If you’ve been to my site recently, you’ve noticed the face-lift for my site and my blog. My old site design was fun, but it didn’t accurately reflect my professional writing career. My work over the past couple of years has been primarily for businesses and professional individuals, so the “fun” site design didn’t accurately reflect my client base. The re-design is better suited to help businesses and professionals get a quick overview of my services, review my portfolio, read about my clients and see my testimonials. In other words, it’s better suited to help businesses decide whether to select me as a writing professional.
Target Your Audience
This redesign goes back to one of the principals of marketing that I convey to my clients over and over again: target your audience. A fun website is useless if your target audience can’t easily find the information they need, or if they’re expecting to see a more professional website. This year in particular has been a good year for me in terms of building my client base and reaching out to new businesses, and I wanted them to see me as the professional that I am – which meant scrapping the “fun” website that didn’t really provide the first impression that I want my potential clients to have.
Make Information Easy to Find
I think my new website design makes information easier for potential clients to find. I’ve eliminated clutter and reduced scrolling to make most of the relevant information visible when people first view the page. The navigation menu is horizontal instead of vertical, which reduces the amount of space required for the header and gives up valuable screen real estate to the text that conveys my message to clients. The boxes at the bottom of each page highlight important information, and many of them lead through to related pages within my site.
Building a New Website Enables Me to Utilize Good Business Practices
I write SEO content for many of my clients, and building a new website has enabled me to better integrate SEO into my design and page text. I’ve also improved the scannability of my site by breaking up information into easy-to-digest pieces, and making it easy to find the relevant information that clients seek. My new site design reflects the image that I want my clients to have of me and my business: the image of a business professional who has worked with many clients to improve their copy, internal documentation and Web writing and boost their business.
My grandpa had a saying that he used to tell me when he was doing something he didn’t want me to do: “Do as I say, not as I do.” I strive to be a professional who can lead by example. I don’t want to tell my clients how to succeed in copy and on the Web – I want to show my clients how to run a good business and hold myself to the same standards.
So enjoy the site redesign, and look for some exciting updates in the not-too-distant future regarding training opportunities, classes and new publications!
