Finally check your website off your to-do list: a case study with Dominique Dunlop

Today I'm going to be interviewing a former client of mine, Dominique Dunlap. She is a Pinterest marketing strategist, and I have her on a later episode of the podcast to talk all about that. But today I am talking to her about her VIP day with me.

We redid her website a few months ago and gave it that total overhaul. As you'll hear in this episode, she was already on Squarespace and had learned how to make some of those changes herself. She had designed her first website on her own, but she really needed something that was going to be consistent, coherent, and make her proud to share it online as she's growing her business and really reaching those high ticket clients.

[00:00:56] Hi, Dominique. I'm excited to chat about your website today.

[00:01:03] Dominique: Oh, I'm excited to be with your Samantha.

[00:01:05] Samantha Mabe: All right, so let's get started by having you share a little bit about you, your business, and who it is that you work with.

[00:01:14] Dominique: Um, I am a former teacher. I live near Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada, and I left my teaching career, I guess about three and a half years ago when my second little one was born and decided I needed to figure out to replace my income.

[00:01:33] Somehow at home, I couldn't be teaching anymore and, um, So I kind of fell down a whole bunch of rabbit holes in the online space. Tried a ton of different things and ended up realizing that I liked the marketing side of business and. I connected with an amazing Pinterest strategist who led me down the Pinterest rabbit hole, and now I'm here Pinterest strategist and content repurposing specialist.

[00:02:04] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. And who are your main clients?

[00:02:09] Dominique: I work mostly with, um, course creators, podcasters and bloggers. Anybody in the kind of the content. Marketing niche as opposed to like product base.

What is your website’s history?

[00:02:24] Samantha Mabe: Okay. Awesome. So can you walk us kind of through your website journey and history? How did it get started?

[00:02:36] What did that look and feel like for you? And then why did you decide it needed to be updated?

[00:02:43] Dominique: Um, I started playing around with website, we'll call it Design it, um, just playing around with it back when I first quit my teaching career and I had launched a preschool at home. Learning program. So I pieced together a website on my own.

[00:03:03] Then I ended up taking a, it was kind of a course slash membership Squarespace focused to get that sorted out a little bit. So I kind of learned the basics. At that point, and then when I transitioned to the digital marketing side, I abandoned that website and started over fresh and put everything I knew into play.

[00:03:28] But my website just became a never ending Do it yourself project of pick this, poke that, move this. Nope, don't like that. And I never really felt like. There was an end point. I never felt like I could just cross it off my list and say, Yeah, my website is good, and then I connected with you.

[00:03:50] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. So you've been on Squarespace since the beginning, right?

[00:03:56] Dominique: Uh, yeah.

[00:03:57] Samantha Mabe: That is different than a lot of people. They sometimes will find WordPress first or start a Wix blog, but you started out using Squarespace and learning how all of that works.

[00:04:08] Dominique: Yeah.

What was working with Lemon and the Sea on a VIP Day like?

[00:04:08] Samantha Mabe: That's great. Okay, so can you talk a little bit about, um, the process of working with me? What was that like on your end?

[00:04:18] And, you know, what did you like, not like?

[00:04:23] Dominique: Um, the process of working with you was so detailed and in depth. I was, Quite thoroughly impressed by how much detailed it was, and when I first received kind of the onboarding homework that you had sent me, it was somewhat intimidating because I felt like I maybe wasn't actually ready to take this step.

[00:04:49] But the more I sat down and the more I looked at it, I realized I was ready. It's just so much of that information was still in my head and it wasn't actually being conveyed onto my website. So that right away showed me the A, I needed you , and B, it really helped me. Where I had been falling down when I was trying to do it myself.

[00:05:15] I had been so focused on the visuals and the pretty colors and what it was going to look like, that there was a lot of pieces regarding, you know, the copy and the tone and who I was actually trying to speak to that hadn't been thoroughly fleshed out. So, going through the process of onboarding, Truly helped me actually give some solid direction and clarity to my own business, even prior to even touching my website.

[00:05:48] So that was super beneficial to have kind of be forced to work through all that as opposed to me saying, Yeah, I'll get to it someday. And. Obviously having that very clear deadline of when you needed my stuff by as someone with adhd, those deadlines are like super important to me. And I'll admit I was up still at midnight the night before you needed my stuff still typing . Um, but I needed that, that push to just get it done.

[00:06:17] And then the actual process of having my website done was. It was actually really neat to be on my side and be receiving the update emails throughout the day and see it all kind of coming together and seeing, um, something even more detailed than my own vision taking place and realizing again, Oh, I do have what I need. I just hadn't actually communicated it. Effectively, And you took that from me and communicated it beautifully.

[00:06:52] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, and I know I, and I try to make the pre-work not as overwhelming, but if you are not working with a copywriter, there's a lot of copy has to be created. Either, you know, you're pulling it off of your website and making some tweaks or you're having to write it.

[00:07:09] And I think that is the most intimidating part for people. When you get in there and you're like, Oh, I have to write stuff for all of these pages, plus I have to give you like what I actually want my website to look like.

[00:07:22] Dominique: Yeah. But it was so effective because like I said, it helped me gain so much clarity in my business and direction in general. Very helpful.

What was your favorite part of the VIP Day?

[00:07:35] Samantha Mabe: What was your favorite part of the VIP day process? You know, doing all that pre-work and then getting on the day where we're creating the entire site and getting it ready to launch.

[00:07:47] Dominique: My favorite part was actually finally being able to check website off my to-do list, honestly. And again, as somebody with ADHD, I really, you know, I want things done like now and having the, that, you know, that dopamine hit of it being checked off at the end of the day so satisfying.

[00:08:10] I sat down that night and showed my husband, I'm like, Look, look at this. It's all done. He's like, Finally like, I don't have to hear about this thing anymore. I'm like, Yeah, we're done.

[00:08:20] I loved having it done instead of drawn out over a month or two months or whatever, it kept me motivated to stay invested in actually just getting done.

[00:08:30] Samantha Mabe: Yeah. And we did during your support period, update some images. Cause you had a new brand new photo shoot, but like all we had to do was drop in the new pictures and then it was completely updated with your new photos and everything felt really cohesive.

[00:08:46] Dominique: Yeah. And it looked great prior to that. But once those brand photos were put in, it just completely elevated it.

[00:08:56] And so anybody that hasn't had like brand photos done, even if it's your best friend, takes some nice photos for you, doesn't have any fancy and expensive, I would, I would recommend that because even just the confidence in myself looking at my website, like, no, it actually looks professional. It doesn't look like my own do it yourself project anymore.

What results have you seen since your new website launched?

[00:09:17] Samantha Mabe: It's been a while since we did your website, so I'd love to know if you've seen any real results from that design as far as clients or income raising your prices, those sorts of things.

[00:09:30] Dominique: I can't say I've seen results as far as clients because for personal reasons, I've kind of ended up stepping away for a few months over the summer, but I was able to step back and know confidently that everything was still there and ready. I didn't have to focus on that.

[00:09:47] I have definitely seen a lot more, um, inquiries in the past few weeks and. I've received a ton of compliments on the professionalism of what my site looks like.

[00:10:05] Samantha Mabe: Awesome. I think that's always fun when people tell you they reach out and they're like, I loved your website, and that's why, part of why I wanted to reach out to you.

[00:10:14] Dominique: Yeah. I've had a ton and I've referred your name out many times.

What advice do you have for someone considering working with Lemon and the Sea?

[00:10:21] Samantha Mabe: What advice would you give to somebody who's considering working with me on this VIP day process? Cause it can be a little bit different than most people expect, and maybe they don't know what to, you know, exactly what's gonna happen. But what advice do you think people might need to know?

[00:10:38] Dominique: Give yourself the time to actually prepare. When Samantha says you might need, I think it says 10 hours in your onboarding, give yourself that time, like she means it. If you want to do it properly, it's going to take some time. And with that, I was thankful that we hadn't actually booked super close in.

[00:10:58] It gave me a lot of think time to go through it. Um, We had actually ended up rescheduling my initial date, too, because I was having some internet issues. But it just having that time and space to really go through and make sure I had everything that I was going to want ready was really important. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I had booked it in on a really kind of close deadline.

[00:11:22] And I think the other big thing is just really have a vision of who your website to speak to and what you wanted to say, kind of about you, which I didn't have that vision prior to going through the onboarding work, but as I went through it, I realized, you know, I, I needed to be a lot more clear on who I was speaking to. So by the time I sent my stuff over to you, I think I had pretty solid idea. .

[00:11:56] Samantha Mabe: Well, thank you so much. And people can check out your website and you will be on the podcast talking about Pinterest and content marketing and all of that so they can really dive into what you do, so make sure you guys check out that episode as well.

[00:12:11] Thank you so much Dominique.

[00:12:13] Dominique: Well thank you for everything Samantha.

If you are interested in having me work with you on a VIP day so that you can get more confidence in your website and really feel like it is a true reflection of your business and that it's checked off your to-do list, so it's no longer hovering out there waiting for the next quarter or the next time you have a free moment, send me a DM or an email to learn more about my VIP process.

As Dominique mentioned in the episode, there's lots of pre-work, but that makes sure you are ready for this day and you get the most out of it. And the good news is that you can actually get your website launched in a day. The VIP day process takes five phases, and at the end of your vip day, if you're ready to launch, your website will be. And you can have more confidence and convert more clients as you drive people to your site.