As a brand & website designer, I often customize Showit templates for my clients.
While I highly recommend having a designer do your website for you, chances are you’ll need to do it yourself at some point. I commonly see websites that clearly started off with a template but ended up looking messy or not at all like the rest of the businesses branding.
Pick the right template.
It is tempting to pick a cheap template, but it’s important to pick one that you actually like. If you don’t like the design elements or don’t feel that it fits your brand well, you definitely won’t like it after you have tweaked it beyond recognition.
Once you find a template that visually resonates with your brand, look through the pages. Does it have what you need for your business? If you’re hoping for a service page, does your template have one already? Do you like the blog design? Also – this is a big one – is it just as nice looking on mobile? Other pages to look for include an instagram landing page, an experience page, etc.
As a bonus, good templates will have content and copy prompts which is important if you aren’t planning on working with a copywriter.
If you’re looking for a template, the Lyra Studios Shop has luxury Showit templates specifically for creatives like photographers, planners, and any service provider – check them out here.
Implement your branding throughout.
Once you’ve picked your template and installed it, upload all of your logos, install fonts, and add your color palette.
I highly recommend uploading everything into organized folders – A folder for logos, illustrations, favicon, and fonts + folders for your featured galleries.
Maintain consistency.
It is vitally important to stay consistent with your font usage, button colors and sizes, spacing, and more. For this reason, I highly recommend not changing more than necessary on your template.
Something that’s also helpful as you’re working on your template is to keep a tab open with the ORIGINAL template. That way, as you’re changing content, you can take a look and see what the original spacing looks like and can make adjustments to keep it looking professional.
If there are canvases you probably won’t use (such as featured canvases, email list opt-in, etc), I suggest you hide them versus deleting them altogether. That way, you can come back to them when you inevitably need them in the future.
Don’t forget SEO!
In the excitement of designing and launching a new website, SEO often gets forgotten. The good news is, Showit makes SEO so easy. Make sure you head to the SEO Settings tab on each page to create
- A page title for each page with important keywords. Something like “A luxury wedding and portrait photographer serving Hampton Roads, Virginia and Beyond”.
- A meta description – this should be a summary of the page’s content
- Choose a share image.
Once you’ve filled out the SEO settings for each page…
Check, and check again.
Look over everything on desktop AND mobile. Click every single link, button and arrow to make sure they’re functioning properly. It can be helpful to send your website link to a friend so they can test everything. Sometimes when we stare at something too long, we can’t see issues that may stand out to other people.
Customizing your Showit template may seem overwhelming at first, but it doesnt’ have to be. Showit has *lots* of step by step documentation including videos and if you’re really stuck, they are super responsive when you message them via the chat feature.
If this still feels overwhelming and you want a completely done-for-you luxury brand and web experience, I’d love to help! See the custom experience or design intensive.
Lyra Studios creates purposeful brands for women in business so they can be recognized in luxury markets and build connection at every touchpoint. If you’re ready to ditch the DIY cycle and create a brand that will help your business grow, get in touch and let’s get started.
