REIKI HEALING SOCIETY BRANDING & WEBSITE REFRESH
The Reiki Healing Society is located in Trinidad, CA, and was founded in 2020 by Carrie Varela. Here, Carrie offers both in-person and online traditional/authentic Japanese Reiki courses & treatments, along with Yoga classes. She also has an online store offering reiki-inspired products.
Why she chose to hire a professional
Carrie successfully launched her website on her own in 2020, but after a few years, she knew it could be improved upon and wanted help
to update the site to match her brand better and position it for increased visibility and growth for her business.
The scope of the project consisted of:
Update branding (logo, colors, fonts)
Refresh key pages of the site and add a new resource page
Implementing SEO basic setup & best practices implemented
To achieve this, we settled on a package of services:
Brand Basics Bundle
2 VIP Design Days
Branding Update
Carrie expressed a desire to update her brand to better reflect the traditional Japanese elements of Reiki along with the nature of the area of the Pacific Northwest where she resides and practices.
I started by updating the color palette and fonts.
Color Palette
Her website's original color palette (shown below) was earthy but vibrant. She liked the green and brown aspect and wanted to have something, but wanted something more in keeping with the coastal locale, the redwood forests, as well as the Japanese inspired elements.
Using those as inspiration, I developed a mood board with images evoking these ideals and, from there, two color palettes. The final color palette, shown below, pulls from those images to incorporate colors found in the redwood forests and the ocean, all while elevating the colors she already liked.
Logo & Fonts
Carrie had two versions of a logo for RHS already. She liked and wanted to use both of them, but she was no longer in love with them. There were some tweaks she wanted.
Primarily, she wanted to change the style of branches and leaves on the tree element to look more like a redwood tree, and then update the colors to align with the new palette.
In addition to the logo icon, the font needed updating as well.
My goal was to choose a font pairing that would work well for her logo but also translate nicely to her website. The original fonts were clean sans serif style but did not have that unique touch that would better evoke her desire for a style that captured a vintage yet Japanese feel.
I chose Halyard Micro because it brings a bit of that Japanese feel with slight angles and points in the letters. However, it remains easy to read! It's unique because it feels vintage yet with a modern touch at the same time.
I chose Aktiv Grotesk for the body fonts because it's crisp, clean, and easy to read and does not distract from the heading font.
The Website
VIP Design Day 1 - Design Refresh:
This project's scope was not to update every page on the website. Rather, during our first Design Day, we focused on updating the most important customer-facing pages and adding a Resources page. Carried could then update other pages as needed since she was comfortable working in Squarespace.
Those pages included:
Home Page
About Page
Reiki Courses
Yoga Classes
New Resources Page
The header and footer of the website were updated as well.
The Design:
The main goal of the refreshed design was to improve the flow of information on the pages, allowing customers/clients to move intuitively through the information.
We also wanted to achieve mobile responsiveness so that users on mobile devices could easily navigate and read the information they need.
Using the new color palette and images to create a cohesive design incorporating more of the nature and Japanese elements so integral to Carrie’s brand was no less important.
I simplified by removing unnecessary or redundant elements, tightening up the copy if needed, streamlining the header navigation, and updating the footer to tie it all together from top to bottom of the page(s).
We also added a section on the homepage to showcase the podcast she hosts. The beauty of this is that this section can be incorporated anywhere on her website if she desires.
Elements used to achieve the design:
Consistent background color to keep the eye from being distracted.
Used dividers between sections to break up content as needed. A simple fine-line wave style plays on the ocean wave element.
Intentional bolding or underlining of text highlights key points and allows for skimming.
Used different images for each service/course so they would stand out and grouped them together to make scrolling and finding information about them was easier.
Below, you can see the ‘Before’ and ‘After’ of two of the major pages to see the changes made. Hover over the images to scroll!
HOME PAGE BEFORE:
HOME PAGE AFTER:
LEARN REIKI PAGE BEFORE:
LEARN REIKI PAGE AFTER:
VIP Design Day 2 - SEO!
The second VIP day was devoted to all things SEO (Search Engine Optimization). As is the case with many website DIY-ers, they know SEO is important, but it can be mysterious/overwhelming to understand how to implement it properly.
Every page on the site was in scope (except e-commerce store pages) for an SEO review and updates.
Here’s how I tackled this!
SEO Review/Update Steps:
Manually reviewed the existing settings/data for every page
Ran a scan of those pages using the SEOSpace plugin (affiliate link)
confirmed what my manual review found
highlighted any other issues I needed to address
got a ‘starting score’ for each page
Updated/created SEO Titles and Page descriptions
Updated links to external sites to open in a new tab
Resized images and add alt-text as needed
Re-mapped URLs as needed
Ensured pages utilized proper use of heading hierarchy and length.
Ran another scan using SEOSpace and was able to show an increase of over 50% on average in the page scores.
At the end of the day, I provided Carrie with a video and report showing the before and after for SEO and all the details of what was updated or implemented. I also provided her with next-step resources so she could submit her site to Google Search Console for indexing, along with other educational resources for SEO that she can use in the future.
The Final Result
At the close of this project, Carrie had a logo and website that truly reflected her vision for the Reiki Healing Society through color, fonts, and imagery.
Visitors to her site have an intuitive and cohesive experience that flows easily and is pleasing to the eye whether they are on a desktop or mobile device.
Finally, she is positioned for improved SEO and is empowered to continue making updates on her own as her business grows and evolves.
I am inspired by the changes you made, a lot less overwhelmed and just generally feel like my website is working for me so much more than it was before. Plus it looks gorgeous! Thank you so much!!! - Carrie
I love working with clients who have a strong vision and clarity about their business, like Carrie.
It was a pleasure helping bring her vision for the Reiki Healing Society forward and showing her what is possible in the future too!
Like what you see? What to Know More?
If you’re thinking about building a website from scratch or re-designing an existing site, I’d love to be of service. Please visit my services page to see how we could work together and book a free consultation call!
