I remember back in 2013 when I was getting ready to launch my first website. I was going back and forth and back and forth between Squarespace templates, but nothing felt totally right to me. I kept thinking “I don’t want to fit into this template that a bunch of other people already use! But, I had no idea how to customize templates either. Scott urged me to just pick SOMETHING because HAVING a website was better than NONE AT ALL. I picked a template, threw in some photos from a styled shoot, threw up a quote from Winnie the Pooh, added a contact form and called it a day. There wasn’t much thought about colors or logos or branding or my ideal client or anything like that. Heck – my ideal client was anyone who would pay me.
Hiring a Website and Brand Designer
About a year into officially taking money from clients, I thought it was time to step up my website and create a brand. My first email to a brand designer I found on Pinterest went something like this: “Oh, this is a stupid question, can you sort of define what branding is or entails.. is it logos, colors, typography… etc? At the end of the day, what is the finished product? Sorry if this is a dumb question.”
She answered me in the sweetest way possible, but it wasn’t until a few months later that I bit the bullet and hired a brand designer. When I started with my first website and brand designer (Foil and Ink), she asked me if I’d be willing to move my site over to Showit, a completely customizable website software that I could really get out of the box from a template. I loved this idea and went with the advice of my brand designer!
I was thrilled with what we created on the ShowIt Desktop software. But, soon after launching that site, ShowIt came out with something better: ShowIt 5. ShowIt 5 is a software that you can design mobile and desktop versions of your site side by side, and make it completely custom with better features relating to our mobile world.
Why I Love ShowIt
To this day, I am smitten with Showit as a website software AND as a company. For starters, there are SO many easy to use features. It’s basically like a combination of InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator for your website, and I couldn’t imagine it being any easier to use! I did my entire Laura Lee Photography website by myself and had also created the Laura Lee Creative website myself originally, until hiring With Grace and Gold to come in and give me a more polished look. (I’m so glad I did!)
Time after time, my ideal clients find me because of ShowIt’s awesome SEO features, and fall in love with my business before we even speak to each other. It’s so easy for me to go in and make changes. I’m frequently updating my site and I’m so thankful I don’t need to hire someone to do it every time I have a change!
I love how Promise Tangeman puts it, saying: “The new ShowIt 5 is flat out impressive being on the forefront of innovation. And the Showit guys just GET the creative entrepreneur space. They know what we want on the front end of our websites, and what we care about with the user interface on the backend.”
Here are some of my favorite key features:
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100% Creative Freedom – from colors to layout out to typography to layering elements, you can do anything your heart desires with ShowIt.
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Drag and Drop – BAM! No more coding skills needed. Easily drag and drop your text, images, and more with this feature. It’s basically digital scrapbooking. <3
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Limitless Design Capabilities – like I said, you can literally do almost anything you can think of. From colors to transparencies, to sticky elements like menus or canvas views on a page to view information sliding across the page AND down the page, you design options are endless.
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Long Scrolling Capabilities for our mobile-centric world. The old ShowIt (and other website builders) didn’t allow you have pages that scrolled more than the length of your computer screen. So there was no such thing as “below the fold” with your website. To get more information you had to bring your visitors to another page. With the new long scrolling capabilities, it’s easier to navigate websites on mobile than ever before.
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Guide your visitors through your website the way YOU want to. When I started, I didn’t have a clue what a sitemap was, let alone how to make my website make sense for visitors. Now, I can guide visitors through my site the way I want them to go, with call to actions and buttons anywhere my heart desires.
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100% compatibility with WordPress. WHOA. I tried to build my blog on WordPress AGES ago and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. CODE = JIBBERISH to me, But now, with Showit 5, you can build your blog design on ShowIt and host it on WordPress – the #1 blog platform in the world. SO YUP, even your blog design is 100% customizable.
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100% customizable mobile site design. Sometimes, we just want our mobile sites to be a little different than what other sites auto create for you. I love that I can have creative freedom on my mobile site to make it absolutely PERFECT and designed how I want it to be designed. NOT how a computer robot wants it. For a world where 60% + of your website users are likely coming from mobile devices, this is imperative if you ask me!
In the end, using ShowIt 5 saves me time AND money in business. Even better, it helps me GROW my business by attracting clients to my page, keeping them on there, and directing them to the right place to inquire about my services. And did I mention, it’s all customized to my brand and business! Yes – it has everything I need for my creative business to grow, scale, and have more time for the projects and people I love!
And last but certainly not least! I just want to say a BIG thank you to ShowIt, one of our 2018 Fireside Retreat sponsors. As part of the retreat, we will be diving into everything from growing your business to outsourcing to brand strategy! We are so grateful to have ShowIt as one of our sponsors, supporting our attendees and helping them design and grow their business with ease!
Other posts on the Laura Lee Creative blog you might also like:
Are You Doing the Right Things for Your Business?
How Outsourcing Your Editing Will Change Your Business and Life
And to get even more tips on staying organized as a small business owner, check out my FREE guide below – 5 Ways to Master Your Time, Schedule and To-Do List!
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