Improving Adoption and Revenue Streams Across New Business Verticals by Introducing Customized Personal Insights
Designing a flexible data system that opened Vagaro to 30+ new business verticals and drove $3.8M in estimated new ARR.
Problem: Vagaro's rigid data model locked out specialized industries that needed to capture unique customer information, limiting platform growth to beauty, wellness, and fitness.
Solution: A flexible custom fields system with industry-specific templates, deep platform integration across forms and profiles, and layered permissions for compliance and multi-location businesses.
Result: 45% increase in new vertical adoption, $3.8M in estimated new ARR, and 1,000 businesses adopting the feature in the first week.
THE BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY
Vagaro's growth was capped by its own data model
Specialized industries couldn't adopt the platform because it had no way to capture their unique business data
Vagaro served beauty, wellness, and fitness businesses well. But specialized industries like medical spas, pet groomers, martial arts studios, and automotive shops couldn't adopt the platform because it had no way to capture the data their businesses depend on.
A hair salon needs: hair porosity, hair density, scalp condition, texture, length
A pet grooming salon needs: pet breed, vaccination dates, health vitals, behavioral notes
A medical spa needs: health history, medications, allergies, HIPAA-protected clinical fields
A martial arts studio needs: belt rank, injury history, fitness level
No two verticals overlap completely. A one-size-fits-all data model would fail all of them.
GOAL
Make every business feel like Vagaro was built for them
Pre-populated templates, full customization, and deep platform integration
We needed to design a system flexible enough to serve any vertical while feeling personalized out of the box. That meant:
Pre-populated field templates matched to each industry
Full flexibility for businesses to create their own fields
Deep integration across the platform, not an isolated feature
RESEARCH AND TAXONOMY
Mapping what 30+ industries actually need before opening a design tool
Building a taxonomy prototype to align leadership on scope and infrastructure
We needed to design a system flexible enough to serve any vertical while feeling personalized out of the box. That meant:
Pre-populated field templates matched to each industry
Full flexibility for businesses to create their own fields
Deep integration across the platform, not an isolated feature
DESIGN SOLUTIONS
Four connected pieces that turn field creation into platform infrastructure
From management to creation to collection to display
Field Management: A Clear Home Base for All Custom Data
One place to see, organize, and manage every field a business collects
Businesses need one place to see every field they're collecting, organized the way they think about their data.
Fields grouped by category with clear type indicators (text, select, number, formula)
Quick actions to add, edit, duplicate, delete, and filter
Field Builder: Guided Creation with Powerful Flexibility
Industry templates, live preview, and advanced options like formulas and date reminders
Admins can choose from industry-specific templates or build from scratch.
Multiple field types: short text, long text, single select, multi-select, number, formula
Live preview showing the field as customers will see it
Formula builder for calculated fields (e.g., BMI from height and weight)
Date reminders for time-sensitive fields like vaccine expiry
Form Integration: Closing the Loop from Creation to Collection
Staff see the information that matters to their industry at a glance
Custom fields automatically appear in the form builder once created. When a customer fills out a form, their responses map directly to their profile in real time. No manual data entry.
Customer Profile: Making collected data actionable
Staff see the information that matters to their industry at a glance
Staff see all custom data on the customer profile, organized by section. A medical spa sees health history. A pet groomer sees vaccination dates and breed info.
Data organized by field group
Permission controls restricting sensitive data to authorized staff
Trend tracking so staff can see how data changes over time
THE PERMISSION MODEL
Designing access control for compliance-heavy businesses
Two permission layers separating field management from data visibility
During ideation, we discovered a critical design challenge: a medical spa needs to restrict clinical data to licensed practitioners. We designed two permission layers:
Field management access: Who can create, edit, or delete fields
Field data access: Who can view the data collected for a customer
This separation lets a medical spa admin create an "Medical History" field but restrict visibility.
IMPACT
Measurable results across adoption, retention, and revenue
Measurement and impact based on results in the first month
10,000 businesses adopted custom fields in the first month after launch.
+12%
New Vertical Adoption Rate
Specialized industries like medical spas, pet groomers, and automotive shops that previously couldn't use Vagaro began signing up and completing onboarding
+24%
Custom field usage among active businesses
Businesses actively using custom fields engaged more deeply with customer data management features across the platform
+8 pts
Retention lift for specialized verticals
Businesses in specialized verticals using custom fields stayed on the platform at significantly higher rates compared to baseline
Projected ARR Growth from New Verticals: By enabling specialized industries like pet grooming chains, medical spas, and automotive shops to adopt the platform through custom fields integration, this initiative is projected to drive approximately $3.8M in additional annual recurring revenue.
REFLECTION
Platform flexibility only works when it's connected
The most important design work happened before any screen was opened
A field builder in isolation is just a tool. When it connects to forms, customer profiles, and team permissions, it becomes infrastructure that transforms how businesses operate.
The most important work on this project happened before any design tool was opened: mapping 30+ industries, resolving tensions between flexibility and compliance, and designing the full data journey from creation to collection to display.
That systems-level thinking is what allowed a single feature to unlock an entire new market.