Creating an EXPERIENCE on your website with special guest Robyn White

Episode Summary:

In this episode of The Solo Grind, I am have a very special guest with me,  Robyn White from RDW Design Studio. Robyn is an incredible web designer and SEO expert. She’s the owner and founder of RDW Design Studio, a strategy-first design studio celebrated for its sophisticated approach to website design. Robyn specializes in providing design and search solutions for interior designers, helping them transform how visitors engage with their websites and step into their next level of success.

Key Highlights

• Creating an experience with your website: Why your website should go beyond being just a digital billboard and instead feel like an inviting space for your audience.
• The power of clear navigation: Tips on keeping your menu simple, user-friendly, and concise—no clever labels that leave visitors guessing.
• Strategic call-to-action placement: How to guide your visitors naturally through your website and encourage them to take action without overwhelming them.
• Balancing creativity and functionality: The importance of pairing visually appealing designs with an intuitive user experience to keep visitors engaged.
• Professional photography matters: Why investing in high-quality imagery is one of the best decisions for showcasing your brand and work.
• Your website as a living, breathing tool: The importance of updating your website as your business evolves to reflect who you are and attract your dream clients.
• White space and breathing room: How thoughtful spacing enhances the user experience and keeps visitors from feeling overwhelmed.
• Auditing your website like a visitor: Teresa's tip for taking yourself on a “business date” to evaluate your website’s user experience.
• Focusing on your main goal: Why defining your website’s primary purpose is essential to its success, from generating leads to showcasing your portfolio.

Links to connect with me... 

Book a Consult HERE! (https://caffeinecreative.io/consult/)

Email me HERE! theperfectblendcaffeinecreative.io

Find me on Substack!

Detailed Show Notes 

(automatically transcribed using AI Technology) 

Welcome to The Solo Grind!

Welcome back to The Solo Grind! I’m so excited about today’s episode because I’ve got a special guest with me—Robyn White from RDW Design Studio. Robyn is an incredible web designer and SEO expert. She’s the owner and founder of RDW Design Studio, a strategy-first design studio celebrated for its sophisticated approach to website design. Robyn specializes in providing design and search solutions for interior designers, helping them transform how visitors engage with their websites and step into their next level of success. Let me tell you—her work is absolutely fabulous.

One of the fun things about today’s episode is that, on paper, Robyn and I are technically competitors. We’ve even bid on some of the same projects in the past! But the truth is, we don’t see it that way. Instead of competition, we’ve built an amazing friendship and a supportive professional relationship.

Today, we’re diving into the topic of creating an experience with your website—something Robyn and I are both incredibly passionate about. Whether you’re designing a website for your business or looking for ways to elevate your online presence, this episode is packed with insights to help you stand out.

Robyn

Thank you, Teresa. I’m so happy to be here with you.

Teresa

Yeah. And as I said, there were a couple of reasons we chatted a little bit before we recorded. There are two reasons why I wanted to invite you to be a guest here. First of all, because I love your expertise and knowledge. You’re honestly one of my go-to people when it comes to advice and things like that. And I love that we’re able to share openly and honestly with each other. But the other reason, which is kind of a little sneaky hidden reason that I wanted to bring you on, is technically we are competitors. We’ve often bid for the same jobs in the past. We both work with interior designers. You’re exclusively interior designers. I work with people from all industries, service-based industries. I don’t like doing e-commerce. So, technically, we are competitors, but we’re not in competition with each other, in my opinion. And I know you feel the same.

Robyn

I feel exactly the same way. And I think we were talking about this before, and I said, “Community over competition,” and it’s so important. We’re first and foremost friends. Even though we met because of what we do—we’re both web designers—and yes, we have bid for the same jobs, neither one of us views the other as competition. We’re friends, we’re a resource for each other, we reach out to each other with industry questions, things like that. And it is something that I am tremendously grateful for. It is something that I feel very lucky to have.

Teresa

Yes. Oh, absolutely. And it’s interesting, too. We’ve talked about this in the past when we’ve bid for the same jobs. Sometimes they go with you, and sometimes they go with me, and it’s always the perfect fit. I love it when they decide to go with you because I know they’re not my dream client, but you are going to take really good care of them. Even though they may not be the perfect ideal client for me, I still have some kind of a dream for their success. Like, I still want to see them succeed. I still want to see them grow in their business. And I know that they’re in really good hands when they decide to go with you because it’s the perfect fit for them.

Robyn

I feel exactly the same way. And it’s interesting because, while we are very good friends and we have a little mastermind group that we’re a part of, and we get together every other week and chat about things, we have very different personalities and very different ways that we work with our clients. I love the fact that someone can come to both of us, and we can both bid for a job, and they can tell which one of us is a better fit for them. And I’m always happy for them, too, when they make that choice because it’s the right choice for them and ultimately the right choice for us as well.

Teresa

Absolutely. And you mentioned the mastermind—I’m glad you remembered to talk about that—because again, it’s that community over competition. This little mastermind group that we have is two web designers and two copywriters, and we get together and share knowledge and share information and share experiences or whatever it is that comes up. It’s always very uplifting, and it helps me realize that I’m not alone in this world, even though I am a solo entrepreneur.

Robyn

Yes, that’s absolutely it. You’re not alone. Because when you are a solo entrepreneur, and let’s say most of us probably work out of a home office, so we’re by ourselves at our computer all day. That community that our mastermind has fostered with the four of us is something to look forward to. Granted, we’re not in person because we’re all over the country—and in Canada as well—but we’re face-to-face on Zoom or Google Meet, whatever it is, and we’re connecting. We know we can reach out to each other. Like you reached out to us earlier this week with a question that you had. All of us responded, and it’s just something where you don’t feel as alone.

Teresa

Yes.

Robyn

And it’s a great thing if you can foster that within your own industry community and have those friends as resources that you can count on and depend on.

Teresa

It is so powerful. So powerful. And a few episodes ago, early on in the season, I talked about building a board of directors. You know, who is your board of directors? Who are people you can go to for advice in certain areas of your life? And you guys are definitely on my board when it comes to business and copy and web design and SEO and things like that. You are part of my board. So thank you for being part of my board, even though you didn’t know.

Robyn

You were there and likewise. Yes, exactly. And I love the idea of creating a board of directors. It’s super important.

Teresa

Powerful.

Robyn

Yeah.

Teresa

Okay, so now let’s go ahead and dive into today’s topic because you have such incredible knowledge and expertise. And I will say, like you said earlier, we have different approaches in how we work with our clients. But one of the things that I love is the quality that both of us provide. Even though we take different routes to get there, the experience that we create in our clients’ websites is powerful and evenly matched because I think you do amazing work. I’ve actually done audits on your websites. So I do audits for a business coach, Nancy. She has me do audits for a lot of her clients. And I’ve had the opportunity to audit some of your websites. It’s funny because I’m like, “Well, of course, this is a fabulous website.” I do a little video component with my audit, and I’m like, “You have a Robyn website. I’m honestly probably not going to have much to tell you, but let me tell you what I think is working really well.” And that’s typically what the audit entails.

Robyn

I love that.

Teresa

Yeah, it’s fun that I’ve gotten a chance to see behind the scenes and just to see how incredible the work you do. So that’s why I wanted to take today for you and me to kind of talk about how we create that experience on our websites. How we work with our clients to create an experience. Because a website’s not just a billboard where you shout out information. It’s not just clever graphics or eye-catching headings. It’s a place to start building a relationship with your future customers. And that’s why you want to give them an experience and not just bombard them with information.

Robyn

Yeah. And I love that you used the word experience because I think something that sets both of us apart is that we really focus on the experience that we’re providing to our clients when they work with us, but then also really stressing the user experience on the websites that we’re designing for our clients. And like you said, one of the most important things is that ease of navigation. So when we look at just—let’s start with the main navigation menu at the top of the website. Something that I always stress, and I know you do as well, is being simple and clear, not cute and clever. And what I mean by that is, first of all, everything doesn’t have to go in that main menu. No, we don’t want to bombard people with too much. Secondly, we want it to be really simple. So let’s just take a blog, for example. Don’t call it thoughts or journal or style diary in the menu. Call it blog. Use the conventional known term that everybody knows. And then, you know, if we’re working with a creative business owner in a creative industry like interior design—yes, be creative and call it style diary on that page. Don’t use that in the menu. You never want somebody to land on your website and question where they need to go. Simple and clear.

Teresa

Simple and clear. And that’s a great example. I was struggling to come up with one. But I love that example because style diary to me wouldn’t grab my attention. If I’m looking for an interior designer and I went to that page, I would be expecting to see mood boards or a link to Side Door or something like that. 

Robyn

Yeah, you would never think it's the blog.

Teresa

I would never think it's the blog. And when I got there and realized that I had to work and read, you know, so I had to work for the information and not just be given some style ideas. Yeah, it would turn me off and I would click back and I wouldn't even go dig into the information. So I think that's a great example of being clear and concise and always, always concise over clever or concise over cute. Clear over cute. I mean, people don’t get that. There’s some odd ones too for testimonials that I’ve seen. I don’t mind a little bit of change-up on that. "Client love," I think, is clear enough. "Accolades," I have a client who uses accolades, and I kind of liked that one. But there are some other ones that I saw for testimonials that really just didn’t grab my attention at all. Yeah.

Robyn

Oh yeah. And even "Contact," you can use "Connect," you can use "Inquire." Everybody still understands what that is. I also prefer one-word names in the menu whenever possible. So I would rather see "About" in the menu rather than "Meet the Team." It takes up less space. It’s still very clear. And you can say "Meet the Team" on the page but call it "About" in the menu so it’s not three words that I have to read there.

Teresa

And I was thinking the same thing with—I’ve seen people use "Get in Touch" for contact, which is clear, but again it’s three words. And the reason I like those one-word navigations as well is when you start looking at responsiveness of the website and the different screen sizes. The thing that a lot of people don’t realize but you have to accept right now, your website is going to look different on every screen size.

That’s part of the whole new world of that responsive design. And it’s not really that new. But as the screen sizes shrink, that menu starts happening, and now you risk having a two-line menu, which is very confusing and often not very optional or operational or functional.

Robyn

Right, exactly, exactly. Yes, I totally agree. One word whenever possible. I also prefer to keep that main menu to five or six max. I never go more than seven because supposedly the brain can’t really even process when there’s more than seven different pages up there.

Teresa

It is a lot. I have one website where I broke that rule too, you know, because it worked for that website. And it’s a medical spa and they have different types of treatments, you know, like the facials and the injectables and things like that. And so it categorized things, and it made sense. It’s a massive menu to try and organize. And so, for that, it worked.

But for the most part, I’m going to say, yeah, we’ve got to keep it clear and simple and concise. And that kind of leads to the next point that we talked about, which is the idea of strategically placing buttons throughout the site. This helps people dig a little bit deeper into your site in a way that’s comfortable and easy and natural and organic.

Robyn

Absolutely, absolutely. And I always like to call those buttons "calls to action." I’m sure you do as well. And I actually like to see the homepage be almost a vertical menu of sorts, right? So it links from the different sections on the homepage to the other main pages of the website. And that, I find, is really good for two things: user experience—so that the visitor, as they’re going down the page, they can hop over to another page easily without going back up to the menu—but it also sets up an internal linking structure, which is really important for Google to follow for SEO. So they know what pages are important. That hierarchy comes from your homepage.

Teresa

I often refer to the homepage as the table of contents. Like, think of it as the table of contents.

Robyn

I love that.

Teresa

Here’s the highlights of what you’re going to find in this website. And this is slightly off topic, but still related, because it’s a question that I get a lot of times: as you’re adding those strategic call-to-action buttons to the different pages, should you open in another tab each time?

Robyn

And what’s your answer to that?

Teresa

No.

Robyn

Right. That’s what I said.

Teresa

I was gonna say, if you’re going off the site—let’s say you have a YouTube channel that’s very active and you want to take people to your YouTube channel from your homepage, your table of contents page—absolutely. Open in a new tab because you’re losing connection with the site. But if you’re going to a new page in your own site, don’t open in multiple tabs.

Because what happens is, now I have 20 tabs, and when I look at my browser and I’ve got—not 20, but 10 or whatever—if I’m more than seven tabs on my browser window, I’m overwhelmed and I’m feeling anxiety. Whether I know where it’s coming from or not, I am not feeling comfortable. And it takes away from the experience of looking at that website.

Robyn

Yes, it does. I agree 100% with you. An external link definitely opens in a new tab, and an internal link should stay in the same tab. Yep.

Teresa

Always.

Robyn

Absolutely. That’s a no-brainer. I love that.

Teresa

It’s a question that I often get, I’ll be honest. It is a common question that I hear either from people who are in the creative vault or taking those free courses that I offer, or new clients that are getting their really first professionally done website at a time. They’re like, "Well, I want to open a new tab so they don’t lose where they’re at." But I’m like, no, no, you really don’t. Because they’re ready to move on. They’re ready to transfer to the next page and to learn more about that.

Robyn

Yeah. And those strategically placed buttons are so important in the sort of user journey of the website visitor and making sure that your—I like to call it—taking them on a journey from curiosity to conversion. Because that’s the whole point of your website, is to get them to convert. Whatever that conversion is for the website owner, generally it’s going to be to contact them, you know, place a phone call, book a call, fill out a form. So we want to gently, through these strategically placed buttons, guide them to learn enough, know, like, and trust us, and then take the action we want them to take and convert.

Teresa

It becomes a natural progression to the other pages where it feels easy and comfortable and you just naturally are guiding them to the next stage of your website, to the next. Your website to discover and learn more about what you have to offer. And that’s exactly what we, yeah, we want to do.

Robyn

Oh, yeah. And I’m sure when you do those audits, because I’ve seen this a lot when I do my own audits, is there’s no primary call to action on the entire website. And that’s a huge—I’ll call it a huge miss. It’s a huge missed opportunity. And I see that a lot when people DIY their own websites because they don’t know about a primary call to action, and they don’t know about strategic website design the way a professional website designer like you and I would. Where that’s going to be one of the first questions we ask our clients. What’s the main goal of your website? Right, yeah.

Teresa

What’s the main thing that we want to accomplish? What do we want them to do? Do we want them opting in? Do we want them booking a call? Like, what’s the main aspect? And like you said. Yeah, I love that.

Robyn

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Teresa

I just had a thought too, that was coming through, that was clear. But it’ll come back to me when you were talking because I love how you’re sharing that, creating that journey, but also getting them in and digging deeper and going to the next page and ultimately accomplishing that goal. Oh, I remember what it was now—it’s how many times do we see, we have the main navigation, it’s done beautifully, it’s perfect.

And then we scroll down the page, and there’s no natural progression to go anywhere else within the website. And that’s kind of part of what we’re talking about with what’s the main goal that you’re wanting to accomplish? You’re wanting people to book a discovery call, or maybe you have an awesome lead magnet that leads to a discovery call that you want them to opt into.

What is that main goal? And we need to drive people to that. And we need to position those call-to-action buttons so that they don’t have to scroll back up and find it. They’ve got to be right there. When we’ve inspired them to take action, we need to give them an opportunity to take action.

Robyn

Absolutely. And to that point, sometimes having a secondary navigation menu in the footer can be very helpful. So when people, if you’re lucky enough that they’ve gone all the way down to the bottom of the page, there are navigation options in the footer and a "to the top" button, a little arrow they can click on.

So if you don’t have a secondary menu in the footer, they can get back up to the top menu really quickly without scrolling. That’s all part of the user experience and just making things so easy for the visitor to get the information they need.

Teresa

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Robyn

I love.

Teresa

All right, so I want to talk a little bit now about the balancing that creativity with functionality, because you and I have seen this. We’ve seen some really heavily creative websites that look fun and stuff, but are hard to navigate.

Robyn

Yeah.

Teresa

And we’ve seen some highly functional websites that really aren’t visually appealing. Yeah, they’re functional and they work, but they don’t check the boxes of attracting and—in the, you know, working with interior designers—visuals are so important, so incredibly important.

You have to inspire these people to start imagining working with you. And visuals are one of the biggest ways you’re going to do that. So talk to us a little bit about how you balance that creativity and that functionality.

Robyn

Yeah, that’s such a great question and such an important topic. And it’s especially important when we’re talking about interior designers, where the work and their visuals is so important. And a lot of them are going after a more premium client. So they want to have a certain aesthetic on their website. And a couple of things that I would say that I’ve seen lately that don’t really work in terms of user experience and engaging content is when we have a font size—so the size of the words is too small. Yes, I see that a lot. And that’s really bad when you—the whole point is to allow people to be able to read your content to get to know you. Having that content also be not enough contrast between the words and the background that it’s on. So something as simple as a white background with a light gray color text, that’s going to be very difficult to read.

So again, that is providing a very poor user experience. And while visually somebody might have decided that it looks pretty, we can’t sacrifice user experience for pretty because many people will just bounce right off because they can’t read what you’re trying to say.

Teresa

First thing. Yeah, absolutely. If I have to struggle to read what’s on a webpage, I’m going to go back to my search engine and see what else is available. Hands down.

Robyn

Yeah, yeah. And then you might want to speak more about the photos here. So I’m sorry if I went off topic with the response, but you know, showing the images of your work is so important. And the—I would say the most important thing is professional photography. And I know some newer designers are going to be like, "I can’t afford that." You really want to make sure that when you’re pricing out your projects that you’re including padding there to allow for the professional photography.

And you want to get it sooner rather than later. Your web designer is going to need it, they’re going to ask for it. It’s going to be very difficult for us to design a strategic and a beautiful website for you without that professional photography. And I’ll give one example.

If we want to use an image that’s full screen size, so going from edge to edge, and you took something on your phone and the image size is, let’s say, 900 pixels across, I can’t use that as a full screen image. It’s going to be blurry.

Teresa

It’s just not going to work. And absolutely, I know that a lot of times new designers especially—and that’s a big part of my target market is the newer designers—they are like, "Well, I’ll get professional photography once I’m established, once I’m, you know…" No. Get it right now. That is one of the best investments that you can get in your journey.

I would say, invest in professional photography before you look at Google Ads or Facebook ads or any of those kinds of silly stuff. Professional photography should be one of the first investments that you do. And like you said, pad that, build that into the cost of the job. But I would also add, if you’re a newbie designer, not all jobs are your dream.

And so be strategic. If you really want to be careful at your overhead and things like that, maybe you don’t pay for photographing a project because it’s not something you want to attract in the future. I recommend that you build your website almost—so I’ve talked about the table of contents, but I also build it as a vision board.

Here’s what I want to create, here’s what I want to attract. Here is who I want to talk to. And every visual should speak to who you want to attract. So you’re going to have jobs that you do because you’re getting started and it’s good experience and it’s money and there’s value in it. You don’t have to put that on your website, though.

Robyn

I love that, Teresa. I love the vision board analogy. And I always say we want the visuals—so the photos of your work that we’re using—we want those to be, A, your best work and B, what you want to attract more of and who you want to work with. So if all of your work has been children’s playrooms and nurseries, but you want to work with bachelors in their 20s, we’ve got a big disconnect then between your visuals and who your target audience is. So, yeah, you want to put in there what you want more of and what will attract who you want to work with.

Teresa

Absolutely. And I will say in this instance, this is where utilizing stock imagery for a little while is a great idea. I actually have a client. She’s well established. She’s been in the industry for years. She does commercial design, and she has privacy agreements with most of her clients. So she can’t share her work because of the offices that she does.

Her website is entirely stock images. Yeah, every stock image was selected strategically. We didn’t just go to Unsplash and find what was free. We paid for good stock images that represented her style, her aesthetic, her focus. She’s very much focused on the health of the office place and, you know, designing things that are going to support employee retention and health and wellness and all of that, along with productivity.

She selected strategically selected stock images. So it’s okay to start with stock images for sure. But you’ve got to have a plan to get your work out there because your work is what is really going to speak for you.

Robyn

Absolutely. I’m all for stock images as long as you’re not representing them as your work in your portfolio.

Teresa

Absolutely. Yes. And I have seen that. I’ve done a few audits where someone was using stock images in their portfolio.

Robyn

Yes.

Teresa

And that’s not okay. Don’t do that. You don’t have to have a portfolio right off the bat. That is the stage that you can add later on when you’ve got a portfolio that really is going to speak to what you want to attract.

Robyn

Absolutely, absolutely. I think, yeah. That professional photography, like you said, that is an investment that I would recommend as well, that you’re making before you’re doing any type of paid advertising on social media or Google. You don’t want to be investing and driving traffic to your website if your website isn’t equipped to convert that traffic.

Teresa

Yes, I like that. Tell us more about that because my listeners maybe aren’t quite sure what we mean by that.

Robyn

Yeah. So you can spend money on organic search, on SEO, on social media advertising, on Google advertising, and you can get eyes on your website, thousands of visitors a month. But if your user experience on your website and the design of your website and the messaging on your website aren’t all working together to, again, take those visitors on a journey from curiosity to conversion, you have just wasted all of that money because they’re just going to land there, not feel like it’s the right place for them, and bounce right off. So you first have to invest in the experience on your website and make sure that’s working well, and then you can take the next step and invest in actually driving traffic—paid traffic to it.

Teresa

Yes, absolutely. And just going to share a little tip. I’ve shared this in other avenues before, but especially for the people who are the solo entrepreneurs that are doing a lot of this yourself, even if you’ve hired a web designer to do this, I recommend that you audit your own website as a visitor. And honestly, what I tell you, don’t sit down at your normal desk where you do all of your admin work and dive in and look at your website because you’re in work mode, and you’re thinking about business, you’re thinking about being the CEO, all the things behind it, the creative genius and all of that. I suggest that you take yourself on a business date, go to a fun coffee shop or a cafe outdoors or someplace different. Take your iPad or a laptop that’s not your normal everyday business and take yourself on a business day and go look at your website from the viewpoint of a visitor.

Robyn

I love that, Teresa.

Teresa

And see, does this feel easy? Does this feel comfortable? Am I able to click on contact when I feel inspired to contact? Use that and just go through the website to feel what the experience is. But it doesn’t work if you do it in your office. I’m just going to say that right now—it doesn’t work. So take yourself on a business date, go to a lovely cafe, a good place for lunch, a fancy coffee shop, wherever you feel good—a wine bar, it doesn’t matter. And use that website as a visitor. That is going to be one of the best indications to you if it is appealing to your dream client because you are the one who resonates with them.

Robyn

That is such a good tip, Teresa. I absolutely love that. And just to add on to that, we should all, as business owners, be looking at our website periodically and making adjustments. I like to view websites as, I call them, living, breathing creatures. They’re not a set-it-and-forget-it type of thing. And as you grow and evolve, as your business grows and evolves, things change, and those changes need to be reflected on your website as well.

So, you know, you might start out in the beginning with offering, oh, I don’t know, let’s say paint consultations, designer-for-a-day, and full-service interior design. And then two years in, you may decide you only want to do full service. So we need to remove those other services from your website, and then probably your ideal client has changed. And that means that the words, the messaging needs to be tweaked so that it’s speaking directly to them.

And this is all a good thing. When we grow and evolve and we need to change things on our website, we don’t know what we don’t know when we first start. And I always view it as a positive thing when I’m like, oh, I need to change the messaging on my website.

Teresa

Well, and it’s funny because we were just talking about the messaging on my own website right before we started recording because some things have shifted and changed in my own business and some things that I thought—directions I wanted to go really weren’t. Like, I started going that direction, I’m like, wait a minute, that’s not where I want to be. And so again, like our websites are always evolving. I mean, I’ve been doing this for, you know, over 10 years, and yet I’m still constantly tweaking and evolving because my focus in business, my dream customers—all of those things—they evolve along with the growth that we have. So it’s important to, yes, visit your website periodically and ask yourself, does this still feel real to me? Does this still feel true to who I am? Because if it doesn’t, you’re not going to attract the people that you want to work with.

Robyn

That’s it. That’s key. That’s key. Yep. It has to be authentic to you. It has to represent you. Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. And like I said, it’s a good thing. And like we were talking about before, this is one of the great benefits of being a solo entrepreneur—you get to decide when you’re ready to make that change, and if it feels good to you, you get to then go do it. You know, you get to pivot. Whenever it feels right, you take the next best step ahead of you. You get to decide what that is.

Teresa

Yes, yes, absolutely. And that’s worth—that’s worth gold to me.

Robyn

Oh my gosh, that’s worth so much more than anything. Yes, absolutely. Well, great. Teresa, is there anything else that you would want to share with our audience here today that you think is just really powerful and important to think about?

Teresa

So one little thing that I’ll say about user experience that we didn’t touch on is white space. I think that is so, so very important. And what I mean by white space is it doesn’t have to be white, but it’s making sure there’s enough—call it margin and padding—around the different components of your website so that things aren’t all smushed together and they’re separated.

And what that does is it gives us time for our eyes to rest and for us to just take a breath. So many times I’ll see sections smushed into the next section or a button smushed into the text above it. And that white space, that breathing room around the elements, is very, very important in the experience your website’s providing.

Robyn

Absolutely. I call it the pause between that allows people to digest the information you’re sharing. And that smushed thing, I call it—it’s kind of, to me, it’s kind of like watching a news channel where you’ve got the ticker going through, scrolling through all the things, and it’s—you feel bombarded with information and it’s almost just over.

Teresa

Not almost. It is overwhelming, and you start feeling a little anxious and uncomfortable. And so you want that pause. You want them to digest and understand what just shared in the previous section before they go to the next section.

Robyn

Yes.

Teresa

So that they have this natural, easy, organic progression through your website content.

Robyn

Absolutely. And that word that you used, overwhelm. An overwhelmed buyer doesn’t buy.

Teresa

No.

Robyn

They will just leave. And that’s where that simplicity in design comes in as well. And yeah, it’s just—it all ties together, doesn’t it?

Teresa

It so completely ties together. It’s beautiful. So, yes.

Robyn

Good. Yeah.

Teresa

Oh, good. Thank you, Robyn, so much for joining me. This was a great conversation. Tell my visitors a little bit more about you.

Robyn

Oh, sure. So I live on Cape Cod with my pug, Jerry, and do web design full-time. I do SEO as well—search engine.

Teresa

You are my SEO expert. I often refer people to you for SEO.

Robyn

You do? And thank. And can I tell them where they can find me, Teresa?

Teresa

Absolutely.

Robyn

Is that okay?

Teresa

Yeah.

Robyn

So I’m very active on Instagram and my handle is RDW Design Studio, and I follow back all interior designers who follow me. That’s my ideal client. And my website is rdwdesignstudio.com if anybody wants to take a look there. But it has been such an honor being on this podcast with you, Teresa. Thank you for having me as a guest.