The majority of my website design clients are fellow weight-inclusive dietitians and nutritionists in private practice. When I first started my design studio, some people questioned why in the world I would help other business owners in the exact same field as me. Aren’t they my competition?!
Sorry, but no. I believe in community over competition. And while we may all have similar philosophies and services, I promise you that we all have our own unique styles and personalities!
Do you want to create a stellar dietitian website that will have people knocking down the door to work with you? Then let’s first talk about what site features actually make a great website.
A common question that I get is how do I layout my website?
You want it to be clean, easy to navigate, and visually appealing. Think of it as the recipe for success. And speaking of visuals, colors play a huge role in making your website pop. Don’t be afraid to spice things up with bold and vibrant hues that make your brand stand out!
As for fonts, keep it simple and readable. I know cursive fonts are pretty, but you don’t want your visitors to strain their eyes trying to decipher your fancy script. This doesn’t mean you can’t use them, but think of them more as an accent to the design.
Now, let’s talk about WordPress. This is the ultimate platform you’ll need for creating stylish and user-friendly websites. You’ll first need to choose a theme that’s perfect for showcasing your nutrition expertise.
And don’t forget about optimization! You want your website to rank high on search engines, so make sure to be strategic and optimize your site for speed.
Finally, make sure your website is responsive. You don’t want potential clients getting hangry because they can’t access your site from their mobile devices.
Of course, all of these things are part of the recipe (see what I did there?) for good SEO practices as well. If you aren’t sure what SEO stands for, it means Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, it’s the steps and strategies you do to get found on Google search.
Remember, your website doesn’t have to be perfect – just start somewhere!
I personally recommend Flywheel hosting for WordPress websites. It may not be the cheapest, but I think hosting is very important and if your business is an online business, you don’t want to skip on premium hosting.
There are so many website builders to choose from. Personally, I recommend Breakdance, Bricks, Kadence, Elementor and Divi (in that order). If you ask for someone’s opinion, you’re going to get a variety of answers. I recommend doing a trial of all of them to see which one works the best for your specific business and functionality needs.
Lindsay is the perfect example of listening to your gut and finding a true niche! She is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist who works with mountain athletes through a weight inclusive lens. How cool is that?!
She’s in Colorado (obviously), so we definitely had to incorporate mountains and yellow aspen leaves into her logo. She is doing an amazing job with her blog posts, so definitely go check it out!
She has also recently updated her homepage to include her very own photograph in hero section – something I highly recommend doing. Stock photos are great to fill in the gaps, but nothing beats having your own professional pictures to help create a beautiful website.
I love when clients that I’ve chatted with for a long time finally take the plunge to work together! We created a Starter Brand for Jasmine and then applied it to her fully custom and beautiful website. I had fun incorporating the arch shape into the images and the wavy quotes throughout the site for her.
Jasmine helps people heal their relationship with food and find food freedom through a non-diet and weight inclusive approach to nutrition counseling.
I love the bold and rich colors that we created for Katherine’s brand and website! The bold orange with the forest green is just so nice and creates a great design – it’s warm and inviting, while also being elegant, which are things that are appealing for all of her perspective clients.
I loved working with Anna Fowble on her Signature Branding and Signature Website. We used lots of rich, fun, beautiful jewel tones and I had fun bringing it all to life on her brand new website!
Anna works with athletes and her mission is to foster healing individual’s relationship to food, exercise, and body through transformative and experimental education that is rooted in HAES, weight inclusivity, and trauma-informed care. Provide a safe, non-judgmental, and hopeful space that is supportive and empowering for change.
Bethany is the first Georgia dietitian that I have worked with! (I’m in Georgia!). It’s somewhat funny because I’ve worked with clients from Hawaii, Alaska, Canada, France… but hadn’t worked with a local dietitian yet. So this one was special!
We created a custom brand and strategy for her nutrition practice and a custom website. I really love how it turned out!
Varvara had the amazing opportunity to buy an established nutrition private practice and turn it into her own. We updated her branding to be representative of the direction she wanted to take the business. The website and brand are very soft colors, inviting and have floral elements.
Mimi is a repeat client who came to me previously for a VIP Day Starter Website for her solo nutrition practice.
But, this time she came back to me for her new joint private practice adventure: introducing JAM Nutrition!
This was a fun site because we adjusted the branding and created something that felt pretty different from my usual color palettes. It’s very neutral and warm. We built the site using a template that I created, but we move some of the sections around to fit their needs.
Beth was another repeat client! I truly love staying in touch with all of my clients and I’m ecstatic when they come back with another project. This project was also very special because Beth was one of my very first branding clients and she came back for us to create her custom website on WordPress. She had been on Wix for years and was finally tired of struggling to make it work and look how she wanted to.
“I tried creating my website, but it didn’t work out. I spent a lot of money on various templates, but none of them gave me the look I was going for. I spent countless hours on web design and felt like I couldn’t move forward with my practice. It was a real struggle, to say the least.“
Once we got her website just right for her nutrition private practice, From the Start Nutrition, she had this to say:
“I am so excited about how my website turned out! Courtney is amazing at understanding exactly what her clients want and turning those visions into a reality that goes above and beyond. Her dedication and expertise really come through in every aspect of her work. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner to bring my dream website to life!”
Another one of my favorite projects from 2023 was working with Megan Luybli from A Soft Place to Land Nutrition and Therapy. A practice that incorporates dietitians and a therapist is always an amazing combination.
Megan did a strategy session with me to help her clarify her branding and then decided to sign on for Signature Branding and a Signature Website.
The final result was a beautiful brand and site that Megan feels truly speaks to her vision. And I got to receive amazing little nuggets like the one below:
Samantha was my first registered dietitian client who wanted a full website build. So shout out to Samantha for trusting me and for still being on one of my WordPress Care Plans today!
She, like many others, had DIY’d her website and branding. But, she knew it could be better and wanted some help. I was more than happy to help her create the designs of her dreams!
Check out the before and after for her WordPress site below:
I really wanted to keep the earthy, botanical feeling in the images on her original site, but wanted to pull in a lot more warmth. Her new photos are beautiful and perfectly captured the feeling of warm, earthy autumn. So, I pulled that inspiration in with the botanical logo, the warm yellow, and then the blue and green.
Samantha said, “Your help has been so invaluable, and I am grateful.”
I’ve loved watching her practice grow this year!
Stephanie was another super fun project! She offers weight inclusive virtual nutrition counseling, like many of my clients. She had also done a DIY website and brand and we completely changed everything. We went from a more muted website with a very botanical logo to something fun, vibrant, and colorful.
Check out the before and after below:
Stephanie said, “I love everything about the final product! I loved the process of working with Courtney and how she truly listens to what her clients want. I love my new logo, colors, and overall website – I feel that it represents me and everything I want my clients to feel when they work with me. Basically – everything about this experience was so wonderful and exciting.”
She has been doing great things in her food and nutrition practice AND in her role with the Nutrition Entrepreneurs DPG for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics! She also recently became a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor – congrats, Stephanie!
One thing that has been so freaking cool is that all of the dietitians I have worked with have been from places all over the country! Samantha is in Maryland, Stephanie is in New York and Brooke is in Alaska! It seriously blows my mind how small the world really is.
Brooke has an awesome niche where she is a dietitian who specializes in working with runners and helps them approach their nutrition from a weight-inclusive perspective. Her site was originally on Wix (see why I don’t recommend that here) and was not responsive on all screen sizes, which is a very common issue.
So, we moved her over to WordPress and built a new site with more than the one page.
Brooke said, “Courtney was FAST and my site looked even better than I could have imagined. She takes a very personalized approach and will make sure you are happy with her designs. She doesn’t push you to do things that you don’t like.”
Check out her before and after (the only time you will ever see me say that is in relation to designs haha)
This project highlights one of my favorite things to do, which is to find the pops of colors in the photos and let them really shine.
If you haven’t heard of VIP Design Days, they are basically days where I focus on nothing but your project. Your project could be lots of different things and it could be more than one day! Why would you do a VIP Day vs. a custom 2-week website? A few reasons, but the biggest are time and money. A VIP Day website would be a template with no design changes (except colors, fonts, and images), but is obviously more affordable than a custom website with the same number of pages.
But, where the VIP Day really shines is when you have design projects that you need to get done, like presentation slides, social media post templates, brand collateral like business cards OR non-design-related things like helping you set up your email marketing workflows, etc.
Back to Mimi’s dietitian website! Mimi is an RD and is growing her private practice and needed somewhere to send clients that was more professional. Her previous site was on Wix (seeing a theme here, yet?) and wasn’t up to the challenge.
We also did a ‘starter brand,’ which is basically just a mood board that helps us have consistent colors and 1-2 fonts.
I did Mimi’s site and starter brand a few years ago, but she and her friend Julia decided to do a joint practice together – introducing JAM Nutrition!
Check out their before and after below:
Shelby’s website is one of my latest projects that I finished at the beginning of December. She had a one-page dietitian website that was no longer working for her growing practice. So, we developed not just a visual identity for her brand, but also a strategy that will continue to guide her practice as it continues to grow. She will be able to continue being clear on who she is speaking to, the tone of voice for her brand and her personality, and more.
The overall vibe for her business’s visual identity focused on boho and warm, earthy pastels.
Check out her before and after below:
This one is the newest kid on the block because I finished this project at the very end of December. This was yet another super fun project not just in the style, but the awesome people I get to work with!
Heather started out as a solo practice and is now growing into a group practice, so it was time to rebrand and get a shiny new dietitian website.
We did a full brand identity and strategy for their group practice, Confidently NourishED. As with most people who don’t live and breathe branding and design like me (what, it’s totally normal), their team didn’t realize how big and important having a full strategy is until we went through the process:
Heather said, “The branding experience went way beyond my expectations and even the team’s. I knew I wanted more than just a logo, but what you gave ultimately was a clearer idea of what our brand stands for, who we come off to customers, how we want people to feel, etc. It’s so much more and I think it really gave me good insight into the whole customer journey/experience with our brand at large. I never really thought about this before. I’m obsessed with all of the visual logos, images, and icons! I want them everywhere!”
I will be working on their project page soon, but for now, check out their before and after below:
Well, it’s been quite the year for website and design projects at my studio! From custom websites for weight-inclusive dietitians in private practice to creating custom brands and strategies, I’ve had the chance to flex my design muscles and help some seriously amazing professionals in the process.
It’s been a wild ride, but it’s also been incredibly rewarding. And let’s be real, these projects have allowed me to show off my mad design skills and prove to the world (or at least a small corner of the internet) that I am the queen of all things web-related.
All joking aside, it’s been a pleasure to work with such talented and passionate dietitians, and I can’t wait to see where the future takes us. Here’s to more in the coming years!
Want to work together? Reach out today and let’s do it!
PS – Did you know that I started a podcast? Check it out over at Dietitian Turned Designer!
Courtney has 15+ years of experience putting together and designing marketing materials, WordPress websites, customer experiences, and workflows that help you save time and money. She developed these skills during her years as a Director of Corporate Health Services, Group Fitness Program Manager, Lead Wellness Dietitian, fitness and yoga instructor, and her own nutrition private practice, Vickery Wellness.
She also taught undergraduate courses at the University of Georgia where she graduated with the following degrees:
Declet Designs offers website design, strategy, and SEO for weight-inclusive private practices & small businesses. Located in Athens, GA, and serves businesses nationally and internationally.
Declet Designs is a welcoming and inclusive space for all people regardless of their race, ethnicity, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, neurodivergence, or national origin.
Declet Designs is located on the lands of the Muscogee and Tsalaguwetiyi people and wishes to acknowledge them as the Traditional Custodians of this land. We also pay our respects to their Elders, past, present & emerging.
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