Client switches From Wordpress to Squarespace

Portfolio

Jun 20

Written By Melissa McKenzie

CUSTOM SQUARESPACE WEBSITE FOR WISDOM IN WATERCOLOR

ABOUT THE CLIENT

Debbie hannah skinner

Debbie, an experienced studio artist specializing in watercolor, came to me with a Wordpress website that she had for YEARS. She is a professional artist and seminary trained Bible teacher who encourages women in their spiritual growth via art, through her business Wisdom in Watercolor.

Debbie had been looking for a clean, neat way to summarize her brand so she signed up for our DIY branding course, Styled to Thrive. She absolutely loved the course and decided to reach out to me to possibly work on her Wordpress website. Debbie said:

“I’d been wanting to restyle my website to make it look more beautiful and modern, be more client/user focused, and be more easy for me to use on the backend. So - based on a friends recommendation, I reached out to Carbon & Clay for help.”

Debbie knew she wanted to update her Wordpress website but was not sure if Squarespace would work for her since she was not already in that website platform. I was able to talk to her about the pros and cons of both platforms (more on that at the end of this blog post). After deciding that she wanted to move her Wordpress website of over a decade to Squarespace, I got started on a custom brand and Squarespace website project for her.

About the process

A NEW BRAND

First, I helped Debbie complete her new branding she started with our Styled to Thrive course. I helped her get clear on what look and feel she was going for and helped her choose colors and fonts based off of that. She wanted her brand to inspire, strengthen, and soothe her audience.

Her Wisdom in Watercolor logo really inspired the design of her custom website.

THE WEBSITE PROCESS: FROM WORDPRESS TO SQUARESPACE

After a decade of being on Wordpress, Debbie had a lot of pages on her website. The visuals looked outdated and her website had gotten unorganized. The amount of links in her navigation were confusing for even her!

I first helped her organize the content of her website so that the viewer had a simplified navigation and could easily find the info they were looking for.

Once I knew her pages and their content, I started her homepage mockup design to make sure she was happy with the design direction I was taking her new Squarespace website.

Once Debbie approved the design, I moved on to building out the rest of her pages in Squarespace. I helped her with the process of transferring over some past blog posts and her already purchased domain.

THE RESULT

Debbie now has an updated, simple and easy-to-navigate custom Squarespace website that she has FULL control over. On her launch and learn session at the end of her project I showed her how to add and change out text and images, create new pages, blog in Squarespace etc.

Adding in the layered watercolor splashes and scribbles gives her website a whimsical and artsy feel.

Here's what Debbie had to say
about working with us:

“I absolutely L-O-V-E the look of my new website and have gotten some great response to it!”

You can view her final website with the video below.

Before and After

We all love a before and after picture, right? Here you can see that Debbie’s Wordpress website was outdated and complicated to find what you are looking for.

After moving her to a custom Squarespace website, she has a clean, fresh and updated site that is easy for both her viewers to use and her to update.

BEFORE

Debbie's Old Wordpress Website — Debbie’s old Wordpress website

AFTER

Debbies New Squarespace Website — New Squarespace Website for Debbie

WHY SWITCH FROM WORDPRESS TO SQUARESPACE?

We’ve had several of our clients switch from Wordpress or other platforms over to Squarespace for multiple different reasons. Here are just a few reasons why Debbie decided Squarespace was the right move for her:

She wanted to be able to understand her website platform and easily make changes to her ever-evolving business. She was in the process of creating digital course content and new offerings so being able to add this in on her own instead of hiring a designer with a hefty price tag each time was important to her.
Debbie liked the idea that Squarespace is an all-in-one platform. There are no plugins that you have to add in for different functions. On Wordpress a lot of times plugins have to be updated which can cause problems with your live website. With Squarespace you don’t have to worry about that.
You can easily transfer a third party domain to Squarespace like Debbie did, but you can also purchase your domain right through Squarespace so all your website billing is in one place. Squarespace gifts you a free first year of your domain name if you purchase through them and don’t already have one.

There are so many other reasons why I love Squarespace that you can read right here.