outcome
The rebuilt site gives NJC Basketball Coaching a digital presence that matches the quality of what they deliver on the court. The visual system establishes credibility from the first scroll, the booking journeys reduce friction across all three program types, and the Sanity CMS setup means the client has been self-managing their content independently since launch. The Next.js foundation keeps the site fast and gives it room to scale as the business grows.