Milena initially approached me in 2019 to redesign her existing website. The site was outdated, running on an old CMS she could not update without a developer, and the design didn’t reflect her personality. Her new site needed to help her stand out as an author and make it easy for visitors to discover her body of work.
With one project under our belt and a great relationship established, she reached back out when the unexpected impact of COVID-19 required an immediate change.
The inability to travel and do writing workshops and speaking engagements meant she needed to make her in-person writing workshops available online through her website. As a partner who already understood her brand and website, we were able to work quickly to get out in front of the challenge.
By bringing her workshops online, Milena was able to triple the number of writers she could reach through one-on-one coaching and instruction. Instead of time and cost-intensive in-person workshops that took weeks to organize, she was able to grow her course sales by 166% as compared to the previous two years.
After the success of her first two courses in 2020, we have continued to work together to launch four more courses for inspiring authors and added a paid content library to her lineup.
A necessary change and an unexpected opportunity
Milena Moser is an award-winning Swiss author with over 25 titles in her name, and her works have been translated into more than a dozen languages. But her website didn’t reflect that. With an outdated design and in need of a support partner in her time zone, Milena sought a website that:
- Fits her unique personality as a writer and teacher and helps her stand out
- Promotes her new work and makes it easy to find and purchase her entire body of work
- Makes it easy for visitors to find information about her book tours and speaking dates
- Offers an easy way for the media to access her press kit and find up-to-date images for publication
- Provides proper multi-lingual support for German and English
Over the past ten years, Milena has been running in-person writers’ workshops for small groups of aspiring authors in Switzerland and New Mexico. When the COVID pandemic shut down international travel in 2020, it also shut down her workshops. With the uncertainty and loss of income, she needed to bring her teaching online:
- Build a self-paced, evergreen, video-based online course system for her website
- Implement a learning management system that allows for one-on-one personal coaching between lessons
- Reach a wider audience than she could through her small group workshops
- Provide a way to grow and offer new courses and content over time
Moving from group workshops to one-on-one instruction online had an unexpected impact:
They (students) often tell me that they would have never had the guts to come to a workshop, especially in a group workshop where they couldn’t be able to hide or come to her directly. This setup makes them feel that it’s just about them. Even though the videos are pre-recorded, the zoom meetings are just about them and their project and that is something they can’t get at a group or in-person workshop.
– Milena Moser
Author& Educator
Creating a website that grows with the clients needs
Milena’s old website ran on two outdated CMS that she could only update with the help of developers in a different time zone. The site had been set up years ago, but difficulty updating meant the content wasn’t kept up to date. With a new book coming out, a speaking tour, and a backlog of books no one could find, she needed a site that helped her promote herself and her work.
The site was redesigned to be as colorful and unique as the author herself. Along with a bespoke design, the flexible WordPress CMS provided an ideal base for building an author platform that would support her books and workshop marketing efforts, including content publishing, tour calendars, press kits, press coverage, and a catalog of work.
As an author who published in two languages, she also needed a website that supported dual languages but was still easy to navigate. For a better user experience, her catalog of books was designed to reorder based on the visitor’s chosen language, making it easy to find the books they were most interested in quickly.
Like many business owners, when the pandemic meant Milena could no longer offer in-person workshops, she needed to pivot to online courses quickly.
While her new course system allows her to reach a much wider audience, no longer limited by location, teaching courses to a hundred people at a time compared to her previous small group workshops, she was initially hesitant — unsure that her individualized approach would translate well to pre-recorded online courses. Providing one-on-one coaching sessions between lessons ensures Milena can provide a higher level of individual attention in a more comfortable environment.
With flexible course-building tools integrated into her site and designed to reflect her unique brand, Milena has expanded her reach, increasing the impact she can have on aspiring authors and sharing her passion for writing. She can now provide more coaching and help more people at a fraction of the time and cost, which has significantly increased profit margins.
It was originally a reaction to the pandemic and something I probably would not have done if not for the pandemic. When I thought about it before, I never thought I could translate my approach to online since I like to work individually online, but once we started, I never wanted to go back to in-person workshops since this was so much better.
– Milena Moser
Author & Educator
The impactful results
With a new online course system and five courses available, Milean has seen her reach triple, growing from 8-person workshops to 130 online students and going from break-even on sales to 166% growth.
With a proven platform and successful courses that support her teaching ambitions, the possibilities for Milena remain wide open. No longer held back by an outdated design and systems that got in her way, her website can now successfully supports her endeavors to promote herself and share per passion for writing wherever it takes her.
A lot of businesses find themselves in the same position. They are held back by websites that aren’t advancing their goals, that don’t help them connect with their audience, grow their reputation, and open up new avenues for growth. It doesn’t have to be like that.
166%
By moving from in-person to online workshops, Milena was able to achieve growth in sales.
130 Students
Instead of small groups, Milena was able to reach a wider audience of writers in the same time.