Behind the scenes: Updating my website without a full rebrand
Ever wanted to give your website a bit of a facelift? Not a full rebrand, or even a refresh, where you’re making changes to your brand’s look and feel. More like… a relaxing day at the spa, where you come out rejuvenated and a little more glow-y at the end.
That’s what I did the last few weeks. I moved my website from Squarespace 7.0, where it’s been since 2016, to the flashy new Squarespace 7.1, and I thought it would be helpful to share a quick recap and peek behind the scenes.
But first…
Why update your website without doing a full rebrand?
Most of the content I see in the creative space about updating and relaunching your website comes in the context of a rebrand… and that is a great time to do it! You’ve gone through an incredibly exciting process of refreshing your brand identity (starting, I hope, with a strong strategy as the foundation)… and your website should show it off to its best advantage.
BUT. Even if your brand is working for you and you don’t need to make any major changes to the identity, there are still good reasons to consider updating your website.
Staying on top of code changes and platform updates
Website platforms are always releasing new features and developing new best practices for how websites are built and function. Over the years, the theme your site is built on (whether that’s on Wordpress, ShowIt, or Squarespace) will become dated, because it wasn’t built with those changes in mind. Updating to a new theme will allow you to take advantage of recent advances in web development, make sure you’re in line with current best practices, and keep things running smoothly under the hood.
Responsiveness
Responsiveness is all about making sure your website can scale from a big desktop screen to a tiny phone without getting wonky images or photos, or forcing your visitor to pinch and zoom to read your content. Viewing websites on mobile devices increases every year — and the coding that makes websites responsive is getting better, too. A responsive website is a major opportunity for you to reach and convert customers where they’re at, and making sure your website has the updated coding to handle that change could mean more money in the bank.
Consistency of content
Websites should not be static. We make small updates to them consistently over time (for example, making changes to your services page). But that means that some parts of the site tend to get neglected (old thank you pages, blogs 😳). It’s worth taking the time every few years to do a thorough audit of what’s there, what should be there that isn’t, and what can go.
Consistency of look and feel
Just like your content changes, you may make small tweaks to your look and feel over the years — updating photos is a common one. Updating your website is a great time to review and make sure everything is visually consistent throughout the site.
Ease of updating
Just as content builds up over time, so does the backend way our websites are constructed. In my case, it was starting to become a bit of a Frankenstein's monster situation. This can affect load times, which is NOT good for creating an incredible user experience that will make visitors want to stick around and hopefully buy from you. It can also make the small day-to-day updates that we all need to make a real challenge.
Laying a foundation for future plans
If you’ve got big plans for your business that you’ll be implementing in the next year or so, you need the website to be ready to support those plans and make it easier to execute them quickly. In my case I planned to start creating content more frequently; for you, it might be adding a new service or creating a shop, membership login, or client portal. Making sure your website is running well under the hood will make that entire process a lot easier and more stable.
This is all important from a brand perspective because it’s about the experience — it affects how your customers interact with your brand (often for the first time) when they arrive at your digital home.
Behind the scenes: What that looked like for C&I
Blog content has been my most consistent audience builder since I launched Cursor & Ink as a side hustle in 2016. Despite that, I’ve been an infrequent content creator over the last few years, and one of my goals for this year is to reverse that trend. It started earlier this year with the resurrection of my newsletter, and now I’ve turned my attention to the blog itself.
But before I start sending people back to the website or sharing new posts to Pinterest, there was one thing I wanted to do first: update the website.
I’m happy with my brand’s overall look and feel, and I’ve gotten lots of feedback from clients who love the website.
However, my neglected blog was in desperate need of a little TLC. On top of that, the mechanics on the website’s back end were slowing down, as I hadn’t made a significant change or done a cleanup in several years.
So, how did it go?
I’m not going to lie — this was a pretty big project. Even keeping things narrow in scope (except for my Work With Me page, I didn’t really touch the copy, and I only made some minor imagery tweaks), it took me [checks time tracker] 52 hours over eight days to get it done. There were a few late nights!
(Part of that was because Squarespace currently doesn’t allow you to export and import your content when switching from 7.0 to 7.1, so everything needed to be recreated manually. I was fine with that as I wanted to review all of my content anyways as I moved it over, and I don’t have a large catalogue of blog posts or other content to contend with. Still, it was a major factor for me that may impact you too, depending on which platform you’re moving to/from.)
Now that everything is done, I’m really pleased with how well it came out. I love some of the new features that came with the upgraded platform; load times are much better, and the whole website will be MUCH easier to manage and update in the future. It was definitely worth the time it took to make the switch.
If you are interested in doing the same, I strongly recommend taking the time to make a plan first:
Be clear on your goals and why you want to make the change. (Review the list above to see which ones apply to you and why — it’ll be a good place to start as you figure out what you need to prepare.)
Know your objectives and what needs to happen for the project to succeed.
If you’re DIY’ing as I did, do your research and make sure you know precisely what the migration/updating process will involve from beginning to end.
And make solid backups of everything before you start.
And that’s it! I’m definitely enjoying the “fresh linen” feel when I visit my website now. Even though there’s no major shift in the brand’s overall look, there are lots of little touches that make it feel more refreshed, up-to-date, and welcoming. So have a look around, and enjoy!
