Case Study: Kate Battistelli

Website Redesign – 1 VIP Day

Kate Battistelli and I first worked together in 2013, when I completed a new design for her blog. We then redesigned her site in 2019 to coincide with the release of her book, The God Dare. This year, I had the pleasure of working with her on a third redesign—this time helping prepare her website for the release of her upcoming book, The After Party of the Empty Nest.

The first two designs I did for Kate were traditional website design projects. When she contacted me a few weeks ago, we hopped on a call and talked through what it would look like to redesign her site during a VIP Day. Both Kate and her husband, Mike, were excited at the possibility. With the upcoming book release, we knew she would benefit from getting the redesign accomplished quickly!

A website redesign in 1 day!

Going in to the VIP Day, I knew my initial focus would be to implement a lot of technical upgrades on Kate’s site to help it run better and be positioned for future updates. Beyond that, our goals were to create a fresh look, restructure content, and showcase her new book front and center.

During Kate’s VIP Day, I was able to:

Switch her site from the Genesis Framework to Kadence (a recomendation I make for all sites using a Genesis theme)
Audit existing plugins, removing those no longer needed and adding new functionality as needed
Update the website PHP version from the deprecated version 7.4 to the current 8.2 (a vital upgrade that many hosting companies require)
Redesign and reformat all website pages with new content and photos

Here’s what Kate had to say:

The whole VIP day with Erin was wonderful! She communicated with me all day long and was able to answer every one of my questions. It’s exciting to see your site go up in real time! My new website is exactly what I imagined and Erin was able to perfectly capture just what I was hoping for. It’s refreshing to have a brand new website in a day, not weeks. If you want a beautifully designed website, definitely book a VIP day with Erin!