083: 5 Ways to Make Your Website Match Your Brand

In this episode, Jules White explores how aligned your website really is with your real-world business — and why that alignment matters more than you think.

Jules walks you through how to spot when your site is out of sync with the brand experience you’ve worked hard to build — and what you can do to bring it back into alignment. From tone of voice to user experience and content clarity, she shares actionable ways to ensure your website genuinely reflects who you are and the value you offer.

Key Takeaways:

• Visual Consistency Across Touchpoints: Discover why your branding, colours, and vibe should match across your website, social media, and Google Business Profile.
• Your Words Matter More Than You Think: Learn why great design won’t convert without clear, human-centred copy that feels like how you speak in real life.
• Tone of Voice That Builds Trust: Jules explains how using conversational, accessible language can boost engagement — and even help with AI search visibility.
• Better User Experience: Explore how to make your website feel as welcoming and intuitive as walking into your salon, shop, or Zoom room.
• Content That Connects: Make sure your most important offers are easy to find — and written in a way your ideal clients actually understand.
• Clear Customer Journeys: Find out how calls-to-action, internal links, and trust-building elements like testimonials can guide visitors to take the next step with confidence.

If your site’s feeling a bit out of step with your business, this episode will help you spot the gaps and start fixing them — no shame, just progress.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Episode 70 – Simple SEO Fixes to Get More Local Clients SEO AUDIT with Jo Bolton
• Free Beginner’s QuickStart Guide to SEO
• Book a free discovery call

Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast for more tips on SEO, content, and turning your website into your hardest-working team member!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Topic Overview
• 1:15 Visual Consistency: Aligning Online and Offline Branding
• 2:51 The Importance of Effective Copywriting
• 3:55 Maintaining Authentic Tone of Voice
• 6:47 Enhancing User Experience on Your Website
• 9:38 Showcasing Your Content and Offers
• 13:01 Guiding the Customer Journey
• 15:30 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Hi, happy Friday. Hope you're all well. So today I want to talk about something that comes up so often when I'm working with clients. It's something that's really important, and it's whether your website actually represents, truly represents your business. So if somebody walked into your physical space, would they get the same vibe and experience as they do on your website?

I'm going to dive in today to how to make sure that your online presence matches your real-world fabulousness. And if it does align, then it helps to become a real trust-building tool. I've got a few things you can check, especially if your website hasn't had a refresh in a while.

If you've not thought about this for a while, not checked anything for a while, then you can just go through and check a few things. This is just to make sure that what you are representing online is the same as people would get if they physically came into your business.

Visual consistency. 
So, is your website visually the same as your physical branding, so things like colours, logos, the overall aesthetic and vibe? If somebody walked into your business or if somebody had some interaction with you, would they get the same feeling? If somebody looked at your social media accounts, would they think that your website was the same business?

I see it so often where businesses are spending so much time and energy on social media, and that looks beautiful. When you go to their Instagram, it looks absolutely beautiful, and there's so much of their personality and so much of their brand coming across there. But then you go to their website, and it looks like it's a different business almost.

Maybe they've got the same logo there. Maybe they're using some of the same colours, but it's just not representing their business in the same way as if you actually physically visit that store or if you interact with that person anywhere else online as well. And this can also apply to your Google Business Profile as well. So quite often businesses aren't making the most of their Google profiles as well, and they're not actually using that and representing their brand visually there as well.

There's so much you can do with your Google profile that can also help with this, but making sure that that all ties in so you have that cohesive brand. Wherever you are appearing online, whether it is socials or across your website or on your Google profiles, or if people are actually physically walking into your store, make sure that it's the same experience. People know they're in the same place. They know they're interacting with the same business there.

One thing I would say about that though is that it's important to remember that just having a beautiful website won't necessarily result in sales. So you can have a website that looks a little bit ugly and doesn't look beautiful or looks really, really plain and simple, and that can still make sales. If the copy on those pages is well written and really explains what you do. Whereas you can have the most beautiful website and it can absolutely look visually stunning.

But if the copy isn't right, then that website still won't make any sales really, because it's the words on our website that actually do make those sales happen. It's the words that make people convert. That's one thing I just wanted to sort of caveat with that: yes, you might have a beautiful website, but it's also really important to make sure that those words that you are getting across on that website are also really, really clear. And that is the part that will actually make the biggest difference really.

As much as we don't want ugly websites, it's also worth thinking about that first really. This means making sure that your website is actually getting your message across as you need it to and as your customers need to hear it. Really.

Tone of voice. 

So, do the words that you use on your website actually represent how you would talk to customers in the real world? I think we can often get caught up in being very technical on our website or just trying to be clever with our marketing. Actually, clarity and explaining things in the most user-friendly way, explaining things as you would if you were talking to a real person, is one of the things that you can really do to help your content come across as helpful and as, what's the word I'm looking for, as authentic really.

And that's something that Google looks for now as well when Google is looking at ranking factors and is looking at why they should put one particular website above another. If your website is explaining things in really simple terms, then it's going to be much better. It's much more likely then that people will stay and spend longer on your site than if you bamboozle them with terms that might mean a lot to you, but actually don't really help them to understand what you do, understand how you're going to make their life better and what they need to do to get it. So it is really important to try and use the same kind of tone and language.

And I talked about this back in episode 70. I had my lovely friend Jo on and we were looking at their website; they're social media managers and everything they do is very fun and very friendly and is very casual. And we realised that their website wasn't actually portraying that. So their website was not, it's not stuffy, but it just wasn't showing that personality; it wasn't really showing them true to how they are in their business and how if you interact with Jo in person or watch any of her stuff on social media, it wasn't then showing that same thing on their website. And I think that's really important.

If somebody goes to your website, they should get a real vibe of what it's like to work with you. And this isn't necessarily something that's easy to do. It is not necessarily something that's going to be something you can fix in 10 seconds. It's all part of making sure that your messaging and the words that you're using throughout your online business or your business in person as well, it's all about making sure that that actually is connecting with what people are wanting to hear and needing to hear, to take them along that buyer's journey with you, really.

So how you're talking about your business and your services and products should feel like the way you would talk to a client if you were talking to somebody in person. It should feel the same sort of thing there. And actually, that can help as well with getting recommendations in like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. If you can use that real-world conversational language, then that can be really helpful and you're much more likely then to be showing up in those AI results when people are asking ChatGPT or Google Gemini for recommendations.

User experience. 

So, is navigating your website as smooth and welcoming as somebody walking into your business? So it is really important to have simple, easy navigation. If your navigation menus are complicated, if you've got every single thing that you sell directly available in the navigation menus without any category pages, without anything that helps people to not be confused to actually come in and use your website, then that is a real disconnect. This is especially true if you've thought lots about your user experience when they actually physically come into your business.

So if somebody stepped into your physical space, whether that is a salon or a shop, or even a Zoom room for a discovery call, you've probably worked very hard to make sure that it feels calm, it feels easy to navigate. It helps people to understand what they need to do next, that people don't walk into that space and feel confused. Because if they did, you would notice that; you would be noticing customers coming in, looking a little bit lost, looking a little bit like, "Oh, should I be here?" And you would do something about it, and it's the same on your website.

So just taking that step back and thinking, if somebody comes onto my website, do they understand what they need to do? Do they understand how easy it is to work with me? Do they understand how to find the solutions to their problems? And that's something that's really, really important. Navigation menus and user experience is something that can make such a big difference to that, to whether people actually hang around on your website or whether they bounce back to Google, whether they bounce back to Google and look for another website, another business to actually visit and find the solution to their problem, really.

Does your website make it clear straight away who the offer is for, what it does, what you're actually selling? Can somebody find what they need in two clicks or less? So like your services, your prices, how to contact you. And don't forget about mobile as well. So most people will visit your website from their phone, and if it's clunky and it's slow to load, they might just come and bounce back to Google before they even see your messaging or your branding or whatever is actually on your website.

So making sure that your website is mobile responsive and loads quickly is also all part of that user experience. It's all part of making sure that that ties in with what they would experience physically if they came into your business rather. And it doesn't need to be flashy; it just needs to sort of feel like you and guide people smoothly onto the next action to take really. So it doesn't, like I would always say that clarity tops being clever, really. So make sure that it's really simple, really easy. Nobody's going to get hung up on what to actually do there on your website.

Number four is your content and your offers. 

Are you actually showing what you do? And this is a big one. So many sites out there are either out of date with the products and services that are offered, or too vague and just not really clear on what you're actually offering and what the difference is between the things that you're offering as well. So are your most important services or products easy to find?

Are you mentioning those on your homepage? Are you guiding people towards those products and services that you actually want to guide them towards, looking at what your most profitable products and services are, looking at what you want to be selling? What do you want to sell more of? Are you actually mentioning that in a visually appealing way on your homepage and on your blog pages and anywhere else that naturally links to that service or product? Are you using that throughout your website to really help to increase the number of times that people actually see that when they come onto your website as well?

And are you describing those products and services in a way that your clients can actually understand? Are you using words that maybe you've taken from your descriptions from your manufacturers or from your suppliers, but is that actually how you would describe those things if you were having a real conversation with people? Is that the language you would use? And if not, then change it. Tweak those product descriptions, tweak those category pages even. So make sure that actually the way that you are describing things is how you would describe it to a real person in the real world, really.

So that's, I think, one of the sort of really important things: actually using the language that people can understand, that your audience wants to hear and they can understand. And also if you can add your own personality in there as well and add your own experience. So if you are talking about your, you could talk about things like your staff favourites or your customer favourites even for products and services. And if your product manufacturer has just released a new product, how can you put your own spin on that? How can you add your own experience when you are talking about that product, adding what you've found and why you enjoy it, and why your customers enjoy that product?

And think about the benefits and the transformation that it gives and describing it in that kind of language as well. And how can you get your sort of personality across there as well, really? So you don't need loads of copy just for the sake of it. You don't need loads of words just for the sake of it; you just need the right words. Thinking about how you can break that up with bullet points, icons, anything that you can use to represent things in a scannable way. So using headlines and breaking up the copy on your website.

And it doesn't have to, as I say, be a tonne of content. Like, walls of text are never really a good idea. But if you can just make sure that you use the right words, words that feel like you, and speak to your people, speak to the people who are there visiting your website, then that can make a massive, massive difference really. So an example of this is if you were a skin therapist who is taking the time to explain how your treatments are safe and why they, what the benefits are to them, then it... The way that you would explain it in real life, if you were actually talking to a customer, have you also got that language on your website relating to those products and services as well?

And if not, then that's really important just to get that across. It's an opportunity otherwise that you are really missing just to connect with people before they even book a call, before they even book a consultation, before they even actually get in touch with you. It's that opportunity to start getting those trust signals across really.

Customer journey. 

Are you guiding people towards the next step? Think about what happens when somebody does land on your website, and when they browse your website, what do they need to do next? Thinking about where they are in their customer journey and their awareness of what you are selling, how can you sort of put yourself in their shoes and actually think about what they need to do next so that they don't become confused really? So are you giving them a gentle nudge to take action?

Are you actually using calls to action that have verbs in them that are actually encouraging people to book now or book an appointment today, or those kind of things that actually do then encourage people to take the action that you want them to take? Or even just reading the next page and linking your pages together. So if somebody needs to understand more, somebody needs to go a little bit further along that buyer's journey before they're ready to book an appointment or make a purchase. How can you link your pages together so that it is crawlable, both to Google and to people actually going through your website and going through that experience so that they understand why you are the solution to their problems?

So this is where things like clear buttons, calls to action, testimonials, examples come in. That's things that you can actually all do to help increase that trust and help people understand why this is a good solution to their problem. And it's not about being salesy with this. It's all about being supportive. It's about helping people feel confident that you are the right person to help them.

And with things like testimonials, it's not about just adding all the greatly long testimonials of the things that people have said about you. When you look at your testimonials, when you get those testimonials in, just looking at the parts of them you can take out and be really useful to help your customers, to help your website visitors to actually understand why you are going to help them. So, thinking about it from that point of view, this is not just about shouting about what you do. This is all about helping people to understand more and just to become more confident to actually take that next step with you.

So walk through your own site like a potential client and think, can you easily understand what you offer? Can you trust what you're saying? Why should they trust what you're saying? And do you know what to do to take the next steps? And if you're not sure about this, then get somebody to help you with it. Get somebody, get either a professional like myself to have a look for you or ask somebody else, somebody who's just that little bit removed from your business, to look at your website and just give you some honest feedback about the user experience and about whether it's clear and simple to use and to navigate, really.

So take a little time this week to look at your website through fresh eyes. Does it feel like you? Does it feel like it visually represents the same experience as somebody would get coming into your physical business? Does it represent the language that you would talk about when people come into your business? And is it an experience that is a pleasure for people to use, that helps people to actually understand what you do and why you are the expert that they should trust to help them with their solution to their problem?

And if not, if it's not like that, then there's no shame in that at all. It's not, there's so much opportunity out there just to tweak it so that it does. And if you need help with that, you know where I am. You can text the show or send me a DM or book a discovery call and let's work together to make your website your hardest working team member. So it's generating traffic and sales every single day for you.

And it's not a quick fix. It's something that does take time to get this right, but it's really important. Your website is your asset that you own, and it really should, as I say, be your hardest working team member. So thank you so much for being here. Let me know what you think or if there's anything you're stuck on, send me a message and I'll try and cover it in a future episode. So I hope you have a great weekend and see you soon. Bye.