Diane Whiddon

Diane Whiddon Results-driven Squarespace websites, digital marketing, and AI Photoshoots.

Website designer, writer, recluse, enthusiastic marketer, and recovering perfectionist.

I built a private membership app called The Rabbit Hole, so naturally its login could not be a white box asking for an e...
09/04/2026

I built a private membership app called The Rabbit Hole, so naturally its login could not be a white box asking for an email address.

The entrance is part of the story.

Members arrive at the edge of a Wonderland world before they reach the tools, resources, coworking room, and community inside. The door tells them what kind of place they have entered before the dashboard has to explain anything.

That is one of my favorite things about building a complete brand world. The useful parts do not have to sit outside the idea. The login, the transition, and the app itself can all belong to the same experience.

Even the door has a job.

https://swayrisecreative.com/projects/rabbit-hole

Most people assume a slow business needs more traffic.More people arrive, more leads come out, right?That only works whe...
09/03/2026

Most people assume a slow business needs more traffic.

More people arrive, more leads come out, right?

That only works when the website can already convert the people reaching it.

A Facebook ads expert once told me, “I turn away clients when their websites aren’t already converting.”

Her whole business is driving traffic to websites. She still refuses the work when the destination cannot convert that traffic into sales or signups.

So here is the question to answer before paying for SEO, ads, content, or AI-search visibility:

Are you already selling to the small amount of traffic you have?

When a warm lead follows a referral to your website, can they understand what you do, see why it matters to them, and move closer to a call, sale, or signup?

The gap often appears in one of two places. The site emphasizes features instead of benefits, or it names a benefit too vague for the buyer to recognize as something they want.

A life coach offering “happiness” is making a promise so broad that it disappears. People buy a result they can feel. More money. Less pain. Better health. A decision made. A problem that stops controlling the day.

Traffic amplifies whatever your website already does. Find the actual constraint before you spend money increasing the wrong thing.

Read the full article: https://swayrisecreative.com/blog/when-more-seo-isnt-the-right-answer

More traffic is useful once the website is worth sending people to.One site I manage grew across two consecutive reporti...
09/02/2026

More traffic is useful once the website is worth sending people to.

One site I manage grew across two consecutive reporting periods.

In 2025, compared with 2024:

Visits rose 91%.

Unique visitors rose 94%.

Pageviews rose 63%.

Then, from January 1 through August 25, 2026, compared with the same period in 2025:

Visits rose another 99%.

Unique visitors rose 109%.

Pageviews rose 74%.

The 2026 pageview total passed the entire 2025 total before September.

Those are traffic results, not conversion figures, and I am not claiming maintenance caused them. They show what ongoing growth looks like when a website stays active instead of becoming a finished project nobody revisits.

The platform has to keep earning the attention the business creates.

https://swayrisecreative.com/website-maintenance

I saw a version of a playable 404 page on Twitter and immediately understood the appeal.Most error pages are dead ends. ...
09/01/2026

I saw a version of a playable 404 page on Twitter and immediately understood the appeal.

Most error pages are dead ends. The visitor took a wrong turn, the website shrugs, and the interaction is over.

Mine puts them in front of a tiny walnut-desk game console instead. They can play one of two games, try again, or head back to the site.

The point is not that every business needs an arcade on its error page. The point is that the page does not have to stop doing its job because the URL is wrong.

A useful 404 can continue the brand, point someone toward the right offer or resource, and make the recovery feel intentional. Mine also shows the kind of custom interaction I can build.

You are already off track. Pick your distraction:
https://swayrisecreative.com/this-page-does-not-exist

Lane Rebelo needed updated photos for a new business. She was also growing out her natural hair color and did not want t...
08/31/2026

Lane Rebelo needed updated photos for a new business. She was also growing out her natural hair color and did not want to spend thousands on a traditional shoot at a moment when her appearance was changing.

She had one very reasonable concern about doing it with AI: would the photos look fake?

We built the shoot around what Lane asked for. No photographer, hair and makeup appointment, location hunt, or new wardrobe required.

Her verdict:

“There’s nothing I would change! Diane really listened to what I wanted and made sure I was happy with the results. She delivered exactly what I was looking for and the results are pretty flawless!”

The new business needed current images. Her hair transition did not need to become an expensive production problem.

See Lane’s finished images: https://swayrisecreative.com/projects/lane-rebelo

08/28/2026

A friend called this *“passive-aggressive at its finest,”* which is fair.

Someone with a very large following went on a public tear about how much she hates AI. I got irritated, and apparently this is how I process clean anger now: I wrote a country song about Claude.

A love song, technically.

There is pedal steel. There is a line about Karen wanting five revisions. There is an artificial angel sent from silicon heaven above. The whole thing is ridiculous, but my favorite line still makes the point better than most of the serious AI discourse I have read:

“While they’re fighting in the comments section
You and me are shipping stuff.”

The joke turned into a full Suno track, because once I had committed to the bit, obviously I had to commit all the way.

And honestly, I stand by the premise. The tools are here. I would rather take responsibility for how I use them, make something strange, and get back to work than spend another afternoon performing outrage in a comment section.

Anyway. I wrote an AI country song.

*I regret nothing.* 🎸

The most expensive website problem is often the one nobody can point to, because technically, nothing is wrong.The pages...
08/27/2026

The most expensive website problem is often the one nobody can point to, because technically, nothing is wrong.

The pages exist. The colors match. The headshot is current and the buttons work. Your website looks f i n e .

And that is exactly where the problem hides.

You can be doing industry-level work while your website still makes you read like a capable consultant someone might hire if the price is right. The gap usually isn't one dramatic mistake. It is typography that is almost right, a hierarchy that asks every sentence to shout, stock photography that lowers the perceived investment, and spacing or color choices that make the whole thing feel assembled instead of directed.

Most buyers cannot explain any of that, but they feel it. Then they decide how established you are, how much authority you have, and what they expect you to charge.

That is why *professional enough* is such an expensive standard for an expert. Your buyer is not comparing your website with a broken one. They are comparing your presence with the person who already looks like the obvious choice.

Finished is a production status.

*Premium is a business signal.*

Shelly asked me for a one-page website to sell a book. Once I got into the material, it became clear that the website wa...
08/26/2026

Shelly asked me for a one-page website to sell a book. Once I got into the material, it became clear that the website was the least of it.

She had twenty years of financial expertise and a lot to teach, but there was no clean path from everything she knew to something a woman could sit down with, write in, and buy. A landing page could give her somewhere to mention the book, but it couldn't turn all that knowledge into a product.

So that became the real work.

We shaped her material into a fill-in workbook, built a free worksheet that gives readers a useful first win and leads naturally into the full version, created the brand imagery, put the workbook behind a paywall, and then built the landing page around the whole system.

Shelly came in needing a website. She left with a workbook she could sell, a free resource that helped sell it, and what she described as “the opportunity to increase revenue that I did not have before.”

*That is what a website should make possible.*

Not another page for the business to maintain. A way for the business to make money from expertise that was already sitting there. 💰

https://swayrisecreative.com/projects/purposeful-spending

Kim Tomlinson knew her coaching stood apart. Strangers could not see why.Kim is a top-producing real estate agent who co...
08/25/2026

Kim Tomlinson knew her coaching stood apart. Strangers could not see why.

Kim is a top-producing real estate agent who coaches other agents using Motivational Interviewing. It changes the hardest conversations in real estate. The agent stops pushing for a decision and asks better questions until the client can name their own reasons to move.

That was the position the new Endeavour platform needed to own.

We built the Brand System first. Motivational Interviewing became the spine of the messaging, offers, website, and lead system. Then we built the 19-page platform around the people already looking for Kim's help: established agents, course buyers, brokerages, and agents starting with the 360 Agent Audit.

The finished work includes the method, coaching, course, team training, store, lead diagnostic, content foundation, and the technical systems underneath them.

Kim's reaction: “It is what sets me apart, and you nailed that.”

A stranger should be able to see the reason to hire you before the first call.

https://swayrisecreative.com/projects/endeavour-coaching

08/25/2026

This is the part of custom web design that I love: the moment the website stops displaying the business and starts becoming part of it.

For The Buttered Porch, I could have built a perfectly nice shop grid. Photograph, product name, price. Repeat until you forget what any of it looked like.

But the whole brand is about wanting the room. You want the late-afternoon light, the kettle, the old green shakers, and the quiet life those objects seem to belong to. So instead of pulling the products out of that world and lining them up on a white page, I made the room the storefront.

As you scroll through the kitchen, the scene moves with you. A pool of light finds each object, its little story appears, and then, if you want it, you can shop it.

The collection includes Amazon finds now and will eventually include things The Buttered Porch makes itself, but the scene doesn't care who ships the box. It is the thing that makes all of those objects belong together.

*Desire first. Product second.*

That is the fun of building something custom. The business gets to follow its best idea instead of flattening itself into whatever the template already knows how to do. 🧈

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Chicago, IL
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