5 Major Website Fixes

Most brands design their websites to be pretty, which is GREAT as long as they are also functional, scalable and easy to navigate.

Most websites are NOT. And mine was one of them. 

So I tore it apart, rebuilt it from scratch, and today I’m showing you exactly what I changed and WHY.

If you’re thinking about launching or refreshing your website (or a clients website), you’ll definitely want to pay attention to this.

Of course, everyone loves a good before-and-after moment, so let’s take a look at my previous website.

Now, to be clear, this website was GORGEOUS. The design was stunning, the colors were fun, the messaging was great, and the branding was sooooo me.

It was perfect and I loved it. This website was home to the Copy Posse for 5 whole years, and in those 5 years, I didn’t change a damn thing, which is AWESOME, but it was also the problem.

While my website was really, really pretty, it was SO hard to update. 

The Copy Posse as a brand has majorly evolved over the last 5 years.

My offers have expanded, my community has grown, my messaging and brand have matured. And my website wasn’t showcasing that evolution – at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I tried updating my old website with the new offers and making tweaks to the messaging here and there.

But it still felt like a big Frankensteiny mash-up of new vs old. It was clunky and static. I realized I hadn’t built a website that could SCALE with the growth of my brand and business.

When I launched the Copy Posse 5 years ago, it was clear I never expected it to become what it is today. So Champagne Problems, I guess and I’m not complaining.

But suffice it to say, a website overhaul was needed; one that could carry me through my next evolution and beyond. 

Want to see it? Alright, here she is, the brand new Copy Posse WEBSITE.

Not only did I hire my original rad brand designer to come up with an entirely new look and feel for the Copy Posse, including an elevated color palette, fonts and graphics (don’t worry, the tigers and lightning bolts didn’t go anywhere).

But my team and I worked behind the scenes for a year to design an ENTIRELY NEW COPY POSSE EXPERIENCE.

I am absolutely obsessed!!!!!

Yes, it is absolutely stunning, but we have also optimized every section of our website to make it more scalable, easier to navigate, and more effective at generating new leads and sales.

And to do that, we focused on these five MAJOR things:

1. Identity-Driven Messaging

Most headlines – and website copy in general – is very outcome-focused. 

Here’s what you will achieve, unlock, or have when you buy this thing or work with this person. And that’s the way my old website was, too.

And, I mean, of course, you want to make sure you’re communicating the BENEFIT or OUTCOME you deliver front and center. That’ll always be key.

But as marketing continues to shift, I believe more and more that it’s not just about communicating WHAT YOU OFFER, but WHO YOU ARE and WHO YOU SERVE.

And I’m not just talking about speaking to your “avatar”, I’m talking about finding your PEOPLE, the customers who share your values and put their money where their heart is.

We have entered an era where the messenger is more important than the message. A lot of different businesses, brands and people offer what you OFFER, but no one does it in the exact way you do to the exact same people.

So for our NEW website, we really wanted to focus on speaking to the IDENTITY of our customers FIRST. And outcomes second. 

Like my good friend and author of Identity Marketing, Veronica Romney says, Brands that sell identities, elevate identities.

When you speak to the IDENTITY of your customers – who they believe they are and who they WANT to be, they are more likely to WANT to buy from you.

Because it’s an affirmation of who they see themselves to be and who they wish to become. 

So everywhere on our new website, you’ll see identity-based messaging in action. We are showing people what it MEANS to be part of the Posse.

Now, let’s take a look at the next thing we changed.

2. Clear Navigation & Dynamic Content

Over the years, I have created a lot of different trainings, challenges and mini-courses.

I have a live coaching program, a monthly membership and a private mastermind.

I have online programs to help my customers with everything from copywriting to email marketing to brand messaging.

I have dozens of free lead magnets, HUNDREDS of blog posts, videos and social posts.

And as our content and offers expanded, our website became really, REALLY clunky and challenging to navigate.

It was like a hodgepodge of random pages and banners that made it hard for the Posse to find the things they were looking for. Or even know WHICH program or lead magnet was right for them.

Yeah, not a good look.

So the most significant change we made on the new site was revamping our primary navigation.

First, we added a new “Hire” page to make it really easy for anyone looking to hire a posse-trained copywriter, marketer or content strategist to post to our job board, which is accessible to members of my SPARK Membership.

We massively revamped our programs page, too!

Rather than stack all our programs into one giant pile with no rhyme or reason, we grouped our short courses into different skillsets you’d like to learn – like sales messaging, email marketing, and brand messaging.

Then we outlined my higher-level programs and memberships in a 3-step journey, where you can easily join the waitlists to be notified the next time doors open.

We’ve also revamped our blog to make it easy for people to search by category or subject matter, and it’s dynamically and automatically updated in real-time as we post fresh content every week!

And lastly, we added a brand new “freebies” page where you can now go to find ALL of our current free resources.

This is something we NEVER even had on the old website, which made it basically impossible for anyone to find any of our free offers without us promoting the direct links on ads or social.

I can almost guarantee we’ll get way more leads by having this page front and center.

Speaking of new leads, that brings me to the next thing we optimized on the new website:

3. Easier (& More!) Opt-In CTAs

Not only did my old website not have a page where my free lead magnets were listed.

It also had only one opt-in CTA on the whole site, which was a “featured lead magnet” on my homepage that hadn’t changed in 5 years.

I mean, there wasn’t even a way for anyone to sign up to my email list directly (they would have had to sign up for that one lead magnet on my home page).

On the new website, we changed this and added opt-in CTAs on every page. 

On the homepage, we feature 3 of our most popular lead magnets AND give them the option to go check out all of our freebies, of course.

We also added an email list opt-in in our website footer, which appears on ALL pages.

This is honestly the biggest and lowest-hanging fruit that ANY brand or business could implement to improve their website conversion rates instantly, especially if you send GREAT emails like me 😉

We even included a couple of little testimonials next to the opt-in from people who LOVE our emails.

But my absolute FAVORITE thing we did to not only increase opt-ins on our website, but to solve that “which program is right for me?” problem that I was telling you about earlier.

4. Personalized User Journey

We created a BRAND NEW  QUIZ to help my audience identify WHERE they are on their journey and give them PERSONALIZED resources.

In just 30 seconds and a few simple questions, my audience can receive a whole collection of Posse resources that are perfect for them exactly where they are in their journey.

Whether they’re literally just starting to think about a side hustle.

Whether they want to learn foundational copywriting and marketing skills.

Or whether they’re looking to build their business and authority.

This quiz identifies the BEST videos, freebies, programs or memberships for them. This is HUGE. Because not only is it helping us get more opt-ins.

But it’s also making the decision process as EASY as possible for our customers.

We’re taking the guesswork out of the equation and making it super simple for them to take the FIRST STEP with us.

And as any marketer will tell you, once you get the first “yes”, it’s easier to get the second and the third. And the fourth.

Speaking of getting more YESes. You know what really helps with that?

5. Real-Time Social Proof

You already know that social proof is one of the best ways to build trust and drive sales.

And while my old website DID have lots of social proof on it, the testimonials were NEVER updated.

In fact, the same testimonials we launched our site with in 2020 were the exact same ones we had up there 2 weeks ago. Oh god, that makes me cringe.

Which means we had literally thousands of testimonials that never saw the light of day. 

We just simply didn’t have a “dynamic” social proof page that allowed us to quickly and easily add new testimonials as they came in. So we didn’t.

That all changed with our new website! 

We now have an awesome Posse Love page that allows people to toggle through testimonials for all our different programs – all updated in real-time, as they come in.

We also added this awesome dynamic section to our homepage that showcases social proof by highlighting some of our authority metrics.

Like the number of customers we’ve served, how many subscribers I have YouTube, number of views, happiness score of our customers and more! 

Whew. AND THAT’S IT!!!

My brand new website and the 5 things we did to improve user experience, opt-ins and sales. Yes she’s pretty, but she’s also super SMART.

Comment below and let me know what you think about the new website.

I’ll drop the link here if you want to click around and check it out.

AND OF COURSE, don’t forget to take the new quiz 😉

Make sure to like and subscribe to my newsletter for more show, don’t tell strategies. 

And if you enjoy blog posts like this, where I share behind-the-scenes marketing lessons, make sure to check out the next post from me here. 

I’ll see you next week with a brand new post. 

Until then, I’m Alex. Ciao for now.

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