March 16 - 20, 2026
Conversion Fest
The ways people find and use websites has changed. Learn how to design for conversion in the AI search era.
Meet Your Host
Shannon Mattern
I'm Shannon Mattern, founder of the Web Designer Academy, host of the Profitable Web Designer Podcast, and I'll be your host for the 2026 Simply Profitable Designer Summit!
I'm so excited you're here, because this year's speaker lineup is next level! You'll find so many genius, creative, refreshing ways to run your design business in this year's Summit... so get ready to get inspired. There's gold in every single presentation!
My goal for you is that when you leave this event, you truly believe what you want for your business and your life is possible, and that you've found strategies that feel aligned and the mentors who can lead you there.
And now, onto your amazing speakers!
Meet The Speakers
Bailey Collins
From Confusion to Conversion: Helping Clients Create Content That Supports the User Journey
Bailey Collins is the founder of Honeywave Creative and the creator of Design Day Blueprint, a proven system that teaches designers how to build high-converting brands and websites in a single day. She has helped hundreds of business owners elevate their online presence through strategic, personality-packed design, and now teaches designers how to deliver that same level of strategy and impact in a streamlined, profitable way.
Cathy Olson
How to Read Your Own Page Like Your Buyer Does (And Fix What's Actually Broken)
Meet Cathy, the mermaid-haired Designer and Marketer who’s worked with brands like Apple and Disney. As the co-founder of Funnel Gorgeous® and FG Funnels®, she empowers women with affordable marketing tools. Her cutting-edge funnels outperform industry benchmarks, proving that profitable can be beautiful. When not designing funnels, she’s creating IG reels or visiting Disney parks, living by Walt’s words: ‘All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.’
Chris Misterek
The Homepage Conversion Blueprint: Design Any Page To Double Its Sales
Chris runs Self-Made Web Designer, where he teaches people across the internet (but mostly on YouTube0 how to go from knowing absolutely nothing about web design to running a full-fledged web design business. Thanks to ADHD, he’s gone headfirst down more rabbit holes than he can count. One of the most valuable, and very relevant here, is conversion rate optimization. He loves helping designers stop guessing, and build sites that actually make people click, book, and buy.
Diana Wei Fang
The 10-Minute Window: Why Your Contact Form Is Losing You Clients
Diana Wei Fang refuses to see one more small business fail. As founder of The Finer Points and certified HoneyBook Pro, she’s helped over 3,700 creative entrepreneurs build systems that convert leads and scale sustainably. After watching clients struggle at the hiring stage, Diana launched VA Advantage, offering The Hiring Blueprint for business owners ready to build teams and The Indispensable VA program for assistants who want to become irreplaceable. She believes small businesses are frontline work, and proper systems plus strategic hiring are what turn vision into lasting impact.
Haley Brown
Woo Them: 5 Simple Design Tweaks That Convert Browsers Into Buyers
Designer, WP wiz and straight talker obsessed with all things WordPress and helping designers like you make an incredible living while doing what you love the most.
Jacob Cass
Build a Signature Offer That Makes Websites Convert
Jacob Cass is a brand strategist, designer, and founder of branding agency JUST Creative and the Brand Builders Alliance, a global community for designers and web designers building serious careers. He has worked with brands including the City of San Francisco, Disney, Nike, and Jerry Seinfeld. Through BBA, he helps designers Stand the Flock Out with clearer strategy, stronger positioning, and better businesses.
Jason Gracia
Million Dollar Website: How I Made Millions as a Web Designer without Ever Selling Websites
Jason Gracia is a website entrepreneur, speaker, and thought leader with over 25 years of experience in web design and online business. He has built multiple seven-figure companies and is the founder of one of the most successful website agencies serving coaches. By productizing his own agency, Jason sold the same results-driven website more than 700 times, generating millions of dollars without building custom sites. Today, he teaches website designers how to scale their businesses by designing once, selling repeatedly, and escaping the burnout of custom work.
Josh Hall
5 Not-So-Common Website Conversion Tips
Josh is a proud work-from-home Husband and Father of 3 littles. 5 if you include 2 Golden Retrievers.
He was a professional web designer who built and scaled his own agency for over a decade before selling it in 2020 to focus full-time on teaching other aspiring web designers on how to build businesses of their own.
Josh is a web design business coach, podcast host and web agency founder based out of Columbus, Ohio. Through his podcast, youtube channel, online courses and web design community Web Designer Pro®, he teaches web designers how to build a web design business that gives them freedom and life they love.
Leigh Scott
Finding the Conversion Baseline & What to Improve Next
Leigh Scott is a Website Growth Strategist and founder of Zainatain, a boutique digital growth consultancy. She helps organizations improve website performance through UX strategy, conversion optimization, and analytics. Leigh works across industries to identify what is driving engagement, leads, and revenue and where friction in the customer journey is limiting growth. Her work focuses on prioritizing high-impact improvements that lead to measurable results.
Meg Casebolt
Search Evolved: From Keyword Chasing to AI Authority
Meg Casebolt works with experienced founders, consultants, and creators who don’t need more SEO advice—but do need a new way to be understood in a search ecosystem increasingly shaped by AI.
As the founder of Love At First Search, Meg helps people move from tactical visibility to durable authority by teaching them how modern search systems evaluate expertise, explanations, and trust. Her Human-First SEO methodology focuses less on rankings and more on recognition: how ideas get credited and recommended by both humans and machines.
Meg lives in Rochester, NY with her husband, two boys, and an 80-pound pit bull, and maintains strong opinions about Broadway musicals, romance novels, and the structural importance of s’mores
Melina Palmer
Designing for Decisions: Using Behavioral Science to Shape What People Choose
When organizations want to understand why people make the decisions they do, they turn to Melina Palmer. A leading voice in applied behavioral economics, Melina is a 3x bestselling author, keynote speaker, and host of The Brainy Business podcast, with over 1.6 million downloads worldwide. She works with small businesses and global brands alike, helping them design clearer choices that drive confident decisions, stronger conversions, and better outcomes. Melina also teaches Applied Behavioral Economics through the Texas A&M Human Behavior Lab. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post, Forbes, Inc., and Psychology Today, and on stages including SXSW and TEDxPortland.
Michelle Bourbonniere
How AI Search Works
Michelle Bourbonniere, PhD, is the founder of Words on the Rise, an SEO consultancy which specializes in small site SEO. She works with solopreneurs and small teams to develop smart SEO strategies to get their website and their brand in front of the right audience of people. She specializes in keyword research, content planning, and in helping brands show up (and show up well) in AI search results.
Nikki Thompson
Integrating Copy Support to Help Clients Get Found & Get Inquiries
Nikki Thompson is a website copywriter, StoryBrand Certified Guide, and the creative force behind Clarity Branding Co. With over 13 years of marketing expertise and 3 years of running her own boutique copywriting studio, she’s helped over 100 brands clarify their message and craft copy that connects. She offers Integrated Copy Partnerships to web designers (forget “white label” or referral partnerships—this concept is way better!). When she’s not writing for clients or making lists, you’ll find her enjoying lake life in Minnesota with her husband and three kids.
Pippa Tanko
The Visual Trust Engine: How Story-Driven Imagery Helps You Build Websites That Convert
I’m a strategy-driven visual storyteller who helps founders and creative businesses translate their value into images that genuinely make an impact. With over 20 years in brand development and photography, I blend narrative, psychology and visual direction to create content that attracts the right clients and positions you as the go-to in your space. My work goes far beyond taking pretty photos; it is about clarity, consistency and building a brand people trust at a glance. I’ve supported everyone from solo creators to established organisations in aligning their message, visuals and visibility so they can grow with confidence.
Sam Sarsten
How to Get ChatGPT to Recommend Your Clients
Sam Sarsten is the founder of Local SEO Academy who built his agency from $0 to over $400,000 in under three years by leveraging a repeatable local SEO growth plan. After experiencing the feast-or-famine cycle firsthand, Sam shifted his focus to building stable, recurring revenue through local SEO systems. Today, he helps other web designers turn one-off projects into predictable income by layering SEO retainers on top of their existing services. His work combines real-world agency experience with practical, dead-simple education.
Sarah Robb
Clarity Before Clicks: Why Brand Strategy Is the Root of Successful Conversion and How to Make It Simple
Sarah Robb has over 20 years of experience as a brand strategist – developing strategies for organisations like Pfizer, Diageo, EY, PepsiCo and Oracle – at agencies like Landor and independently. She is co-author of the Amazon bestseller ‘Rebrand Right’ and founder of Brand Strategy Academy, an online course that has helped over 400 designers become brand strategy confident.
The Brief Collective
The Experience Edit: How To Design Websites That Quietly Sell For Your Clients
We help high-achieving brand designers stop booking “budget clients” and start booking premium ones. Our work is focused on helping designers build demand, raise their standards, and close $10K+ projects consistently without people-pleasing or over-explaining. Together, we are breaking the starving artist narrative.
Tiffany Pichardo
Design Systems + AI The New Conversion Advantage for Web Designers
Tiffany is a product and web designer with nearly a decade of experience designing high-converting websites and digital systems for growing businesses. She specializes in helping designers move faster without sacrificing quality by using design systems, strategy, and AI as leverage—not shortcuts. Tiffany is the founder of Anthology of Web Design, a premium design library built to help Wix designers deliver better client work, protect their time, and increase margins.
Whitney Rose
AI is Choosing Who Gets Hired. Here's How to be the Obvious Choice
Whitney is a web designer and educator who believes your business should support your life, not run it. After burning out on long, traditional website timelines, she perfected the Website in a Week method, a strategic, time-based approach that helps web designers deliver high-quality websites without scope creep or exhaustion. By pairing strong positioning, streamlined workflows, and automation, Whitney runs a 6-figure design business while working just 20–25 hours a week. Today, she teaches web designers how to earn more, work less, and build sustainable businesses through her course, One Week Web Designer while living out the same method in her own studio.
Yevgeniya "Gigi" Davarashvili
The Five Levers of Web Conversion Every Designer Needs in the AEO Era
Yevgenia “Gigi” Davarashvili is a conversion-led designer and business educator helping creatives build profitable businesses through marketing, positioning, and sales.
Gigi believes designers are not pixel-pushers, but strategic partners shaping real business outcomes. She advocates for websites that are built with purpose, clarity, and intent, and believes the future of design belongs to those who understand how people think, decide, and buy.