How We Designed Sirena: A Lebanese Product Brand Online
When the Sirena team came to us in early 2026, they had a beautiful product — a premium back towel made in Lebanon — and a problem most product founders have: how do you sell something tactile, sensory, and culturally specific through a screen?
This is the kind of brief we love. Not a restaurant. Not a portfolio. A real product, a real audience, and zero existing brand assets to lean on.
Here's how we built it.
### Phase 1 — Understanding the product
Before touching Figma, we spent a session just talking. What does the towel feel like? What ritual does it belong to? Who buys it — for themselves, or as a gift? Sirena isn't a commodity bath towel. It's positioned closer to a luxury home object, designed for a slow morning, paired with a coffee, made in Lebanon.
That conversation killed every "minimal e-commerce" template we'd considered. Sirena needed warmth, not Scandinavian sterility. Rose pinks, not greys. Editorial photography, not product shots on white.
### Phase 2 — Brand foundation
We landed on a palette of rose `#fdf4f7` (the background tone — soft, never stark white) and `#c96080` as the accent (a deep dusty pink, used sparingly). Typography paired Playfair Display for headlines — serif, elegant, a touch romantic — with DM Sans for everything else.
Two fonts. Two colors. That's the entire system. Constraint is what makes brand design feel like a brand and not a Pinterest board.
### Phase 3 — The buying flow
Most e-commerce sites push you straight to "Buy Now." Sirena's product needed a different rhythm. The homepage is a slow scroll: hero image, the story, the materials, the ritual, then product. By the time you reach the buy button, you understand what you're buying and why it costs what it does.
We integrated a custom cart system with a WhatsApp checkout flow. That sounds technical, but it matters: in Lebanon, customers want to confirm details (color, size, delivery area) before paying. WhatsApp is the natural channel. We let people add to cart, see their total, and then send the order directly via WhatsApp — no clunky checkout, no payment gateway friction, just a real conversation with the brand.
EmailJS handled order notifications to the team. Simple. Reliable. No backend to maintain.
### Phase 4 — The details that don't show up in case studies
- A fullscreen loader with the Sirena wordmark fading in, so the first impression is unhurried- Hover states on every product card that lift slightly with a soft shadow- A footer with a hand-drawn signature mark, made in Illustrator at 4 a.m.- Mobile menu transitions tuned for 350ms — long enough to feel premium, short enough to not annoy
None of this is in the spec. All of it is what separates a site that feels expensive from one that feels generated.
### What we'd do differently
If we did this again, we'd push harder on photography from day one. We launched with a mix of brand-supplied photos and stock pinks that mostly worked but occasionally didn't. A consistent visual system needs consistent images. Next iteration, we're booking a half-day shoot with one photographer and one stylist before we touch any code.
### Results so far
Sirena launched in February 2026. The site runs at 96/100 on Google PageSpeed mobile, has zero accessibility errors, and converts at a rate the team is happy with. The bigger win: the brand has a foundation now. Future products, campaigns, and partnerships have a visual home to live in.
### The lesson for other product brands
If you're building a Lebanese product brand, don't reach for a Shopify template. You'll save $2,000 and lose the only thing that makes your brand worth buying: the feeling.
Custom doesn't mean expensive. It means intentional. Every color, every font choice, every animation should mean something to your customer — even if they never consciously notice. Especially if they never consciously notice.
Launching a product brand in Lebanon? We design and build custom e-commerce sites for Lebanese brands — fast, beautiful, and built to convert. [See more of our work](https://www.novustudios.com/work) or [start a project](https://www.novustudios.com/contact).