Mara Quinn Coaching
WordPress personal-brand demo for a fictional executive coach — long-form bio, three engagement types with honest pricing, lead-magnet PDF resources, and a book-a-call page treated as a real conversation rather than a calendar widget.
Overview
A WordPress personal-brand marketing site for a fictional executive coach — five-page structure (Home, About Mara, Coaching, Resources, Book a Call) on a custom Full-Site-Editing block theme. Fourth demo in the Tier 1 batch; the first to use a serif heading treatment (Fraunces) and the only Tier 1 demo whose primary visual is a single editorial portrait.
Per-demo theme — editorial, serif headings:
- Thin child of the platform
_chassisparent - Deep brown primary (#3F2A1E), warm terracotta accent (#C2552E), bone background (#F7F1E6)
- Fraunces serif for headings against Inter for body — the only Tier 1 demo with a serif treatment, fitting the editorial / single-practitioner register
- Header carries the four-item nav plus a permanent "Book a call" pill — third demo to use the pattern, established as the Tier 1 norm for any demo where a single conversion path matters more than category navigation
- Footer carries practice bio + nav + email + working-hours window
Honest engagement pricing in the placeholder content:
The temptation on a coaching site is to gate pricing behind a sales call ("Investment varies by engagement; book a discovery call to learn more"). The Coaching page lists every engagement type with a flat-rate price in italics under the description ($5,800 per twelve-week 1:1 arc; $22,000 for a two-day leadership offsite; $6,500 for a career-transition quarter). The pricing honesty is what separates a credible single-practitioner site from the funnel-by-default coaching market.
Five pages:
- Home — Brown cover hero with name + tagline ("Leadership work that doesn't sound like a brochure."), an about teaser block with the editorial portrait + bio CTA, a three-up engagement preview, the
sfp-blocks/trust-stackresults bar (9 years · 220+ clients · 38 cohorts · 30-min intro call), and three testimonial cards with rounded avatars - /about/ — Long-form bio across four H2 sections (Operator first, Coach second, Who I work with, Where to find me) with the lifestyle photo and an explicit "who I refer out" paragraph
- /coaching/ — Three alternating image-text rows for Executive 1:1, Leadership offsites, and Career transitions. Each row carries a substantive description and a flat-rate-pricing paragraph in italics
- /resources/ — Two lead-magnet PDFs (Clarity Sprint, Feedback Loop) with cover images + descriptions + "email me for the PDF" buttons (no email-list signup gate). Plus a quarterly-essays callout for the back catalog
- /book/ — Email-only contact card (no phone, no Calendly) with a "what the call is and is not" callout that screens out sales-call-style entries. Treats the intro call as a conversation rather than a funnel
The Challenge
Coaches default to one of two failure modes — the wellness-mystic template ("transform your leadership presence"), or the funnel-by-default landing page that gates pricing behind a "discovery call." Both treat the prospective client as a lead to capture rather than a peer to talk with. The result reads as either spiritual marketing or sales-call bait; neither communicates what the work actually looks like or what a session would cost.
The Solution
A per-demo theme on the platform chassis with no new shared block. Long-form bio that names what the coach does and does not do; three engagement types with flat-rate pricing visible on the page; lead-magnet PDFs delivered by email without a signup gate; intro call treated as a conversation rather than a calendar widget. Serif headings (Fraunces) for the editorial register; permanent "Book a call" pill in the header for the single conversion path.
Results
Lighthouse 98 / 96 / 100 / 92 (perf / a11y / best-practices / SEO) with placeholder photography — within a point of the platform ceiling without per-demo tuning
Five-page personal-brand site live in ~4 hours including per-demo theme with serif headings, full seed with flat-rate-priced coaching content, hub case study, Project registration, and portfolio surfacing
No new shared block — fourth consecutive Tier 1 demo to make that call; the testimonial trio + avatar pattern is core/columns + core/image with rounded radius, no new abstraction needed
First Tier 1 demo with a serif heading treatment — Fraunces for headings against Inter for body. Proof the chassis carries the editorial / single-practitioner register without per-demo typography overrides
Flat-rate engagement pricing visible on the page ($5,800 twelve-week 1:1, $22,000 leadership offsite, $6,500 career-transition arc) — the pricing-honesty discipline that runs through all four Tier 1 demos (legal results, roofing cost ranges, dental procedure pricing, coaching engagement rates)
Email-only book page with explicit "what the call is and is not" callout — treats the intro call as a conversation, not a funnel; pattern is generalisable to every Tier 1 contact page
Gallery
