And we get it. Talking about yourself, your achievements, your life story, and how awesome you are is awkward.

But guess what?

There’s another way!

Because (wait for it) your About page isn’t really about you!

And if you’ve tried writing your own About page copy, you’ve probably fallen into one of the traps a lot of other website owners fall into. So here we give you the top copy mistakes that personal brands make on your About page (and share some handy tips on how to fix them). Because we’re nice like that.

Let’s get stuck in.

What are the biggest mistakes personal brands make on their about page? 

1. It’s all about you!

The first mistake a lot of business owners make on their About page is focusing on themselves. It’s making a big song and dance about what an amazing professional you are, when you went to university, what you got your degree in, and… and… and…

Boring!

News flash. No one’s interested.

Obviously, you are awesome – super qualified and great at what you do. We know that.

But do you know what people really care about? Making sure you’re the right person to help them. They want to know they’re in the right place to get the product or service that’s going to solve their problem.

And most of the time, whether you went to university or bagged yourself a gazillion certifications that only really mean something if you work in your field and industry, is irrelevant.

What Should You Do Instead? Tell your readers how you can help them

Turn your About page on its head. When it comes to writing your about page, reframe your mindset from ‘about me’ to ‘How I can help you’.

This isn’t what you’re actually going to name your page by the way. You’ll still call it ‘About’, ‘About Me’, or ‘About Us’, but adding this phrase to the top of the page while you’re writing your copy will help you switch your focus onto your readers – your ideal customers or clients.

So think about:

• What are the problems they are experiencing? (And that you solve?)
• What puts you in the ideal position to solve those problems?
• How do you help them?

Ask yourself these types of questions as you write your copy, and you’ll avoid the mistake of making it all about you. Make it about how you can help them. 

2. You write in the third person

“Bob is one of the most acclaimed speakers in the industry. Since 1995, he has travelled all over the world to deliver his signature talks to large crowds.”

Who is writing this for Bob exactly? His biographer?

Let’s be honest. Writing in the third person may have been the done thing 10-20 years ago. It came across as professional and prestigious. Not many personal brands or small businesses had websites back then, and no one wanted to come across as a one-person band. The trend was definitely to try and make your company look bigger and better – more corporate and sought-after.

But, just like in fashion, things changed. And they’ve moved on.

Website users are shrewd and clever. We can see through stuff. And we can tell the difference between something that comes across as genuine and approachable versus something that seems stuffy and detached.

You may not be aware that you’re doing it, but when you write content in the third person, you’re putting distance between yourself and your reader. You’re almost putting yourself on a pedestal, making yourself look unreachable and unattainable. Which is exactly what not to do as a personal brand.

And people don’t tend to relate too well to that.

What Should You Do Instead? Write in the first person!

If it’s just you in your business, and you’re the one people will work with when they hire you, don’t be afraid to say so. Feel free to use ‘I’  – write content for your About page in the first person. We’re giving you full permission here!

You need to learn to embrace your personal brand, not run away from it. That’s why we recommend your website domain can be your personal brand name! And it’s why we recommend you write in first person.

And if you have a team, you can still write using the first person. Just change ‘I’ to ‘we’, ‘me’ to ‘us’, ‘mine’ to ‘ours’, and job done!

3. You don’t have any calls-to-action to your product or services

Much like your Homepage, which acts as the reception area of your website, your About page should direct people to other pages.

For example, on our About page, we list all the problems our services solve, and under each service, we have a ‘Find Out More’ button that takes people to the relevant service pages. This is where they can read more about each of the individual services we offer and make an informed decision as to whether they’re ready to work with us.

We also invite people to get in touch with us via our ‘Let’s Chat!’ button, which takes our readers to our Contact page.

But if you don’t have any calls-to-action where you let your prospective customers and clients know what you’d like them to do next, your About page may become a dead end.

So what should you do instead?

What Should You Do Instead? Direct people to other areas of your website

Use your About page efficiently by directing your audience to the relevant pages on your website where they can find more information about working with you. Add links to your Product or Service pages, your Contact page, and more of your content, if relevant.

4. You copy your competitors

Another mistake we see people make all the time is to sound exactly the same as their competitors. We see this a lot in the web design world, but it happens in all fields and industries.

Sure, all coaches want to help their clients ‘thrive’ and everyone is ‘result-driven’. But is this really you? Or are you just using terms and phrases that everyone else in your industry uses?

If your website copy reads exactly the same as everyone else’s, how can your ideal clients make a decision as to who they should work with? How do they know you’re different and better for them than any of your competitors?

They don’t!

So what should you do instead?

What Should You Do Instead? Focus on your USP

Instead of trying to fall in line and use overused words and phrases that other professionals in your industry use, be original. Be you! You are a personal brand, after all, and what makes you unique is you.

Ask yourself these questions:

• What’s your USP? What makes you unique and special? Is it your method? Your business set up? Your background and experience? Or maybe your qualifications?
• Why should people do business with you?
• Why should they pick you over someone else?

That is what you want to talk about on your About page, so don’t worry about the latest buzzwords or the overused business jargon that everyone else is using. Being like everyone else won’t do you any favours – we can promise you that!

5. You have zero personality

When people come to check out your website, they want to get an idea of what it’s like to work with you. Are you serious and corporate? Informal and quirky? Straight-talking but hilariously funny?

Whoever you are (and whatever your brand), it’s important that your website copy reflect your personality. The last thing you want is for people to get you on the phone or hire you for their first consultation and find out you’re nowhere near how you come across on your website.

Surprises like that never tend to work out well. After all, people check out your About page to figure out if you’re the right person to work with. And your job is to help them make that decision by the way you come across on the page.

How will you do that?

What Should You Do Instead? Nail your tone of voice

Your copy should help your target audience connect with you. You want to build trust and differentiate yourself from your competitors.

If you want to learn more about how to show your personality on your website, check out our blog post: How to Nail your Tone of Voice.

6. You don’t have any pictures of you!

Another mistake we see a lot of business owners make is to shy away from having any pictures of themselves on their website, and especially on their About page.

Remember – your About page is the place where your ideal customers or clients come to work out if you’re the right person for the job.

How can they choose you if they can’t even see you?

You see, words and images are a match made in heaven! The trick is to make the copy about your reader but the imagery about you. This is so people can see and sense who you are and who they’re thinking about hiring. 

Using stock photos or no images at all is tempting, but it means missing out on the opportunity to build that know, like, and trust factor that’s so important when people are thinking of buying from you.

What Should You Do Instead? Have amazing personal brand pictures of you on your About page

If it’s just you in your business, by all means, show us your face! You can have photos of yourself ‘in action’ while working with a client, speaking from a stage, teaching from a classroom, signing your book – whatever applies. Just make sure people can see you!

And if you have a team, share their lovely faces too! We feel so strongly about this that we even wrote a piece called, Show Us Your Face! And if you’re thinking of hiring a photographer to take some professional pics of you, then check out our blog post, Lessons We Learned From Our Business Photoshoot.

7. You don’t capture any leads

Something a lot of personal brands seem to forget is that your website is the ideal place to capture people’s email addresses, so you can build and nurture relationships with your audience by offering them value, and, ultimately close more sales.

Website traffic is great, but a lot of people won’t be ready to buy after visiting your website just once or twice. They’ll want to read more, find out more about you, and get to know you a little better before they make the decision to go ahead and make a purchase.

You can certainly give them more information through your copy and the awesome content you publish on your blog. But your email list is the place where you can show off your knowledge and expertise and offer your prospective customers or clients loads of value. 

Except… you won’t be able to get your visitors from your website and onto your email list if you don’t give them an incentive to pop in their email address.

What Should You Do Instead? Add a sign-up form to your About page

Your About page is the ideal place for you to add a sign-up form, so make sure you create a lead magnet and ask your readers for an email address. What can you offer your audience that will encourage them to join your email list? What value can you give them? Is there a quick problem you can solve for them? 

Once you’re clear on what you’re going to offer, add a sign-up form where they can easily pop in their email address, and then you can deepen and nurture that relationship via your email list. If you’re interested in using your website to build your email list, check out our blog post on how to create a lead generating website. 

8. You call your About page ‘Your journey’ (or something equally rubbish)

We see this all the time, and it’s probably a side-effect of wanting to be original and show your personality (which we get).

But calling your About page something else – like ‘Our journey’, ‘Our story’, ‘Experience’, or ‘Thoughts’ (or anything else) is never a good idea.

Why? Because people are used to the About page being called ‘About’. It’s an easy, recognisable term. It’s what the page is called.

Your readers head over to your About page when they’re trying to make a decision about working with you. The last thing you want is for them to skip over the page or miss it completely just because you called it something else! 

If they can’t find your About page, they might click the back button and be gone. And that’s not what you want!

So what can you do instead?

What Should You Do Instead? Call your About page by its name

This is a simple one. Call your About page ‘About’, ‘About Me’, or ‘About Us’. You don’t need to be any more creative than this – not with your page title. It’s what your readers expect to see on your website and where they head to in order to find out more about you. Make this easy and straightforward for your audience. 

Want to Learn More About How to Create a High-Converting About Page?

And if you want more tips on how to write an awesome About page for your website, head over to our blog post, How To Write Your Website About Page.

Or download our checklist on how to create an about page for your personal brand…

Martin & Lyndsay

The post The Biggest Copy Mistakes Personal Brands Make on Their About Page appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

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Website copy is one of the key elements that will make your website a success. That’s why, in this episode, we’ll give you four easy ways you can instantly improve your writing.

You’ll learn…

• How to make your copy more engaging
• How to identify passive voice
• How to make your copy less clunky
• How to use rhythm in your writing

Resources

54 Ways To Increase Your Website Sales

Facebook Group

4 Ways to Instantly Improve Your Writing: Transcript

Welcome to Episode 44 of the Make Your Mark Online Podcast. Today I’m going to give you 4 instant easy-peasy ways you can improve your writing.

But before we get into that, this show is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online Community, this is our signature membership community where we help small business owners build and grow a successful website.

So let’s get on with the show.

Now firstly, who am I to tell you how to improve your writing? I own a web design company after all. Well, your website’s content is one of the key elements to its success. So, no, we don’t write your website copy, but we really do care when it’s a load of crap. Because that means your website won’t be as successful as you want it to be, you’ll be sad, we’ll be sad. There are just crappy feelings all around.

So I actually spend a lot of time learning about how to write business copy, so I can pass this knowledge onto our clients and our members too.

So, my first tip…

1. Cut the fat

We use a lot of excess, unnecessary words in our writing, especially if we write how we talk. So it helps to cast a glance over our writing to try and spot words or phrases that are redundant i.e. we don’t need them. Why bother doing this? Well, the more the brain has to read, the harder it has to work. Brevity is beautiful, so it’s a good idea to cut as much as we can without losing the meaning of the sentence.

My favourite redundant phrase is 100% true. I use it all the time. I even know when I’m writing it that I have to go back and edit it, and often I forget. Of course, there’s no percentage when it comes to truth. Something is either true or not true (unless you’re a politician in which case there seems to be some sort of different scale of truth where things can be kinda true.) But for most of us, it’s either one or the other. So in this instance the ‘100%’ is redundant. You just need to say something is true.

Some other common redundant words or phrases are – I absolutely guarantee. It’s just I guarantee. Or the end result. It’s just, the result. The basic fundamentals – I see that one all the time. It’s just the fundamentals. Let’s collaborate together, that’s a good one. Obviously it’s let’s collaborate. Actual experience – as opposed to…what? That fake experience that seems to be going around these days. Actually, my CV when I was 20 had a lot of fake experience so maybe that one does make sense. But you get the picture.

You won’t pick up on all of these but if you have an awareness of it you should be able to catch a few of them in your writing.

2. Use active voice

So this may sound like I’m sending you back to school, but that’s not what I’m trying to do here. There’s a huge difference between active and passive voice and they can have a remarkable effect on the reader.

Passive voice is when the noun becomes the object of a sentence. Whereas active voice is where the noun is the subject of a sentence. But let’s give some examples.

The letter was posted by me, that’s a passive sentence.
It makes the letter (or the object) the subject of the sentence. It essentially makes ‘the letter’ the most important thing in that sentence, and the ‘by me’ is like an afterthought.
Whereas if I say ‘I posted the letter.’ That’s active. ‘I’ is the noun which is made the subject of the sentence. And you can see the difference ‘the letter was posted by me.’ ‘I posted the letter.’
So you could have ‘the training programme must be attended by all staff.’ But it would be better to say ‘All staff must attend the training programme.’ It’s stronger, isn’t it? It puts the noun, in this case, ‘the staff’ at the forefront.
And this is a common problem in writing. I think this happens when we’re trying to tiptoe around things, like the training programme must be attended by all staff. It sounds less bossy than all staff must attend the training programme.
But what happens when we use passive voice is that we don’t sound as engaging. And we end up using more words too, words like was, were, been, be – the training programme must be attended by all staff. It just makes the sentence clunky and doesn’t inspire action. Particularly on sales pages, this is really important because you want sharp, focused copy. Not a rambly mess.
Although saying that, Martin often moans at my bluntness on WhatsApp or Facebook messenger because once you start doing it, it does become a habit, so perhaps just be wary of it in emails. Or just add a smiley face emoji. That’s what I do when I think I’m being blunt, I’ll just throw in a smiley face emoji and hope for the best. You see, you’re getting the best writing tips ever in this podcast episode.
Now, I said in the beginning that I’ve always struggled with grammar and spelling and spotting active/passive voice is no exception. So I use a handy tip from a school teacher called Rebecca Johnson who tweeted about this. Rebecca said, if you can add the phrase ‘by zombies’ after the verb in a sentence then you have passive voice. The letter was posted…posted being the verb. The letter was posted by zombies. The training programme must be attended by zombies. Our business is recommended by zombies.
And every time a politician says ‘mistakes were made’ I swear you’ll say ‘by zombies’ in your head.

I don’t know what’s with me and politicians today, they seem to have annoyed me. Who knows.

3. Sentence rhythm

Okay, so I realise you’re not a poet or musician. Well, you might be, in which case this will be a doddle.
So essentially when our sentences don’t have rhythm, the reader will get bored. And quickly.
Now rhythm is a tricky subject but I’m going to go through one tip that helps me with my sentence rhythm and I’m going to do it by first showing you a bad example.
Sometimes I get emails. And they’re usually from men actually. I have no idea why. But it goes like this. And by the way every sentence I’m going to read is on its own individual line.
Lyndsay.
Your Business is Dead.
You don’t have sales.
You don’t have leads.
You don’t have hope.
I have the solution.
Yes, that’s right.
I have the solution.
Ready to hear it?
I bet you are.
No, not really mate. Because I’m bored with this incessant style of writing style. Short, sharp sentences are really useful, but only when peppered amongst longer sentences. To create that rhythm we need peaks and troths. If you use too many short sentences, they lose their power. If you use too many long sentences it can become boring and tiring. So mix it up.
There’s a brilliant quote from Gary Provost who is an American Writer about this. I’ll pop it in the show notes because it’s a great one but it goes:

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.”

And I think that pretty much sums it up.

4. Stop with the stuffy

I used to be a copywriter and if I ever did receive negative feedback it was always the same thing: People used to say, ‘I don’t feel like the copy is professional enough.’
The thing is, before I would write anything I’d phone the client and say, pretend I am a prospective customer and tell me about this service or that product. But what I was listening too wasn’t just fact and figures, it was their tone of voice. The way they spoke, phrases they used, how formal or informal they were, where I could hear the excitement, how they got to the real benefits of what they sold.
So when I received the feedback that the copy sounded unprofessional. I would ask them if it sounded like them, sounded like a conversation they’d have with a client. ‘They would say yes…but it’s different for a website.’ I would explain, that really, it wasn’t. What you want your website to do is to connect with the reader, make them understand who you are and how you help. And they’d say ‘Yes, but my competitors’ doesn’t sound like this.’
And that’s the crux of the problem. We want to look good in front of our peers so we say things like established in 1982, suchabody financial services, offers a complete solution to your financial needs (I had to do that in that voice by the way.)
And I get it, being different is scary. Just think about school. Many of us wanted to fit in, right? But there was always that one kid that was different, who owned being different and didn’t care what others thought. And you know what, she or he actually got respect for it. That’s what your business needs to do. It needs to be that kid. Don’t worry about what your competitors do, however you speak to your clients is the way that you should write your business copy. Of course, it should be well structured and without all the ums and arrhs. But it doesn’t have to be super formal.

So I hope you found that episode.

And if you’re wanting regular feedback on your website copy or content, then check out our membership community, Make Your Mark Online. We host a 90-day challenge where our members produce one piece of content every week which we then give feedback on. If that sounds good head to makeyourmarkonline.net to find out more.

So that’s it for today’s episode, we’ll see you next time on the Make your make online podcast

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post Ep 44- 4 Easy Ways To Instantly Improve Your Website Copy appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

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In this episode, we’re going to go through some of the changes that have happened with Google and SEO. How these changes could have an impact on your business and finally what you can do to keep (or even increase) your search traffic.

In this episode, you learn…

• The issues with Google that could lead to less organic traffic to your website
• How you can still maintain and even get more traffic from Google even with these changes

Resources

54 Ways To Increase Your Website Sales

Less than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click

How Much of Google’s Search Traffic is Left for Anyone But Themselves?

Facebook Group

Is Google Dead: Transcript

Welcome to Episode 43 of the Make Your Mark Online Podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about whether Google is dead. So that’s nice. I’m going to go through some of the changes we’ve seen in Google, what impact they’ll have on you and essentially, what you should do about it.

But before we get into that, this show is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online Community, this is our signature membership community where we help small business owners build and grow a successful website.

So let’s get on with the show.

Okay so firstly, what’s happening Google?

What have we done to deserve this?

Now you may have noticed that Google’s got a little frosty with those of us who use it (or for the many of us who rely on it) for organic traffic. And there have been a few changes that have sounded pretty scary for us business owners.

Rand Fishkin, the CEO of Moz – and if you know anything about SEO, Moz is pretty much the frontier in providing SEO knowledge. But Rand Fishkin wrote an article in 2019 that stated that less than 50% of Google searches result in a click to a website. For mobile, that’s even scarier, at less than 27%. I’ll link to this article in the show notes so you can go look at some scary graphs and cry into your bowl of cereal.

But maybe before you do that, you could just listen to the rest of this podcast and hopefully, it will put your mind at ease.

Why Are Is Our CTR (Click Through Rate) Decreasing?

Well, there are many different factors. Firstly, you may have noticed something called featured snippets in search results. So when I type into Google ‘How much does it cost for a website’ – Google provides me with an answer without me having to click on the website that provided me with the answer.

So, it takes the information off the website that answered that question and delivers that as an answer on its own platform. And in this case, it’s a gives a reasonable ish answer, it says it costs between $100-$500 to build your own website and up to $30,000 to get a custom-built site. And it’s quite difficult to see the name of the company that wrote the article and provided the answer.

Which is why some people argue that a featured snippet is resulting in a decrease in people clicking on your links in Google search. The data certainly seems to show that.

So, that’s pretty scary, isn’t it?

And the answer to that is yes and no.

The problem with this data is that it doesn’t factor in what people are searching for. So I don’t know if you do this, but when Martin and I watch a film, we’re like, is that Mark Wahlberg and Matt Damon? I’m like, it’s Matt Damon, definitely. And Martin’s like, no it’s not, it’s Mark Wahlberg. No, you’re completely wrong. Okay, Google it. And then you Google the name of the film and you get your answer straight away without having to click on a website. So it’s not taking into account all the millions of people who are also performing these kinds of searches.

So, when we talk about there being fewer clicks from Google, it doesn’t necessarily categorise what people are and are not clicking on. Essentially, yes, overall click-through rates from Google are down, but that’s not necessarily true of educational content.

Take the search query I mentioned before – How Much Does It Cost For a Website. Google gave the answer between just between $100-$500 or up to $30,000 dollars for a custom site. Now the likelihood is, someone will need more information than that. Between $100 – $30,000 isn’t particularly helpful. So there’s that to consider.

And there was actually a study by Hubspot that stated that these featured snippets get more clicks than organic search results, so that’s good news here.

So it conclusion, yes it’s a worry and I’m going to talk about how to combat all this later. But it’s probably not all doom and gloom as you might think.

So let’s move on to some other obstacles Google is throwing at us.

The second is how Google is changing the way it displays ads.

In fact, this is changing regularly. I used to instinctively know which results in Google were ads, and I’d just click on the results that I knew weren’t ads.

Now it’s trickier. The way ads are displayed is changing so much that we don’t really have time to get used to how they look and well…avoid them.

And it’s often more difficult to get to the organic traffic too. We’re on the first page for ‘top web design agencies manchester’ and yet you have to scroll down to halfway down the page to find that search result. And that’s because there’s a lot of ads and a big map in the way. So, thanks for that Google.

So what do we do?

Do we just not bother anymore? Forget content marketing and forget having a website and just focus on social media?

Well, no. Good God no.

In fact, this is an opportunity to invest more in educational content. If someone types into Google, web designers in Manchester they’re just going to see ads and a map and maybe click on a company in the organic results, maybe not.

If someone is typing into Google a question like ‘how much does it cost for a website?’ then they need education. Educational content is the best kind of content to use in order to get traffic from Google. We’ve certainly found this too, the majority of our traffic has come from our educational content, even now. And in a lot of cases, our educational content gets more traffic than our homepage.

In summary, if someone needs educating, they’re generally going to need more information than what’s included in a 40-50 word featured snippet. Not always, but mostly.

But more importantly, this highlights something bigger.

You cannot rely on one single platform in your business.

Now it’s scary when we see people building businesses using just Facebook, and we’re like, ‘oh my God, get a website!’

But equally, perhaps we web designers haven’t been very clear about how we shouldn’t rely solely on Google either.

We cannot control Google. They are there to make money, not be our friends. And they don’t owe us anything.

This is why it’s frustrating when we see websites rank purely for search engines. If you look at some of the websites that are on the first page of Google for ‘How much does a website cost?’ yes the articles are helpful but some of them are…well just kinda boring. They aren’t memorable. The businesses have no personality. No brand. Nothing. I’d read their article and then I would forget their names.

What we need to do instead is elevate ourselves, build our brand, be clear on who we are and have that come across in our content. We need to provide helpful content but also have personality too. We need people to find us and remember us.

And we also want more and more people searching for our business name. If there’s one thing Google can’t do, it provides other answers to our business name. When I want to know something about SEO, I don’t type that question into Google, I search for Moz and then I use their internal search to find what I’m looking for. Essentially, you want your own website to become the Google of your industry. So we all end up with a bunch of tiny Googles!

To do that we need to, as I said merge both personality and content marketing. To make sure we’re found and also remembered.

We can still optimise our content for Google, of course. But we can’t put our eggs in one basket. We need to use social media too. We need to join communities and make connections. We cannot sit back anymore. To get traffic to your website you need a constant proactive approach.

In short, don’t rely on anyone but yourselves.

So I hope you found that episode useful and not too scary!

And if you’re wanting to learn more about how to grow your website so it acts as the best salesperson for your business, then check out our membership community, Make Your Mark Online. We do talk a lot about SEO in our membership especially how it relates to content marketing. If that sounds good head to makeyourmarkonline.net to find out more.

So that’s it for today’s episode, we’ll see you next time on the Make your make online podcast.

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post Ep 43- Is Google Dead? appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

In this super practical podcast episode, we’re going to tell you exactly how to produce over 50 pieces of content in just 30 minutes.

You’ll probably want to grab a pen and paper for this episode, or better yet, download our content planner which will help you.

In this episode, you learn…

• How to relate your content to the products or services that you offer
• The type of content that delivers more leads and sales
• The six key topics you need to cover in your content
• How to get in front of people searching on Google
• Why you need to view your content as a customer service tool
• How to create over 50 pieces of content in just 30 minutes by following along to this episode

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Everyone wants their website to look great. And I get it. When our websites look good, we look good. And we feel confident driving traffic to it.

But often we get too caught up in how a website looks and we neglect everything else.

Your website is not a piece of art to be looked at and admired, it’s a tool that should be used to drive action – usually by delivering leads and sales.

So although strange of us as web designers to say, we need to stop obsessing over how our websites look and start thinking about how they’ll drive leads.

There are actually 6 elements that make a great website, and all these need to be carefully balanced. In this episode, we’ll go through exactly what those 6 elements are, and how you can apply them to your website.

In this episode, you learn…

• The 6 key elements that lead to website success
• How to balance these elements across your website
• Quick wins to make your website that bit better – and get more sales!

Resources

54 Ways To Increase Your Website Sales

Content Planner

Big, Bold Statment 

Facebook Group

Website Buyer’s Guide

Homepage Blueprint

The 6 Key Elements that Make a Successful Website: Transcript

Welcome to Episode 42 of the Make Your Mark Online Podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about the 6 elements that make the perfect website.

But before we get into that, this show is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online Community, this is our signature membership community where we help small business owners build and grow a successful website.

So on with the show!

Everyone wants their website to look great. And I get it. When our websites look good, we look good. And we feel confident driving traffic to it.

But often we get too caught up in how a website looks and we neglect everything else.

Your website is not a piece of art to be looked at and admired, it’s a tool that should be used to drive action – usually by delivering leads and sales.

So although strange of us as web designers to say, we need to stop obsessing over how our websites look and start thinking about how they’ll drive leads.

There are actually 6 elements that make a great website, and all these need to be carefully balanced.

1. User Experience

User experience is the biggie. Above all else, this should be your main focus when building your website.

We want our user’s to know exactly where they need to go on your website to get what they are looking for.

One of the key places to do this is your homepage. We like to think of your homepage as the reception area of your website. A reception area of a busy building gets lots of questions, where are the lifts (or elevators as you may call them), where are the loos, I need to speak to sucha body. That’s what your users need from your homepage – where’s your blog, I want to contact you, I want to find more about sucha service.

And like any good reception area, your homepage needs to efficiently direct people to the right place on your website. And quickly.

You do not want people congregating around your reception area, trying to understand where to go. Because they will just leave.And that’s just one example of something you have to consider when it comes to user-experience. There are so many things to think about – do your call to action buttons (so your ‘find out more’ or ‘contact me’) buttons stand out, do you have images that reflect what the text says, is there plenty of white space on the page, can the user flow through your website with ease?

As web designers this sort of becomes automatic. But when you’re DIYing your website, you have to constantly question yourself – is this easy for the end-user to understand and use?

The reason a lot of people get this wrong – and that includes big, fancy agencies – is because they focus too much on how the website looks. If you go on many high-fashion websites you’ll find this is the case, it’s all just too pretentious to actually be user-friendly.

2. Website copy

Yes, you can have a beautiful website but if the words on the page don’t connect with your reader then no amount of beauty will make up for it. Like when you discover that really hot person you’ve liked for ages actually doesn’t have any personality. That’s the same thing, it’s all very disappointing.

People most often get their website copy wrong just because, they don’t really think about it. They just start typing without consciously thinking about the reader, what their problems are and why they’re on your website.

A lot of people also copy off their competition, and often the competition doesn’t know how to write website copy either. So everyone just ends up with…crap website copy.

I think the problem is people tend to overcomplicate website copy. But it really shouldn’t be difficult. As business owners, we speak to people about our products or services every day. We’re able to articulate what we do and what the benefits of our products or services are verbally. All you need to do is to write it down.

Some major things to get right with website copy is making sure people know exactly what you do as soon as they land on your homepage. And you can do this by coming up with what we call a big, bold statement, which essentially summarises what you do. We have recorded a podcast about this and written a blog post about it and we’ll pop this in the shownotes.

Another thing is making having a page for each service you offer and making sure you include everything about that service so your reader can make an informed decision about whether to work with you – so the benefits of the service, the cost, FAQ, the process and previous testimonials.

Finally, it’s about not overthinking the writing. You constantly have to balance copy with user-experience and SEO. This is why calling things like ‘My Journey’ instead of about page is a bad idea because it’s just confusing for your user.

And calling your service a funny name that Google won’t understand will not help you rank on Google. For example, calling an editing service ‘the wondrous wizard package’ just doesn’t make sense. You have to kind of balance creativity with, well, what your readers and search engines will understand.

3. Content Marketing

There’s zero point having a beautiful, user-friendly website without getting traffic to it. It’s like the perfect shop stuck in the middle of the dessert. Sorry, I’m all about the bad metaphors today, you’re just going to have to bear with that.

The problem is, people try content marketing but they produce what we call ‘fluff’ content. So that’s ‘look at this client we’ve just landed’ or ‘look at this award we’ve won’ or even very basic ‘7 ways to blah, blah, blah’ posts. Now these aren’t always bad but sometimes they’re just very basic overviews of a topic that have less than 500 words. They don’t really give the reader any value.

But content marketing isn’t just about driving traffic to your site, it’s about building trust and authority. It’s about answering those questions that none of your competition will answer. It’s about being the go-to person for your particular topic.

If it’s done correctly, content can deliver more leads and sales but it can also deliver better customers, the ones who are the right fit for you.

Some of the major mistakes people make when it comes to content marketing is not answering a question. They skim the surface of a topic but don’t delve in and try to give the best, most informed, most researched answer.

But even when people do, do this what they then fail to promote their content. You need to spend a lot of time getting eyeballs on your content.

Finally, people don’t produce content for every step of the sales process. They focus on ‘awareness content’ – basically making people aware that they exist and that they are knowledgable. But people rarely produce content about their products or services. And this is a huge error. That’s why we produce so many blog posts about our products or services. In fact, we’ve just had one out this week called, Why we charge large companies more for a website redesign.

4. Lead Generation

By lead generation, I mean collecting email addresses or getting people to get in contact with you or book a call.

Now there are usually two camps when it comes to lead gen…

Those who make zero effort to capture leads
Those who harras you so much for your email address on your website that if they were an actual person you’d probably call the police

If you haven’t yet guessed, what we’re after is somewhere between the two.

The reason you can’t harass someone is that it’s just not good user-experience. And good relationships aren’t built by stalking people unless your that weird bloke off 50 shades of grey.

Equally, saying nothing won’t get you anywhere either.

Now, there are ways of capturing email address or getting people to get in contact with you without being annoying and I actually talk about that in my last podcast episode. But offering things like content upgrades to your blog posts such as helpful checklists or planners to go alongside the topic you’re talking about is a great way of doing this.

Using a sticky hello bar at the top of the page if you’ve got a webinar coming up or something new and exacting is another.

Including a contact form on every single service page is also one.

So you see, you don’t have to be Christian Grey to get leads. You can do it respectfully.

5. Appearance

Okay, so I harped on about how appearance is not all that. But it is something. No, your website doesn’t have to be a victoria secret model but it does help if it’s ya know, showered and put on clean underwear. Your website has to be presentable, easy to use, and yes, have good images and easy to read text as a minimum.

The biggest mistakes we see websites make when it comes to appearance is one, it looks like the 90s has thrown up on the page. Or 2. They copy everyone else.

You see it all the time. Look at the IT industry. Every website looks exactly the same. They use a lot of blues, oranges and whites. And they have a lot of stock photos of people wearing headsets.

The problem is, people won’t remember you.
With your appearance, you generally have to use good images and this is exactly why we recommend people invest in a photographer before they get a website.

You have to make sure you use plenty of white space, so give your text and images room to breath don’t squash things in so close together.

You also have to break things up into sections, particularly on your homepage where everything can feel a bit crowded. So dedicate one section of the page to just about you with an image, dedicate the next section to just your content. Don’t try to cram in testimonials next to your about you text with several images, it just looks and feels messy.

6. SEO

The next thing is SEO. Now the basics of SEO is just good user-experience mixed with website admin. For most of us, this is pretty much all we need to know.

One huge mistake business owners make is worrying too much about SEO and going way to deep with it all that they actually forget about their actual business.

Another thing to remember is that producing content on your website i.e. blogging is also a great way to rank for the questions that people ask you.

So don’t overcomplicate it for now.

But there are some rules you want to follow, such as using your H tags correctly. H tags are essentially your headings on the page. You H1 tag tells Google what the entire page is about, H2 tells Google what the following paragraph is about, and if that paragraph is broken down further you’ll use H3 and so on. This is actually just good user-experience to break up the text and tell the user what the next section is about. It’s just you’re telling Google at the same time.

And you may want to do some keyword research too, and drop these keywords naturally – the key word here is naturally- throughout your copy and your headings too.

In your blog posts, you’ll want to link to other relevant content. And you’ll want to make sure you give all your images appropriate names.

You want to keep your URLs short.

Now, if you’re furiously typing don’t worry you can stop I do have a checklist for this that I’ll put in the show-notes or you can also check out our blog post on how to make the perfect website.

Conclusion

So there you have it, the 6 key things that will make your website a success – user-experience, website copy, content marketing, lead generation, seo and appearance.

Now, remember this can seem overwhelming but you’ll get this right over time. No website is perfect. Ours isn’t perfect. I could visit our website right now and pick at things. But if you have an awareness of these 6 things, and consciously implement them when you work on your website, I guarantee it will be that bit more successful.

So I hope you found this episode useful.

And if you’re wanting to learn more about how to grow your website so it acts as the best salesperson for your business, then check out our membership community, Make Your Mark Online. We actually create one-click-install website pages for our members such as the homepage, about page or even things like lead capture pages and sales pages. These are built with our knowledge and experience so a lot of what’s been talked about in this podcast episode such as user-experience or appearance has already been covered.

If that sounds good head to makeyourmarkonline.net to find out more.

So that’s it for today’s episode, we’ll see you next time on the Make your make online podcast.

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post Ep 42- The 6 Elements That Make a Successful Website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

In this super practical podcast episode, we’re going to tell you exactly how to produce over 50 pieces of content in just 30 minutes.

You’ll probably want to grab a pen and paper for this episode, or better yet, download our content planner which will help you.

In this episode, you learn…

• How to relate your content to the products or services that you offer
• The type of content that delivers more leads and sales
• The six key topics you need to cover in your content
• How to get in front of people searching on Google
• Why you need to view your content as a customer service tool
• How to create over 50 pieces of content in just 30 minutes by following along to this episode

Stitcher| iTunes | Radio Republic | Soundcloud

In this super practical podcast episode, we’re going to tell you exactly how to collect email addresses on your website.

In this episode, you learn…

• What I class as pushy or annoying ways to capture leads
• The best way to capture email addresses from your blog
• How to get people to get in touch with you when they’re on your service page
• What information you should ask for when capturing people’s data
• How you can capture leads from your homepage

Resources

54 Ways To Increase Your Website Sales

Content Planner

Facebook Group

Website Buyer’s Guide

Hellobar – sticky bar at the top of the page

Homepage Blueprint

Transcript/Notes

This all started with a question from one of our members, Helen – who asked how she could capture leads on her website without being pushy or irritating. And I think that’s a pretty good question because we all want to grow our email list but we don’t want to do it by being annoying.  

So that’s what this episode is about. We’re going to go through how to collect email addresses without being annoying and also look at what are annoying and spammy tactics.

And just to clarify, when I say lead I mean someone enquiring about your products or services or someone giving you their contact details such as their email address. 

Now, in all honesty, collecting email addresses is something we really struggled with in the past. We didn’t prioritise it for years. I think this was just to do with plain old apathy. We’d built our web design agency through content marketing – essentially giving away everything and being open and honest about the way we worked. And this definitely worked well for us. 

Until one day, we said, do you know what, we’d also like to launch a membership and we were there with an email list that consisted of my mum and dad. We had this idea for something exciting and new, but we had no one to sell it too. So we had to kind of shift our way of thinking a little. 

And in that short time, we’ve learnt a lot about building an email list, but more specifically how to build an email list without being pushy. So that means we don’t use things like annoying website popups – because they’re crap for user experience. Or gating our content, such as only letting people know our prices in exchange for an email address. 

So, here are the ways you can capture leads, without being annoying…

1. Content ‘upgrade’ 

Patt Flynn describes content upgrades as, ‘Smaller, unique, bite-sized lead magnets that directly relate to what people are already consuming.’ and that was a way better description than what I came up with so let’s steal that. 

To give you an example, we recently released a blog post about how to create a perfect website. We then created a lead magnet, which was a free website checklist that directly related to that blog post so people could see where they needed to improve. The content in the blog post and in the checklist was exactly the same, it just came in different formats.

This works really well for many reasons, we didn’t have to write new content, and we didn’t have to hide any content and get that icky ‘I’m only going to tell you this if you give me your email address’ feeling. 

And just another thing, we add information about the content upgrades within the body of our blog posts and at the end. The reason we do both is that often people don’t read all the way to the end, so this is a way of capturing their attention. Like this 😉 

2. Pop a contact form on every service page 

A lot of our leads, funnily enough, don’t come throughout the contact page, they come through lots of different pages on our website. 

So if someone is finding out more about your services, they may have questions as they’re scanning through. Imagine just a little box to the side or at the end of the page that said, ‘Got questions about x service?’ pop in your details below. That’s a great way to capture a lead because they probably do have questions, and you’re making it super easy for them. 

3. If you’re an E-commerce business, offer a discount

A really nice feature, which is great for eCommerce businesses, is to offer a discount as a way of capturing leads. So you could say something like ‘get 10% your first order’. Lots of companies use this. 

You can display this on a sticky bar at the top of the page, which is essentially just a bar that stays their permanently. 

It’s not like a pop-up, so it doesn’t disrupt the user at any time, but it is on display permanently, and with the right copy it will capture their attention. 

The only caveat to this is, obviously, you will have a section for a discount code on your checkout and if someone doesn’t have a discount code, maybe they’re a repeat customer that may mean they feel a bit down about it. Or if you’re like me, you go off in search of a discount code and before you know it you’ve forgotten what you’re buying anyway. So just be aware of that.

4. Don’t ask them for war and peace

When capturing leads, you don’t want to ask for anything you don’t need. I always see forms that ask for your address, and telephone number and blood type. Stop it. Most of us, unless we’re an eCommerce business, will just need a name and email. 

And of course, this is good for GDPR too. We don’t want boatloads of people’s personal data. 

5. Don’t make them identify traffic signs 

Talk about annoying. I get it, we all hate spam but asking people to identify traffic signs is incredibly irritating. I don’t even know what a traffic sign is on these things, I’m always squinting, like is that a stop sign or just some other kind of sign. Is it a lollypop lady? Or something else? Who knows. 

6. How to capture leads on your homepage 

You can create a bar that sits within the first third of your homepage that offers your freebie. This is a great way of capturing people when they first land on your website but without being intrusive. 

On our website homepage, we offer our homepage blueprint which runs through how to create a great homepage. That’s done really well too. 

7. Sell the benefits 

We go on about this a lot. But join my newsletter is not a compelling enough reason to get people to give you their contact details. Give them the benefits and tell them what’s in it for them. Weekly tips on such a thing, or discounts and exclusive offers. 

Also, tell them that by joining your email list they’re joining hundreds or thousands of their peers, give them that social proof that they’re in the right place and with others just like them. 

8. Tell them what will happen next 

Once someone fills in your contact form, then what happens? Don’t just have something that pops up and says, ‘thanks’ 

Equally, if someone wants to download one of your lead magnets, take them to a thank you page. Tell them what happens next.

So I hope that’s been useful to you. I think when considering this, think of yourself as a shop owner. If a customer comes in, would you jump out and shout ‘Sign up to my newsletter!’ Sorry, I seriously hope you weren’t driving then. 

But no you wouldn’t. Then obviously a popup as soon as someone lands on your site probably isn’t the best. 

The worst one by far is giving people these ridiculous options. So you may have seen this where you click the x on the pop up because you don’t want to hand over your details and they say, okay, could you just confirm that you don’t want your life to change and you don’t want to be super-wealthy? And then you have to click ‘Nah I don’t want to be super wealthy, thanks’ 

I can’t actually say what I really think when I see those because Martin wants the entire podcast to be marked as non-explicit but you can guess.

So I hope you found this episode useful.

And if you’re wanting to learn more about how to grow your website so it acts as the best salesperson for your business, then check out our membership community, Make Your Mark Online. This community helps people build and grow a successful website, and do it without being annoying. 

So that’s it for today’s episode, we’ll see you next time on the Make your make online podcast

Lyndsay Cambridge

Owner at Jammy Digital, Digital Marketing Specialist and Writer of Young-Adult Fiction.

jammydigital.com

The post Ep 41- How to Capture Leads On Your Website Without Being Annoying appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.