Website Audit

First impression

What's working

• "How do you want to feel when you walk in?" is a great opening line. Keep it.
• The hero kitchen photo (green island, patterned tile) proves the promise instantly.
• The five service tiers are clearly written and say who each one is for.

What's getting in the way

• Nothing on the homepage says where you are. The only clues are gallery captions (Rock Creek, South Pointe, Boulder) and one blog post. A visitor can't tell if you'll come to their house.
• No testimonials, no reviews, no numbers, no faces. Shana and Jackie's names only appear as email addresses in the footer.
• Your Google snippet says "quick, affordable… prepare spaces for sale." That's a staging pitch, not the feel-first studio people actually land on.
• A couple of stray hyphens in the first 200 words ("alike- Ember," "A La Carte- Hourly").

Do this

• Add one line under the hero: "Serving Boulder County — Louisville, Lafayette, Superior, Erie, Broomfield."
• Rewrite the homepage meta description to match the "design for how you want to feel" message.
• Fix the two hyphen typos.

Tick items off as you go — your progress is saved in this browser.

Navigation & user experience

What's working

• Short, clean menu. Five links plus a button is the right amount.
• The gallery captions tell real before-and-after stories. That's case-study material.
• The blog is fresh (four posts this summer) and every post ends with a booking prompt.

What's getting in the way

• "Contact" in the menu and "Start My Project" go to two different forms, and Our Story has a third. They ask different questions, list different services, and use different budget ranges (one tops out at $10K, another starts there).
• There's no Services page. The tiers only live on the homepage, about three screens down, behind a grid of uncaptioned photos.
• The services section has two headings ("Reimagine Your Space" and "The Ember Approach") and neither says "Services."
• The homepage ends right after the Commercial tier. No closing line, no button. The footer is just two email addresses.
• The gallery is a slideshow titled "It All Begins Here," so it doesn't read as a portfolio, and there's no link to it from the homepage body.

Do this

• Keep one form on one page. Redirect the old Contact page to it and remove the form from Our Story.
• Make the form's service dropdown match the five tiers on the homepage, and use one budget scale.
• Add "Services" to the menu (a page or an anchor to the tiers).
• Rename the gallery heading to something like "Recent Work" and link two projects from the homepage.
• Build out the footer: menu links, service area, phone, Instagram, and a Google reviews link.

Calls to action

What's working

• Offering a free call is the right move. It's low-pressure and it matches your voice ("no pitch, just a real conversation").

What's getting in the way

• Two competing paths. The hero button books a 30-minute Calendly consult. The nav button opens a form promising a 15-minute discovery call. Visitors don't know which one to pick.
• The hero button is a thin outline, while the nav button is solid. The eye goes to the wrong one.
• Each service tier explains what you get, then offers no button. Someone who just decided on Designer for a Day has to scroll back up.
• Gallery and homepage end with no ask at all. Our Story ends with a whole form, which is the opposite problem.

Do this

• Pick one primary action: "Book a Free Discovery Call." Make it a solid button in the hero and settle on one call length.
• Keep the form as the secondary option ("Prefer to write? Send project details.").
• Add a short button under each service tier that opens the form with that tier pre-selected.
• Add the same closing band to every page: one line, one button, your service area.

Look & feel

What's working

• The palette (white, warm sand, terracotta, and the sage that shows up in the rooms) feels cohesive and feels like your work.
• Rounded sans headings with serif body text is a warm, readable pairing.
• Plenty of white space. The site feels calm and edited, which is what a design client is buying.

What's getting in the way

• Four big uncaptioned photos sit between the hero and the services. They're gorgeous but say nothing, and they push the services way down the page.
• The services text runs as a narrow column of small type next to one very tall bathroom photo. On a big monitor the text feels like a sidebar to the picture.
• The hero has an odd gap between the paragraph and the button, with more empty space underneath.
• The pink mountain shapes in the logo almost vanish at header size. Only the word "Ember" reads.

Do this

• Caption the photo grid as featured projects with a link to the gallery, or cut it to one image.
• Give the services the full width, with body text the same size as the rest of the site.
• Tuck the hero button directly under the paragraph and center the text block against the image.
• Use the "Ember" wordmark alone in the header; save the full logo for the footer and social.

Where to start

In order of payoff. The first four are quick Squarespace edits. The rest need a little content gathering.

Suggested homepage order