News from our team, events, and communities we support
We started our ON & OFF THE CLOCK series with a heartfelt gratitude to the dazzling women of SiteGround who bring boundless creativity and expertise to our team and community. First, we introduced you to Sophia – one of SiteGround’s web & graphic designer powerhouses that brings our content to life.
Now, we want you to meet Velina – one of our human resources experts who carries an adventurous spirit with her wherever she goes.
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March is here, and with it comes an amazing celebration of womanhood – International Women’s Day. This year, we’re turning our spotlight to the incredible women at SiteGround who bring professionalism and personality to everything they do. We believe that a supportive workplace that values each individual leads to a ripple effect of positive energy that extends far beyond the workspace. In our series, “ON & OFF THE CLOCK,” we’ll be showcasing the stories of some of the women who have been instrumental in SiteGround’s growth, sharing their experience of navigating work and life with a smile.
Meet Sophia – SiteGround’s web & graphic designer powerhouse who brings creativity everywhere.
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Last December, while everyone was in the whirlwind of the end-of-year Holidays, among the SiteGround team there was a different excitement in the air. We had just announced our support for the World’s first human-powered rowing expedition from the Antarctic – and our whole team was anticipating the start of the adventure, planned for January 2023.
Fast forward to a little over a month later, the mission was successfully completed with extraordinary success and 8 Guinness records! As one of their main sponsors, at SiteGround we are extremely proud with the accomplishment of the crew, but even more so with their cause – the petition to help prevent the overexploitation of the once pristine marine environment of the Southern Ocean.
It all started in November 2022, when we decided to hold an inspiring internal event for the SiteGround team in our HQ office. We had invited Bulgarian entrepreneur and adventurer Stefan Ivanov, who already had 2 Guinness Records with his son Maxim, awarded for their astounding journey, called NEVEREST. For NEVEREST his son and himself spent 105 Days across the Atlantic in the hurricane season in a rowing boat they built themselves in their garage at home.
During the meeting with the team, Stefan revealed that he was about to become part of another expedition with even bigger stakes and cause – to help protect the environment of Antarctica. The upcoming mission resonated deeply with the inherent values of the SiteGround team – to challenge yourself, raise the limit of what’s possible, and live with purpose. But it also highlighted our need to care and take action for our planet and our personal and collective responsibility for its protection. In the words of our co-founder, Ivo Tzenov, “The courage to keep doing what you believe in, despite that everyone tells you it’s impossible, is no stranger to us. It’s exactly what’s been driving our work and success at SiteGround from the start. But the mission had our support also because of their cause and stand for the environment, which is also something that we at SiteGround firmly believe in”. So it was only natural that we decided to support this endeavor.
The crew of the Shackleton Mission included 6 leading explorers and adventurers from 5 countries – Captain Fiann Paul (Iceland), Lisa Farthofer (Austria), Jamie Douglas-Hamilton (United Kingdom), Brian Krauskopf (USA), Mike Matson (USA), and our home-country representative Stefan Ivanov (Bulgaria). The expedition departed across the Southern Ocean from the Antarctic King George Island to South Georgia Island aboard their boat, Mrs Chippy, on January 11, 2023. Their 850 nautical mile journey passed across what is regarded by many as “the most dreaded bit of ocean on the planet”. It retraces the voyage made by Sir Ernest Shackleton and 5 of his crew in 1916 that saved the lives of all 28 members of Shackleton’s previous Endurance expedition.
The 2023 Shackleton Mission was conducted under the flag of “THE EXPLORERS CLUB”. Established in New York in 1904, the club has been supporting scientific expeditions of various disciplines and uniting its members in the bonds of good fellowship. It’s the same club, whose flag graced the first expeditions to the South and the North Poles, mount Everest, and even the Moon!
The whole SiteGround team followed the Antarctic mission’s journey closely thanks to the online diary of the Bulgarian representative in the crew, who even managed to post regular updates along the way! On January 17, 2023, the mission was completed and the team landed safely on Laurie Island (South Orkney Islands) after rowing 777 km (420 nautical miles) in the Southern Ocean in 6 days. The row meets all requirements of the Ocean Rowing Society and qualifies as a successfully completed polar ocean row and won 8 Guinness Records:
🏆 First human-powered expedition from the Antarctic
🏆 First human-powered expedition on the Southern Ocean South to North
🏆 First human-powered expedition on the Scotia Sea
🏆 The first human-powered expedition completed entirely within the Southern Ocean
🏆 Southernmost start of a rowing expedition
🏆 Fastest row on the Southern Ocean
🏆 Longest distance rowed on the Southern Ocean
🏆 Fastest Polar row
The crew of the Shackleton Mission were aiming to challenge what’s humanly possible, but their mission went beyond that. It is true evidence that with the right team, the right partner, and support, we can accomplish anything.
That’s also true for the mission’s even greater goal – to prevent the overexploitation of the once pristine marine environment of Antarctica. The petition started by the crew calls for the designation of new marine protected areas of at least 4,000,000 km2 in the Southern Ocean – the largest marine protection in history. Given that over 90% of the large marine species in the oceans are already in danger of extinction, with your help we can stop this.
Read more and sign the petition:
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2022 is coming to an end, and here at SiteGround, we marked another winning and eventful year. We worked hard on enhancing our services and tools and fine-tuning our hosting environment to be even faster and safer for our clients.
Now it’s time to wrap up and look back on the whole year! Go to our 2022 Recap, unlock our milestones, collect points, and enter to win a pair of custom noise-canceling BOSE headphones!
In the past year, we took our hosting environment security and speed to yet another level. Some of the service enhancements and cutting-edge tools we launched are:
Our custom plugins for unmatched WordPress speed and security – SiteGround Optimizer and SiteGround Security – have together been installed nearly 3 Million times already. This year marked another big step on this journey, after we released both plugins for free use by everyone, regardless of the hosting platform you are using. In less than a year, SiteGround Optimizer has had more than 1,000,000 active installations on top of the 2+ Million SiteGround users and is ranked among the top 3 performance optimization plugins. The SiteGround Security plugin is close to 1 Million new installations and is ranked as one of top WordPress security plugins by the community.
In 2022, we also increased the WordPress memory limit for all of SiteGround clients in response to a growing demand in the community for raising the default WP memory value and to accommodate the ever-growing development of WordPress sites. The new limit of 256 MB on our servers means our WordPress clients have more room to expand their WordPress sites right out of the box.
In 2022, we introduced 4 new Data Centers and 7 CDN locations across Europe and the USA. Our new geographical locations provide better website performance and faster content delivery.
Our clients can now host their websites as close as possible to where their visitors are to ensure faster page loading time and better user experience.
Being customer-driven has always been a cornerstone for us. Our clients’ feedback is the driving force behind everything we do at SiteGround. For this reason, each year we ask our customers to rate our efforts and services throughout the year.
This year our client satisfaction rate remained a steady 98% on our annual end-of-year survey. And to share our gratitude for our customers’ input, we’ll plant a tree through TreeNation for each person who completed the survey.
Revisit these and more annual accomplishments in our SiteGround Year in Review and enter our raffle for a chance to win a pair of custom noise-canceling BOSE headphones! And that’s not all – get extra entries by sharing our recap on social media with #SiteGround22 by January 9, 2023!
2023 is around the corner – supercharge it with some extra points from 2022 and SiteGround, and let’s see what it has in store for us!
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Did you know that even your website makes an impact on the environment? To celebrate Earth Day, SiteGround launched an educational campaign that helps website owners calculate their site carbon footprint as well as offer optimization tips and tricks to help reduce CO2 emissions.
However, our efforts did not stop there. It’s important to remember how all our individual everyday actions add up to a cleaner and healthier Earth. We invited our client, Michelle Li, to share her insights on how we can live a greener life. Hosted on SiteGround, she founded clevercarbon.io with a mission to build a carbon literate society and help people make clever carbon decisions for themselves and our planet.
In her quest to understand and reduce her carbon footprint, Michelle was unpleasantly surprised that most of the websites she visited were full of confusing technical data. How can someone understand their carbon footprint when it appears that the majority of educational websites are overly complicated?
That motivated her to start Clever Carbon, with the mission to educate people about their carbon footprint in a fun, hip, and relatable way. The Clever Carbon team manages to simplify the complexities of carbon footprint data so that everyone can understand the problem and implement solutions. At the heart of their work stands the carbon footprint quiz which helps people understand the things in their daily lives that generate carbon footprint.
A person’s highest individual carbon footprint comes from their home energy use, their diet and transportation choices. Together with Michelle, we prepared a few day-to-day actions that you can take to limit your impact on the environment.
First you can start by calculating your carbon footprint here.
While electricity generation is shifting toward more renewable sources, home energy consumption still accounts for the majority of our emissions. Some simple actions you can take to reduce the consumption are:
Did you know that emissions are directly related to what we eat? When it comes to food, we must examine what happens during manufacturing as well as transportation. Here’s what you can do:
Carbon dioxide emissions from transportation are a well-known issue. There’s no need to get rid of your car just yet, but here are several things you can do better:
It may surprise you, but on average, a website generates 1.76g of CO2 per visit due to all of the processing power required to load and deliver to users all over the world. Don’t worry, there are several things you can do to create a more sustainable website. The good news is that most of the actions are based on best website practices, so it’s a win-win situation for both the planet and your business.
Start by choosing a host committed to minimizing data centers energy consumption and is running on renewable sources. On top of that it offers blazing-fast speed for your website success with top security measures in place, like SiteGround.
From caching to media and front-end optimizations, your website will get lighter and page load faster, saving energy from the processing time. Here are some actions you can take:
On-point content and user-friendly experience will help your website get easily found. This way, you’ll save users time from surfing the internet all day and lower their energy consumption.
“Starting our carbon literacy journey is an important way for each of us to make small, but better decisions for our planet.” It creates a pattern where each person can make smarter and healthier choices in our daily lives.
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We dedicated the month of March to inspiring women entrepreneurs who turned their ideas and passions into full-time businesses. Our Women-owned series features amazing women from various industries, including hand-made pottery, web development and design, and tour photography. And all those powerful females trusted SiteGround to host, build, and grow their websites.
We’re excited to share the story of another one of our customers. Alisha Kumar, founder of thesocialproject.ca – an all-in-one creative agency. As part of our mission to inspire people worldwide through the power of the web, we wanted to share her story so that you can learn from her experience. Let’s dive in.
From a business aspect, Alisha found a gap in how businesses use social media to achieve their marketing goals. So she took that opportunity and founded her creative agency specializing in helping brands with their marketing efforts through social media to increase brand awareness and sales.
However, The Social Project was inspired by one leading personal question: “How do I break the barriers of being in rooms where nobody else looks like me.” Being in the marketing industry for over 12 years now, Alisha struggled to find a way to stand out in the industry as a woman, and more notably, as a woman of color. She aspires to change the marketing industry “because it doesn’t look like me at all.”
When people are browsing, you want to be that one website that they stop at. Looking back on her brand identity back in 2017 – being all rose gold with a heart in the logo – Alisha didn’t find it authentic; instead, she felt she was trying to fit in with the current scene. She had to rethink her branding “because I can’t show up for a business that isn’t representative of me.” As a result, she returned to the drawing board and refined her brand into an edgier look that fully embodies her.
Initially, Alisha was hosting her website with another company. However, after the rebrand, her web designer suggested using SiteGround, and after the switch, “I honestly haven’t had a problem at all.”
Being a social media expert, Alisha remarks that “social media isn’t about you, it’s about your audience.” Listening to your audience, learning what they want to see, and knowing what they want to learn is essential for success. There is a lot of social listening to do.
Social listening refers to monitoring your brand’s social media channels, explicitly tracking mentions of your brand, customer feedback, industry trends, and more. With social listening, you can produce the kind of content that followers want, develop new ideas based on trends, have a better customer experience by interacting with customers directly, and consistently adjust your strategy to best fit their needs.
Alisha believes that good leaders should be good listeners. They should listen to what their team has to say and contribute to their ideas. Working with a team means you will use the strengths of each member, making the whole better than the individual.
As for being a good leader to your business, Alisha says, “remember why you started.” It’s so easy to get lost in the little things, and businesses should go back to why they started in the first place. Focus on your company’s original mission and what you hope to achieve with it.
If you have been thinking of starting your own agency, you have to have concrete ideas of what type of services you would provide. Ideas, while important, are not enough. Start a business plan for your new agency, which includes picking a niche, defining a target audience, creating a value proposition, and considering how you’ll earn money. Then you need to go online! Most of all, give your ideas a chance and as Alisha says, “no risk, no story.”
Your branding is influenced by your personality, which in turn influences the tone of your copy, your color scheme, and your fonts. With SiteGround, you can have that complete freedom, coupled with amazing tools to build, host, manage, and launch your successful business website that reflects who you are. Our high-performance platform will make your site load up to 500% faster thanks to our proprietary technologies crafted for top speed and security. We also crafted our own account management software that provides an outstanding user experience, along with superior efficiency when managing one or multiple websites. With the right partner you can take that leap without thinking “what if” down the road.
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In our Women-Owned series, we partnered with four female entrepreneurs who host, build, and grow their websites on SiteGround platform.
This is the story of Anna Lee, a music, tour and brand photographer living in Los Angeles and the webmaster behind annaleemedia.com. If you’re a photographer, aspiring to be one, or interested in how to build your online portfolio – dive into Anna’s story and find valuable tips that might be just the thing you need to read.
Anna Lee was that one child who constantly carried a camera, documenting the surrounding world. Following a very natural path, her love for music and photography fueled her journey as a tour photographer.
Tour photography connects the audience with the artist’s experience and documents moments that otherwise can’t be seen behind the scene. Anna describes the feeling of being on tour with musicians as “incredibly special, a little bit surreal and totally comfortable at the same time.”
Reflecting on her 10-year journey as a tour photographer, Anna attributes her success to curiosity and bravery. As a photographer, you must constantly challenge your creativity. You must also work up the courage to reach out to your customers without the fear of being rejected. Once you liberate yourself from that fear, the horizon of opportunities becomes far broader. Stir in a bit of patience, and you’ll be on the way to steady growth in what you’re doing.
It’s easy today for people to rely on social media as a place for their portfolios. However, social media gives you limited control over what’s getting viewed and how your content is presented. Contrary to that, a website gives you the freedom to express your unique style as a photographer and curate your work. Expanding on this, Anna explains that “a photographer’s website is such an important home base for all of your work because you actually own your website.”
Before SiteGround, Anna hosted her website with another provider. Even though she wasn’t satisfied with them, she felt intimidated to transfer her websites with another host, feeling it would be messy and complicated.
Unlike her fears, Anna found migrating her website to SiteGround to be “pleasantly super easy.” She was also excited by the speed SiteGround offers. Anna was being very precious about her website. She wanted something really unique and different from what other photographers were doing. And the decision to switch to SiteGround completely transformed her previous experience and made it possible for her to realize exactly what she wanted.
Being one of the early women adopters to enter tour photography as a full-time job, Anna occasionally faced certain setbacks. Initially, she encountered the uncertainty of musicians about bringing a woman into the tour, “some viewed it as a challenge rather than an asset to have a woman on their team.”
However, she eventually found the artists and the clients who were not afraid of embracing women into their camp. She worked with people who wanted her there and were excited about having her on their team, “Those ended up being the best working relationships that I had and that I still continue to work with to this day.”
Anna believes that we are reaching a point where photographers, visual artists, and content creators are viewed, approached, and treated with the value that they merit. Specifically, women photographers are finally being attributed the value they deserve for what they provide.
One of Anna’s mantras is “don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.” That’s something that she wishes she had realized right from the very beginning.
When she decided to pursue tour photography, what helped her breakthrough was realizing that she had to create her own job. Naturally, like many others, she didn’t know how to approach clients. She had to pitch herself to other people and overcome the fear of feeling like she was being intrusive. However, she chose a different approach – she pitched her clients by presenting the opportunity and the value she could add to what they’re doing.
Anna’s second piece of advice is to do what you want consistently and with as much authenticity. If you’re creating for what you think other people want or what you think is popular, you will get burned out. But if you create what you want to do, the right people will find you, and they will compensate you for doing the thing you love to do. That will keep you excited as you continue into a specific career.
No matter how skilled you are, SiteGround enables you to start easy, build fast, and manage your website effortlessly. For those who are just starting out, we have a helpful tool – the WordPress Starter. You can go through our pixel-perfect customizable templates, some with incredible photography options. But to have a successful portfolio that generates leads, you’ll also need a contact form, SEO optimization tool, performance analytics, and a calendar. With SiteGround, you can add these with a click of a button. Suppose you prefer to have a designer build your portfolio site. In that case, SiteGround makes it easy for you to give collaborators access, keeping the ownership and privacy of your website to you. With the right hosting provider, you can overcome technological limitations and build a powerful online presence. After all, your website is the go-to place for your potential clients.
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We are heartbroken by the events unfolding in Ukraine and the toll it takes on civilians. We’ve received many concerned thoughtful notes from clients, and while we do not have offices or employees in Ukraine, we stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, because a stand for Ukraine is a stand for peace.
Here are some of the actions we’re taking within our scope to show our support in these extremely difficult times for all.
* Free renewal of hosting accounts of clients from Ukraine – we are extending all expiring hosting accounts of clients from Ukraine for free;
* Free hosting for new signups from Ukraine – all new hosting accounts of clients from Ukraine are currently free of charge;
We will donate laptops to an organization helping Ukrainian kids who had to leave their homeland and take refuge abroad to continue their education. This will be an ongoing effort, since we believe supporting children to go back to their usual routines as much as possible in these extremely difficult times is essential.
* Proactively reaching out to Ukrainian people with job opportunities – our team is proactively sharing job opportunities with local organizations working to help Ukrainians looking for work opportunities abroad;
It is astounding to see the world is uniting against violence and looking for ways to help. However, nearly 150 million Russian citizens are not fully aware about the course and the scale of the actions in Ukraine for various reasons, including media and Internet censorship. That’s why we decided to try and convey a direct message to them.
In addition to not accepting new orders from Russia, from today all Russian traffic going to our main website is redirected to a page showing our plea to stand for peace and end violence.
All SiteGround clients wishing to express their solidarity with Ukraine and help raise awareness can also add this page to their website for their Russian website visitors. If you’re a SiteGround client and wish to join our initiative, log in to your Client Areа and go to your website Site Tools section to show our Stand With Ukraine page to all traffic coming from Russia to your website with a click.
We sincerely hope for an expedient path to peace. Together we can make an impact.
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We kicked off our Women-Owned series celebrating women entrepreneurs who host their businesses on our platform with the ceramic artist Raquel Acosta.
Now, we introduce you to Laurel Brown – the self-taught web designer and developer behind laurelbrownmedia.com. Laurel started her web design and development agency dedicated to helping small businesses prosper online. Laurel has helpful advice for others who want to take the same journey as a designer and developer.
We need to rewind a bit to get to the heart of how Laurel got into web design and development. She had another business before starting Laurel Brown Media. Even though she didn’t have any experience in website building, she opted to create her own website for it. Beginning as a hobby, she gradually expanded into designing websites for her friends who owned small businesses. After her first business came to nothing, Laurel saw her newfound interest in web design and development as an opportunity to start over.
Speaking about her mindset of trying again with another business, she explained, “this other business failed massively. Nothing can be worse than that. So let’s try it again. That’s why I decided to go for it.” She discovered the intersection of value and passion in web design, which laid the foundation for starting her small agency.
While e-commerce grows in popularity, service providers, such as web agencies, are confronted with the issue of selling intangible “products” like their time and knowledge. So how is one supposed to start selling their services online?
As with every business, you must first define your niche. Consider where your service fits in the market and how you may differentiate yourself from the competitors. Are you going to specialize in one service or offer various services? Who is your target audience? Take into account every detail from gender, age, income level to career, education and spending patterns.
Laurel, for example, focuses on web design and development for small businesses. She also provides graphic design and copywriting services to complement her business. Interestingly enough, Laurel’s earliest clients were predominantly female. It seemed like her clients were relating to her because she was just like them – a female who runs her own business.
Once you’ve identified your niche and target audience, you need to drive traffic to your website. Your freelance or agency website serves as your online professional representation. Expert website designer Laurel shares that a website builds credibility. Having a website shows people that you are a real business with valuable services or products to offer. When people research their desired products, your website will likely be one of the first things they look into. And to this she points out, “It’s just so important to have a website because if you don’t, someone else does.”
More and more of a company’s sales happen on their website. Regardless of the industry, most customers will first visit a company’s website before making a purchase, even if the business does not have an online store, mainly for credibility and product/services research. Consequently, having a strong website presence can substantially impact the success of your business and help you generate more income.
When designing a website, it is critical to consider the client’s interests. Laurel advises designers to put their preferences aside and listen to their clients to get a pretty good idea of who they are and what they are trying to share with the world.
As a website designer, Lauren admits to feeling like she’s empowering business owners to take control of their online presence, including managing their websites, so that they can evolve on their own.
When it comes to multi-site development and management, freelance developers and agencies need to consider a partnership with a trusted hosting provider that meets their needs. Laurel trusts SiteGround with many of her web projects. She points out that SiteGround performance optimization tools really win her over during our conversation.“There’s a lot of amazing site tools that I feel like other hosting companies don’t have.”
Furthermore, SiteGround allows freelancers and agencies to access and manage all their sites from one dashboard. With our service, web creators can add collaborators to a site such as designers, developers, content creators, each with their own and limited access. If you build sites for clients but want to continue maintaining the site after handing it off, you can choose to stay on as a collaborator when the main site management has been transferred to your client.
To maintain professionalism, you need to do things right from the start till the end. Incorporating a smooth handover process will bring many benefits to you and your clients. Delivering a finished site is a nice experience, and transferring ownership is simple with SiteGround’s Transfer Ownership tool.
As a small business owner in the web development industry, it’s hard to be noticed when everyone is fighting for that attention. Laurel believes that having more collaboration would be a remedy to this. She knows firsthand how it feels to start on your own, working by oneself and not having any support system or community.
Eventually, over time, she found a stronger support system. As soon as she started to work with other creative, supportive people like web developers, SEO experts, graphic designers, she really felt a sense of relief. It was like she could learn much easier and work so much better, since she was around people who shared her work.
When it comes to creating websites, the pure joy from her work comes from knowing a website can have such a huge impact on the business. If someone gets a client because of their website or sells a product because of their website, it makes her feel part of their success.
To be successful, Laurel believes that you need to be dedicated, motivated, and passionate about what you’re doing. Your idea needs to ignite you. She wakes up every day and she’s excited about her work. She also reminds us that people should take care of their mental health, balance rest, and be business owners.
We all know that tons of great women want to build their own creative agencies. What is your advice for these aspiring entrepreneurs? Tell us about it in the comments below, and keep an eye out for more women-owned business stories!
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This March, we’re turning International Women’s day into a whole month and shining a light on incredible women creators who built their own small businesses from scratch. We highlight some of the amazing women who host and grow their online presence with SiteGround in our “Women-Owned” series.
We’re starting off with Raquel Acosta – the self-taught ceramic artist behind glazemepretty.com. Raquеl has mastered the craft of creating unique pottery pieces with glazes that tell the story of how minerals are formed. We followed her journey into pottery, including how she got started, what it’s like being an independent artist, and what advice she has for other creators looking to turn their passion into their business. Hint – your own website is the easiest way to start!
Originally studying Computer Science before eventually moving onto data analysis, Raquel’s initially chosen path led her down an uninspired road. Needing creativity, she experimented with different art forms until fate introduced her to clay. Starting out with evening pottery classes it became abundantly clear just how much potential there was.
Her initial intention was to have a side project to work on in her spare time, but what started out as a small hobby quickly grew into so much more. From the very first pottery class, Raquel envisioned herself having her own small business doing ceramics.
Starting your own website may seem daunting, especially if you don’t know where to begin, but it can open many opportunities to business owners. Your own online portfolio or e-commerce website enables you to reach a larger audience, make your creations easily accessible, and turn your passion into a self-sustaining business.
But before investing in your online store, you need to invest some time in planning a few essential elements, so you can set your online business up for success. From choosing a website builder and a hosting provider to design and functionalities, it can all help you smooth out the process of creating your first e-commerce site.
Of course, building and optimizing your website requires dedication. Raquel is a living example of that. She launched her online shop in 2018, but it wasn’t until 2020 that her online presence really took off. All thanks to her consistency to learn and be better in her craft and in showcasing it on her website and social media.
Brand identity is that aspect of a business that radiates your brand’s personality and values. It enables people to recognize you and even better – relate to your business. From your name, color palette, and visuals to tone of voice and copy, these are all aspects you need to think about, create and distribute uniformly on all online and offline channels.
Creating an effective branding strategy starts with answering important questions such as what do we want our potential customers to know about us, who is our target market, what do we stand for, what makes us different.
Evan though building her brand identity was a challenge at first, Raquel drew inspiration from her craft. Her brand name and color palette are inspired by the glazes that she develops herself. As for her web design, she followed the “less is more” approach, adding clean and simple backgrounds, just letting the pots be the stars of the show.
If you struggle with building your visual identity, you can always find useful resources on how to design a website that your customers will love.
Raquel points out her biggest challenge when running a maker business – growing your organic audience when you’re competing with big companies. Not everyone starts with a huge upfront investment, but as long as you are willing to put in the work and your heart is in what you’re doing, you can start and grow your small business on a budget.
A key role in growing your online presences is exploring different smart techniques. One tactic is integrating a newsletter into your website. This is an excellent way to engage your audience with what you do. Raquel uses her monthly newsletter to offer exclusive sales, samples, and clearance items that can’t be found anywhere else. Putting that exclusivity touch can surely increase your audience’s interest.
Raquel also emphasizes the importance of building a dialogue with your audience rather than just one-way communication, that really helps to build engagement. For example, except for her daily social media posts, Raquel asks her audience for their feedback about the pieces she crafts – do they want to see a new item, which is their favorite glazing pattern, and simply involve the people in her work. Still, optimizing the selling and marketing aspects of any online business is an ongoing process and there is always room for growth.
Besides the online presence, another challenging aspect of running an e-commerce business is managing the online and offline inventory. Trying to predict product demand can be hard, but batching production together helps Raquel stay organized to manage her small business efficiently. On the other hand, e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce have internal stock management systems that offer all the configurations you need to manage your inventory.
Glazemepretty.com is what Raquel looks forward to every day. Before, weekends were all she cared about. But now, her priorities have shifted from living for Fridays to looking forward to Mondays when all that matters is waking up knowing exactly what she’ll do today – craft one-of-a-kind ceramics that she can then share with the world through her own online brand.
Seeing how happy her clients are after purchasing something from her makes her recognize the importance of what she does and what Glaze Me Pretty represents. It’s amazing how far an idea can go from a self-taught passion to your own online business – if you put in the time and hard work to see it through – just like anything else in life. SiteGround is proud to be the hosting partner of choice to such incredible female creators and entrepreneurs like Raquel – the world is your oyster when you put your mind to it.
We know that there are lots of incredible women entrepreneurs out there, thinking of launching a project of their own, or building it right now. What’s your advice to people who want to make their idea online? Share it in the comments below, and stay tuned for more women-owned business stories coming soon!
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