Design Tips and Tricks for DIY Websites

Jun 2

design tips and tricks for diy (do it yourself) websites with julie nelson

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Most entrepreneurs rely on themselves to create their own websites, especially in the first years of business. Designer Julie Nelson explains how to create your own website with purpose and strategy in mind.

Julie Nelson helps women break free from overwhelm, perfectionism, and self-doubt so they can reach new levels of alignment and fulfillment in their personal and professional lives. She teaches them how to master their mindset, learn to trust themselves, and cultivate the confidence to show up for what they really want.

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The episode:

Katrina Widener: Hi everyone. Today I am joined by my amazing friend, Julie, who if you haven't listened to episode seven of the podcast was also on then. I'm so excited to have her join us. She's been a group coaching expert beforehand, and today we're going to talk all about DIY in your website and what you need to know and all that amazing goodness.

Julie, do you really quickly want to introduce yourself and explain to everybody all about what you do and all the amazingness of your design genius.

Julie Nelson: Yes, I would love to. So Julie Nelson and like Katrina said, I've been here before in the capacity of being a life and mindset coach. But another huge part of my life is that I am a designer. I've been a web designer for 13 years and have loved design for a long time and obviously have been able to use my skills as a designer in my business to move me forward. And now really looking to continue to help other female entrepreneurs in the design area as well, because it is vital for us to create our brand and put together an aesthetic, whether it is through brand assets or our website so we can show up online and feel really competent and feel good about our businesses and let the world know what we're doing so we can share our gifts in the world.

Katrina Widener: Yay. I'm so excited to have you here today, Julie! Julie and I actually co-founded a business together a couple of years ago and she did all of the branding for that and a lot of the website stuff. In addition to so much more, but it turned out beautifully. So I'm really excited to talk today about people who do DIY their websites, whether you're starting from scratch or you have DIY'd beforehand, and really how to approach that in a way that's intentional and meaningful and purposeful.

Julie, what would you say would be like the first thing that someone should think about when they're either starting up their website or going back and auditing their existing one?

Julie Nelson: Yeah, so what's really important about a website is one, of course, we want it to look beautiful. We want the aesthetic to be there, but as business owners, we also want our website to work for us. It has a purpose. So when you're going in to design your website, we also want to be strategic about what we are doing. And in order to have that strategy piece, the component as well as having it look beautiful, it's really helpful to start by asking yourself a few questions around what the purpose of your website is.

So you can ask yourself what are you looking to get out of this website? Are you looking to get more clients? Are you looking to build your email list? Are you selling products? You want appointments to be booked through? And then really getting clear on what's the single most important action you want your user to take if they did nothing else on your website.

So for me personally, I want people on the design side of my business to reach out to me and book a call because I want to be able to get on the phone with them and talk about how I can help them in their design needs.

So that's just an example. It could also be that you want them, like I said, to buy that product or to download a freebie so they can get the value and kind of start in your world that way. So once you have that single most important action, you can also think of a secondary action that you want them to take as well.

So in addition to booking a call with me, I want them to get value added right away, so I want them to also download my freebie. So once you know what the purpose of your website is, how your website is going to work for you, and how it's going to be an asset in your business -- and this is whether you currently have a website or if you're doing a redesign because maybe the first time around you didn't actually get out of your website what you want. So these are questions in both cases, whether you are brand new website first time, or you are doing a redesign or a refresh: what is the purpose of my site? Really getting clear on that. What's the single most important action?

So I'm taking you through the process that I do with myself when I am designing a website or the process I do with clients, but this is what you can do for yourself in the DIY zone. I'm going to be thinking about the pages that I need in my website. And, I think the philosophy has really changed over the years on what should be included in our websites. It has really come down to right now less is more when it comes to your website.

Really, you have two to five seconds to capture someone's attention with your website. So you want it to be clear. You want it to be easy to navigate, to be intuitive. So less is more when we are looking at the number of pages, we don't want people getting lost in too much information and too many pages. We don't want the big dropdowns of years ago, especially if you are a service-based provider, there are some key pages that you can really focus on to get clear on for your goals for your business.

Once I know what my purpose is and I start thinking about the pages that I want in my website, I actually start writing this down because what I want to do before I get into my platform to do any designing is I want to know exactly what I'm going to be designing.

So often we open up -- whether you are using Wix or Squarespace or Showit -- we open it up and we just get into a state of overwhelm because we don't know where to start. So I am suggesting instead to halt and do a planning process. So when you get to the point where you start building out your pages, you have your roadmap, you know what to do, and you are not in that state of overwhelm because I don't know if Katrina, have you ever felt the overwhelm of a new project? I know you've had a recent website refresh as well.

Katrina Widener: Oh, totally. I think when you sit down to write your copy or do your imagery, or even for me, I already knew what platform I was on, but trying to find a template that I liked. I actually started out already having all my copy done, having my branding figured out, it was not leading with the design first, but the design was actually the last step, which totally makes sense with what you're saying, because you want to know the purpose. You want to know what pages you're building. You want to know all of that information before you decide how it's going to look. Because I even know, I have friends who DIY'd their website, who purchased a template and then tried to fit their copy and all the design they decided separately into this pre-purchased template and they're like, oh wait, this doesn't actually make sense together.

So it totally makes sense to me that you would want to start with these really important pieces before you make any of those design decisions.

Julie Nelson: Exactly. So the things that I'm talking about here and you made a really good point is that I am also assuming that you have some of those brand assets created.

Cause we're not, you know, really diving into brand because I know you've talked about that with some other experts, that is also important to the prep as well that you already have your color palette decided, what fonts you're going to be using as part of this prep for your website as well, you can start going out and looking for stock photos that fall and fit nicely into your brand aesthetically. And one of the places I love to go to look for stock photos is Unsplash, that's one of my favorite free stock photo places.

So these are the things you can do prior to opening up the platform and diving in: getting your brand set up, making sure you have all your brand assets together, the color palette, the fonts, the general feeling that you want, the purpose, the goals. And then you start looking more deeply at the pages. So what I like to do, cause I think it's really helpful is to talk specifically about some of the pages that you actually want to build out and have as part of your website.

Katrina Widener: I think that'll be super helpful for people too, just okay, what, like I'm making my website, what do I actually need to have? Especially for the first time DIY hires who are like, this is my first website ever, the idea of creating a huge website is super overwhelming to me, what are the things that I actually need?

Julie Nelson: I start the process by just doing even pen to paper. I love to grab a piece of paper and start brainstorming that way cause it just feels right more natural in the flow of kind of getting all your ideas down. So here, I'm going to give you the core pages and then even on those core pages, I would invite your listeners then, if they were doing this process, to once they have these core pages to even start brainstorming on each one of these pages, some bullet points that they would want to cover in their content before they start actually creating the full content.

So of course every website needs a homepage. And when you are thinking about your homepage, I like to think about it as the door mat, that entry point into your website, and it's really the place that you are greeting your user, your potential client, your ideal client, and you're giving them this nice, warm, welcome.

You have clarity around how you can help them. You have a really specific call to action, that one single most important task that you want them to take. And it's just this really great place that you can say, here's the problem I solve. Here's how I can help you. And here's the results I can get you. And so your home page needs to right at the top clearly define those things. So when they land there, they know, yes, you're the person I need. I'm going to continue to explore this homepage. So homepage is that, that pathway, that doorway in.

And then if you are a service provider, you also need an about page. We want to learn about you. We want to understand who you are, your background, give some fun information like this is... the about page can really be the place that you talk about yourself-- because of the rest of the website you're really focusing on your client, your ideal client, you're speaking to them. The about page is your place to shine and let them know a little bit about you.

So the next page, number three, is a work with me or a services page. How can you help them? How can they work with you? What services do you offer? This is a beautiful place to outline those so they're really clear on what you do and then are able to figure out what you don't do as well. So outline those for them in a way that I really love, if you have a lot of services, I love to first start with a services overview page. And then from that overview page, you can also have additional services pages that dive more specifically into each service that you provide. But you don't, again, you don't want to overwhelm them right away. So break up the content so they can easily consume it and go deeper if they decide that they want more information about a specific service. So that's number three.

Katrina Widener: That's awesome.

Julie Nelson: Yeah. Yeah. If you offer four different services, don't feel the need to try to, have that all on one page. Really think of it as a landing page and break that into then additional services pages.

Katrina Widener: Also that way, just like a little extra hint for everyone, if you have four different services, then if you break them out into different pages, you can optimize each page separately for SEO later on when you get to that stage of this. So I'm so glad that you brought that up.

Julie Nelson: I love it. And really that's such a good point for SEO purposes. And then it's also like many landing pages as well. So as you continue to share your services other places and you're speaking to different audiences, if your services speak to different audiences, you can share that direct link to a specific services page and have them bypass everything else and go straight to the page that you want them to go to.

The next one is a freebie landing page. Again, this is a place where we're adding that free value. I suggest actually building out a landing page for that, so people can go there. Again, it's an easy link you can share when you're on someone else's podcast and say, "Hey, download the resources that I have for free."

Okay. So those are the first four basic ones. And then the last basic one that I would have on every site is a contact page of course. I suggest always having a contact form on there that isn't too lengthy, but that will get you at least enough information to get started, to have a conversation with your ideal client.

So home, about, work with me or services, a freebie landing page, and contact. Now, a lot of other people also want to have a blog. And this is really the beautiful thing about a blog is that it's a place that you can share all that additional information that you may be inclined to clutter the rest of your website with. So this is where less is more, because the great thing about blogs is you can search blogs.

You can put the content and information into specific categories and it makes it really easy for the person who is within your blog to search for whatever information is specific to them. So a blog is an additional asset on your website that is amazing, but you don't have to launch with a blog. It can be something that you can add later on.

That's the base. Now of course, depending on what type of service provider you are, you might have a courses page, if you sell courses. You might have a podcast page if you are a podcaster.

From that point, we can get a little bit more specific, but if you were to come to me and ask me, what are the pages I need to start this DIY website, those are the ones that I would suggest.

Katrina Widener: I think that's like such valuable information because when people are first starting out, they're almost like, Ooh, but do I need to have this page? Do I need to have this page? Like how many pages do I need? Do I need an about page? Or can I write that later? That's super, super helpful.

So now everybody is like, okay, so I have my pages picked out, I got my brand assets figured out, I know the purpose of my website... what would you say is like the next step? Like the first thing that they should dive into once they've prepped all of that work.

Julie Nelson: Yeah. So when you are actually ready to go in and start designing, one you need to decide on your platform and I'll share a couple of my favorites. My go-to is Showit. I have also designed on Squarespace as well, but I find I get a little bit more design creativity in Showit or Wix, but there's so many great blog posts about which platform to use. And when you actually get into designing, always start with the homepage.

I always start with the homepage because that really allows you to figure out how you want to welcome the people into your site. It allows you to just get clear on exactly how you're going to be styling the brand aesthetic within the homepage and then how you are going to link to those other internal pages, because you want to make sure from your homepage that they're beyond the global navigation, that's that navigation of the links that go across the top throughout the homepage.

You want to provide other links that allow them to dive deeper into your website. So down on the homepage, as you're scrolling through, have a section that is the teaser for your about page, have your photo, have a little bit of a lead-in, and the link that will take them to go into your about page. Have a section that also highlights your services. You're not giving too much information in these sections on the homepage. You're really just providing a pathway into the interior pages of your site.

Katrina Widener: I love thinking of the homepage almost as a table of contents, just cause I'm such a like nerdy book person, but I love being like if you go to page 35, you can find the about me when really it's just here's the section on my website that's the about me. So anyway.

Julie Nelson: I recently just thought about it too, as like you're throwing a party and someone is entering the door of the party and like you're there in the hostess mode. And you're like over here to the right you can find the snacks, then back there are the games. Is like, is that way yes of letting them know what is part of the website, what they can find there, how they can get to it. So they really have a sense that they're in the right place.

Katrina Widener: That makes so much sense.

Julie Nelson: Yeah. And that's too like have fun with it. Like I know for a lot of people, it can feel overwhelming. You're an entrepreneur. You, this is probably not your zone of genius, but continue to have fun with it. Be playful with it. Find resources to help you as you go along, but done is always better than perfect. So really check your mindset as you're going through this and continue to have fun, cause you can always iterate. That's the beautiful thing about design we're really never done. We're just continuing to iterate on it. See what's working well, you can make changes in the future because your website really shouldn't be "I design it and I leave it." It's a breathing thing. So just know you can continue to come back and always make changes.

Katrina Widener: I find that so helpful because oftentimes as entrepreneurs, we're like, "I have to have this be perfect. I have to make this be the exact best before I can launch it, before I can show it to the rest of the world." When really for things like your website or your website copy or so many other different projects, done is better than perfect. I always tell people aim for a B+, we don't need to be A+ students here. Have a little grace for yourselves.

Julie Nelson: Yeah. Have a little grace, be kind to yourself through the process. Find a couple of people that you feel like you can really trust. I would say don't source your website out to too many people to get feedback before you launch, but have one or two people that you can say, "Hey, will you take a look at it? Let me know what you think." to just make sure that your messaging is clear that all of the links are working. That's the other thing, doing that audit before you actually launch to make sure everything is working. It's really helpful to have a couple of people that can help you do that, but don't, don't crowdsource your website. Get it out there cause once it's out there, then you can get some meaningful feedback and just be open to continuing to play with it and have fun and continue to make adjustments as you get to know your ideal clients more, or add in the future, add that blog, or maybe you have testimonials that you want to place throughout different little places on the website.

Katrina Widener: I love that. Thank you so much for coming on here and sharing. Where can everyone find you?

Julie Nelson: So for my design services, they can actually go to JulieNelsonDesigns.com. And also I am on Instagram . Thank you, Katrina. It's always a pleasure and a joy to be with you.