In this episode, Kristin shares a major client success story (a 6-figure client booking!) and highlights the key takeaways we can all learn from this big win. She emphasizes that a website is like a storefront and digital business card in the online space, and even if most of your business comes from referrals, people will still look you up. Kristin also discusses the benefits of using website templates instead of custom websites, explaining that templates can be customized to fit your branding and messaging. She then outlines key elements of a successful website, including clear messaging, legibility, and a professional vibe. Finally, Kristin reminds listeners that building a business takes time and that each client can contribute to its growth.
Episode Transcript
Hey guys, how’s it going? So excited to share a huge client win with you on the podcast today. So back in December of last year, so a few months ago, I received an email from one of our past website design clients and was literally like cheering out loud in the coffee shop I was sitting in and like clapping. I was so excited for her. And also I feel like her message just perfectly shows the value that your website can bring when it comes to your business and how we operate today in the online world. So I wanna share this win with you and then kind of dive into this a little bit more to see what we can learn from this result.
So the email that I got was from our past client, Dina from King Travel Design. And we launched her website back in, I believe when I looked it up, because I forgot when we launched her site. I think it was like 2022. And her message says, I’m just going to read it to you:
Hi, Kristin.
I hope all is well with you. I just wanted you to know I just booked my biggest booking to date, Six Figures. She saw a post on Facebook that was shared when I first started my business. But she told me the reason she reached out was because of my website. It hasn’t been announced yet, but I am also now a member for our travel MBA program for new advisors. One of the things I will reinforce is to build a website and to refer you. Have a wonderful holiday season.
So, this just makes me like so proud and happy to get any type of just kind words back from clients always means so much. We always, I always share it with my team. It just makes us feel like so fulfilled and proud and like this is why we do what we do. We just love, love it. No matter what it is, it could be the simplest little love note, right? It just makes our day. And so to get something like this, I was just so excited for her. So the idea, OK, so she has basically a client. I just want to outline this so it’s clear. From my understanding in the travel industry, if someone is getting a six-figure booking, right? What that means is they are not making six figures off this client.
The client is basically booking an entire trip that is of six figures in value, and they are gonna be getting a commission from all of that. I believe that’s how it works. Please someone in travel, correct me, or Dina, if I am incorrect about this, please correct me. I believe that’s what the situation is. So either way, it’s so exciting, such a big success for her, and I want to dive into this idea a little bit more.
So the first thing that I want to point out in this situation is that your website is like your company’s storefront and digital business card to the online space. We need to remember that most likely people will look you up, even if it’s through a referral. So I hear every now and then people come onto consult calls, and sometimes they’ll say, well, my website doesn’t really matter that much, because most of my business will be from referrals. Or it already is coming from referrals, or it will be from referrals. So my website doesn’t really matter that much. And referrals are amazing. I feel like you already have such a like know trust factor, because it’s going through a referral. They make up the largest chunk of our business as well, is through referrals.
The reality is, though, that we want to remember is that people will most likely investigate you a little bit more before reaching out, even through a referral. So in Dina’s case, someone saw a post on social media that was shared about her business. And they did their homework. They went and looked at her website. And then they decided to reach out to her. I mean, she says in the client, you know, says that.
Like Dina’s client told her the reason why she reached out was because of the website. It’s like a pure perfect example. So the website is reinforcing your value, right? Having no website, a never-ending coming soon page, or a very outdated website is not working in our favor in today’s world. We are so in a digital age. People are looking on their computers, they’re looking on their phones, they’re checking you out, right?
In today’s world, we need to have an active, professional website to legitimize you in the online space. That’s lesson number one from this situation, or from this success story, not situation. Lesson number two that I want to point out is that you do not need a custom super fancy website. Templates are so where it’s at right now. So Dina’s website was a website template.
We designed her template using our Venice template. All of our templates have the same type of features. They’re just different design styles. I wouldn’t say the success came from which template she picked. I think probably the success from her site is going to come from some of the other things that I’m going to mention in a second. So I stopped offering custom sites a few years ago.
Because I really, truly don’t believe you need one. It literally doesn’t matter if your website is based on a template or not. And it doesn’t matter if someone else has the same template as you. We need to remember that our ideal client is not going around and looking at all of your colleagues’ websites. If they are, I mean, what are the chances of that? What are the chances that they just happen to have access to all of the websites that happen to be using your same template? It doesn’t even, it’s not realistic.
Plus the templates transform so much with your branding, the photos, the messaging, your niche. I mean, it transforms so much. So you don’t need a custom super fancy website in order to have massive success with your business. What does matter with your website is number one, a no-brainer that it’s live and active, duh, right? It needs to be easy to navigate on both desktop and the phone.
I know with our website, if I ever happen to go look at any analytics, usually it’s around like 50-50 with desktop and the phone. So we want to make sure it’s a good client experience on both devices. It needs to be clear what you do, who you serve, and the value that you bring in your messaging. So many people will overlook the messaging of their website. The messaging seriously is what will seal the deal. The visuals will draw them in to learn more. The messaging will seal the deal to have them reach out. It needs to be legible.
OK, so you would actually be surprised with how many websites that I’ve seen that are difficult to read because of how someone is using the color. How are you layering the color when it comes to your font color and your background color? Or if you’re putting text over top of an image, is there enough contrast to actually be able to read the text? This can happen with font sizes. Maybe the font size is way too big or too small, or even the styling of the message. If everything is just pasted on there and all these really big paragraphs, people do a lot of skimming. And so we want to pull out bits of that and make it larger so someone can skim and then read a little bit more in certain sections if they want to. So the styling of the text can affect the legibility of your website. How the color is being used affects the legibility and font sizes and things like that.
It also needs to have, it needs to give off a professional vibe, right? Someone needs to land on it and you need to feel like you’re legit, you’re professional, and that it’s attracting your specific niche. So this doesn’t mean that, you know, professional doesn’t mean it’s looking a certain way across the board. It’s gonna depend on your niche and what makes sense for your niche and the feeling you want to create. You can have a website that’s more playful. You can have a website that’s very neutral. You can have a website that’s vibrant. You can have a website that’s moody.
All of these things can look professional. It just needs to be relevant for your niche and for your ideal client. You also want to make sure it’s easy for them to take the next steps in contacting you. We don’t want them to get lost in content overload. Make it easy for them to contact you. So this is what actually does matter when it comes to your website. The fact that you’re having a fully custom site versus template site and that other people might have your template is irrelevant. I feel like Dina’s situation where she used our first level template customization. So we left the layout of our template, the Venice template, and customized it with her branding, content meaning messaging, and images, and all that type of thing. We left the layout of the original template. And she’s booking, having a six figure client booking based on her website. I think that’s amazing news for everyone.
We don’t need to spend ten thousand dollars on our website. You know, I’ve been in different like masterminds and business programs where a lot of people are after building a business based on like high ticket Custom websites, you know the websites that cost, you know ten grand plus to build because that is you know Great for their income as a business owner and I’ve never been able to really get on board with this because our process with how we operate with our templates works so well. And I feel like everyone wins in this situation. As long as your needs fit the website structure needs, I mean, there are cases where we do need to customize pages to match the client’s needs. And that’s where the semi-custom approach comes in, where it’s kind of an in-betweener of our template as is and then a custom site. It’s kind of that nice middle ground between the two.
But I would say 80% of our clients use our template structure as is. It’s our first level done for you service. That’s what Dina did. And I just don’t think from a client’s experience, there’s not a need to go through a full customer experience and pay this high ticket price. It just makes more sense, I think, overall. I love it because it allows us to streamline our process so much and take someone through our process that I’ve really refined over time. It allows the creation process to a lot of the times be a lot faster. And it’s a win-win. So I’m all for the template-based approach to the website design. Number three lesson that I want us to all learn from this is that your business is built one client at a time. You can create ripple effects in your business. It’s almost like creating exponential growth because you’re leaving like a little trail of breadcrumbs out there in the world with your marketing. It just takes one person and one person and one person to allow your business to just grow and grow and all of a sudden these amazing things start to happen, right? Sometimes we want to go from having no business to being fully booked out immediately and wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t we all love that, right?
And I’m sure it does happen.And I’m sure it also doesn’t happen too. Everyone’s on a different path and a different journey. So sometimes things take more time. Each and every person that crosses our paths can contribute toward building our business and dreams. You never know what kind of ripple effect can be created from sharing your business out into the world. And it is our job as the owner of our business. A lot of the times in the beginning, we’re solopreneuring it all on our own, right? It is our job to get our business out there in the world. Some people think it’s the website’s job to do everything for them. It is your job to market your business. The website is there to reinforce the relationship and create that connection for them to actually reach out to you. So I want to also say that I am not sitting here saying, if you work with us, you’re going to have a six-figure client coming and booking in with you.
Obviously, there’s no way I would know that. There’s no way I can guarantee that. Everyone’s on their own experience and journey. But what I do know is that when the right person does come your way at the right time, sometimes it’s timing for people. Sometimes people may be exposed to your company, but they might not be in the right place to be ready for your services. This happens sometimes.
For Girlboss Designer, I’ll even have a consultation call with somebody and it’s just not the right time. And then all of a sudden a year later, I’m having another consultation call and they’re booking in. Or sometimes someone even does reach out on our inquiry form, but it doesn’t really lead anywhere. They ended up not booking the consult call, but then later on we ended up booking them in. Or maybe it’s someone that’s been a part of our community, whether it’s like on our email list or following on social media, but it hasn’t really been the right time, but also when the right time does come, right?
Now you’re sealing the deal. Sometimes it’s about timing. So when the right person does come your way with your website and it’s the right time, that your company is gonna be looking polished, professional, it’s gonna draw them in, and it’s really gonna look like you have your shit together in the online space. And of course, it’s gonna look good on desktop and mobile, of course. So that’s what I feel like I can guarantee when it comes to working with us on the design side. But we’re all on our own path. People are going to grow their business in different levels, at different times. I mean, it’s all just a part of your own path and journey. And we just have to trust in our path, know that we are so much more resourced than we sometimes remember. Resource as far as our experience, sometimes we can undervalue our experience, we can undervalue our own intuition to tell us where to go next. We have so many resources at our fingertips to allow us to finally launch this business out into the world, to start sharing it. The more experience you have with sharing your business, operating your business, growing your business, the more comfortable you are. And it does create this domino effect.
People start to recognize that confidence. They start to see that you’re comfortable and confident out there with your business, and it just increases and increases and increases from there. But we’re all beginners at one point. I remember I used to be so nervous about to jump onto console calls with clients in the very beginning. And now it’s like I’m about to jump on one in about 20 minutes once this wraps up. It’s like so easy now, but it’s not easy in the beginning. So all of these successes that we see other people having are 100% possible for us and more.
We just have to really lean into our own abilities, our own resources, and trust our own path. And also, take the actions to create your own path. It’s not just about sitting back and letting it all unfold. Creating your goals and your dreams requires your action as well. So I’m going to cut off my little ranting there. I feel like I could easily take this on a whole other direction. But just to kind of recap our learnings from our friend Deana’s big client booking is that number one, your website is like your company’s storefront and digital business card in the online space. People will look you up. And we want to make sure that you are looking professional, that your website’s active, because you want to be legitimate in the online space. Number two, you don’t need a custom website.
You don’t need to invest in having something built from the ground up. Templates offer so much value. It cuts out so much creation process time versus going custom. And there’s so much more that matters with your website and with creating success and results from it versus feeling like you need to go custom. It’s totally fine that other people have the same template as you. It really is irrelevant when it comes to operating your business. And number three, your business is built one client at a time. Create ripple effects with your marketing and with your business.
OK, I’m leaving you there. Thanks so much for joining me on today’s episode. And I’ll catch you guys later. See you!
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