Iterate & Grow: The One-Page Wonder

Something I wish more people knew before working with developers or managing their websites is this. You should always be empowered to iterate and grow! And by this I mean, take ownership into your own hands. Knock down any walls. Take out sections of your website, or take down whole pages. Edit your website as much and as often as you wish (it can even be daily), and rebuild your website as if it were literally your home.

In that analogy, whether you hire an architect to custom design a home from the foundation up—or you’re someone renting and find out you have only so much control over what colors to paint the walls or what light fixtures to install, from what suppliers—don’t be afraid to make this space fully your own. To the extent you can 😉

My client Ariel Herrera-Molina, a licensed esthetician, proves this concept in the latest iteration of her site.

Ariel and I had worked together last year to build out the Guava Spa website for her spa’s relaunch: a new spa location, branding and name, after four years under a different business name (with 300+ five-star reviews and four practitioners). During the spa’s fifth year in business, the site grew and evolved alongside the spa. Eventually, at 15 pages, it had multiple drop-down menus; service pages for skin care, Reiki, waxing, and The Sanctuary; an events calendar; blog; earned media hub; email list integration with updated lead magnets; and mobile-responsive menu redesign.

Then one day in March, Ariel wrote me saying she wanted to pare down to a one-page website. “I’m just changing, my vision is changing, and I want to honor that,” she wrote.

No problem! Sometimes, in the metaphor, we want to move ourselves across the country or the world. And we can start over from a studio apartment instead of a palace.

It can even be considered ethical for website visitors to have fewer calls to action. This parallels Ariel’s shift in her business to work with overwhelmed clients who desire simplicity and serenity in their services, without fuss or decision fatigue.

All of the former pages are now archived, even if they’re not what people see when they visit her site. While I’m proud of the beautiful website we had built together—I’m just as proud of her current site.

(And it’s a fun one to check out on mobile as well.)

You, like Ariel, can follow intuition. I trust the source and trust where it leads.