How to Prepare for a Website Update Before Hiring a Web Designer (or Copywriter!)

Every website redesign starts the same way: you get excited, you start looking at colors and fonts and templates, and in that excitement, you think you're finally ready to hire someone. 

But here's the thing—if you skip the prep work, you're setting yourself (and whoever you hire) up for a project that's unclear on scope, potentially not very strategic, and basically...a site you'll want to redo again in a year.

Today I'm talking with Carolyn Leasure, a website redesign expert, about what actually needs to happen before you bring in a designer or a copywriter. We get into the five foundational things every business owner needs to nail down first, why "what do I want my site to look like" is the wrong starting question, and how the prep you do now saves you money, time, and a whole lot of back-and-forth later.

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EPISODE 191.
Read the show notes and view the full transcript here: https://erinollila.com/how-to-prepare-for-a-website-update-carolyn-leasure/

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Get to know our guest expert, Carolyn Leasure

Carolyn Leasure, Website Redesign Expert, turns frustrating starter sites into sexy systems that work better for everyone. At Maypop Creative Studio, she creates beautiful, seamless sites that do the heavy lifting. Because she believes that your brand, design + tech should work for you – not the other way around.

Carolyn calls the mountain town of Charlottesville, VA home. When not constructing website automations or copy-driven design for clients, she can be found playing Himalayan Sound Bowls for a meditation shortcut, or splashing and whooping down the Rivanna River in an inner tube alongside her husband and two kids.

Click here to join Get Your Site Together, Carolyn's free 5-day website challenge that starts on August 3, 2026.

Learn more about Carolyn's DWY program, Website Wayfinder. The next cohort starts in August 2026!

Learn more about Carolyn and Maypop Creative on her website

Here's the info on your host, Erin Ollila
Erin Ollila believes in the power of words and how a message can inform – and even transform – its intended audience. She graduated from Fairfield University with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and went on to co-found Spry, an award-winning online literary journal.

When Erin’s not helping her clients understand their website data or improve their website copy, you can catch her hosting the Talk Copy to Me podcast and guesting on shows such as Profit is a Choice, Mindful Marketing, The Power in Purpose, and Business-First Creatives.

Stay in touch with Erin Ollila, SEO website copywriter:
• Learn more about working with Erin or just book a strategy session to get started
• Visit Erin's website to learn more about her business, services, and products

Transcript

0:08

Hello, Carolyn. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today I really appreciate you having me. Thank you. I'm psyched to be here and chat with you What made you start really caring so much about the prep work before starting projects with your clients? I'm a website redesign expert and I work with people who, service providers, solopreneurs, coaches, consultants, and they're re-doing their website. And so when we start onboarding, when I need to collect content from them, that's when things come to a screeching halt. And I have like very clear processes for this., I'm always telling people what they need and when, but they find and I find that it takes them longer to gather all of that content because the foundations aren't quite set, and that's nobody's fault. Like it makes total sense. You are busy in your business. You're wearing all the hats. You're, doing client work. You're doing your program. You don't have time to sit down and really focus on those foundational elements, and it is what I call the prep before the prep. Before you hire a copywriter, before you hire a website designer, before you look at a template. And those are the exciting parts. Picking out your colors and your fonts, like I love that. It's exciting for me . It's the frosting on your cake. But we really need to be looking at the ingredient, like the flour and the baking soda and the eggs so that the frosting has a place to go. Because without it, the frosting's gonna like splat on the table.. So I really wanted to help people,, make that process smoother of actually starting the website. It's so that when people work with me they have a really strong foundation of their site because I don't want them redesigning it, in a year or two. I don't want them to look at me, "Oh shoot, I, threw some copy up there. I threw some pictures. I didn't really talk about my offers in the way that I want to," and so they have to redo it. I want like websites to be able to last for, at least three years. Five years is ideal Yeah, I've talked a lot on the podcast about client experience, just as an example. And there are so many things that service providers of various industries can do to make sure that they are giving a really positive and engaged, an improved client experience. But I do find that this, , our world specifically, is a tricky one , because we can do our best job to provide the best experience for our clients. But when we think of things like the onboarding process, we also need our clients to step up and provide X, Y, Z, or be able to inform us about certain things so that we can give them the best experience, you know? If you are not as engaged in the process, like as a client, or if you're not as prepared, that's where I think a lot of friction comes in, because you can only then, as a website designer or me as a copywriter, do as good of a job as the information that you have. And I don't, so I don't think it's like a selfish thing. Part of it is like if you're prepared, right? So we're talking about our, our potential clients getting prepared for a project. But if you're prepared, then you can do your best work for them, which just makes the return on investment even better and the experience even better. But so that we don't lose people in thinking to themselves like, "Okay, well what do I need to do for prep?" What are some of the like phases of prep or overall things that people should consider the, like the website preparatory process? Uh, make it as easy as possible for people. So there's tons of prep that we will do when we work together. The things that come before that prep are really getting clear on the foundations of your business. So from from my perspective as a website designer, the first thing that we figure out is what's your site's job? Like, you pay for your website. It's an employee of your business , it should have a job. And a lot of people come to me, and their initial response is, "Oh, I want people to see how, , look at it and see how professional I am," or they're coming there to vet me, and the site should really just be to vet me. And that is the floor. Every single site should be social proof in the sense that it looks as good as the experience that you should provide your clients, When you're redesigning your site, you have to determine, "what do I want my site to do for me?" Do I want people to enroll in my program? Do I want them to book a discovery call? Do they, do I want them to buy a course? What is that main job? Because that is going to influence all the decisions that you make down the line. And I also believe that your site should have a secondary job if people are coming to you cold, even if they've been referred by someone that you both know and they're not familiar with you yet, asking them to take that step to to join your course is like asking them to get married. And they're probably not ready to get married yet, but they might be ready for a date. So figuring out a secondary job for your site, like getting them on your newsletter or subscribing to, your podcast, whatever it might be, that's a secondary job that's gonna keep people in your world that they can find you again. So that's,, the first thing., After that,, your brand bio, which of course is really important for copywriting, figuring out what you do, and then who you do it for way. And it doesn't have to be, like, a niche of a specific industry you work with, but being able to articulate what you do for work and who you do it for, if you can do that And it doesn't have to be perfect words either. I'm not talking about public-facing right now. I'm just talking about you knowing yourself. If you can explain that clearly, then your site will be able to explain that clearly. Your copywriter can explain it clearly for you. Your website designer can explain it clearly. and that's the who, what, where, right? But the how is really important, too. So for me, that is, can you clearly explain how you work with people? So not just the deliverables, but the logistics. How do they start working with you? What happens after they first inquire or sign up? How is it delivered? What does it look long-term? All of those things, again, we're not talking about public-facing. We're just talking about can you explain that? Because I'm gonna ask that for your website design. I'm sure you as a copywriter are gonna ask that, too. And people, when they come to me, they don't necessarily have- All of that really articulated, Yeah, 100%. When you're figuring things out, I don't think that you as the business owner needs to know each and every one of those. I think working with a copywriter and a designer helps you figure that out, or at least the process of preparing for it helps you figure some of those things out. But to add to what you said, this is where I think that projects can get a little funky. I've been in business for 10 years now, so I've tried very hard to figure this out in the discovery phase, but it's very often making sure that my clients or potential clients understand that behind the scenes stuff that doesn't even go on the website. Yes the, like you were mentioning, like what are your offers? Who are you selling them to? What's the process like? Especially with the words of a website, one thing that we talk about a lot is like how many words is too many? How many is not enough? And there's no cut, like clear-cut answer for that. No matter what any other copywriter will tell you, it depends on the offer, it depends on the service, the industry, all those things. But people tend to want to overexplain on a website, and I will remind them like, that's actually an onboarding question or that's like a discovery question. So we want to get people to the site and give them enough information that they need to move forward. So your website designer, your copywriter can help you figure out what information gets shared. But in talking about preparing, we need you to give us all of the information so that we can help you like segment that, right? We can help you figure out what's important. And I find, and I s- I see this so many times in surveys from like former clients, - after a project. They'll say things like, "I feel like I got business coaching like wrapped inside of your copywriting package," or, "I cannot believe we redesigned my entire offer suite." And that goes back to what you said about like them being in their own head by being the business like owner. And if you've listened to my last couple episodes, you'll hear that I did this myself while working on my own website project this year. It's like you look at what you offer and you think, "Well, this is how I've always done it," or, "This is what people want." But until you start examining that, and it's so much easier to do with the guidance of someone else, , , you start to realize, well, hmm, maybe it doesn't need to look like that, or am I overloading work here? Or am I not doing enough there? So the process opens up, I don't wanna say it this way, but kind of like a big wound that you need to just take care of and figure out how to move forward with, and that's very normal. Again, if we're thinking like logos and stock photos and brand colors, that's the exciting part. That frosting is really tasty. Mm-hmm. As you mentioned, and I loved this comparison, you're not gonna get there to that frosting without all of the ingredients that go into the cake and the frosting themself. Which my rant now is bringing us back to the idea that like preparing for these types of projects is like the best thing that you can do for yourself and for your business. The interesting thing too is that once you do this kind of foundational work, you use it everywhere in your business, your, all of your marketing, email marketing, social media, And it makes everything easier and clearer. And what I find really interesting too is that, let's say we're talking about, you're mentioning like site job. The way that you use that information as a copywriter is totally different than a way a website designer would. So I'm thinking about what journey are people taking through your site? What button do we need to have where? What, um, page do they need to see before they get to that final step? You know, all those types of things, and I know you think about that as a copywriter too. then even as far as, clarifying your offers, writing down what happens when, because people will start a project with me and they'll give me their information. I'll be like, "Okay. Well, how do they actually sign up with you?" And they're like, "Oh, shoot, I actually need to fill, to build, a landing page for that." So it changes the scope of your project, and when you're doing it with a designer, that means one thing, whether it's deadlines, timelines, money. When you're doing it by yourself, that's that stop, start, stop, start that totally screws with your momentum and prevents you from finishing. So knowing all of those little bits and pieces, I love the way you said it does not all need to go on your website, but you need to have it so that you can refer back to it, so that you can give it to the service providers you work with. What, all of those little different ways that we use it to turn your website into something that's actually a, a marketing hub for your business Yeah, and I think it does so much, right? The preparation helps set the project up for success. The preparation helps you work through some business challenges or even like creating business goals moving forward. The preparation helps make decisions. The preparation helps influence strategy, right? Because even like what you're saying, it's… I'm laughing at myself., I was working on my website copy, looking at building just like a site navigation map for myself solely that I could cross things out. Like to be like, "Okay, you did that page." "Stop thinking about that page. You don't need to do that." Or don't forget the like myriad amount of pages that are like the thank you page, the end promotion page, the thanks for clicking page. Like all of these things that get neglected and you have to fix reactively instead of proactively., But it is true that, having someone help you figure that out and doing it before you touch anything is so helpful. I, I realized like, let's just talk opt-ins as an example. I can't think of a specific example from what I was just working on. Let's say you have three opt-ins, , plus a standard just join the regular old email list. For me, there was the join the podcast, update list, right? So that would now go to five opt-ins, now you need to think, do they all end up at the same thank you page? Probably not, because I'll tell you for my podcast, opt-in as an example, I embedded a podcast player. I suggested some of the top, episodes that people have listened to. So now I have multiple pages, and it does not need to get that granular. Like you don't have to stress about that. But I just wanted to share the examples to think through. These are things that my clients, and I'm sure your clients, are not even considering. And without considering them, what happens is , you build a proposal that the scope of your project is one thing, and expectations, because the client doesn't even know what to expect, can become let down when they realize at the end like, oh, , I'm paying X amount, but we didn't even factor in these 12 pages, which wouldn't be your fault as the designer. It would be that you don't have the business information you need if you have not like pried it out of your customers, because yes, I do pry a lot of things out of my customers. But if you don't have that information, you can't suggest it to them, you can't make that site navigation and that user, journey like actually work for each other., As the example of the podcast opt-in I just brought up, can we stop for a second and think about why I would do that? A very good example. Because if people care enough to give me their email so that they're getting podcast updates, they're highly interested. And could I send them to a page that just says, "Hey, thanks," and that does nothing else? Sure. But I want to nurture them., I want them to feel like I'm not only going to, give them future updates, but I'm gonna suggest things and categories that they might,, want to poke around and listen to as they wait for the next episode., But there's so many decisions that go into it, and when you're DIYing it, you don't necessarily know to think these things. And when you're hiring it out, you still need someone to help you prepare well so that the expectations at the end, instead of being like, "Oh gosh, we didn't consider that," you're like, "This is more than I could have ever dreamed. Thank you so much., Everything is set up how I need it to, so I don't even have to think of or focus on or worry about my website. It's just going to be that employee. It's going to work well for me." And that's something that I just wrapped a project for someone literally with thank you page examples very similar to that. And that funny thing is , my onboarding is super thorough, and I ask all of these things, but if you don't have the foundations down, you don't know, right? So like on a thank you page, for example, if you don't know your site's jobs that we talked about, you won't know necessarily what you wanna show them on a thank you page, because maybe they subscribe to your email list and then, , we could put a little, , blog embed, or we could put your case studies if your case studies are what they need, or we could, your podcast, whatever it might be. But if we haven't decided first what's important after they take this step? If it's this kind of client, what's important for them? we put some testimonials there, but we haven't spent the time actually finding where they all are in your DMs and your emails and your Google Drive, and if we haven't actually gathered the best ones to use strategically in that spot, then we can't do it, and the onboarding takes so much longer. And it's a bigger stressful, like, redoing your website is a big, huge project. No matter how you approach it, it's going to be big. It's a content heavy asset, probably the most content heavy asset that you have in your, in your marketing system. So hate seeing my clients get bogged down in that onboarding process when I'm trying to pry all that out of them. I want it to feel breezy. I want it to feel like I've got this. I'll take this off your hands, and doing this kind of prep really you to breeze the whole process much more easily with any, any marketing service provider you're going to be working with I agree. And then, uh, again, that is our role. Like, we do this so consistently that we know how to do that and how to help you, which I think actually, I don't know if I'm rewinding slightly, but it's bringing me back to a point that you had made when we te- decided to talk about this topic of, like, website prep. You have a very specific, like, five-step process for preparing for a website project. Do you wanna kinda talk about what that is now? So to be clear, these are the things you do before you hire someone like me, or when you're making the rounds and talking to different designers, or before you pick a template. So my prep when I work with a client is the next step, what we talked about. So I actually, we talked about some of the things, but I do have a free five-day challenge to tackle these five things, and that is essentially the framework. So like I said, the first thing we do is figure out what's your site, what is your site supposed to do for you?, Then we figure out who exactly you're talking to on your site. Who are you, promoting your business to? Then we talk about what you do, so a clear brand bio, This is, the hardest thing for people, is to write bio. And I, again, I'm not talking about s- words that sound perfect to go on your website and go on your marketing. I'm just saying clarify it is you do. That's it. And that's really hard because, like, you're, you're in the body. What is it? You can't read the label from inside the bottle, right? It's really hard to just get so clear because what you do is complex and all-encompassing and, so large., And then from there, you know what you do, who you do it for, what the job is gonna be, then we can talk about your offers and getting everything really clarified, and not necessarily re-strategizing, which is also cool. Great. Do that. But- Really listing out all of the different, , steps involved with providing your offer or your service. And then the last thing is to go ahead and collect all that social proof. So whether it's people wanna have case studies on their website, and I'm like, "Great, we're gonna do it. Here, put in your case study." They're like, "Oh, I don't, I don't have one yet." So go ahead, write your case studies, gather your testimonials from your DMs and from your email and wherever you might have them. And not just screenshots, because as we know, those are not readable by screen readers and by, um, you know, search engines, but write them down. And then if you organize them, you can say, "Okay, what offer is this from? What part of the service are they speaking to? Is it, my organization? Is it my delivery? Is it my empathy?" What is it that they're speaking to? Then when you actually go to use those testimonials, it doesn't take you half an hour, to be like, "Oh, was the testimonial? one for this service. Where can I find that?" You have to have it all organized ahead of time. So again, this is not, like, difficult prep. This is not technical. This is not asking to, what offer should I put where on a website? This is all just gathering and organizing , your foundational content I 100% agree, , if you think of a Venn diagram, I just wanna like make it very clear that there is also a lot of repetitive work that gets done in the preparing before working with a copywriter, preparing before working with a website designer, then the working with a copywriter in preparation to work with a website designer, and again, during the working with a website designer after hiring a copywriter. But it is very … It is all needed to be done. Like, it actually has its own jobs and potentially, , its own tasks in each phase, and some might overlap. Some you might push around as well. But I love that you started it by saying,"This is what you need to do y- before you hire me/while you're looking around for, , different website designers." Again, the root, which I mean, I, I-- if I were in charge of things, I would just course correct and be like, "No one ever starts with a website designer. You will start with,, a brand strategist or a copywriter first, so the strategy gets done and that makes everyone's job easier." But that's not reality, folks. So when you're looking for, , the design and everything, you, it, are benefiting yourself by doing this work, and it does not need to be done perfectly. It just needs to be considered, right? So let's say then after that you reach out to Carolyn and you're like, "Okay, I, , wanna get my s- my site redesigned," and she re- reiterates the importance of those five steps and five things that she needs to do her best job. But she says, "Before we work together, you need website words. Whether you do DIY and you just want,, let's say an editor or a copy coach, or whether you're hiring this out 'cause you want them to be done by someone else, doesn't matter. Just get me the words before we start our project." So she directs you to someone like me, and then I, yet again, am going to talk to you about these things, and They're going to build on each other or be refined. So just as a silly example, you talk about like one of the key steps to prepare is, the testimonials. Mm-hmm. I too am gonna talk about that with people and for the same reason, but also for different reasons. Because when we survey our former clients, when we do market research, not only can we develop case studies to add to the site, which are wonderful sales and nurturing pieces of content, not only can we clip them and get testimonials that can be very strong social proof that lives on very specific pages, like you mentioned, offer specific testimonials might go on a sales page or a services page. Those are all important things. But from my perspective, the way that your clients or your former leads or your past clients talk about why they needed to hire you, what the biggest benefit was from working with you, why they were looking for that like offer or product or service, that is how we choose the words to influence all future leads and clients. If you go on someone's website or you hear someone speak like on a stage at a conference and you think , "Oh my God, like they are reading my mind," or "Yes, I need this," like they put it in better words than I could or something like that. That comes from market research and things like learning your clients and having a strategist like me interview people to get these specific phrases. I need your preparation to be able to step into my job, and then I can give it to Carolyn so the work does seem like a lot, and it is. I will not sugarcoat that, . But it does not have to be hard, and it does not have to be uncomfortable. It just has to get done well so that it can serve you in the process that you're in, and as you mentioned, continue to serve your business down the line. Like, like having systems for gathering testimonials is the best, one of the best things any business owner can do. Why would you not want feedback, positive or negative, and why would you not want to refresh your social proof or develop more case studies and things like that? So long example, but yes to everything you said. You know, the, the five things that I'm talking about, again, I want to make life easy for my clients because they have a lot going on. But you know that I just wrapped up a massive audience research project for my own business because I hadn't done it in a number of years, and this whole thing started because I said to myself, "Oh, gosh, I am getting that feeling of cringe when I'm sending people to my website." There's just certain things that are outdated, whether it's offers or whether it's my, bio, whatever it is, I need to update my website. Okay, so if I need to update my website, do I need copy updated? Okay, I need to update my copy. I need to talk to people in my audience to find out how they're talking about, what they're looking for and the struggles they're having, and just generally, not even just for copy, but learn about what their needs are so that I can actually meet those needs and change my offers if I have to. So I actually in … I have something called Trail Mix, and it is a site prep system. You it on my website. I really wanted to create it as a tool for like deep prep. So it does have a audience research module that gives you like a template of questions to ask and then an organization system to keep it all and to, , be able to see at a glance like what the big picture problems are and desires. And then after that, there's a module on keyword research, I want them, when I ask them, what keywords do you wanna use, I want them to have a sense of how to look for those. So taking your audience research and then turning that into keyword research or key phrase research everything follows a, a path. And so that is why when I plan to redo my website in September, October, I started my audience research project, I think, in April because I just worked backwards. I'm like, "What do I need when?" So my,, Trail Mix that I have, it's meant to be over six weeks done totally solo., You could do it in a week if you wanted, but that would be nuts. You could do it in six months if you wanted. It's meant to be like something you work into your life., But yeah, if you have the time, starting with research before anything else is like the number one advice I would have. I'm glad you said that, 'cause the key here is like we're g- we're trying to showcase how much is interrelated and important, but also the, intensity to which they get done can be different for every project. Mm-hmm. had clients who maybe haven't, done, off-boarding surveys with their clients or haven't done them in a long time, so they don't have updated testimonials at all, and that's always a big concern. Like, you know, Erin, you like literally hound me on this. Like, I've heard your podcast, you talk about this all the time, or, you know, I know I need this and my competitors all have it, but I don't. My competitors have case studies. So I think it's also determining what's important for you and your business, and then prioritizing that, right? So I'm just thinking of one client I worked with in the beginning of the year. What we decided for her, even though she knew she wanted case studies, they just weren't part of the budget at the moment. But we decided like, and this happens, and I would probably say you see this too with your clients, sometimes projects get like phases and only certain phases will get done at one time, but you know that you're working toward something next, right? So for this client, we decided to just create a survey, which is very normal with working with me. I will wanna survey your clients. Just got sent out via email. It was a quick Air- Airtable form where it helped her get updated testimonials., In the form I ask, could we follow up again if we have a question or we wanna highlight your business for a case study. I, I will say the vast majority of people always click yes on that question. Does that mean you need to email them tomorrow? Nope. So we knew once we looked at the scope of this project that the testimonials were key. We knew that, or we were trying to figure out who were like the, the case studies we would focus on if that did come into play., But for her project, we just prioritized testimonials, and we set like, a to-do system of we're gonna move forward after the website's done, after the launch is successful, and once,, the ROI starts to come in of doing a website update, we will do case studies. And now that we've done the website, we know exactly what case studies we need. We would love one for each of these main services. Let's say there's three as an example. And Okay we do that now by looking at the survey and saying, "These six people filled out for one service, 30 filled out for another." Now we're gonna look at their responses and see maybe are they highlighting something that hasn't been mentioned before that's important, or something they want to draw out about the surface, , and how it's changed over the years, whatever, right? So level two is gonna be those case studies, and then once they get written, you can continue to build on them or ask more questions, invite them on a podcast or a YouTube show. That can all be done later. So while we're showing you how things are interdependent or like what we'd love to have, as a copywriter, and I'm sure for you as a designer, we don't need like fully fleshed out About case studies. We don't need a project map of all the clients you've ever worked with. The key that I need, and I'm sure you'll probably a- agree with this, but the key that I need is I just need you to be able to clearly answer my questions. Mm-hmm. think that's why you need to prepare before hiring us, right? When I say, what services are we putting on the website or offers, right? You need to know what you want to do moving forward. I found myself, and there was an episode a few episodes ago, where I, broke down my, , done-with-you offers, there were things that I, I don't want to do anymore, like period, end of sentence. And that's not a bad thing after being in business for 10 years. There were also things that I was working on my, figuring out what I'm gonna do, and I realized I'd love to test this out because not only do I think that this could be like a nice little gap project for me , or I could do this quickly. I think it's like a huge win for a client to, like, get something done quickly in their business. I've never offered it before, so now I've gotta figure out, like, what it looks like, how it works. That's fine, but you do that figuring out before you commit to paying all the money you pay for a website update. Can you adjust?, Meaning in the sense of if you have that idea, if you have pretty solid clue on how it's gonna work, can you maybe shift that while, especially, while working with a copywriter? Sure. Because I'm gonna ask you some questions about like, well, what does that look like for a timeline? And you might not know. Or like what does the process look like depending on, what we wanna share on the site. Like our You might be still figuring that out, but you still need to be able to look at me, not your clients, to look at me and say,"I'm offering this new done-with-you,, website editing experience. I'm not writing. I'm just editing." And talk to me about why you want to do this., Who would be the right client? What the package would look like. Because if you can't answer those questions, the copy, the sales copy is gonna be like glibbity globbity vague and it's not going to convert. So you don't need I guess to sum up that rant, you don't need everything perfectly figured out. You just need to be able to talk to us, your service providers, about what it is that you're looking to accomplish, and we have the expertise to help you figure all of that out. But I do wanna ask a quick question,'cause you did a good job explaining, like, how to prepare to talk to you. But what are like some of the biggest mistakes people make in preparation, so that way we can help them not make those mistakes? I think the v- the thing that most people focus on, and I found this in my Done With You group program, in my free challenge that I talked about, in done-for-you services that I provide, is that the very first thing people to when they're excited about their website, they're ready, again, for a template, for a designer, whatever it may be, is they go start looking at other websites and figuring out what they want it to look like. And they look at colors and fonts and, again, I love all that stuff. That is my joy as well. but when I'm having, a discovery call with someone or we're doing a project kickoff and it's all about what they want it to look like, that is going to be a site that gets redesigned in a year or two years, , because we're not starting with the goals of your business and the goals of your site. And that's why on discovery calls, , I'm talking about what your business goals are, not what we're gonna have it look like, because that will… All of the decisions that I make for how your site is set up comes from your business goals. I want my clients to be able to use their websites after I create them. I want to give them resources so that they don't have to call me. I mean, they can. They can keep me on retainer. That's great. But my goal is so that for my clients, if they have a new service and they need to make a sales pitch for it, they feel confident that with the building blocks that I've given them, they can create that. But if you're just looking at visuals first and you're looking at other sites and being like, "Oh, I like what they did here," and, "I like the…" Then we're never gonna get there. And I think also, actually, there's another mistake, too. If you're ready for a website redesign, there's a reason for that. It's because maybe your offers on your site are no longer up to date. Maybe the branding feels really out of date. Maybe the client, the experience, the user experience that you're offering on your site doesn't match the level of experience they get with working with you, right? So when you go into a redesign, sometimes people bring all the baggage with them from their old site, and I'm not saying to throw it all away, definitely not, but you have to sort through it a little bit. Like, if you're dumping all of the old photos from your current site but you don't wanna use them anymore and you haven't figured out which ones you do wanna use and don't wanna use, that can get really confusing to both you and me, or same thing with copy., Whatever it might be from your current site, you kind of need to go through that first before you start at visuals and the beautiful things. Yeah, and to echo that, I, I see so many of the same things, in my field. It's the l- um, sunk c- cost fallacy, whether it's cost or time. And someone will say , "Well, I, I spent a lot of time working on my website." Let's say it's a DIY. Or like, "I've, I've already like redone the copy myself a few times, and there are things that I like," and they are clinging to a, uh, marketing asset that is, it's not serving them. Like, they wouldn't come and pay the amount of money that they pay for a project like the work that we do if it was serving them. Actually, that's not true. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put a little caveat there. Uh, lots of people redesign their websites because their business is going well and they just need to like refocus on an up, um, their services, or they want to hone in on their audience. So I'm sorry for everyone if I confused you. But back to the other people who have the sunk cost, right?- Can you bring copy over from your website if it is serving you into your new one? 100%. Like, I've had people act like it's a sin to ask me, if they could just, like, reuse this paragraph on their About page that they love. Heck yeah, you can if you love it. But the majority of the time is that's not the problem. It's the problem is that they think they have, , a business persona they need to keep, or they think that, Their brand messaging is one that has to-- former brand messaging, has to influence their site going forward. But what I find very often and what I see is people don't like the damn brand messaging. They might have paid for it in 2018, let's say, and it might be very, outgoing personality and,, show up on Instagram,, stories every single day and,, let's film TikToks, and that is not true to their own individual personality and what their business needs in general. So they might say "Well,, my former writing is, like, so spunky and in your face." But then when we talk about business goals and when we talk about what they want or how they'd like to speak to their customers, it's anti that. It's very like, "I want them to be supported. I want to be empathetic. I want to not drive home on the pain points". So a lot of it for me, I find, is letting go and just being vulner- vulnerable. And if I were to hire a copywriter, I, I… Or the, if this is, like, a suggestion for people looking to hire a copywriter, look for someone that you feel like you trust and most importantly, someone who listens to you. I think the same thing even with web design, right? 100%. Mm-hmm I don't care what you put on your website at all. Like, that's not a bad thing. I really don't care. It's your business. You can put what you want. But I will push back if I think you're making a choice that is not, strategic, and I will push you forward to think of that forward version of yourself that I might see, because I know how to look under all these little c- covers, right? And I know how to find that. You might not, yeah, 'cause maybe nobody's encouraged your growth or maybe, you're just nervous to step into that. So the whole thing really is to say, a lot of what we're doing is to help, and I think that the best way to hire someone to do this Is to make decisions that can inform them, but also to hire someone you can trust that cares about your business and cares about that end result. And, , I know we're getting long on time here, but before we leave, I really want to talk about something that you have coming up because we talk about this being hard or we talk about this being a process, but I think it's like giving the keys away to the car, right? Like you don't have to have this be hard because Carolyn actually figured this shit out for you. We have slightly similar programs but for different needs. If you've listened for a while, you know I offer Rewrite Your Site, which helps people work through the copywriting on their site. You actually have a program that helps people design their site with copywriting involved, with SEO involved. And one of the things that you do before you launch your program is, I'm sure to help you, but also to help your students, get them set up with the prep work they need before they do the work. So you have a, what is, it's called Get Your Site Together? Yeah, Get Your Site Together Challenge. In And it it the Get Your Shit Together Yeah. Perfect. That works. Site Together. Um, so tell me, uh, it is coming soon. I will put the links to sign up in the show notes and in the podcast description. Um, I think by the time this goes live, it will be in about a week, maybe a week and a half. Uh, but tell me about how it works and like what people get when they sign up for the challenge. So this is a free challenge, um, and I've been told that it is a tremendous amount of value for being free. I've considered charging for it, and maybe in the future I will, but right now it's free. It is Notion and Slack based. It's five days. So it starts August 3rd and ends the Friday of that week, I think August 7th. If you miss it, if you're listening to this in the future, I run it in the winter, too. So I wanna run it in, August and January when people are really trying to get their shit together for the next, for the, what's coming. So five days, you sign up, with your email, and every day for five days I will drop an audio message in Slack, and you'll have your own Notion dashboard that walks you through how to gather those five prep elements that I talked about. So the very first day we start with your site job. Then we go into your ideal audience. Then we go into brand bio, then your offers, and then finally with social proof. So every day there is a prompt from me talking about how to find this stuff. There's very detailed information in your Notion dashboard. And one of the really cool things I found when I ran this is in Slack, it's like, it's very active, and you can get feedback from people in all different areas. So for example, Erin was in there last time helping, and she gave copy feedback to somebody. Or we have an offer strategist who's, giving feedback on that area. So you're getting feedback from me. I'm in there nonstop because it's really fun, so I'm giving lots of feedback all the time. But you complete your module, you share,, one bit of info I ask you to share in Slack. If you want, you can also lurk, that's fine., But then you'll get feedback on the the prep work you actually did . From there, I do have, again, twice a year I launch, Website Wayfinder, which is a small group done-with-you website building program, which I'm lucky enough to have Aaron come teach copy in. Um, I also have a SEO keyword expert come and teach how to do keyword research, but it's 16 weeks with I've now built in two catch-up weeks within that 16 weeks, so 14 weeks of content. you don't start from scratch, you start from one of my templates, and these are not templates that I'm, like, selling, but they're the templates that I literally use in my business with my semi-custom sites. So they're designed with strategy baked in. start with your brand foundations, we start with the real basics of Squarespace, we go into keyword research and copywriting, and then we do content. Adding all of your content and thought leadership and blogs and portfolios and all of the nitty-gritty that people have told me that they didn't even know they had to do, like how to do alt text, how to do your legal pages that you need, how to do redirects from your old site to your new site, all of those things. And it is done with you in the sense that if you're looking at, let's say, 16 weeks, only , active time, we meet for two hours a week and do about 20 minutes of teaching, 60 minutes of co-working, and then another 30 minutes of feedback at the end. So we're actually doing the work together live. Let's say it takes you 45 hours over 16 weeks. The accountability is such a big part of how you get this done. Showing up and doing the work together because if you had 45 hours on your own to do it, it would be done already. Absolutely this program we work together, you get feedback from other people, other service providers, other coaches. I give my feedback all the time, and there are actually some things that I do for you. I have, , image library, color palette library. I get my hands into your site and help fix little tweaks. So really excited about Website Wayfinder because I think there are … And I still do all my done-for-you work. That's the bread and butter of my business, but I love the group program because I know that as a solopreneur to be like, "I know my business best. No one else knows it like me. Um, I wanna learn how to use this thing when I'm done with it. I don't wanna just hand it off to somebody else. I wanna know. I wanna get my hands dirty in it." I really love helping people in that way. So the Get Your Site Together Challenge free, come do it. Um, and you can do all this prep and then, know, if you want, you can work with me and Aaron together in Website Wayfinder and use all that prep Which I think if you have a Squarespace site, is what you just said is so im- important because I find that I am a type of business owner that likes to know how to use things, whether or not I'm, I am gonna hire them out to other people later. So if you are, like, fall in that category and you have Squarespace, , this is the program for you because y- you c- you're not starting from scratch. You have that template, which they're beautiful, by the way. And not just pretty, they are considering user journeys and decisions that you need to make on a site. So you're starting from a level of strategy Mm-hmm. building upon that, right? So yes, I think that is a great program to be. But to jump backwards slightly, the other thing I want people to consider is if now is not the right time for you, being in the Get Your Site Together challenge is so helpful for the sense that, like, you're getting prepared for when the time is right. So y- five days where you're gonna, like, put a c- like, an hour in your schedule to, like, work on something that, you know, that, that's getting assigned that day, is going to set you up for so much more success. If you're on day five or whichever day it falls on and it's the testimonials, and you start gathering your old ones and realizing, "I really, I really need to send out, like, a, a new survey or, or questionnaire," cool. Do that afterward, right? Like, even if you are not able to join Carolyn's program, Website Wayfinder, following the challenge, the work that you do within the challenge will help you if you want to do another, like, Done With You program later, or if you wanna just hire her to do it for you, and honestly, these are the things that help in all of your marketing. So, like, you're figuring out, you're organizing all your offers and figuring out all the stuff, then you go and you make an Instagram carousel, and it's really easy to be able to tell people how to work with you and what happens. Or you do,, a YouTube video about,, what offer or service you're doing is for who. This is stuff that helps in all areas of your business. And I wholeheartedly believe in going slow and not, , maxing out your energy. And so doing five days of this and then spending a few months, I mean, you can join Website Wayfinder in the winter, Yeah. can don't tell. you need to. Um, and taking some time. Um, but it's that balance of like, if you don't set aside the time, Yeah, I was just gonna say that. happen. Yeah aside the five days, again, like you said, half an hour, hour to knock it out, and then be like, "Okay, well, where do I go from here? What's next? Do I need a new brand photo shoot? Do I need to do some market research? Do I need to, you know, do some case studies?" Whatever it might be, it'll get you started on your path., I also will say the Get Your Site Together Challenge is not Squarespace specific. You can come into Sorry. Thank you for saying that. that's okay. And I have a lot of, I would say most of my clients are on other platforms and switch to Squarespace, Yeah. Yeah Wayfinder or whether it's through my done-for-you work. Um, I do only work in Squarespace, and that is for the reason that the clients that I work with, it provides the best balance of guardrails and flexibility, , and that's how I design my templates, too. Some sections have more guardrails, so The layout doesn't just,, suddenly shift around on you, you Right? something. But some have a lot of flexibility built in. For my clients that I work with, Squarespace has that, , balance. And , the free challenge, everyone come one, come all., And the program, I think is, if you're wanting to have that,, level of autonomy in your own website, like it's a great fit no matter what platform you're on, if you're willing to Yeah, and just to back that up, I absolutely think even if you're like dead set against Squarespace, what I would suggest is two, two things, right? Join the challenge to get yourself started, get that momentum. But I want to circle all the way back to your trail mix. It is, well organized. That's a paid product. It's not like a million dollars., So if even if you don't wanna do Squarespace, but you just want to make sure you're preparing, like you do have a free and paid offer that will get them prepared as well as could be. So yeah, , I would say go with an open mind, you know, especially if you're not , dead set for a s- a specific website, , provider. But I think that you have something for everyone in just that Yeah smaller sphere and the larger offering., And again, we can end this by just really reiterating the time exists, but if you do not set aside the time, you will not set aside the time. I will put up how to join you, below, and I will be in there, so I will hopefully see, you in there in the future, listener friend. Thank you so much for this conversation today. It's really nice to geek out on being prepared so you have the best results with someone who totally gets it. I know it's not the sexy part, but it really will make your business a smoother operation Agreed. All right, everyone, see you next week where we'll keep talking copy