Behind the Scenes of How to Create a Brand & Website for Your Business: Healing Roots Naturals

I am so excited to finally share a beautiful rebrand and website project I’ve been working on over the past couple of months, with an equally beautiful power couple.

Ladies and gentleman, I would like to introduce you to Healing Roots Naturals, founded and run by Jessica and Steve Ponce.

A little insider knowledge is that Jessica and Steve have been dear friends, mentors (and even pastors) in my life over the last almost two decades. When they reached out to me to help them with their exciting rebrand and relaunch of their business, of course the answer was YES!

With seven kids (yes, I said seven), many years ago Jessica began making her own concoctions with all natural and organic herbs and ingredients that she knew were safe for her babies’ skin and needs. Being the passionate and driven entrepreneurial woman that she is, she decided to turn it into a business.

As their business continued to grow, and their products started being sold not only online but in shops across the country, Healing Roots Naturals knew their brand and website needed to be top notch—that is where Perspective Studio came in.

If you are a small business, even running it out of your home, and need assistance with your brand and website, I’d like to share with you the real life process we went through to get to that desired end point (where you’re killing it with too many customers to count, am I right?).

Mood Board

One of the first stages of creating your brand, is to establish your desired look and feel.

You want to decide on the emotions your target customer experiences when they interact with your brand. How does it make them feel? What emotions does it stir? Does it connect with them?

A great way to do this is to create a mood board. Of course, the perfect tool for doing this is Pinterest. I asked Jessica to create a Pinterest board, and literally pin anything and everything that may demonstrate an aspect of the desired mood she wants for their brand. It can be color palettes, items, decor, typography, interior design, really anything.

Jessica got right to it, pinning lots of earth tones, product lines and labeling she admired, color palettes, farmhouse style decor, lavender and greenery, among many other beautiful things. This gave me a starting point, and allowed me to pick out some of the themes that ran through the items she pinned. At the end of the entire rebrand, I was also able to create a custom mood board with her finished logos, colors and fonts.  

Logos

The next step is to create the fingerprint of your business: your logo.

Jessica and Steve had a very clear idea of what they were going for, and knew they wanted there to be a tree and/or roots in the logo. They also admired the celtic tree of life. After going through a few variations and color schemes, we landed on a simplistic yet striking tree, both with a celtic touch but modern vibe.

It’s good to create a few variations of your logo as well, that can be utilized in all kinds of vertical and horizontal ways, depending what you are using it on.

Colors and Fonts

Jessica really liked earth tones, but also variations of lavender and eggplant. After trying a few different variations of color schemes, we decided to go with somewhat darker eggplant and mauve tones, and compliment it with a brighter green and a softer pistachio green. We also pulled in a complementing yellow, that is used to specifically identify their beautiful Baby Line of products.

Never forget about your fonts! Typography is a personal passion of mine and choosing your fonts is just as important as anything else. We chose a nice san serif font to be utilized in the logo itself, with the “R” in roots standing out in a unique way. We also chose san serif fonts for both the header and text font, giving it a more modern and clean look. These fonts were carried through on the website and labeling.

Labels

Next on the list is to tackle your packaging! This is another main way your customers will interact with your brand.

They say never judge a book by it’s cover, but we know that potential customers are often guilty at judging a product by its packaging.

Jessica again wanted a clean look, on a white label, but she wanted the logo and label design to take up the entire label space, making it stand out. We pulled in a variation of the logo, utilized some banners giving it a touch of a farmhouse look, as well as nice borders. We also distinguished each product line with a color: eggplant for Wellness Line, green for Body Line and yellow for Baby Line. This helps their customers identify each line with more ease.

Social Media

Now that the brand look and feel is sorted, it is something you will want to pull through in all of your social media presence. We created profile photos for each social media channel, header photos demonstrating the new brand, and a nice business card.

Website

Now that we have the brand sorted, it’s time to move on to the second half of the project, designing a brand new website!

As a small business owner, designing a website can feel like a very daunting process, but that is where we come in, to walk you through each step of the way.

My first step was to create a calendar with deadlines and dates that different things were due. This was helpful to Jessica and Steve and I, so that we all stayed on track, and had the website ready to go by launch day. It also helped us set clear expectations up front of who is responsible for what and by when.  

The next key is to gather your content. Jessica took the time to think through how many pages she wanted and what content she wanted to go on each page, including each product in their online shop, descriptions, keywords, etc. Once that is in place, I can take that content and begin designing the layout of each page and product. She also had an amazing photographer on hand, Melissa, of Melissa Schnitz Photography, who was able to take gorgeous photos of all the product lines with the new brand, as well as artistic photos of Jessica’s process, varying herbs and ingredients used, and head shots. These photos were hugely helpful for me to work with, and really, good imagery is what brings a website to life. These kinds of photos are also beneficial for future use on blogs and social media.

Once I had the pages laid out, we went back and forth on revisions and changes. We stayed on a strict timeline however, as not to drag out the process too long. The final part of the project is putting all the behind the scenes logistics in place—connecting your domain name, email, email marketing system, social media channels, putting in all the SEO possible (using the keywords and phrases Jessica gave me), putting all the ecommerce details in place (shipping, tax, payment system, etc.), checking links, and many more not so fun things. But these things are all very important, and are what go into making a website run smoothly, efficiently and making it work for you.

Finally, as part of my package, we scheduled a call on Zoom, which allowed me to not only have a conference call, but share my laptop screen with Steve and Jessica, giving them basic training on how to utilize the backend of the Squarespace platform, as they continue to manage their ecommerce, blog and make page edits in the future (thankfully Steve was already somewhat proficient in Squarespace, which made my job much easier). Also, because I wholeheartedly believe in their brand, we discussed potential marketing strategies, pointers on design (pro tip: Canva is an amazing free design platform), and creative ways to utilize social media.

Whew! I’d say we got a lot accomplished!

To be honest, I could not have had more fun with this project, and I love to work with clients whose brands I believe in and who I desire to see succeed as much as they do.

It was an honor to be a part of this rebrand and website build for some pretty stellar clients. For those of you in the US, check out healingrootsnaturals.com, and go order some natural, organic products today. I promise you won’t be disappointed!

Are you a small business and feeling overwhelmed with branding your business or creating a website? I would love to chat with you! Check out some more info on what I offer, or schedule a free consultation call today!