The rule with websites is the more specific you are in what you are offering, the more successful the website will be.

When you niche down to one area, one skill, one product, all your focus goes into it and a good website will naturally shine with this formula. 

However, there are times where this isn’t possible. Especially if your work is service based and your offering is to more than one type of ideal customer. Take for example you offer your services to individuals and organisations. Or you have 2 skillsets and want to offer both of them on your website. 

You could have 2 different websites, one for each product but this isn’t the best idea. 

The answer is to advertise both skillsets on the same site. 

Working with a branding designer who has been fully briefed to understand what the website is about and wants to achieve will be worth its weight in diamonds here. They can create the logo and elements in different formats – for example, with the colours reversed, black only, white only to help different areas of the website stand out according to the service you’re offering. 

Once you have your branding sorted and worked into your website design you can assign different identities to different areas so the colours and elements make your user know that they’re on the same website but in a different area of it. Here’s an example: 

Logo by Amy Newlands.

Use the same style of language across the website so your user feels confident that they’re in the right place when they’re visiting different services. It’s tempting to launch into a load of technical jargon when aiming at a corporate audience then more relaxed when speaking to individuals. Setting a tone for how you speak/words you use across the site will install confidence in your website visitor no matter which part of the site they visit. I recommend you use a copywriter here as they’re trained to do this.

Consistency is key when it comes to styling. Yes you can make subtle changes – one of my favourites is to reverse the colours, for example, use one colour from the logo for the main identity of one service and another colour from the logo for another service. It goes deeper than that though – if you have full page ‘hero’ images on one section of the site you’re going to need to use them in the other sections to keep your user feeling that they’re on the right site and in the right place. If you’re inconsistent in the design – how you layout images, spacing and sizing of titles, where you use colours and separators, it will undermine your authority on your site..

Your user journey is how a user navigates their way around your website. With any website we need to ask ourselves ‘is their journey a good one? is it taking them to the right places?’ The places are where we want them to land and what we ultimately want them to do. If you are offering more than one service, helping to navigate your user to where they need to go quickly and efficiently will help to keep them on board. For example, your Home/Landing page could simply be a hero image with the question: 

This would then take them to the relevant are of the website

A Call to Action simply put is telling your user what action you want them to take. This is often in the form of ‘Book a call’ or ‘Send a message’.  Does this give your user enough confidence in you to go ahead and complete the call to action? If you’re selling to an organisation, it may be so clear early on of what you do that a ‘book a call’ button at the top of the page works wonders and cuts out the need for a lot of information before prompting them to get in touch. 

Selling to individuals often takes more work as they need more convincing as to why you’re exactly the right person/service for them. In this instance your Call to Action may be along the lines of ‘Book a free, no obligation discovery call’. 

As your message in your call to actions is different, to work for your different audiences, being consistent with branding and styling helps reassure people and prompt them to complete the Call to Action. 

Getting the look and style right when designing your website for more than one audience takes time and thought. It is possible though and to do it well. Staying consistent across your website will go a long way to supporting your users when on your website. It will also help inform the rest of your marketing – using your allotted brand colours when promoting content to your different audiences on Social Media will help clarify who you’re speaking to in each post and therefore which part of the website they should go to when they visit.