Designer Boss
Designer Boss
5 Website Must-Haves for designers
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Welcome to the designer boss podcast, listen, learn, love and level up with the ultimate success guide for web and graphic designers.
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My name is Anna Dower. I'm a cake lover and success-slaying graphic design mentor. And I'm Emma Kate your personal sensei for mastering the wonderful world of the Web.
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Together, we'll show you how to harness our tried and tested experiences and hard earned lessons while you soak up everything we know about building a successful design business.
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Hello, and welcome to the designer boss podcast. It's Anna here. And TODAY Emma and I are talking about five website must haves. When it comes to your website, I know it's hard to know what you have to include and what you can take away. It's often the things that you need to take away that are the hardest to figure out. Emma is a graphic designer turned website designer, so she's got all the insight. I've just got some ideas that I have seen work for designers over the years. So let's jump into the five website must have. The first thing In our last podcast episode, we talked about sales funnels. So of course, one of the most important things you need to have on your website is a freebie that makes people enter their email address and sign up to your list, basically known as an optin. So basically, you need to have on your website, download this free checklist, ebook, cheat sheet, whatever it is you're giving away for free, and an opt-in form for them to enter their email address and hit submit. No one wants to sign up for a boring newsletter anymore. Don't have anything on your website that says Sign up for my boring ass newsletter.
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You need to give them something valuable people are like precious about their email address these days. So that's the first thing it needs to be on your homepage. And it needs to be prominent.
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Make sure you have an optin. Yeah, I absolutely have it. Definitely on your homepage, but also in sort of strategic places throughout your website and potentially also have a whole separate page dedicated to it as well. So you can obviously direct people from social media or something just straight to that page where the only thing that they can do really is opt in and get your freebie. Next thing that I had on the list was to have a portfolio, but have an intentional portfolio, don't just put up every job that you do. In there, don't even just put up jobs that you do that you like, make sure that they're all targeted really towards who your ideal client is. So for instance, you know, obviously, you wouldn't put stuff in there that you're not particularly proud of. And we all have those jobs where the client loves it, but you're like really, okay, just won't put that one in my portfolio. So definitely don't put stuff like that up in there.
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But also, if say your ideal client is the health and wellness industry, and you happen to do a really awesome website for a plumber, it might be tempting to put that website up there. But maybe that's just sending the wrong message. You know, it's not, it's, it's sort of showing people that you kind of do work for all these other types of people and you're not so niche and specific to what they would want. So I would just be really intentional about the types of projects that you actually put in your portfolio.
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Yeah, be super strategic about it. It is seriously, quality over quantity. If you only have like four or six projects that you're proud of, and that speak to your ideal client, only use those, you can update it over time.
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The next thing that I think is really important to have on your website is photos of you because it is so easy to hide behind your brand. Hide behind your Mac, and not let anyone see you. By doing that you're not creating an emotional connection with your audience. You're not letting anyone see the real you and that's really important when
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Someone's handing over $5,000 to you to bring their business dream to life, they want to see you, they want to feel like they can trust you and that you are on the same kind of wavelength as Sam, I spend a lot of time hiding behind my brand. But now I'm out there baby.
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All my headshots are pink and fun, and completely me. And it's okay. If there's people out there who are like eww pink. They're not my people, obviously. And you can still be my people. If you don't like pink, you might like what I say. But I know that it plays a huge role in connecting with your audience. Make sure that there are photos of you everywhere. Absolutely. And I think when you think about it, if as if you were going to invest, say $5,000 in somebody, wouldn't you feel so much more comfortable, if you saw that photo of them on the website, you know, and about them, and you feel like they're a real person, rather than just this random company that you've stumbled across online. I always think like, even if I was just say, investing in a tradesman of some kind, I like to see the actual picture of their team and their, like their office and stuff like that, because it makes me feel like they're an actual person that I'm dealing with. So the same goes to us as designers too, if we're trying to convince people, even that, you know, aren't in our local area that maybe we'll never meet, they might even be overseas, having that sort of human face to the brand, I think is like super duper important. Another tip that I had was ensuring that your website is easy to edit, so you can update it all the time. And the reason for this is I used to have this beautiful website, honestly, it looks stunning, I loved it, I love the theme I'd chosen, everything looked great. But to update my portfolio was a real pain in the butt. Like it took me forever, and I hated it. So guess what, I never did it. I never added new my new projects to it, because I just couldn't be bothered, I didn't have a whole day to weigh to do it. So then I rebuilt my website in Divi, of course, and it just made it so much easier to update my portfolio. So it turned to, you know, a whole sort of day exercise to maybe like an hour or two's work, and it's done. And so it meant that I was adding new projects to my portfolio more often, I could do more in depth sort of like case studies and things like that, and keep my website really up to date with sort of current projects and things that I think my audience would be interested in. So it might not necessarily be a feature that people see on the front end. But having a website that you can easily update yourself quickly. And you know, stress free, I think is really, really important. Yeah, and it kind of just reinforces the fact that your website is never just done, it will never be done. You will always be wanting to change things and update things all the time. So if you've got a website, like on Wix or whatever, and you have no idea how to update it,
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that is not what you should have.
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You need to be updating it all the time, you change all the time. You should have new offers all the time.
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It just needs to be able to be edited. And like I said, it's never done, you will always be working on your website. Now the final must hav+e for your website is making it clear to your audience what the next steps are. So that means having a call to action.
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Or many calls, calls to action throughout your website. I tell my designers that it's really important for them to have a pricelist so that should be the first call to action that they have on their website. Like my style, like my voice, download my pricelist now, and let's see if we're compatible on that sense. So having a call to action throughout your website. It's really important. And it's important to make it clear for them. Like it's awesome for them to get to your website and go oh, this person looks amazing. I have no idea what I do next, in order to start working with them. So I think it's really important to have clear calls to action even have a section on your website that has the process really clear like step one, download my pricelist here. Step two, lock in a free 15 minute call here. Like make it crystal clear like you're talking to someone who hashas never ever gone through the process of hiring a designer before.
10:05
Yeah, I think even on your contact page, having that clear what the next steps are, because people might automatically go, oh, yeah, this check looks good. Click on the contact button. And then if you have email address and your social media and maybe your phone number, and you have all these different options of ways people can contact you, maybe making it clear, they're just having a sentence or two of like, what the next step is, you know, if you want to make an inquiry, if you want to talk about a new project here, book a discovery call or download my price list or you know, whatever it might be, so that they're not contacting you in a way that you don't necessarily want them to initially.
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Yeah, and so that they're not wasting your time. Like on your contact page, you could have, you know, hold that thought, have you downloaded my priceless yet, that is the first step to working with me. So basically, if you get my price list, and don't freak out at my prices, you then have permission to contact me. But if you're contacting me, in order to ask for a quote, you're wasting my time, download the price list first. So making it clear as to what they need to do, and what's your preferred process, like you're in charge of this whole scenario. So make it really clear and know that this is how it's gonna go down. And these are the steps you need to follow.
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So we also have a few things on our list that are nice to haves for your website, not necessarily must haves, but things that would, you know,
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make your website better, but aren't necessarily essential. And the first thing is case studies, I think, if you want to take your folio to the next step,
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Having small case studies that go with each of the folio pieces is a really nice thing to have. It helps you connect, it helps you tell a story. And people like tales of transformation, you know, before and after type things. So case studies are nice to have definitely
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Absolutely, yeah, and these are things that you can sort of, after you've, you know, rebuilt your website or whatever, if you've put all your must haves in and then over the next six months, maybe you can sort of revisit and just add more of this stuff to your site to make it even better. One other thing is, obviously, having testimonials throughout your website is a good thing. But try to trying to get a few video testimonials from some of your favourite clients. Just really, I feel it works wonders. People love video testimonials, they're more likely to watch a video testimonial that says a lot rather than read a whole like, you know, long page of someone's written testimonials. So I really encourage my clients and my students to provide video testimonials, because you can always turn them into written testimonials as well, of course, but you can also then add those video testimonials to your case studies pages to your portfolio pages and also strategic places throughout your website to just show people that you know, it's not only you that think you're good, obviously your clients think you're good as well. Yeah.
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And even if you have to bribe your clients and tell them that you'll send them something in the mail, in return for a video testimonial. Do it. It's worth it. Yeah, it will be a great conversion tool on your website. Yeah. Another nice to have is a Blog. And I don't know if blogs are outdated now. But there's a whole heap of reason why blogs are still important. I think it allows you to educate your audience and show them how clever you are, how smart you are. It allows you to serve them to solve their problems. And it's great for SEO as well. Now, if writing is not your jam, perhaps it could be a podcast instead. But there needs to be a way that you're serving your audience that's free.So I think a blog is great. I've loved blogging. I've gotten a bit slack in the last year or so. But I feel like I'm starting to get my mojo back now. So yeah, a blog is nice to have as well.
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Yeah, absolutely. I think a blog is a great thing to have. It's great for SEO, it's great for building your authority to you can speak about certain things and educate your clients on it. And you can also obviously use all that content, as little snippets on social media in, you know, an email newsletter or an email to your clients. You can reuse all that content. And I definitely encourage you to do that too, rather than just having an on your blog and that's it. Yeah, blogs are awesome for that. Just repurpose that stuff. Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's just like your Optin that we spoke about in the
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Last episode, where, you know, you don't just have to share it once you can share snippets of it 20 different times, it's the same with your blog posts, you can share different snippets and say it in a bunch of different ways across social media. And it means you've got all that content there to share.
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Another nice to have would be like a Frequently Asked Questions section or page on your site, that just demystifies a lot of those questions and stuff that potential clients might have for they work with you. Like, what's the process moving forward? Why do you use this particular tool? Why do you do it that way? Like, what are those questions that you get asked often from clients, and then have a frequently asked questions there just to, I guess, put people's mind at ease when they might have these questions. And rather than them having to ask you, they might potentially read it on your web page. And that saves you a lot of time having to answer that again and again. Yeah. And then you can just send people there, when they have come to you with those generic type questions. It's all about streamlining, saving time, just having all the information there for them, basically, so that there's no question that hasn't been answered. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Is there any more nice to haves that you had Anna.
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not off the top of my head. But I did, we did want to mention that Emma and I have been busy creating some beautiful website templates for designers. And these templates have been designed by me and have been built by Emma. And they include all of these things that we've spoken about today. Also, these templates, when I design them, I actually put a bunch of content prompts throughout the design. So you don't even have to like use your brainpower to think oh, what goes in this section? What goes in this section, I've actually got a bunch of prompts in there for you. So it's really easy. All you need to do is fill in the blanks, basically. And of course, these templates have been really intentionally designed for designers to attract their ideal client and then convert them into paying customers. And Emma’s taken all the hard work out of building it out for you. So all you need to do is .what do they need to do Emma?
17:33
Well, yeah, so Anna designed these beautiful templates, and I told her, hey, just go all out. Just design whatever you want. And I'll make it happen with Divi. And I'll make it easy for people to edit. I love those Divi design challenges. So Anna has just designed his gorgeous websites that obviously are designed to convert as well. So you can have these real fancy sort of features and stuff on there, but they're going to be super duper easy for you to edit. So all you need to do essentially is have Divi installed so you have to have word of WordPress and Divi site and then you can load these layouts to your website. And so along with the layout you do get obviously a checklist of you know what the steps are you need to do to load it if you're sort of unfamiliar if you don't already have Divi installed what you need to do there. And then there's a full over an hour I think masterclass on Divi that I've included in that as well to show you sort of how you can set up your Divi website, how you can load these layouts, and some really quick and easy tools that Divi has included. That means you can swap out your colour palettes and your fonts and everything like so quick, like superduper quick, it's pretty awesome. So it should be fairly straightforward for you. And it takes so much obviously all that time and effort of having to design your website, figure out what content you need to write all that kind of stuff, all that learning curve with Divi and stuff. Hopefully I've made that a lot easier for you as well. Yeah, and when you're a designer, your website is always at the bottom of the list. And you don't want to be that designer with website shame.
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Like the irony is too much. This is the answer. You can have your website up and running, like in a few hours if you wanted to. Also throughout the design, there are sections specifically for your price list to be downloaded. There's sections for your opt in to be popped in there. And for people to add to their email address, like everything we've spoken about today is included in the layout. So you don't have to think about trying to make it all fit. I've done it for you. And yeah, like I said, get your website up and running really quickly. Imagine how good it will feel to have that done on your To Do lists. Like I feel like it would be a massive weight off your shoulders.
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Just to get it done, and you can change the colors you can change the fonts and the images. Just make it your own. Absolutely. And will I, you know, I wish I could explain how beautiful they are verbally over a podcast. And it's just created these gorgeous designs. If anyone's, you know, been on Anna's website, or even my website for that matter, because you designed it for me.
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You know, she's a fantastic designer, and they're just beautiful. So if you want to see the demos, we'll put links in the show notes, and you can go see the full live demos that we've created. So you can click through and see how it all works. And we've actually created this particular template that we're talking about right now. But we will have more to come. We've created two different versions of it. So there's a sort of muted natural tones kind of version. And then there's this really bright, bubbly, vibrant, fun version as well. So you can see, just get an idea of how it can look really and how you can really change everything up to suit your brand. Yes, check them out. I don't think there are many templates out there specifically for designers. So I think yeah, it's a no brainer. If you want to ditch the website chain, and take it off your list, check out these templates. You're gonna love them. They are the answer to your problems. I think so. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us today. And I really hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if you haven't seen already, our designer boss Summit is open now it's starting in a couple of weeks, so head to our website, designer boss.co and reserve your spot so you can get all the emails for the summit and hear from 20 Plus awesome speakers from all around the world, talking all things working smarter, not harder in your design business.
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You've been listening to the designer boss podcast with Anna Dower and Emma Kate. If you'd like to learn more about us and our upcoming digital summit for graphic and web designers, head to our website designer boss.com