The cobbler's shoes: why I've just given my own website a proper overhaul

There's a saying that the cobbler's children are always the worst shod. The idea being that the person who spends their days making shoes for everyone else never quite gets round to sorting out their own.

I am, professionally speaking, that cobbler.

I spend a significant amount of my working life looking at other businesses' websites, rewriting their copy, tightening their messaging, and gently pointing out that their About page still has a stock photo of someone at a laptop who is definitely not them. And for a while — longer than I'd ideally like to admit — my own website was quietly gathering dust and doing several of the things I routinely advise clients against.

So this Easter, with a bit of down time and a whole heap of Easter Egg, I finally did something about it.

What prompted it

Honestly? A combination of things. I had a proper look at the site with the same fresh eyes I'd use on a client's — and once you do that, you can't unsee it.

The copy was doing that thing where it sounds fine at a glance but doesn't really say anything on closer inspection.

A load of old cobblers, in fact. 

Phrases a few years old like 'compelling narratives that captivate your audience' and 'supercharge your marketing and business success.' The kind of language that fills space but without giving any actual meaning. The kind I'd circle in red on a client's draft these days without hesitation. 

There was also a consistency problem. As a freelancer, I am Emerald Frog Marketing — it's just me - but I work with a trusted network of specialist designers, videographers and photographers when extra resource is required.  But the website talked about 'we' and 'our' throughout, which created a slightly odd impression of a business that was simultaneously one person and a team of in-house people, depending on which page you landed on. 

And the About page. A page that said 'Hi, I'm Jo Evans' — next to a stock photo of a woman at a laptop who was very much not Jo Evans. This has been pointed out to me a few times. It needed sorting.

What I changed — and why it matters

The changes sound simple but they took some thought to get right.

First, I switched everything to first person throughout. 'I' instead of 'we,' 'my' instead of 'our.' For a freelancer, this isn't just a grammatical preference — it's about honesty. When someone is considering bringing in an outsourced marketing consultant, they're making a decision about a person, not a faceless organisation or marketing agency, which I never wish to be. The copy should reflect that.

Second, I went through every service page and stripped out the filler. My test was simple: could this sentence appear, word for word, on a completely different business's website in a completely different industry? If the answer was yes, it went. Phrases like "delivering exceptional results" and "passionate about your success" could belong to a plumber, a solicitor, or a dog grooming salon just as easily as a marketing consultant. They sound professional but they don't say anything specific — and readers sense that, even if they can't quite put their finger on why. What replaced them is more direct, more specific to what I actually do, and more useful to someone trying to work out whether I'm the right fit for them. I also updated the meta descriptions and title tags while I was in there — the bits of text that appear in Google search results rather than on the page itself. They're easy to overlook because nobody visiting your site ever sees them, but they're often the first thing a potential client does see. If your meta description is auto-generated, blank, or still says something like "welcome to our website," you're wasting the one line of copy that has to do the most work with the least space.

Third, I sorted out the About page. New copy that actually explains what I do, who I do it for, and what makes the way I work different. And a real photo. (I am not a natural in front of a camera, much prefer to be behind it, but that is a story for another day.)

I also spent some time on the Portfolio page, which needed freshening up. The client entries now include a bit more context — not just what I did, but why the client needed support and what changed as a result. It makes the work feel more real than a list of services ever can. And while I was in there I updated some of the graphics and images that had been sitting unchanged for a while.

As I explained to my husband, I feel like I've done the website equivalent of finally clearing out the garage — a man-cave analogy that he'd get.

He nodded, knowingly.

The thing about your own website

Here's what I was reminded of doing this: it is remarkably difficult to edit your own copy.

Not because the writing skills aren't there, but because you're too close to it. You know what you mean, so you read what you meant rather than what's actually on the page. The phrases that have been there so long they've become invisible and lack meaning.

This is true for me and it's true for almost every business owner I've worked with. Your website always makes more sense to you than it does to someone landing on it for the first time. Which is why a second pair of eyes — whether that's a colleague, a client, or someone whose job it is — is worth more than another hour of staring at it yourself.

A few things worth checking on your own site

While I have your attention — here are the questions I asked myself that you might want to ask about yours:

• Does the homepage tell a first-time visitor, within about five seconds, what you do and who you do it for? Or does it open with a tagline that sounds good but doesn't actually say anything?

• Does your About page have a real photo of a real person? (If it has a stock image of a generic professional, people notice more than you'd think.)

• Does your copy use 'we' when it's actually just you? Or claim to be personal while reading like it was written by a committee?

• Are there any phrases on your site that you'd wince at if a competitor used them? 'Passionate about,' 'bespoke solutions,' 'going forward,' 'we put our clients first.' If you wouldn't believe it coming from someone else, your visitors probably won't believe it coming from you either.

• Is there anything on the site that's no longer true? Services you don't offer, team members who've moved on, news that's years old?

  
  

If any of those made you slightly uncomfortable, it might be time for your own refresh. It doesn't have to be a full redesign — sometimes the biggest improvements simply come from better words, not a new look or an expensive new website.

And if you'd like a second pair of eyes on it, you know where I am.