Congrats! You’ve made the decision to officially launch your website and get your name out into the online world. You’ve decided to go the semi-DIY route so that you can launch a website on a budget. You have your website domain, your hosting site, and your customizable site kit template. Now it’s time for the fun part…customizing your website template.

The great thing about going the semi-DIY route with an easy to customize website template is that the hardest part is already done for you. The website strategy, page structure, and overall design elements have been carefully thought through and designed by our team of experts. This makes it easy for you to jump in and customize your website.

Read on for 4 tips for customizing your website template that will help you infuse your brand, style, and personality on your website while showcasing your value to your dream clients.

Tip #1: Personalize Your Content

When customizing your website template, much of the design work is done for you. One of your biggest focuses therefore will be your content. We recommend starting on this process right away because crafting great content does take some time and thought. 

 

When creating the content and copy for your website, think about personalizing it not only to who you are, but to your ideal customer as well. 

 

As you plan and create your website content, ask yourself what style, tone, and voice you want to portray on your website. Is your brand more serious or more laid back? Do you like to use inspirational words or infuse more humor in your brand? Look at your social media and get a feel for the vibe you’re already putting out into the world. Ask yourself these questions so that when your ideal clients visit your site, they know exactly who you are and can recognize your content. 

 

On the other hand, you also want to personalize your website content for your ideal clients. Dive deep into the reasons why your ideal customers follow you and will visit your website. What content do they love to consume from you? What are they interested in? What is their personality? Are they coming to your website to view your services, buy a product, or read a blog?

 

By understanding your audience, you’ll be more equipped to create content, headlines, and call to actions that speak directly to them and grab their attention. This will also help you decide what types of testimonials and featured content like blog posts, podcasts, or social media posts to feature on your website.

 

Tip #2: Pick Your Colors

The next tip for customizing your website template is to pick your colors. If you already have brand colors, you’ll want to look at your website template and decide which colors will work best with the specific template. If you don’t have brand colors yet, think about your brand power words and search for images using those words to help you find colors that speak to you and your brand. We recommend choosing 6 colors, 3 primary colors and 3 supporting colors. 

 

Once you’ve chosen your brand colors, you can use those to inspire your background colors and textures on your website pages. It’s so important to ensure that your colors and background compliment each other and your images (which we’ll cover in the next tip). 

 

To see how these elements will look together, create a style tile or brand board for a visual representation of your branding. This will be useful not only for your website customization but for all future content creation that requires branding elements. You can even add your branding information to Canva to make customizing graphics easy on that platform.

 

Tip #3: Choose Your Photos

Once you’ve picked your brand colors and backgrounds, the next step in customizing your website template is to choose your photos. This is one of the most critical elements on a website because it helps your ideal customers connect with you and ultimately gets them to stop their scroll and stay on your website. The photos on your website should guide the readers’ eye and help them visualize what is being said in your content. 

 

A website often has a mix of stock photos and brand photos. When choosing stock photos, do your research so that you choose unique stock photos that fit your branding that you haven’t seen before on several other sites or social media platforms. 

 

Whether it’s a stock photo or a branded photo, make sure that the colors in the photo match or compliment the color palette you’ve chosen. If you have too many different colors going on on your website, it won’t be as aesthetically pleasing and will create confusion around your brand. Think about the positioning of the person or objects in the image. For example, an image of a person facing inwards brings the reader into your page content and is more welcoming. 

 

Check out this free photography resource guide for a list of the top stock photo websites along with tips for selecting photos for your website.

 

Tip #4: Select Your Fonts

When customizing your website template, selecting your fonts is a key element in making your content stand out and showcase your personality. While it’s important for your fonts to bring your brand to life, readability is always the #1 priority when it comes to selecting your fonts. Think about your brand and the clients you’ll serve. If they’re more laid back and playful, a script font may be appropriate. If they’re more professional and corporate-style, block text may be the right choice. 

 

Do research to find font pairings that go together and speak to your brand. You may have a specific font for your headings, subheadings, and body text. This helps guide the reader through your content and draws the eye to different sections and calls to action. 

 

Your easy to customize website template will help guide you on what styles of text to include for different parts of your website. You’ll be able to easily plug in your heading font, subheading font, and body text font into your template.

Ready to customize?

Customizing your website template doesn’t have to be stressful. Ready to start checking off the boxes (while counting down the days until launch day?) 

 

We’ll help you take it to the finish line with our free Customize Your Website Cheat Sheet, a guide to help you customize your website template and ensure it’s fully functioning, optimized, and ready to convert!

 

If you’re the entrepreneur that would rather outsource and get their website template customized for them in just a day, we can help you with that too! Check out our Done in a Day Service, where we devote an entire day to YOU as we customize your website for you using your colors, fonts, photos, and copy. Interested? Book your Done in a Day here!