Are you embarrassed to share your website?

Feel it makes you look:

• Unprofessional
• Untrustworthy
• Not credible

Today, I want to talk about 3 simple steps to making your website something you are proud to share.

Most businesses think they need to rebuild the entire website from scratch for them to like it. Meaning it’s a huge project and always gets put on the to-do list, but never started. Once you understand a few website tricks, you will be surprised how much you can enjoy your website—without having to rebuild it.

Let’s get started!

How you feel about your website is correlated to how closely is represents your business

In order for you to feel confident in your website, you first need to understand what makes you frustrated with it.

Most of my clients feel the website is disconnected from who they are as a business.

What they stand for.

How they differentiate in the market.

And how it visually represents them.

Once you determine how to connect your website and business, you will start to have more confidence in the job it can do to bring in leads.

Step 1: Start with the messaging

What you say on your website is the MOST important part.

The words on your site dictate how it feels. Even if you take the exact same design and replace it with different words, it will feel different. This is why I don’t like to use Lorem Ipsum text in my copy. It devalues the design and resonates differently than it would with real copy.

Start by thinking about the message you want to communicate with your customer.

• What problem do they have?
• Why you care about that problem too
• How the solution you provide helps them overcome that problem

See how the focus is on them? It’s your business, but your customer comes to it for a problem to be solved, not to learn about your company history.

Once you reframe the words on your site to point to your customer you will see your website in a whole new light.

Step 2: Remove clutter

One major reason your website looks bad, is because there is too much.

Too much of everything.

• Too many words
• Too many colors
• Too many pictures

Think about a high end restaurant. They don’t cram as much food onto the plate as they can, but have a smaller amount of food than something like a chain restaurant. The reason is because quality and quantity don’t go hand-in-hand.

When you have too much of something it naturally devalues each thing.

Think about your website like a fancy dish.

Take a hard look at everything on your website. If it doesn’t have a clear purpose, remove it. While doing this process, you will start to see a lot more whitespace on your website. Good. That’s the goal.

Let the things you do have speak loudly and they will have more impact.

Step 3: Simplify the design

If you built the website yourself or had a low end designer build it, you probably made a few of these mistakes:

• Trying to incorporate every color from your brand
• Using stock images (because you think they look better)
• Writing large paragraphs of text for each section

The thing about great web design is, what you leave out is just as important as what you keep.

To simplify the design, start by removing all the colors. All beginner websites use way too many colors. Creating a messy and inconsistent looking website. The more inexperienced you are, the less colors you should use.

Next, remove all stock images and replace them with real ones. Go hire a professional photographer and get images for you and your team (candid and headshots). Trust me, it’s worth it.

Stock images immediately make you appear less credible.

Lastly, focus on the headings of your website. It’s what most people read anyway. When you do write the rest of your copy, break up the text. Use line breaks, bullet points, bold and italics, to vary how the text looks visually.

This makes it more inviting and people can skim it for the important parts.

That’s it!

I promise if you implement these steps, you will be excited to share your website..

To recap:

• How you feel about your website is correlated to how closely is represents your business
• Step 1: Start with the messaging
• Step 2: Remove clutter
• Step 3: Simplify the design

See you next week!

Luke