All the Tools I Use to Run My Business as a Copywriter & Website Designer for Health and Wellness Practitioners
In this post, I’m breaking down all the core tools I use to run my business as a copywriter and website designer for wellness practitioners and professionals—from copywriting tools to design to operational tools.
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, working with health and wellness practitioners across New Zealand, Australia (and even globally with a bit of time-zone maths), primarily as a website copywriter and designer.
All that informs the tools I use, and 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!
→ Zoom
Zoom is perfect for conducting client meetings or customer interviews (for brand research and Voice of Customer research, both of which are essential parts of the copywriting process). 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 continue to love it today.
→ Squarespace
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
→ Kit
I send out a newsletter called Notes from the Nook, where I write about marketing and wellness business well — and how I stay well runnning my own business. If you want to send out your own emails (recommended!), there are a bunch of email marketing platforms to choose from—from Flodesk to MailChimp to Squarespace Email Campaigns and beyond—but Kit is what I (currently) use to send out newsletters and my welcome sequence, as well as freebies to people who opt-in. It’s intuitive to use, includes landing pages and automated sequences, and allows for list segmentation and subscriber tagging (which, even if you don’t need it as a brand-new business, you’ll be grateful for as you grow). I connect it to my Squarespace opt-in forms using Zapier.
GET IN ON IT: Sign up for my newsletter, Notes from the Nook, here
→ 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?
→ Notion
Lately, I’ve been using Notion to plan out my promotions and website content, and as a hub to keep my marketing organised. I still write my actual content in Google Docs, because I cannot do a word count of individual sections in Notion, which I like to do for SEO keyword placement and keeping my copy tight. And honestly? It’s been so many years working with Google Docs, I’m not going back now!
→ Acuity Scheduling
I use Acuity for scheduling calls with clients. Useful features? It’s now owned by Squarespace so pairs perfectly with the platform, no need for workarounds. 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 that include a Zoom meeting link—making getting clients onto calls simple.
NEXT UP? COPYWRITING, COPYEDITING, MESSAGING STRATEGY & WEBSITE 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.
→ Otter.ai
I use Otter for interview transcriptions. This 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, it doesn’t capture everything perfectly (particularly if you’ve a pronounced accent). Still, you can get close enough--and then replay the audio alongside the transcription to clarify any confusing elements. All in all? Otter is a great tool as a copywriter for capturing a client’s unique offer and perspective on health, wellness and their work—in their own words.
→ 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.
Why do I love it, personally? 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 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).
→ Google Drive
I create a private folder in Google Drive for every client, and store their web copy and design mockups (for bespoke website design projects) in there. This is also where I ask clients to upload their images for their website.
→ Mangools
Mangools is one of many SEO tools on the market. It features five tools for an effective SEO workflow—and my top four are keyword research, SERP (Search Engine Results Page) analysis, backlink analysis and rank tracking. Mangools is the primary tool I use for the SEO side of my copywriting services. I have dabbled with others, including Keysearch (cheaper but less functional) and 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 brands, Mangools works wonderfully for my needs. I can monitor clients' rankings (and my own), save lists of keywords I want to target for each client website, target areas right down to local regions, and see what keywords competitors rank for. 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.
→ Word Hippo
Word Hippo is the best thesaurus for keeping your copywriting and content interesting, engaging and decidedly un-snooze-worthy. Like it says on the box, it’s an excellent tool for creatives to expand their vocabulary—and to make your web copy pop on the page.
→ Grammarly Premium
My proofreading secret weapon. (Or not-so-secret, as I'm sure almost every professional 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.
→ Tinify
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.
FINALLY: Random by important extras
→ Spotify
For background noise. My favourite playlist when I have to concentrate and work up a storm is usually something instrumental without words—or actually, Taylor Swift’s Folklore is a good ‘un too! (No surprise according to my last Spotify Wrapped I’m in the top 1% of Taylor Swift listeners! #whatanachievement)
→ Eule Planner
Despite moving to a Kindle for books (being an expat will force you to minimise clutter!), I love to use paper and pen to plan my weeks/days. My favourite planner is Kerstin Martin’s Eule Planner, which is excellent for entrepreneurs and small business owners since it includes tracking for your key metrics, newsletter, and blog post ideas. While I know everyone has different preferences, the layout really works for me.
When I can’t get hold of a Eule Planner, I also love an Emma Kate Co. planner—specifically, the Horizontal Weekly. So beautiful.
Well, there you go! A peek behind the scenes of how I deliver copywriting, messaging strategy and website design—and into all the tools I use to run my business overall in 2025!
