Hello and welcome to Your Business Online, Your Way, the podcast to help you to achieve success in your small business. I’m Holly Christie, your host. I’m an award winning website designer with 2 web design companies - This Demanding Life, for businesses who want to grow with flow, and an incredible website. And Simply Sites for micro businesses and start-ups who are looking for a stellar website and experience. In 2023 I won ‘Web designer of the year’ award and in 2024 ‘Web design services of the year’ and that’s why I feel particularly qualified today to talk to you about your website!
If you’re thinking of having a website built for your business, or you already have one but it’s not bringing in leads or making you sales, then this episode is for you! With websites being so readily available for small business owners, especially with the self build options like Wix, WordPress, SquareSpace or Shopify, it’s easy to pour a whole load of time and energy into building a website then feeling pretty flat when it doesn’t make a difference to your business. If this is happening to you then rest assured, you’re not alone. When people come to me for a new website, whether it’s a budget Simply Site or an all singing, all dancing custom build, they often talk about wanting a shopfront for their business. They expect to make sales by hustling, posting on Social Media, with recommendations, but they often don’t consider that their website should be doing some of the heavy lifting too.
In this episode I’m going to talk you through what makes a successful website and, whether yours is already built, or you’re in the planning stages, how you can create a website you love, are proud of and is so much more than just a shopfront. Ready? Let’s get started.
Hosting
I believe in really building a website with all the vital components, not just coming up with a pretty or dynamic design then layering on SEO, but building with best practices, from the ground up. For that reason I’m going to start at the roots of a website - hosting.
If you’re not familiar with what hosting is, this is the server which your website files are kept on. When people look up your website address, it’s the host that delivers the website files in a readable format for your browser. There are so many great hosts out there and for every brilliant host there is an equally bad one. I’m not going to name names here because no-one likes to be sued by the big giants but if you would like a hosting recommendation, drop me a line
If you’re using Wix or SquareSpace or Shopify for your website you won’t need to worry about hosting as it’s all part of the package. However, because it’s all part of the package is exactly why I don’t recommend Wix or SquareSpace or Shopify for websites. To generalise, not being able to control your server settings can put you at a disadvantage with page speed scores - in a nutshell, a fast website is one which gets chosen by Google. It also means that if you have a lot of visitors to your site and there isn’t the allocated space for this on the server, your website visitors may get a 404 error message, not be able to access the website or have a painfully slow experience when on it.
If you’re planning on hosting your own website or having it hosted by your developer here are some things to consider:
The reputation of the company - you’ll hear the name of hosts such as Siteground, Litespeed, Cloudfare and Kinsta come up over and again. There’s a reason for this - they deliver excellent service and websites hosted here do well. So if you’re hearing the same company name over and again, then it’s worth checking them out. Even better if you know someone who uses them and can walk you through some of the experience.
Before we move on I’ll quickly say - you’ll hear of GoDaddy a lot. That’s not because they offer a great service, but because they have a large advertising budget.
Once you’ve chosen your host make sure you’re running the highest version of php - this will help keep everything current and compatible on your website.
Branding
Next up is something that’s a little more fun than the technical setup - branding! I have to confess that this is one of my favourite parts of the process. Whether clients come to me with an existing brand, or they’re looking for branding as part of the website build, seeing the colours, patterns and fonts and working out how to bring them to life is brilliant.
The first rule of branding is that it needs to appeal to your ideal clients. You may have thought I was going to say ‘you have to love it’. I’m going to be controversial and say actually, you just need to like it and feel happy putting your name to it. If you go on to love it, that’s a bonus. Also branding can grow on you. When Amy and I rebranded This Demanding Life last year I wasn’t crazy about the font. But (and it’s a big but) I can get obsessive about fonts, forever searching for the right one only to find that it doesn’t really exist in the way I want it to. With the font we used for the branding I kind of liked it so went ahead and have found, over the time I’ve used it that Amy made a great choice, it’s easy to work with, clear to read, has some personality and it’s really grown on me.
I would recommend you use a branding designer as a brand is so much more than just a logo. Your branding designer will create all the files necessary so you can have an inversion of colours, a white logo for layering on dark backgrounds and all the file formats so it’s totally scaleable for digital and print products.
As well as the logo, a branding designer will help you to create a colour palette to be used on the website and in other marketing materials as well as suggesting image styling and stock photography or videography to really cement the brand.
Trust me, even if you have a limited budget, don’t skip the step of consulting with a designer. If you really can’t afford it, some designers offer a power hour where you can spend an hour on Zoom getting ideas and insights into what’s going to make a great brand.
Copywriting
You know your business and how to write about it. A copywriter knows how to sell your products and services so your audience wants to buy it. They are 2 very different things.
Great copywriting is a fundamental part of great website design as the website copy will determine the layout of the website design. Website copy is also different to any other writing for your business, whether that’s reports, presentations, social media posts or brochures. Website copy needs to be structured to include Headings and titles for SEO, be laid out in a certain way for ease of use and include Calls to Action and Calls to Attention. Getting your website copy right is an essential part of your website success.
Website copywriting is priced at all different levels depending on industry and the experience of the copywriter. If you’re really tight on budget find a copywriter who offers copy consultations and coaching where they give you some training, often over Zoom) on how to structure and write your website copy then review and edit it for you once you’ve written it. If you’d like recommendations of copywriters who have this service, get in touch and I’ll share their details.
Images
Images are a huge part of the design because they’re what people naturally see before they read any of your website copy. If you’re just starting out you may not have had a brand shoot, or you may be in an industry where it’s better for you to use stock photography. Whatever your circumstances, your images are going to need to have a lot of thought behind them.
In an ideal world everyone would have a branding shoot with a photographer who specialises in brand storytelling. This is so much more than just having headshots done and you’ll get some amazing images to use across your website, Social Media and printed materials.
If you’re not ready for a brand shoot then at least get some professional headshots done. They don’t need to be expensive but they do need to be well styled. You can also ask the photographer for tips, such as what to wear, how to pose and any props you’d like to use.
If you’re thinking of using stock images on your website steer away from free imagery. These are great for blogs and some Social Media posts but you’ll tend to see the same ones come up time and again for different companies and over time it can make your brand feel a bit smudgy and watered down. Instead look for stock photography which comes from part of a paid subscription. You’ll own all of the rights to using the images and you’ll find less people using them across their websites. In many cases, rather than pay per image, you’ll be able to buy a set number as a bundle or you can get subscriptions to download as many as you like over a set time period. As a guide, for a small, 5 - 7 page website you’ll be looking at needing around 20 images.
Here are a few quick tips for images:
- [ ] Try to include diversity and accessibility in your website images. Everybody should be able to recognise themselves when coming to your website so do seek out images where people can do that.
- [ ] Try to ensure the images have the same feel - we will often do this by identifying a colour from a brand, for example pink or green and selecting that when searching for images.
- [ ] Check that the images feel like they’ve been taken in the same light. That they’re well lit or, if you’re going for a dark/moody/spotlight-y vibe, that they’re all similar.
- [ ] Website images should be aspirational - even if you’re advertising a service for people going through a hard time, such as addiction or mentoring children in care, or, I’m sure there are hundreds of examples here, we’re looking for the end result of your service or product and promoting that.
SEO & Accessibility
I was going to separate out SEO and Accessibility but really, they go hand in hand and in both cases, one leads into the other. If you’re not sure what they are, SEO stands for search engine optimisation and it’s the work we do behind the scenes which alerts search engines like Google, of your website and helps your website to be delivered to your ideal clients when they do a search for a product or service which you’re a match for.
Accessibility is what we do to ensure the website is accessible and readable for all users, whether they have sight or hearing impairment or struggle with fine motor control. This can mean colours having a high contrast so those who struggle with vision can see colours clearly and easily. It can mean having subtitles on videos and alt text on images for those who are using a screen reader to have the website read to them. Clickable elements shouldn’t be spaced too close to each other and links should have descriptive elements telling the user where the link will take them.
Whilst this falls under the title of Accessibility, it’s also essential SEO on the website. There are other SEO factors that go into making a website desirable to search engines but there are too many to go into here. If you’d like to learn more, get in touch and I can send you my webinar on Successful SEO. I will also be releasing a course in September dedicated to successful website SEO. If you’d like to know more, drop me an email or carry on following this podcast as I’ll be announcing it when it’s ready.
Responsive Design
Since smartphones came about websites have been accessed more and more on peoples’ phones. With the ability to click a link and look up something immediately, not having to wait until you’re at a computer, it’s not surprising that just over 52% of all website traffic is from mobile phones.
This means that your desktop design has to be stunning, but so does your responsive design which affects mobiles and tablets. Whilst most software will break a website down into a responsive layout, you will most likely still need to do some work to really give the user a great experience when on your website. This can mean re-organising the column order so there’s a consistency of photo then text in each section. Maximising margins and padding space can work well here, too. I tend to take the padding of columns down on a mobile so we can have more space for the text. But on a desktop design I keep it quite airy and easy to read.
You’ll also want to look at the size of the text and have it reduce - particularly for your titles and headings, on mobile devices.
In some cases, if I have an image or video which is more decorative than informational, I may hide it on a mobile so the user can access the essential information more easily.
The best way to test the responsive design of your website is to pick up a mobile phone and test it. See if it looks good, works well and the user journey feels good. I appreciate that this can be easier said than done and if you need some help with it, you know where to find me.
Whilst I could speak about websites forever, I’m going to leave this episode here as I think there’s more than enough for you to be getting on with. Here’s a reminder of what I’ve spoken about today, which will help you take your website from a shopfront, to a successful part of your business which brings in leads and makes sales:
Hosting - what to look for and what to avoid.
Branding - who you’re creating a brand for and what the components of it are.
Copywriting - how to write for your ideal client and structure your copy for SEO success.
Images - how to tell your brand story and my top tips for using stock photography.
SEO & Accessibility - why you need this to feature in your website and the basics of how to create content which fits the criteria.
Responsive Design - my top tips on how to handle design elements to maximise your websites success on mobile devices.
Which one appeals the most to you? What will you get working on first? I’d love to know! And if you need any help with organising your website, you can find me at thisdemadinglife.com or I’m on LinkedIn at hollycchristie. I also have a company page on LinkedIn of This Demanding Life, where you can follow me and receive updates which will help you have a successful website.
That’s all for this week. This is the last episode of Season 2. The podcast will be taking a break for the summer and we’ll be back in September. Thank you so much for listening. Whether you’ve been around since the beginning or have just tuned in, I really appreciate having you here. The podcast has been a big undertaking and I’d love to keep being able to provide content which you find valuable. So if there’s anything you’d like to hear me, or me and Amy, speak about, do drop me a line, you can find me at holly@thisdemandinglife.com, I’d love to hear from you.
Until next time, have a great summer and I’ll see you again in September.