Case study · Aotearoa · 2026
The Unedited Life
Stace had already written every word of her website. She just didn't have one. I built it from scratch: setting the brand direction, pacing 4,000 words of honest copy so a tired reader could take it in, and getting it ready to take bookings from New Zealand and Australia.
CLIENT Stacey Renata, founder
WHEN August to October 2026
The starting point
All the words, no website
Stace mentors women through self-discovery, mostly online, with a group programme, a weekly Facebook Live and workshops. She arrived with more than most clients ever do: a full master copy document, a self-discovery quiz, a landing page she'd built herself and four mood boards.
What she didn't have was a website. There was nothing to send people to, nowhere for Google to find her, and no way to take a booking without messages back and forth. She needed a site that felt as real as her writing, worked for people who'd never heard of her, and could take payments without her chasing invoices.
Starting from zero
No existing site, no search history and no way to book or pay online.
Two competing concepts
Four mood boards that pulled two ways: raw and real, or luxe and gold.
Two countries
Clients in NZ and Australia, so payments and terms had to work for both.
Live dates
A weekly Facebook Live from 5 November and a paid workshop in December.
01 · The brand
Raw, not gold
One mood board was ink splatters, torn paper and typewriter text. The other three were brushed gold and foil. The gold was lovely, but her whole message is "stop performing, you're already enough", and a site that looks expensive and immaculate says the opposite. So I built on the raw board and parked the gold for a future premium offer.
Then I eased off the charcoal and lightened the linen so the site never felt heavy, and kept her script font for her name and the moments she speaks directly, where it actually means something.
Type: Sacramento for her name and pull quotes, Courier Prime for headings, Lora for body. All free, so no licence bill, ever.
02 · The website
Built from scratch, every word kept
There was no old site to work around, so I started with a clickable prototype Stace could react to before anything went into Wix. The easy fix for a text-heavy site is to start deleting. I didn't cut a sentence. Instead I changed where the words sit and how big they are, so a woman skimming on her phone at the end of a long day can get the gist in seconds and go deeper if she wants.
- One type scale across the whole site, so each section has one line that lands even if nothing else gets read
- A simpler homepage hero: one clear thought, with her video faded on one side so the words stay readable
- "Read more" on the longest sections, so readers choose how deep to go
- Left-aligned text in a narrow column, so it reads like a letter, not a quote graphic
- A two-door homepage: one path for women who want to start gently, one for women who are done waiting
- A new header and footer, with her newsletter sign-up in every page's footer
03 · Ready for business
Found, contactable and paid
A new website starts with no search history, so it has to be set up properly from day one. I made the real homepage the front door so Google has something to rank, and kept her opening page as a separate link for her social bios.
Then I set up the parts that turn a visitor into a client:
- A business email on her own domain, so enquiries look professional and land in one place
- An enquiry form with automated emails, so every enquiry gets a quick reply
- A booking system in Wix, so clients can choose a session, pick a time and pay in one go
- Card payments through Stripe, since Wix's own payments aren't available in NZ, with fees for NZ and Australian cards spelled out up front
- Terms and a cancellation policy written for both NZ and Australia, shown before anyone pays
0
words of her copy cut
4,175
words paced across 6 pages
2
countries her clients can book and pay from
3
free fonts, so no licence bill, ever
Stace also got plain-English guides for everything on her side: a photo brief, the reasoning behind every design decision, and step-by-step setup for her email and payments, with costs up front.