I’ve recently taken up baking. It’s been a passion of mine for many years, and something that’s been pushed to the back burner as I’ve been navigating the waters of running a small business and busily raising my family.

I’ve been looking for a hobby, something I get lost in and the time flies by without me realizing it. I’ve tackled the art of starting sourdough from scratch, investing in all the kitchen gadgets and appreciating learning something new from a place of an open mind. I was amazed as I saw the bubbles form from what was just flour and water the day previous. How good it is to slow down and focus on just one thing for an extended period of time.

Something I’m not used to.

Between, the constant daily interruptions of everyday life and figuring out the ins and outs of running a small business, it’s a breath of fresh air.

In a matter of a week, I had already baked my first two loves — both of which were gone in less than 24 hours. I was reminded how good it could feel to slow down and invest in something that I’ve been putting off for years because I was always ‘too busy’.

I was also reminded of how I like to bake. It's relaxing, I’m good at it and I like to make it for my people.

Too often we put things off because it never feels like the right timing, but what if, we sat down with ourselves, in a moment of quiet and evaluated what is important right now?

To look over everything. The amount of time we have available, the people and relationships that are important to us. Away from the hustle of working all the time and pushing ourselves to make X amount of money.

What if it was fun? What if we laughed and met new people and explored that stress-free version of ourselves?

These are all things I think of on a regular basis.

Right now my focus is freeing myself from fear, doing things even though I’m scared and having fun, without expectations.

The first few years of running my small business have been, full of stress, uncertainty, and questioning if I’m doing the right thing, but here’s the thing, I decided to let that all go and just go all in.

That means leaving the what-if questions behind and connecting with local small businesses, without any real expectations, simply to show up as myself, offer help and make new connections. Connections I wouldn’t otherwise of made being paralyzed by indecision.

Sound familiar?

I get it. Running a small business is H-A-R-D. That’s why not everyone does it, but you know what I’ve seen from fellow small business owners, we care, and we put our heart into our business because it’s so much more than that, it's the people we help, the knowledge we share, the connections we make, and the lifestyle it affords.

That’s why I decided to curate a web design process that got right to the heart of what every small business website needs to have. You can spend literal hours, searching, re-searching and testing to complete a website and it not convert to paying customers.

It can feel like you’re pasting together advice from many different sources without having a real plan or idea of what to include or how to figure out how to make your website rank highly with the powerful Google.

I remember back to when I started putting together my first website. I had no clue about anything, how to build a website, or what should go on my website, I was constantly going back and forth between reading blog posts, watching tutorials and testing it on my website.

Let me be real honest for a minute, it was super discouraging. I had put so much work into my website and it was something I wasn’t proud of, I was embarrassed to send clients there.

I found myself in a situation of a) continuing to do what I was doing, piecing together advice from blog posts and continuing to ‘figure it out’ on my own, or, b) investing in a course to teach me the basics of building a good website, one that I wanted to send people to and that converted the right people to ultimately purchase from me.

After getting real with myself, I knew option b was the clear way to go.

So I put in the time, I invested in courses, I spent many hours within Squarespace and ultimately decided that I loved it, and I wanted to help fellow small business owners with their websites.

I took what I learned from the courses and my own experience to create a process with step-by-step instructions for what content needs to be on a small business website.

Including resources that I actually use and recommend, for example, what websites to pull free-to-use pictures from, and how to write effective copy (all that wonderful text) on your website because I believe every small business deserves a professional online presence to connect with their audience.

After the pandemic, a 2023 study saw that the percentage of business conducted online rose to 28%, which means if you’re not online, you could be missing out on potential clients/customers.

Just think to yourself, what is the first thing you do when looking for a specific product or service?

You ‘Google’ it, right?

Same.

You can imagine it’s 99% the same for others, including potential customers.

In this daily scenario, they want and (we want) to type what we’re looking for in Google, and most likely will click on one of the first three options to find what we’re looking for.

Once someone is on your website, they make a 5-second judgement to see if you can help them. If they can’t find the information they’re looking for, off to the next website they go.

When a visitor comes to your website, they are looking for three things:

Can you help them?
Is your website easy to navigate/has a good design?
Is it an easy process to buy from you?

ACTION STEP:

Let’s do a little exercise, it’ll only take a few minutes but will be super insightful into whether your website is speaking to your ideal client or customer.

Go to your homepage (if you have a website already)

Set a timer for 5 minutes and only scroll down 2 times — can you easily identify the below questions:

Do you clearly tell visitors what you do and how you help them?
Do you have a clear call to action (CTA) or a prompt to show them the next steps in working with you? A button works great for this.
Does your photo or background (hero image) make sense with your business?

Are you making the right impression on a new visitor that’s coming to your website for the first time?

This exercise is eye-opening, there are really only two answers, yes or no.

The good news is that, if you answered no, you have room to improve! And that’s always a good thing.

This is just one example of how I design strategy-rich websites for all my clients. I believe that a good website goes beyond a good design. It’s the combination of design and strategy to create a winning website.

That means, knowing your ideal customer like the back of your hand, building a website specifically for their unique experience and combining current web design best practices to make sure your website gets found — this is where SEO and keywords come into play (and where I take the reigns).

When I take on a new design client I have them complete a pre-design workbook to collect all the vital pieces of information we’ll need to build their dream website.

I’ve created a sample of what that process looks like in my Ulitmate Website Content Planning Guide and Checklist — Download now to see what’s involved in my two-week design process.

Here’s a sneak peek into what resources you’re going to find (I’m always on the lookout for time-saving tips and tricks as a small business owner):

I like to break my content-gathering process down into five main steps:

Collect inspiration for your website, you can use Pinterest as an easy way to pin inspiration images together in one spot (link to blog post)
Gather photos to use on your website - these can be your own images or stock images
Write the copy for your website or hire a copywriter (this is something I can help you with if you’d like to DIY your website copy or work with a professional copywriter)
Gather all account logins, logos, brand information, and contact forms
Purchase terms and conditions, privacy policy, write out cookie policy

Download your Guide & Checklist!

Ok so maybe you’ve looked through what exactly needs to go on your website but you still have a couple of questions that have come up in the process, let’s dive in and answer commonly asked questions when first starting out with your website.

Can I use any image on my website, how do I know if I can use it?

It can be so tempting to see an image you love and want to use on your website. Please resist the urge to right-click and save the image, and here’s why. Images on the internet are copyright protected and need to be attributed to the original owner. A better option is to download images from free websites like Pexels, Unsplash and Pixabay. All you have to do is search for the image you’d like to use and download the image from there.

When you download an image from the above websites, you can read through the terms of use to ensure you’re able to use it without any penalty.

Can I copy a website's template and use it as my own?

You’ve been busily pinning images on Pinterest and find a website that you absolutely adore, you then hop on over to your Squarespace website you’ve been working on and start copying the colours and features of the website you found. Should you do this?

I understand that creating a website from scratch is a huge undertaking, when we find something we want for our own website we want to copy it. Here’s the thing though, someone else has already put in the time and effort to create an original website. Creating a website identical wouldn’t do you any favours (remember how photos are copyright protected, well so are website designs) so instead, take screenshots of the different features of the website you love, and find a way to incorporate them into your own design.

Another option is to purchase a pre-made template and add your information to make it custom to your small business. Just search for Premium Squarespace Templates in Google and take a look through your options.

What if I don’t want to build a custom website by myself?

No sweat, the beautiful part about our world today is that there are experts to help you with pretty much every part of your business.

Not wanting to DIY your website, coolio, you have a few options. You can hire a professional designer to create a custom website for you, or you can purchase a template (made by a professional designer) and add your information. There is even the option to have a website designer customize a template for you.

If you’re looking to have your website professionally designed, take a look at my services page to find out more about my two-week website package.

I’m feeling stuck with writing copy for my website, how can I find a local copywriter I can work with?

Equally as important as having the technical side of your website done, is having a well-written website to show visitors that they want to work with you. Words don’t always come easy though, especially when writing something for yourself.

To search for a professional copywriter, start your search with:

Website copywriter

To find someone local to your area, I’d recommend searching for these terms:

Canadian copywriter

Your city + copywriter

You can also search for copywriters on Instagram by entering the same terms in the search bar.

Copywriting is an add-on to any website package, let’s chat by booking your free consult call today.

I need a logo and brand colours for my small business, how do I create my own?

A great place to start is in Canva! Canva is a great tool for creating pretty much everything for your small business. What’s great about Canva is you can use a template to create both your logo and brand board. You can read more about creating a brand board in Canva in this blog post.

Feeling stuck and wanting someone else to make your logo for you? I can help! Logo and brand board design can be added to any website package. See packages here!

Should I wait to invest in my website? I made my own website and have thought about working with a professional designer, what should I know before working with a web designer?

Here’s my advice to small business owners doing it all, focus on one big thing for your business at a time. That way you don’t get overwhelmed with all that comes with entrepreneurship. If you’ve just started your Instagram strategy, and it’s taking up 90% of your time, stick with it and when things become more routine or you hire help to manage it, then tackle your website.

If you’re already active on socials and/or you want to have a centralized and professional place to send potential clients to, I would highly recommend that it's time to build your website. 85% of people look up a business before purchasing from them. Having a strategically built website is a fantastic way to make a great first impression and convert website visitors into customers.

How do I make sure my website is protected, how does copyright work for my website?

In addition to including your Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy on your website (the footer is the best place to house these documents), you’ll notice that most websites include a copyright notice at the bottom of the website. It usually looks like this:

This protects anyone from using creative ideas from your website as their own.

Is a website a good idea for my business?

As much as I love building websites, and I’d love to build your website, I’m going to say it depends! Having a well-designed website is part of a larger marketing strategy for your business. Sometimes it makes sense to have one and sometimes it doesn’t.

Cases in which it doesn’t make sense is if you’re just starting out and don’t have a clear vision for your business just yet. It’s really important to nail down your messaging and to know who your clients or customers are. Sometimes you know right off the bat and other times it takes time to really know, and both scenarios are perfectly fine and completely normal.

If you look at a well-made website you’ll notice that the design stands out, and you get a whole body feel from visiting, maybe you feel excited to find out more and it speaks to you. This is what I want for your website!

I need help choosing where to host my website, is Squarespace a good choice for small businesses?

What Squarespace does well for small businesses is it does the heavy lifting for you — think not having to worry about what plugins to use, having extensive web design experience to maintain and includes features like automatically making your website mobile optimized (important because 60% of web traffic comes from mobile phones) and all websites built with Squarespace are automatically built with current SEO best practices (this includes clean URLs, automatic tagging, and Squarespace automatically submits your site map to Google).

What I love is how user-friendly Squarespace is, business owners are able to manage their website without all the background knowledge that usually goes into having a website and that's great!

How do I decide if I should DIY my website or work with a designer?

This is where I would start. Evaluate how much time you want to spend on your website, does this time look like you are learning the ins and outs of building a website either by DIY or by purchasing a template? Or, do you already know you want to have a designer build your website for you?

Secondly, evaluate your budget. To DIY or purchase a template would cost you a few hundred dollars or free (you’d just have to pay to host your website with Squarespace) or do you have it in your budget to invest in a designer?

Either way, you know what’s best for you and your business, and I’m here to support you!

You might also like to read….

This blog post is for informational purposes only, for more questions about copyright and protecting your website consult a lawyer.

Articles mentioned in this blog post:

20+ CRUCIAL WEBSITE STATISTICS [2023]: HOW COMPANY SUCCESS DEPENDS ON A GOOD WEBSITE

TOP WEBSITE STATISTICS FOR 2023

Why You Deserve A Website And How To Get It (Including 5 Questions To Ask Before You Start)