A guide for consultants, coaches, and freelancers
Let’s get one thing straight. Upgrading (or creating) your website will take effort. But it doesn’t have to cost you a fortune, and it doesn’t have to take forever.
In a couple of days, you can plan and write a simple website, that ticks your client’s informational needs, adds value to their lives, and helps them build a relationship with you.
And if you use a simple, cost-effective web platform like Wix, WordPress or Squarespace, you can even DIY your website build in that time too.
Laying the foundation for your website project may take more time, but if you’ve paid attention to business strategy, you should be in a solid place to get cranking.
The five essentials of a strong site
In this guide we’ll look at the five essentials you need to build an effective website.
A clear understanding of who you serve.
A focused service offering.
A site map that lists your pages and the content you’ll have on each page.
Strong content for each page.
A professional visual brand and quality images of you and your clients.
We’ll also look at building your site, whether you need designers and developers, when to bring them into the mix, and how to make sure you get the best out of that relationship.
Who is your website for?
Before you start creating content, looking at website templates, or talking to developers, you need to be crystal clear on who you serve. Who is your website for?
Your website is a tool to help potential clients find out more about you and your services.
The question all visitors to your site are asking themselves is, “Can this person help me?” If your site’s doing its job right, it immediately makes it clear who you help and what you do for them, shows you know your stuff, and gives potential clients a feel for your vibe.
In other words, it’s an attraction magnet for your ideal clients.
But before you can attract your ideal clients and answer their questions, you need to know who those people are.
Obvious advice but hella underused.
It faileth not to gob smack me the number of conversations I have with professional service providers, that go like this …
Me: “So, tell me about your ideal client then.”
Them: “Weeeeeelll, we work with everybody really.”
Me: “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGHHHHHHH!!!!!!”
You need (you really, really need) to be able to define your market niche.
You can niche by:
Industry.
Need for a specific service.
State of mind.
Stage of life.
Any combo of the above.
The reason you need to niche is simple.
Relevance.
When we pick people to work with, we want someone who knows how to fix the problem we’re experiencing. Someone who can show they’ve delivered the goods for people like us.
Consultants who niche, attract their ideal clients, and get better and better at what they do. Consultants who don’t, struggle to grow their business and have to reinvent the wheel every job.
The more ultra-focused your niche is, the more powerful your website will be, because it will be a love letter to a group of people you know intimately.
For example:
I help consultants who hate selling use content to attract more of their ideal clients.
Andrea helps struggling new parents become more confident with their baby.
Michael helps executives who fear public speaking deliver world-class presentations.
See how defined those target markets are?
Not only do Andrea, Michael and I know who we serve, we also know their state of mind, and the problems they’re struggling with. You need that level of clarity on your target market too.
If you need more help identifying your ideal client, there’s a step-by-step guide to niching over here.
The value of client interviews
There’s no better way to get up close and personal with your clients than with a series of client interviews. Client interviews help you understand why people choose to work with you, the problems you solve for them, and the things they value most about your services. They also help you identify any areas where you can up your game.
Most of what I do isn’t very creative. I’m as much a researcher as I’m a writer.
I start every web project by talking to your ideal clients about their experience of your brand.
I ask them:
Why they work with you.
The problems you fix.
The benefits you deliver.
What you’re like to work with.
Why they picked you and not Nigel down the road.
Then I use their words to weave your web copy.
It’s more craft than creativity. And the key thing to notice is that the process is rigorously focused on your clients, their needs, and the language they use to talk about what you do.
Often the way we talk about what we do isn’t the same as the way our clients talk about what we do. Using your clients’ own words will infuse your site with authenticity and show your ideal clients that you really get them and know how to solve their problems and deliver their desires.
There’s a detailed guide to client interviews over here if you want to give them a whirl for yourself.
What do you do for your clients?
How many services do you offer? One? Three? Five? More?
Lots of consultants I know offer too many bespoke services. We’re afraid of leaving money on the table, so we say we’ll do it all. However, the more services you offer, the more complexity you create. You spread yourself too thin. You waste time quoting for bespoke projects. And you miss out on becoming really brilliant at one thing.
Saying no is a superpower. That first time you say no to something that you could do, but you choose not to because it’s not your core focus, is a momentous day.
Saying no means:
You have clarity on your core offer.
You have confidence that more of that work will come along.
Focusing your services helps give you that clarity and confidence.
Focusing your services helps you:
Attract the people you help best.
Streamline business development through removing the need for bespoke quotes.
Get better at what you do through focused repetition.
Deliver more value, as you get better at what you do.
It also makes it easier for people to work with you. More choice isn’t more fun if you’re a busy person wanting to fix a problem. You want a specific solution that’s relevant to you.
Focusing your service offering
I recommend not offering more than five services. One is even better. Do the thing you’re best at and do that alone, with different price points for different markets. Just because you can do lots of things, doesn’t mean you should.
When it comes to planning your website, look at every service you offer and answer these nine questions.
Who is this service for?
What problems do you solve with this service?
Why is this problem a big deal to your client? What effect is this problem having on their lives? This is where your client interviews come in handy.
What results and benefits do you deliver?
What’s your process? What happens when your client signs up to work with you / buys your product? What steps will their project move through?
What FAQS and objections do you get about this service?
Why you? How did you become qualified to solve this problem for your client?
What proof can you get from happy clients that you deliver the goods?
How much does this service cost? If you don’t have a fixed price package, consider services start from $XXXX.
Planning your site’s structure
Before you start creating content, plan your site’s structure. You’ll also hear this called your site map, or your information architecture. This is where you plot out the sections and pages for your site and map out the content for each page.
It’s easier to create your site map once you:
Understand your customer journey.
Understand the three different types of pages on a consultant’s site.
Know the anatomy of a high performing consultant’s website.
Start by understanding your customer journey
Understanding your customer journey, how strangers become your clients, can help make sure you provide your website visitors with all the information they need to choose you.
People move through four stages to become your loyal clients.
First you attract people with potential to be your ideal client.
Then you enrol them in your community by sharing relevant, valuable content.
Next you convince them you know your shit and deliver the goods.
Next you convert them into customers with social proof and relevant offers.
At every step of this journey, people are looking for different content. Your job’s to make sure your website covers all these bases.
The only difference between Attract and Enrol content is that Attract stage content is designed to be shared outside your digital community, while Enrol content is for people who are already aware of you and want to dig a little deeper.
In both phases, you’re addressing problems your ideal clients experience, and showing them how to fix those problems for themselves.
So, smart consultants start by creating valuable long-form content that enrols people in their community and repurposing that content in bite-size chunks for the Attract stage.
This process can look like this:
Write a substantial article, for example a how to guide including examples, advice and actionable takeaways.
Break that article up into 5-10 social posts.
Post daily on your social channel of choice.
Put a call to action in every post. This can be a call to conversation, or it can be a link to your e-newsletter sign up.
Once you’ve finished posting on this topic, link to the original article to drive traffic to your site.
You can also repurpose this content for an e-newsletter.
It’s important to understand that people move through this customer journey in different ways and at different speeds.
You may chance upon someone in urgent need of your help, who’ll go to your site, see you offer the service they need, see you’ve a strong track record and that they can afford your services, and boom, you’ve got a new client.
Other people may spend months or years following you on social before they decide they want to work with you.
Both are great outcomes, so you want to be sure your website (and your content marketing) caters to both types of potential client.
The different types of pages on a consultant’s site
There are four key types of pages on most effective consultant’s websites. It’s important to understand the difference between these pages because each performs a different role. Knowing the difference between these pages also helps you understand how long your copy should be.
The four types of pages on your website are.
Hallways.
Sitting rooms.
Market stalls.
Laundries.
1. Hallways
Hallways are pages you pass through on the way to somewhere more specific to your needs.
We’re talking homepages, service pages, and resources sections. These pages tell your ideal clients your business has good gear for them and give them a curated range of options to choose from.
See each option as a doorway in a hallway with its own alluring sign.
Keep your copy focused and snappy.
2. Sitting rooms
Sitting rooms are pages you visit, sit, and stay a while.
Think case studies, useful resources, and blog posts. They add value to your ideal client and establish your expertise by answering FAQs, solving problems, and telling stories about how you helped businesses like them achieve their goals.
These are rich, detailed resources, often upwards of 1,500 words, where you go deep into a topic.
3. Market stalls
Market stalls are sales pages. We’re talking service pages, offer pages, or product pages.
These pages show your ideal client that you get their challenges, and you have the perfect solution. They’re personal and persuasive. They also tend to be longer because a strong sales page covers a number of important topics.
4. Laundries
Laundries are pages where people go to accomplish a task. We don’t hang around in laundries. We wash our undies, and we get out.
These are pages like contact pages, e-newsletter sign up pages, and any tools you’ve created to help your clients solve their problems, e.g., currency converters, price comparison tools, etc. Generally, copy on these pages is short and to the point. This doesn’t mean devoid of fun and character.
anatomy of a high performing consultant’s site
Now you understand how your website can support your customer journey, you’re better placed to plan a site that acts as your number one salesperson.
When it comes to planning your site structure and naming your pages, keep things simple and predictable. Follow traditional website protocol, unless you’ve a really good reason not to.
People have been trained by thousands of websites to look for certain things, and they’ll get frustrated fast and bugger off if you don’t deliver what they expect. The place for creativity in your website is in your content and your imagery, not your page names and site structure.
The best way to explain the anatomy of a high performing consultant’s website is to show you a couple of examples. These site maps horrify real designers, but ugly as they are, they do the trick, so please suspend your aesthetic sensibilities for a short while.
BOLD BLOCK CAPS indicate pages.
Bullet points explain the content on each page.
I haven’t gone into detail for the content of Level 3 pages.
See how these site maps:
Are concise and to the point. Ideally you don’t want more than five options in your top level navigation. Example 2 is verging on too big, but that’s what happens when businesses have more than one target market. Keep it simple my friend.
Use common naming protocol for pages. We want to make it easy for people to find things.
Provide content for all stages of the customer journey.
Include all four page types.
Example one. Website plan for a business coach with one target market
Example two. Website plan for a business coach with three target market
Write strong content for each page
Strong website content:
Helps your ideal clients solve their problems and meet their goals.
Has a clear purpose for each page.
Is concise and to the point. Even long articles like this should cover only the content they need to cover to meet their purpose and no more.
Is entertaining and informative.
Uses your ideal clients’ language and words.
Gives people a feel for you as a person.
Always, ALWAYS, plan your site and write the content for your website before you go briefing website designers and developers.
There are three reasons for this:
Your site is a business development tool. Each page has a job to do. Your website developers need to know the purpose of each page before they can scope, design, or build your site.
Your website is a communication tool. If web designers don’t know what message each page communicates, they can’t create a design that supports that goal.
Your website is a tool to make people take action. Information and inspiration combined with direct instructions (i.e., content) makes people act, so content comes first before design.
In addition, your website project will go faster and cost less, if you’ve defined the purpose of each page, and written the content, before you approach a web shop for a quote.
Be very wary of a web designer or developer who says they can design without content. This is a big red flag because it means that they:
Are not considering the purpose of each page.
Are not creating their design to reinforce your messaging.
Are not considering your business goals or return on investment.
A strong visual brand and quality images
Your visual brand is made up of your logo, your brand colours, the fonts you use, your brand imagery, and any supporting graphic devices.
A polished visual brand is an investment that doesn’t come cheap.
This is why many consultants, coaches and freelancers muddle through with a logo they bought on Fiverr, some dodgy phone snaps (or worse some generic stock imagery) and a font selection that’d make a graphic designer beg for mercy.
It’s important to check in with yourself every few years and ask if your brand visually matches where you want to be in the market?
Check out your competitors and the businesses you aspire to emulate.
How does your site measure up visually?
Is your imagery as compelling?
Is your design as polished?
Does it feel like an accurate representation of you and the services you offer?
Is it as appealing in mobile as it in in desktop?
Is there plenty of white space, or do you have everything, and the kitchen sink crammed into every page?
Is it starting to look a bit dated?
Assessing your site can be complicated by the fact that some folks aren’t very visually sophisticated. This is the only logical explanation I can think of for some of the visual atrocities I’ve seen masquerading as professional websites.
It’s OK if aesthetics aren’t your strong point. Nobody’s good at everything. So, if you’ve a sneaking suspicion your site ain’t all that, but you can’t nail what’s going wrong, hire someone to do a website audit and make some design recommendations.
Quality images are also vital, and by quality, I mean photos of you and your clients taken by a professional photographer. The more candid these images are, the better they’ll perform.
People buy from people, and they want to see the sort of person they’re buying from. They also want to see that you serve clients like them. Real imagery of you, your work, and your life helps people build a rapport with you. So, invest in quality imagery.
Do not use stock imagery. The decent stock images get used everywhere, and there’s no guarantee that your competitors won’t be using exactly the same shot as you. Plus, people have an inbuilt radar for stock photography. They know when something isn’t authentic.
Bringing developers into the mix
The first thing to note is that you may not need a website designer or developer.
Most coaches, consultants and freelancers don’t need a complex website with bespoke functionality. Simple, cost-effective web platforms like Wix, WordPress or Squarespace, offer you affordable website design and build options, cost effective hosting, and great modular DIY functionality.
It’s worth working with a designer / developer if:
You don’t have the time to DIY your site.
The idea of DIYing your site makes you want to curl into a small ball and wail.
You want a very specific design that you can’t replicate with a template site solution.
You need specific functionality that these templated website platforms don’t offer.
Your business model requires significant site traffic. If this is the case your site should be optimised for load time and your hosting may need to be optimised too.
Some drawbacks of templated solutions are:
They’re templated, so you can end up looking like everyone else. Web designers who specialise in using these platforms can customise templates for you to avoid this.
Load time isn’t always great and they’re difficult to optimise.
SEO solutions aren’t always intuitive or Google centric.
These two last considerations may not be deal breakers if you don’t require significant traffic to your site to meet your financial goals.
My advice is that templated website solutions are ideal for start-ups, and businesses with DIY marketing budgets. They’ll serve you well for your first few years, as you grow your business and your marketing budget to afford to work with a developer to get your dream site.
If you do decide to go the bespoke route, pick a designer / developer who has built sites you admire for people you know.
Make sure you work with a developer who offers modular website solutions so that you can DIY adding new pages to your site and updating existing pages. You do not want to be going back to your developer every time you want to add a new offer to your site. You want the same level of flexibility that a platform like Squarespace offers, or there’s little point in paying extra for a bespoke solution.
Ask your developer to show you examples of modular sites they’ve designed and demonstrate how to build a new page, so you can see for yourself how user friendly their solution really is.
Before you go to a developer for an estimate, make sure you’ve prepared the information they need to give you an accurate estimate and meet your expectations.
Understand who you serve.
Focus your service offering.
Draft a site map that lists your pages and the content you’ll have on each page.
Write strong content for each page.
Gather your visual brand assets.
Invest in quality images of you and your clients.
Collate visual reference of websites you admire and want your site to emulate.
Once you’ve curated this information, you’re ready to complete a detailed website brief. If you’ve never written a website brief before, you can grab my website brief template for free below.
Remember, your website should be your number 1 salesperson
If this all sounds like a lot, you’re right. It is.
But it’s time and money well spent. Most of your clients meet your website before they meet you, so make sure it meets their informational needs, adds value to their lives, and helps them build a relationship with you. Your site should be your number one salesperson, or it ain’t doing its job.
Good luck planning your site. If you need help, my website planning and content services are over here.