Nicola Scholfield from the Company of Nature found me through a recommendation from another client; Jackie from The Hummingbird Lodge.
Nicola started to make her own WordPress site but decided she would prefer someone like me to set it up and show her how to update it.
The perfect client has a clear idea
It saves money, time and stress if the client has a clear idea about what they want. That doesn’t mean it has to be totally nailed down and inflexible but having a starting point really helps. With content already written and a few page purposes identified I can shell up a website pretty quickly and being able to see it working live helps clients decide what they want from their websites.
The brief for Company of Nature
Nicola had already prepared a document with an outline of her website, which makes the whole process smoother. If she hadn’t I would have supported her to do that. She had also designed a logo that fitted perfectly.
Her brief was:
“In essence I want the website to drive potential clients to my business, explain more about me, the work I do and services I offer to encourage them to contact me, plus a blog. My business is nature connection/ forest bathing work.”
We started with some stock images to get an idea of layout but swiftly changed them out for original photographs taken by Nicola. This gives the site more personality and represents her perfectly.
What went into this website
Nicola had already installed WordPress and made a start. She had sent me an outline, with colour preferences and some content to make a start with. This is what I did:
- Installed a responsive theme template so that the site works on all screen sizes
- Put up an ‘under construction’ landing page with a login so Nicola could see progress and share with friends for second opinions
- Identified the need for a security certificate which Nicola could sort out via her hosting
- Honed down the structure of the site to make it really simple to navigate by eliminating dropdowns
- Eliminated overlaps in original site plan
- Set up the colour theme, fonts and a consistent layout (that changes as screens get smaller)
- Set up defaults for font and button colour changes on live links
- Added content and images
- Optimised the whole site for search engines
- Set up security and regular backups
- Integrated Mailchimp so Nicola has a mailing list in place
- Added links to social media platforms
- Set up a cookie notice and a draft privacy policy with links in a custom footer menu
- Taught Nicola what she needs to know to write effective blog posts and how to edit content on the site.
- Made a duplicate of the front page of the site so Nicola can practice using a different editor.
We communicated via email and zoom. I was able to screen share to show her examples and ideas and I sent her screenshots that walked through anything she needed to do.
“Thanks again for the wonderful website. I’ve had lots of comments about how good it looks – and thank you for making the process so straightforward.”
You can visit the Company of Nature website here.
