The #1 Best Tool to DIY Your Website-Interview

Shortcuts:

0:48—An intro to Daniela's background and The Humanista Co.

3:07—What inspired you to create these templates? Why go from custom design to a DIY product?

5:06—Who are these website templates for?

6:46—What do you get when you buy a website template kit?

9:09—What are some of the benefits of using these templates to get your website set up?

Transcript from live interview between Christa, CEO of Christa Davis Coaching, and Daniela, Designer and Founder of The Humanista Co.

Christa:

Hello, Daniela! Thank you so much for joining me on here today. How are you doing?

Daniela:

I'm so good, Christa, I'm super excited to chat.

Christa:

Yes, oh and those of you who are watching—just to give you a little bit of background of Daniela, the work she does, how we know each other, and why we're here today. Daniela and I met years ago working in our old 9-5 jobs, and we both went on separate paths and we ended up coming back together again when Daniela was starting to think about, "Do I want to stay on the corporate path or do I want to become an entrepreneur?" She ended up hiring me to be her coach and during that time she birthed the beautiful business, which is what we're here to talk about today, which is the The Humanista Co.

And I'll let you talk more about what you do there but just to give an overview—it is a holistic web design and branding company for conscious service-based entrepreneurs. And as we were working together, I immediately just saw Daniela's talent and saw the work that she was doing with her clients and I ended up hiring her to do my rebrand and my website and:

The results that I have gotten, seriously, the results that I've gotten from investing in this work with her have been incredible. And when I look at your work, Daniela, compared to some other websites I see, it's just so quality, it's so incredible.

And why I am bringing Daniela here today—so for those of you who are watching—is that she is launching these new website templates. Do-it-Yourself. These beautiful templates that are great for people who are starting out in their own business or even people who have been in business for a bit but they've never really invested in a website. So I'm bringing Daniela on here today to tell you about her work, tell you about these templates, and also—I think I covered everything but Daniela, I'm going to turn it over to you if you just want to share just a little bit more about your background and what you focus on.

Daniela:

Yeah, wow, what an amazing intro! Really hard to top that, Christa, you pretty much covered it all. But yeah, like Christa said, I birthed The Humanista Co. It is a holistic brand and web design company. And we really focus on working with, in particular, female service-based entrepreneurs who have a—I call it a conscious mindset—so women that really are purpose-driven and really care about making an impact through their work. So that's something I personally love to do. Love the clients I work with and, yeah, we're here to talk about these new website templates. So this is kind of the big announcement for it, which is really exciting.

Christa:

Yeah, and yes I'm so excited to give a sneak peek and I have seen the templates and you can see them and they are just stunning and unbelievable. So tell us more—what inspired you to create these templates? Because I know before you were doing more one-to-one custom work. Why pivot and offer these templates?

A glimpse at some of our stunning Squarespace website templates from the shop

Daniela:

Yeah, that's a really good question. So as I've been doing one-to-one custom work, I've been noticing a pattern with a lot of my clients. It seems that everyone's coming to me for a rebrand. So all of my clients are amazing women who've probably been in business at least a year, maybe a couple of years, and I was starting to notice the gap. I wasn't really coming across any brand new business owners and this made me start to think about, "How can I serve brand new business owners who maybe don't have, you know, a full vision of what they want for their website or even what their business represents (because it's so new)."

But I still wanted to be able to offer a service or a product that can help these brand new business owners just get off the ground and have a beautiful website to show the world, to start sharing their voice and their gifts through this.

So I think that's really what inspired me just to kind of fill that gap and be able to offer something affordable and beautifully designed for new business owners.

Christa:

Definitely. I love how you're filling in this gap here because I know for myself, you know, my first website—when you're just starting out in business it's like you do it yourself, everything, and you don't really have a huge budget to play around with. So I know my first website, it just kind of strung together and it did the job, you know, it did what it had to do, but sometimes I do wonder though—if I had something like this template to work with in the beginning— what that could have even done for my business from the start. So I think this is fabulous that you're offering this. Tell us more about who are these templates for?

Daniela:

Yeah, that's a good question. So the website templates are for, specifically, service-based entrepreneurs. And I do tend to target it more towards more of a female crowd. I mean, could be for men and women, but the aesthetic I would say is a little bit more aligned with sort of a female perspective, you could say, so I would say yeah, female service-based entrepreneurs who are just getting started or maybe they've been in business, you know, a couple of months, maybe a year but really just want to kind of elevate that aesthetic and have a beautiful strategic website to show off their services.

Christa:

Awesome. So, new in business or even people have gone in business—you might have already been in business but might not have that online presence yet. So starting out with a website or, I'm guessing, if people could probably ditch their website and start over with one of these templates as well?

Daniela:

Yeah, you totally could do that, you could definitely ditch your current website and move on over to one of these templates. And they're all hosted in Squarespace, just to make that really clear, that is my favorite platform. And Christa knows because when we built her website, we moved it from Wix to Squarespace actually, so it's my favorite easiest-to-use platform that I've seen.

Christa:

And an emphasis on that. And I just want to bring that out—you said easiest to use—so part of these templates, you're not just giving them a template and like figure it out yourself. Tell us what else comes in the template package?

Daniela:

Yeah! Lots of things come in this package. First, I wanted to make all of these templates super user-friendly, so instead of, you know, editing graphics for the templates in something like Photoshop or these more advanced graphic design programs that not everyone has access to, all of these templates can be fully customized in Canva. So they're really user-friendly. There's zero coding involved, and you can edit all background colors and graphics in Canva to really customize it how you want. It's set up with eight video tutorials, so you'll be watching me.

I'll be kind of holding your hand the whole way through to guide you through the entire building and customizing and launching process. There's a branding lesson as well so I'll teach you how to put together cohesive photography, how to create your own color palette from that—it's a really easy and free way, kind of a secret way, that I'll teach you. And also how to put together a mood board, really simple process to kind of guide your entire customization process so the branding piece is kind of like a DIY version of working with me. So it's a lot of fun.

Another look at our high-end Squarespace website templates from the shop

Christa:

Oh, I love it! And even some of these things—I didn't even realize you had that branding component—and that's huge. I want to go into the benefits like why have a website, I want to talk about that in a second. But it's not just about having a website, it's about that consistency in your brand. It communicates a message to your clients.

So the fact that you're not only helping people set up the website, but also how to have consistent visuals. have a mood board in a sense, like what do you want to communicate through your brand, that is huge how this all comes together.
And I know, just speaking from my experience—having my website branded with a great user experience, which you specialize in—was a game changer.
It's not just about having a beautiful website, it's about what that website can do for you and growing your business.

So I would love to hear from you—what are some of the benefits of using these templates to get your website set up?

Daniela:

Yeah, another great question, Christa, I love your questions [laughter]. So I'd say the main benefits are—number one—just the freedom that comes with this. So when you build your website from a design template, a professionally designed template, you will get the freedom and the knowledge to go in and customize this yourself. So you will learn how to build and manage and edit your own website without the need to hire an outside source for your small changes. You'll be able to go in and change it whenever you want, so you don't need to go and pay a designer every time. So there's a lot of freedom and it's very empowering to know how to build and change your website yourself.

The second is the flexibility. So I think to be able to customize this website, like, completely change the look of it from start to finish is another benefit that you get with these templates. You can really change it however you want it to look for your brand and really make it feel like the essence of who you are.

And I would say another benefit is, not only are these templates beautiful, but they're really designed strategically.

So my goal was to really help my customers eliminate the guesswork when it comes to building your website from scratch. So I know a lot of people struggle with, you know, how do I write my website copy, and then if I write it, how do I and where do I put it? You know, what goes on what page, how much should I write, how do I make everything cohesive, and how do I create a great user experience for my audience? You know, how do I lead them from the home page to the main goal which could be to contact me or to book a free consultation call, for example.
These website templates are already strategically designed to convert your audience into clients. So it totally takes the guesswork out of this.

I forgot to mention before, but another thing that's included with these is a Website Writing Workbook. So it's a start-to-finish workbook. Christa and I used something similar with her custom design, but it will guide you through the entire copywriting process for every page on your website. So it's another little bonus that I threw in.

*Examples of some of the included brand bonuses in each* *website template*

Christa:

Oh, I mean what's not to love about this? And yes, I love the freedom, the flexibility for entrepreneurs. So it's easy for them but also yes, right, you don't a beautiful website that's just pretty—that's great—but you need that strategic lens and also all these bonuses you're including with the writing and everything, I mean, that is huge.

And I'll just add my two cents in there—I think what's also great about this is that, as an entrepreneur, I'm constantly evolving and a lot of times you're evolving very quickly. So to be able to have that flexibility and be able to easily update your website—that is huge. So thank you so much, Daniela, for coming on here. I know with a lot of clients who are starting their businesses, the website question comes up.