How to Know When It's Time for a Website Refresh
There’s a few key indicators of when it’s time to freshen up your website. Like…
Your branding has changed
Your pricing / offers have evolved
You have outdated content
Need updated SEO descriptions
Things have gotten cluttered
And more!
I talk you through all of this and also share a quick and painless solution: The One Day Website Refresh
Video & Transcript below!
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00:02 Hello. I wanna talk to you today about a website refresh and how to know when it's time for a website refresh.
00:11 This is a bit of a different video for me. Usually I create a lot more tutorial type stuff but this is just less like directly how you see your website.
00:22 This video is inspired by two things. One is my over website refresh, which I'll show you a little sync preview of at the end of the video.
00:29 Well not sync preview, it's up live. It has been for about a month. And also by an offer that I have that I'll share with a little bit with you.
00:40 It's a really, really cool thing. But anyway, without further ado, how do you know when it's time for a website refresh?
00:49 For context, I built the second iteration of my website. So I built the first, first iteration of my website in Squarespace 7.0 like five or so years ago.
01:01 And then I built the second iteration of my website as a lockdown project, so right at the start of lockdown in 2020.
01:10 And that was something for me that was really good for keeping me distracted in the early days of the pandemic.
01:21 So I threw myself into learning 7.1 when it was new, and taught myself how all these really cool new simplified features worked.
01:33 There's a lot more control, and that was really exciting. And then I used, I have used that site ever since.
01:40 Since then, Squarespace has added loads of new features. They've introduced fluid engine, they have added video pages, and I've used they've added member areas, all these new things over the last three or so years.
01:54 And I've used quite a lot of those on my site. Additionally since I started the most recent version of my site, I have a blog.
02:04 I had a podcast. I still have a podcast. I just don't add new episodes. I create content for this YouTube channel.
02:11 So there's a lot of content in different places that I was creating and adding to my site. So science that I knew that I needed to refresh my website.
02:23 We're gonna go from personal experience here, but also obviously I do this stuff a lot for clients. My branding felt a little bit out of t not my actual logos, color font.
02:34 All of those still felt really right. I've been using those for the last four years. And the reason those still feel sob, right, is cause I took the time to get it really done right.
02:48 And so they feel timeless to me and my personality and my brand. However, my website itself didn't feel like I was using my photos necessarily, right?
02:58 Like, I didn't feel like acid website designer, my website was really showcasing my expertise very well anymore. It felt a little clunky, dated.
03:07 I hadn't necessarily felt a little like I'd added too much and had too much going on because I'd tweaked and added and added and added to things over th two and a half, three year period.
03:22 So the look of my website just felt a little heavy, and I really wanted to feel more spacious and bright and fun and playful.
03:30 I have quite masculine branded colors, which I love. As you know, like nine times outta 10 you find with me, I'm more in burgundy.
03:37 Today's an off day <laugh>, but so yeah, I just felt like that was a little bit off my website feel.
03:45 Didn't feel quite right. Additionally, I had had several revisions and changes to what my offers and pricing were. So, and I also had added back in system design.
03:57 So I was doing scores website design, and then I added system design, and I just didn't feel like my services were lined out very well on my existing website.
04:09 Like I said, I felt like I had had a lot of clutter on my site from adding and updating things over time, which you all know, I believe that a website should be evolving as you and your website like that.
04:21 That's the point you should. That's why I love Squarespace and Shopify square up, like all these sites that I work with, because you can tinker with them over time.
04:30 You can add to them, they are designed to grow with your business. However, after a certain point, you probably need to do a little bit of a cleanup here and there.
04:39 And I was real overdue for a cleanup. One of the signs that I see a lot with clients that they need a website refresh is they haven't taken the time to add in any new content in a while.
04:52 Now, this isn't my problem, very good at creating content. But if you haven't created blog, post podcast episodes, YouTube tutorials, if you haven't added any new pages or offers, your website will read a stale to the SEO gods, to the search people.
05:11 So you wanna make sure you're updating things on a similar, similar semi-regular basis for that purpose as well. Another thing that I knew for me, and then especially, but also this is common, I think, is that my SEO keywords, my content across my page and my seo like descriptions and stuff that I have in the backend of Squarespace, were all out of data as well.
05:40 So I have to a bit of an SEO health check on my site and do a lot of tweaking that way.
05:47 The copy on my website was written by a professional a few years ago. And again, my web, my business has just evolved and I really took it as a challenge and this time, time to learn how to write the copy really well myself through a directed process from an expert copywriter.
06:05 And so I, because I work in web design, I just thought this is the time to really learn and figure out how to really get my message in my brand voice, right?
06:15 Which obviously I've been evolving and perfecting for the entire time I've had my business, but it just felt like a good time to really bring it to that next level.
06:25 So if your copy is out of alignment, if your copy is incorrect or just feels like you've out, maybe outgrown the tone.
06:34 Something I've done in my copy on my site here is I've put strategic swear words throughout my copy mostly because I swear in real life and I don't want my clients to feel caught off guard if I swear on a call <laugh>.
06:48 And I just really wanted it to be authentic to me. So those are most the reasons. I think other reasons is, like I said, these platforms that we use for easy and easy to evolve.
07:04 Websites are constantly changing. Squarespace is really so much so this version of my site, I was able to do in a much more streamlined, clean way.
07:13 I was able to delete a lot of code for my site that I used to do things that I couldn't do when I built it the first time.
07:20 Testimonial sliders and suffer. Now were just so easy to do, which I had to do with lots of roundabout ways before.
07:28 Yeah, so that's another reason you can clean up your site. You can make it simpler. The other thing that I I see a lot of my clients coming to me for is when you need your website to work harder for you in the background.
07:43 So you need to add in scheduling, you need to add on a shop or a course or something. You need to essentially be giving people a way to plug in with you when you're offline.
07:55 So you're creating, whether that be connection calls or you're creating sales or you're creating whatever, it's for you to keep the wheels in motion in your business when you are like, I'm on vacation, or, or you're overwhelmed or your kid's sick.
08:11 So that's a lot of what I do is building these systems into websites because I love a good system. And your website is the front end of all that.
08:20 So those are the signs that I, and most of my clients see when it's time for a website refresh. I will transcribe this.
08:30 It will be, so if you're looking for like specific ones. And then I just wanna talk really briefly about my offer and then I'll show you my new website.
08:41 So I'm not gonna talk too much about this, but I will link it so you can see it. It's called the One Day Website Refresh.
08:48 And it is an offer that I'm doing from now through early April. It's got limited availability As far as I'm only offering it to 10 people.
08:57 Couple slots are already gone. But it's a one day thing where you can essentially say, oh, I want this added to my site.
09:04 I want this change on my site. Literally any change, you want the course added, a podcast added. You wanna change the branding, you're looking at overhauling this, that, or the other.
09:16 Literally any changes you wanna make sure site, maybe you're on 7.0 with Squarespace and you wanna move to 7.1 maybe in Shopify.
09:23 You just need a big cleanup of various things on your site. So in one day I will do all of it.
09:32 And now let's take a look. My brand new website. All right, so here's my site. I'm gonna make my little face a little smaller here.
09:42 Okay. So I made sure to have a really good, strong headline and a subhead. And then this little tweak that just helps people think like there's a personality pop there, right?
09:52 And then I've got a fun image. I've rounded things in this version of my side. It just feels a little softer.
09:58 Some icons, I'm actually looking at getting these custom done. So a lot of these will be redone so that they match a little better and they're personalized to me, which I'm lo looking forward to.
10:08 Got my freebie here. And I've rounded my buttons, but you can see, and I've just added a little personality with the weedy lines and things like that.
10:17 So I'm just loving this newer cleaner version. I had a testimonial slider before it only showed one at a time, and it was a lot clunk.
10:25 Loving the new one. And then a way for people to plug into my podcast YouTube channel blog, which is pretty much, so you can see it here.
10:33 I have a much simpler navigation. I've got just a few things across here. And then I've got the this one dropdown, and that includes my portfolio and testimonials, which I've combined.
10:44 I've also combined my blog podcast and such here, another link. I've those around quiz to be on my newsletter. And so I've combined my portfolio testimonials basically by having the portfolio that I already had and adding a few things to it.
11:07 And then I might need to make that a little smaller. That's huge. And then adding testimonial slider. But this one has every testimonial ever pretty much.
11:17 And so the same testimonials are obviously inside the I don't want, this one's not a good example, but inside the, this will be a better one, the portfolio.
11:30 So you can see testimonials and things in here as well. And then if you're into my blog, so I've, I've redone this as well so that my blog and my YouTube and my podcasts are all in one place.
11:42 And so you can from here you can see all the content or you can pick a format here. You can listen to just podcasts, YouTube, or whatever.
11:50 You can see the categories of things I talk about. And then, yeah, so this is a custom sidebar that I got from s sq.
11:57 Anyway, themes, Squarespace, themes. It's a little acronym <inaudible> over there. And that's that. It's still pretty much the same, just a little bit cleaner and a little bit more easy to use for people as a site.
12:09 So I'm loving it. It feels a lot more me. Just, it's important to know when it's time. It's important to take the time.
12:17 I did my entire website refresh. I did in the first week, back to work. I redid all of my copy in the new year.
12:28 So first week back in January and the second week I redesigned my website. And in order to make it happen the way I wanted it to, I actually took my site down for just one day and made all the tweaks.
12:38 Now, granted, I'm a website designer. I can do that on my brain. Like I know how to make all the tweaks really, really fast.
12:45 But that's what we do. So if you really want it done fast, come to a website designer. Or if you wanna do it in your own time, you can take your site down for a little bit longer or do it without taking you to site down and having hidden.
