It's LAUNCH DAY again — my favorite day of the month! Today, I'm sharing the website for Shanella Kelly! Shanella is a brand new life coach based in one of my favorite cities - Asheville, North Carolina. Shanella worked as a counselor for years, until recently deciding to open her own business that really marries together coaching and counseling.
Her style is magnetizing, and she came to me ready to go with this beautiful, whimsical vision for her website. I was immediately obsessed and ready to try and create this vibe for her! The end product is a gorgeous website that truly FLOWS. The photographs are whimsical and adventurous, and the little details such as paint splatters, scribbles, and feathered photo-edges really make this website unique.
I did a little Q&A with Shanella about her website experience + her advice to fellow new business owners. Her advice is GOLDEN and her feedback makes me want to happy dance. Read on!
Question: What is your favorite part of your new website?
Shanella: "Oh, so many things! But my top three are:
1) My favorite page is the "Meet Shanella" page which guides the reader through my personal story of transformation. I had a specific vision in mind for the flow of that page and Elizabeth nailed the design and brought my vision to life!
2) All the artistic details that make it feel like a work of art (e.g. blurred photo edges, paint splatters, font appearing handwritten). I know it took a lot of extra effort to "stylize" almost every image on my entire website and Elizabeth happily obliged my all my detail wishes!
3) I love the color palette; I wanted my brand to feel like a 'mountaintop at sunset' and that's exactly how it feels!"
Question: Did we successfully accomplish your design goals?
Shanella: "It was so important to me to have a beautiful, authentic, original website to be an extension of who I am, my essence. I wanted people visiting my website to be able to FEEL my energy/vibe through the photos, words, colors, and design. I think Elizabeth successfully accomplished that.
My favorite part of working together was the co-creation process. She would send me some pages (with the copy I'd given her) and then I realized that things needed to be altered and I'd tweak some wording or placement on the page. She was very understanding of my changing and adding copy as we went! Then once it was all together, getting to "customize" everything exactly how I preferred in Showit was so fun! I love the Showit platform and it is going to be so easy going forward customize my website as I grow and expand in my business!"
Question: What advice would you offer someone who is in the early stages of starting their business like you?
Shanella: "Be authentic and work with people (photographers, designers, copywriters, etc) who are authentic! There are too many people trying to fit into a box of what they think a "professional _____" is. Let your originality show! Use your own voice, don't just copy what everyone else is saying. Don't be afraid to BE YOU. You will attract other people who are authentic, bold, quirky, totally real in their range of humaneness. Life is so much more interesting and fulfilling that way!"
Question: Tell me (and the readers!) a little more about your experience working together!
Shanella: "Let's start at the beginning... what drew me to work with Elizabeth. First off, I stumbled upon her on Instagram when another coach was promoting her new website launch and I checked it out and LOVED the design. I thought "wow this designer is really talented." Then I visited Elizabeth's website and resonated with several things.
1) she shared a story/blog post about quitting her corporate job and starting her own business so I knew she really understood the new, young-ish business owner (me!)
2) I loved how generous she was with sharing business, website effectiveness, marketing info on her blog.
3) I appreciated her personality showing through; she wasn't all "uppity professional"- she was quirky and unapologetic about her joy which was refreshing.
4) when checking out her previous design work, it was absolutely stunning. I knew she would pay attention to the little details!
So I invested the most money I ever have on myself and my new business! It was scary but I knew this investment would catapult my business forward. And I was DONE waiting to create my dreams! Working together, Elizabeth was soooo helpful about all things "new online business owner"! I was almost clueless and she guided me through what systems I would need in place to make my website work most effectively for me. Definitely beyond the scope of just a web designer; she was very generous with her knowledge.
Once we got into the creation process, she was very patient and understanding as I changed copy and added pages. Her attitude was always willing and open to my creative input, which I liked. I wanted to contribute to the creation process, she was just the one to execute it for me! 😉
I am very happy with the end result. To a person looking into working with Elizabeth, I would tell you to follow your intuition. If you are pulled to her for a reason, take a deeper look at WHY? She is a very talented designer and no matter what your vision, she can bring it to life! If you look at her past work, you'll clearly see she is able to greatly diversify her design. I would absolutely recommend her services to anyone wanting a gorgeous, unique website!"
So, CHEERS to you, Shanella! And, definitely go visit her beautiful new online home at shanellakelly.com!
