The story of my website design (and some tips to help you create a beautiful DIY online home for your business and creative work)

I receive messages quite often asking me who designed my website, so I thought it could be helpful to write a little about it on the blog.

As I have already written about in this blog post, I see a website as such a valuable tool for a gentle, feminine business that doesn’t require reliance on social media or outward marketing.

Creating a naturally magnetising website (which includes a combination of rich content, design and discoverability/SEO) is a very practical way to embody a more receptive approach in business, where your website serves as the nucleus that draws resonant people to your work, in a way that feels very organic and pressure free.

As well as this, one of the deepest frequencies of the feminine is ‘Home.’ So while social-media heavy business coaches may espouse not needing a website, if you are a deeply feminine-essenced soul you may find that not having your own online home to nurture, create, sell and share from, will feel very disorienting to you.

For these reasons, it was really important to me that I had a website that reflected the deeper feel, message and values of my business.

I decided to create my website myself, as I actually really enjoy the creative process. As well as this, there are lots of really user friendly platforms to create your own website on, with little need for complex tech knowledge (this of course is not to say there isn’t a bit of a learning curve to get things looking the way you want them- so if you’ve been feeling frustrated with your DIY website design, don’t be disheartened!)

I personally decided to use Squarespace for my website, which I decided on after a lot of research. My original iteration of what was to become Soul and Self was designed on Wordpress and hosted on Bluehost, which I found to be more fiddly and not as all encompassing as Squarespace.

I ended up switching to Squarespace and have used it ever since, because of 3 main reasons:

aesthetics: I love the base designs of Squarespace templates. They are all clean, simple and spacious, and look very modern and fresh.

SEO: I did a lot of research around which platform would be best for SEO, and Squarespace came up very high on the list. I knew that a big component of my business would be my blog, so I wanted to ensure that I was giving myself the best opportunities to be found in online search engines (I delve more deeply into SEO and blog discoverability in my Growing a Business Without Social Media course if this is something you would like support around)

the ease: Squarespace is very user friendly. And although I learnt some coding to make my website more unique, you can very easily create a beautiful website without using any code.

The process of creating my website

My website has gone through a number of iterations! And to be honest, I think that for a lot of creatives/solorpreneurs, this is a very normal thing.

Usually, in the beginning stages of our business, we are still experimenting and figuring things out. If you are multifaceted, you may be figuring out what to focus your business on. You may be feeling into who your audience truly is. You may be experimenting with different offerings and services.

For many feminine souls in business, I truly think that this initial experimentation is a big part of uncovering our true gifts, and deeper message, values and focus. Which means that trying to create a perfectly polished website straight away can often put a lot of unnecessary pressure on creative souls who are still figuring things out.

For me, I really enjoy playing with different graphics, visuals and words, and my website has very much been a space of experimentation and slow evolution (much like my business).

I am some-one who likes to create and then feel into whether it works for me, rather than figuring out everything before I start. Which means that my website wasn’t something that I designed and then left. Instead, I slowly tweaked things over time, to reflect the deeper intent of my business.

From the inception of my blog, my website has always been a place that I loved spending time tinkering with. It has always felt like a safe space for me to come, where I could connect with the vision for my business and become more comfortable sharing and expressing myself. (a note on this- at the start, I remember constantly putting my website back on private, as at that stage I definitely did feel that pressure to have it ‘all figured out’ and looking ultra professional).

That being said, I always knew that my website was going to be the centre point of my business. As much as I talk about the importance of the intangible and unseen in my feminine healing work, I also love the beauty of being able to ground things- and a website is a beautiful grounding mechanism for our ideas and creativity, as it requires that we bring our vision, business, ideas, message and creative work into tangible expression, for others to experience and deepen into.

If you are some-one who is wanting to design your own website, I encourage you to look at it not as something that you have to do in order to get onto the ‘real’ work of running and growing your business, but instead approach it as a fun, creative and revealing journey that allows you to dig deeper into the values and natural expression of your business. A space to ground your ideas and offerings into one space that feels like a true reflection of you and your gifts.

While I traditionally support women with their website content, rather than design, below are some DIY website design tips to support you. (And if you’d like more support around creating the content for your website/blog you may like to explore Content that Connects).

Three tips to support you with your DIY website design.

1. Don’t aim for perfection

Your website does not need to perfectly reflect you and your business straight away. If you’re just getting started, it’s okay to experiment. Things don’t need to be perfect and your website doesn’t need to reflect the way a professional website designer would do things.

I actually love having a DIY website because I personally think it adds a more natural, organic element to my online space. Which is a huge part of the values that I espouse through my work. Naturalness over perfection. Process over outcome. Hearty earthiness over sleek professionalism.

2. Harmony is key:

There should always be a sense of harmony across your website. Harmony is the way separate parts fit together to create a unified whole. When people visit your website, you want them to feel a sense of safety and trust- and this is something that people feel when the design elements of your website harmonise together. There are certain elements that will create greater connection and resonance for people when they visit your website, and certain things that will distract from or distill the potency of your website.

Three main areas that you might like to consider here are fonts, visuals and spacing.

Fonts~

When I was deciding on fonts, I created a non public “experimentation” page in Squarespace, where I would play around with how different font sizes, styles, spacing and boldness looked together. Currently, my website has clean, classic-modern headings (H1), my second heading style (H2) is the same font as my first but with wider spacing for a different look, and my third heading (H3) is the same as my normal text (the text you’re reading now), but in a more spaced out, bolder text and different colour. This gives my website a clean, harmonised look.

Some other ways I add interest to my website (without needing to use code) is through creating the sign up forms on my websites in Flodesk. Flodesk is an email marketing platform that has a very similar aesthetic feel to Squarespace and you can create beautiful sign up forms, pop ups and other sign up forms and easily integrate them directly into your website. I use a more cursive, romantic font on some of these forms, which still keeps things clean and simple, but adds a softer, feminine touch to my design. It also gives me more flexibility to easily add some different design elements without needing to use code.

I find in the online space that here are certain fonts that are becoming increasingly popular in the online business world, which can end up feeling very cookie-cutter. So I looked for fonts that felt a little unique, playing around with sizing, colour and spacing. It’s amazing how different a font can look when you change the spacing between letters, or add a warmth to a black front by ever-so-slightly changing the tone.

Visuals-

Something that creates harmony in a really potent way, is overlaying all visuals with the same tone. I do this in Canva with my visuals, where I use specific tones (usually earthy browns or neutrals) under my visuals, and then adjust the transparency of the visual to create a sense of both softness and continuity. This a great way to create similar tones across all of your visuals. It’s also useful if you’d like to create a different feel for different sales pages, creations or offerings- just simply underlay a different colour/tone to your visuals on specific website pages.

As you can see, this simple thing makes a big difference to the feel of your visuals. If you’d like to learn more, Canva gives lots more advice around how to use transparency to add harmony to your visuals in this article).

Spacing~

Spacing is hugely important in creating harmony. Allowing spaciousness between segments of text is always easier on the eye, and something that stands out in an online space that is often very busy and crammed. As I mentioned before, even the spacing between letters can make a huge difference in the look and feel of your design.

Regardless of the nature of your business, a cleaner, more spacious design will always serve you better, as you never want your visitors to feel overwhelmed.

3. Take an intuitive approach

I find that the women who are drawn to my work thrive when they create things in a less structured, pressure-free, intuitive way. So although there are certain “rules” that may be commonplace in website design, I encourage an intuitive approach where you can soften into what feels right and reflective for you and your business.

What colours and tones do you feel drawn to? Earthy, warm tones? Cooler, blue-grey tones? Pastel colours? Bright colours?

The colour palette you choose will tell you a lot about the deeper feeling of your business, and it can be fun to look up the meaning of colours that you are drawn to.

Browse Pinterest and create a board of all of the images that you are drawn to that you feel reflect your business. And if you’re looking for professional looking images to use on your website, you can find many on free sites like Unsplash.

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So there you have it, three tips to support you with your DIY website design! I hope this gave you some food for thought if you are thinking of creating or refining your own website. And if you’re just getting started- remember, like everything in online business, we usually don’t come in knowing exactly how to do things. I still remember having no idea and Googling “What website platform is best” at the start of my business journey, and then spending a long time on a big learning curve.

If you do have any questions, please don’t hesitate to share in the comments or contact me here.

Belinda x

ps. If you were wanting to try Flodesk for your own email marketing, the below link will allow you to explore and trial the platform for free, and then receive 50% off for your first year if you choose to sign up. As with any affiliate recommendation, I receive a payment when you sign up through my code, at no extra cost to you.

Affiliate link to try Flodesk

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