My Website Is Live Again, Here's What I Changed This Time
If you've followed me for any length of time, you probably know I have a habit of tinkering with my website. I'm a designer. I'm not sure I'm physically capable of looking at my own site for too long without eventually thinking, Hmm...I could change that.
But this refresh felt a little different.
Over the last few days, I put the site into maintenance mode and went through it properly. Not because I wanted to completely reinvent Pamela June Creative, but because parts of the website no longer reflected where the business had quietly been heading.
My services have changed.
My products have grown.
I've become clearer about the kind of work I want to do.
And, perhaps most importantly, I've become a little better at recognising when something actually needs redesigning... and when I'm just making more work for myself.
So instead of simply showing you the new website, I thought I'd share a few things I learned while working on it.
I finally have an About page
Let's start with something embarrassingly simple.
I have avoided properly writing my About page for an irrationally long time. There was something about it that always made me freeze. What am I supposed to write?
Do I tell my entire life story?
Do people actually want to know all of this?
How do I talk about myself without sounding awkward?
Meanwhile, I could happily spend hours working on practically every other page of the website.
Recently I've been using ChatGPT quite a bit as a sounding board while working through my business, website copy and SEO. When we got to the About page, it suggested something surprisingly...short.
And I remember looking at it and thinking:
Oh…That's it?!
I had somehow built the About page into this enormous task in my head when it really didn't need to be one. It didn't need my autobiography. It just needed to give someone a little context about who I am, how I work and whether I might be the right person for them. Lo and behold, after years of avoidance, I finally have an. About. Page.
I stopped trying to make every page do everything
This became a recurring theme throughout the refresh.
I have a tendency to think, Well, while I'm here, maybe I should add this...
And then another section appears.
And another.
And suddenly a simple page has become an entire afternoon.
This time I kept asking myself what someone actually needed from each page. The services pages needed to explain what I offer, who each service is suitable for, what's included and what happens next. The shop needed to make it easier to explore my creative resources. The About page just needed to introduce me.
Not every page needs twelve sections and an elaborate storytelling experience.
Sometimes a page is allowed to simply do its job.
A revolutionary concept, apparently.
My services finally feel like actual services
A large part of the refresh was getting much clearer about my design services.
Over time I had accumulated different ideas for ways people could work with me, but they weren't presented as one clear collection.
So I spent quite a bit of time defining them properly.
There's now support for someone who has purchased a template and wants me to take care of setting it up for them.
There are shorter Studio Support sessions when someone needs focused Squarespace help without committing to a full project.
There's a Full Day Intensive for larger pieces of work.
And there's my Two Week Website experience for someone who wants something more considered and customised, including custom CSS where it makes sense.
Writing all of those pages also forced me to answer questions I'd conveniently avoided.
What exactly is included?
What isn't?
How long does something take?
Who is this actually for?
And yes...What do I charge?
That last one remains my favourite completely stress-free business activity.
I paid much more attention to SEO this time
SEO has historically been one of those things I knew I should do properly but never felt particularly excited about doing.
Designing the page?
Absolutely.
Writing metadata?
Suddenly I have somewhere else I desperately need to be.
This refresh was probably the first time I went through the website much more intentionally and thought about what individual pages were actually trying to rank for and how someone might find them.
I've also been using ChatGPT to help me work through this.
Squarespace has introduced more AI-assisted SEO tools, but I found some of the suggestions fairly generic. Because I've spent so much time using ChatGPT to talk through my business, services and audience, I could give it far more context about what each page was actually trying to communicate.
Whether any of this makes a noticeable difference remains to be seen.
That's the slightly unglamorous part of SEO.
You make the changes...put the website back into the world...and then watch what happens over the next few months.
I'm actually quite curious to see what the analytics tell me.
Navigation deserves more thought than we give it
Another surprisingly fiddly part was deciding what belonged in the main navigation. Even tiny wording choices started bothering me. "Shop" felt too generic.
I eventually renamed it The Collection.
My blog became Musings & Tutorials.
My services sit under Design Support.
None of those changes are enormous, but together they make the site feel more like my business rather than a collection of standard website labels.
I also moved things around based on how important they currently are.
Something doesn't deserve prime navigation space just because you think you're supposed to have it there. The website can change as the business changes. Which sounds obvious, but I think we sometimes build websites as though every decision needs to last forever. It doesn't.
Your website doesn't have to be finished forever
Maybe this is the biggest thing I took away from the whole refresh.
There's enormous pressure when you work for yourself to create the definitive version of everything.
The perfect website.
The perfect services.
The perfect portfolio.
The perfect About page.
The perfect positioning.
And then you can finally stop thinking about it. Except businesses don't really work like that. Mine certainly hasn't. Pamela June Creative today isn't exactly the same business it was when I first built the website, and I'd be slightly concerned if it were.
My skills have changed.
What I enjoy doing has changed.
What I sell has changed.
So the website changing with it isn't evidence I got the previous version wrong.
Sometimes you just outgrow things.
The distinction I'm trying to learn is between making a useful change and endlessly tinkering because I'm uncomfortable calling something finished.
I suspect that lesson may take a little longer.
And now... we see what happens
For now, though, the maintenance screen is gone.
The site is live.
The services are clearer.
The SEO has had some long-overdue attention.
The navigation makes more sense.
And yes, there is finally an About page.
I'm resisting the temptation to immediately find another twelve things to change. Instead, I want to leave it alone for a while. Let people use it. Watch the analytics.
See what gets clicked.
See what gets ignored.
See what actually brings enquiries or sales.
Because eventually you have to stop designing the website and let the website do its job.
Even if you are a designer.
