If you are reading this, I have a brand new website and a new brand for my business, and it’s finally live! I'm talking about new fonts, colors, patterns, logos, and a completely new website that I started completely from scratch. This business rebrand has been in the works since LAST October, and so we’ve been working on it for almost a year (and I’ve been dreaming of sharing it with you ever since!).
I’m going to share:
- Exactly why I chose to rebrand my business
- My experience working with a branding agency (as a designer myself!)
- Design decisions we made for the brand (and the why behind those decisions)
- The process we went through (including the nitty gritty of working to redesign and reimagine 100+ pages of my giant website from the ground up).
Plus, before you dive in, I’m celebrating the launch of my new website with a SALE. Head here to find out how you can get 15-25% off my Showit Website Templates and Courses!
LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE NOW:
Subscribe & download the episode to your device: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | iHeartRadio
Search for episode 282!
Why Did I Choose to Rebrand My Business?
Simply put, I’ve had my business for almost 9 years. In those 9 years, there has been a ton of evolution of what I do and offer, but my Elizabeth McCravy brand hasn't changed at all!
A little history lesson (in case you’re new around here!):
- When I started my business almost 9 years ago, I was under a brand name (Every Whim Creative) that I kept for a little less than a year. I had a brand/website I built for that on WordPress.
- Then I rebranded. I made a new logo, brand, and a new WordPress website with a new name (Speak Social Agency)! Some of you may remember those days! Thank you for being here so long!!
- Then I redesigned that website on Showit, when I switched to designing websites on Showit.
- Finally, in August of 2018, I rebranded AGAIN to Elizabeth McCravy. I said “let’s stop with the made up fictitious/created names and use my name”. I was showing up as a personal brand and I just wanted to do that all the way.
I feel like sometimes we forget truly how many changes and growth that happens in the early years. It’s funny looking back on it now thinking how many times I changed things in a short period.
Business as Elizabeth McCravy
I rebranded to Elizabeth McCravy six years ago already. And in those 6 years, I’ve been using the same logos, even though I didn’t like them anymore and didn’t feel like they represented me well. Instead, I kept adding new courses and products and the overarching visual identity for the brand was the same in these 6 years!
It got to the point where I didn’t like the logos so much that I avoided using them anywhere (they weren’t really on the website at all). Then, in 2022, I set out with the goal to do a rebrand myself. New logos, fonts, colors, website, everything!! It was my big THING for that year.
Truthfully, I did not even consider hiring anyone else because I am a designer myself. So my thought was, “I should do this, because I can do this.” With this business rebrand attempt, I got as far as new fonts and colors that I really loved, that I felt suited the brand well, but I never created new logos. I did do some brand strategy for sure, but it was all done SOLO, with no one to bounce ideas off of. Just me and me! Not super effective!
Also, it always fell to the back burner for me behind other projects. I felt like I struggled to get out of my own head and out of my way. It’s hard designing for yourself as a designer!
So basically, since January of 2022, I have been using the rebranded vibe that I created, while trying to not use any of my old logos. And it did work. I want to emphasize that. My business has grown and done really well in those years. But that whole time, “completing the business rebrand” has been on my to do list and I just kept not getting it done or getting stuck.
It’s also harder because I have a lot of sub-brands underneath my business name. I have Booked Out Designer, The Template Shop, Breakthrough Brand Podcast, and now Podcast Success Blueprint. They are different and unique, so figuring that out how they could all come together cohesively too was tough at times.
I think in reality, I needed someone else’s perspective as a designer myself!
Fast Forward to January 2023
I had done a power hour call with Veronica Romney! She’s wonderful. She’s a team building expert and a podcast host herself. I’m going to have her on this show soon! A big thing that came out of the call is that I was holding onto things in my business that I needed to delegate.
She helped me see ways I could focus more on my genius, on the things only I can do, which is especially important for me in this season of working so few hours and being with my kids more than working typically. I’m not a stay-at-home mom, but I am not working 40 hours, or even 25 hours a week, either!
So after that call, I had ideas and direction, and I decided enough is enough. I needed to step into my CEO role more in my business and let a brand designer do the rebrand, while I did the website after! Because truly, websites are my passion. I love website design, and felt confident that I could take a brand and implement it into a new website for myself. And that regardless of if it was a good use of time or not, I would adore the process. And it would be fun for me, and business is supposed to be FUN!
I will be honest: I had some doubts/imposter syndrome at first about the idea of hiring a designer (as a designer myself). But I realized that was not how I should run my business, and it was not how I was running my business in other areas that I was seeing success.
For example:
- I don’t do my own customer support and haven't for years.
- I don’t write the blog posts that go with these episodes.
- I don’t create every single Canva graphic to promote launches/sales.
- There’s a lot I don’t do that I can do or did do at one point.
So I applied to be a client of another designer who I admired. I knew she was familiar with my brand, and had listened to my podcast before. We had been online acquaintances for some time, but she wasn’t overly involved in my brand, which I felt was something I wanted actually. Some familiarity but not too much.
Read more: My Team Building Story: Hiring, Outsourcing, Terrible Hires, Delegating and More!
Hiring Cember Studio for My Business Rebrand
That person was Kelsea from Cember Studio! I do plan to have her on the podcast to talk about branding at some point, because she’s wonderful. I reached out to her, she had never worked with another designer before, but was game! I promised that I would trust her with the process and let her be the design lead. Which was actually really easy for me to do!
I booked her, then we started the project in October of 2023. And guys — it was exactly what I needed to create a powerful brand for this business and powerful sub-brands, and a vibe built to LAST! Plus, I felt like I had a really strong foundation for the website I was going to build!
We finished up the rebrand in December of last year, and of course, I was closing in on having a baby at that point. I started designing the new website then but I struggled to really get GOING on it until after my maternity leave was over. I had some pages done prior but not much.
I implemented the finished branding on my current site first, which I know is not necessarily the best way to do it, but I knew with the size of my site and all the different things that needed updating, I couldn’t launch it all at once.
Before I went on leave, I updated the logos everywhere on the website, updated all my checkout pages, receipts/invoices, Dubsado settings, email signatures, things for students in Kajabi, and our freebies to be the new look!
Then post-leave, I got going quickly. After we started to get some momentum, it was like BOOM - HERE IT IS!
About the Business Rebrand
I love it all, and I hope you do as well! Kelsea was great to work with. It was truly just a fun, fun project. I love when I hire contractors in my business and get to see how other people run their business and work with them and get to be a client myself. Kelsey's process (at least her process with me) was that she ended up presenting two brands that were similar.
They had the same color palette and some similar elements, but the logos themselves for my main brand were completely different. we actually did the brand presentation in person, which is really cool because I live in Nashville and she lives in Alabama fairly close by, and she was coming here for their team retreat. She then asked me, “Would you want to meet at a coffee shop and do the brand presentation in person?” I was like, yes, that would be so fun. I was so excited and nervous leading up to it though! But it was so nice having her explain her vision and show me everything in real time.
When she showed me the options, there were things I loved from both of them and things I didn't like about both of them. So the ultimate brand we ended up going with was a combination of both things she presented to me, even down to some of the submarks. I really, really love the final result and the whole process with her!
Brand Words and Visuals
Beyond visuals, the brand words that we went with to describe the new brand identity, are: bright, friendly, authentic, inspiration, supportive, and powerhouse. I really love all of those words and I hope those words resonate and feel accurate for you too. A lot of them are actually words that I've gotten from podcast listeners and other customers who have filled out my end of the year survey.
Truthfully, I had a moment in the business rebrand process where I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue to embrace color. My brand has literally from day one embraced color — from pinks to yellows, blues, purple. I have always been a color gal, and loved bright and vibrant colors. However, one of the goals for me was to “grow up the brand” while keeping it fun, and I briefly was like… wait, do I ditch the bright colors? Really quickly I decided (with Kelsea’s help) that the answer was NO. This is something that is my style and there’s a way to stay bright, but mature with the brand,
For the final colors, you’ll see some shades of pink, yellows, a poppy reddish pink, a purple color, and shades like that. The yellow and poppy colors are almost the same as what I had been using from that half-way rebrand, but lots of the other colors were new! I actually started using the new colors on social media last year and in the freebies! I did things in phases.
Overall, my favorite parts of my new branding are the colors, having a cohesive brand look, and having so many patterns/logo variations.
Updating and Launching the New Website
I’ve been on Showit for many years now, and hadn’t created a new site for myself since 2018 when I switched to my Elizabeth McCravy brand from Speak Social. Overtime, I’ve ended up building a huge website of over 100+ pages, some not using the design settings in Showit, which made it hard to update. It wasn’t the best organized, which is why I chose to START FRESH instead of duplicating my current website and going from there. I wanted to start with a complete blank slate.
If that sounds daunting to you, especially for you designers listening… it was!
I’ve learned so much from this design process that I plan to create more content around Showit for template customers and fellow designers, because yeah… designing for yourself is hard. And staying organized and motivated and getting started is hard too!
So anyway, I started with a blank website last December in Showit. And I did make some progress before Ethan was born. I got everything set up in Showit with the brand colors and I started on the homepage and the menus, but then I halted at baby time and had to pick up after. I picked up the project again for real in June of this year, and now we’re launching, so that feels FAST. Once I got the momentum and systems, it moved a lot quicker.
Read more: Get a New Website By New Years: How to Customize Your Showit Website Template Really Fast
Help From My Team Redesigning the Website
At first, I was doing it all completely alone because I had a vision of reimagining every single page. Then, I realized that I really only needed to reimagine the older pages and the bigger/most important pages (for example, the home page, resources, blog, etc).
But then there were some pages (like all 30ish email marketing freebie landing pages) that I have that I didn’t feel the need to reinvent the wheel on myself! My team member, Stacey helped me with those pages, and y’all she is one of my favorite business people ever. I just adore her! She was a huge blessing in this project. I’d assign her pages in ClickUp and give her some direction, and then she reworked them on the new website by bringing those pages in and editing them (so not every page was done from scratch).
New Website Rebrand Changes
Here are a few of the pages/things that I am most excited about with the new brand and website:
- About page (finally - I didn't have one for like a year!!)
- Freebies only page
- Resources page
- Blog that’s more easy to navigate (now that it’s so large)
- Logos for all my products and podcast that feel more cohesive and branded than they did prior
- My site menus (head to the hamburger menu at the top or the footer to see them!
Design Decisions For The Blog
While there were a million decisions that went into the new website and business rebrand, I want to walk you through just a few design decisions I made for the blog.
- For pages like the blog pages, I had a process where I mapped out all of the possible things that could go on those pages. Then, I thought about what should go where (and in what order). So, for example, I have a bio at the end of all single posts, but not on the blog “home” page.
- I chose to get rid of the sidebar on my blog, because with over 400+ posts, I wanted to go “full screen” with it.
- I redid the categories for all 400+ blog posts I have to make things more organized. That took hours in WordPress! There is a big emphasis on search and categories for the new design to accommodate all the content.
- I also created a blog search bar and think it’s sooooo cool. Have a look here!
Updates I Did With the Business Rebrand Nobody Will See/Notice
Here are a few more changes I made with the new business rebrand and website that nobody will see/notice (but make my life easier and business better!)
- I started using Universal Site Canvases! Yay! I never implemented these on my old site, even though I did in all my templates as soon as the feature came out in Showit. My old site felt too massive and unorganized to do it. Now, I am using universal canvases really well and intentionally and it’s so nice!
- All of my pages are sorted in the sidebar into groups (which I already had that way) but now, within the groups, everything is alphabetically organized. This is going to make it so much easier to find a page quickly.
- There’s no more “Em Shop” branding (what I used to call my template shop). Now, everything has been updated to Elizabeth McCravy.
Favorite Things On My New Website
Thank you for reading this post all the way until the end! To close, here are a few of my favorite things on my new website:
- My Resources Page
- My About Page
- Flashing text throughout
- Moving icons for subtle animation
- Patterns in the backgrounds
- My 404 page with Phoebe
- My new menus!
To Celebrate, I Am Having a Sale!
Like I said before, I’ve been dreaming about sharing this with you all for more than a YEAR. For a limited time, until September 3rd, grab some seriously stunning website templates at a sweet discount (25% off!). Whether you're a coach, creative, or small biz owner, I’ve got Showit Website Templates that will make your online space feel like home.
Plus, if you’ve ever thought about diving into one of my courses (Booked Out Designer or Podcast Success Blueprint), you can join those here at 15% off. I would love to teach you everything I know to support YOUR business vision!
Thank you so much for celebrating with me! Grab all the launch sale details (and find out what you get for FREE with every purchase) here.
