Marketing and literary agent Blythe Daniel is a long-time client of MRM. Our team designed and still maintains her agency website, along with working with several of the authors the Blythe Daniel Agency represents. When Blythe became an author herself, alongside her sweet mother Dr. Helen McIntosh, we had the pleasure of creating a single-page website for Mended: Restoring the Hearts of Mothers and Daughters and then worked with this mother-daughter duo again in 2022 to expand the website to include their second book, I Love You, Mom, and create a space they could share inspiration via blog posts and resources.
In the last couple of years, the list of authors and new releases in Blythe’s family has expanded greatly, and it was time again to refresh the online space and make room for all of their books. This time the redesign also included a rebrand. To better feature the family of authors and of books, “Our Mended Hearts” was rebranded to “Connecting Hearts & Conversations“.
About This Recent Project
Website Design & Development
After a couple of consultation and planning calls with Blythe, we outlined the list of updates for the website’s sitemap, to include new pages for You’re Joking Me, Let’s Be Friends, and I Love You, Dad, to add a more traditional About page for all of the authors, and to update the Media page layout and flow.
During our pre-work and planning, we also offered Blythe a few recommendations for the website’s new domain, site title, and tagline, to help with the rebrand. Once she reviewed our recommendations, Blythe settled on the title Connecting Hearts & Conversations for the new site.
With the new site’s name and direction established, and using the color palette and simple elements Blythe provided, Carol assembled a moodboard for the site design. Blythe’s feedback then helped us refine the colors, font selections, and overall look and feel of the board so we could move on to the page mockups. Through a few revision rounds to finalize the layout and content of the website pages, we were able to create an updated Home page that serves as a landing page for the whole website, a new About page that features the entire family of authors, multiple sales pages for all of their books, and an updated Media page that’s visually appealing, very user-friendly, and packed full of relevant appearances and features for all of the books.
The previous “Our Mended Hearts” site was developed using the Beaver Builder page builder. In an effort to ensure the longevity and flexibility of this new site, it was necessary for us to rebuild the site in a custom Kadence child theme and Kadence Pro Blocks. Once the individual site mockups were complete and approved, the next step was for Mandy to replace the outdated theme and tools and implement the new design in the new theme. The end result is a beautiful and fully optimized site, sure to serve this talented family of authors well into the future.
What Blythe had to say…
“I wanted to say a very heartfelt ‘THANKS’ for all the hard work, for catching my vision for the site, for your edits, re-dos, design work, and all the knowledge and experience to bring all the pieces together to this site. I wanted you both to know how much I appreciate your taking my thoughts and preferences from day one all the way to now and showing me more to think about in how things are designed for engagement purposes. I’m so happy with the site!”
Services Included in this Project
- Custom WordPress Website Design and Development
- Removal of Beaver Builder Page Builder and Backend Cleanup
- Training for Gutenberg Block Builder
- Domain Change & SEO Support
- Hosting, Site Care, and ongoing tech support
Team Members Involved
Carol Poortvliet
Mandy Roberson
Find out more about these ladies and the rest of the team here at MRM: Meet the Team
This post may contain affiliate links. Read our full affiliate disclosure here.
