I redesigned my Agency website to boost conversion - FULL GUIDE

This is kind of like a top secret thing for them. Most agencies are afraid to share these things because this is proprietary information. This is a professional level complete breakdown of our high converting agency website. It's something that most agencies don't share because I'm revealing all of our secrets to conversion, to client trust, and to building that trust long term using the website. This breakdown is of the version of our website from a few months ago. We did redesign it recently since then, and the new redesign is fully annotated and explained for all of our Square Blueprint users. They always get it a few months ahead. So, three years of AB testing and talking to all of our clients have led to this, our new website, and it is so far performing three times better than the old version. So, I'm going to walk you through what changed from the old version to the new version, why it works, and why I broke some of my own rules here. Let's go through why our agency website is performing so well. Let's start with the header. And it's worth mentioning that for this site specifically, we bought the license for Helvetica now, the noisiest version of Helvetica that cost us around $300 per year and it was completely worth it because it transforms the website in a big way. We start the header off by framing our experience. Then as a selling point, we show our primary focus when working with clients. I mentioned both websites and apps because some clients thought that we only make websites. It's good to have it right there and very clear. So think of it that way. We do websites and apps. Those websites and apps are high converting meaning more money for the clients and then the framing of it is 25 years of doing that which means that we must be good because otherwise we would have been out of business. In our case this is what's going through the head of the client. But the framing can be completely different. You can just write how many successful projects you delivered if you don't have that many years of experience and that will work too. Instead of high converting, you can use another metric that works for the way that you work for your clients. The idea is that it has to be instantly clear for them. They need to mentally connect these three things, framing, selling point, and what exactly you do. And you need to make it stupidly simple. So no jargon, no difficult words and no meaningless words like seamless, empowering and so on. We simplified the logo and made it in a way where there is a lot of white space on the left side that shifts the attention to the right where the buttons are. This creates a kind of an F pattern that has the CTA buttons and the logos on the ends of it. Because our eyes don't have too much visuals to focus on the left side, they kind of jump naturally to the right where all the things that matter are. This is also why we have the top CTA button also in black and kind of competing for attention with the main one. This is done on purpose and we're going to talk about it in a second. The menu is as simple as possible. Projects, then testimonials, then a client list, and then finally the pricing, followed by the main CTA button. Normally, you can combine testimonials and clients. But in this case, the clients list is just a list of specific projects and testimonials are testimonials. We wanted to split it that way so it naturally connects the logos in the header that are scrolling sideways, the logos of the clients to specific projects later down the page. But of course, this can also be connected. The idea is to always start with your projects in the menu at least because this is what's interesting to people. Sure, they want to know who you worked for previously, but they really want to know what you've made. For a long time now, the idea was to have the top CTA not as visible, so it doesn't visually compete with the main one in the middle of the page. But in this case, we broke that rule and it worked. So, as you can see, it's not all set in stone, and sometimes you really need to test even the obvious. I believe the extra clicks to the top CTA and the fact that they both work even though they're kind of competing for attention might come from that little shift to the right of the F pattern that I showed you previously, [snorts] but we have to test that still. A lot of our clients kept asking whether we only work for big Fortune 500 brands. So, we added the and

startups at the end here. That clarifies that we do all kinds of projects. The second sentence here from working with both Fortune 500 brands and startups is a good one. It works and we asked our clients and they tell us that yes, that makes it clear. The first sentence, however, still needs work. This is not the final version. First of all, the word leverage is not completely clear to non-English native people and some of our clients are like that. So we definitely need to simplify the first sentence and also cross industry kind of sounds jargony but this is good because the site is already doing better and we can identify little points of things that we can fix and improve and make it even better. We have a sidescrolling carousel of the logos of some of the clients we worked for. But in this case, there is a twist because this is just priming for a special section down below that we're going to talk about very soon because anyone can show logos here. And in most cases, people have no way of checking that. So, we remedyed that below. Many companies also lie about the logos, putting logos of companies they never really worked for. And when that comes out, the good clients will actually go away from you and probably stay away. But even if you're not lying, you need to justify the logo somehow. So either show those specific projects in your portfolio or do what we did in the client section. If the project is already out, most NDAs will allow you to write about it. And if they don't, check the chapter on negotiating the proper NDA. Above the fold, we're still showing our work. Two projects in that case, and they alternate between just screens and people in the context of using the product, like the one on the right. That adds both variety and the personal touch. On some of the projects, we already have the stats of how they're doing after a redesign. So, we show that they tripled their signups or revenue, and those metrics will be all explained in a case study. We also emphasize both work types. So both websites and mobile apps right in the header both in the title and in the two visible project types. That's on purpose because we worked on a lot of projects. We can actually pick the projects that have colors like black and green like those two projects at the top that match our brand colors. If we had a blue project near the top, it could clash with our entire branding. This is a small extra touch, but we believe that kind of consistency is what works. Square block is all about green, black, and white. So, having client projects in those colors as well at the top just adds to that consistency. If you want the newest version, including all of our other methods, techniques, and documents, and templates, go get the Squarbot Blueprint link in the description. If you're liking this so far, I think you're gonna love the Squarbot Blueprint because this is always a few months ahead of what I'm releasing on YouTube, plus dozens or hundreds of little tips, tricks, templates, and documents that we used on a daily basis to run a successful sevenf figureure agency for over 14 years now. The rest of the projects under the main ones have obviously different their own color schemes. We write exactly what the idea behind each project was and when there is data to support that there was growth and improvement we obviously show the data as well. Currently we're still working on case studies and once we complete them I will add another video talking about how we use case studies to explain the exact process we use and how to convince clients through case studies that you're the right choice. To make it interesting, some of our grid items are smaller with purposefully left whites space like the one on the left here. And some are bigger to show more screens. That kind of alternating between different project types and project sizes makes the whole portfolio section less boring and a little bit easier to focus on the details of a specific project. Next, it's a bento grid that explains exactly what we do. It has four boxes. So, let's handle the top two first. There is a scrolling list of different industries that we worked for. And that's a very good thing because when a client sees their own industry, it lights a little light in their head that they're right for me. Remember, nobody has the time to think too much or for too long or to parse

information. So, you need to point them in the right direction. If they come to your website and they're looking for help and they're from the fintech industry, if they see the word fintech directly on your site, even in a scrolling carousel, that immediately makes them happy because they get their first confirmation that you're the right choice. And if you think about it from the client perspective, it's not like they want to analyze a 100 different freelancers or agencies. No, they want to find the perfect one for them on first try or within the first few tries. So the sooner you convince them you're the right try, they might not even keep looking anymore. Then we show the conversion rates of typical websites and where we go, but we keep it realistic. We don't say it's going to be 10x because it rarely really is. A problem I often see on websites is that people make those insane claims like 10x, 100x, and so on. It's never really like that. So, if you're looking for a good client, they're usually smart people, and they can see right through that. So, if you say 10x or 100x, they will know instantly that you are just lying and making stuff up. Take a look what's under the titles under the graphs. The first one says, "Bad UI, UX, and SEO practices and missed product potential. " This happens to a lot of companies. Sometimes it's just a little bit of bad UI. Sometimes they're completely missing the product potential because they don't know how to package it for the digital world. In many cases, the reason people are not buying from your client is some of these issues. Or at least one of these issues is on their current site. That's why they want you to help them redesign it. We use the words heristic analysis which basically means using the common UX knowledge from the past and our own experiences and it is jargon. I gave you that but in that case it works because people can Google that part and understand that these are two kinds of optimizations and it also shows that we don't do any magic tricks or black hat SEO or cheating or any kind of shady tactics. This is all things that are coming from our experience and our knowledge, the best practices and obviously your user research. Because if you're making any claims about any percentages, you need to be sure that you can deliver it. One of the biggest differentiators in our case is that we both plan a whole future growth strategy, so not just the product and that's it. And we also explain all of our design decisions. The last part is done through appearing chat messages to grab attention so people understand that working with us is not random. So, let's unpack those two sections quickly. We are brutally honest and realistic. We don't promise anything we can't deliver. And we also explain to our clients always that the first version of the website or a redesign is going to be better for sure, but it's never the last version. It should be tweaked and optimized and you should have that long-term strategy because sure you want to help them get a couple percent more money, more sales from their website or their app, but the idea is to have that percentage growing with time. So, learning from how the user used the new better website or app and then improving it slightly every month, every week or sometimes even every day that shows that they're in good hands. and then you will keep helping them achieve their goals even further. So the money that they're paying you is actually an investment into making more money themselves. Selling long-term strategy is how we differentiate as a company and that's why we can charge more. This is explained in more detail in a dedicated strategy chapter, but I wanted to emphasize how we talk about it on the website because this is very important. Then we show real client testimonials. But there are a couple twists here. One important thing is to ask the clients not to overproduce their recordings. They need to be rough and recorded on a smartphone, preferably vertically, because if they're too overproduced, they're not going to look trustworthy. We mix subtitled video testimonials that you can watch right in place with text testimonials that you can read, so it's not overwhelming. you don't feel like you need to watch a lot of videos, but at the same time, you get both the text and the video. I believe that you do need video testimonials, and it's great to ask the clients that are happy with your work to record them every time, but having some of those text testimonials

is just a little bit easier on the brain because people know that they have the ability to watch the videos, which are just a better kind of testimonial. But before they even click into the video, they can see the snippets from the text one. And with the text testimonials, you can actually check that these are all real verifiable people, not some random stock photos like on most agency websites. This creates a deeper sense of trust because it shows real people that have been working with us before and they were happy. Then we have a section that I call a breather because the previous section was on a completely white background, but it had a lot of different elements. It had the grid of people. So here we change the contrast drastically to a dark background, but a lot of white space. This allows the person looking at the website to stop scrolling for a moment and kind of take it all in. These sections are really good to do a couple times on the site if your website is long and usually after a very heavy and condensed section. So, one that they need to parse mentally for a longer time because it has so much information. Notice how we have two non-friction elements here. One is to book a call and it also shows that we are available. But also, if you don't want to have a call just yet, you can just click and write an email to us. Also, notice how we don't really talk about selling you anything at this point. So, the only risk for a potential client is a quick 15-minute call with me and understanding if we even can help them because I'm honest on these calls. So if a product or company is out of our expertise or beyond saving, I will not take that client and I will tell them exactly why. But for the most part, for most clients, we can actually make a meaningful difference for them, which makes everything that they read so far on the website make more sense. And then we get to the client list because everybody can put some nice logos on their website and pretend like they did those projects. But in our case, we actually have a history of quite a lot of work. So we wrote a little blurb about each project and each client that we worked for. And you can expand it to a full list of 50 main clients. It's a short, easy to understand information about every client and every logo. And it connects to the carousel of logos that you see above because now they start to make sense. They're not just logos in a carousel, but the real tangible projects that we did. And we limited the list to 50 biggest projects that we worked on, but obviously there is more. And you can click to expand that full list if you really want to know more. This shows we're not afraid to actually show our work. This is also something that I haven't yet seen on another agency website. Maybe some agencies are doing this, but I haven't seen it. So to many clients, to many potential clients, this is something unique, something new and interesting and also a pretty much no BS way to show that we've done the older work, that we've done a lot of work. Now, let's talk about the pricing section on purpose. It's called book a design sprint or audit because it gives you that action right in the title. And we only have a simple two-tier offer. You can either buy a product design sprint that's clearly stated, it's two weeks of work, or a one-time audit where we look at your work or your design and give you feedback on how to fix it and improve it. We purposefully omitted all the extra services like we do offer coding the website sometimes and we have that in the FAQ but it's not here because we want to have a very clear pricing strategy where people instantly know what to expect from us and how much will it be. Our main service is on a darker background with higher contrast to attract more attention. The audits are a secondary service. We structure it that way because we want the clients to first focus on the maximum benefit that we can provide by helping them design. But so this is a preferred option. But when they realize they might not have enough money or time for a full design sprint or more, then they have a secondary cheaper option that also is very helpful to them. Now take a look at the buttons. It says book a design sprint because this is something you have to book in advance for an extended period of time and then buy a one-time audit that tells you that the audit is a

one-time thing and you just purchase it like it is a product. The button labels or the CTAs in that case are structured that way on purpose. So they are instantly very clear. There is absolutely no confusion what will happen when you click the button here. It's direct. It's not get in touch. It's not get a quote. It's a direct invitation to pay us money. And this is one of the more important parts of this section. We talked to our clients a lot and they told us, the existing clients that one of the things that they liked about us the most is that they actually work with us. So many popular agencies or influencer based agencies usually just outsource stuff. So they are the face of the company. They do the call maybe but then there are some people in another country for much cheaper doing the actual work. So the work quality is lower and basically it's juniors doing the project while there is a senior trying to sell you on an idea. In our case, there is a very clear disclaimer that we do have a waiting list because you only work with us directly. We don't outsource to anyone ever and that allows us to ensure the highest possible quality of work. When asking our new clients about it, many of them said that this was the last thing that convinced them to actually book that design sprint. Clients can also have very different expectations. So, we have a full list of what you get within either the product design sprint or the one-time audit. We emphasize that you not only get a design, but also you get the strategy and the report explaining our design decisions and how to move the project forward. So, what would be the next steps after that sprint and in the next sprint to maximize your conversions and for you as a client to make more and more money. And if something is not on that list, you can assume that it's not included in the price. Remember how I told you that it's all about what problem you solve and then it's all about clearing the doubts. So, this is our idea on how to clear some final doubts that we might have missed or maybe that specific client has them that most other clients don't. So, if you have any questions about our product design sprints or our one-time audits or you feel like maybe you need something else entirely, you can just write to us. This is a low friction way to solve all the remaining questions and doubts a client may have. Then, we merged an information about me and Diana with an FAQ. And the FAQ is not random questions. These are all things that the clients kept asking about. So, we naturally update them as we go. What I often do with new clients is that I ask them a lot of questions. A lot of questions about what their potential doubts before hiring us were as well. If we get friendly enough after some time, they will give you plenty of information and then you can use that information to find patterns. If there are many clients that are asking a very similar question, we add it to the FAQ. This helps us optimize because obviously if more questions are answered right here on this stage, they won't have to ask them on the call and that will streamline the entire process. But also when a question is very popular, it means that most clients are thinking about it. So it's really good to put it in the FAQ. But for the most pressing or most popular of these questions, we are also planning or defining how we could answer them on the website itself in a more visual and engaging way. I'll give you an example. If you have a no code template building business where you also code the website for the client, if many clients ask about that coding part, maybe you should add a specific section about it with visuals explaining the exact process how building a no code websites and updating them looks like if that's the question that most of your clients are asking. And then you don't need to have it in the FAQ anymore. Then we have another breather section and this one actually gets 40% of all the CTA clicks. That happens because if a client wasn't sure before that point, the FAQ cleared all of their doubts and all of the other potential doubts were cleared by the previous sections of the website. But just in case, there is both book a call or just write an email because email is obviously lower friction. So you can ask any specific questions you may have and

we can answer you that way. The footer adds another kind of social proof, this time journalism and showing only our active high follower pages that have links to them. And the last CTA with our faces. It also works because it's not too overwhelming. It's pretty easy to focus on and it has links for you to check whether we're legit or not. But you know what? To test something, you need to understand it first. So, the first thing that I do on a call with a new client is asking how they found us and what convinced them the most on our website, also what was possibly missing. And in our case, some clients actually told us what was missing. They were missing the case studies, and I completely get that. But they do take a while to create, and we are pretty busy with work right now. We are working however pretty slowly at filling all those case studies with relevant information. But in our case, it can't be just a style guide with some screenshots. It needs to make sense. So for all our clients, we're actually getting metrics and feedback. Some of those you can already see as those little badges on the website itself. But there's going to be a lot of data, a lot of graphs, charts, and patterns that we used to make the client's website perform way, way better. So these things take time. And at least we acknowledge that we're not fully there yet because I believe once we put the case studies out in a format that I believe is going to be the right one for us, then those sales are going to skyrocket even further. The previous version of the website had a huge logo right in the header and the single project up top with the logos and a main overview of what we do. Then a much larger project showcase done in a similar way but not as well planned. The communication around the brand was completely different. And back then we didn't really have all that client data and the client questions. So, we only focused on what we thought the clients wanted to know. We also complicated our offer quite a bit and focused on ourselves a bit too much. This section required sidescrolling which made it a little bit less visible because some people just never scroll. And once again, answering some of the questions we thought the clients would ask. We have worked with clients both big and small. And we've seen it all. We've seen clients not paying, ghosting us, getting abusive, getting angry, getting indecisive. And I put all of that information into a special communications chapter that tells you how to handle all these different kinds of problems while running an agency or a freelance business. This is 26 years of experience condensed into simple conversations in which the chance of you winning is significantly higher if you know what to say. So running a successful agency in 2025 is all about being honest about what problem you're solving and then clearing all the doubts. Something that I've been talking about for the last two or 3 years maybe. It's not about fancy bento boxes. It's not about AI generated heading visuals. It's about the message. Because the one thing that convinces most of the clients right here is that mix of framing, selling point and what we do. Because this is how their own experience, their own website or their own app can be better, can make more money. They don't come to you to hear about you specifically. They how you are going to make them more money. Basically, that's the whole selling point that you should have because 99% of projects are about making your clients more money. So, you don't need a fancy header with a light leak or some gradients everywhere. It's all about crafting that first part, the message, because this is the most important part. And you do it through a type framing exercise. Check the companion book to understand how we do it. And of course, all that comes through rigorous testing. If you get a new client or a new call, always ask questions. Always realize that you can learn from the clients. And even if the call ends up with you not taking on the client and not getting the money, it's still good to take it because you are learning. And that learning is the way to improve things, get better clients in the future, and just grow. All right, thanks for watching this far. Let me know in the comments what you liked or found the most interesting about this particular breakdown so I will know what to focus on next. Of course, you can smash that like button and it's going to really help the channel because I'm

coming back to it. I'm coming back to designing and making things and sharing my journey here. So, thanks for being here and obviously have a beautiful day.