BTS of My Own Website Refresh and How to Make Updates for Your Own
About the episode:
I’m SO excited to reveal my updated website with you! I share the changes I made to my website design, including tightening up my messaging, updating my photos, and showcasing my work throughout the site. I also talk about the importance of a clear client journey and how to add credibility and expertise to your brand. I think there are so many things to keep in mind when you’re doing a website refresh including knowing the extras you need for a website refresh such as photos, copywriting and having a marketing plan. I hope you find this episode helpful if you’re wanting to refresh your own website!
Takeaways:
• A website refresh involves making tweaks and changes to something that is already working well, while a rebrand involves a complete overhaul and starting over
• Tightening up messaging and updating photos can greatly improve the effectiveness of a website
• Showcasing work and creating a clear client journey can help potential clients understand the style and level of service provided
• Adding credibility and expertise through testimonials and features can build trust with potential clients
• Having a marketing plan is essential to promote your new website and attract visitors and potential clients
• Using a productivity hack like thinking of the big picture but also going granular can help with completing big internal projects
Resources
Kansas City Brand Photographer Juliana Jumper
Ep. 11 Refreshing Your Brand for 2024: 5 Steps to a Powerful Uplevel
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Hello and welcome to today's episode. I am so excited that you're here. Today I am taking you behind the scenes and we're talking all about my own rebrand slash refresh. I'm kind of calling it like a hybrid of a rebrand and a refresh. It's more of a refresh I would say. I am gonna talk about the distinction between the two, why I made some changes and we're gonna talk about what wasn't working for me and some things I changed on my new site some things I changed with my brand and all that kind of stuff So I'm excited to take you behind the scenes to talk all about that. But before we get into it I wanted to know if you But before we get into all that if you are feeling like your brand is not aligned with your vision or your vibe Anymore, maybe you feel like you've outgrown it or it's outdated or you really just hate sending people to your website
I would love to help you. I believe your website should be your number one employee working for you 24-7 and your brand should be doing the heavy lifting for you. I help my clients with rebranding like doing a big overhaul or a littler refresh so you can make smaller tweaks to your site and brand so you're really thrilled about it and you can't wait to send people to your website and share about your work.
and really go to the next level in your business. If you are interested in rebranding or refreshing, I would love to chat with you. I am currently taking clients. And so if this is something on your radar for this quarter or this year, I would love to invite you to check out my services at rartspace.com slash services and fill out a form if you feel like it would be a good fit. If you're aligned with the services I offer, I would love for you to.
Reach out, fill out a form, and we can schedule a free discovery call.
I would love to invite you to check out my services. And if you feel like they're a fit, I would love for you to fill out a form and we can set up a call to chat about your biggest goals and how we can reach them with a rebrand. Okay, but right now we're gonna be talking all about my own hybrid of a rebrand and refresh. So there is a distinction I wanna make when it comes to rebranding and refreshing. To me, these are very two different things. Sometimes people use these words interchangeably, but to me, rebranding is, and I've talked about this in a previous episode, I think probably multiple episodes, but I'm just gonna do a little refresh here, but I'm just gonna do a little reminder here. For rebranding, that is when things are really not aligned anymore. You are changing your services drastically, you're changing your ideal client, you're changing your messaging.
This is when you want to raise your prices, maybe you are changing your business name. So this is like a really big leap in your business. Like if things really are not aligned, you would be going through a rebrand, which is going through and going back to the beginning of brand strategy, making sure your color palette is in alignment with where you want to go, making your making sure your logo is how it should be all of that kind of stuff. So it's going back to the beginning and starting over so that would be a rebrand. And a refresh is more of like making tweaks and changes to something that's already working pretty well and you just want it to work a little bit better. So you're making some smaller changes. And that's kind of how I distinguish the two. And I also like to think about it if this is if we're talking about like remodeling, rebranding is taking a room down to the studs and doing demo and you're really starting over for how you want the room to look. You're building things from scratch and you're starting over. And a refresh is more like repainting the room, changing around the furniture. It's more surface level stuff. It's not as like down to the studs. So that's a little bit before we dive into this. A little differentiation, a little differentiation between the two of rebranding and refreshing. So because I'm a brand designer and because I have all the tools at my disposal, you know, it's just so easy for me to go through a little bit more of a process than I would with my clients. But I think for me, this was more of a refresh, even though I kind of call it a rebrand. It's more of a refresh. It wasn't.
Super like a lot of things were working just fine, but there were some things that were not working So let's talk about those things. What was not working I think for me my messaging was not as tight and directed exactly to the person I'm wanting to talk to you. So I got like clear on my messaging I went back to some of the wonderful client projects I've had and really read through their testimonials
And this is a great exercise to do in general. Whenever you're wanting to tighten up your messaging, look back to what your past clients have talked about, what has been like a real hurdle for them to get over, why they chose to work with you, outcomes that they have, like some really struggle points before they started working with you. So making sure your messaging is super tight and really aligned to.
the person you're wanting to work with really helps. So I think my messaging was a little, it wasn't terrible. It definitely wasn't terrible, but I think it could have used some work. So the last time I will mention, the last time I worked on my site was in 2022. So it was about, I think it was like the end of 2022. So it was about a little over a year ago, and which is-normal. I feel like you should revisit your site like every year or every six months even to see kind of how things are going. Check your analytics, that kind of thing. But for me, yeah, my messaging was not as clear as I wanted it to be. So I just kind of tightened that up a bit. From a visual standpoint, I was using a lot of tan and there just wasn't a lot of contrast to me. And so I was feeling like things were just looking too boring and like that's normally not a good reason to like change something. But like I said, because I'm a brand designer, because I just have the opportunity and the skills to do this, I just changed a few things and I really brought in some color, which I love using color and so I was able to kind of choose some colors that I feel like really worked with my color palette and my vibe and like what I'm wanting to portray.
And so I was able to kind of bring those in a more bold way, which I really, really enjoy. You know, I do love the tan, the muted look, but that's just not my style. And it was for a little while and it was going fine, but I personally was feeling super bored. So I wanted it to be a little bit more lively. And I do use color so much with my clients. And so it just made sense for me to bring in some color that really represented my personality and style.
And color also that really communicates what I want to communicate, which is that feminine, sophisticated aesthetic that I have and really leaning into that, not being afraid to use those feminine bold colors. And they're definitely not girly, so I wouldn't say that, but they are, they're feminine and they're they're sophisticated, that's how I'm thinking of it. But you let me know what you think when you go to my site and take a look. But yeah, I was able to, yeah, change the colors a little bit, tweak the colors a little bit, and make sure I was bringing in some of those bold colors that I really like. And so I think it looks so much better now. I was using a script font before, and I love a good script font. I'm such a huge fan of using it as an accent, not overusing it, but just using it very sparingly. But the one I had before was very hard to read and I was really enamored with it at the time and it was fine for a while, but it was just very hard to read and I just feel like it was a little bit too loopy and not as tight as I wanted it to be.
And so I just decided to change out my script font to something a little bit more like calligraphy, a little bit more, it definitely feels a little bit more formal, but I kind of like that. And so I just feel like it goes more with like what I'm trying to exude. So I changed the script font. A huge thing was I updated my photos. I had a brand photography shoot back in November, and I am just so in love with the photos that she did for me. And I'm going to link her in the show notes. She's in Kansas City and she is fantastic. She is a wedding photographer, but she sometimes does other shoots too. So if you're in Kansas City, I would love for you to check her out. But she did my photos that I'm just thrilled with. They're definitely a little bit on the artsy, moodier side to it, but I really love how they turned out. I feel like she did just such a great job with bringing in some new elements that I had not used before when I've done brand photography shoots and I've definitely done a lot of shoots so it was nice to try something new to do something a little bit different and I'm really happy with how they turned out so that was a big one too is like updating all the photos on my site. Another two well two other really big things was like my testimonials were
I mean, they're still relevant and they're still great, but some of the people I worked with years ago no longer have their business or they've moved on to other things or, you know, they've just, life happens and so, and not that I can't still use their testimonials, but I have definitely a lot of recent clients who I've worked with who they've been really happy with what I've worked with and they've been really happy with what I've done for them. So I like updating the testimonials was a huge one. A lot of the testimonials, sometimes testimonials can take a really long time to update and to put into a site and stuff. And so that's just one of the things that I was putting off for a while, but I updated those and the portfolio. That's another big one that takes time when you have like a design portfolio like I do. It just takes some time. So I was able to update that as well. So some of those things, some of those things were internal to me, like updating testimonials and stuff, and some of those were external. Like when a prospective person comes to my website, are they reading my site and really connecting with my messaging and what I'm talking about and stuff. So a little bit of internal and external, but I'm so glad I made these updates and I would love for you to check out the site obviously to see what you think. And another thing was I added my work so much more than I ever have in throughout my site. I feel like in the past I've had like a little, I don't know, a little grid of my work at the bottom or something and like, oh go check out the portfolio, but I don't have my work like scattered throughout the site. And so I was able to do that this time.
And I feel like it just showcases my style and the clients I've worked with. And so I'm really happy that I was able to do that. So that's another thing is, when people come to my site, I do hope that they see this is the style and this is the level of work that I provide. And so I want them to be able to see that on every page, even if they're not going to the portfolio page. So for me, that was a big one.
And yeah, so some of the key changes I was ready to make, and I've already talked about, you know, some of the things that weren't working, but like reworking my services page, I put my pricing back on my website, and I took my pricing off for about a year, and I felt like I got more inquiries with my pricing, and I just feel like pricing is such, pricing is a topic I could talk about on a separate episode because it's just such a huge topic to talk about, but I feel like, and I've always felt this way, is having your prices on your site, even if it's a range of starting at this price, going to that price, I just feel like it helps bring transparency and it also just lets people know ahead of time just so they don't feel sprung upon in a discovery call or something, and they 9.718)can see, they can get the information they need.
and then reach out when they're ready. So I feel like it will weed people out sooner rather than later, just because, you know, a lot of the clients I work with are more established in their business, they are profitable, they are, you know, definitely earning an income, like a solid income and stuff. And I don't, sometimes I do, sometimes people do invest when they're brand new, but I don't normally work with people who are brand new. And so it just helps people see like, this is...
this is the investment, this is the type of people I work with, and obviously I can get other types of people to come and want to work with me too, but it's nice to have, I think it's nice to have that pricing on there, so people kind of have an idea and they don't have to feel like they have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get the information that they need.
Another thing of a change that I was ready to make was I tightened up my client journey. So when you come to a site, I think one of the...
There's a tendency to put everything that you do up in the top navigation. I have a podcast, I have a blog, I have resources, I have templates, I have services, I have testimonials, I have features. There's a real tendency to wanna put everything out at once. And I think that is a deterrent to people, and I prefer.
a more streamlined approach. I only like four to five things in the top navigation. And then when people are scrolling around the site, then you can link to internal pages and they can go. So from, for example, from my about page, I have some recent features. I was featured on several podcasts. And so I linked to those features in my about page. And I don't have a separate page for features just because I didn't want it to be too cluttered and I only have like eight features and I only like showed four of them. So I didn't really want to do like a whole bunch of, you know, like a whole extra page of features. But like I've seen this before with testimonials, like you can have a whole page of testimonials where people can just read testimonial after testimonial. For me, I like planting them throughout the site so people can see them on any page that they're at and it just shows.
It just is great credibility for the work that you do, for the experience you provide, and for someone to have a great experience is an awesome way to build your reputation and to build trust with potential clients. And so what I'm trying to say is I wanted to tighten up my client journey and not have everything in the top navigation.
where people feel overwhelmed with choices and stuff like that. So I really dialed it back. I really focused on four main pages and throughout the site I'm able to link to internal pages. I have some stuff in the footer, but I prefer this and I'm really happy with just how clean it looks and stuff. With how clean it looks and I think it helps the client know where to go as they're going through the site.
Another thing I did that I already mentioned, but I wanted to feature more of my work. I also wanted to have a little bar of like my clients have been featured on. And then I have like different logos of like where they've been featured on, like the New York Times and Yahoo Finance and stuff like that. So I really wanted to add that. And that's just adding another layer of credibility and.
That's just adding another layer of credibility and expertise to the work I do and the clients, you know, the level that they're at and like where they wanna go and stuff. And so to me, that was something I really wanted to do. And then, so for me, that was something I really wanted to add as well as showing my work more and making it apparent that, you know, this is my style, this is who I love to work with.
I also have on the portfolio page, I added in clients that we've had who we love to work with and I have a list of different professions who I've worked with. I think that's just good to kind of let people see themselves in who you love to work with. So it's like, oh, I'm a service provider. I'm a florist. I would love to work with this person and she said that she works with florists and that would be a good fit.
So I think that's a great thing to do as well when you're trying to identify the people you would love to work with.
And some other factors that were outside of the web design. I think I do mention this in episode 11 called refreshing your brand for 2024, five steps to a powerful up level. I talk about this in this episode, but you know, when you're doing a website refresh, it's very important to look at the pieces you have going into the website. It's not just going into Squarespace or going into WordPress or wherever you're going and starting to make changes. You have to have all of those pieces together and finished before you get started.
And so for me, those were three things that I did was new brand photography, so that was something extra outside of the website design that I brought to my website design process, cleaning up my messaging, which is writing my website copy, and then your marketing plan, which this comes after the website design, but you need a marketing plan whenever you finish a website design so you can get the word out there so people can come to the site so that you can have more website traffic and more people looking at the site and all that kind of thing. So I think it's awesome when people do a website refresh and stuff, but sometimes people think, oh, I've done this website refresh and now like all these people will flock to my website and buy from me. It's like, yes and no. If you're sharing it and you are being out there and like did this website refresh, I really want you to check it out, you're going to get more people going to your site and potentially more people booking your service or booking a discovery call or something. But if you don't really have a plan to market your site, to get it out to people, then your site is just going to sit there probably like it was before. And so I think that's why it's really important to have a marketing plan or a social media plan where you can share it with people and they can go look, you know, take a look and all that kind of thing. So I think those are three things to keep in mind, like factors outside of the website design, new, you know, for me it was brand photography, website copy, and the marketing plan outside of the website. So that's a little peek into my little website refresh, my little brand refresh. I am excited to have this all finished. This was something on my to-do list that I'm just thrilled to have it done.
It's just one of those things that can stay on your to-do list forever and I'm really glad I made the time. Oh, I did want to mention this kind of ties back into, I believe it was last week's episode and I talked about how to make your rebrand happen this year and in that episode I really break down kind of the method I'm using to make really big projects come to fruition and similar to a website project.
This is like a big internal project that people don't really know you're working on it. You know, sometimes people know that you have things on the docket, but you know, when you're working on something internal, like a course or a podcast or a rebrand or something, it can just feel like you have a lot to do in the process because you do. And so in that episode, last week's episode.
I just shared about how I'm making really big progress on big goals that I had, like doing this website redesign. I wanted it to happen in January and it is complete and I am thrilled and now I'm moving on to the next thing. And so you can definitely check that episode out if you're interested in kind of a productivity hack that I'm using that's really working well for making your really big internal projects happen.
So that is that. So that is what I have for you. I hope this was entertaining, if nothing else, and I hope you took something away from this. I would love to hear your feedback. I always am looking for feedback and would love to hear your feedback. And if you love this show and wanna share about it, I would be so thrilled and grateful if you could do that.
And definitely tag me whenever you do share it so I can thank you and just really... And if you do share it, please tag me so I can send a thank you your way. I just so appreciate you being here and I will...
I so appreciate you being here and I alluded to this last week as well, but I have a very exciting series coming up where I'm walking through the artist and branding experience, which is one of my service packages on the brand identity. I'm walking through the whole process with a client of mine, so I'm really excited to be sharing that journey. I think the first episode is starting mid- February so definitely stay tuned for that, but I'm so excited that that's coming out and Like I mentioned at the beginning of the show if you are interested in a rebrand in a refresh for your website and brand and you're ready to Really take that next step and look like the industry expert that you are I would love to help you Please reach out and contact me and definitely go check out my new site and let me know what you think You can go to rartspace.com and you can check out the show notes for everything I mentioned, of course. And until next week, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and I will talk to you later.
