The problem: people research surgeons for months, on sites that hide prices and sell transformation.
What I designed: a 12-template practice site built on the opposite bet: published costs, one action, honest fine print.
The result: live at shoshanamd.com, average costs from $1,000 to $22,000 in the open, every page ending at the same consultation.
Nobody impulse-buys surgery. By the time someone reaches this site they have compared surgeons, read horror stories, and rehearsed the question they are embarrassed to ask: what will it cost, and will I still look like me? The design answers both before the first phone call. The thesis is the first line on the site:
“Plastic surgery that still feels like you.”
Aesthetic surgery marketing defaults to selling a new person. That framing feeds the visitor's exact fear, that they will come out looking done. Every design decision below runs the other way: the site photographs the surgeon as a person and the practice as a place, states limits as plainly as promises, and treats the reader as someone making a careful medical decision rather than shopping a glow-up. The practice is self-pay and consultation-based, which makes the honesty affordable: the site's job is not to close a sale, it is to start the right conversation.
Decision one
Elective surgery is the industry of “call for a quote.” This site publishes a full average-cost table, $1,000 to $22,000, procedure by procedure, before anyone has given up a phone number.
A visitor who has seen the table books a consultation already knowing the scale of the investment, which respects both parties' time. The page pairs the table with monthly payment plans through Cherry, introduced with unusual candor for the category: applying happens directly with Cherry, and the page says outright that checking options does not guarantee approval or a particular rate. Price transparency also disciplines the design itself: a table this dense forced the quiet white panel, generous row height, and a covers column written in sentences.
Decision two
There is no newsletter, no quiz, no chat widget. Every page ends at the same place: a consultation with the surgeon, $275, applied toward a procedure.
Appointments go through a secure scheduling portal, not a contact form that goes nowhere.
Intake happens in the patient portal after booking, so the public site never asks for medical history.
Clinical photos travel through the portal, never by email or text. The site repeats this rule wherever photos come up.
Patients considering breast surgery can choose a virtual first visit, and both visit types use 3D simulation to discuss possible outcomes. That single option removes the biggest scheduling barrier for the practice's largest procedure family, and it is why the out-of-town page can honestly say a first conversation requires no travel at all.
Decision three
Credentials do the persuading: ABPS board certification, training at Yale, Duke, Michigan, and UPMC, and twelve Google reviews reproduced in full. The site's most distinctive voice, though, is its disclaimers.
Financing is provided by Cherry and its lending partners, not by Shoshana Ambani Plastic Surgery.
Reviews reflect individual experiences. Results and experiences vary from person to person.
These are researched suggestions offered for your convenience, not endorsements or affiliations.
On a page asking for surgical trust, small honest sentences compound. The surgeon's own quote on the homepage sets the register: “My goal is never to make someone look like a different person. It's to restore form and function, and to preserve what already makes a patient look like themselves.” The design's job was to protect that voice: no urgency mechanics, no countdown offers, no stock smiles, and disclaimers set in readable type instead of eight-pixel gray.
Decision four
Patients travel from across Michigan and beyond, so the out-of-town page is designed as an itinerary: airport, hotels, recovery, the ride home.
The page walks the actual sequence: begin with a virtual consultation if the drive is not practical; fly into Detroit Metropolitan, about 25 miles and a 30 minute drive; stay somewhere with a kitchen; plan around a travel-home window that the surgeon sets per procedure rather than a generic promise. Even the FAQ is written from the traveler's side: what airport, how long, who has to stay with me. A page like this converts anxiety into logistics, which is the most calming thing a website can do.
The visual language
The palette is deep plum on cream, the display face is Newsreader with italic closing phrases, and every photograph is the real surgeon in the real practice. No stock, no gradients pretending to be brand.
How this design became a governed Figma system, tokens, variants, and a full production rebuild, is its own story: the systemization case study.
Composite personas reconstructed to document reasoning, not field research. No persona maps to a real patient.
52 · weighing reconstruction options after a mastectomy plan
Arrived at plastic surgery through oncology, not aspiration. Exhausted by medical logistics and allergic to anything that reads like selling.
34 · researching rhinoplasty · three hours away
Has wanted this for a decade and researched it for a year. The distance, not the decision, is the obstacle.
41 · breast reduction for comfort · budget first
This is a quality-of-life decision she has postponed twice for money. She abandons any site that makes her call to learn a price.
Live and taking bookings; no numbers invented. Counted on the site:
shoshanamd.com, the practice's production site
published average costs across the procedure catalog
page templates, one shared action
procedures across face, breast, body, and focused care
consultation fee, applied toward a procedure
hotels researched and grouped by recovery fit
The site is newly live, so there are no conversion numbers to claim yet, and this case study deliberately claims decisions rather than lifts. The strongest evidence for the pricing decision is structural: in a category where competitors gate cost behind a phone call, a published table is a position, not a widget. When booking data accumulates, this page gets a results section; until then it does not pretend to one.
The most persuasive element on the site is a table. Warmth got the visitor to stay, but candor is what a scared reader actually converts on: a price, a fee, a rule about photos, a window for the ride home.
Maria Angelika AgutayaWorkflow Engineer · mariaangelika.com · Designed for Shoshana Ambani Plastic Surgery, 2026