Makeunder My Life

(Sorry for the delay! This is Maggie’s Dream Report from last Friday – I have been out of the office on other business since Thursday.)

Adventures in Web Design

One of the first things I’ve learned as a brand-new business owner is that I am it. All of it. CEO, Finance Director, Marketing Manager, Sales Person, Custodian… and while I do believe in hiring out professional help when necessary, as a teensy baby business with a teensier budget, that can be hard to do.

My original plan had been to have a new, shiny, spiffy website launched a few months before I went full time. As an interior decorator (really, any service-oriented business), my website conveys who I am as a business and what I do. I don’t have a pretty storefront display to show off and bring in customers. But my original designer fell through only weeks before my last day at work. After pricing out new designers (and having to start from scratch, negating the funds I’d already spent) I had to admit that it just wasn’t in the budget.

So I’m doing it myself.

“This girl must be crazy,” you’re thinking right now. You might be right! But it comes down to knowing that my site needs a change, but not being able to afford what I really want.

The problem right now is pretty easy to identify: As I prepare other marketing materials for both in print and on the web, I’m directing potential clients to my site for the first time ever. When you get to my site, it’s not immediately clear where you should go to hire me. It takes you straight to my blog. Instead, clients should be able to see right away the services I offer, where to buy them or request a custom quote, and any other profitable areas of the site I want them to see (my etsy shop, my ebooks, etc). The blog is an amazing marketing tool, and I think it is a great way to share information and for potential clients to get to know me before putting their home in my hands. But it’s not the “hire me” hook they need to find.

So on the techy side of things, I’m learning a lot (one of my other roles is IT Manager, although my computer-whiz boyfriend Ryan is an invaluable resource). Obviously I’m not going to code the site from scratch. I use WordPress as my blogging platform, and luckily there are tons of developers writing unique and flexible “themes” (design templates) for free or for a small fee. I chose to purchase a theme on ThemeForest, which was only $35. I looked through HUNDREDS before choosing one that had elements I knew I wanted: a static home page with lots of visual elements and places to advertise different aspects of my business, a footer at the bottom with additional information, a built-in portfolio widget to showcase examples of my work, and a clean and simple look overall.

I was also able to trade my interior design services with a graphic designer friend for the branding elements I needed to make the theme uniquely Maggie Rose. While I’ll be creating some of the visual components myself, I wanted a pro to give me a look that I could carry from my site to my facebook page to my etsy shop. We just wrapped up that step and I love the simple design we ended up with.

As for the coding, well, it’s a steep learning curve. So far I’ve broken down in tears about three times, usually over something that I manage to figure out within the next thirty minutes. It’s really frustrating for someone with limited HTML or CSS knowledge. Fighting through the jargon in the forums and help section has been difficult (I just learned what “javascript” is).  Last night I told Ryan, “I just want someone else to do it!” and promptly burst into tears. Turns out, I just needed to re-read the help file that came with the theme and copy and paste a line of code.

But on the other hand, the problems I’ve managed to solve (getting my “contact me” form to show up, getting a weird error message to go away) have given me a huge sense of pride and accomplishment. And while I wish that the traffic spike I got during my first week of self-employment had gone to a fancy and efficient site, at least I know that I’ll know my site inside and out when I’m done. How many CEO’s can say that?