Mary Beth Debus

Mary Beth Debus is the talent behind Program Savvy, which provides consulting and training for nonprofits. She helps them build organizational and staff capacity, design for the future, and build programs to support their clients and their mission.

I love it!

When Mary Beth came to me, it was because her website was old, outdated, and wasn’t brand aligned. She was able to update existing content, but the site had been built on WordPress and, because she has little experience, it was difficult to add new pages and content.

What a pleasure it was to rescue her from WordPress and give her the web presence she deserves!

The original website

Mary Beth’s original website had been created on WordPress back in 2014. Like a lot of older sites, the design had an outdated “boxes within boxes” feel. It was a bland grey-and-white design that didn’t do justice to the vibrancy of her brand. To make matters worse, the two-column layout pushed a lot of information at the visitor all at once, but had few clear calls-to-action. Visitors had a difficult time finding the information they needed and acting on it.

To give you an idea of where we started, here’s a look at the original home page:

The web design process

Mary Beth knew exactly what she wanted: A fresh, new look that would elevate her brand and showcase her talent. She wanted a brand-aligned way to communicate with those interested in her services. Above all, she wanted to easily be able to add new pages, offerings, and resources.

Done, done, and done!

To put together the elements I needed to build her site, Mary Beth and her talented team sprang into action. They painstakingly re-evaluated her existing website and wrote fresh, simplified copy for her new website. They redesigned her free resource downloads. They gathered photos and created brand-aligned graphics. They cleaned up her email list. They sent along detailed brand guidelines, complete with hex codes and usage examples. Oh—and all the logo variations a girl could ask for.

In short: They spoiled me rotten! When the time came to build Mary Beth’s new website, I had a ton of gorgeous tools to work with. I couldn’t wait to bring it all together!

Mary Beth’s brand is vibrant, vivacious, and bold—just like she is. I knew Squarespace would be the perfect platform to showcase her gorgeous brand and her talent. I was eager to rescue Mary Beth from the complexity of WordPress, too. Squarespace is my platform of choice and I knew it’d give her a simple, stress-free way to manage and update her website—all by herself, no code or experience needed. Finally, I added Squarespace Email Campaigns to her site to make it easy for her to collect email addresses and send gorgeous, brand-aligned email newsletters.

Catch a glimpse of her new website below!