My lessons in building a website: Overcoming Negative Self talk and Perfectionism
Hey there beautiful beings...
Firstly I’d need to make a disclaimer: “The struggle is real people”… to those of you that have built your own website and found it easy; I bow down to you. To those of you that have struggled and pondered and procrastinated and doubted and cried over it - I see you, I feel you, I am you!
I want to share a little bit about why this website launch is such a big win for me, and what I’ve learnt along the way. My wish is that maybe I can provide you with some hope and insight; if like me you are embarking upon this intrepid creative journey into online presence.
There were many challenges along the way and a few major barriers I found particularly hard to face.
Challenging my self-belief and practicing non-perfectionism
Yes you read that correctly; even with all my coaching and yoga experience, starting this project meant overcoming lots of negative self-chatter, such as:
“This is something I’ve never done before; it’s bound to be too hard for me”
“Even if I manage to pull something together it will never be good enough”
“I have no idea where to start and I’ll probably get it all wrong”
So, in a nutshell, lack of self-belief and perfectionism were my nemesis.
Believe me when I say this has been something on my ‘to do’ list for 16 months (maybe yoga has taught me to live in the moment a bit too much!). I purchased my domain name and designed a logo back in May 2019 - so if you thought you deserved the procrastination crown then pass it back over.
Only when lockdown happened due to COVID 19 did I find myself with time to assess the direction my life was headed in. It was one of the best (and worst) things that happened to me, as it enabled me to ponder the things that had got side-lined due to life being ‘too busy’.
Making ‘Now’ count
There was a part of me that knew I might not get this opportunity again and that I needed to use it to give my business idea more attention. Now there were no more excuses, I couldn’t continue to avoid the thing I wanted to avoid the most. I had to start to build my website.
The first and most important thing I did was to make a pact with myself. This pact included a few very important aspects that are as follows:
1. To be kind to myself during this process; I am not a professional in this field and can only do my best
2. I will not spend hours on one single aspect trying to get it EXACTLY right, if it looks ok then it probably is
3. I will ask for and accept help
Setting the scene
I knew there were two key areas I would find challenging; they were the technical and the creative sides. So, I chose two friends with experience in these areas to give me some guidance. After chatting with both of them, doing some brainstorming, and deciding on what platform to use (SquareSpace if you’re interested), I took the following steps to start:
Reminded myself of my brand and message; made sure I had a clear idea of what I wanted my website to portray and the purpose of it. I also put myself in the headspace of being the end-user to think about what I would want to see from their perspective
Looked at 3-4 other websites of a similar genre (not too many to be overwhelmed but enough for me to know what I did and didn’t want) I also looked at some websites outside my genre to see what grabbed my attention and wrote down ideas
Planned what pages I wanted on my site. As you will see I kept it as simple as possible, the fewer pages the less work and the less chance of having a nervous breakdown
Getting it done
Firstly I set up all my pages as templates on SquareSpace; leaving boxes for where I thought I might want text and images to go. It was also at this point that I started to play around with colour schemes to see what I liked the look of
Starting to write the copy - I did this in stand alone Word documents completely separate from the website. I also started with my ‘about’ page rather than my home page as that was the one I had the clearest plan for. Giving my attention to the about page first and finding it less difficult than I thought gave me the confidence to continue with the rest of the pages
Researched and downloaded images; I used Unsplash and Pexels plus Google images and created an image folder on my computer. I ended up with far more than I needed or used but it was great to have options when it came to putting them into the site
Started dropping images and copy into the template. If you are using SquareSpace there are some great already formatted templates you can use, but it’s also super easy (once you figure out how to do it the first time) to drop your own text and image boxes onto the page
Extra things to consider and check
Remember that a lot of people are going to be viewing your site on their mobile phone. SquareSpace has a little mobile icon at the top of the page so you can switch really easily to mobile view. Do this regularly as you are making design changes to check it translates well to mobile
· Check the following:
a. Does my homepage instantly and clearly say what service/product I’m offering and give a clear benefit to the user
b. Is it really easy for the user to contact me/purchase something (hint: use ‘buttons’) i.e. is my ‘call to action’ clear
c. Is the site easy to navigate so the user can find what they need
d. Have I checked that the links are all working
e. Have I spell checked, grammar checked and got at least one other trusted person to read through this and give me some constructive criticism
Ready to launch
If you have followed my steps then now is the time to GO LIVE.
Having launched my site there are still images and content that I want to add. I spent a few days procrastinating, going back to the old idea that everything had to be my idea of ‘perfect’. The truth is that no one looking at my site would even know that it’s not ‘finished’ or ‘perfect’ (unless of course, you are reading this blog now!).
When I look at what I have accomplished I am smiling on the inside, I feel proud of myself. I have pushed through the negative self-talk and overcome my need for perfectionism in order to put myself out to the big wide online world.
This experience turned out to be a bit like my recovery journey…I was scared at the beginning that I couldn’t do it but by having a bit of belief, making a firm decision that I was going to do things differently and engaging the help of some people that were more experienced me; I got there in the end and you can too.
….with love and magic, The Farting Unicorn