What you really want to know is whether you should hire us.

Are we the right fit?

Or could hiring us turn out to be an even bigger mistake than the eighth Fast and the Furious movie? I mean seriously, how many do we need?

Doing business with someone, especially long-term, is a commitment. It’s a bit like any relationship–there has to be respect, honesty and good communication. We have to be on the same page. Otherwise, it ends up stressful, time-consuming, and could potentially end up in a divorce. Not a happy ending for anyone.

So in this blog post, I’m going to go through the reasons why you shouldn’t hire us, so you can establish whether we’re the right fit for you and your business.

And don’t worry, it’s not full of bullshit reverse-psychology reasons like, ‘you shouldn’t work with us if you DON’T want your business to succeed.’ 🙄

So who shouldn’t hire us for our content writing services?

Let’s take a look. 👀

1. There are lots of people involved in approving everything

We happily work with marketing teams, but we only communicate with one person within that team, particularly when it comes to feedback.

We’ve been in situations before where feedback has come from different team members.

Sometimes it’s been contradictory, where one person has loved something we’ve done and another has been unsure, meaning we have to clarify which person’s feedback we prioritise. And as you can imagine it all gets a bit…messy. 😬

The best thing to do is for our contact to collate any feedback and give us everything in one go (and they’ll be able to spot if there are any opposing views). If this isn’t possible, we’re not right for you.

2. You don’t have any time to give feedback on the writing

The aim of our SEO content writing service is to save you time. In fact, we save you up to 10+ hours per week by offering a full blog management service, i.e. doing everything from keyword research to hitting the publish button–and all the tasks in between.

But we still need a teensy-weensy bit of your time. And that’s to either:

• Approve each blog post
• Give any feedback

On average, our clients spend 15-30 minutes giving feedback and approving each blog post.

So if you picked our Gold package (which comes with 3 blog posts a month), you’d have to dedicate 45-90 minutes per month to giving us feedback and approval.

Often this time gets less and less as the project goes on, e.g. there’s more feedback on the first blog post than the fourth!

I don’t think it’s an excessive amount of time, but if you can’t do that, we’re not right for you.

3. You want a yes man/woman

At the start of each project, we create a content plan. We create this plan based on our in-depth kick-off call with you (where we find out all about your business), and our keyword research and competitor research.

In this content plan, we’ll suggest three months of blog content–which includes draft titles and a bit about what we should include within each blog post.

Not one single client has asked to change any blog content ideas we’ve come up with–which they’re more than welcome to do, by the way!

But we get why.

We put so much upfront work into the content plan, and because of this, our clients understand how our proposed content ideas will help them achieve their business goals. We even record a video to go through the content plan and explain why we’ve proposed each idea.

As you can see, we don’t just ‘write the content’, we’ll tell you what we need to write too. We do this, not because we’re ego-maniacs, but because doing tons of research tells us the best content ideas to go after.

So if you’re the kind of business who wants a yes-man/woman to tell us what to write and when to write it, we’re simply not the right fit for you.

4. You’re not exactly sure what you’re selling right now

You might be clear on your products or services, but maybe you’re not clear on exactly how you’re selling them or in what way.

For example, if you’re a website design agency, you know you’re selling website design (at least, we hope so 😂). But maybe you’re not sure whether to offer a ‘website in a week’ service or do a truly bespoke service for every client?

If these are decisions you’re still thinking about, then we might not be the right fit, right now.

We create content with the ultimate aim of getting you more sales, so we need to position you correctly through your content.

For example, the way we’d talk about a ‘website in a week’ service is completely different to how we’d talk about a bespoke service for each client.

But once you’ve figured all that out, come back to us. 😉

And if you need help with that, check out Janine Coombes who specialises in helping business owners package up their services!

5. You’re not sure who your audience is

If you’re thinking to yourself: should I pick a niche or not? Or even ‘What are you talking about? I sell to anyone and everyone!’ then we might not be the right fit for you.

If you don’t understand your audience and their problems, it’s difficult to create content for them.

Because everything starts with your customers–their goals, problems, values, the language they use etc. This will help inform our keyword research and come up with your content strategy.

It also helps inform our tone of voice. We would write differently for an audience of plucky microbusinesses and freelancers than corporate HR professionals.

If you’re still struggling to find your niche, definitely check out niching expert Amy Caiger! Amy can help you understand how to hone in on who your audience is!

6. You want us to pitch for work

We sound a little egotistical here and we really don’t mean to. But we don’t pitch for work. The reason we don’t pitch is simple: pitching isn’t the best way to find the right content writing agency.

Why? Well, there are three main reasons:

• It relies on you having already diagnosed your problem

You don’t go to the doctor having done your own diagnosis. Well, I’m sure some people do! Doctors need to do their own investigation to diagnose a problem and prescribe medication or further help.

It’s the same with your business.

You need an expert to diagnose any problems and tell you what you can do to fix them.

• Pitching is all about turning on the charm (and quite frankly, we’re not all that charming. But we are good at what we do 😉)

We’re just not ‘charm the pants off you’ kinda people. And we certainly don’t want to peacock our way to your money by being all ‘look at how good we are’.

It’s not us. And it’s not right for you either. You need a company that asks YOU a lot of questions. That listens to you. That gets to understand you and what you need. Not the other way around.

That’s the only way for us to create good content that will deliver rankings and sales.

• Just because it’s free, doesn’t mean it’s good

Pitching can sometimes feel like a race to the bottom, where everyone competes by giving all their ideas and strategies away for free.

But ideas are cheap.

We can only create a good content strategy by delving deep into your business, understanding who you are and conducting our own research like keyword research and competitor analysis.

To do that takes a huge amount of time. And it’s not something we can cobble together quickly for a pitch. If we did, we’d be doing you a huge disservice.

So those are our three main reasons why we don’t pitch! And, if you like, you can learn more about why we don’t pitch for projects.

7. Your website needs A LOT of work

Our service gets you higher search engine rankings and website traffic (nice), but if your website looks like a dog’s dinner, it’s pretty pointless bringing more people around to see it. They won’t be impressed, we’ll tell you that much.

Now, don’t get us wrong, even when we were website designers we’d always say: don’t spend thousands on a website until it makes business and financial sense!

You do not have to have a fancy-pants website to make content work, but it does need to be:

• Professional looking i.e. doesn’t look like it was designed in 1992
• Mobile friendly – because 50% of searches take place over mobile now
• Relatively fast – because people won’t wait around for it to load
• Be clear about what you offer – and have a good user experience where people can find what they are looking for.

And that’s it. But if it doesn’t do those things, you may want to look at improving your website first (or getting it redesigned).

Side note, it’s helpful if you have access to your full website. Some website design agencies like to control access or gate certain areas so clients ‘don’t break anything’ (newsflash, that’s why you have backups).

If you don’t have access, you may have to send content to your website design agency to upload for you, which adds time and money to the process! Our advice: get access! No company should be prevented from accessing something as important as their website! 

8. You want a cheap service

Honestly? There are writers that charge $20 for a blog article out there (if you look at places like Fiverr). And we’re a teensy bit more than that (our content writing packages start from £1397 per month).

When we work with clients, the actual writing takes up around 40% of the actual time it takes to press publish on a blog post. The rest of that time is taken up with:

• Keyword research
• Coming up with a content strategy
• Uploading the content–formatting it and optimising it for search engines
• Creating imagery (such as the featured image or images within the blog post)
• Adding and optimising images and GIFs
• Fixing small technical issues
• Tracking rankings

It’s a full blog management service, where you can ‘outsource your entire blog’ to us. We can do this because we’re experts in content writing, but also SEO, website design and content design too.

Unfortunately, all that ain’t cheap. If you want to learn more about it, check out our blog post: why are we so expensive?

9. You want free samples

We won’t work for you for free. Ever. No, not even if you’re Hopper from Stranger Things (he’s my favourite). But not even then will we work for free.

Of course, you’ll want to see samples of our writing. That’s fair. And if you contact us directly we can send some samples to you. But we don’t do any kind of free sample.

10. You just need one blog post

It baffles us when we get this request, because, in all honesty, you’re unlikely to see a massive difference to your bottom line thanks to one blog post.

Of course, we’ve had single blog posts that have performed AMAZINGLY well for us and our clients. BUT that was because we had a content strategy in place based on our research.

You can see results from just one blog post such as an increase in traffic, rankings and even leads. But to see results that impact your sales in the long-term, that only comes from consistent blogging.

11. You want to write about your awards

If you can honestly say that you’ve had a genuine customer or client contact you and say, ‘what awards have you won?’ then we will happily write about your awards. Until then, no. 😂

Think we’re a match made in heaven?

So, you’ve read through this and you’re thinking, ‘do you know what, Jammy? You’re my kinda people!’

Firstly, yay. We may be a bit fussy about who we work with, but that’s because we love the relationships we build with our clients. It’s better for everyone if we’re the right fit.

Secondly, visit here if you’d like to know more about our SEO content writing service. Or book a 15-minute chat with us to ask us any questions.

Lyndsay Cambridge

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

jammydigital.com

The post 11 Reasons our SEO content writing service is not right for you appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

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Up until 2017, we did nothing to market our business.

Instead, we relied on referrals.

But when you only rely on referrals to fuel your business, you will hit problems.

In this podcast episode, we’re going to tell you…

• Why referrals are bad for business
• The bad things that can happen when you rely on referrals
• What to do instead of relying on referrals
• How to turn a referral into an ‘ideal’ client

Resources

Make Your Mark Online Membership 

Jammy’s Content Planner

Facebook Group

Website Buyer’s Guide

Time Stamps If You’re In a Rush!

1.03 – Why are referrals bad for business?

1.52 – You don’t know who they are

2.41 – Are they the right fit?

3.39 – Combat this through content

5.07 – Don’t shut down a referral

7.02 – How we can help you plan content

7.41 – Why your business stays still when you rely on referrals

9.34 – The benefits of actively marketing vs referrals

10.56 – The importance of being able to pivot

Transcript

Welcome to the Make Your Mark online podcast where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. Please welcome your host, husband and wife team, Martin & Lyndsay.
Welcome to Episode 39 and series three of the Make Your Mark online podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about why referrals are bad for business.
Now this season, I will be running the podcast myself – myself being Lyndsay, just in case you weren’t quite sure which one was which on that one. And Martin is going to be doing lots of video. So I’m going to be focusing on the podcast at the same time. This actually suits us really well and because it kind of plays to our strengths. So we’re both very excited to have our own little individual projects here.
So before I get into the episode, I just want to say that the show is sponsored by the Make Your Mark online at community. This is our signature community where we help small business owners build and grow a small Successful website. So let’s get on with the show.
So why referrals are bad for business? Now, this can be kind of a controversial thing to say because we all feel good when someone recommends us right? And I know I feel really good when someone says good things about me like the guys at Jammy digital are great and they make great websites. That makes me feel really good. And it’ll probably make you feel really good too, when you know other people actually recommend you or previous clients or people that have come across you before actually recommend you to others.
But in this podcast episode, I’m going to tell you why that’s bad. And we for very long time actually, before 2017 we relied solely on referrals to our business, and then we switched. I’m going to tell you why that happened. And I’m also going to explain to you kind of what the benefits were as well.
So firstly, why is it bad to actually have referrals coming to your business. So one of the main issues with having referrals come to your business is that you don’t know who they are. You don’t have a clue who this person actually is. And I’m going to refer to it kind of using a dating analogy. So it’s kind of like your mum saying, you know, I’m going to set you up with Tony from accounts or Jane from accounts. And you’re thinking…
yeah, I don’t know who Tony or Jane is. They they might be super nice people, we might connect we, you know, it might just be a fluke, we might get married. Or they could be really creepy. They could have a weird doll collection, you know, you never know they could be a serial killer, you don’t know.
And it’s kind of the same referrals, you know, people keep referring these people to you, and you don’t have a clue who they are. And you don’t know whether they’re the right fit for you. You know, you could be perfect, you could work together really well, or you don’t know whether they’re completely the wrong fit. And you know, everything could go kind of wrong. And, and that’s because they’ve been referred to you. So they don’t know anything about your business and how you operate and who you are, and you don’t know anything about them and what their expectations are. And that’s a huge, huge problem. And because, you know, they may not understand what your processes, they may not be willing to pay what you charge, and they may not understand, you know, what’s expected of them through through the whole thing.
You know, there’s lots and lots of things that that they won’t know, and, and that you don’t know how they’re going to react to. So there’s a big there’s a big problem there.
Now, to combat that, we started content marketing, in 2017. And we kind of go on about this being the the the life changing thing, not even the business changing thing, but the life changing thing that happened to us. And it actually was, and we always say, and it sounds super cheesy, but it was it was life changing for us because of when we started content marketing about things that people would ask us, you know, clients and potential clients would ask us things like, how much do you charge? Why are you so expensive? Why are you so cheap? We’ve had that one before. And what’s what’s the process? How long did the project take? Why does it take longer than than you think it’s going to take? You know, why should I work with you? What’s wrong with you? We actually blogged about all of these things. So that when someone comes to our website and finds us naturally, they gain all the information they need to decide whether we’re the right fit for them, or whether they’re like, nope, these people are really weird, I’m going to go somewhere else.
So they actually make that decision for themselves by being informed by our content. That gives them the power and then when they come to us, they’re likely to be a really, really good fit for our business. S
o the problem is, obviously whenever a referral comes to you is they haven’t seen that content. They haven’t seen you. They might have not even been on your website, they might have not even heard of you before. They don’t know how you work, and you don’t know how they work as well.
So I’m not saying this point, what you need to do is when you get a referral, is just say no, go away. I don’t want to speak to you. We don’t want that, obviously. But equally, we don’t want to just, you know, dive into this relationship straight away and start working with someone when we don’t know what they like.
So what we do is when we get a referral, actually, when we get any kind of person who contacts or someone wants to know more information about our website project, who wants to get on a call with us, we say that sounds great! We cannot wait to learn more about your business, which we genuinely can’t, and and the project. And first off before we actually jump on a call, here are three and four pieces of content that you might not have seen from us haven’t read over them. Then we’re going to jump on a call you’re going to ask us any questions that you have. And these pieces of content are usually things like you know how much we charge for our website. This is our process, and you know how long the project takes. And we also have a website Buyer’s Guide thrown in there as well, which teaches people how to actually sort of buy a website. And it’s completely unbiased. And so we give people these pieces of content because, particularly with referrals, if they’ve not come across this before, that’s their opportunity to learn more about us learn about how we work, and then again, go back to the point where they’re like, these guys are weird. We don’t want to work with them.
Or they might be like, we like the look of these – let’s work with them. And that’s great. And then we jump on a call. And we know by that time that we’ve jumped on a call that, they’ve gone through our content marketing, and they’ve still kind of committed to that process in some sort of way.
And so that works really, really well so we’re not saying you know, when you get referral through just completely shut it down. And that would be that’d be quite rude and mean, but you know, use your content marketing still educate and inform people of how you work and then if they still don’t work with you, then they can do.
And if you actually need help with planning this kind of content, and we have something called our content marketing planner, which we created, and which will tell you the type of content that you should be producing, and in order to educate and inform people properly, but also to actually increase sales and leads to your business, and it’s actually a really, really good planner, which helps you plan all that out, by your products and services. So you actually go off your products, services and plan copy content for each of those products and services that you offer. So it’s really really cool. And and I recommend that you download that is completely free to anyone who downloads it and I’ll pop it in the show notes as well.
So I’m just going to go into the second reason why you shouldn’t rely on referrals for your business. And that is because you won’t grow your business if you rely on referrals. Now it sounds obvious, but pre 2017 old we did we didn’t do any marketing that was no content, marketing, social media marketing, any of that. We just relied on referrals. And so past clients saying, you know, this, someone I, you know, I had my website built with these guys, you should have your website built with these guys. And that was kind of fine. You know, we kind of bumbling along we got the same amount of money, the same kind of clients, we did the same thing every day.
Until we realized, actually, we’re not growing our business. So when you do this, when you rely on referrals, your business stays still. It doesn’t develop, it doesn’t get any better, doesn’t get any worse. It just kind of stays the still stay stagnant. And, and this is fine when things are going good. But you have to think about, okay, in six months time or in a year time or whatever it might be, you know, do you still want to be doing the same thing?
Firstly, and what happens if those referrals dry up? That’s you know, it’s a major, major problem with those referrals dry up, you’re kind of left stranded, you haven’t got any leads in the pipeline, you’re kind of stuck, so when relying on referrals your business sort of stops – it still doesn’t go anywhere. You don’t get any website traffic, you don’t get any email subscribers, you don’t get any extra leads and sales, you don’t build your personal brand, and and that means yeah, you don’t have a pipeline of leads and you’re stuck doing what you’ve always done.
You you can’t increase your prices, you know if someone says oh, Jammy Digital designed my website for a grand and you know, you can do the same. We can’t then turn around to then go actually it’s two grand now or three grand or four grand or like five grand is what we what we charge now.
You know, so it’s it’s very, very difficult actually doing that your business remains still. But when you actively start marketing and in particular content marketing, then you can charge more for your services because you’re, you’re telling people you know, this is how much I charge and then they’re going through your content marketing and that they’re getting in touch with you knowing how much you charge. You can select who you want to work with, you know, things like our article on who will not be th right fit, actually, you know, repels people who aren’t the right fit for our business, you become a leader in your industry.
You know, if you write a lot of content, if you become kind of the leader in your industry of answering people’s questions about your particular products and services, then people aren’t going to view that if you that way, they are going to trust you and see you as an authority.
And you can even pivot so what we found was by content marketing by building our email list by doing more marketing by doing more to promote our business, we able to build you know a base of people and who I am will basically you know, they they invest in us and and they like working with us, and whatever kind of products or services that we offer, they will they will look at those and then they will work with us and they then they’ll probably buy them from us just because they know that we know what we’re talking about. They’ve they’ve dealt with us before
The’re constantly coming back to us – reading and consuming content, they trust us. And so we could able to pivot and that’s why we introduced our, our membership. In 2018, we introduced our making mark on my membership, which was aimed at people who were wanting to build a websites and what we’re struggling with it. And it’s just kind of struggling to grow it and not really knowing what to do with it, it’s just kind of sitting there like a billboard, and it’s not actually doing anything. And we actually launched that product. And we were able to do that because we built such a base to begin with.
So remember you you might not be offering the service or product that you do forever. So you need something now you need a backup of people that are you know, invested in you that know you know what you’re talking about that trust you where you can go actually, guys, I’ve got this new product, this new thing coming out, I think it’s going to really benefit you. And they will happily give you their money because they know of the value that you offer.
So those are the major reasons why you shouldn’t rely on referrals. And as I said before, I’m not Saying shut the referrals down before anyone starts thinking okay, well, I’m just gonna say no referrals. And equally you know, if you referring people to us yeah, we still accept those. Thank you. And it’s just about thinking carefully about it. It’s about being aware, okay, this person coming in, it’s great. It’s really nice. I like it.
It’s an added bonus. That’s what you should treat referrals as – an added bonus to your business. But it isn’t your isn’t the lifeline of your business. It shouldn’t be the blood pumping to your business. Definitely not. And should be an added bonus and you should still get that person before you let them into your business. You know, you should still get them to read your content, consume, consume your content, see if they’re the right fit for you. That’s really, really important. Otherwise, you might head to problems down the line.
So I hope you enjoyed this episode. It is a little controversial one but I hope that you found it useful. Going from relying on referrals to going it alone is scary, but if you do it right, you will find that you won’t need to realize referrals. And actually, you prefer to get clients kind of finding you naturally rather than were being referred to you. And I’m community, we are actually launching a 90 day Content Marketing Challenge on Monday the 13th of January. And that will help our members do just that. It’s a simple challenge, you just need to produce one piece of content every week for 90 days. And we provide personalized weekly feedback via kind of live video on that content too. So you write a piece of content or you record a video or podcast episode, and then we’ll tell you exactly how to improve it for conversions or SEO or, you know, the headline or the copy and things that we’re really excited about to actually start it. And so you’ll be able to attract better people to your business naturally, and you know, be able to actually work with the people that you want to work with. So if that sounds like something that you’d be interested in, head over to Make Your Mark online.net find out more and that’s it for today’s as episode we’ll see you next time on The Make Your Mark online podcast.

Lyndsay Cambridge

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

jammydigital.com

The post Ep 39 – Why referrals are bad for business appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Mostly, you’ll find diaries and planners and journals. But there are a few planners/workbooks out there that specifically help you increase leads and sales in your business. We released one of these late 2019 – the 90 Day Challenge Workbook. 

A diary you may have also come across is Janet Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner. 

Both are business-related. Both are what you might class as ‘stationery’. Both help you plan your ‘content’. 

But the question is, which one should you choose?

It’s actually a question we’ve been asked a few times since we launched the workbook – mostly in the form of, ‘What’s the difference between your workbook and Janet’s diary?’ 

In this blog post, we’ll take a look at which diary/workbook you should choose. 

Erm…why would I trust your opinion? 

That’s a good question. 

Obviously, we’ve produced one of these products and we earn money from it. BUT, we are strong believers in your content marketing delivering good customer service. Which is why we are going to take an unbiased approach, look at the facts, and report all this back to you, so you can make the best buying decision. 

This, of course, is still my opinion, but as a fellow-stationery-geek, I want this to be super-helpful so you make the right choice. 

An Overview: Janet Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner

Janet Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner is an A4, spiral-bound, desk diary that helps you plan your content for your social media updates, blog/vlog and email newsletter. 

The diary includes…

• Guidance on how to create your content plan for 2020
• Yearly and quarterly content planning pages
• Key awareness days, such as ‘Blue Monday’ or ‘National Tea Day’, for each month of 2020 
• A week-to-week spread so you can plan your social media/blog/podcast content every day
• Prompts and ideas for content 
• Notes sections 
• Different front covers to choose from 

An Overview: Our 90 Day Challenge Workbook  

The 90 Day Challenge Workbook is an A4, spiral-bound, desk workbook that helps you plan your blog post, video, podcast or website page once a week for three 90-day ‘challenges’ or stints. 

The 90 Day Challenge Workbook includes…

• An overview of the six types of content topics you should produce
• A planning section to note down your content marketing ideas 
• Sections for evaluating where you are currently, such as your current website traffic and search rankings 
• One page per piece of content you need to produce as part of the 90-day challenge- with prompts on target keywords and call to actions 
• Blogging, podcast and video checklists 
• A section to evaluate how successful each challenge has been 
• Notes sections  

Price/Number of Pages: Janet Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner

The cost of the diary & planner is:

£39 + P&P  for a physical copy of the diary. 

Shipping Costs: 

£3.55 if you are based in the UK.

For international P&P, the prices vary, such as…

£13.35 (for customers based in the United States)

£14.10 (for customers based in Australia)

The number of pages the diary has is: 

168

Price/Number of Pages: Our 90 Day Challenge Workbook  

The cost of the workbook is:

$9 (Approx. £6.88)+VAT for the PDF version 

$26 (Approx. £19.87)+VAT, +P&P for the physical copy which also includes the PDF

Shipping Costs: 

£2.99 if you are based in the UK.

For international P&P, it costs: 

£10.00 anywhere you are in the world

The number of pages the workbook has is: 

119

Key Similarities Between Janet Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner and Our 90 Day Challenge Workbook

• A4 Desk Diary/Workbook 
• Spiral Bound
• Classed as Stationery 
• Helps you plan your content 

When Should Janet Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner be used/purchased? 

You can use this diary at any time of year, but ideally, to get the most out of it, you would want to start the diary from the beginning in January. It would make a great gift for a business owner, so would also be good to purchase for Christmas. 

When Should Our 90 Day Challenge Workbook be used/purchased?

This can be used at any time. The workbook includes 3x 90-day challenges, which can be completed at your own pace, although it’s recommended you leave just a month between each challenge. 

What does Janet Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner help you do? 

Janet’s Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner, helps you plan out your entire year of content – blog/vlog/email/social media, through annual, quarterly, weekly and daily planners. 

The diary also includes key awareness days for the entire year, so you don’t have to struggle for content ideas. 

What does our 90 Day Challenge Workbook help you do? 

Our 90 Day Challenge Workbook, helps you stick to three 90-day Content Marketing Challenges throughout the year, where you produce one piece of content per week. 

The planner also includes sections on how to improve your SEO and evaluate before and after each challenge. 

How does each diary/workbook define ‘content’? 

This is one of the key differences I’ve noticed between the workbook/diary. Both of them help you plan your ‘content’, however, the ‘content’ they describe is actually quite different. 

Janet’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner, helps you plan your social media updates, blog, vlog and your email newsletter. 

Jammy Digital’s 90 Day Challenge Workbook, helps you plan your blog, video, podcast, website page, eBook or infographic. 

The only cross over here is with the blog posts ideas. 

What’s the difference between a diary and a workbook in general? 

A diary helps you plan or keep a record of events. And Janet’s diary does that, it helps you with a yearly, quarterly, weekly and daily plan for your content. 

A workbook contains instruction and exercises. And that is exactly what our workbook does, it’s focused on completing a content marketing challenge, three times a year.  

What Extra Support Does Janet Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner Provide?  

Free Support – Monthly Email

When you purchase the diary you get a monthly email which updates you with further key dates such as new books, films, TV programmes to add to your diary. 

Paid Extras: The Media Diary Owners Club

The Media Diary Owners Club includes the physical copy of the diary as well as a PDF version. It also includes a 90-minute online class which shows you how to use the diary and extra ways you can use it, additional printables, a quarterly group coaching call and weekly newsletter. 

Total Cost – £102.00

What Extra Support Does our 90 Day Challenge Workbook Provide?  

Free Support – Facebook Group 

When you purchase the workbook, you can also join a free Facebook group which gives you tips on how to use it, training videos and answers your questions. 

Paid Extras: The Make Your Mark Online Membership 

Within our Membership Community, we run a 90 Day Challenge three times per year. Every week, members receive feedback on their content on a group call, access to training on the type of content to produce, a private channel to ask questions and gain feedback, and the PDF version of the workbook. 

Total Cost – $39 per month+VAT or $390 per year+VAT

An Overview of Key Benefits: Janet Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner 

• Space to plan for 365 days of content – so you never miss a day
• Key awareness dates make it easy to think of content ideas 
• Ability to see your full year of content  
• 4 beautiful designs to choose from 
• Great quality paper and front cover 
• A great gift to give a business owner 
• Extra email support 

An Overview of Key Benefits: The 90 Day Challenge Workbook

• Set goals for each piece of content such as target keywords or calls to actions 
• Plan each piece of content using one of only six content topics 
• Blogging, video and podcasting checklists – which help you set up, optimise and complete your content on each platform
• Facebook group support 
• Measure success – take stock and evaluate before and after each challenge
• A great gift to give a business owner 

In conclusion, which one should you choose? 

That’s the tricky question, isn’t it? And the truth is, it depends. It really does depend on what you need. 

The diary and the workbook are actually very different. 

Janet describes her diary as a ‘content planning toolkit’. And I would certainly agree with that. It helps you plan an entire year’s worth of content across many different channels, such as all your social media channels, blog and email newsletter.

Our workbook helps you stick to a  specific challenge – consistently producing one piece of content every week for 90 days, three times a year. You pick one platform to produce your content such as blog, video or podcast and we help you set your aims for each piece of content. 

Janet’s diary has a huge focus on planning content across your social media channels. Whereas our workbook has a huge focus on planning one piece of content consistently on one channel.  

So, if you need a content overview of your year and need ideas for social media updates – Janet’s diary may suit you better. 

If you want to produce one piece per week consistently on one particular channel, then our workbook may be the better option. 

It also depends when you plan on purchasing a diary or workbook. Janet’s works well right at the start of the year when you really want to get into planning!

Ours works well at any time of year. It’s less about having a full overview of content and more about sticking with one piece of content per week for 90 days, which can be completed at any time. 

How Will I Be Using the Diary and Workbook? 

So, after all those facts, what’s my personal opinion? 

Obviously, I’ve got a workbook – it would be pretty rubbish if I didn’t give myself a copy. And as well as running the 90 Day Challenge, I’ll be taking part in it too. Our workbook will help me with this, and I’ve already filled a lot of it in for the next challenge starting on Monday 13 January. 

But I also have a copy of Janet’s diary too

I’ve already started filling this in. I love blogging/podcasting/video but could do with extra help with social media updates and this is where Janet’s diary is really useful! Plus, I love having an overview of my year. 

So personally, I’ll be using them both for different things. Although there is some cross over too, for example, I’m planning some social media updates in Janet’s diary that are centred around the content I’ve come up within our workbook. 

Finally, as I said in the beginning, I am a stationery geek and LOVE stationery design. There is no doubt about it, Janet’s Media Diary is friggin’ beautiful. The copy I have is pretty and feminine and has really good paper-quality (this is important to us stationery geeks). 

And I personally love the design of our workbook too. It’s not your typical stationery design with pastel colours and golds – it’s bright colours and pop art style. And I like how it’s a bit different. 

I hope that was helpful to you and you now know which option suits you best. 

Whatever option you choose, I recommend a brew, some biscuits and an afternoon filling in the diary or workbook. Pure heaven for a stationery-geek. 

Find out more about or purchase Janet Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner

Find out more about or purchase our 90 Day Challenge Workbook

Lyndsay Cambridge

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

jammydigital.com

The post Janet Murray’s 2020 Social Media Diary & Planner vs Jammy Digital’s 90 Day Challenge Workbook appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

The decision to have our first website professionally designed cost us our business. And we don’t want anyone else to make the mistakes we made!

Unfortunately, we’re not unique. Many business owners we speak to have had a bad experience with a web design agency.

So here’s what we did (or didn’t do) and what you should do instead.

Our first business

About 8-9 years ago, we both had full-time jobs and a dream to live the entrepreneurial lifestyle.

So we started a business on the side.

We spent all our spare time (mainly evenings and weekends) building our online business – selling cushions and home furnishing on eBay and at the odd local event. Yes, Martin was actually a pretty good cushion salesman.

It wasn’t easy, especially when we were both working full time, but we loved it. So when the time felt right, we decided to take things one step further and invest in a professionally-designed website.

We had big plans.

We wanted our own online shop that people could buy from, no matter where they were in the world.

Hiring a web designer

Decision made, we didn’t waste any time. Instead of asking around for recommendations from friends and family, we looked at a few local businesses and hired the web designer with the best-looking website.

We paid £1,400 for the job (which at the time was all the money we had in the world), and he built an all-singing-all-dancing online shop that would make us millionaires.

Financially, this was a real struggle for us. With money tied up in stock sitting idle in our spare room, we had put everything we had into this one investment.

It wasn’t a great position to be in. But we were young and excited and we had a vision!

Can you blame us?

But things went horribly wrong.

The mistakes we made with our first website

1. We didn’t do enough research before hiring a web designer

Hiring the web design agency with the glossiest website is a mistake we see a lot of people make.

Don’t get us wrong – we hired a nice guy, and we enjoyed the process of working with him. But had we done our homework, we probably would have gone with someone else.

Why? Because he wasn’t the right fit. We needed a cheap website that showed us

2. We chose the wrong platform (Content management system) for our needs

At the time, we didn’t even know you could build a website on different platforms!

And unsurprisingly, (considering we had skipped the research part of the process) we found ourselves with a website built on OpenCart – a platform we found really hard to get to grips with.

Little things, like organising postage, for example, felt really complicated. And we had to spend a lot of time and effort learning things to just get it to work for us.

Plus, we hadn’t realised we didn’t have the experience or expertise to be able to update our own website. And teaching us how to update and optimise our newly-built website wasn’t something our web designer offered.

But the real point is – we didn’t ask! And we didn’t ask because we didn’t know we’d need training and support!

Also, as we later found out (when we eventually heard about this thing called search engine optimisation) that OpenCart isn’t the best when it comes to SEO. (And that’s a big part of why we now only build websites on WordPress!).

So in hindsight, we would have definitely hired a different agency to build us a website on a platform that was right for us.

But we hadn’t done our homework, so we didn’t know!

3. We adopted a build-it-and-they-will-come mindset

Big mistake.

We thought we had it all figured out.

We’d just need to throw money at this amazing web designer with the glossy-looking website, and people from all over the world would flock to our website.

We’d make lots of money.

The end.

Except that’s not how it works at all.

People didn’t come.

Because we didn’t realise that once your website is made, you need to start driving traffic to it.

And unfortunately, with our capital tied up in stock and our savings used up for the website, we had nothing left. We didn’t have another penny to invest.

When we eventually asked our web designer to help us with SEO, his monthly quote was completely out of our reach.

Plus, it’s only after our website was built that we realised our business was operating in a very competitive niche/.

We were selling products that were available on big websites, like Amazon and eBay (and probably thousands of others). And we had no way of differentiating ourselves – we hadn’t given our visitors any reason to buy from us!

Not to mention that competing on price against the biggest online giants on the market meant we had no profit margin. And that just wasn’t sustainable, especially when we had exposed ourselves financially in such a big way.

And that’s when the realisation hit us.

We were not going to be millionaires and live on a beach, sipping cocktails after all.

Not while selling cushions online anyway.

4. We thought building a website was the end goal

We hadn’t realised how much work it would take to build AND grow a website.

And we made the mistake of thinking that the website was everything – the end goal. Instead, we should have seen it as the beginning of our business.

Your website is the heart of your business.

But you’ve got to pump blood to it.

And that’s web traffic.

Once your website is live, how are you going to market yourself? Because your website is really just the starting point, and we didn’t know that!

5. We got too excited about our business

We loved our business so much that we put our heart and soul into it – we went to the extent of naming our cushions! To tell you the truth, we were so enthusiastic about our products that we wrongly assumed the whole world would be!

The bottom line is that we had fun with it, and we were really excited. But it meant we let our hearts rule our heads, even when it came to big business decisions like hiring a web designer!

6. We obsessed over the details

Instead of looking at the bigger picture, we focused on the details – literally down the colour and size of each button!

But with no website visitors, the details were pretty useless.

So what should you do instead?

1. Download our Website Buyer’s Guide

We learnt so much from this experience that we vowed we’d help other people avoid all the traps we fell into.

So we created our Website Buyer’s Guide, for anyone who is thinking of getting a new website or having their re-designed. You can download for free here. It’s our gift to you to help you avoid the costly mistakes we made.

2. Do your research before you buy

Find out what platform is right for your needs before you buy.

Consider things like:

• Is the platform easy to optimise for search? Will I need help with this or is it something I can do by myself?
• Will I be able to update and maintain my website once it’s live? Who will make changes and how?
• Will I need training and support? And if so, who will provide that help?

3. If you’re brand new in business, DIY your website

There are times when hiring a web designer is the right choice. But there are times and situations where it definitely isn’t.

If you’re brand new in business and haven’t tested the viability of your idea and model yet, you should DIY your own website. All you need at the start might be something like Shopify or a WordPress template.

And if you’re struggling, try to find someone who will help you move forward one step at the time, much like we do in our membership, Make Your Mark Online.

If you want to find out more about why you shouldn’t hire a web designer when you’re brand new in business, listen to our podcast episode: Should you DIY your website?

And when your business is established and you have regular customers and clients, by all means, consider hiring a web designer if that’s the right move for you.

4. Focus on driving traffic to your website

Once your website is live, that’s when the real work starts. Because even if your website looks amazing, you can’t convert traffic if you don’t have any!

So get the blood to the heart.

And you do this by:

• Creating and executing a content marketing strategy.
• Optimising your website for SEO.
• Engaging in social media marketing and/or email marketing.

If you want to convert traffic, you have to drive that traffic in first! And if you’re unsure about how to start, keep things simple. Think about what your buyers might want. Write helpful blog posts and promote the heck out of them.

5. Don’t invest in something you can’t afford

If you have to put your last pennies into something (a website or anything else), it’s probably not the right time to invest. We really struggled financially as a result of hiring a web designer at the wrong time for our business.

And eventually, this decision cost us our business.

So when making business decisions, and especially big buying decisions, try to use your head instead of your heart!

Would you like our help as you create your own website?  

So there you have it – the honest mistakes we made on our first website. If you enjoyed this blog post, you can also listen to our podcast episode 9 – Why our website failed miserably.

We learnt a lot from the experience, and that’s what led us to where we are today. We understand what you’re going through at the very early stages of your business, and we can help you avoid the mistakes we made.

If you want to find out more about the ways we help, check out our membership Make Your Mark Online, where we can support you in creating a website you can be proud of.

Martin & Lyndsay

The post 6 Mistakes To Avoid When Hiring a Web Designer (and What To Do Instead) appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

That kind of content, the kind that’s honest and transparent, takes me far longer to write and publish than anything else.

Why? Because it scares the crap out of me.

Scary thoughts run through my mind. Things like…

What if we never see any enquiries ever again?
What if we’re so honest that no one wants to work with us?
Isn’t it best to get people on a call first to convince them what we’re worth before we reveal our prices or processes?

But you know what? None of my worst fears have ever come true.

We’ve published blog posts like, Why Are We So Expensive, How Much Money Have We Made From Free Website Critiques?, Why We Don’t Do Ad-Hoc Amendments, Top 10 Best Web Design Companies in Manchester and Why You Shouldn’t Work With Us.

On the face of it, it looks like we’re majorly shooting ourselves in the foot, doesn’t it? But in fact, by being brutally honest through our content we’ve managed to attract MORE of our ideal clients.

Still not convinced? Here are some reasons why you need to bring some brutal honesty to your business.

1. You’ll get found on Google

I distinctly remember when Martin told me he was going to write an article about the top 10 web design agencies in Manchester…and not include us.

‘Are you feeling alright?’ was my first response. ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ was my second. There was probably a swear word or two in there as well.

But Martin, being Martin, stubbornly went ahead and has been smug about it ever since.

Back then, we were getting a lot of enquiries from people who just weren’t the right fit for us. They weren’t bad potential clients, it’s just they didn’t have the right budget or they needed a much larger agency. In the interest of good customer service, Martin wrote a blog post about other web design agencies in Manchester who he thought were great and would be happy to recommend.

Essentially this blog post was all about saving us time when responding to enquiries and delivering good customer service. BUT, this one article actually had another, more profitable side-effect.

What Were Our Results?

We received (and still do receive!) a lot of traffic to this blog post. We are ranked on the first page of Google for ‘Best Web Design Manchester’/ ‘Best Web Designer Manchester’/‘Best Web Design Agencies in Manchester’ and all associated keywords.

In fact, four days after we published this post, we received a phone call from a completely cold lead. Someone asked us to design their website on the spot, and they’ve been a loyal client ever since. That’s about 6K from one blog post (that we can account for directly).

They found us from typing into Google ‘Best Web Design Agencies in Manchester’. And they wanted to work with us because they valued our honesty.

You can see why Martin was smug.

How Can You Do This?

Think about what your audience will type into Google about your products and services and answer that question.

It’s that simple.

Yes, it might make you squirm a little. Yes, it’s scary. But if you’re answering that question and delivering the best customer service, people will find you on Google and you’ll blow the competition out of the water.

Of course, there are things you can do to enhance your chances of getting found, check out this blog post on how to optimise your blog posts.

2. You won’t waste time with people who aren’t right for your business

Before 2017, we were spending A LOT of time talking to people who just weren’t right for our business. This ranged from people who wanted a cheap web designer for a few hundred quid to people who wanted a full-service agency with £50,000+ to spend.

But it’s not just about money. We also spoke to people who wanted a ‘yes-man’ to do exactly what they asked or people who wanted an agency to update their website daily without doing anything themselves.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with these particular clients. At all. They’re just not the right clients for us. But we were spending hours and hours each week talking to these kinds of people. They booked calls with us and sometimes we’d even get to the proposal stage before it became clear we were the wrong company for them.

That’s why we write articles like ‘Why You Shouldn’t Work With Us’, that’s why we talk about our pricing and that’s why we joke that we’ll never, ever wear a suit. We’re just not that kind of agency.

At first, writing this kind of content is scary. You’re putting yourselves into a corner. You’re drawing a line in the sand – this is who I do work with, this is who I don’t work with.

What Were Our Results?

Now we attract our ideal clients, and by that, we mean people who are the right fit for us, but equally, we’re the right fit for them.

How Can You Do This?

Firstly, you need to think about who you’re ideal clients are and who your crappy clients are. And I’m not just talking about clients with the right budget, I’m talking about clients you want to work with.

For us, that’s people who are quite happy to get their hands dirty with updating their website themselves, and people who want to hire an agency for their expertise (they don’t just see us as designers to boss around).

You need to establish the type of people you want to work with then use your content and your web pages to make it clear who you’re suitable for and who you’re not.

3. You tackle people’s objections

You know those little niggles you have when you’re purchasing something…‘It seems a little expensive’, ‘will this deliver a ROI?’, ‘will this really help me to x,y,z?’

Every time a potential customer visits your website, they have these same ‘niggles’.

You can do one of three things to tackle this:

1. Completely ignore them in the hopes that the potential customer just decides to invest in you anyway
2. Invest in ‘soft’ strategies that help give you social proof, essentially proving to the potential customer you are reliable and trustworthy. You can do this by showing reviews and testimonials, case studies and awards etc.
3. Tackle the issues head on through your content.

A lot of business go with option one. Some do two. Very few go with option three.

And yes it’s scary. Why is it scary, I don’t know? Maybe it feels like we’re shining a light on the perceived downsides of our products and services?

That’s what it felt like when we wrote the post ‘Why are We So Expensive?” Aren’t we just reaffirming a bad point to our potential customers???

Nope.

We knew our customers were asking themselves why we cost more than other web designers. It’s not as if by writing this content we were putting those thoughts in their heads. They were already there.

So, if those thoughts were already there, what did we have to lose by explaining why we charged more?

What Were Our Results?

When people question why we charge what we do, we simply send them that article. It essentially explains the difference between us and other agencies. And you know what? It does really well at converting those potential customers into paying customers! Just because we tackle their concerns head-on.

How Can You Do This?

Think about the main concerns people have about working with you. Think about…

1. What are your customer objections?
2. What are the reasons you’ve been turned down in the past?

Now, this can be difficult as often people don’t want to admit why they don’t want to work with you, either out of politeness or embarrassment (if they can’t afford it, for example).

This is where it’s good to ask your peers and other business owners what their objections might be for working with you. Once you have these objections, you can start writing content around that.

4. You’ll build trust and loyalty

This is possibly the biggest benefit we’ve seen in producing ‘scary’ content. Scary content is usually honest content. It’s saying something that others in your industry don’t talk about, or even hide from their customers.

Scary content is about delivering the best possible customer service, and in doing this, you will build trust and loyalty.

One of our scariest pieces of content was – Why new business owners shouldn’t spend thousands on a website.

This was based on our experience. We’d designed websites for excited new business owners only to find that a year or so later their business had changed direction. This meant they had to come back to us to tweak their website or even redesign it.

It occurred to us that this was a huge waste of time and money for new business owners. So we made the decision not to accept clients who were brand new business owners and recommend they invest their time building a website themselves first.

What Were Our Results?

Did we lose money? Yes.

BUT, this was only a short-term loss.

We’ve had several clients who originally took this advice and spent their time building their business and website only to come back to us when they were in a better position to invest.

Our advice meant that when they were ready, they came back to us at a better time for them to spend money. There was no chance they were going to go anywhere else.

How Can You Do This?

This is about taking the decision to be better.

We know so many wonderful web designers but we also know the industry is rife with money-grabbing, crap-bags too.

We constantly strive to be better and make the right recommendations to our audience. Sometimes, this is tough, as it can feel like you’re losing money. But in the long-term, it works out better for both the client and you.

5. You’ll get traffic

Do you know what happens when you’re the only one in your industry talking about something? You get traffic. And tons of it!

One thing that people hate talking about is money (I think it’s a British thing). But, we all have a secret interest in it, don’t we?

We decided to share how much we’d made from delivering free website critiques in our Facebook group. The point of this article was to show people how they can make actual money from giving away free content. We used us as an example because we could see a direct correlation between our free website critiques and our sales.

What Were Our Results

This blog post received a lot of traffic and was shared a lot across social media. Other people said they were going to do something similar, even other web designers!

How Can You Do This?

My biggest fear was that I was going to come across as braggy. I didn’t want that.

So, instead of just saying this is what we did, look at how much money we made and aren’t we just ace, we broke it down. We said how we did this and why it worked, and we talked about how our audience could do something similar.

Just come at it as if you’re sharing something that works, and you’re wanting to help your reader do the same.

6. You actually sell

We’ve made a commitment to being open and clear with our pricing, which is why we have a pricing page on our website.

But this year, Martin and I sat down at the kitchen table and made the decision to increase our prices. Now, we could’ve just edited our pricing page and had done with it, but we wanted to explain why we’re increasing our prices.

In an effort to be transparent, what actually happened was we outlined how we deliver value and a healthy return on investment for our clients.

What were our results?

As a result of that blog post, three people confirmed they wanted us to design their website for them, resulting in over £15,000 worth of sales.

How can you do the same?

If there are changes within your business – such as price increases, don’t shy away from telling people about them. Tell them, but explain why these changes are happening, what value you are giving and how it’s a benefit to your clients and customers.

But, even if your prices are going up from external factors outside of your control, such as the price of goods, explain why clearly. People get that costs go up and if you’re upfront about it, you will gain (most) people’s respect and understanding.

To Sum Up

Scary content is exactly that, scary. Of course, there are massive benefits to you, as I’ve listed above. But ultimately, this is about your audience and what will be hugely helpful to them. If you put them front and centre of everything you do, you can’t go wrong.

We didn’t think of this ourselves (I wish we did). This all comes from the teachings of Marcus Sheridan and Chris Marr from Content Marketing Academy. It’s all about producing content that helps your audience make a better buying decision.

Your thoughts?

Have you ever produced a piece of scary content? What was it? And what were your results? We’d love to know!

Lyndsay Cambridge

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

jammydigital.com

The post If Your Content Doesn’t Scare You It Won’t Work appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Listen on iTunes | Soundcloud

Does your blog content look a bit naff? There are so many blogs out there and it’s sometimes difficult to stand out. If you want to make your blog posts sparkle then listen to this week’s episode.

We talk about all the different things you can do to make your blog posts more interesting and easy to read.

Everything from font size to Tweetables, headings to bullet points. Everything in this list is what we do to make sure our blog content looks the part.

In this episode we discuss:

– Using Headings
– Creating featured images
– Fonts
– Images and links
– Videos
– Tweetables
– Internal Linking
– Coloured Boxes
– Lead Capture

Resources

Make Your Mark Online Membership 

Facebook Group

How to Make Your Blog Posts Less Boring

Lyndsay Cambridge

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

jammydigital.com

The post Ep 32 – How to make your blog posts look good appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

There’s nothing that quite divides business owners like whether you should put your prices on your website. In this episode, we explore whether your prices should go on your website and the best way to do it.

In this episode we discuss:

– Why you might not have your prices on your website
– Benefits of putting your prices on your website
– What WE did and the results we got
– What I’d recommend that you do

Resources

Make Your Mark Online Membership 

Facebook Group

Why You Should Put Your Prices on Your Website

Our Pricing Page

Martin Huntbach

Web designer & marketer for small businesses. Martin is an experienced search engine and web design specialist, with over a decade of experience working with large corporations to small businesses.

jammydigital.com

The post Ep 31 – Should You Put Your Prices on Your Website? appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Why do some Personal Brands attract a huge following whilst some fail to gain any real traction? We’ve found that there are 5 key elements that will allow you to attract more potential customers using your website.

In this episode we discuss:

– How to build trust on your website
– How to use your website to attract your ideal clients
– How to be viewed as an expert
– How to stand out from your competitors
– How to transform your readers into paying customers

Resources

Make Your Mark Online Membership 

Facebook Group

The post Ep 30 – How to create the Perfect Personal Brand Website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

So you’re not exactly proud of your website. The information is a bit out of date. The design isn’t great. But that’s okay. You get plenty of word-of-mouth referrals. You do really well on social media. Is it that much of a big deal if your website looks bad?

Actually, yes. Having a bad website is bad for business.

In this episode we discuss:

How people end up with a bad (or ineffective) website
– The downsides of a bad website
– How this could be impacting your brand confidence
– How this could be impacting your sales process
– Why we paid 3x more than we needed to based on someone’s website
– How a bad website can impact your SEO
– How your website could be affecting your conversions

Resources

Make Your Mark Online Membership 

Facebook Group

The post Ep 29 – The REAL cost of a bad website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

We were bright-eyed twenty-one-year-olds when we invested every penny we had (and hadn’t, to be honest) into a brand new website.

It failed miserably.

In this episode, we uncover what went so wrong in our first ever business, so you don’t make the same mistakes as us.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

• Why you need to do your research into web design agencies
• Why investing loads of money didn’t work
• How having no backup funds is dangerous
• Finding a web designer that’s right for you
• Researching the right framework for your website

Time Stamps: In a rush? Get to the section you need to below!

5.00- Why did it fail?
5.10 – Our lack of research into web design agencies
6.20 – A ‘build it and they will come’ mentality
8.00 – Don’t expose yourself financially
9.30 – Understanding that you need time
11.00 – Getting no traffic to your website
14.00 – Investing in a website in an extremely competitive niche
15.20 – Going too fast
16.00 – The website is the beginning of your business
19.15 – Getting obsessed with the website
20.25 – Try taking your heart out of it
21.30 – Don’t invest when you don’t have the money

Useful Resources and Links

Jammy Digital SEO webinar 

DIY Website vs Agency

Website Buyer’s Guide 

What To Do Next

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Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to episode nine of the Make Your Mark Online Podcast. In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about why our first website failed so badly, and it’s gonna be a really interesting episode, but before we get into the show, we wanted you to know that we are running a free online webinar all about SEO for personal brands. Now this is taking place on Thursday, the sixth of September at 8:00 P.M. BST or 3:00 P.M. EST. Now if you’re listening to this podcast when it’s just being released, you still have a couple of days to sign up to the webinar. If you just go to JammyDigital.com/webinar, then you’ll be able to pop your name and email address on the page there, and we’ll send you our unique for the webinar. Okay, let’s get on with the show.

So Martin, this is a really funny episode actually ’cause it’s kind of going back in time, but we weren’t always web designers, were we?

No. Yeah, surprisingly I didn’t just happen to know HTML as a toddler. Yeah, it’s definitely something that we’ve picked up later on in life.

Yeah, definitely. We’re talking about our first website, so this was when we were probably 21, 22. We were real babies.

Yeah, eight, nine years ago, something like that.

Yeah, something like that. Makes us feel very old. But like I said, we weren’t always web designers, but we did start up a completely new business, didn’t we?

Yeah, it was completely random really. We bought kind of these cushions and some home furnishings and just some odd bits that we wanted to sell online really. So we’re selling stuff on Ebay, and we were doing odd market stalls, and we actually really enjoyed it. It kinda got us out and about, and we’re obviously glutton for punishments, because we just gave up our entire free time to run this business while we were both working full time. So it wasn’t easy, but we enjoy it, yeah.

Yeah, definitely. And like you said, yeah, it was pretty much our weekends we spent. We actually went to sort of farmers markets and things like that. We sold our soft furnishings on there, and yeah, like you said, it was our evenings and weekends, even though we’re working full time that we actually invested into this sort of extra business. So we did try and make the decision to take it one step further and invest into a website.

Yeah, exactly. And we’ve always enjoyed design. Lyndsay, you’ve got your marketing background, and I’ve always known a little bit about HTML and CSS, so I had the skills potentially to be able to build a website, but we wanted it done properly at that point, wanted to make sure it was an online shop, people could buy from anywhere in the world. And we just wanted to hire a professional really, so we actually paid a web designer to build this singing, all dancing website. And it was a real struggle financially for us to do it, but we managed to get the money together, didn’t we?

Investing in a New Website

Yeah, we did. And I remember now, I think it was 1400 pound, which I mean money is relative, isn’t it? So at the time, that was all the money that we had in the world. We had to save up quite a while for that, and yeah, it was a really, really big investment for us because we weren’t massively well paid from our jobs at the time. We were just starting out in our careers, and so, yeah, this was a big, huge investment, and we put everything into it. So I think this episode really is about how we can help all the people not make the gigantic mistakes that we did when we first got a website.

Yeah, we just want to kind of give you our experience, so that you can, yeah, avoid the same mistakes. It’s as simple as that really because there are a few simple mistakes that listening to us, you’ll probably be like, “Well, that’s stupid. Why did you do that?”

“What are you doing?”

Exactly.

Remember we were 22.

And we were just excited, and we were trying to be proactive, and we were trying to be positive. And the business model in general that we had was actually quite risky in the fact that you buy products with your money, and then you have to try and sell and recoup the costs. So it’s not like a freelance business, is it? Where you can just make money just by doing your service. There’s a lot of risk there, and we actually put quite a lot on our credit cards to start off with, which is never a good move.

Yeah, and it was, even though, you said it was quite a risky business strategy, probably was one of your better ideas, Martin, if I’m honest, wasn’t it?

Martin’s Crazy Business Ideas

Yeah.

Because Martin, bless him, when I first met him, he had every business idea under the sun.

Of course. That’s how businesses start. I wouldn’t be here today, if I hadn’t come up with random ideas that never would’ve worked.

Yeah, no they were terrible. Please if you do ever run into Martin, just ask him about the business idea, karaoke toilets. That was one of his worst-

Moving on. Moving on.

… Business ideas that he’s ever come up with. But yeah, this one was actually, even though you said it was a difficult one, it was probably one of your better ones to begin with, Martin.

Thank you.

So why did it fail? That’s the ultimate question. Why did this business fail? And why did the website not work?

I think a lot of the reasons why it didn’t work were basically based on our lack of research. So our actual approach to hiring a web designer was pretty quick. We didn’t do an awful lot of kind of asking friends and family for recommendations. We looked around at a few local businesses, and we hired somebody who had the best looking website. I blame you for that actually ’cause you were kind of the more aesthetic one, so-

Yeah, I was hooked in by the prettiness of it.

But that’s a mistake that I think a lot of people make. You potentially look at the web designers that have the glossiest website, and we actually hired somebody who was fine. I mean he was a nice guy. We got along with him very well. Nothing to do with him. It’s just that if we’d had done more research, if we would’ve spend more spent, we’d have potentially gone with somebody else.

Doing Your Research Before Hiring a Web Designer

Yeah, definitely. I completely agree with that. I think what advice anyone now is to do their research before they actually hire a web designer, but we were just really excited. We kinda jumped into the process. But I think the major problem was that we had this mentality of if we invested in this web designer who had a really glossy website and had built other websites that were nice and looked nice before, then if he built ours, then people would flock to it. We’d get loads of customers, wouldn’t we? And we kind of had this “build it and they will come” mentality, which was probably one of our biggest mistakes, wasn’t it? We just kind of thought, “Do you know what? We just have to throw some money at this, and then all will be fine.”

Yeah, exactly. And like I say, it was a nice process. There was nothing wrong with it or anything, but we invested all of our money in that, so essentially what we did is we saved up so much, and we’d already got lots of stock piling up in our spare room, and we spent the rest of our money on this web designer. And we didn’t have anything left, so in our minds, we were like, “Well, I’ve gotten nothing left, so this has to work.” And we didn’t have a leg to stand on.

No, no. Definitely. I think it was a combination of having this mentality of, “We just need to have a pretty and functioning website, and that’s all we need. And this is the last penny that we’re investing, so it has to work.” And two of those things kind of really collided, didn’t they? And kind of ended up in a disaster. And yeah, having no back up funds, no money for extra marketing, just no money for food in some cases was not a good place to be. We really exposed ourselves, didn’t we? And it wasn’t great.

And this is why we advise people now to not hire a web designer with a brand new business because we should have built a website ourselves. We should have tried to do it ourselves. Maybe even if we really struggled, actually hired a cheaper web designer that perhaps didn’t design websites as nice as this other agency, but at least we could put one foot in front of the other and protect ourselves a little bit more. We kind of just went in at the roof level and just said, “We’re gonna throw it all, and it’s just gonna happen to just start throwing money out of the screen of our computer because we’ve paid this money in, and we want the money back.”

Yeah, definitely. And I think this is something we actually talk about in episode one of our podcast. The first episode that we wanted to say was, “Don’t invest loads of money in a web designer, especially if you’re a new business because-”

And now you know why.

Exactly. That is due to our own, not even our client’s experience, but our own experience. We never want someone to go through that themselves because it really did leave us really financially vulnerable for quite a long time, didn’t it?

Getting the Right Support from Your Web Designer

Yeah, exactly. And it is a struggle. But aside from that also, again we don’t think that this web designer was probably right for us, as well. I mean, yes, if a big company was to hire him, and they’d get a nice glossy website, that’s fantastic, but we actually needed quite a bit of support, and it’s not his fault. It’s our fault for not doing the research, but when it comes to support, we didn’t know anything about how to update the framework that he’d given us and how to optimize our website for search engines, things like that. We didn’t have the tools to be able to really make the most of our website that we’d spent a lot of money in and invested in.

Exactly. We didn’t have the tools that you said, and we didn’t have the time to sort of learn all that stuff either. Especially after the website went live, we were like, “We just need the money back now,” but we didn’t have the time to actually think, “Well, what do we need to do to learn to make this website a success?” We just expected it to come back straight away.

And I think, yeah, the web designer, it’s absolutely nothing of his fault at all, but we did need that extra support. It was built on a platform called … It was OpenCart?

That’s the one. Boo.

Boo. Booing it. But it was really difficult for us to use, wasn’t it?

Yeah. If any of you have used that platform in the past, you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about, but it’s not the most search engine friendly. The URLs that they create are just horrible, and it’s really difficult to optimize it. And that’s why we’re very particular these days about the framework that we use, and we have to trust it. If somebody came to us and said, “I’d give you 50,000 pounds to build a website in OpenCart,” I don’t think I’d be able to sleep at night taking someone’s money and actually creating a website like that. And it’s partly due to the fact that we didn’t have a choice. We just got the platform that we got given.

But we didn’t even research, did we?

No.

Researching What Platform Your Site is Built On

I don’t think we were even aware that there were differences, but certainly, we didn’t do our research about what platform to use for a shopping website or even what platform to use for a website. We would always tell people to do their research first and find out platform actually works for them. But yes, for us, that was a real struggle, and we spent our time, rather than actually learning how to market our business, how to do better with our website, we spent our time just learning the nitty gritty bits of how to organize postage and how to do all these little things that were really complicated. And it was just a lot of work. A lot of evenings, weekends actually spent just doing that, while we were losing money essentially on the website itself.

And what we really needed at that point was just a lot of traffic. We just needed to try and drive as much traffic to our website as possible, and we didn’t have the time to do that because we were focusing on the nitty-gritty parts of managing the website. But that for the most part, would’ve solve a lot of problems. If we’d had spent more time promoting it on social media, maybe focused on learning more about SEO, which we didn’t have a clue about at the time, then we could’ve still moved forward, but I think it was just such a big weight on our shoulders with the money that we’d invested, and we just wanted it to work. And it was just a real struggle.

But I do think, if we’d of had a website buyers guide, for instance like what we’ve created, then we would’ve been able to protect ourselves to a certain extent, and we would’ve potentially hired another agency, and we’d of had a better mentality really about going into a business and accepting that “Build and they will come” was going to just miraculously happen, probably wouldn’t have been the case.

Yeah, definitely. And I will put a link to the website buyers guide in the notes because it’s useful for anyone who wants to get a new website or redesign their website. We don’t recommend us, by the way, but it’s a guide for you, if you’re shopping around for a website, so it’s really useful.

Yeah. We spent quite a lot of time on that because we wanted you to be able to avoid making the same mistake that we did. That was one of the big drivers for it.

Getting Traffic to the Site

Yeah, definitely. So just talking as well, when the website went live, we didn’t get, as Martin mentioned, any traffic to it at all. We really struggled. And we had this mentality that once it was built, it would just magically get traffic. We were quite naïve about that. And I remember you coming home one day from work, and I was going, “I’ve heard of this thing called SEO, and I think it’s quite interesting actually. I think this stuff works, but I don’t understand any of it. Will you help me with it?” And that was kind of the first time we’d ever heard of SEO, wasn’t it?

Yeah, and then what we did is obviously … ‘Cause we’re quite positive at that point. We just launched, and went to web designer, and we said, “SEO. What can we do? How can we do it?” And he said, “Oh, well. It’s expensive. If you want us to do it, it’s gonna cost this much.” I think he quoted it at over a thousand pound a month that some clients pay for SEO.

For us then, may have well been a million pounds, really. It was just impossible.

Yeah, it was impossible for us to be able to invest even a couple of hundred pounds a month, never mind that much. So it was a real struggle, and that was really deflating, especially because that’s when he decided to tell us, “Well, you’re in a very competitive niche,” which was an even bigger blow because it meant that even if we did optimize our website, it’d still be a real struggle because we were trying to optimize for unique gifts or home furnishings or cushions or whatever it is that we were selling at that point. So it was a real kind of de-motivator at that point to know that we’d spent all this money on this website, and it was a real struggle. It felt like we were at the bottom of a mountain, didn’t it?

Yeah, it did. And I don’t think it was his responsibility to tell us, “You know, you’re in a really competitive industry.” We’re selling cushions, so we could’ve realized really that we were in a competitive industry, but yes, I think it was just this naivety that we sort of took to actually doing the website.

Yeah, definitely. And that’s something, I think, we need to discuss a little bit, as well. Sometimes, we actually let our excitement for the business, and Lyndsay’s passion for these owl cushions that we just had an abundance of.

I loved the owl … I miss the owl cushions.

That we actually went sort of too fast because we were so excited about the business, which it sounds like a good thing, but actually it can lead you to make the wrong business decisions, hence hiring a web designer at the point when we didn’t necessarily need to. We believed in the products so much, and our enthusiasm would just sort of take us to be a successful business, and we could live on a beach. That kind of business model.

Our Naive Outlook to the Work Involved

With cocktails, selling owl cushions and being millionaires.

Yes, it’s all done to our naivety, and the fact that we didn’t realize how much work it would be to be able to build a website and grow the website. And I think that’s the thing. You think that the website is everything. You think it’s going to just generate business, but it is means to an end really.

Yeah. Yeah, I always say that the website is not the end. It’s the beginning. Getting a new website is just the beginning of your business, and we viewed as the end. “That was it. That was all we needed. We were going to be a success.” No, it’s actually the beginning of everything because a website is the heart of your business, but you’ve still got to kind of pump blood to it in a way. You’ve got to make sure that you’re building a business on it. You’ve got to get traffic to it. And we didn’t understand any of that, really. We were just selling a product that was available on Amazon, on Ebay, on hundreds, probably thousands of other websites, as well, and we didn’t really give anyone a reason to buy from us, did we?

No, we didn’t differentiate ourselves. We were trying to compete on price. There was no benefit from hiring us, or buying from us, rather than buying off Ebay, and you could probably even get it a bit cheaper. So the profit margins weren’t there because we were competing on price. We were too scared to do any kind of content at all. We were brand new to social media marketing at this point, and we barely even touched Facebook. But again, we had that encouragement. We didn’t mind getting out of there.

I remember the day when we went to a park with all our products and decided to take photographs of them. Like with the little owl cushions, we’d put them in trees-

Well, we had owl cushions. We had lion cushions. We had monkeys. Yeah, so we did some really fun stuff, didn’t we?

We enjoyed it.

Yeah, like Martin said, we went to the park, and we even stopped at a zebra crossing, and we put our owls on the zebra crossing, like on the cover of a Beatles album, I think it was, and we tried to emulate it. And yeah, we took pictures. We gave all the owls their own names. We made poems for them.

She’s very proud of the name thing. I don’t know.

And I am very proud of the names because the supplier actually stole that from us, I’m sure.

She still says that. It’s true. They didn’t have names before, and they did after.

They didn’t, and then they had names afterwards.

And our names were better, I think.

Our names were really good, yeah.

Sebastian the lion cushions.

Sebastian the lion cushion, yeah.

It was a very fun business.

It was.

Not Everyone is as Excited as You

It was exciting, and I think that’s why we let our hearts rule our heads. And that’s why because we were so enthusiastic about it, we just assumed that the world would be, as well. And it’s not the case, and that’s why it’s really important that you have a strategy behind how you’re going to market your business once the website is done. And like Lyndsay said, the website is just the starting line. It’s not the end line. And by considering what your buyers might want, it’s a good place to start on your content marketing. Literally, your website is such a fraction of the effort in your business, that as long as the website’s set up a certain way, and it’s built to convert people, and it’s built to attract search engine traffic as well, then the rest of the effort goes into the marketing and the promotion and writing helpful blog posts and going down the real kind of nooks and crannies really of content marking.

Getting Obsessed with the Small Detail

Yeah, and I think the biggest mistake that we also made … There was lots. There’s lots of biggest mistakes we also made. Was probably that we were so obsessed with the website and how each little bit looked, so we thought, “Oh, we could move that bit down there. Or we could change the color of that button. Or we could make that slightly bigger.” And we got so obsessed with the details, but like what we said what we really needed was to do content marketing. We needed to drive traffic to the website because changing those little details is pretty useless ’cause no one was on the website anyway, apart from my mom. Thanks Mom. She went on the website. I think she pity bought a product, which is never a good place to be.

So yeah, it was a struggle. So from what we’ve learned from this whole process, what would you advise people to do in future if they were going to get a new website?

I think the website buyer’s guide is going to help. I know it’s our product. We don’t get anything. We’re not selling it to you, but we definitely put it together to avoid this kind of scenario. So definitely check it out. But the research mentality is so important. Try and take your heart out of it. Try and use your head when you’re making buying decisions in general, never mind when you’re hiring a web designer. But if you are brand new, then try doing it yourself first. We’re never going to stop teaching this. Try doing it yourself first, get on Shopify, or try and launch a WordPress template that comes with the shop. Just try and do it yourself first. See how far you get. If you struggle and you’re having problems with it, then try and find someone that can help you move forward one step at a time. Don’t just go straight to step ten, which is pay over a thousand pound for your brand new website with a brand new business that you’ve not been able to validate yet.

Yeah, definitely. And we’re not just talking about shopping sites either. We’re actually talking about all websites. Obviously, it’s a bit more complicated with a shopping website, but I think this applies to all new business. Make sure you do that research first ’cause it’s not just shopping websites that are complicated. Web design itself is very, very complicated, so make sure that you do that research and, yeah, that buyers guide should be able to help you.

And don’t use OpenCart.

And I think another thing would be, like you’ve touched upon Martin, is don’t invest when you shouldn’t. So we made a bad financial decision, and that is on us that we invested every single penny that we had into a website, and that kind of made us put everything into this website. And it felt like life or death, didn’t it? And it’s really not a good place to be. If you’re-

No, and it definitely ended in death. Flat lined completely.

Yeah, definitely. And I think if you’re finding yourself struggling to pay for a website, it’s not a good time to invest in it. We would never ever want a client that was not financially comfortable giving us their money. It would just be horrible, and it’s not a nice place to be.

No, it’s okay if you’ve already got a business, and you’ve generated it. Like go back and listen to episode one, if you’re concerned about whether or not you should or shouldn’t invest. But if you’ve already got a business, and it’s established, and you’re already getting customers, then yes, maybe at some point, you need to think about hiring a web designer. But with a brand new business, it’s a very risky tactic, especially if you’ve got three or four thousand on a credit card for these piling owl cushions.

Yeah, definitely. And finally, I think it’s just to understand and have the mentality that once the website is built, that’s when the work starts, that’s when your content marketing has to start, that’s when you have to think about CEO, social media marketing, email marketing, all these kind of things. You need to start getting blood to the heart really. You need to just start getting traffic and conversions, and that doesn’t just happen on a website. That requires a lot of work itself.

And we don’t want to put people off, but we don’t want to lie to you or tell you that it’s easy because it’s not. It’s not easy, but it is worthwhile doing it and learning this stuff, as well.

Yeah, and we never want to be the kind of podcast hosts that just kinda tell you that it’s all sunshine and rainbows. And that’s kinda why we wanted to kinda break it down a little bit and tell you that we’ve been in the same position that potentially you’re in right now, or have been in the past. And it’s all about us being open and honest about it, so that if you are in that position, don’t beat yourself up about it. We made the same mistake, as well. We’re just here to hopefully prevent other people from making that mistake, as well.

A Positive Outlook to Failure

Yeah, we cannot possibly look back and think, “This is a bad thing.” We never look back now and think, “That was awful,” because it led on to so many different things because in the process, we learned so much more about web design, we learnt everything about SEO during the process and conversions, content marketing, all those different things. We actually learnt so much from it, but we also learnt what it was like to be a customer buying a website. It’s been absolutely priceless in growing our own agency because we kind of understand how you guys feel, and we’re able to provide this advice like “Don’t invest thousands straight away, if you’re a brand new business, and this is all the money that you’ve got.”

Yeah, and we obviously try to be as supportive as we can, as well. So we send training videos and lots of help for resources to be able to help businesses grow, and that’s something that we don’t feel that we got, so that’s something that we’ve learnt that we’re able to give back now.

Yeah, definitely. Usually after we’ve built a website, we have like an hour with the client, don’t we? Where we say, “Okay, this is the kind of stuff you could possibly do to sort of grow your website further,” isn’t it? But it’s definitely not something where I look back and think, “I wish that would have had happened,” because without it happening, we wouldn’t be where we are today. So I definitely do regret it one bit, but it was fun.

But I think how we reacted to that disappointment is what really changed things for us and how we could’ve looked at it in a negative light and thought, “You know what? We tried doing a business. It’s rubbish. You can’t do it. I’d rather just get a normal job.” We truly believed in the life that we wanted to live, and that didn’t involve working for another company. So yes, it didn’t work this time, but we kept going on that road, and we pushed forward, and we then launched our very first web design business and got out first clients, and immediately, we saw the benefit of the failure that we’d lived through.

Yeah, definitely. And we’re still learning now. We learn every day all new things, and we keep investing in learning, isn’t it? Because it’s just so important that you do. I mean we never ever stop learning, and everything is an opportunity to learn, even the massive failures. So this got really all philosophical, didn’t it now [inaudible 00:26:11]?

I’m glad you was able to pull that word off. Let’s hope you don’t have to say phenomenal ’cause you-

No, don’t make me say that word. Pheno … Can we edit that out please?

Never. Never been able to say that. No.

He’s not going to let me edit that out.

No chance.

So I hope you found that useful and not too negative because like we said, we did bring some positives from the experience, and I hope that you were able to hopefully learn from our mistakes at least. So before we go, don’t forget to register for our SEO webinar on the sixth of September. Like we said, there are limited spaces available, so make sure you get your name down for that. You can’t access it without actually giving us your email address, and then we’ll send you an unique link. Make sure you turn up early because we do have limited spaces, so make sure you get a space, and we’ll see you next time on the Make Your Mark Online Podcast.

Martin & Lyndsay

The post Ep 9 – Why Our First Website Failed Miserably appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Images are one of the most important aspects of your site. Even if the design, copy and user experience are perfect, if your images are poor the whole site is going to look naff. Images are the first thing your user will see when they land on your site. It’s vital you get them right!

We recommend our clients use a mix of photographs from their own collection and stock photos. Stock photos work well, but more natural images give the user an insight into you and your business, particularly with images of yourself and your team.

We hired Rustic Lovebirds, a team of two professional photographers – Matt and Sabina, to help us create brand new photographs for our new website.

We learnt a heck of a lot from the experience. So we’d like to share with you what we learned, as well as a sneaky-peek of a few photographs too!

Send Your Photographers Photos You Like

In preparation for our photoshoot, we sent Matt and Sabina some photographs we found appealing. These were surprisingly hard to find as we wanted a very informal business photoshoot, when it’s mostly serious headshot photographs out there.

I created a board on Pinterest with the kind of photographs we were looking for. It worked very well, with Matt and Sabina taking inspiration from the relaxed and natural style!

Don’t Leave It Until The Day

Preparing for website photography is hard. At first, I tried to think about the exact shots we needed, and where they would go on the site. But this quickly became a tiresome task and one that was futile. Any good web designer should be able to work photos into the design; they just might take a little editing.

But I did think about the following:

What do you want to feature in your photographs?

For example, we knew we wanted photographs of us on the phone, poring over our laptops and web schematics, presenting and showing our training sessions.

Where will these photographs take place?

We used many different locations for our photographs – Martin’s office, my office and even the beach!

What props do you need?

Props made the photographs look more natural and colourful. Even simple things like plants, a couple of coffee mugs and some glasses really brought this shoot to life! As you can see from one of the photographs from our shoot below…

Do You Feel Comfortable With Your Photographers?

Let’s face it; sometimes photography can make you feel a little awkward, so you need to find photographers that put you at ease. Matt and Sabina had previously photographed us for our wedding, so we already had a great relationship with them.

We felt completely comfortable being silly in front of Matt and Sabina and you should with your photographers too! A photoshoot can be (and certainly was for us) an enjoyable experience, but having the right photographers is key.

Make Sure You Don’t Over Organise

It was tempting to over organise during the prep stage for our photography. I tried to think about every shot and everything we needed. But some of the best photos were the ones I’d never even thought of! Ones where our photographers used their skill and imagination – because at the end of the day, they’re the experts and they certainly knew what they’re doing!

Have Several Wardrobe Changes

So, I’m giving away the secret here!

The shoot only took place over the course of an afternoon, not a few days!

So if you’re planning on photographing yourself and staff for the whole site, it’s a good idea to have wardrobe changes. This makes it look natural, as though the images give a snapshot of you during different days and times.

Don’t Underestimate the Time it Takes

I remember looking at my phone and being shocked that two hours went by. It felt like two minutes!

Don’t get me wrong, we’d gone through a lot of separate locations and types of images by that time, but with wardrobe changes on top of everything else, time flew by.

It may be tempting to save on costs and book a photographer for only one or two hours, but remember that this time will go quickly. Your photographers are there anyway, so you may as well pay that little extra for more shots.

Show Your Personality

Like I said before, it was difficult for us to find relaxed and natural business photographs. A lot were of people are suited and booted and standing straight and tall. But that’s just not us. And it’s certainly not how we work every day.

So we decided to keep our (slightly messy) offices as they were, complete with star wars toys and sweets, family photos and paperwork. It shows a little glimpse of our personality.

I’m certainly not saying you have to show people what you’re up to at home on a Saturday night. But try to show a little bit of yourself.

Don’t Forget To Check the Weather

If you’re thinking of shooting outside, don’t forget to check the weather. Sabina, one of our photographers, was kindly chatting to us the night before our shoot to arrange the best times to go to the beach. We also checked the tide times too so we had some sand!

But hey, this is the UK and we all know that weather reports are no guarantee of anything at all. So have a backup just in case it pours down with rain. If worst comes to the worst, brollies make great props!

Photograph Objects

Matt and Sabina had the great idea of photographing little details, such as our keyboard, the computer and our offices in general. These will be really handy going forward as our own version of stock photographs. A great idea!

Use More Than One Location

Having photographs taken in the same place can get a little dull.

So if you can, try to use different rooms or areas. Even if you just use different corners of the room to maximise your space.

If you can, get outside too!

Make Sure You Have Lots of Natural Light

This was a great tip from our photographers! Make sure you open all blinds and curtains and select rooms with plenty of light!

The more natural light you have, the better the photographs will be.

Summary

Is getting professional website photography worth it? Absolutely yes! We cannot wait to get our new site live with these new photographs. If this is something you’re thinking of doing, just make sure you showcase your personality, allow yourself enough time, and plan ahead with your photographers.

So what about you? Have you ever used professional business photographers before? How did you find the process?

Lyndsay Cambridge

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

jammydigital.com

The post Lessons We Learned From Our Business Photoshoot appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

You might have a number of questions and concerns, but, without spending hours on the phone speaking to dozens of web designers, how will you know who to choose?

This is why I wrote this article.

I wanted to lay it all out on the table and show you our entire process from start to finish, so you know exactly what you get when you hire us.

Below, I’ll walk you through the 31 steps we use to create a high-performing website that works FOR you!

1. We talk, usually via Skype

Before we start working together, we’ll book in some time to have a chat about your project. We’ll usually do this on a live video call and discuss what you want to achieve from your new website.

We’ll take a look at your existing site (if you have one) and we’ll go through your ideas for the new site. We can use this time to talk about your goals and objectives so that we have a better understanding of how we can help.

Essentially, this call is to work out whether we are a right fit for each other. I work only with clients who I can truly help, which is why this call is important. We’ll also discuss your budget, and I can give you an indication of what we charge.

2. Questionnaire

Following on from our initial call, we will send you a website questionnaire to fill out. This will allow us to gather additional information so we know as much as possible about your business before we start designing and building it. The more information we have, the better the finished product.

3. We send you a quote

Once we have all your requirements, we will send you a full proposal for our services, including all the website features you requested. We may also include additional elements that we think would work well for your website. More often than not, the fee for our services is similar to the price we discussed on the call.

We can also include a quote for creating your website content. Most of our clients hire us to write the text for their new website. This is an option for you, too.

4. Research

Using the information you provided on the initial call and the questionnaire, we will begin our own research. We will do a deep dive into your world, learning as much as possible about your industry and your competitors. We’ll perform some keyword research to find out what your customers search for online. During this time we’ll look at dozens of different websites, leaving no stone unturned before moving forward with any designs.

5. Initial concepts

Once we have enough information from the research, we then move onto the planning stage. This is where the fun begins. This is the creative part that I personally love the most. We’ll start by sketching out some layouts on a whiteboard. We use a lot of post-it notes and marker pens to come up with a basic wireframe of your pages. This begins the initial framework of your new site.

We’ll also discuss the main colours we’ll be using and taking into account what you already have and what we would recommend. We’ll decide on the best use of fonts and where to place your headlines and content for the most impact. We’ll also decide where your calls to action will go and how to ensure they are clearly displayed for your users.

6. Mockup

The next stage of the process is to take all the rough sketches and post-it notes and turn them into a work of art. Your website. We use Adobe Photoshop to pull together all of the pieces from our planning to create a mockup. We’ll position each element one by one and add some content to bring it to life.

Everything from your logo to your social media icons will have its own rightful place. Every inch of the design will be considered, informed by the research and concepts we’ve previously completed. Some of the initial ideas won’t work when we add them to Photoshop. And that’s fine. At this stage, there will be a lot of testing and trial and error along the way.

Chances are the design will change numerous times throughout the mockup stage until we are happy. This is one of the most import steps, and we’ll keep working on it until we have something that looks spectacular, is user-friendly and ensures maximum results.

Here’s an example of us building a mockup

7. You see the design

This is the fun part for you. This is the first time you get to see the design since we’ve started working together.

Once we are happy with the mockup, we’ll send you the homepage design via a video link. In the video, we’ll walk you through the design and talk you through each element one by one. By using a video, you get to see the full design as if it were a real website. We’ll explain why we’ve designed it the way we have and you’ll get to experience it before we move forward with the rest of the project.

Please note

Some of the items on the mockup will act as placeholders. This means if we are waiting for images and text from you, we may use stock images temporarily until we have all the correct information. Currently, your mockup is still a static document; the extra content can be added later on in the process.

8. Feedback

Once you’ve watched the video and had chance to reflect on what you’ve seen you can tell us what you think. You can also ask us any questions, and we can discuss what you want to change, if anything. This is your opportunity to let us know if we’ve missed out any key information so we can add it before moving forward with the build.

9. Continue with designs

Once we have the homepage nailed down, we then design the layouts for your other pages. You will generally have 3 unique layouts to choose from for your website. A homepage, an inner page and a blog page. We’ll design the additional pages using Photoshop like we did before. The colours and style will match the homepage, but the structure will be different.

10. Domain name

When we are happy with the designs, we then move onto the technical aspects of the process. We will register your domain if you haven’t already done so. If you have already done this, then we will use a temporary domain, which we’ll work on while we’re building your site.

Please note

Even though we register (and purchase) the domain for you, you will own it. It will be registered in your name.

11. Hosting

Along with your domain name, we’ll also purchase hosting. This will allow us to install a coming soon page and set up your email accounts so you can use them while we’re building your website.

Please note

If you already have an existing site, this will already be set up for you.

12. Setup of emails

It’s time to register your email accounts. This is where you get to decide which emails you’d like to use. You can have as many as you like. A few popular choices are yourname@yourdomain.com, info@yourdomain.com, sales@yourdomain.com and enquiries@yourdomain.com.

13. Install WordPress

The very first thing we need to do before we build your website is to install WordPress. WordPress is the content management system we’ll be using for your site. It will allow you to make changes easily, so you don’t have to pay us every time you want to add something. If you want to know why we ONLY use WordPress, then this article will explain all.

14. Add coming soon page

Once we’ve installed WordPress, we will add a “coming soon” page. This means we can start working on your website and we don’t have to worry about your customer stumbling across a half-built website. Instead, they’ll be greeted with a nice, warm welcome in anticipation of your brand new site.

15. Install the Genesis Framework

We use something called “Genesis” to build your website. It’s a WordPress framework that allows us to have 100% control over the technical aspects of your website. It also allows us to take your truly bespoke design and turn it into a fully functional website without additional “drag and drop” software.

16. The techie bit – Photoshop to website

We then take the Photoshop files we created for your mockup and your other pages and add them to your website. To do this, we create page templates for each unique design using a number of fancy tools and techniques (Code editors, FTP, CSS and PHP).

This sounds complicated and confusing, and it often is. It can take a lot of trial and error and is probably the most time-consuming part of the project. It needs to be done properly otherwise the website won’t look like the initial design you fell in love with.

We also have to prepare the site for mobile devices. The website will need to look good no matter what device is used to view it. We’ll assign a specific layout for mobiles, tablets, laptops, etc,.

17. Add pages and assign templates

We will then create all of the pages for your website within WordPress. Usually, we’ll just add blank pages with the titles, to begin with.

If this is a redesign of an existing site, we’ll also need to make sure that the URLs for these pages are the same as the old site. This isn’t always possible, so we’ll need to be extremely careful setting up redirects as we don’t want any broken links when you launch your new website. More on this in step 25.

18. Choose page style

Once we have added your blank pages, we then need to choose how each page will look by selecting the relevant template which we created in step 16. Generally speaking, the homepage and the blog page will be unique, but most of the inner pages follow a very similar style.

19. Add menu items

We then add your menu items to their assigned position. This is where we choose which pages will appear within the main navigation area of your website and order them appropriately.

You may have more than one menu on your website (e.g., sidebar, header, footer, etc.) so we’ll need to be careful not to duplicate pages. We also need to keep in mind the end user and how they can navigate through the site easily.

20. Add content

Once we have added all the menu items to your website, we can then add the content. We take the text and images for each section of your site and place them on the correct page.

We will arrange your content in a way that makes it easy to consume. There’s nothing worse than blocks of text with nothing to break it up. We’ll use images and headings to make it as readable as possible.

21. Plugins

We then install any relevant plugins to your website. Plugins are like website add-ons, and we’ll use them for most of the advanced features on your site. There are over 45,000 plugins to choose from, another great reason to use WordPress. Things like image galleries, contact forms, and social media sharing buttons can all be added by using these pre-made applications.

We may also adapt the plugins to make them look more in keeping with the style of your website.

22. API integrations

Aside from using plugins, we may also need to integrate additional applications from third-party websites. Services like MailChimp and PayPal use APIs so they can communicate directly with your website. Think of them as plugins on steroids. They will make your life easier and most major companies make their software WordPress friendly.

23. Test contact forms

We’ll go through your website, testing all of the contact forms, ensuring that they work properly and that emails go to the right place.

We can edit the form so you can gain any relevant details you’ll need from your prospect. We can also add more email recipients, meaning multiple people can receive your enquiries.

24. 301 redirects

If this is a redesign of an existing site, we’ll need to ensure all of your old pages are correctly transferred over using 301 redirects as we said in step 17. On occasion, you may not want to keep the old pages, or you might want to change the URLs. That’s fine. But we will need to set up 301 redirects for each page you plan on changing.

Essentially, we’ll communicate with Google exactly what you’re changing, so it knows where to redirect traffic if users land on a specific page in the search results.

Take this example below:

Old URL: exsistingwebsite.com/about-us
New URL: exsistingwebsite.com/about

We’ll make sure that if your old URL is displayed on Google, the page will automatically redirect to the new one. So no lost traffic.

25. Mobile friendly test

We will then test your website on different sized screens to see how it looks. During the website build stage (step 16) we assigned a different layout depending on the size of the device e.g. iPhones, iPads, laptops and desktops. However, we’ll still need to check it to make sure looks OK now that we’ve added plugins.

26. Page load speed

We need to check one last thing before we feel comfortable releasing your website to the world. We want to test your page load speed to make sure the site is running as quickly as possible. Google advises that all websites should load within 5 seconds to avoid any kind of penalty.

We use a number of tools to confirm your new website is as quick as it can be and we might even install some additional features to improve it if it needs it. The quicker your website loads, the better the experience for your users.

27. Cross browser test

There are many different web browsers, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer to name a few. Each browser will display your website slightly differently. There’s no real way to avoid this but we do make sure to catch any major differences and glitches.

28. Yoast SEO plugin

We will then install the Yoast SEO plugin to your website. This is the tool that will allow you to optimise your website so that search engines can find you more easily. We will set it up for you and use it to verify your website with Google in the next step.

29. Submit sitemap to Google Search Console

Using Yoast, we can connect your website directly to Google. This means they can provide you with extra data about your website, and send you an email if you have any errors going forward.

We then provide Google with a list of web pages from your site so they can start listing them in search results. This is known as your “sitemap”. Chances are they would find your site over time anyway but this way they will keep their records up to date every time you make a change to your site.

30. Google Analytics

Once we have given your site to Google, we can then create your visitor tracking account. Instead of using fancy plugins for this, we use Google Analytics. This is a free tool that Google provide to show you everything you need to know about your website visitors. This will show you everything from monthly visitor numbers to the most popular pages. It’s a very valuable tool which you want to keep an eye on.

31. Rank tracking

We’ll add your website to our rank tracking software and keep an eye on how well you perform. From the day we launch we’ll have a record of your Google rankings and keep track of how they adjust within a month of launching. The main reason we do this for you is to make sure there aren’t any technical issues affecting your website’s performance.

Summary

So there you have it, our entire web design process from start to finish. I didn’t want to focus on the technical aspects of what we do. Instead, I wanted to show you the broad outline so can see what’s involved when designing a website. Hopefully, I’ve answered a few questions along the way. But if you have anymore, feel free to comment below!

Martin Huntbach

Web designer & marketer for small businesses. Martin is an experienced search engine and web design specialist, with over a decade of experience working with large corporations to small businesses.

jammydigital.com

The post How we build your website from start to finish appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.