The Recipe for a Stellar Creative Website: 3 Essential Ingredients
As a creative and heart-led business owner, I do not doubt that you deliver a remarkable service or product. With all that passion and love, how could you not? In 2023, customers will be savvier than ever. When customers land on your website, they make snap judgements on the quality of your product and if you are the right person to solve their problem. They will promptly move on to your competition if they don’t like what they see. There’s no love lost when one is scrolling while watching Netflix in the comfort of their pjs.
Before cooking up a stellar heart-filled website for your biz, I need you to provide three base ingredients:
Visual brand identity
Brand photography
Copy
Brand strategy and visual identity
In oversimplified terms, brand strategy defines what you want your brand to be known for and how you want people to talk about your brand when you’re not in the room.
If you’re a new business, there’s a good case for skipping brand strategy to see how your business evolves. Sometimes you’ve got to take action to see what works and what doesn’t. On the other hand, if you’ve been in business for 2+ years, it’s time to do some deep thinking about your brand and the collective experience you want your customers to have at every touchpoint.
No matter your business season, a cohesive brand visual identity is the first investment I recommend my potential clients make if their current brand identity feels misaligned with their website goals. A professionally developed logo, brand icon, typography (brand fonts) and colour palette is the bare minimum I recommend. It helps your business become recognisable (for the right reasons) faster.
A logo is not a brand.
If you’ve been in business longer and you’re ready to look premium and polished, go after bigger opportunities and attract more of the right customers. It’s time to move beyond basic branding. Engage a professional to create custom graphics and multiple logo variations in conjunction with developing your brand strategy.
Effective branding communicates who you are, how well you can solve your customer’s problems, whether or not they can afford you, and (most importantly) if you’re trustworthy. Nothing makes your business look more like a back-alley massage parlour than dodgy branding. First impressions are everything. When it comes to websites, that first impression comes from your branding.
Brand Photography
A picture paints a thousand words.
Ecommerce
You must nail the product photography if you’re an e-commerce brand. Someone purchasing an item online is taking a risk. They’re handing over money potentially for a product they’ve never had the opportunity to touch and feel in real life. Your website must help overcome that risk and reassure them to take the chance. Clear and on-brand photography can be what makes or breaks a sale. As a bare minimum, the photos must clearly depict the product and its features. Poor product photography is the real-life equivalent of a trash and treasure boot sale at the community hall v a high street store. These outlets appeal to very different demographics, so the price points are chalk and cheese.
Service businesses
Most clients underestimate the number of photos necessary for captivating web design and connecting with clients. People buy from people, so never underestimate how critical it is to have quality images of you throughout your website prominently.
As a general guideline, 3-4 photos per page is a conservative start. A mix of photos relevant to your service and consistent with your brand strategy. How do you want your clients to talk about you when you’re not in the room? A brand photographer will consider your brand strategy to ensure your brand photography contributes to the correct look and feel. How many who, what, why, where, and how questions can you answer for your clients visually with brand photography?
Investing in brand photography is a worthy investment. It provides peace of mind to customers and clients before they take the next step with your business. Remember to use your new custom image library repeatedly throughout your marketing.
Website Copy
The words your business uses to communicate with your audience are called ‘copy’. This can be anything from the words on your website, emails, reel scripts and blogs. Copy is crucial to nurture, connect with and guide your customer to take the next step with you.
Website Copy is where a lot of clients (including myself) struggle. Headings are essential to pique curiosity and entice your customer to read more. Body text provides essential messaging and information concisely. Calls to Action prompt your customer to take the next step.
An experienced copywriter will write in your brand’s tone of voice consistently. Like branding and photography, the right copywriter will ensure that your website copy creates the right “feeling” or “vibe”.
An SEO copywriter will research opportunities for your website to perform better in Google Search results and weave those findings into your website copy. For example, while you might usually use the word ‘elixir’, if customers use the word ‘serum’ in searches to discover products, it would be prudent to start using ‘serum’ in your website copy.
Suppose you don’t have enough relevant words on your website. In that case, Google will have no way of understanding what your website is about, and therefore, it is less likely to display your website as relevant to potential customers.
Professional website copy will increase your website traffic and conversion.
Summary
When we work together, your success is my success. Like a Three Hat chef, I can craft website magic for you if I have quality ingredients.
While it may seem too expensive to invest in all of these ingredients, you will achieve your business goals faster if you do.
