Hey Reader!

On Tuesday I talked about my experience with making a new website for myself, realising that there were a LOT of big decisions about branding involved, and getting stuck in with the design aspect of it (read here)

Today I'm gonna share about the writing and building aspect.

Website building is also copywriting in disguise

As I said last time, I started out by playing around with templates in Squarespace.

But I quickly got stuck because I still had no idea what I wanted the site to look like or to say. Playing around wasn't helping.

I'd already been told that successful website building is all in the prep, and now I had personal experience that this was true 😅

The most important parts of website building seem to be those two things:

A) what it looks like

B) what it says

(I'd give slightly more weight to what it says, but I may be biased)

As a copywriter, I'd already written website pages for clients before, so I hoped it would feel at least a little familiar.

And it kind of did? But it also felt very personal.

I sat on it, not making any progress, for quite a few weeks because it was so intimidating.

Good communication — putting big things into simple words

A big theme I focused on was putting things into plain, easy-to-understand language.

(This is about to get very meta, lol)

One of the things we often forget is that people outside our areas of knowledge don't know much about what we do.

I'd bet most people don't intimately know what "copywriting" or "copy" is.

Me saying I'm a copywriter doesn't tell them what I do or how I could help them.

But I do know that many people struggle to put things into words, whether that's explaining what they do or sharing their big abstract creative ideas.

Unless they're already familiar with it, they're not thinking in terms of looking for "a copywriter".

They're thinking "I struggle to write things myself" or "I'm not sure what to write" or something along those lines.

So I really focused on writing with this in mind.

(And if this is you right now, you're very welcome to reply and we can chat about working together!)

What to include in the writing

Looking at other people's websites helped the most with deciding what to include.

I decided to go simple and straightforward, listing the struggles my ideal client might have + outcomes they really want.

I'd seen others do this, and it just felt really validating when they directly mentioned things *I* struggle with, and outcomes that *I* want.

I hoped I could create that same validation for someone else.

(My main reference for this was Claire Paniccia, with the section where she talks about various business struggles and then says "what you really want is to...")

Writing the about page was also intimidating...

A "proper" about page is apparently supposed to be focused on the audience, but also share a little about yourself, and also highlight how your personal journey might be similar to the audience's, and so on...

Looking at other business owners, there was so much variation in their about page approaches that I realised there's no wrong way to do one.

Designing the pages (systeme.io)

I used Systeme to build the site. (I was fed up with Squarespace. Sorry Squarespace.)

I found it extremely easy to use, especially after I learned a tiny bit more about coding and stuff (for example, the difference between "padding" and "margin", and how to create scrolling text).

The free tier is incredibly well-equipped, I haven't paid a single penny!

The only downside I've found so far is the lack of ability to add a contact form. You can add forms to collect subscriber data (like email addresses), but it's not suited for collecting enquiries.

I got around this by embedding a form I built in Tally.

As for the actual page design, I found that everything just came together at this stage.

I'd got the logo, fonts, colours, and text. I'd spent ages looking at various references. I found it easy to say "I want this here and that there".

I think the biggest thing I've learned from this whole process is:

When it's a personal project like this, it can take a while for me to really develop an idea of how I want it to end up.

It takes some time for the pieces to come together. Especially when you can't stand back and look at the big picture because you're the one at the centre of it all.

If you need help with what your website should say, hit reply or email me at hello@damonsiseman.com and let's see if we could work together 😊

Bye for now,

Damon

Find me on: My Website | Instagram | TikTok | LinkedIn​