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About once a year, I get the pull to do a website overhaul — or at the very least, a detailed refresh. I’ve been with my designer Jen Olmstead (of TONIC Site Shop) for years now and she just gets me. This year, I wanted my website to match the energy I’m feeling after welcoming our second daughter last year and launching my book this year: bright, fun, free. Between the book, the baby, and the new house, this year was a big one, so we asked ourselves: How do we freshen up my home on the web to reflect all this newness?

I feel like it’s important to evaluate our marketing materials regularly and make sure they all still fit our current vibe, style, and business trajectory. For me, it makes sense to do this review and revamp about once per year.

If you haven’t taken a look at your website recently, I’d urge you to do at least a light review because people land here from your emails and social media all the time. It’s super important to make them feel like they’re landing somewhere that makes sense for who and where you are currently!

The difference between a business & a brand

I always say you need to focus on building a brand, not just a business, and this rings true for your website content, design, and copy. A business is the official stuff: the organization that offers something for people to buy. But the brand — that’s the vision, voice and personality behind your offer. 

Brands can do 3 things really, really well:

1. Pivot: Businesses that are set up around a product are harder to adjust with time, while brands centered on a personality can move and shift with you.
2. Make an impact: It’s more dimensional than a business, and your brand voice resonates with people and creates a deeper meaning behind your work.
3. Create a deeper connection: When it’s time to sell, your audience will remember the content you’ve shared and served with the majority of the time, allowing them to trust the brand and be more willing to purchase from you.

Make sure your website demonstrates the personality and voice behind your brand, and not just the thing you’re selling as a business.

Why do you need a website, anyway?

Well, first, if you’re someone whose Instagram or other socials are up to date but you don’t have a website, you really do need a home on the web. A website is where people should be landing, looking for next steps to take with you brand, whether that’s contacting you/your team, purchasing something, booking a service, and so on. A website makes you more official by providing deeper searchability/SEO power, being a long-form content hub and resources for your audience, and being a place for people to connect with you outside of social media and/or your email list.

Using storytelling on your website to convert visitors

My website designer and epic Showit template creator, Jen Olmstead, gave some fire tips about storytelling in your marketing on Instagram a while back that can be translated to ALL of your copy: social media, email, and yes, even your website. Here were some of the biggest takeaways:

• Boring, regular, or mundane stories are what connect us to people (and you don’t need extravagant, crazy storytelling to convert readers!)
• You need to learn how to notice the hidden content/stories in your life and relate it back to your audience
• The more “normal” or “boring” your story is, the more relatable it is
• The MOST important thing (like, more important than the story) is relating it back to your audience and making their wants, needs, problems, and desires feel understood

Website templates like Jen’s do a lot of the heavy lifting for you by laying things out in a way that draws in your audience and makes them FEEL something. (Plus, she has writing prompts that will help you naturally weave in storytelling and audience-focused copy so that you can speak directly to your audience in a way that makes sense and connects with them.) You can save 15% on one of her beautiful and brilliant templates by clicking here!

My biggest website design advice

One of the BIGGEST things I always look at in my own site redesigns/refreshes is that the reader can quickly and easily find what they’re looking for. Who do you serve? Who are you as a brand? What do you offer? Are there easy access points to contact and purchase? Does your website design reflect the space you’re in professionally and personally? Ask yourself these questions as you take on your website, and don’t be afraid to get a little (or a lot!) of guidance and support by utilizing a professional, easy-to-customize website template like TONIC’s!

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