When you take a look around the web today, it can seem like everyone has a gorgeous, amazing website. It can make you feel very pressured to create a fabulous website for your business or project too!
You never want to act out of pressure.
However, if you sense that it’s time to create a new website, or improve your existing one…that’s great, because a well-created website can make a world of difference in your inflow of prospects.
But where to begin?
What do you include in a website? What’s important and what’s unnecessary? What about graphics? Or video? Or downloads? There are so many variables to consider, it can get overwhelming fast!
If you are just terrified of or feel unprepared to have a website, rest easy: you don’t need a perfect, fancy website in order to be successful in your soul-centered project. If you’re ready to create your website or to uplevel the one you already have, great! Let me walk you through the process step by step.
Elements of a Soul-Centered Website
Before you get started, my number one recommendation to you is this: keep it simple.
Once you start to make your website complex, it’s so easy to get overwhelmed. When you get overwhelmed, more often than not, you just stop working on it or you beat yourself up. This is not helpful! Remember, entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint. There will be plenty of time to add and make things fancier. Here are the real essentials:
HOME PAGE
This is the main page that people will land on when they visit your website. The best use of a home page is to identify who your ideal clients are, to address your clients’ needs and visions of success, and to let them know how you’re the bridge to that success.
- Be accessible. Make sure your contact information is on every page, starting with the home page. The information you supply will vary depending on what’s appropriate for your particular business, but this may include company name, logo, phone number, email address, social media accounts, etc. This may seem obvious, but this information gets overlooked so many times!
- Identify your prospect. Have some copy that lets the prospects know that they should be reading it because they are exactly the type of person whom you serve best. You can ask: "Are you a good match for my programs?" You might list qualities of your ideal clients. Describe who they are by identifying their needs and their visions. If you are a yoga teacher, your clients’ needs might be to find tranquility within themselves, to become more fit, or to try yoga for the first time. Their vision might be that they can finally perform a difficult pose, meditate successfully, etc. Speak to their dreams in this section.
- Reveal the benefits of your service or your product, etc. I like to use bullet points here, just listing all the ways your prospect will benefit from your offerings. You can briefly outline your Brilliance-Based System – lay out, step by step, your system for bringing your clients from where they are right now (their "needs”) to where they’d like to be in the future (their "visions”).
- Let them know what to do next. You need to always have a clear call to action that invites folks to the next step with you. This might be a call to have people sign up for a complimentary call, or to sign up for a newsletter, or to download an ebook. List the benefits of this and clear instructions on how to do it.
- Your photo + your presence. A clean, clear photo of you, if appropriate, helps your prospects make a personal connection with you.
OFFERING PAGE
- This can be called "services," "work with me," etc. You can list in detail what you do. If your offerings are services, be clear about what’s included in each program, and more importantly – what the BENEFIT is. If you include your pricing – and you don’t have to — be clear about it. Make sure nothing is confusing; this is your opportunity to paint a bright and vibrant picture. If your offering is a product, you may want to also use images and photos in this section.
- Again, let people know what to do. At the bottom of this page, include a very clear call to action. For example: "If you would like to learn how these services can move you from A (your readers’ experiences of need) to B (their vision of success) then do Z (sign up, call, email, etc.)."
BIOGRAPHY PAGE
- This can be called "About Me," "Bio," "About [your name]," or another appropriate title that’s aligned for your business or project. This is where you get to describe, in a personal way, who you are. You can include your qualifications, experiences, education, and your story about your business. Your biography should be personal, because it’s an opportunity to make a real connection and create a relationship with your readers.
- Include a good headshot of yourself to continue the feeling of connection with your readers. Make sure the photo is adequately lit so that you are easy to see.
- If the work you do isn’t appropriate for there to be a photo of you, think about other ways to integrate images into your website. You want images to break up chunks of text. The eye needs to rest from all the text, and also the images will help create atmosphere and energy for your site.
Important Additional Elements
- Make sure there is a way for people to enter their name and email address (and maybe even their phone number) on every single page of your site. You must have a way of capturing the contact information of people who visit your site and are interested in you.
- That registration box needs to be somewhere in the upper right hand corner of every single page. This is because research has shown that when people look at websites their eyes will naturally fall pretty quickly to the upper right hand corner. Getting peoples’ contact information is even more important than getting them to read your entire website, because it means you can contact them and let them know about your offerings in a more personal way.
- Create a free offering to use as an incentive for people to sign up and give you their contact information. This could be an e-book, a report, an audio, a guided meditation, a video, etc.
- Testimonials are a great way to help prospects feel comfortable with and trust your offerings. You can devote a page on your website to them or sprinkle them around the other pages.
