Experienced Website Designer In The Spotlight For 1 Day

Wonderful World of Websites | Website Wonder Woman

Whether you are a budding website designer yourself or just like to find out more about what I do, I've decided to put myself under the spotlight for just 1 day. Please, delve in and discover what a typical day is like for an experienced website designer.

An experienced website designer's office, a desk with an Apple computer and a window with a view.

The first thing that I want to say is every day is different!, even for an experienced website designer like myself!

When I first began creating websites, as a business back in 2015, I was working during the day and creating websites in the evening. When I left my job, most days were the same. I was in the house, looking after my children and naturally doing a mountain of household chores. In between all this, I was creating websites. However, it soon turned around. Before long, I found less time to do chores because I was spending more time creating websites! I had developed into an experienced website designer, in demand.

Networking

In addition to this, I did a lot of networking. Fortunately, because I was a member of quite a few networking groups, I was the only experienced website designer present. As a result, I made a lot of contacts very quickly and gained a lot of work with minimal effort. I just had to turn up, chat, something I love to do, and the work came in.

Experience over Time

As I became an even more experienced website designer, I expanded my business. I started to offer support and training, and this is when things became a bit more hectic. Indeed, as the support work increased, I seemed to be working around the clock!

I'm now 10 years into my website business journey, and things are a lot different. I now have a small team. Even so, despite their support and being an experienced website designer, it's not always plain sailing. Things can get very crazy, very quickly, so let me tell you what life is like on both a typical day at the office and a typical day out of the office:

graphic of a blonde female experienced website designer working at her desk

A Typical Office Day for an Experienced Website Designer.

When I wake up, the first thing I tend to do (after getting dressed, etc.) is to go for a walk. Because I spend most of my day sitting behind a desk, I try to get at least a 40-minute walk in before I have breakfast. Then, it's a quick clean of the house before I drive to the office.

Luckily, the office is only a 5-minute drive away or a 30-minute walk, so sometimes if the weather is nice, I walk there and home.

The first thing I do is set myself up for the day. This involves having a quick check of my emails and creating my to-do list for the day. However, this can change by the hour!

As I said, I no longer work alone either. As an experienced website designer with a growing business, I found I needed more 'hands to the pump'! My wonderful team keep my to-do list updated and, as we all share it online, a lot of the support work gets done by them now. As a result, I also keep an additional list of things I'm personally working on on my desk.

A great deal of my office time consists of Zoom calls, more than actually working on websites. These consist of client catch-up calls (to go over where we are and make tweaks), training groups, one-to-one calls and, of course, the ever-popular discovery call. I try to allocate my call days to Tuesdays and Thursdays, but if I've got a few website clients currently live, it may be more. Calls are usually from 10.30 am until 3 pm, with a break for lunch.

In between calls, I obviously work on websites or help out with any support work. This is usually an hour before calls and an hour after calls.

If it's my turn to make food in the evenings (yes, even as an experienced website designer, I still have to do my share of the cooking! 😂), then I'm usually home after my calls are finished to prepare the food.

We cook everything from scratch, and with 5 adult children living in the house, as well as my husband and me, it requires a lot of meal planning! My husband loves to cook, whilst I tend to use my Thermomix, which is a lifesaver! I just plan the recipes for that week so I can just click the screen, pull out the ingredients needed, and the machine does the rest of the work, beeping when I need to add an ingredient. This gives me the chance to carry on with client work and a general clean-up of the house, before everyone else comes home.

As a team, we can be working on anything from 1-8 website builds and numerous support hours for a variety of clients each week. We work from a list, in order of when clients email with their requests, but we often receive urgent requests, such as sites going down, hacks etc. As the most experienced website designer in the team, I usually deal with these.

Graphic showing 3 differnet people icons all linked up to illustrate networking for an experienced website designer

A Typical Non-Office Day for an Experienced Website Designer

If I'm not in the office, I'm either out with a client (although they also come to the office for meetings and training) or I'm at a networking event. As I mentioned earlier, after referrals, this is where I generate most of my new business leads.

I LOVE networking, because I am not just an experienced website designer, I'm a people person too, and I love nothing more than mixing socially with other business brains. I don't go just to build my own business and make connections, but to learn more about what everyone else does. Consequently, I have plenty of people I can refer when my clients ask for help. Oh, and let's be honest here, I especially love the events that involve food! 😂

If they are not all-day events, I'm usually in the office before or after. Naturally, my time then is spent like the aforementioned office day.

I try not to work evenings or weekends, but it depends on the workload. I am also trying to fit in more time to grow my own business. This involves planning blogs, social media, learning more and keeping up to date with new things in the website world (such as AI).

Although I do find I get smaller tasks done quicker in the evening, whilst watching a re-run of one television show or another. I don't tend to watch TV otherwise, preferring to go up to bed around half 9 to read for an hour.

Naturally, I also keep in touch with the team (especially Sara Roddis, who is my right-hand woman!). As a result, we all know what we are doing. Consequently, we usually get things done to a high standard as quickly as possible.

A Day in the Life of an Experienced Website Designer

I love how every day is different. On a lot of days, apart from a few support hours already booked in, we often have no idea where the day is going to take us or what work will get emailed through (which it does regularly every day) - great for my ADHD brain!

Before having a team, even a year ago, the majority of my day as an experienced website designer would be spent answering emails and providing support. I was doing the website creation in the evenings to try and keep on top of things. With regular breakdowns and exhaustion!

But recently, I went on my first holiday for a whole week. I didn't have to check in with work at all, everything carried on as normal, with no massive pile of work to come back to.

It was amazing!

For some reason, as humans, we are curious about others and how their life works. So, if you are interested and want to know more about myself and the team's typical sign up to my Weekly Website Wisdom email newsletter. You'll also recieve website tutorial tips and all the latest website news!

Help ChatGPT find your website a laptop with a megaphone coming out of the screen

I know that sounds ridiculous, but spend a few minutes browsing small-business websites, and you will see why it matters.

For example: A homepage might say: "Helping you achieve your goals." That's great, but what goals? Who are you helping?

A web visitor might work it out from the logo, photographs and navigation. Machines have less tolerance for ambiguity.

Compare that with: " We provide commercial cleaning services to offices, schools and healthcare businesses across South Wales."

Suddenly, there's much less to decipher. Who are you? A commercial cleaning company. What do you do? Clean commercial premises. Who for? Offices, schools, and healthcare businesses. Where? South Wales.

Clear website copy isn't unsophisticated copy. If you want to help ChatGPT find your website, clarity can be a big advantage.

3. Create Proper Pages for Your Main Services

One mistake I regularly see is businesses trying to squeeze everything they offer onto one service page. Imagine a building company offering extensions, loft conversions, kitchen renovations, and garage conversions. Giving each important service its own useful page creates far more context than mentioning all four in a short bullet list.

A strong page can explain:

what the service involves;
who it is suitable for;
common questions customers ask;
the process;
relevant experience;
examples of completed work;
geographical areas covered.

This is not only useful information for potential customers, but also useful for conventional SEO and will help ChatGPT find your website and understand exactly what your business provides.

However, a word of caution. The important word here is useful. Creating 30 near-identical pages simply to target 30 slightly different phrases isn't the answer. Websites are ultimately for people, so create pages because you have something worthwhile to tell them.

4. Answer the Questions Your Customers Really Ask

3d speech bubbles with Q & A in them for Help ChatGPT find your website blog

This is where good blog content becomes particularly valuable and can help ChatGPT find your website.

People often interact with ChatGPT and other AI bots in a conversational way. Rather than searching for something like: "loft conversion Cardiff", they might ask "Do I need planning permission for a loft conversion in Cardiff?" or "Is my house suitable for a loft conversion?". You get my drift.

Think about the questions customers ask you on the phone, in emails, during quotations, or at meetings. Those questions can become extremely useful website content. And don't limit yourself to just obvious FAQs. Some of the best content comes from the questions that require actual expertise to answer: comparisons, costs, pitfalls, misconceptions, alternatives, and situations where one option is better than another. That is where your knowledge becomes valuable. Put that into blogs, and it will help ChatGPT find your website.

5. Don't Just Say You're an Expert - Demonstrate It

Almost every business website claims some variation of: "We pride ourselves on providing a professional, high-quality service." The problem is that anybody can write it. Evidence is much more persuasive.

If you want to help ChatGPT find your website and understand why your business might be a credible source, then you need to give your website substance.

That could include detailed case studies, named authors with relevant experience, customer reviews, original photographs, accreditations, qualifications, awards, research or data you've produced, and genuinely knowledgeable articles/blogs.

A case study saying: We recently completed this project for a client in Newport", isn't particularly informative. Explain the problem. What did the customer need? What did you recommend? Why? What difficulties arose? How did you solve them? What was the outcome?

That is useful information for humans, and it gives search and AI systems considerably more context about your real-world expertise.

6. Make Your Location Clear

Naturally, this is particularly important for local businesses.

If you are an electrician serving customers across South Wales, make that clear on your website. Your address, service areas, and contact details shouldn't require detective work to find.

Your About and Contact pages can reinforce where you are based, while individual service pages can naturally explain areas you cover. However, avoid creating dozens of thin location pages where the only difference is swapping one town name for another, like "Electrician Newport", "Electrician Cardiff", and "Electrician Cwmbran."

That's not useful content. If a location genuinely warrants its own page, give the reader something specific and worthwhile.

7. Build Your Reputation Beyond Your Own Website

Your website doesn't exist in isolation.

If you claim to be a leading expert in your field but nobody else on the internet appears to know you exist, that's not a particularly convincing signal. Therefore, I want you to think about your wider digital footprint.

Are you listed accurately on relevant professional or industry websites? Have local publications mentioned your business? Do reputable websites link to you? Are there genuine customer reviews? Have you contributed expert comments or guest articles elsewhere?

You see, digital PR, quality guest blogging, and traditional link building still have a place. However, the aim shouldn't be to scatter links across hundreds of low-quality websites to help ChatGPT find your website. On the contrary, it's to build a recognisable business with a credible online presence.

8. Write Content Worth Citing

Graphic woman sat at a computer with pages of content coming out of it

This may be one of the biggest opportunities created by AI search.

If everybody writes a generic article called "10 benefits of X", then there is very little reason for any search or AI system to favour yours above the others. To help ChatGPT find your website, you need to give it something better:

Share your experience.

Explain what customers commonly get wrong.
Compare two approaches and say when you'd choose each one.
Publish original examples.
Answer awkward questions.
Discuss pricing honestly where possible.
Challenge a commonly repeated piece of industry advice if you disagree with it – and explain why.

The internet doesn't desperately need another 800-word blog saying the same thing as the previous 100 ones. What it does need are people who actually know their subject sharing information that isn't available everywhere else. Tricky, yes. Impossible, no.

9. Don't Forget Traditional SEO

As I mentioned right at the beginning of this article, trying to help ChatGPT find your website doesn't mean forgetting Google and other search engines. In fact, as I'm sure you've realised by now, many of the fundamentals overlap.

You still need a technically sound, crawlable website with logical navigation, descriptive page titles, useful headings, strong internal links and well-written pages focused on genuine customer needs. Ultimately, your content should make sense to a person first; I always stress this to my clients. There is little to be gained by contorting every single paragraph into something you imagine AI or search engines want to read.

Cater for your customer. Ensure your website clearly explains who you are, what you do, where you operate, and why you know what you're talking about. That's what they need to know, and by doing that you are already building a much stronger foundation for both traditional and AI-driven searches.

Help ChatGPT Find Your Website - But Write For People

Help ChatGPT find your website a 3d graphic of a person in front of a laptop with books and text

AI is changing how people discover information online, but that doesn't mean websites suddenly need to be written for robots. Quite the opposite. After all, humans, your potential customers, are asking ChatGPT the questions. So, if you want to help ChatGPT find your website, you must make it clear, informative, and more authoritative for the people you're trying to reach.

Follow the guidance listed above. None of it is particularly technical (save point 1); it is simply about making sure you have good website content. The difference is that today, a well-written website isn't only helping a potential customer decide whether to contact you; it may also help ChatGPT find your website and decide whether or not to list it in response to a query, ultimately driving fresh traffic your way.

If you would like help reviewing your website content, or creating quality blogs that appeal to both humans and bots, please do not hesitate to get in touch. My name is Heather, and I'm The Content Creator.

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A bit about the author

Heather founded The Content Creator nearly three years ago, combining her love of writing with a genuine passion for helping small businesses and solopreneurs get seen online. She supports her clients with everything from website copy and SEO to AI search visibility, newsletters and social media, taking the stress out of creating content that not only sounds like them, but helps their business grow.

If you need a helping hand with any of these areas, Heather is your go-to girl! We can speak from experience, too, because she works on our own website, helping us keep up with the ever-changing world of SEO and AI search and making sure our content continues to work hard for our business.

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