The tools I can’t live without as a Website Designer & Copywriter for wellness pros [2026]
In this post, I’m breaking down all the core tools I use to run my business as a website designer and copywriter for wellness businesses. I don’t know about you, but I love getting a peek behind the scenes of other people’s businesses—past the glossy Instagram grid and into the “nuts and bolts of their operations. Not only that, but I also hope prospective clients can look under the hood of my business here and see how things run smoothly.
Some background on my business? I live in Auckland New Zealand, working with health coaches, nutritionists, yoga teachers, Pilates teachers, boutique fitness studios, PTs, dieticians, therapists, naturopaths and more across New Zealand, Australia (and even globally like the US and my home country the UK). All that informs the tools I use, as it means my business is run primarily online. Although I’m always excited about catching up with local clients over a long black! ☕️
So, with that clarified, let’s jump in!
FIRST UP? BUSINESS & CLIENT CARE TOOLS.
→Dubsado
This is the platform I use for invoicing, contracts, and gathering information from clients about their project. It’s great! If you have a Squarespace website, like I do, you can embed forms from Dubsado into individual Squarespace Pages. You can get quite advanced with Dubsdao, setting up workflows to automate tasks and emails in your back-end processes. You can also create Client Portals which I do, and use this feature as a hub for my clients to access all of their information in a single click! I connect Dubsado with Stripe to take payments.
Use this link to get 20% off your first month or year of Dubsado (depending on the option you choose) - or simply use the code “yolie20” at checkout.
→ Google Meet.
Zoom had its moment in the spotlight over the peak of the pandemic—and I remember dissolving into much-needed giggles at the woman accidentally conducting a meeting as a potato and the lawyer arriving at a Zoom hearing as a cat — but I have now moved to using Google Meet because (a) I can still record my meetings and (b) it’s much more cost effective than Zoom.
I use it to host Discovery Calls, conducting client meetings or to conduct THEIR customer/client interviews (for brand research and Voice of Customer research). I record interviews these because it means I can pick up on everything my clients says about their project, their vision and goals for their website, and their work as a whole. Sure, transcripts don’t often capture everything perfectly (particularly if you’ve a pronounced accent). But you can get close enough-and then replay the audio alongside the transcription to clarify any confusing elements.
All in all? Recording and reviewing calls is a great tool as a copywriter and website designer for capturing a client’s unique offer, their (in-depth) vision and goals for their site, and perspective on health, wellness and their work—in their own words.
recent Move from Otter & Zoom
I used to use Otter for interview transcriptions, but I just moved! Before I was already paying $10.50/month for my Starter Google Workspace for my business email, PLUS monthly subscriptions to Otter and Zoom on top of that to host and record meetings. Now I’m just paying NZ$10.50 extra for a higher-level Standard Google Workspace membership — and get unlimited duration Google Meets and transcriptions of my meetings.
Ultimately, that move saved me paying 2 additional subscriptions (about NZ$40 a month), while keeping the same functionality. Love it. :)
→ Squarespace (OBVS!)
Squarespace is the platform I use for my business website, and what I design client websites in as well. It’s also where I purchased my yoliestephenson.com domain name, too. (Ohhh, the benefits of having an unusual name. Being able to have my name as my business URL almost makes it worth the awkward roll calls where my name was mispronounced. So embarrassing as a shy schoolgirl!)
READ MORE: Why Squarespace Works Well for Health and Wellness Businesses »
→ FLODESK
I send out a newsletter called Notes from the Nook, where I write about marketing, running a wellness business well, and staying well while running my own business as an endo girlie prone to perfectionist.
If you want to send out your own marketing emails (recommended!), there are a bunch of email marketing platforms to choose from—from Flodesk to MailChimp to Squarespace Email Campaigns to Kit and beyond—but Flodesk is what I (currently) use to send out newsletters, my welcome sequence, communications to people who purchase my website templates, as well as freebies to people who opt-in. I mainly chose it because it allows me to automate what gets sent out when people buy something from my shop. It makes beautiful emails too, which is another win.
→ Chat GPT
Of course, like almost everyone these days, I integrate Chat GPT into my process to create content for my business. I prefer to capture my voice, so tend towards using Chat to outline content rather than write it from scratch, brainstorm marketing strategies for my own business, repurpose blog content into social media posts (I love it for this), pull information from transcriptions I’ve recorded and uploaded, fix spelling mistakes … and more! I think this topic is worth it’s own separate blog post, don’t you?
→ TRELLO
I use Trello to keep my marketing and business-related tasks organised. I have created workflows for content creation, website design and copywriting processes which I can repeat with each client or task I take on— so I’m working through action steps I’ve already mapped out for each service, step by step. (Keeps me feeling organised and in-control) And of course, I organise my weekly schedule on there too.
→ Acuity Scheduling
I use Acuity for scheduling calls with clients. Useful features? It’s now owned by Squarespace so pairs easily with the platform, no need for workarounds like Zapier. It prevents time-wasting email back-and-forth and eliminates the need for complex time zone calculations by automatically converting available time slots into each person’s time zone. (Magic when you work with worldwide clients like I do! ✨) Plus, it sends automated reminders about meetings—making getting clients onto calls simple.
CLIENT WORK, COPY & DESIGN TOOLS
These are the tools I use at every phase of my copywriting and website design process—from the initial client, customer and SEO research to the actual writing, editing and proofreading. Then through to to mocking up and designing.
→ Google Docs
Personally, I prefer Google Docs to Microsoft Word. Perhaps it’s because it’s what I’m used to? But perhaps not, since all the large digital businesses I’ve worked with have used it too. It’s collaborative—allowing easy commenting and sharing—and all Google docs are stored on the cloud rather than locally (so it’s accessible from anywhere, on any computer). Perfect for me since I often travel between the UK and NZ. Oh, and perhaps most importantly, it has the Version History functionality.
As a professional copywriter who regularly has to “kill my darlings,” this magic button is terrific for not losing the copy nuggets you come up with and delete in a fit of madness. (Seriously, version history is a literal lifesaver). And as a business owner crafting or editing copy for corporate/creative/small business clients? Using Google Docs means my clients can add comments to their drafts, we can respond within a clear comment thread, and you can easily share documents between people with different permissions (view, comment, edit).
I also love that you can do a word count of individual sections, which I like to do for SEO keyword placement, Page Title and Meta Description length, and keeping the copy I write tight — particularly with website UX and browser experience in mind. And honestly? It’s been so many years working with Google Docs, I’m not going back now!
→ Google Drive
I create a private folder in Google Drive for every client, and store their web copy, brand assets, photography and design mockups (for bespoke website design projects) in there. Then I link to that in their Dubsado Portal.
→ SEO Space
An incredible tool, I use this to optimise my Squarespace website for SEO! It’s brilliant. Can’t recommend enough. One of my least favourite SEO jobs is writing alt-text and meta descriptions, and I love that this drafts them for you!
→ UBERSUGGEST
Ubersuggest (paired with SEO Space) is the primary toolkit I use for the SEO side of my marketing. I have dabbled with others, including Keysearchand Keywords Everywhere (which I still use to supplement Mangools). Large SEO and marketing agencies I've worked with have used more complex tools like Agency Analytics or SEMrush. However, as a boutique copywriting and website design studio for wellness entrepreuneurs, this pairing works well for my needs. I can monitor my ranksings, save lists of keywords I want to target for each client website, and target areas right down to local regions. Overall, it's very handy!
→ SEO Meta in 1-Click
A recommendation I picked up during my time at an Auckland copywriting agency, I use this free tool mostly for reviewing Page Titles and Meta Descriptions—to see what keywords are currently being targeted and to check that everything has been input correctly once a site is published. Just add it to your browser bar in Chrome!
→ Portent’s SERP Preview Tool
Perfect when it comes time to writing meta descriptions, URLs and page titles. Gotta make sure they’re concise, displaying well, and engaging! This helps.
→ Grammarly Premium
My proofreading secret weapon. (Or not-so-secret, as I'm sure almost every copywriter uses it, too! 😅). Grammarly is my right-hand tool for catching spelling and grammar mistakes. And if you're trying to discipline yourself to write LESS—which you should, as it's one of the best ways to improve your web copy and content—the "clarity" suggestions are useful. You don't need to accept every suggestion, but it's good at training you to slim down your copy.
→ Canva
Canva isn’t just what I use for my own social media marketing and blog graphics—it’s a great tool for creating beautiful graphics and imagery for client websites. I personally have a Canva Pro subscription, so my own branding is saved in there with speeds up the process for me when it comes to my own marketing work. Love it!
→ Figma
As part of my custom design projects, I create a mockup of the web pages on each site before building them out in Squarespace. This gives clients the opportunity to make edits and updates — and see how the entire site flows together as a whole and is design cohesively.
→ Tiny JPG
The faster your website loads, the better it is for Google, for GEO and for your website visitors. (Nothing more teeth-gritting than the wheel of doom while a site loads—and, I promise, people will and do click away when they’re made to wait too long to see a webpage.) That’s why, one of the biggest mistakes health and wellness practitioners make when they DIY their website is upload full-size images!
It’s super important to reduce your images to under 500KB, or ideally, 250KB. I start this process in Canva if I’m designing imagery in there, and then reduce each image down to the correct size using Tinify, before uploading into Squarespace on a client’s website.
→ Squarekicker
A great way to add customisations and animations and fun effects to Squarespace websites without CSS. You can get it for a month, use it to create changes on your site, and then cancel it after that an all your changes will remain live, which is wonderful.
Well, there you go! A peek behind the scenes of the tools I use in my business, to organise things and deliver copywriting, messaging strategy and website design in 2026!
