A PINK ELEPHANT PRIMER ON WRITING THE ESSENTIAL PAGES OF A SERVICE-BASED SMALL BUSINESS WEBSITE

(while sipping tea)

{a writing tip sheet especially for life coaches, therapists, nutritionists, birth workers, health practitioners and other self-employed people in helping professions}

If you’re a small business owner in a service-based or helping profession, your website is often your first welcome. It’s a friendly greeting to prospective clients and it’s a means of connecting you with the people you’re meant to help and serve. It doesn’t have to be poetry; in order to be effective, it simply needs to be clear and it needs to communicate the essentials with empathy. Not certain you’re sure what those essentials are or how to write with empathy? Then, read on. I’ve got a plan for you here that will help you write (or re-write) your own website in a weekend.

I recommend your navigation bar – the menu that’s usually along the top of a website – be made up of these pages, in this order: Home | About | Services | Blog | Contact. This is a fairly standard ordering and because it follows an expected format, your website feels welcoming and easy to manage for first-time (and repeat) visitors. And that’s our first goal – to provide a kind, warm, stress-free welcome.

Your Friday homework:

1. Open a new document.

2. Type your navigational menu at the top of your file and then type in the other page titles. Tomorrow, when you come back to this, it’ll feel good to have this super-simple framework ready and waiting to be filled in.

Bonus website design tip:

I do not recommend using drop-down menus, as they force visitors to make decisions without any helpful information and that can be subtly stressful. We want our guests to feel at ease in their travels through our sites.

The homepage is where I see the most mistakes in small business websites, mistakes that really hurt businesses, but the happy news is that they’re usually easy fixes. Open that document you started and under your Home heading, start typing…

Your Saturday morning homework: Complete this crash course in homepage writing:

1. Write a headline that speaks to the problem you solve or your unique point of view. For instance, for this Pink Elephant Academy website, my headline is: Marketing can be quiet, gentle and kind … and still be marketing. That tells you about my philosophy (quiet, kindness) and it tells you the basics of what I do (marketing). If I were a relationship coach, my headline might be a question: “Do you want to have a more loving marriage?” Ask yourself what those you help are seeking and speak in that language.

2. Write a paragraph that describes how they might be feeling right now. Demonstrate empathy for their current place of struggle.

3. Write a paragraph about who you are and how you help. This kind of clarity is so thoughtful for your readers, who may be feeling overwhelmed.

4. Include a bulleted list of your services. Yes, you have a separate Services page that site visitors can access through the top navigation, but we also want to give them a path there in the page content.

5. Include a clear “call to action” at the bottom of the page. What do you want your reader to do next? Book an appointment? Read your blog? Sign up for your ebook. Let them know so that they can feel gently guided through your site.

Bonus website design tip:

Include a professionally-taken photo of yourself on your homepage. It gives a face to the voice and makes the experience feel more like a conversation.

Bonus small business marketing tip:

Add a sign-up form and a generous opt-in gift to your website sidebar so that visitors have an easy way to keep in touch, and something that can help them right away without cost.

My most helpful homepage resource: I’ve written a comprehensive workbook for small business homepage writing that takes you through each step, swiftly and sweetly… if you use it this weekend, you might have more time for a Saturday brunch date.

>>Click here to check out the How to Write a Homepage Your Clients Will LOVE workbook (with sliding-scale, honour system pricing and a percentage of proceeds going to charity).

Okay, so here’s the thing about writing the About page. It can feel hard. How can you be objective about yourself? If you’re not certain what to include and what to leave out, then you can run in mental circles of wondering, right? I totally get it. But we can make it manageable by having some content “buckets” and I’ll outline them in the writing tips below. So, open your document again and set your cursor below that About title.

Your Saturday afternoon homework: Follow these tips to write your website’s About page:

1. Write a headline. This one’s much easier than your homepage’s because we can be straightforward. Here are a few options: About [your name], About [your business name], About [your name] and [your business name].

2. In the first paragraph, get straight to the point. Tell us 1) what you do and 2) who you do it for. You might use a subheading like “What I do.”

3. Tell us why. In a paragraph or two, share the story of how you came to be doing what you’re doing. Everyone loves stories, and small business owners usually have good ones with a lot of heart! You might want a subheading like “Why I do what I do” or “My story” or “The story of [business name].”

4. Do you have a lot of credentials that feel important? You could add a section called “My professional credentials” or something like that, and then list them. This section is optional.

My most helpful About page resource: When I write About pages for clients, I use my own The All-Important About Page writing workbook. It saves me so much time in figuring out where to start and what questions to answer. You may also find it helpful.

>>Click here for The All-Important About Page workbook (with sliding-scale, honour system pricing and a percentage of proceeds going to charity)

This is an easy one but it’s so important to handle well.

Your Sunday morning homework: complete your Contact page.

1. Type your headline: Contact, Contact me, Be in touch, Say hello, Bonjour! … whatever you like that feels friendly.

2. Write a sentence or two, encouraging site visitors to be in touch with questions or bookings. You might also want to include a line that lets them know when to expect to hear back.

3. Write your contact form. Common fields are: Name, Email, Message. You may also want to ask your correspondents to select the services they’re interested in, or to provide their estimated budget, or to provide their own website address. What information would be helpful to you to have right away so that you can respond to them most helpfully? Ask for that.

4. Include a heading that says something like, “Connect with me on social media” and include links to other places you hang out online.

5. Include your sign-up form with opt-in gift again (unless it’s already right there in the sidebar).

Bonus website design tips:

If your website uses the WordPress platform, there are easy plug-ins you can use to create contact forms. Contact Form 7 is one that’s really well-reviewed.

If your business is local, it’s also a great idea to include a Google Maps thumbnail on your Contact page, along with your address.

A lot of writers stress about the Services page as though all the pressure to be persuasive lives here, but if your homepage and About page are clear, the Services page nearly takes care of itself. I think we can knock out this first draft in an hour. You’re so close to being done!

Your Sunday afternoon homework: Write your Services overview page.

1. Type a descriptive headline that explains what you offer in brief. Think: Gentle Parenting Coaching Services or Vegan Nutrition and Weight-loss Coaching Programs or Small Business Website Design Packages. If you have a local business, it’s a good idea to add your location to the title to help with search engine optimization (SEO): Eco-friendly Landscape Design Services in Toronto.

2. Write a sentence or two that, again, tells what you do and for whom. Phrase it a little differently than you did in your About page, for variety. This is your first paragraph. If your business is local, it can be helpful to work in your geographic location in this paragraph too.

3. Do you offer more than one service, or offer your services in various formats/experiences? Then type those subheadings. For instance, you might offer home-study courses, in-person workshops, and private coaching – each of those would be a subheading. Or, maybe you’re a doula who offers prenatal support, birth support, and postpartum support – those are each clear subheadings, dividing up your services tidily.

4. For each of your subheadings, write one to two paragraphs, explaining 1)  the goal/outcome of each service  (“My Gentle Discipline coaching package provides an easy-to-follow, respectful discipline plan for your child that will make parenting feel more peaceful…”) 2) what to expect the experience to be like in practical terms (“This offering includes three one-hour coaching calls, recorded for your re-listening, plus a written plan, delivered by email three days after our first session, that includes specific activities and approaches to try with your child to address behavioural challenges…”).

5. Now, for each of these sections, you’ll need to write a “call to action” – the thing you want your reader to do with this information. Your service may be simple enough that it doesn’t require extra explanation, in which case, your call could be “>>Click here to book your appointment” (which could link to an online booking tool like Square Appointments – a service I haven’t used myself so I’m not vouching for… it just looks handy). Another appropriate call could be “>>Contact me directly with questions about this service” with a link to your Contact page.

6. Sprinkle in some testimonials. Your Services page is a great place to have a few lines from a few happy clients. It sets prospective clients at ease to read the stories and confidence of others, like them.

Bonus small business marketing tip:

Ideally, down the road, you’ll write a full offer page for each of your offerings, so your calls to action would become “>>Click here to read more about [service name].” (When you get to that point, Selling Sweetly is the sales page writing workbook I designed for business owners like us who want to communicate effectively and want our work to sound appealing but without sounding sales-y or being pushy, or you could read offer pages you like and try to emulate them.)

Reward yourself with some Sunday night “sleepy tea.” I found this recipe by Jenny McGruther on The Nourished Kitchen and with lemon balm, mint, fennel, licorice and flowers, I can barely imagine sipping something more beautiful.

Cheers to you! And thank you for writing with me.