easy tips to ‘glow up’ your current website

If your website is feeling a bit sad and tired (not a spark of joy to be felt when looking at it) the good news is, you don’t have to build a completely new site – just give it a lil ‘glow up’! By making some small tweaks to how your Squarespace site looks and operates you can feel refreshed while also hopefully unlocking some sweet new business.

To get some tips on making our websites shine a little brighter, we asked an expert for her top tips. Web designer Katie Zana runs her own studio Pearler, and regularly consults on how people can best give their sites a sweet upgrade. We recently asked her to share her website update tips in a webinar as part of our Strictly Business ‘Lunchbreak Lessons’ series in partnership with Squarespace (which you can catch up on here).

THINK HERO What do people see when they first get to your site? Katie recommends redesigning your site so the ‘hero’ section at the top is as effective as possible. Her top tip is utilising scrolling text across the whole page for a big impact. “Everybody loves it… I’m willing to make that sweeping statement,” she says. She likes to use it to list her values or brand ‘vibes’ – words that really sum up who she is. If location is important to your business, the hero section is a great place to place that. Plus a “really cute big image or video” and a tagline. This gives people a clear introduction to your business as soon as they get to your site.

SEAMLESS TRANSITIONS If people often come to your website from Instagram, Katie says we need to make sure that experience flows: “If you’re promoting tutorials on Instagram, but people have to click through to your site to see them, we need to make sure they’re really easy to find.” She recommends using a ‘carousel block’ that utilises horizontal scrolling instead of a ‘summary block’. Then if someone comes onto your site on a mobile device they could use their thumb to flick through all your jewellery tutorials, instead of scrolling down through them all for ages.

CONSIDER A GATE If you’re not currently collecting email addresses on your site, perhaps you should be! Katie says the best way to do it is with some high-quality content you can exchange with your audience for an email address. “Make sure it’s something they really dig,” Katie says. “And put it right at the top, or in a pop-up that appears straight away.” Then once you’ve got it, you can automate a Squarespace welcome email to go out letting them know about other aspects of your biz they might love.

SYSTEM UPDATE If you’ve had your business website for a while (like, over five years) it might be hosted on an outdated version of Squarespace. It’ll still work, but the user interface you’ll have once you upgrade to Squarespace 7.1 is really different. “It has a grid layout and we have way more flexibility to move stuff around,” Katie says. “Plus, it’s more user friendly.” It’s so easy to put off a website redesign, especially when there’s other aspects of your business to focus on (you know, your actual business)... but a refresh can also re-energise your brand (and how you see your business personally).

MAKE (SOME) RULES Making edits to how your website looks is so fun, but Katie says setting some rules makes things so much easier. “I love breaking every single rule, but having a method to the madness helps – especially with a maximalist aesthetic,” Katie says. “Otherwise it just ends up looking like a dog’s breakfast.” She recommends putting together a ‘font family’ (so you know what font your paragraphs and sub-headings will be) and a colour palette (always with a deep dark colour in it – she prefers really dark purples or deep greens as an alternative to black) to keep you consistent.

These helpful tips were brought to you in partnership with Squarespace, providing entrepreneurs and small business owners with the tools they need to bring their creative ideas to life, online. Using their all-in-one platform, you can claim a domain, build a website, sell online and market your brand. Use code ‘STRICTLYBUSINESS’ for 20% a monthly or annual subscription – learn more here.
Image from Freepik.