Before and After: Website Glow Up for Gingham Books
Gingham Books is an independent children’s publishing imprint creating beautifully designed board books and keepsakes. The flagship title, Rover Goes to Stone Harbor, inspires a growing series of sensory adventures that celebrate real places and natural discovery.
Author Carla Morrone is the creator of the Gingham Tales collection, and she came to me to improve upon her basic, DIY author website.
Before working with me, Carla said:
“I was happy to have a basic website, although I knew there were shortcomings, and I was embarrassed by them, and I also wanted to appear more professional and credit worthy.”
Enter my one day “Glow Up” service!
Authors like Carla hire me to have a professional Squarespace designer solve their website headaches, while they get on with the work they love.
It’s perfect if you have a part-finished, DIY, or outdated Squarespace website. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, embarrassed, or just too busy to sort your website out yourself, I can step in.
In just one focused day, I’ll take your existing Squarespace site and elevate it into a polished, compelling platform that helps you connect with readers, clients, and event organizers.
Let’s take a look at how Carla’s Glow Up day turned out!
AFTER: a professional, beautiful design for Gingham Books
AFTER: More screenshots, showing the Gingham Books pages after our Glow Up day (click to enlarge):
What “before” problems did we solve?
With plenty of beautiful illustrations in the first picture book, the Gingham Books website certainly had potential. However, it was one long page (I’ve split it into two here, so you can see it more easily) and it lacked the overall finesse of professional design.
Although the color scheme was pleasing and the paw prints were a fun touch, as you can see here, there were some unnecessarily large fonts and a few margin troubles too. Plus, the scale of the gingham pattern was distracting.
And with only one page for search engines to visit, Carla wasn’t likely to build up much SEO traction. She needed more room, for upcoming titles, and to position the overall mission of the Gingham Books brand.
What I did:
Corrected font sizes, margins, and spacing of elements
Added more pages, including
An About page introducing Carla as the author and Gingham Books’ mission
A dedicated page for the first book, Rover Goes to Stone Harbor
A page for upcoming titles, in this series and beyond.
Fixed the top menu (broken links frustrate your readers and Google will penalize you for them, too)
Created a more professional footer, complete with (working) email signup form, social media links, privacy policy, and contact information
Made sure best-practice SEO settings were all in place
Tested all the pages across different screen sizes, adjusting where necessary (this is a common pitfall for Squarespace websites - your efforts look perfect on your screen, but elements clash on other screen sizes!).
BEFORE: one long home page (split into two here, so you can see it more easily)
And here’s what Carla had to say, afterward:
“I really thought the whole experience was wonderful! Your professionalism, and strategic gathering of information, as well as billing, was seamless, not to mention your lovely personality and eagerness to assist in this creative project.
I think I was pretty excited about the surprise element! After becoming comfortable with your creativity, and eagerness to work on the website, I really enjoyed this suspense, knowing you were working that day on my site, and then the delightful outcome! Your ability to understand my vision and incorporation of many of my deliverables, was super exciting to see altogether… Especially the part of the movement of the words and the Rover slideshow.
I knew from the start that you were the person I was looking for, as I had been looking for some time, your website, and the way you presented it, was definitely the hook that sealed the deal for me. I will definitely be back in the future to take you up on your services again.”
Ready for your own website “Glow Up”?
If your website needs professional rescue, it’s straightforward to book me for a day to work some magic like this:
Make sure your website uses Squarespace (for now, that’s the only platform where I offer this service)
I’ll take a look at your site, and let you know whether I can help
If we’re a match, you’ll pick your date from my online calendar, pay a deposit to reserve that time, and prepare your wishlist for me to work on
We’ll meet and make a plan, about a week before your Glow Up day
Other popular resources to improve your author website:
Save 10% off your first subscription for a Squarespace website by using the code PAULINE10
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