I support creative business owners in accomplishing their design dreams.
As you might already know, a quality brand + web design isn’t just beautiful. They must encompass authentic strategy to help you achieve your goals. Below are tips for improving your website by blending your heart, authentic strategy, and design so that you can book more clients. These 5 tips are all things that I implement when working with custom brand + website design clients.
It’s tempting to make our websites like we do our Facebook accounts, wanting to share as much as we can about ourselves and our businesses.
In order to make valuable improvements your site, you have to start by understanding your audience. Take a look at your website with your client’s point of view in mind. Is it easy to tell what you do, who you serve, and how you solve their problems?
Will your audience relate to the text, pictures, and colors they see on your site? We’ll talk more about branding next.
If you’re having a hard time imagining what your customers experience, as past clients or someone in your target audience for feedback on your site.
What does on-brand mean? Your brand is more than just a logo. In a nutshell, it’s how you communicate with your audience so that they always know it’s you. And your brand should be created and developed with your target audience in mind, like we talked about in point 1.
Once you define your brand, it’s time to make sure that your website follows your brand “rules.”
How do I make sure that my site is on-brand? Incorporate your writing style, your core values, and your mission statement into your website copy (text). Stick to your brand fonts, color scheme, and photo style.
Some people put a shorter version of their mission statement here, while others have a value message, or a problem-solution statement.
The idea is that by making this the first thing that someone sees when they land on your homepage, they’ll automatically know if they’re in the right place.
The general formula for writing a value message is:
“I help [insert your ideal client] by [insert what you do] that will [insert how your offer solves a problem].
Once you’ve written your message in this formula, you can get creative with the structure. Just make sure your statement identifies your ideal client, what you do, and how this solves their problem.
For example, the value statement on my website is: “Heartfelt brand + web design for Creatives who want to book more clients and serve well.”
It’s okay to explore different ways to say this, I’ve changed mine a few times!
It’s a good rule of thumb to keep your navigation menu to 7 items or fewer so that you don’t overwhelm visitors. You want to make it clear and easy for them to find what you need.
If your current navigation has more than 7 options, is there anything that you can takeaway? Or can you combine certain options into one page?
Only the most important things need to be included in your navigation. It’s normal to have more sub pages that aren’t visible in the navigation.
Don’t assume that your audience knows what to do, or leave them to figure it out themselves. Define a clear goal for your website (ex: booking clients, selling your product, getting podcast listeners, etc.)
You might have one main goal and other sub goals, but everything should work together to help clients move along the funnel to your major goal.
Based on your website’s goal, include at least one call to action on each page.
Ex: The goal of my website is to help me connect with and book brand + web design clients. There are calls to action through my website for visitors to view my services, and on the services page I invite them to contact me. See how I am moving them from point A to point C without giving them too many options at once?
You can also have calls to action to subscribe to your email list, follow you on Instagram, listen to your podcast, go to you YouTube Channel, etc.
Remember that the goals for these platforms are to nurture your audience there, then lead them back to your website for when they are ready to book your services, purchase your product, etc.
Before you go, I have a surprise for you! As you might have heard, I’m launching a special offer on September 8, 2020. When you book my Brand Design Experience, Website Design Experience, or The Complete Experience, you’ll receive access to my Trello for Creatives mini-course as a bonus.
In celebration of this, I’m giving away a free 30-minute Brand + Site Feedback Session! The winner will get to hop on a call with me and ask anything they’d like to about their branding, website, my services, etc. I’m so excited to offer this! You’ll be able to enter the giveaway starting tomorrow, September 1, 2020, so be sure to follow me on Instagram @mayapalmerdesigns for updates.
I encourage you to take a look at your website with these tips in mind, and consider areas that you might improve. These tips go along with episode 6 of this podcast, where I share tips for writing website copy that makes your audience feel understood – so go back and listen to it, if you haven’t already.
Do you love serving your clients and using your passions to make an impact, but find yourself struggling? It’s not just you – being the owner of a growing business isn’t always easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
What if a strategic, beautiful website that works for you was part of the solution to getting you back on track towards building the business you want? You could take a sigh of relief and log off to spend more time doing what you love (or at home with those you love).
If you want to see how well your current brand + site is serving your business take my free Brand + Site Checkup quiz. Based on your result, I’ll recommend a freebie to help you!
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