Katie Gardiner
Katie Gardiner is the talent behind ElevateHR Consulting, a company she launched to help small- and medium-sized businesses manage personnel issues like staffing, talent development, governance, compliance, ethics, and culture. You know, the Big Fat Issues that every business struggles with.
Katie’s an HR whiz and a small business owner herself, so she’s the perfect person to help.
But her original website didn’t make it easy for prospective clients to find her. Not only was the website poorly optimized for search engines, Katie designed it herself using a super basic template that didn’t exactly fit her needs.
When Katie came to me, it was with a cry for help. Help with “getting found.” Help with leveraging her gorgeous brand to its fullest. Help positioning her as an expert in her field and a go-to solution. Just… help.
I had her back.
I love working with amazing women to help them bet on themselves. What a pleasure it was to give her the website she deserves!
The original website
Katie’s original website was a couple years old. She’d built it herself using a predesigned, basic Squarespace template that didn’t exactly fit her needs. The website included all of the information about how people could work with her, but it wasn’t optimized for search engines and wasn’t easy for people to understand and navigate.
There wasn’t enough information on the homepage about her services—and that’s more important than you might think! Lots of website visitors never leave the homepage.
Worst of all, there wasn’t an easy way for people to book a consultation call with her, so she was potentially losing interest from prospective clients.
To give you an idea of where we started, here’s a look at Katie’s original home page:
The web design process
Katie was ready to go with almost everything for her website. She had a professionally designed logo and color palette. She had picked out stock photos and even had a couple great headshots we could use. She had a clear idea of her services and what she wanted to say. She knew what she wanted to be known for—or, to put it another way, what people might plug into Google when looking for someone like her.
What she didn’t have? Simple, clear wording that would make it obvious to Google when it should show her business in search results.
During our strategy call, Katie and I talked in-depth about search engine optimization. I gave her all my tips and tricks, then got her started with writing wording for her new website. Once she was done, I went through and helped her pick out some different phrases to use here and there.
I also had Katie set up an account with Calendly, one of my favorite scheduling services. Thanks to Calendly, prospective customers would easily be able to schedule a consultation with Katie during her hours of availability—with no email back-and-forth. Best of all? It’s got a robust free plan.
(What can I say? I like things that are free and work well.)
With all of the content in-hand, it was time to build a lovely website for a lovely person.
Katie’s new website is as warm as she is. The muted, mature color palette perfectly suits her personality. There are lots of slanted section dividers that speak to the sharp, crisp edges in her logo. The homepage is now super informative and helpful for even those visitors who don’t click into the site. Oh, and Katie’s new website also includes a generous sprinkle of custom code to add drop shadows, button hover effects, and a few other bells-and-whistles.
Take a look at her new home page!
