Josephina Worrall is a translator, copywriter and sustainability report writer, who helps businesses communicate their impact and sustainability work clearly.
Why the website needed to change
Josie wanted to transition her business towards a suite of sustainability focused services, reducing the focus on translation and adding impact reporting and sustainability copywriting. When we first spoke to her, she described having a ‘hate-hate’ relationship with her current website.
"I didn't visually like the look of the website and branding, there were lots of technical issues with the site, and I found it very difficult to change anything."
- Josie
Ultimately, Josie's website was holding her business back from growing towards the direction she wanted to go in. She knew the site no longer reflected the business she was trying to build, and felt stuck between endlessly tweaking something that wasn’t working and starting again properly.
Josie decided to take the bold move of an entirely new business name, a rebrand and a new website to reflect her new positioning. She needed some support with the strategy, as well as the actual build and launch of a fast, lightweight, easy-to-manage site that finally gave her a solid platform to grow on.
Laying the foundations
A big shift in a direction for a business means rethinking the brand strategy, messaging and positioning. This was a big part of our work during this project, and included our our infamous (and very creatively named) ‘website and brand strategy questionnaire’, and an in-depth strategy and planning session.
Once we'd got the overarching brand strategy and website structure in place, Hannah, our website copywriter, interviewed Josie to drill down into the details and capture the nuances of Josie's tone of voice, in order to then write the new website copy.
"I found the process challenging, but in a really good way. It made me really find clarity on my aims and ideal clients and going into so much depth with Hannah meant that the copy really reflects my business and sounds like my voice, but better!"
- Josie
A website that looks the part
Josie had already picked a name and commissioned a simple logo for the new brand.
We needed to flesh this out into a full visual identity, which we could then apply to the new website (as well as any future branded assets going forward). Here’s a quick snapshot of the process:
Image 1: The new logo Josie had commissioned before the website redesign
Image 2: The results of the ‘brand refresh’ (by Tara, our graphic designer) - updates and variations on the logo (including a submark or favicon), a fleshed out colour palette, and typography pairings
Image 3: The polished up branding in action, used on the new Hawthorn Communications website. Page layouts and designs were by Lydia, our web designer.
The finished brand and website feel completely aligned with Josie’s vision, and she now feels confident sending people to a site that truly represents her work.
But the way the website looks is only part of the bigger picture. Brand and marketing strategy are baked into the websites we build. Here are a few of the strategic considerations that went into the new Hawthorn Communications website:
Strategic choices for a bigger impact
Putting sustainability reporting front and centre
The new website, page structure and navigation were all designed to make ‘sustainability reporting’ the main focus. But we needed to add ‘sustainability copywriting’ and keep ‘French to English translation’ without it looking too out of place among the new suite of services.
By grouping these second two services into their own bucket of ‘marketing communications’ we managed to create a cohesive overview of Josie’s services that made sense for her new brand, as well as a streamlined navigation menu.
Many clients come to us wondering how to display new services on their website whilst retaining an overarching message that keeps the brand cohesive. But this kind of big-picture strategic thinking is right up our street - drop us a message if you need some help with this!
Social proof placement
Social proof is really important. Whilst many website owners lump all their testimonials together on a testimonial page, or a slider (usually hidden somewhere at the bottom of the website), we take a more intentional approach so that your glowing testimonials work harder for you.
With the new Hawthorn Communications website, we worked through a list of Josie’s testimonials, making sure that relevant social proof was added into the page in a way that visitors can’t miss. This adds weight and credibility to important areas of the website.
SEO foundations
Although we specialise in website redesigns at Pie Heart Studio, in this case, the new domain name, brand and service model meant we were essentially starting from scratch. With no meaningful traffic flow to be redirected from the old website, we had to treat our SEO strategy the same way.
The strategy and keyword research phase uncovered some useful keyphrases: relevant to Josie’s services, relatively low competition, and with a decent number of searches per month. We worked these into specific pages (always focusing on natural language and user experience first) as well as building technical SEO into the foundations of the site.
After launch, we submitted the new sitemap to Google Search Console and requested indexing of the main pages, to give Hawthorn Communications the quickest route to getting found in search engines. We’ll continue to optimise and work on building up domain authority in the weeks and months to come.
The new Hawthorn Communications website
"Working with Beth and the team was a great and stress-free experience and I love the new site they created for my business! For business owners who feel a bit panicked about anything website-related, Pie Heart Studio make it all easy and stress free."
- Josie
Supporting the next stage of growth
Launching the new Hawthorn Communications website was just the first step. Now that the foundations are in place, we’re supporting Josie with ongoing optimisation to help the site evolve alongside the business.
This includes keeping a close eye on performance and visibility, making data-led improvements as the site starts to attract more visitors, and refining content and structure as Josie continues to develop her services and messaging. With regular check-ins and strategic support, she has the Pie Heart Studio team on hand to sense-check decisions, plan next steps and make updates quickly, without the frustration of trying to figure everything out alone. The focus now is on building momentum, turning a strong launch into a platform that actively supports the new direction, and long-term growth, of her business.
Is your current online presence holding your business back?
We'll take your outdated online presence and completely transform it, setting you up for some of the biggest opportunities in your career. If that sounds like something you need, we'd love to chat to you! Take a look at our brand and website design options to get started.