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Jammy’s Content Planner

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.

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

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

Ep 32 – How to make your blog posts look good

Lyndsay Cambridge — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 16:07:30 +0000

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

How to Make Your Blog Posts Less Boring

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

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.

Ep 31 – Should You Put Your Prices on Your Website?

Martin Huntbach — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 15:45:03 +0000

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

Why You Should Put Your Prices on Your Website

Our Pricing Page

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.

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.

Ep 30 – How to create the Perfect Personal Brand Website

Wed, 03 Apr 2019 11:07:53 +0000

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

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.

Ep 29 – The REAL cost of a bad website

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 16:21:59 +0000

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

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

Ep 28 – When to Outsource your Website Tasks

Tue, 02 Apr 2019 15:58:21 +0000

We always recommend business owners have some knowledge of how to make changes to their website. You don’t want to pay someone for every little change.

However, sometimes it is better to outsource web design tasks, particularly if it’s going to free up a lot of your time. Spending hours and hours faffing with your website trying to get something to look right is definitely not something you want to be doing!

In this episode, we will be talking about how to outsource website tasks and the best way to do this.

We discuss:

– What we mean when we say outsourcing?
– What tasks could you outsource with your website?
– When not to outsource work
– When to outsource website tasks
– 3 lists to freedom by Chris Ducker
– Where you can find people to outsource to?

Resources

Youpreneur

The post Ep 28 – When to Outsource your Website Tasks appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 27 – How we increased our traffic by 10X

Lyndsay Cambridge — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 15:50:10 +0000

Before 2017 we neglected our website.

Yep, we’re web designers who abandoned our site. But it’s easy done, isn’t it? You’ve got better stuff to do than keep faffing about with your website, stuff that brings in actual money – client work, invoicing, admin.

We thought the same. We were so busy with client work that we didn’t touch our website. Problem was, client work dried up, and we had nothing in the pipeline to sustain us. We hadn’t put any effort into our website and we found ourselves stuck.

In this podcast episode, we discuss how we managed to increase our website traffic by 10-fold, so we could continue to bring in leads and sales to our business.

In this episode I tell you how we increased our website visitors by 10x within 12 months.

We discuss:

– What we were doing before 2017
– How many visitors we were getting per month
– Why we decided to change things
– What we did to increase our traffic
– How we did it step by step
– Traffic number after 2017

Resources

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

The post Ep 27 – How we increased our traffic by 10X appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 26 – New Year’s Resolutions for Your Website

Martin Huntbach — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 18:12:32 +0000

Every year pretty much every business owner sets themselves new goals, new targets to hit and areas to expand or grow.

But often, we don’t set ourselves any goals for our website.

Our businesses are growing and changing, yet our websites remain static.

This is a huge mistake.

Having no goals for your website means the part of your business that’s viewable to the world is out of date and inefficient.

In this podcast episode, I talk about goal setting for your website and how to measure website success. This includes measuring and improving…

– Web visitors
– Page views
– Bounce rate
– Number of enquiries
– Rankings
– Conversions on sales pages
– Email subscribers

Resources

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.

The post Ep 26 – New Year’s Resolutions for Your Website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 25 – Planning Your New Website Part 4 of 4- Website Content

Martin Huntbach — Sun, 06 Jan 2019 17:50:33 +0000

Every year we hear the same thing from business owners and personal brands:

‘This year, I’m going to sort my website.’

But then clients and customers come first and the sliver of time you do have to work on your website is taken up by procrastination.

What’s my colour scheme?
What should I write on my homepage?
How do I do this bloody techie thing!

If this sounds like you, you are not alone! We see business owners vow each year to sort their websites only to go into the next year with the exact same one.

You know your website is important. You know that you can’t continue with the website you’ve got and that #WebsiteShame is holding your business back.

So 2019 is the time to get it sorted!

In this four-part series, we’ll be outlining the four key pillars to website success so you can get your website live ASAP in 2019.

In this final episode, we’re talking about how you can create content that converts your readers into paying customers.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

– How to plan your website content
– What to consider for your homepage content
– What you should include in your content
– How many words you should include
– What to include on your about page
– What to include on your services pages
– Mistakes you want to avoid

Resources

Worksheet Website Content

Transcript

Welcome to Make Your Mark Online podcast, where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. Please welcome your hosts, husband and wife team, Martin and Lyndsay.

Welcome to episode 25 of the Make Your Mark Online podcast. This actually episode four of four in this little mini-series. As you know, 2018 is now over and 2019 is here. Part of what we’re trying to do with this podcast and with the Facebook group and the membership as well, is to help as many people as possible create a highly successful website. The problem is, is that quite often you’re just not sure where to start, especially if you’re doing it yourself, and especially if you’re trying to redesign your website from scratch. It feels like a little mountain to climb. This is why throughout this little mini-series, we’re helping you plan your new website.

We’re going to be focusing on four key activities that will help you get your website live quicker so that you can get 2019 off to the best possible start because seriously, we want you to make your mark online in 2019 and stop fluffing around and putting off the website stuff because it will be holding you back. So let’s do this together.

Now this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online Membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. Now the doors for the membership are currently closed but we will be opening them again later on this month, but get your name in there. Join the wait list at makeyourmarkonline.net and we’ll notify you as soon as the doors open.

Now before we get into the show, we have a little announcement to make. As you know, Lyndsay went off on maternity leave last month getting everything ready for our brand new little boy who was due to arrive on the 22nd of December. On the 21st of December he decided to make an appearance a day early. He’s called Lucas Michael Huntbach and we’re so happy that he is nice and healthy and so is Lyndsay as well, and they’re both doing really well. As you might expect, he’s got us wrapped around his tiny little fingers, but we’re loving every second of it. I’m sure you’ll be hearing his cries in the background on this podcast and I’m sure he’ll be making a few Facebook Live appearances in the Facebook group as well so be sure to check that out.

Like I said, I’m going to be covering the podcast for the next few months while Lyndsay’s on mat leave and then we’ll see how things go and then potentially in season three, she will be coming back and maybe even Lucas as well. Who knows? So something to look forward to. But thank you so much for all of your kind messages and support in the Facebook group and privately as well. We’ve even had some of our listeners send us gifts as well which is so amazing. We’ve never received so much handwritten notes and postcards and chocolates and even little baby presents which is fantastic, so I really appreciate that.

So let’s get into the show.

So in the past three episodes we’ve discussed three major elements that will help you get started with your website. First of all, it was understanding your goals for the website and then it was how to structure your website based on those goals, and then it was what to do when you start to think about design. We gave you three different things that you can do to make your design planning easier.

In this episode, the final episode of the mini-series, we’re going to be helping you plan your content. So what content will you need to have in order to launch your new website? I’ll be honest. We review a lot of websites. We do it in our Facebook group. We also have lots of people pay us privately as well for our website critiques. One of the major issues is that there’s a real lack of content. Most of the websites that we review need to improve their content. We’re not talking about blog content necessarily. I’m talking about content for your main pages.

Quite often the mistake that people make is there’s just not enough content there in general on the different pages and it’s quite vague and broad. What we want you to do is to go a little bit more specific and actually talk about the questions that people might have and actually go into a little bit more detail for the specific services.

We said this in the past couple of episodes as well is that on some websites, when they talk about, “We’ve got all of these services. You can hire us for this or this or this,” but they don’t go into the details of what’s included. They just say, “These are our list of services. Please get in touch.” It’s not really enough.

That’s why it’s so important that we dedicate a full episode to this topic, which is plan your content and have some rules to follow so you can make sure that when somebody does land on your website that they are potentially going to fill out an inquiry form or get in touch or give you a call or at least join your email list, for instance. That’s what we’re going to be going through in this episode.

Now in episode two of this mini-series, which was two episodes ago, we actually spoke about the structure: the structure of your homepage, the structure of your website, as in what pages you’re going to have and how many pages. You should have a list of pages that you need to produce content for, so that’s a good place to start in regards to planning out the content for those pages. But we’re going to go through a few of those in this episode anyway.

So let’s start with the homepage. This is an extremely important page and quite often it’s the most highly trafficked page. It should act like a little bit of a reception area. It should be when someone gets to your homepage and they are directed to the next pages that they’re supposed to go to or that are most relevant. So it’s really, really important that you get this right, the language that you use, the content, the wording, everything really. It has a job to do. It has a role to play and it’s very important that you take your time to plan this page.

Everything from your big bold statement, supporting statement: what content are you going to have for this? Things like the buttons. Are you going to say, “Find out more.” Are you going to go to, “Click here,” or “Check them out”? You can use some quite interesting language with your buttons, so this is your opportunity really to get a blank piece of paper out, actually plan out what kind of content that you’re going to have and spend some time on mapping that out. What’s it going to look like? Have you got any text on your homepage? What’s that going to sound like?

Quite often we find that the mistake a lot of people make with the homepage is they don’t have any content whatsoever, or on the flip side, they go into a little bit more detail than they need to. So for instance, we see this a lot with the promo area, or the promotional area where you’ve got your three key services or your four key services. Quite often we see people go into a little bit detail than they need to on these ones, whereas generally you only need a line or two to convince somebody to find out more, to click on a button. So that’s something that we see a lot of.

You might just need to ask somebody a question on those things, but you do need to plan out what that question is going to be. You do need to plan out what your big, bold statement is going to be. Is it going to be a power statement? Is it going to be a question? Is it going to be a guarantee? We spoke a lot about this earlier on in the podcast, I think it was episode nine. We’ll link to it in the show notes. But it’s definitely one of those key messages that you need to get across on your website and we gave you nine ways to come up with a big, bold statement.

Again, everything on your website is an opportunity for you to build up more trust, come across as more relevant. You can even position yourself as an authority with the language that you use on your website. You can make yourself stand out from your competitors. If you’re the kind of business that swears in your content, then fine, let that be your differentiator as long as it’s authentic. You can obviously use the language and the content on your website to help direct people to where they’re supposed to go. But you need to do something and you need to plan it out. It’s not enough to just copy what other people do because you’re not going to stand out and that’s not going to position your services differently from your competitors. This is why it’s so important to plan out your homepage and the other pages as well.

So what other content might you have on your homepage? You might have a section of text. You may have to come up with maybe 100 words for a little section of text that you’ve got on your website template that’s something that you need to fill out. This might be something like, “You may have struggled to find somebody who can edit your book or who can design your logo and we can help.” You’re actually talking about the problems that people are facing. You’re automatically tackling the questions that somebody might have. You’re not just saying, “We’ve been in business for all these years. We’re amazing. We’ve won loads of awards.” You’re actually talking the problems and concerns that somebody might have in the hopes that they’ll stick around longer and then click on that “Find out more” button or they’ll subscribe to your email list.

That leads us on nicely to that content. What’s that going to look like? Is it a question? Is it a concern? Are you talking about the pain points or are you talking about something exciting that you want somebody to get from your website? Do they need to fill out their email website? This is your opportunity to put it all down on paper. This is why this episode is so important because you know what goals that you’ve got for your visitors and for your website. You know what pages you’re going to have and obviously in the previous episode we talked about design, which will bring it all together as well.

Now this is the content that’s going to really get people on your side. The content has the power and the words that you use have such a force that can help people buy from you a lot quicker. That’s why people pay so much money for content writers. It’s just so important. Even if you’re hiring a content writer or a copywriter and a technical writer, whoever it is that you go to, ideally you still need to plan it out and that’s why this episode is so important. So think about all of the places on your homepage that you’re going to need to create content for and then use this time to map that out. What does it look like on your template? Did you find a theme that you like the look of? How many sections of text does it have? What would you put in those sections of text?

Actually get the demo of a theme in front of you and then mark out all of the words, where they are, and then what you would replace them with. It’s really important that you do this, especially for the homepage. And remember, you shouldn’t really need to do any selling on your homepage. It’s all about convincing people to stay on your website for longer, click through to another page and then you can go into the content a little bit deeper. Then you can educate them on the individual pages.

Nobody goes to your homepage and decides, “Oh, this is the person for me,” the first time they land on your website. “I’m going to ring this person or get in touch and give them loads of money.” People visit your homepage to make sure they’re in the right place, to allow you to build up a little bit more trust and to allow people see you as more noteworthy. Then they’ll go into a little bit more detail and then they get in touch and then they might join your email list and then they might buy from you. So it doesn’t all happen from the homepage which is why you don’t need a lot of content on there, but the content you do have is extremely important to get people through to the service pages which we spoke about in the past. They’re very important pages. These are the pages that will help people buy from you.

Chances are you’re going to need to have an “about” page. Most websites have them. They are very important pages. We’ve never built a website without an “about” page and whenever somebody says, “Do we really need one,” we always say, “Yes, yes, yes. You do.” It’s really important that you have an “about” page because people like to know a little bit more about who they’re working with. They don’t necessarily want to know about your background. They just want to know if you’re trustworthy.

That’s why so many people visit the “about” page. They want to know who you are, they want to know are you capable of helping them solve their problems. So be aware that it’s not all about you. A lot of people think it’s the page where you can actually just brain dump your previous work history onto a page in the hopes that people will sit there and read it with a cup of coffee. It doesn’t quite work like that. Yes people like to get to know you a little bit more and a little bit about your personality, but just a little bit. Easy enough.

The rest of the “about” page should be about what they are having an issue with. With us, it’s does your website make you feel like putting your head in the sand? Do you have website shame? Are you struggling? Have you hired web designers in the past and you’ve not gotten the website you wanted? Have you lost money before? These are the reasons that you want to work with us. That’s what is should be about really. It’s about the problems that your potential customers are facing and how you can help.

Quite often when we write an ‘about’ page, because we do occasionally write content for our clients, we write at the top rather than “about me” or “about us”, we actually reframe our minds by writing “about how we can help”. That just sort of flips that switch in our heads that allows us to create content that’s customer focused rather than business focused and that helps. We always have a little bit of information about the people behind the business which is definitely something you should have, but more than anything, as soon as someone gets on the “about” page it should be. “You’re probably struggling with this. This is why I can help. This is what I’ve done in the past and this is why you should care. This is how it relates to your problems and your business. Get in touch.”

Again, that’s something else that you need to have. You need to have call to actions on your pages. Every page should have an action you want somebody to take. It should have a call to action. Your “about” page is no different. Every page is a sales page on your website, it’s just that you need to be tackling the problems that people are facing.

So an “about” page is very important. We have, I think, close to 800 or 1000 words on our “about” page because we have a lot of problems that crop up that people are talking to us about. “We hired this web designer. It didn’t work because of this. It didn’t work because of that.” We’ve just collated that information and put it on our “about” page. It doesn’t look like there’s a lot of text on there, but there is actually quite a lot and it allows people to get to know us a little bit more, but it also allows people to get to know our processes and a little bit more about what they’re going to get when they work with us. So an “about” page is really important. Take the time to plan out the content for this page. Take a look at our website if you need some guidance as well and what we’ve done, but it is very important.

Next we have the service pages. This is where it gets really interesting actually because when we talk about content, we talk about website content, quite often people think about blog posts and writing really in-depth blog posts. Get lots of traffic to your website and then the money will start rolling in. But we’ve actually found that service pages are the ones that generate the sales and the inquiries. You might get lots of traffic via these big long form blog posts and in fact you do want to do those. We definitely do them as well to draw in the traffic and draw in the numbers, but to actually get somebody over the finish line, to actually get somebody to fill out that inquiry form or get in touch, the service pages are absolutely vital.

It’s very important that you have a page for each dedicated service. If you offer all these different services, you need a page for each individual thing. You don’t just want to have a vague broad statement that says, “We offer these services and we are great at delivering service. The customer service is fantastic. Read our testimonials.” What you want is you want to split your services into individual pages.

You want to write at least 500 words plus if you can. Our service pages are probably again, close to 800 or 1000 word mark because each individual service is different. You’re not going to speak to every single person the same way which is why you need to talk about the individual services, the problems that people faced in the past with these services, and why you’re different.

Show a little empathy. Show people that you care about their individual problems. When you don’t have an individual service page for everything, what you’re essentially saying is, “These are the services I offer. I’m not really going to tell you anything about them, but I want you to give me your money anyway and then we can talk about them.” It comes across a little bit arrogant and maybe a little bit lazy sometimes when we see this. That’s why it’s so important.

People have questions. People are doing more research than they ever have done before. That’s why it’s so important that you go into detail about the services. Don’t be afraid to talk about the processes. You can even talk about pricing if you’re really brave, which is a good thing. That’s what we like to do. But you absolutely need to be talking to that person who is looking for that key service. It’s just not going to work anymore by having 300 words on a service page that just lists your products and services. It’s definitely not going to work. It’s not going to allow me to learn more about how you are different from your competitors and why I should work with you as opposed to them.

This is quite often what we see a lot of websites do when we’re reviewing them. So go deeper into that service, specific problems that your customers are facing, what questions would prospects have before working with you. These are the kinds of things you need to be talking about on the service page. Are you addressing these? Don’t just talk about you’re here, people talk about features and benefits and getting a little bit more clinical about it here. But a lot of websites we see that do go into a bit more detail, they tend to focus on the kind of benefits all through the content, so, “You’re going to feel better. You’re going to live a happier, healthier life. It’s going to be incredible.” They avoid talking about the specifics of the service as well.

So don’t forget about that. Don’t just get your copywriter head on and just talk about benefits, benefits, benefits. You do need to give some information away as to what somebody’s actually going to get when they pay you that money. We were reviewing a website not long ago and for the life of me, I couldn’t work out what I was actually buying because they just kept saying, “You’re going to get more clients. You’re going to get more sales. It’s going to be amazing.” It’s like, yeah, but what am I actually getting? What is the tangible thing that I’m going to get when I give you this money? What am I getting back? I don’t just want this kind of dream life that you’re trying to sell me. I want to know the specific things that I’m going to get.

That’s why people care about specifications of cameras and TVs. When you’re buying things you want to know the specifics sometimes. It’s okay to know that you’re going to feel great after it and it’s going to be amazing and you’re going to live a happier life, but you still need the benefits and the features as well. They go in tangent. So don’t just focus on selling the big dream at the end of it. You do need to give people some key information and that’s why service pages are so important.

A few other things to be aware of: make sure that the content sounds like you as well. Would it be the kind of thing that you would say if you were sat with a client and they were asking you questions and you were answering them? Or does it sound like you’re putting on a little bit of a writer’s mask? You don’t want that to stop you from sounding like yourself. You want to be authentic. So ask yourself, does this sound like me? Write out the content for the pages, give it to a friend or family and say, “Does this sound like I wrote it?” If it does, then great. Keep doing it. But if not, you may want to revisit it because at the end of the day, people want to know that they’re getting to work with you.

If they speak with you on the phone or meet you face to face and they read your website, if it all sounds like the same thing, then fantastic. Nobody’s going to get any surprises when they pick up the phone and they start working with you and they start talking to you. They’re like, “This doesn’t sound like the person on the website at all.” That can be a good thing or a bad thing, but it’s best to keep everything consistent.

Another thing, avoid the fluff and get to the point quickly. What do you want people to understand? People’s attention span isn’t as good as it used to be, especially on the internet, which is why you need to get to the point quickly. So say what you want to say and say it quickly, but obviously be authentic as well.

So there’s a few tips there, but like I say, if you need any additional help with the service pages, then feel free to check out ours. Share a link to a Google doc perhaps in the Facebook group and we can help you with that as well.

Other pages you might need: contact pages. There’s not generally a lot of content on a contact page. It’s best to get straight to the point. If somebody clicks on the contact page, generally they want to get in touch. But just be aware that when you do have content, make sure it’s authentic and make sure that you’re giving people clear direction. Just accept that people don’t want to be messed about. They want quick answers, quick communication and you want to make it easy for people to buy from you as well.

So use regular language. When you’re labeling your menu items, don’t use fancy words for your blog. Don’t use the “journal” or “our thoughts”. Get to the point. It’s a blog. It’s an “about” page. It’s your service pages. Try to not have anybody think too much when they get to your website. It’s really important.

So again, use this time to plan out the different core pages on your website: what you’re going to talk about, what do you need to sell, remember your goals, remember your structure and how this content is going to fit into all of that as well. It’s really, really important. I felt it was especially important to have a dedicated episode to this.

Again, there’s lots of other podcasts that we’ve done, lots of other episodes that we’ve done that break into these different sections in more detail, but this is your opportunity to plan it out before you touch your website. Before you actually start building anything it’s best to get an idea of what content you’re going to have on the different pages and take a few hours at this stage to plan what content is going to go on those pages. If you’re not writing it, then write down bullet points based on what we’ve gone through in this episode and then give it a content writer. There’s plenty of content writers in our Facebook group. If you’re struggling, then we can give you … We can tag a few people in there and you can reach out to them yourselves.

This is just so important that you’ve got this right. Far too many times we have people launch their website and they’ve not got anywhere near enough content and then they come to us and they struggle because it’s not working. They’re not getting the visitors. They’re not getting the conversions, and quite often this is one of the reasons which is why it’s so important.

So that concludes our four part mini-series on planning your website for 2019. Just by using these four key principles you can dramatically speed up the process of getting your website live sooner.

So I hope you enjoyed it and please let me know if you’ve got any questions at all. I hope to hear from you in the new year to find out what you’ve been getting on with following these episodes. Like I said, ask if you have questions at all. If you do need some support with this, some guidance, and you just need a helpful community to help you get your website live quicker, then check out the membership. Check out the website at makeyourmarkonline.net and join the wait list. As I mentioned, we will be opening the doors later this month, so make sure you’ve got your name down.

So I hope you found that episode useful. Let me know how you get on with exercise and don’t forget to download the worksheets to help you with this as well. If you didn’t already know, we have a free Facebook group. We’d love you to join. If you head over the jammydigital.com/facebook. We try to do regular training. We do website critiques every week. We’d love to help you get better results with your website as well.

So that’s it for today’s episode. I wish you a happy new year and we can’t wait to help you get massive results with your website. We’ll see you next time on the Make Your Mark Online Podcast.

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.

The post Ep 25 – Planning Your New Website Part 4 of 4- Website Content appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 24 – Planning Your New Website – Part 3/4 Design Elements

Martin Huntbach — Mon, 24 Dec 2018 12:10:42 +0000

Every year we hear the same thing from business owners and personal brands:

‘This year, I’m going to sort my website.’

But then clients and customers come first and the sliver of time you do have to work on your website is taken up by procrastination.

What’s my colour scheme?
What should I write on my homepage?
How do I do this bloody techie thing!

If this sounds like you, you are not alone! We see business owners vow each year to sort their websites only to go into the next year with the exact same one.

You know your website is important. You know that you can’t continue with the website you’ve got and that #WebsiteShame is holding your business back.

So 2019 is the time to get it sorted!

In this four-part series, we’ll be outlining the four key pillars to website success so you can get your website live ASAP in 2019.

In this third episode, we’re talking about 3 key design elements that will dramatically improve your website.

In this episode we’ll cover…

Website Photographs/ Imagery
Your Colour theme
Website Themes

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- Should you use photographs or stock images?
- Where to find ideas for your colour theme?
- How to find great themes and what to avoid?

Resources

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 and Lindsay.

Welcome to episode 24 of the Make Your Mark Online podcast. This is actually episode three of four in this little December mini-series. Now, as you know, 2018 is nearly done, and 2019 is right around the corner. And part of what we’re trying to do with this podcast, and with the Facebook group and also the membership as well, is to help as many people as possible create a highly successful website. The problem is that, quite often, you’re just not sure where to start, especially if you’re trying to redesign your website from scratch, and it feels like you’ve got a mountain to climb. And this is why, throughout December, we’re helping you plan your new website. We’re going to be focusing on four key activities that will help you plan your website, and getting it live quicker, so that you can feel better about getting your head into it and actually starting to look at the tools and the tech behind it.

Before you do any of that, we’re going to go through the four important elements that you need to do before you get to that stage. Because seriously, we want you to make your mark online in 2019 and stop faffing around and putting the website stuff off, because I know it’s holding you back, okay? So let’s do this together.

Now before we get into the show, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online membership. This is our signature membership community, where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. The doors for the membership are currently closed, but you can check out the details at MakeYourMarkOnline.net, and you can actually joint he wait list, and we’ll let you know as soon as we open the doors again in January. So let’s get into the show.

So in the last two episodes, we’ve discussed two of the major elements that will help you get started with your new website. First of all, it was understanding your goals for the website, and then it was how to structure your website based on these goals. How to structure the pages, how to structure the home page. Both of these episodes are really, really important. They both come with worksheets, as well, so feel free to head over to those episodes and then download the resources.

In this episode, we’re going to be talking about design. The fun stuff. Although I would say, if you haven’t listened to those episodes, do those first. This might be the fun one, but those two are very necessary, because you have your goals, you have your key services identified, you have the map for your new website, and now, you need to know how it’s all going to be pulled together in terms of the design, so that we can make it look nice and professional.

Okay. So what I’ve done with this episode is I really had to think about the three most important elements that will impact your design, or the design of your new website. And these three sections are photography, and the imagery on your website; the colours, which is kind of the branding and the style; and then thirdly, the theme. Now these three elements, if you break them down, and you just do these three things … there’s plenty more you can do. You can talk about fonts, and you can talk about all that, but these three elements, from experience, are probably the best ones to get started with, because the majority of the website will be taken up by one or more of these three things. These three items are going to help you plan your website and get it live quicker, and yeah, we’re going to go through those now.

Okay, so the imagery on your website. Should you use photographs? Should you get stock images? Should you use vectors or animation on your website? This is such an important element that I don’t think I could ever stress it enough. You can clearly see some websites have not been designed by a professional. Some of them scream, “I have just been down by the designer, or the actual, the business owner.” And photography and photographs and images is the quickest way for you to show people that you have not invested in your website, because it’s just so important. Once someone lands on your website, what are they going to think? What are they going to feel? And chances are, they’re going to immediately see some imagery on your website, and it’s really important that you have a strategy behind it, otherwise it may potentially look like it’s kind of been Frankensteined together, bits and pieces added at different times, and you don’t want people to be on your website and not feel like they’re in the right place. You want people to feel welcome. You want people to feel at home on your website. And you don’t want to put people off, because it’s the easiest thing for people to spot whether or not you’ve invested or you haven’t.

And that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to invest. It means you need to have an system and a structure. And yeah, we actually did an episode a few weeks ago now about photography for your website, so we’ll leave a link to that in the show notes. But this is kind of a quick start guide, really, in regards to photography for your website and the images. They can either make or break a website. I think I mentioned that. And like I said, I can’t stress this enough. It is one of the most important elements. So, yeah.

Now should you use photography or photographs of yourself? You know, the higher that you’ve got somebody to take for you, or should you use stock images? So this is something that you’ll be able to tell me based on your budget, based on how much you’ve got to invest. Or whether or not you know someone who can kind of get to take photos of you. But more that anything, if you’re a personal brand, you’re going to have to have a picture of yourself on your website somewhere. It just so happens that on most personal brand websites, the halo section, the big home page image that you see as soon as you land on a website, usually has an image of the person who’s running the business. You know, the coach, the consultant, the speaker, the author, the business adviser. Whoever it is, whoever you are, and whatever you do, if you’re a personal brand, generally speaking you would have a picture of yourself there.

That being said, quite often I stumble across some websites where they have a picture of themselves, but clearly they’ve taken it themselves, on kind of like a smart phone. Maybe they’ve cut out the background, and it looks a little bit amateurish. So, just because you’re including an image of yourself doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to come across as professional. And when I say professional, I just mean it’s got a certain level of quality. You know, we’ve all been on websites before where it looks as though the website’s been built by the person, and they kind of just cut out an image, it looks a bit awkward and strange. So at some point, you might want to think about hiring a professional photographer. We found it one of the best investments that we ever made, and it’s something that we’ll continue to invest in as time goes on. Yes, we have a really nice camera, and yes, I could potentially set the timer and take pictures myself, but I’m not a photographer. I stick in my lane, and I just do what we do best. I would not trust my own skills with, even though I’ve got a quite decent camera, I just wouldn’t trust myself to do photography myself. It would just look a lot better if I got somebody else to do it, a professional.

So just bear that in mind. That being said, there are some instances where you can’t use a picture of yourself. Maybe you’ve got a small team. Maybe you’re just not sure about it yet, and you just want to get the ball rolling. You want your website live, and maybe you’ll think about that later down the line. That’s fine.

If you do need to use stock images, we do have a few rules to follow, one of which is to keep it consistent. So if you do want to use a series of stock images throughout your website, then make sure you’re being consistent with the style of them. So, we’ve been on some websites in the pas where there are photographs on one page, and then on another page, they’ll have kind of cartoon images, or vectors, as they’re called. And this is kind of a bit awkward, really, because you want that consistency. You want people to not kind of land on every new page and it has a different kind of image theme, if that makes sense. So try to keep it consistent. If you are using photographs, generally stick to photographs. If you are using doodles or vector images or icons, then use them, as well.

There are some occasions where they work well together. You know, if you have been on any home pages, for instance, you may have noticed they’ve got a photograph of themselves, but they’ll still use a few icons around. That generally is okay. But I just want you to be aware of it. Be conscious of it when you’re buying stock images or downloading them.

And that leads us on to the next point, which is, invest a little bit of money. If you’re not spending £500 on a professional photographer, then you can at least spend 50 pence or a pound on an image every now and again. This is your website at the end of the day. If you’re not paying a web designer, then generally, you’ll have to provide the images yourself. And even if you are paying a web designer to build your website, generally speaking, you don’t want to leave the images to them if you don’t have to. You can provide them with some images that you like, and then let them decide which images they want to use. But you want to keep it consistent, and generally speaking, you might have to buy a few images. The main reason for that is if you use free stock images, other websites have used them, as well. Other business probably don’t want to invest in photography because it’s cheap and it’s easy to just download a free one. The problem is, I’ve stumbled across websites in the past that have a lot of similar images.

There’s this one image that just keeps, I just keep finding it on every website. It’s just kind of a standard office image with people talking, but it seems to be overly used. And that’s the risk that you have with stock images. The best thing that you can do is actually get a book, buy images. So if you go to DepositPhotos, for instance, or ShutterStock, or 123RF, then these three websites will allow you to buy packs of images. And at the end of the day, it’s a really thing for your website. You want it to look good, so try to keep it consistent. Try to spend a little bit of money on photographs if you can pay a professional photographer. But just be aware, it’s about making sure that your website looks good. That is important. We talk a lot about SEO, and we talk a lot about content, but the images on your website and the design is equally as important. So don’t skip this step. It is important.

And also get to know tools like Canva, you know, free online tools that you can actually use to edit the images. Sometimes, you need to create an image of a specific size. So get to use Canva, go on YouTube, learn a couple of tutorial videos, and actually just get used to some of these tools, because it’s going to help you further down the line.

You’ll also want to avoid any kind of clearly stock type images. You know the ones I’m talking about, with the big, cheesy grins, and the people with he thumbs-up. You know, those kind of images are clearly stock photos, and it’s best, if you can, to avoid them. Try to find ones that could potentially have been photographs, actually taken by a photographer who you’ve hired. Things like taking a picture of the desk with people’s hands if they’re signing things, if they’re drawing, if they’re sketching, if they’re educating, they’re teaching in a classroom, for instance, or a workshop. Then you can find lots of images of people in that kind of scenario.

Generally find if you zoom in, you’ll get nice little sections of images. You might not need to use all of the images. But you can play around with them. And like I say, you might need to get to know image editing tools like Canva. But hopefully, you got a few tips there in regards to images. Where possible, get a photographer. Get them to take photographs, and check out the episode that we did a few episodes ago about what to do when you’re planning your photo shoot for your website. We give you lots of extra tips away there, as well.

And finally on this one, don’t copy anybody. If you see an image style that you like, you may be tempted to coy their style. We get this quite a lot with our blog images. We spent quite a lot of time coming up with a style that we wanted, and we buy stock images. But people still try and copy what we do, because they like the style, which is nice and flattering, but we’re seeing an abundance of these blog posts being published now, where then everybody using similar sort of images, and sometimes it doesn’t come across very well, especially if you’ve tried to copy because you like the style, but we spend a lot of time editing those images so if somebody does copy, then it might not come across, it might not look as good as you expect. And that goes for you copying other people, as well. Just try to avoid it, and come up with your own style. It’s probably going to be better for you.

Now moving on to colours. colours is such an important topic, and that can, again, make or break your website. It can have such a big impact if you get it right, and it can have such a negative impact if you don’t spend any time on it, much like all of these things, really. Sometimes it’s about just learning a little bit, and then researching, and having a few tools and tips, but quite often, people get colours wrong. So I’ve got a few resources here that you’ll be able to use. Again, you don’t have to be a designer to use these tools. You just have to give yourself a better chance. If you’re planning your website, knowing what colours you want to use and the style, and kind of what those colours mean, is going to have a big, it’s going to play an important part, going to play an important role in the website and how it’s designed.

colours have a unique ability to make us feel a certain way. colours have various meanings. The colour red can mean danger, but it can also mean passionate. The colour blue can also feel cool and cold, but it can also make you feel relaxed. So there’s lots of different colours that, lots of different meanings for those colours. But, what’s important for you is that you find a colour scheme that represents your business, and what you want people to feel.

So, again, without kind of going to university and doing a degree in regards to colours, there is a kind of quick step guide that I’m going to give you now, and you may already have a colour scheme in mind, you may already have colours within your logo that you need to keep, and that’s completely fine. That’s going to make your life a lot easier. But generally, we like to have five colours to play with when it comes to building a new website. You know, the main kind of three colours that we use, and then a couple of extra ones that kind of, more middle of the road colours that are consistent with the rest of the website. But three kind of, or two or three main colours that add an overall brand elements. You may also need kind of this accent colour, like you’ll see people have a certain colour because they want the buttons to be a certain colour, maybe orange or green, that kind of thing, to add to the mix.

So yeah, you want kind of a nice colour scheme that complements. You want the colours to complement each other, but you also want a couple of stand-out colours. One specifically is important to highlight the areas of your website that you need to highlight. So a few different resources. If you don’t know what colour scheme you want go with, then you can actually use a website called Coolors. So we’ll even link to that in the show note as well, and you can actually browse a series of colours. You can browse through unlimited colour swatches, while you can actually lock in certain colours. You can lock in a few colours if you like a couple of them but you don’t like the others. Then you can mix and match, and you can find a colour scheme that’s going to work well for you. Again, this is nice, it’s a nice tool, because it’s free. If you go to Coolors.com, I think it is, you can actually just press the space bar, and they’ll just give you a new series of five colours, and like I say, you can lock some in. So you can just kind of spend ten minutes going through that, and get a few really nice ideas about colours that you like, five colours that you can imagine being on your website. So that’s a really, really good tool.

There’s also a tool called Peculiar, and again, I’ll leave a link to that in the show notes. This is where you can actually search for keywords, words like relaxing, words like winter, you know, general words like sunset, those kind of words that will give you a series of colours. So if you are a marketing guru, and you don’t want to be seen as kind of relaxing, and meditation kind of theme, then you would put a different kind of word in there. You would put hard work, or passionate, something that outlines who you are, and like I said, colours can help you in so many different ways. It can help differentiate you from your industry. Some people, if you are a health and wellness coach, for instance, you may see that there’s a series of websites out there that kind of use green and pastel colours, you know, relaxing colours like that, whereas you mIght be a health and wellness coach that wants to stand out in the industry. So this is an opportunity for you to type in words that you are associated with. So again, great little tool. It’s kind of the search engine for colours, and so have a play around with that, as well.

Another great tool for getting ideas is Dribbble. So Dribbble is a website that is great for inspiration. But if you go to the colours page, then you can actually type in specific colours that you like. You know, if you like a colour, if you have a colour in mind, like it’s in your logo, for instance, and you’d like to have that colour as well as finding other colours, then search Dribbble, and have a look at all of the websites out there that use a colour similar to that colour that you’d like. What you’ll notice is that as you scroll down the page, they’ll start introducing new colours, so you may find that if orange is your colour and you’ve got a certain tone, some of them might use blue, some of them might use another colour, and you can kind of get an idea based on inspiration from existing websites that are already using that colour.

And again, you don’t want to copy people, but it’s nice to get as many colour options as possible. But more that anything, find five colours that represent your business, and how you want people to feel, how you want people to think about you, and like I say, it’s extremely effective if you get your colour scheme right. People like to comment on our colour scheme quite a lot. They recognize it when they’re scrolling through Facebook, and they see a blog post that someone shared on LinkedIn. They can automatically recognize it as a Jammy Digital blog post. So, it’s great in so many ways, but these are a few tools that you can use.

If you don’t know anything about colours, then feel free to share a couple of colour swatches in the free Facebook group. That’s what it’s there for. If you are in the membership, naturally you can add a thread in there and ask us about that. But you’ve got a few tools there that you can use. Again, you don’t have to have gone to university to at least start the process of finding colours. As long as you’ve got a really nice scheme that represents who you are and how you want people to feel when they get your website, and then you’ve got a couple of punchy colours in there that will ask people to do what you want them to, call to action buttons on your website. So hopefully, you found that part useful.

The third and final thing is the theme, the actual theme and template that you’re going to use, potentially, for your new website. So this is important, because a lot of websites out there use templates, use themes that have not been custom-built for their website. They do this for a few reasons. One, it’s really cheap. You know, you can get a theme for free, you can pay a little bit of money and get a good one, and there’s lots of online help and resources out there that will allow you to do your research before you buy anything.

A little secret in the web design space, when it comes to templates, is that a lot of web designers actually use templates to build websites. So if you ever went to a web designer, and you hired them to build you a new website, some of them might use a template. Now, it’s not necessarily a bad thing if they do that, but it happens a lot, especially if you’re paying kind of a low fee for the website. Generally, what happen is you pay them, tell them what you want, and then they’ll go out and find a theme that does what you need it to. So, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I just felt like I wanted to tell you, just in case you didn’t know. If you’re thinking of building your own website, or you’re thinking, “I’ve got £500 to spend, or maybe even £1000 to spend with a web designer, I might as well just get them to do it.” Just be aware that they may be getting a template, a theme, that you could buy for yourself for a fraction of the price. So just be aware about that.

Again, if you can’t do it, that’s fine. Hire a web designer to do it, but it’s best to ask them, are they using a template, which template are they using, and is it something that is within your budget. In some instances, this is a good thing to do. In other instances, we’ve known people who’ve not been told that they’re using a template, and then get a bit frustrated with the amount that they’ve spent, and the web designer’s just used a cheap theme and they didn’t tell them about it. So definitely something I want you to be aware of.

Another thing I want you to be aware of as well, when you’re looking for a theme, is try to find a pre-made theme. And what I mean by that is avoid page builders for now. You know you’ll stumble across a theme, or WordPress system called Divi. This is a page builder. This is an example of a page builder. Things like Thryve themes. These kind of tools make it look really easy for you to build your own website, but actually, it’s quite difficult for a beginner to get to know these tools. They’re kind of a theme within a theme, if that makes sense. So what’s important, I think, for you guys, is to have an open mind when it comes to your website, but make it as easy as possible where you can.

This is why I would probably recommend you find a theme that’s been pre-made for you. It’s okay if some of that theme includes certain page-building elements, but what I would say is there are plenty of templates out there, plenty of themes, that will allow you to build a website quickly without the headache of learning an additional system, as well, like Divi, like Thryve themes. Some page builders are fantastic, but generally, I like to use them after you’ve installed your theme. You know, you’ve found your theme first, and then if you want help building out the pages, then that’s where you can look up page builder. So just be aware of that.

So, the first thing I want you to do is think about your goals. Think about what you want to achieve when you launch your website. Go back to the first episode in this series. Think about your goals. Think about the structure. Think about how that’s going to work within your design. In the last episode, we spoke about structure of the home page, so you want to keep an eye on themes that will allow you to achieve what you want to achieve. We actually provided quite helpful documents in the last episode, where you’re able to download and fill out the different sections on the home page. So, try to find a theme that will allow you to do what you need to do, that will help you achieve your goals.

So what you can do is, when you … To get ideas for themes, you could search via industry. If you are a book editor, for instance, you could type in WordPress themes for book editors. That’s a way to go, although it’s not always necessary, you will get a few features if you do that that you may not already get with a standard theme. So it can be helpful, but don’t restrict yourself to just that options. What you could do is you could type in “best WordPress themes 2018,” or 2019, whenever you decide to do this. You could type in “easy to use WordPress themes.” Yeah, just anything, really. Search quite a lot of themes, get to know a few of them, and make a list of all of the themes that you like the look of, all of the themes that will represent your website, the way you want it to look and feel. And yeah, generally speaking, if you do your research, you’ll cover yourself.

So, don’t buy the first theme that you see. You want to read reviews. You want to make sure that if you do get a list of themes, and you want to shorten that list, a quick way to do that is to actually do reviews on the themes, and actually work out which ones are easy to use. Read what people are saying about them. You can also check the demo of the theme, as well, which is a good thing to do. Quite often, they’ll allow you to browse the back end of the theme as well as the front end of the theme. Again, you’re still going to have to build the website out. You’re still going to have to add your own images, and create the different pages, but a theme will generally mean that you can just worry about the images and the content, and then the theme will take care of the rest.

So you want to make sure it looks good. You want to make sure it looks like a website that you’d be proud of, and you also want to make sure that it’s easy for you to use, as well. So, does it come with documentation? Do they give you instructions on how to set up the theme? Do they offer ongoing support? Some of these theme websites actually have comments that are publicly viewable. You can actually see them without having an account with them. Look at some of the questions that people are asking. Look at some of the replies that the actual developers of the themes are giving back. Doe sit look as though this company are going to be able to support you in your efforts when it comes to creating a website? Again, we’re not buying anything at this stage. You’re just getting a list of themes that you like the look of, and you’ll quickly realize that when you start researching this, the same themes will be popping up, especially if you’re searching for “best templates,” “best themes 2018 or 2019,” or “highly recommended WordPress themes.”

Generally, you can give yourself quite a lot of choice on those ones. And don’t just look for the best-looking ones. You need to make sure that the support comes part and parcel with it. You don’t want to buy something just because it looks good, and then five months down the line, it stops working, because they’re not supporting it on an ongoing basis. So that’s something to be aware of, but like is say, don’t buy anything just yet. We’re just giving you things to think about before you sit down and start handing over your cash. Okay?

So there you have it. Again, it’s more of a technical episode, this one, but it is important. There’s things that you can do with your imagery, with your colours, with your theme, to give yourself quite a lot of power with your website. If you just take care of these three different elements, you can make sure your website looks great. It doesn’t have to look world class. It just has to look good enough so that you are bing represented in the best possible light. Your website will allow you to build more trust with your potential buyers. It will allow you to come across as more note-worthy. If you want to stand out from your industry, these three things are absolutely vital.

So yeah, a few things to be aware of there. So hope you found this episode useful. Let me know how you get on with these exercises. Don’t forget to download the workbook, as well. And let us know how you get on in the free Facebook group. If you didn’t already know, we do have a free Facebook group. It’s at JammyDigital.com/Facebook. We try to do training quite frequently, and there we’ve got website critiques that we do every Wednesday afternoon, which we’ll be picking up again in the new year. And we’d love to help you get better results with your website, too. So feel free to join and say hello.

And that’s for today’s episode. So we’ll see you next time on the Make Your Mark Online podcast.

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.

The post Ep 24 – Planning Your New Website – Part 3/4 Design Elements appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 23 – Planning Your New Website – Part 2/4 Website Structure

Tue, 18 Dec 2018 12:40:06 +0000

Every year we hear the same thing from business owners and personal brands:

‘This year, I’m going to sort my website.’

But then clients and customers come first and the sliver of time you do have to work on your website is taken up by procrastination.

What’s my colour scheme?
What should I write on my homepage?
How do I do this bloody techie thing!

If this sounds like you, you are not alone! We see business owners vow each year to sort their websites only to go into the next year with the exact same one.

You know your website is important. You know that you can’t continue with the website you’ve got and that #WebsiteShame is holding your business back.

So 2019 is the time to get it sorted!

In this four-part series, we’ll be outlining the four key pillars to website success so you can get your website live ASAP in 2019.

In this second episode, we’re talking about the structure for your website. This structure is based on the goals you have for your website, which we talked about in the previous episode.

We’re going to go into detail about how to structure your homepage to get people to the right pages on your website. We’ll also be looking at how to present your services. This is exactly the process we follow with our clients to ensure website success!

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- Structuring your web pages
- Prioritising your menu items
- Mapping out your homepage (click below to download our diagram)
- The first third of your homepage
- Things to consider on your homepage

Resources

Ep 22 – Planning your new website – Part 1/4 Goals

Page Structure

Homepage Structure

Big Bold Statement

Testimonials

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

Welcome to the Make Your Mark Online Podcast, where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website.

Please welcome your hosts, husband and wife team, Martin and Lyndsay.

Welcome to Episode 23 of the Make Your Mark Online Podcast. This is actually Episode 2 of 4 of this little December mini-series.

As you know, 2018 is drawing to a close, and 2019 is right around the corner. Part of what we’re trying to do with this podcast, and the Facebook group, and also the membership as well, is to help as many people as possible create a highly successful website.

The problem is quite often you’re just not sure where to start, especially if you’re trying to redesign your website, and it feels like there’s a mountain to climb. And this is why, over the next few episodes, for the rest of this month, we’re helping you plan your new website.

We’re gonna be focusing on four key activities that will help you get your website live quicker, so you can get 2019 off to the best possible start. Because, seriously, I want you to make your mark online in 2019, and stop fuffing around and putting off the website stuff, because I know it will be holding you back. And I don’t want it to. So, let’s do this together.

Now, before we get into the show, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online Membership. This is our signature membership community, where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. Now, the doors for the membership are currently closed, but you can check out the details in makeyourmarkonline.net And you can actually join the wait list, and we’ll notify you as soon as we open the doors again in January.

So, let’s get into the show!

Now, the last episode was all about web cycles, and why it’s important to think about these before doing anything else. Now I highly recommend that you go back to that episode and listen to it, if you haven’t done already. There are worksheets with each of these four episodes. So make sure you check it out in the show notes as well.

Now, in this episode, we’re talking about structure, the structure of your website. What goes where, and how to do it effectively, so you know what you need to include. Now, why is this so important? Well, this is actually a really vital step that’s hardly ever done when people build their own website. Now, much like an architect creates a plan and a structure for a house, you also need to think about how to structure your website. You know, you need a plan. It’s gonna be a lot easier if you have a plan, and some blueprints to follow, so that you can build a website quicker, and make sure that things are going in the right place.

So this is kind of like a bird’s eye view of your website. And this is a really, really important aspect to it, so that you don’t focus on, you know, the minutiae, the focus on the little details. You actually focus on the big picture, and the broad strokes first, so that you can then focus on the finer details later on. And this will allow you to get off the starting block with your website a lot quicker.

Now there are two pieces to this puzzle. Okay. So when it comes to mapping out your website, you have to think about this on two levels. One level is mapping out all of the pages that you’re going to have, all of the core pages that are based on the goals that you have, and the goals that we went through in the previous episode.

You’re going to need normal pages. You know, you’re gonna need a home page, you’re going to need an about page, a contact page, maybe an FAQ. You know, the standard pages will probably need to be there. But we need to take what we discussed in the previous episodes about the services that you offer, about the goals for the website, and consider how they’re going to play a part in the blueprints for your new website.

So, if you have a number of services that you’d like to promote, ideally, we need a page for each one of these services. So again, at this stage, we’re not really thinking about anything technical, we’re not thinking about styles or colors, or content, necessarily. We’re thinking about where things are going to sit on your website.

Now, in the notes for this episode, we have actually included a quick diagram to allow you to kind of envisage how this might look, if you’re not sure where to start. So, it kind of … Imagine that we have a home page, you know, which is obviously a really key page on your website, and branching off from the home page, you’ll have all of the other core pages. So imagine what you might see on a website. You might see a main menu. You may see the about page, you may see a couple of service pages, you may see the contact page. These are kind of the secondary pages where at least, so the home page is kind of the first power page. And then branching off from the home page, you have all of these other core pages.

So you need to realistically know what you need to have on your website. And also, if you have a number of services as well, how might that work? You know, if you have one key service, and that’s all you do, then you may just have one menu item. But quite often what people do is they have a main topic, and then they have their sub-menu items underneath their main menu item.

So this is kind of the purpose of this first task, really, is to understand, based on the goals that we discussed in the previous episode, based on the most important. You know, we told you to put them into a priority list. What do you want to be doing more often? What do you make the most money from? What do you enjoy doing the most? You know, consider how those goals may be linked to services on the different pages.

So, using the diagram, think about … You don’t have to fill out all the boxes. This is just an example. But if you can think about the home page as the main page. You always need a home page. And we’re gonna be talking about that in a minute. But what does the big picture look like? If somebody was to look at a bird’s eye view of your sitemap, how would it look? You know, if you’re giving things kind of three different tiers, as in tier 1 being the home page, tier 2 being the other main menu items, and then the third tier being the sub-menu items.

So if you have services, you’ll notice on our website we have services, and then we have a website redesign, we have a personal brand website, we have started a new business website, we have maintenance packages, and we also have website critiques as well. So those are kind of our third tier of menu items.

So what we’re doing at this … We’re trying to put down on paper where these pages might sit, based on the priority of the goals. And like I say, you’re always gonna need an about page, you’re always gonna need a contact page. You might not always need to, but in general situations, you would have those pages. You might even have an FAQ page. Depending on your service-based business, and your industry, you might want to portfolio as well. That might not always be relevant, but consider what you might need on your website. You may have a case study section as well with individual case studies. This is your opportunity to plan out the structure of your website without thinking about the finer details.

Now this is the very first thing that you’ll need to do. And this is stage 1 of planning out your website, you know, the structure of it. So, yeah. You’ve got your goals from the last episode, and now we’re gonna actually put in some goals down on paper, and working out where they’re going to go. Is it tier 2? Is it tier 3? On some websites, they have more tiers, but again, this is just a general idea, really, to get you off the starting block. So that’s the first thing you need to do.

The next thing that we need to do when it comes to structure and planning, is to think about the home page. Now, quite often what will happen is lots of the other things that we’ve just been discussing, the services that you’ve got, you know, the contact us, and the about page … Quite often what happens on websites is they actually include sections on the home page that link out to these individual pages, these kind of tier 2 pages. And what we need to do, really, is to kind of use the document in the show notes, or just sketch out a kind of a design of a home page on a paper, so that you can actually plan out what’s going to go where. Because the home page actually acts like a little bit like a reception area. When someone lands on your home page, you want to imagine that people just wanna know where to go next. Quite often the mistake that people make is that they think that all of their information needs to be on their home page, whereas in reality, what matters most is you giving people the direction, pointing people in the journey in the path that they need to take to get to what they need to get to. So you don’t wanna overface people with too much content. You wanna give people an idea of what you offer, and where they need to go next to find out more.

So we’re gonna go through this in detail now. So, if you can imagine a home page from top to bottom, naturally, you’re gonna have a logo at the top, you’re gonna have a menu at the top. And the next section down, generally, is kind of the big impact area. This is what we like to call the hero section. Quite often, with personal brands, we’d have an image of you, you know, something that represents your business, so the people can connect with you better. This is your opportunity to include a nice image or something that people can relate to. You know, you want to stop people in their tracks, and you wanna stop people from clicking on the back button. So you need to consider what might go in this main section.

Now, if you’ve ever used heatmap tools, and heatmap software, there’s a few of them on the market, but you’ll have noticed that when you look at these tools, quite often, a majority of the people have stayed quite actively in that main top area. Not as many people as you think scrolled right down to the bottom of the page, which is why this area is so valuable. It’s so important. And if you don’t plan this well, you may waste that section, you may waste and squander your opportunity to get people to do what you want them to do, and to connect with them as well. So this is why this hero section is so important. And don’t treat the images as an afterthought.

The next thing in this section, you’ll also notice on most websites, they have this big, bold statement. They have a clear defining statement that clearly articulates what they do, and why you should care as a visitor. So you need to consider where that’s going to go. Generally, it’s the first thing people read on your website, and it needs to be quite big and bold, and we did actually cover this in a previous episode as well. All about how to create a big, bold statement, and we give you nine ways to do that as well. And we will link to that in the show notes.

Another really important aspect to this area is, potentially, a supporting statement. So sometimes, big, bold statements by themselves, can come across a little bit vague sometimes. So, quite often you’ll see like a line or two beneath the big, bold statement, below this key, clear, defining message, that actually explains, in a little bit more detail, a little bit more clarity, about what it is that you do. We use this on our website as well. So feel free to check that out.

Next, what you need is a button, a call to action. At least one button that will allow your visitor to be able to click on something when they get to your website before they scroll down, before they kind of lose interest, we need to give them a button to click. This will allow your visitor to start using your website, actually start going through some pages. And that’s why it’s really important that you think about what button that would be. Where are they gonna go? Is it schedule a free call? Is it download a free ebook? Or access some video content? Or maybe it’s just a contact page, or get in touch to find out more. Or maybe it’s a link to the service page. Whatever it is, it’s important that you have it. And it’s important that it’s as enticing as possible.

And again, it comes back down to the previous episode: Goals. What are your goals for the website, and can we find a way to include this within the main call to action?

As we scroll down the page, you may notice that, on some websites, they have media badges. They have, you know, signs of their previous publishing records. You know, where you’ve been published in the past. Is it BBC? Is it The Guardian? Maybe you’ve been … You’ve had a blog post published on a marketing, you know, if you’re in the marketing arena. You may be a popular podcast or something related to your industry that people will recognize. This is something else that you can do. It will allow you to build up a little bit more trust and credibility, so that you keep people around for longer. Especially if they don’t know who you are, and whether or not they can trust you.

So that might be something you wanna consider. Have a think about any places you have had things published, or you’ve appeared on things, and what could go there? Just write it down. Again, don’t worry too much about the details right now. We’re just trying to get an idea of where things are going to go.

And then, further down the page, we like to have something called a promotional area, or promo area, for short. And this should be a few boxes, potentially. Or a few things that people can see that clearly articulate how people can work with you. We try to do this on every single website that we build. We always tell people when we’re doing our free website critiques in our Facebook group, it’s really, really important that you use a section on your home page to tell people what you can do, and how they can benefit from working with you.

This is your website at the end of the day, and it is important that we focus your agenda as well, rather than just, you know, being completely free, and giving with all of our content and not have any structure to it. This is why this is … that is so important. We want to make sure that when we are creating content in the future, and we’re getting lots of visitors to our website, that people can actually see, “Okay, they do have services as well. Maybe I want to commit. Maybe I want to hire them. Maybe I want to work with them on an ongoing basis.” And that’s why this section is so important. And it’s not done enough, as far as I’m concerned.

Further down the page, you may want some home page content. You may want a little bit of text to go along with your home page. Just in case you need to reaffirm why people are still here. Maybe you’re just doing a little bit more of rapport building. Maybe you’ve got an image of yourself further down the page. Whatever it is, you may want some home page content. You generally find in most websites, especially for personal brands and small business owners, there’s a little bit of content there supporting, you know, reinforcing why people are on your website in the first place. You may also want to think about links to blog content that you might have, podcast episodes, any resources that you might have, like downloads and free give-aways, and videos, all that kind of stuff. You do want to entice people to stay on your website for longer. And quite often, content is the way to do that.

You may also want to think about video. You know, if you use a lot of video in your marketing, you might want to section out some space on that page for a video. You know, something that helps your business come across better. Video is phenomenal when it comes to marketing, because there’s so few people still doing it, compared to the number of websites on there. So if you look at your competitors, video often can be the one thing that people wait the longest to do, you know, because people are nervous about it, people are frightened. That’s why it’s so good when I come across websites that do use video on their website. It’s great for engagement. It keeps people on your website for longer, and it’s a lot easier to build about trust when they can see and hear you on camera. So you might want a section on your home page for a video to go there. Think about what that video might be, what it would be like, what would you be saying in that video? Just a general outline as to where it’s gonna go, so that you can start to think about, you know, the finer details later on.

Another thing you might want to be thinking about is building your email list. You know, are you hoping to gain more email subscribers? Maybe it’s something that you’ve not done up until now, and you know on the new website you absolutely want to make it a priority. So you’ve got entice people with a free give-away usually. You don’t just wanna say, “Please join our mailing list.” Or, “Subscribe for news and updates.” It’s not interesting enough. So consider where that would go on your website, and what you might consider as enticing enough for your visitors. That’s something that’s quite important, actually. If you are wanting to build your email list, don’t treat it as an afterthought. Think about it at this point, where it’s gonna go and, “What’s the best thing that I can give away in exchange for an email address?”

You may also be thinking about testimonials. Again, we want to build up more trust. Where are these gonna go? How many should you have? You know, these are questions that you should be asking yourself. Is two or three enough? Generally what you find is if you have too many, people get a little bit blind to them. So you wanna pick two or three, maybe four at the most, of your best. Make sure it doesn’t take up too much space on your website. You know, quite often you see these roller banners with testimonials go across. That will save you a little bit of space. But quite often, you know, a couple of testimonials is enough, as long as they are good enough, and as long as they’re not just kind of, you know, just saying how good you are, you know, actually getting to the content there, and say why people hired you. And actually we do have a testimonial, a podcast episode. I think it was around Episode 19? Episode 18, 19. But again, I’ll link to that in the show notes. But again, two or three is generally good enough for the home page.

And, other things as well. Things like if you’ve got a book. If you’ve got, you know, something that will build your trust and credibility. I know some people who are listening to the podcast have already got books out, or they’re planning or writing books as well. So, where would that go? If you’re selling a book, maybe you’re giving a free chapter away of a book in exchange for the email. You know, you can kind of use these in tangent with one another.

But that kind of structure is the kind of things that you want to think about when it comes to your home page. You notice there’s so much that you might stumble across on a home page, but these are the things that we think would generally go on a website that we would be happy to build. You know, we try to cut out any clutter. We don’t have things like social media feeds coming through. You know, I need my social media feeds. And if we have social media links, generally, they’re quite low down on the page. You know, people have to scroll to get to them. Partly because we don’t want anybody leaving your website at the end of the day. We want people on your website so that they can build up trust with you, they can join your email list, they can hire you for your services, they can pay you cash. You know, that’s what a website is at the end of the day. It’s a sales tool.

So, that’s kind of … covers it really. We’ve got the planning in the first section, which is mapping out all of the different pages on your website, how that might look in terms of a priority list. But we also have how the home page might look as well, and structuring that home page. And kind of sketching it out. Not spending too much time on the details, but actually considering where things are going to go, what order they’re going to go in. Use the downloads in the show notes for extra assistance as well. And, hopefully, you will now have more of a structure.

So, that’s pretty much it for this episode. I don’t wanna overface you with too much to do. We’re gonna be getting into, you know, the nitty-gritty in the next episode, and actually thinking about what we’re going to use to build the website, and how we’re gonna actually build it.

So, I hope you found this episode useful. This is such an important step, and that is often so overlooked, and it’s really important before we talk about tools and tech. So now, hopefully, you’ll spend less time, you know, fiddling around with the tools and the tech, and now you have a plan. You have a blueprint. You kind of have a bible to follow when it comes to your website. And again, this is related down to your products, your services. So we don’t have all the answers. This is just kind of a general, helpful episode about how to plan it. You’re the one who has to work out what your goals were, and what should go on this website. And, hopefully, this episode along with the last one, and the next two episodes, should help you create a website quicker.

Now, if you didn’t already know, we actually have a free Facebook group that we’d love you to join. If you head to jammydigital.com/facebook every week we try to do training, we try to do website critiques, and we’d love to help you get better results as well. So, feel free to join, and say hello.

So that’s it for today’s episode. We’ll see you next time on the Make Your Mark Online Podcast.

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Transcript

Welcome to the Make Your Mark Online podcast where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. Please welcome your hosts, husband and wife team, Martin and Lindsey.

Welcome to episode 22 of the Make Your Mark Online podcast. This episode is actually going to be a bit different from the usual episodes. As you know, 2018 is now drawing to a close and 2019 is right around the corner. And part of what we’re trying to do with this podcast and with the Facebook group and also the membership as well is to help as many people as possible create a highly successful website. The problem is is that quite often, you’re just not sure where to start, especially if you’re trying to redesign your website from scratch, and it feels like a big mountain to climb. And this is why over the next four episodes for the rest of this month, we’re helping you plan your website.

So we’re going to be focusing on four key activities that will help get your website live quicker so that you can get 2019 off to the best possible start. Because seriously, we want you to make your mark in 2019 and stop faffing around and putting off your website stuff which I know from feedback that I’ve got and is happening right now, they just keep putting it off and putting it off, and that’s kind of the reason that we wanted to do this kind of four-part series because we want to make sure that you make your mark online and I know it’s been holding you back. So let’s do this together.

Now, before we get into the show, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. Now, the doors for the membership are currently closed but you can check out the details on makeyourmarkonline.net and you can join the wait-list and we’ll notify you as soon as the doors open again in January. So let’s get into the show.

Now, in the first of these four episodes, we’re going to be talking about a very, very important aspect to the entire web design process. Now, if you don’t do this, it can have a dramatic impact on how successful your website is and it can feel like you’re just missing a piece of the puzzle and you’re not really sure why your website’s not working and its goals. It’s understanding what your business goals are and how you can use your website to move you towards those goals so that you can make money and achieve everything that you want to do, your website needs to have a goal.

So what’s your goal for the website? Maybe you might have a few goals. For a lot of us small business owners and personal brands, it would be to get customers and to make money. And it’s okay to talk about that. We’re all friends. It’s about making money. That’s why we’ve all got business websites, that’s why we all pay for hosting, we pay for expensive plugins, we pay for really nice themes. It’s because somewhere down the line, we want to make money from it.

Now, that’s not always going to be the goal. You might win a charity and that might be to generate donations or whatever. It might just be to help people. You need to understand your goals, it doesn’t matter what it is. But for most of us, it’s about taking on clients, getting customers, taking on new members and getting booked for speaking, and workshops, all those kind of things. And you need to understand these goals before you can build a successful website.

So when you start to build your website or even if you’re paying for a web designer, you want to think about the techy stuff or you might start thinking about the style, or the colors, or the fonts, or the images, or adding social media feeds, or fancy features. And before you know it, you forgot why you needed a website in the first place. And this is so common. We like to focus on the small details partially because we don’t have a strategy. We focus on the smaller details and we end up procrastinating because we don’t really know what we’re doing, especially when we’re building websites ourselves. We have the best intentions in the world, we want it to look great, but quite often we forget about getting customers, we forget about making money, we forget about the ultimate goal and this is what tends to stop us in our tracks. We focus on the cause, the styles, and all the fancy features and we forget about why we even have a website in the first place. And like I said, this is very, very common.

Now, what really matters with your website is that we need to make sure we get our visitors to do what we want them to. You see, people visit your website for many reasons. It could just be to check on your prices, it could be to read an article, watch a video. It might just be that someone is checking out the competition and you are that competition. So you’re going to get lots of people to your website for many different reasons.

So everybody’s agenda, when they visit your website, is completely different but your agenda is exactly the same. Your website is a tool for you to make money and get customers. So that’s why it’s important to understand the goals so it’s as important to identify the most important goals and how we can take these visitors that may or may not be the right customers and make sure that we are funneling them through and making sure that they are in a position to know what services we offer, how we can actually make money from these people, and it’s your job to understand those goals first so that we can actually reverse engineer the website. And this is by far one of the biggest reasons that websites fail, it’s because they’ve completely missed out the understanding your goals segment. This is so important and that’s what we’re going to get into now.

Now, I’m going to give you a few questions that you can ask yourself and you can actually access a workbook with these questions on. As part of the next four episodes, we’re going to give you a workbook so that you can actually download it, print it off, and actually answer these questions that will help you come up with the plan so that you can launch your website in 2019. So for the worksheet on goals, go to jammydigital.com/22 and you’ll be able to download the PDF file there. And like I said, print it out, fill it out, and yeah, let us know what you come up with for your goals.

So the first thing I want to ask you is what do you have to sell. So what is going to actually make you money? What products and services are you able to provide to allow you to achieve your goals if making money is your number one goal? So what services do you have? Do you offer coaching? Do you offer workshops? Are you a paid speaker? Are you selling books? Are you selling physical items? Whatever it is, I want you to write down all of the services that you offer that make you money.

And this is one of the most important elements for you to do at this stage because it will help you focus your mind when you’re thinking about your website rather than getting the little images to line up and your social media links in there and making sure that you’ve got all of the stuff that you like to procrastinate about and actually focus on the things that are going to make you money. It’s a nice kind of triggering your mine, it’s kind of switching your mindset to think about the money in your bank and your website being a tool rather than getting distracted with the finer details. So that’s the first thing you want to do, write down what services you offer and what things you have to sell.

The next question is what do I need to have on my website to sell these services. So what we’ve really down when we’ve thought about the services and people giving you money at the end of it, we’ve kind of got the end goal there. And what we need to do now is to reverse engineer it. So what you’re going to have to have on your website to allow your visitor to buy from you and to hire you for this particular services.

So a nice little tip is if you up until now, if you’ve been thinking about you and you’ve been thinking about your website, imagine that you are the customer, imagine that you are the one looking to hire a speaker, you’re the one looking to attend a workshop or hire a coach. You’re the one who wants to buy a book. And you’re on this website, what are you going to need to see and to access before you’re in a position to buy.

So this is good because you’ve thought about it from your point of view and how you’re going to make money but you’ve also thought about it from a customers point of view and their goals are completely different from your goals. But if we’re going to convince them to buy from us, then what you’re going to need to have on your website. This is things like a specific page for each of these services.

Now, that sounds really obvious but I can’t tell you how many websites don’t do this. We were reviewing a website recently in our free Facebook group and that’s jammydigital.com/facebook, if you do want a free website critique, feel free. But we were reviewing a website recently that didn’t do this. They had one page for all of their services and they kind of used the services as bullet points. So there’s a couple of reasons that that might happen. They’ve not identified that their visitor might actually want a little bit more information about these services.

You know, if someone’s handing over their hard-earned cash, chances are they’re going to want a service page for each of your services. If I want to hire you as a speaker at my event, changes are I’m going to want to actually ask you some questions, I’m going to want to find out about your feels, and find out about what topics you talk about. And one page to cover all these services is never going to work and that’s why it’s important that you might want to think about having a page for each service so that you can answer those questions.

You know, this is where it gets interesting because you might have completely different audiences as well. So somebody who wants to hire you as a one-to-one coach is completely different from somebody that wants to attend one of your workshops. And that’s why you need an individual page for each individual service and that’s why it’s important to think about your goals first so that when it comes to structuring your website, you start to think about services for each individual product and service that you offer.

The next thing you might want to think about is, well, if somebody’s going to buy from me, the chances are we’re going to have to build up a bit of trust with them. We’re going to have to have maybe a portfolio, maybe some testimonials from people who’ve been in similar situations so that we can actually allow them to imagine what it would be like to work with those. And you’re only going to get to that point when you are thinking about the end goals first and then reverse engineering them. This is why you see so many testimonials that are a little bit vague. “We really enjoyed working with this person, highly recommend. Would use again.” These are the kind of vague testimonials that are not good for anybody. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like working with you from listening to a testimonial or reading a testimonial that you’re really gray. What I want to know is what kind of situation was that person in to hire you and what kind of situation are they in now once they’re hired you.

A couple of episodes ago we did an episode on testimonials and how to get good testimonials for your website so you might want to check that out and we’ll leave a link to that in the show notes. So another question to ask is what order of importance do you have for the services that you offer? Maybe you prefer to do coaching than you do workshops or visa verse. Maybe you prefer to sell loads of books rather than actually sell an online course. Whatever it is that you offer, you have to put it in some kind of order. This is really important because when it comes to prioritizing your menu items and your sub-menu items and where you place things on certain pages, this is going to be important. So think about the end goal first, think about what you want to make money from, what’s the most financially beneficial product that you want to sell. And then maybe that’s the one that gets the most, the highest in the hierarchy of services that you offer.

Do you offer too many services? Maybe you need to slim them down a little bit so that you can actually put more emphasis on a few key services. Maybe you need to scrap a few of them. We’ve actually got to a position with some of our clients in the past where they’re like, “Well, these are the services that we offer.” And if we hadn’t questioned it would have just built a new website with all of those services.

But we always have a discussion with our one-to-one clients where we actually say, “Well, are all these services still relevant?” Yes, it would be easy for us to just transfer over these five services so that you can sell them all, but do you actually enjoy doing them? Do they make money? Financially, is it worth it? And we’ve to positions before where we’ve had people kind of rethink what services they offer and scrap them all entirely.

So it is an interesting topic but you only get there from thinking about the end goal first which is what’s going to make me money and what am I going to have to do to allow people to give me more of that money or attract the right clients. Because sometimes, working with lots of people just for the sake of money is not the end goal. It’s definitely not for us. We want to work with the people who we really want to help and we don’t want to work with … For example, we don’t want to attract super big companies and corporations where we’re only dealing with a few people from a marketing department, with a company over 100,000 strong. We want to help small business owners and that’s what we really love to do. So that’s why it’s important that we articulate that on our website. So that’s an example of what I’m talking about with audiences.

So how many services do you offer? If you can’t get rid of any, then you have to understand that your website may feel a little bit … you’re going to have to dilute some of the key services. So if you have eight key services and you don’t want to get rid of any of them, then you have to accept that everybody’s going to be able to click on as many pages as you want them to. Whereas if you have two or three services, naturally, they’re going to get more eyeballs. That’s just how it works. So you may have to think about grouping some of these together.

We reviewed a website recently that had kind of eight key services, as an example. And after we reviewed it, we recommended that they kind of group a few of them together. Think about your individual services, could you group some of these together as coaching, could you group some of these together as done for you. Instead of if you’re a writer and you’ve got editing and proofreading and content creation, could you potentially just group them all together as done for you if you have too many services. So that’s something to think about as well. You don’t want to overwhelm your visitor.

Another thing to think about is what are your goals for the future? What is it that you might want to introduce next year, in 2019 that isn’t currently on your website. And it’s important to do this because say, for instance, you’re launching a new online course, let’s just say you’re launching a new services, maybe you want to do some public speaking or you’ve just finished your book and you want to sell a book on your website, you’ve got to write this down as well because you have to imagine what your website might look like with that product or service added. It’s okay cutting down your products and services but just in the back of your minds, you want to know how a future services might impact your website. So again, write any future goals down on here. We’re not talking five years down the line. Your website’s never going to stop changing but it’s a nice idea to write down any future goals you might have, maybe even three to six months or 12 months into the future so that you can start to imagine where that would slot in as and when you’re ready to sell.

So that’s it for the first episode. It’s all about you taking some time out to plan what goals and objectives you have for your new website. And this is just a really important topic. And I think, hopefully, you’ll all find it useful. And like I say, print out the questions as well in the worksheet jammydigital.com/22 and let me know what you’ve come up with. What are your key goals?

In the next few episodes, we’re going to be breaking down the next steps in the process so that you can have a highly successful website. And yeah, I hope you found this useful. Now, if you didn’t already know, we have a free Facebook group and we’d love you to join. If you got to jammydigital.com/facebook, we do weekly training, we do website critiques, and we’d love to help you get better results with your website too. So that’s it for today’s episode. We’ll see you next time on the Make Your Mark Online podcast.

The post Ep 23 – Planning Your New Website – Part 2/4 Website Structure appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 22 – Planning your new website – Part 1/4 Goals

Martin Huntbach — Tue, 11 Dec 2018 13:58:34 +0000

Every year we hear the same thing from business owners and personal brands:

‘This year, I’m going to sort my website.’

But then clients and customers come first and the sliver of time you do have to work on your website is taken up by procrastination.

What’s my colour scheme?
What should I write on my homepage?
How do I do this bloody techie thing!

If this sounds like you, you are not alone! We see business owners vow each year to sort their websites only to go into the next year with the exact same one.

You know your website is important. You know that you can’t continue with the website you’ve got and that #WebsiteShame is holding your business back.

So 2019 is the time to get it sorted!

In the next four episodes of our podcast, we’ll be outlining the four key pillars to website success so you can get your website live ASAP in 2019.

In this first episode, we’re talking GOALS for your website. Yep, before you jump right in with your theme or page builder or start choosing a new colour scheme, you need to understand your website goals first.

This is a process we do with all our clients, and it’s worth the time you put in. Not only will it make things super clear for you from the get-go, but it also builds you the best foundation for your website.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- Understanding your website goals
- Why understanding your website goals is important
- What can distract you from your website goals
- The questions you need to ask yourself for website success
- Reverse engineering your customers’ web journey
- Honing in on your services

Resources

Worksheet _ Planning your new website

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

Coming soon

Useful Resources and Links

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Transcript

Welcome to the Make Your Mark Online podcast where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. Please welcome your hosts, husband and wife team, Martin and Lindsey.

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.

The post Ep 22 – Planning your new website – Part 1/4 Goals appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 21 – The best tools to improve your website

Martin Huntbach — Tue, 04 Dec 2018 21:27:10 +0000

Over the past 10 years, we’ve tried hundreds (probably thousands) of tools that help us and our clients improve their websites and processes.

Some tools are fantastic, helping us save time and money. Others, are terrible, taking ages to wrap your head around or costing too much for your business.

So in this podcast episode, we’ll be running through our favourite tools that we use all the time to improve your website and business.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- The best tools to create images and graphics for your website
- The best video hosting software
- The best email marketing tools
- Our favourite page builders
- The best tools for taking bookings over your website
- The best tools for taking payments over your website

Resources

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

1.52 – Why are we talking about ego?
2.42 – Why personal brands fall into the ‘ego’ trap
4.02- Your about page is not about you
6.57 – Be careful of the word ‘newsletter’
10.21 – Using silly names for normal stuff
13.36 – Caring more about aesthetics than anything else
16.57 – Thinking too much about your competitors
20.04 – Using your blog as a promotional tool

Useful Resources and Links

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

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.

The post Ep 21 – The best tools to improve your website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 20 – How your ego can damage your website

Martin Huntbach — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 16:11:45 +0000

We’re all human. And sometimes being human means our egos can get the better of us.

Generally, it’s okay when this happens. We can keep ourselves in check and try to be better people.

BUT, what happens when our egos creep into our business and, more specifically, our websites?

In this podcast episode, we’ll be going through our top ego-driven, website faux-pas that will drive your end-user insane!

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- Your about page is not about you!
- Why you should steer clear of the word ‘newsletter’
- Using silly names for normal stuff
- Looking pretty is way more important than user-experience, right?
- When your website is for your competitors
- Using a blog as a promotional tool

Resources

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

Useful Resources and Links

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to episode 20 of the Make Your Mark Online podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about how your ego can stop you from having a successful website. But before we get into the show, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online membership. This is our signature membership community, where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. The doors for the membership are currently closed, but you can check out the details at the MakeYourMarkOnline.net website, and you can join the wait list, and we’ll notify you as soon as we open the doors again in January.

Now, just before we get into the show, we just wanted to let you know that this is actually the end of season one of the podcast, as Lyndsay is now going off on mat leave.

I am, yes. And you’re going to be all by yourself, aren’t you?

I am, yeah. It’s going to be lonely.

It’s going to be lonely for you.

Yeah. But we felt that this would be a nice place to break up the episodes so that I can take it from here as a solo show for a few months until you come back next year.

Yes. And I’m hoping the listeners don’t double while you’re doing your solo show.

That would be really embarrassing, wouldn’t it?

It would, really.

We just can’t get enough of this manc accent.

Yeah. Get rid of her.

But we are actually continuing straight on with season two on the podcast, so there won’t be any gaps. So it’ll just be the next episode next week as normal, but it will just be yours truly instead of the both of us.

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

So yeah, let’s get into the show.

So Lyndsay, this episode is all about ego.

It is.

It’s an interesting topic.

Yeah, it is interesting because I think we can all have a bit of ego from time to time, and we all are human, and sometimes ego creeps in. But sometimes, it creeps into our websites, and this can actually make them less successful, and it can kind of harm your conversions and things like that. So yeah, that’s why it’s quite a good topic to talk about I think.

Yeah. I think you’re right. And I think it’s when we forget about the end user mor than anything else.

Yeah.

And you see it a lot on websites these days, and we focus on ourselves and our business rather than our potential customers.

Yeah, definitely. That’s pretty much the nail on the head of when ego creeps into our websites, and as Martin always says, your website is not about you.

No, absolutely.

So I have to say, this is actually something that impacts a lot of personal brands. When you’re a personal brand, it’s tempting to make everything about yourself. You’re selling you, which I get, so it’s quite difficult not to. But we can easily fall into the trap of kind of making everything about ourselves and our brand and kind of forgetting about that end user. So it’s quite a difficult one for personal brands, I think.

Yeah, it’s definitely a difficult balance, I think, isn’t it?

Definitely.

And it’s not just personal brands, as well. Big businesses also fall fowl of this, as well. It tends to be there’s a certain arrogance of being a big business or a larger business. Big business websites also tend to make quite a lot of mistakes with their website, too.

Yeah, definitely. It’s not just the little guys that, like you said, fall fowl of it. It is big businesses as well, so we see countless examples of this when we are just browsing the web all the time, and it kind of irritates us, doesn’t it? So yeah, it’s not just the little guys. Definitely not.

Okay. So from all of our research and all of the websites we’ve reviewed over the years, big businesses and small businesses, have we got a list of things that we can do to make sure that we kind of leave our ego at the door?

Yeah, I think the first thing that we constantly talk about is about your “about” page, and a lot of businesses make their “about” page just about themselves, and I get why because you think “about us”, “about me” is just going to be about you, and you see this sort of start of the page that says, “I graduated in 1984 with this thing, and I did this, and I’ve done that, and I am brilliant.” And it can kind of put your end users off, really. They’re not going to be interested in that information. Yes, they want to know you’re qualified and things like that, but that “about” page is just either going to be really boring for them or it’s just going to turn them off and make them think you’re a bit of a big head.

Yeah, but I don’t think it’s your fault a lot of the time, as our listener. I don’t think it’s your fault because people say, “About me. This is about us. This is our “about” page.” And this is the one page where you think that you can actually talk a little bit about yourself and not your customer’s problems, but that’s not true, actually.

No.

You don’t have a lot of wiggle room on this one. But yeah, the “about” page actually is one of the busiest pages on your website. It’s one of the pages that draws in a lot of traffic. So yes, it’s okay to be about you a little bit, but more than anything you have to remember that if somebody’s clicking on your “about” page, they still want to do business with you, and by having a big block of text saying all about you, it does put an extra barrier into play, in the waves, doesn’t it?

Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I think, yeah, you’re right, maybe sometimes it doesn’t come from a place of ego, it’s just a case of, “I’m unsure of what to put on this page, and I’m just going to talk about myself for the next paragraphs.” But yeah, I think that it just comes across as very self-centered when we just talk about ourselves on our “about” page. I’m not saying don’t talk about yourself at all, but you need to put the onus really on the end user, and more make it about how you can help them. We actually have an episode, a podcast episode about how to write an “about” page, and I’ll put that in the show notes because that explains it quite clearly in there. But that’s a big, epic one, really, that we talk about quite a lot, where your ego can creep in, and you can end up just being quite self-focused.

Yeah.

Particularly on that page. And as Martin said, it’s quite an important page on your website. It’s usually well trafficked, so you want to make sure you’re taking advantage of it and actually getting people to do something, and connecting with people, and getting them to actually convert into a customer or lead on that page, not just talking about yourself.

Yeah. It is important because every page on your website is a sales page.

Exactly.

Okay. So what’s next, and what else are we doing out there that may cause our ego to get in the way of getting customers and leads?

Yeah, another thing people do that really bugs us. This is just a big, giant episode of things that bug us. Is that people offer a newsletter-

Oh, that old [inaudible 00:07:08]

Yeah. People offer a newsletter. Sometimes it comes as a pop-up, which is like a double whammy of joy.

It’s like a double [crosstalk 00:07:16] around your face.

And I get why people do this, I do. A lot of people offer just a newsletter in exchange for someone’s email address, and sometimes you just say, “Sign up to my newsletter.” Sometimes we say, “Sign up to my newsletter and get my latest news.” Or thoughts, or whatever it is. But you have to think, how much do people really care about your latest news? Do people care that we got a new office plan this week? Probably not. I don’t know. And I think, yeah, I think newsletter just isn’t good enough really to get someone’s email address. You have to be respectful of someone’s personal information. If you’re requesting that information, you kind of have to give something in exchange for that. You can’t just say, “Sign up to my newsletter.” Because at the end of the day, people probably don’t care. It’s your ego coming into that, I think.

Yeah, and we’re not saying that you can’t tell people about your business and what you’ve been up to, but the idea of a newsletter and you saying the word newsletter makes it feel like it’s just going to be a bulletin about you and about what you’ve been up to.

Yeah.

So we’re not talking about, you don’t have to not tell people what you’ve been up to. It’s great to learn more about you and about how you run your business and let everybody get to know who you are, but try to avoid using the word newsletter because I just think it’s becoming … there’s a negative effect that it’s having out there, so you’ve got to be careful. When I see the word newsletter, I think I’m going to sign up, and I’m going to learn about what you think about things and what are your thoughts and feelings, and it’s very internal rather than thinking about your customers. So just something to be aware of I think [inaudible 00:09:09].

Yeah, definitely. And actually, some businesses offer really, really good stuff. They offer really good stuff in emails every week, but they just call it a newsletter, and I think if they called it something else, I think they would find that conversions on that call to action a lot better, definitely. But yeah, just newsletter, like Martin said just sounds like it’s going to be just about you and your company and what’s going on in your life, which is fine to talk about, but you don’t want to be talking about it all the time. So to get people’s email address, yes, I think you either need to give something away for free, something meaty in exchange for their email address or just reword what the actual newsletter is.

Yeah. Unless you’re famous like Ann Handley and Chris Kroeger and these people that just from saying newsletter, it’s like, “Oh, I’d actually like to know what they’ve been up to. I’d actually like to know if Chris has got a new video game playing on.” But again, we’re not all at that same level.

No.

So you have to think about your customers more than you think about yourself.

Yes, definitely, definitely.

Okay, so what else are we doing? What else are we doing that’s infuriating you today?

This is great. This is a great eight and a half month pregnant episode. Just rip into things. Another one would be using silly names on websites for normal stuff.

Oh God, yes.

It really, really irritates me. If I see the words “My Journey” instead of “About” on a homepage menu, I’ll go insane. Yeah, I think people have this idea of wanting to be kind of quirky and different, so they give things different names. I’ve seen “blog” called “growth zone”, I’ve seen all sorts of different things.

Yeah, or “our stories” as the blog. And I’m like, what?

“Our stories”, yes. That was a strange one.

That’s the most egotistical thing I think I’ve ever seen on a website. Crazy.

Yeah, I think it is. It is very much like that. And it’s a mistake that a lot of people do make because they want to be different, but if you think about it from the end user’s point of view, and I think this is the point that we keep making, it’s that they know immediately what “about” is, they know immediately what “blog” is, and they can easily get to those pages, and they don’t have to think about it. Whereas, if it says “my journey” or “my stories”, that doesn’t make any sense really to anyone.

Yeah. Imagine if you were to walk into a shop and they changed the aisles. Rather than “dairy”, they said “cow stuff”. That’s the worst example I’ve ever used in anything.

That’s terrible.

Okay, so “vegetables” is “plant stuff”, and you’ve just got to kind of figure it out for yourself.

I actually would like to shop there.

I know. That’s our next business. Settled that. But you see what we’re saying. It’s about not letting your visitors think, like, why are you making them jump through hoops to access information that they already know, like, and trust, you know what I mean?

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

We wouldn’t change the name “website”. We could just introduce a new way to say website, but it’s like, what’s the point? People know what it is.

And I think this is the thing of, like, big businesses do this a lot we find as well. They kind of use this weird terminology, and there’s absolutely no reason for doing so.

You’re still laughing at “cow stuff”?

I’m still laughing at “cow stuff”, you’ve made me giggle too much. So I think, yes, I think stick to the normal names for things, make it easier for your end users, and try not to be different and unique in that sense. It doesn’t mean in your actual copy you can’t be yourself and reflect your brand, but I think when you’re naming pages and things like that, try to stick to the normal stuff, really, rather than using “cow stuff”.

Yeah. Don’t forget about SCO as well, because if you have a service page where you offer, and we’ve said this before about, let’s just say that you’re a solicitor, and you offer will writing or whatever, and you decide to call it something completely different, then people searching online won’t be able to find it because they know the terminology that they’re used to.

Exactly.

So it’s kind of a negative impact in terms of traffic as well.

Yeah, definitely. So I think further on with this is a lot of businesses care more about how their website looks than user experience.

This happens a lot.

It does happen a lot. We see this with luxury brands all the time. So they use … if you go onto many luxury brand websites, they use really small text-

They do do that. Why?

It’s really difficult to read. They do.

Why is that just a luxury brands thing? It seems to be, doesn’t it?

I don’t know, they just … I don’t know whether the customers just have really good eyesight.

Yeah.

I don’t know.

30/30 vision.

It’s not aimed at us. We wear glasses. We’re not good enough for these luxury brands. I’m really not sure. I mean, I went on a luxury brand website today to try and look at this, and also their product descriptions are terrible. There was one who was advertising a suit for 3000 pounds, and the product description had six words.

I’ll buy two, please.

And I get, you don’t want words to reflect badly on your organization, to look ugly on the page, but people might want to know a little bit more when they’re spending 3000 pounds on a suit.

Might do.

I don’t know. Maybe.

Or maybe you want to live life on the dangerous side, you’re just like, “Yeah, it’s 3000 pound, and I don’t really understand what this is about, I can’t really see it because the text is too small, but yeah, let’s do it.”

Yeah, let’s do it. I think a lot of things like art, luxury brands, those-

Even photography-

Photography, yes.

It’s generally more-

Image based.

Imaged based, and branding. And what you’re saying really is that branding sometimes and design can get in the way of user experience when really we should be using users to come up with design. How a website’s built and constructed and looks should be based around your target audience, otherwise, it’s just about you, and that’s where the ego comes in.

Yeah, exactly. If you want a good example of this, Apple, their website is quite a good example of a website that is both beautiful, but also thinks about their users as well. They do it quite, quite well, and it is possible. You have to get that balance right, I totally understand that. It’s not good to have an ugly, user friendly website, but I think you have to think about your end user. If you have something so beautiful, websites aren’t a piece of art, they’re not there to be looked at. They’re there to actually do something, so don’t try and get so hung up on how it looks to much so that the end users are the ones that suffer really.

Yeah, no, that’s a great point, and I think it’s a fairly common thing. Especially when you’re building the website as well. This happens a lot because you’re thinking a lot about how you want to be perceived and what people will think, what your friends and family will think when they see your website, and you want it to look amazing. But while you’re thinking like that, you’re not thinking about your customers or the people that are going to give you money. And in some cases, you’re thinking about your competitors, which is very strange.

Yeah, definitely. And that actually leads us on to the next point actually, which is businesses that think about their competitors too much.

True, yeah. It does impact-

It does.

The way we think about our websites.

Yeah, and a lot of businesses do this. We know from working with businesses and talking to businesses that they are, a lot of them are quite bothered around, “Such a body’s got this thing, and such a body does this thing, and we’ve got to be better, we’ve got to do this, and we’ve got to do that.” And there’s a lot of focus on what your competitors do, particularly in our industry, so web design.

Definitely.

Web designers are terrible because we use sort of jargony language and try and look like we know exactly what we’re talking about and use really technical terms and try and show off in front of each other.

Exactly. Like PHP and having all these little weird languages on your website to try and appeal to your customers in the hopes that they’re going to be baffled and they’re going to buy from you because you know more than them is such an outdated way of looking at a website, and that’s what a lot of web designers do. We talk a lot about people in other industries. We talk about accountants and the way that they use their language, and sometimes they come across stuffy, and we talk about … we don’t want to leave web designers out of it because they do a lot of really bad stuff as well. So when we use examples sometimes, we might tend to focus on certain industries, but we’re not the best, the web design industry is one of the worst for this.

And I think sometimes it can be a bit like, “Well, we know what we’re doing, so you probably don’t understand any of this.”

So you shut up and sit in a corner and just give us your money.

Give me money, yeah, and I will do what I can do. Whereas I think there’s arrogance about it, but pretty much anyone who wants to apply themselves, could be a website, it could be an accountant, it could be any of these things, you can learn it, and there’s no need to be arrogant about it really, so we try to explain things in as simple language as possible, and I think that’s something you should do on your website. I don’t know, someone famous, I think it was Einstein, he said something like, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t know it well enough.” Or something like that, which is true. You’ve got to explain it in terms of how your end user is going to understand it.

But it’s just such a difficult one because even now, even though we’ve tried to dedicate a hundred percent of our efforts in creating content for our customers, you still get in the back of your mind an idea for a blog post that is, this is going to make us look great with our competitors, and it’s difficult to get out of that role, but it is important, and when you do get the thought, “I’ve got a great idea for a podcast episode or a blog post.” Just ask yourself, did you come up with the idea because it will make you feel better, and it will make you look good with your peers and your competitors, or are you creating that piece of content because it’s going to help educate your customers or help make them into a potential customer like a lead or a sale?

Yeah, exactly, and that’s a really good point. And I think the final thing is when businesses just use their blog as a promotional tool. That really, really grates on me.

Yeah, much like the newsletter, isn’t it?

Yeah, it is. It’s so irritating. There’s a web design company that’s relatively [inaudible 00:20:09] to us, and their blog is just, “This is the awards won this week. This is who we’ve hired this week. This is the new client we took on this week.”

Office makeover.

Yeah, “Office makeover this week.” And it is just, why would anyone be interested in that? I just don’t understand it at all. I mean, they’re sort of aiming at bigger corporations, but I still think, you’re still speaking to someone, and it doesn’t mean that you can just show off about yourself. It’s unbelievable ego really that comes into that. A blog should be there to educate your end user, provide helpful content, and it doesn’t mean that you can’t try to get leads from that, we’re not saying that, definitely the opposite, but it definitely shouldn’t be there just to shout about yourselves because it’s just boring.

Yeah, exactly. And we don’t want you to not think about your experiences and your stories because we recently started introducing a little bit more about the internal running of our business as well, but we always do it from a customer point of view. So for instance, the last podcast that we released this week was how much money we had made from doing free website critiques. Now, on the face of it, that looks like a very egotistical blog post.

It did feel that way when I was writing it.

And we were a little bit concerned about publishing it, which is why it took us two or three weeks to hit the publish button. But an actual fact we were thinking about, how can this help our customers create better content? How can this help our visitors think about marketing in different way and how it works, and what can they learn from our experiences? And if we’d have blogged about every recent award that we’d won or our latest bean bag in our office, then how does that help anyone? So I’m not saying you can’t do it, you can’t talk about your experiences in your business, but think about the customer’s spin.

Yeah, definitely.

And I just want to add one more to this, actually because we’ve not mentioned it, but it’s about your logo.

Oh, the logo.

I can’t believe we missed it.

I need it nine foot, Martin.

Yeah. Actually, can you make people scroll down so that they have to get to the actual content because I want my logo so big.

Right. Logo is amazing.

Yeah. Make my logo bigger. No, this is just something that we get asked a lot, and we do joke about it quite a lot, but so many businesses still have a big logo. Someone recently hired us to redesign just their homepage because they had a current website, they were getting lots of visitors, but it wasn’t converting, so they had hired us to just design a homepage and then give it to their development team so that they can build it, and the only thing that they changed was the logo. Everything else was pixel by pixel perfect, exactly as we’d designed it so that we can increase conversions, but you know that she’s … this customer had obviously just said, “Actually, can you just make my logo bigger?” And it changed the entire design, really. It just pushed everything else down, and everything else was not in the right proportion. And I get that she was proud of her logo, but it does get in the way, and it’s important to remember that when someone’s on your website, they don’t really care about the name of your business or your brand. They just want you to help them buy from them. They just want your support as well.

Yeah. Definitely, absolutely, I agree. So I think in conclusion, what we’re trying to say is just think about who your customers are and what they actually need from your website and from you, and try to be a bit humble on your website. Try and think, okay, so what does my end user actually want from me? Do they want a huge logo and a blog that just talks about the awards I won? Or do they want something more? And just really just about helping people and not at all hyping yourself up, really. I think that’s what your website should be about, definitely.

Yeah. Fantastic. Well, I hope you found this episode useful. I know that we can all find ways to improve our websites and leave ego at the door. If you didn’t already know, we have a free Facebook group. We’d love you to join. If you go to JammyDigital.com/Facebook, we do regular training, we do free website critiques, and we’d love to help you improve your website as well. So that’s it for today’s episode and season one of the Make Your Mark Online podcast.

I’m going to miss everyone.

I know. I know, but I will see you next week for the start of season two of the Make Your Mark Online podcast. I’ll see you then.

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.

The post Ep 20 – How your ego can damage your website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 19 – How to avoid overwhelm when building your website

Wed, 21 Nov 2018 15:05:14 +0000

Designing a website yourself can be a lonely and overwhelming process. You’ve got to figure out hosting, domain names, themes, plugins, content management systems as well as write new copy, figure out the design and get new images.

It’s no wonder when we speak to people, they tell us they’ve been working on their websites for months or even years.

We get it. Even as web designers we still question ourselves and take time making decisions.

In this episode, we’re going to tell you how to best avoid website overwhelm and make sure you get a good website up and working as quickly as possible.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- How choosing a good theme can make or break your website
- Keeping it simple so your head doesn’t explode!
- How to cheaply seek the help of a ‘techie’ for those annoying bits
- The research you need to do before jumping into DIY websites that will save you so much time and money
- Where to get answers to your questions
- Where to find support from others

Resources

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

4.49 – What kind of images do you need on your website?
7.10 – Showing your personality through photographs
8.53- Think about your surroundings
5.15 – What kind of testimonial should you be looking for?
10.32 – Creating your own stock photographs
11.15 – Think about your location
12.03 – Think about your outfits

Useful Resources and Links

World Class Communication

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to episode 19 of the Make Your Mark Online Podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about how to avoid overwhelm when building your website. But before we get into the show, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online Membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. The doors for membership are now closed, but you can check out the details at MakeYourMarkOnline.net. You can join the wait list and we’ll notify you as soon as we open the doors again in January. Let’s get on with the show. So Martin, overwhelm. Why are we talking about overwhelm?

Well, I think it’s inevitable when you are doing most things in your business. When it’s something new, when it’s something slightly more technical than you’re used to, it’s very easy to see why so many people get overwhelmed by it. We get overwhelmed by it. We do this stuff all the time, but when we take on new clients, new websites, different features, it’s okay to feel overwhelm sometimes because it’s just natural. If we feel overwhelmed, then anybody else building their own website should see it as a normal kind of day-to-day thing that happens, but people let it stop them in their tracks and it can feel really frustrating.

I think we speak to a lot of people who say actually building a website, they think it’s quite say to begin with. You know, you see things like Wix and Divi and it kind of looks really easy on the videos. Then when you actually come down to it, it can be a real struggle. People have a real battle with it, don’t they? Yeah, it’s very, very easy to get overwhelmed with it all, isn’t it?

Yeah. It’s so frustrating sometimes. You’re trying to get a plugin to work. You’re trying to get something to your theme to set up. Even with WordPress, you install your theme and you want it to just look amazing as it does on the demo, but it doesn’t. You have to actually do something to make it work, to make it look good. At every stage throughout building your website, there’s a chance you might feel out of your depth and feel overwhelmed, but that’s the same, like I said, for techies as well. If it’s new, if it’s new in general, then it’ll take you a while to get used to it.

It does require a little bit more patience especially because like you say, when you see these videos online and it’s like, “Oh, I’m a celebrity and I can build a Wix website in 10 seconds,” like shut up. You don’t do anything yourself.

Martin loves those adverts.

I have dartboards of all of the actors that Wix hire. It’s even more infuriating because my football club, Manchester City, are sponsored by Wix, which is just like a knife in the back. It’s not nice.

Do you think the players themselves set up their website?

Oh yeah. Every one of them.

Definitely.

Sergio Aguero clicking around, building his own website. I’m sure he does that.

Definitely.

It’s infuriating because everybody else says it’s so easy. You see all these amazing websites. Your friend might not be a great web designer, but they may have a great website. Maybe they’ve chosen a theme and you’re like, “Well, it was so easy for them,” but it’s not. It’s not easy. Someone once said something like “don’t judge your backstage by somebody’s front stage.” What they do in public might not always seem that easy. I think sometimes we’re all victims of that. We all sometimes think, “Well, they’re doing great things and their website looks amazing. How have they done it? They don’t know that much more than me,” but it’s because everybody struggles. They just don’t talk about it a lot.

Yeah, definitely. Do you have a few tips then that will help people avoid this overwhelm where possible?

Yes. We’ve given a few tips, one of which is to choose a good theme with great support. If you’re building your own website, chances are you’re going to use a template or a theme of some sort. It’s really important that you find one that’s got great reviews. It’s got good feedback. There is a support desk, and there’s people there to help you if you struggle. That’s quickly the worst thing in the world is when you get a theme and you just paid for it and you’ve spent hours trying to decide what theme you get. Then you buy it and you install it and you just don’t know what you’re doing. That can be really frustrating and it can quickly make you feel overwhelmed.

A lot of things as well. They come with like documents before you buy them, don’t they? These manuals of how to use it and things like that. It’s always good to look for those as well.

Sometimes we get excited when we see something, we just want to buy it before doing all the research and that’s where that comes in handy. Especially if you’re buying from a legitimate company, check on the documentation. See if there’s a demo. See if you can actually test out the theme before you actually buy it. Log in to kind of a demo portal and play around with it a little bit. I’m the worst for this. I’ll see something that kind of remotely does what I need it to and then I’ll just buy it before doing the research. But look …

You are the worst at this.

I am.

I can concur with that.

Lyndsay, I bought the wrong thing. Can you get a refund? I don’t think so. There’s got like a lot of like plugins and stuff that we’ve never used before that we’ve paid for. Ridiculous.

I’m one of those people that read the instructions for about six hours. We’re kind of both of extremes. We kind of meet in the middle though and that works.

Yeah, exactly. But if you do find a template that has great support, that can solve so many problems. Just by sending off a message at 8 o’clock at night, by morning you might actually have an answer to that question while you can get on with some other stuff in the meantime.

Definitely. Also look at where the template is from. I made this mistake once with actually a plugin. The guy was in New Zealand and then we kept having to wait 14 hours. It was just a nightmare. It was great, but yeah, that was a nightmare because 14 hours in our business is like forever. Well, it is for me. I’m very impatient, so yeah. Do actually look at where it’s from to see how quickly you’ll get an answer back.

There’s plenty of reviews online as well. Just do your research when it comes to your theme because it’s so important that you don’t want to make a bad buying decision when it comes to your theme.

Okay. What else is there? There’s obviously to look at the theme and support. What other things can we do to avoid overwhelm?

One thing is a little bit of a mindset shift actually. It’s in regards to how complicated or simple it is. We always recommend that you try to keep your website as simple as possible. I don’t mean basic black and white with no styling whatsoever. I’m just talking about when there’s an opportunity to keep things more simple and get things done quicker, that is nine times out of 10 the best option. We can always make it a little bit better. Your website’s never going to stop improving. It’s just you need to finish your website, get it out, and then make improvements once it’s live.

We’ve seen people actually just dwell over the tiniest insignificant kind of little hover effects and these fancy little features that somebody else has got on their website and you want on yours. Don’t do it. It is literally the biggest time suck and it can be the death of your project completely because people just spends two years building a website. Every time you speak to them, “How’s the website coming along,” “Yes, it’s coming. It’s still coming,” but they’ve not have anything to show for it. In the meantime, they’ve not got a website. They’ve not got leads coming through and that’s a problem. Your website needs to be up and live and out there as quickly as physically possible.

By keeping it simple and having that simple mindset when it comes to you designing your website, as long as you’ve got that key core information that people need, things that we’ve spoken about before in previous episodes like the big bold statement, like having your call to action buttons quite high up and quite prominent and your service is visible, as long as you do the basics, then the design to a certain extent doesn’t matter that much on the first round of getting your website up. Then you can make improvements as you go.

Yeah, definitely. I think that’s the point, isn’t it? It’s about making improvements as you go, but trying to just keep it simple and get something up straight away out there. Advertise is what you do in the right way and getting the basics right from the beginning. Definitely.

Exactly. This leads us on actually to the next point, which is when you really do need help, when you really do need a feature installed in your website, something that you can’t do, then seek the help of a techie. Now not just any techie. Techie, not Trekkie. We’re Star Wars fans and we’ll have none of that here.

Trekkies might be able to help.

We’ll have none of that here. Anyway, if you are struggling and you’re trying to do something, I mean … We had Rachel, one of our members, ask in the forum actually, “I can change words and images on my website, but I’m not sure about moving buttons and actually the design elements. What can I do?” We actually suggest that you have a look on Upwork or a freelancing website, maybe even Fiverr, to see if there’s anyone who specializes in that theme. I think it was Divi.

Yeah, I think for her it was quite easy because it was Divi and there were plenty of really good Divi sort of developers out there on perhaps Upwork. Yeah, she doesn’t need to spend a lot just to …

You’re talking $10, $20 the most to solve a problem-

Yeah. Yeah. Potentially.

… that you really, really need to solve. You shouldn’t have to do that a lot because not everything that you do needs to be that complicated, but there are a few things where you might need help. For Rachel, that was exactly what she needed.

It’s that time versus money issue, isn’t it? I mean you could spend all the time in the world trying to figure it out. But if it’s just going to take $20, $30 to solve that problem in five minutes for someone else to do it, then that’s going to be better for your business and you can start focusing on other things, more important things in your business that will move you forward definitely.

It absolutely will stop you in your tracks and it will make you feel overwhelmed if you’re trying to do this complicated thing. When you search for it on Google and you get this really complicated blog post where it’s telling you to go into your FTP and change this code and add this snippet of code and then something happens and your website goes down, like all that is really scary even for me.

Even for us, yeah.

You’ve got to be careful with your websites. We’re all susceptible to having your website go down or deleting something that you shouldn’t. It is sometimes necessary. Just stick to the basics and then hire someone if you really, really need some extra support.

Definitely. Okay. So what else can we be doing then?

Well, you spoke about this a little bit. It’s about doing your research. This doesn’t just to do with the theme. This is things like plugins. This is things like content management systems. If you want to use WordPress, you want to use Shopify, if you want to use something else, then do your research. It’s also the same for things like your email marketing system. Even tools like Canva, for instance. Do your research before you actually start downloading and actually creating new accounts and just signing up to stuff without actually doing your research. Because you can sign up to something and it’s like, “Oh, it’s a free trial. I might as well do it,” but then you get …

An hours gone by and you’re trying to set up an email marketing tool and you’ve not even got your big bold statement done on your website. You’re thinking so far ahead before you actually decide what’s important, what can I do to keep my website simple. I’ve got my theme. I’m trying to keep it simple. Then you go down a rabbit hole and we got the plugins and themes and content management systems and you’ve wasted all that time. It’s best to know what you want to do first and then do your research before you start delving into the tools.

Yeah, definitely. I think a good thing to remember is what is insanely popular. This is why we use WordPress for all our websites is because if we got hit by a bus, our clients would be able to google any problem and no doubt someone on the internet will be the answer to that problem because WordPress is so popular. Same with Shopify or with Canva or that email marketing software like MailChimp or ConvertKit, those kind of things. If they are well-know, if people trust them, if they’ve got good reviews and you’ve done that research beforehand, the likelihood is you’re going to be able to find quick solutions to your problems. If you use something a little bit out there that hasn’t been heard of before, maybe …

Even if it’s cheaper.

This is the point, don’t always go with the cheapest option-

Exactly. Exactly.

… just to save money when another tool might actually be built a lot better. It might be quicker to get something done. You might be able to go live sooner rather than you try and do everything for free and then spend a year trying to hook it all up because there’s no support. This is the same with free plugins, free templates, even cheap, really, really cheap freelancers. You’re not going to get everything you need to. You just need to do your research and don’t be afraid to put your hand in your pocket if it’s a ton here and there.

Yeah, definitely.

Another thing as well is, and this again is more of a mindset thing, when you are thinking about yourself and you’re thinking about your website and it’s easy to see how you can become overwhelmed, just try and remember that this is not for you. This website is not yours. It’s for your customers. This is something that we’ve been talking about a lot recently. It’s the fact that when you think about your customers as the audience and you only think about them and you think about what questions are they going to ask, what questions are they looking for online, then it’s easy to see how you can create a quick and easy website and get it live sooner rather than later.

But when you’re thinking about yourself and all the fancy features, then it does get a little bit more complicated and more time consuming. That’s when you can go down these rabbit holes. Try and remember that. Actually stick it on your wall in front of your computer and think that my website might belong to me, but it’s not mine. It’s for my customers. That is so important that people understand that.

I think people get very wrapped up in what their competition is doing. Oh, they’ve got a fancy hover feature. I want one of those. Really it’s about them and they’re not thinking about their customers. I can honestly say hand in heart that I hardly spend anytime thinking about who our competition is or going on their websites at all. It just doesn’t take a penny of our mindset, does it, because we know that that’s not going to be productive. We have to focus on what our clients or potential clients will be asking when they’re on our website, what do they actually need. Don’t start looking at your competition and thinking about, “Okay. Well, I need a Whizzy thing because they’ve got this Whizzy thing,” and that kind of thing.

This is why people make so many mistakes when it comes to websites because they end up copying people, “Oh, they’ve got a slider image. I want a slider image. They’ve got like a Twitter feed in the bottom of their homepage. I want a Twitter feed.” We go down a road that we shouldn’t be going down anyway. Never mind, “I just want this fancy feature,” that’s when we do start actually looking at competitors and trying to get what they’ve got. Yeah, it’s a great point actually.

Absolutely.

Okay. The next thing is actually really important. This is how we grew our business a few years ago. This was kind of the biggest shift that we made and it was to find a community, a supportive community, that can help move your business forward. Not just your website, not just a “I’m going to join a WordPress group,” actually join a community that’s going to help move your business forward, get your website live quicker. Maybe join an accountability group and actually have people around you that are going to move you in the right direction. There’s nothing worst than feeling alone when it comes to running a business. It’s even worse if you’re trying to do the techie stuff yourself.

You could ask a question in a forum that you’re a part of, this could be a paid community, it could be a free community, that you could spend eight hours trying to solve. Well, somebody else has already solved that problem. Find some communities that you can be a part of, whether it’s paid communities or free communities. We’ve got people in our community that ask questions all the time because they know that we’ll probably know the answer or somebody else in the community will have. They don’t have to spend all that time, an entire Sunday given up because they can’t get this plugin to work.

It makes you feel so much better, doesn’t it, when you got other people in the same boat and you’ve got experts to ask that are willing to help. It makes such a huge difference in your business. We’re part of … I don’t know how many communities we’ve got.

Like too many. Like five or six maybe.

Be our friends. Yeah, five or six communities. Honestly it makes a massive difference in our business because yeah, like you said, you can just ask that question and someone will know the answer.

We get great content ideas from this as well. On the flip side, we were talking a minute ago about having your website work for your customers and not just for you, it’s great when you’re in a community and somebody asks a question that you know the answer to and you’re like, “Actually I’ve answered this so many times myself to my own clients. I’m actually going to write a blog post about it.” A lot of the content ideas that we get are questions that we see other people ask as part of forums and communities as well.

People don’t just go in their normal Facebook page or Twitter and just say, “I’m struggling to get this plugin to work or why is my website not showing up in Google,” but they do ask those questions in sort of niche industry specific communities.

Definitely. Okay. What’s the final thing then what we can be doing to avoid overwhelm?

This is really important. This is to get a good host. A good reliable company to host your website. Not just somebody that can do it for the cheapest, but somebody who actually offers great support. We get people contacting us all the time saying, “Oh, we’ve been with this company for a few years now, but the website keeps going down and the support is really bad. Can you point us in the right direction? Can you help us? Can we move the website to you guys,” even though we don’t host websites. We don’t have a server in our back bedroom. We actually use companies to host as well. It’s just that because we’ve seen the good, bad and the ugly, people come to us and ask the question.

We do have a few companies we recommend, but more than anything, it’s about finding someone that’s going to be beneficial to you. If you have thousands and thousands of visitors coming to your website, then do some research about who the best person is to use. If you’re just starting a brand new website for instance, then we might have somebody else to recommend as a host. It’s all about finding someone that has a great support desk, somebody that can be there, someone who’s got live chat. They can pick up the phone and cal them if your website goes down. That should always be your first point of call and that would help you overcome that overwhelm if you are struggling because something has gone wrong.

Yeah, because you can guarantee you’re going to get overwhelmed very quickly if your website has gone down. We’ve seen it when people have launched major things. They’ve got thousands of visitors to their website. This one always annoys me as well. I think it annoys me because I think you pointed it out to me. When companies say, “Oh, we were so popular our website went down,” I’m like, “Mate, that’s not a good thing.”

Yeah. What is that about?

Like, “I’m really pleased I’ve lost all these sales. Woo hoo.”

I know. That’s like a badge of honor, ain’t it?

Yeah. We always find really strange. We just kind of shake our heads like get a good host then. You’re clearly not investing in a good host. That shows you up really. It’s not a good thing if your website goes down during a major launch. Yeah, I think it’s just something that you have to look at, invest, in do your research. But yeah, like Martin said, think about things like live … Live chat with hosts is just wonderful. If you can just speak to them and someone is there a minute later just replying to you and helping you, either they’ll solve the problem or just show you how to solve it, that’s just so incredibly powerful because it can save you so much time and so much stress as well.

I mean you’ve got to understand that when you’re building your own website, you’re the one who has to think about the domain name and where that is. You’ve got a domain name with one company. You’ve got your host with another. You might have your emails with somebody else. That’s why it’s great having a great reliable host because you can actually just contact them and actually say, “This is the situation. What do I need to do?” If you’re submitting a support ticket and they don’t get back to you for 48 hours and you want it to launch on Friday night, then it’s going to be tricky. That’s why it’s so important. We do have a company to recommend.

If you go to jammydigital.com/hosting, feel free to contact us and we’ll send you a tutorial video as well on that. It’s just a case of what’s best for you I think more than anything. But yeah, you do need a good host. Part of the reason a lot of websites get hacked as well is because of hosts. Again that’s another reason you might get overwhelmed. Okay, my website’s been hacked. What do I do now? Where do I start?

Why is my website in Russian?

I don’t remember selling these products. What’s this?

What are these dodgy things?

Getting a good host will prevent a lot of the ability for somebody to hack, but you can also install a software. You can get pretty cheap software from a good host that will scan your website for any malware and malicious kind of viruses and stuff like that. You don’t want to be overwhelmed by it, which is why you need to get a good host.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

That’s pretty much it. There’s a few things there that should help you avoid overwhelm. I’m sure there’s plenty of other things as well, but for you, it’s about growing your business. You are the business owner or you’re the marketing inside a business. It’s about you thinking about promoting your products and services, reaching your audience, and making sure that they’re becoming inquiries rather than just visitors. That’s what you should be thinking about. Not the technical stuff. Not your hosting and your domain name stuff. Yes, you might have to do it, but seek help when you need to and do your research.

I think the point is as well is that we’re not actually saying that you have to invest a lot to avoid overwhelm. If you are new to business and you think, “Well, I can’t do that because I’m just on my own. I’m just starting out. I haven’t got much money,” like Martin said, you can hire people off Upwork for quite cheap. Just go for a reliable host that’s well-known. You’ve got that chat support. These things don’t cost a lot of money-

No.

… but they are worth it because it will save you so, so much time and then you can go ahead and build your business. I hope you found this episode useful. Everyone has struggled with this in the past. Hopefully now you can use a few of tips to help you overcome it. If you didn’t already know, we do have a free Facebook group. We’d love you to join. Head over to jammydigital.com/facebook. We do training, free website critiques, and we’d love to help you get better results from your websites. Feel free to join and say hello. That’s it for today’s episode. We’ll see you next time on the Mark Your Mark Online Podcast.

The post Ep 19 – How to avoid overwhelm when building your website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 18 – How to prepare for a photo shoot for your website

Martin & Lyndsay — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 18:25:57 +0000

Good photography can make or break a website.

If you have bad photos or you rely heavily on crappy stock images, it can really turn off your end-users.

We’re pretty terrible at the art photography, but, we’ve learnt a lot about the best way to present your photographs on your website.

In this episode, we’ll tell you how to prepare for your website photoshoot.

It doesn’t matter if you’re paying for a professional or getting a friend to help, by following these tips you’ll get the most out of your photography.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- Do you really need a photoshoot for your website?
- Our tricks to make website photography easier
- Why you should avoid the ‘suited and booted’ look
- How to make your own stock photos that look cool
- The need for different locations and outfits

Resources

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

Useful Resources and Links

World Class Communication

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to episode 18 of the Make Your Mark Online podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about personal brand photography for your website, but before we get into the show, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online Membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. The doors for the membership are currently closed, but you can check out the details at makeyourmarkonline.net where you can sign up to the wait list, and we’ll let you know as soon as the doors open again in January. So let’s get into the show. So Lyndsay, I’ve had a bit of break last week. I was traveling, wasn’t I?

You were, yeah. You left me all on my own.

Left you all alone.

It was great. No, I’m joking.

Yeah I was traveling up and down the country, up to Edinburgh and then down to London.

I was very jealous but I did have the remote and that’s always good.

Yeah, you’ve always got the remote, I don’t know what you’re talking about. But yeah so we’re back on with it this week and we’ve got some great episodes ahead. And yeah we can’t wait to get into it.

Yeah.

So today we’re talking about photography but Lyndsey …

Yes.

… Let’s be honest, you’re a terrible photographer.

That’s horrible.

There’s no nice way of putting it.

That hurts my feelings, Martin.

I know but you say it yourself. I mean it’s yeah … it’s an interesting topic for you is what I would say.

It definitely is, yeah. I did see your face when I said, “I’m going to talk about photography.”

Yep.

Yeah if you remember like in the olden days whenever I went on holiday and you get those wind up cameras. You’d have to like go get printed after your holiday. Mine would just be 108 pictures of my thumb. That’s what I would end up printing. Yeah I am a terrible photographer, definitely but …

You’re the kind of person to take a picture of the sun. And like this is going to work out phenomenally well.

I just chop peoples heads off.

Yeah.

Yeah, no everyone was headless in a photograph of mine. But I do know the value of good photography.

You do, I’ll give you that.

Especially for your website, yeah. We’ve done a few photo shoots ourselves and I think we’ve picked up on some tips along the way. So this is definitely sort of a beginners guide to photography from the point of view of someone who’s terrible at photography.

Yeah that’s great. Okay but is it always necessary … do we all need to kind of have a professional photo shoot for our website? I mean we’re not all models.

Shocking.

Yep.

Believe it or not, me and Martin are not models.

You could be though.

Aww.

Cheesy.

I know, cheesy as ever. And I get that and we’re quite a few years into our business before we actually had a photo shoot ourselves. I’m not saying that you have to have a photo shoot straight away but you do need photographs of yourself on your website. And the best way to guarantee good phots is to book a professional photographer.

Makes sense.

We actually used our wedding photographer, didn’t we?

Yeah.

For our business photos. We’d already had that kind of relationship, they knew us quite well, they knew we’re quite weird so we didn’t have to reveal that to them. And it cost about £500 for half a day. Now some listeners might think that’s quite a lot but that was as I said, about 18 months ago and we used those photographs all the time, don’t we?

Yeah.

Not just on our website and our social media, in everything that we do we use those photographs. It’s just a really handy bank of photographs that we can always refer to. So it is, if you can, worth the investment because you will continually use them in your business.

Okay, so now that we know that we all need photographs, what do we need to get the best photographs for our website? Because that’s really what we’re talking about, it’s not photography in general, but it’s how to get great photos for your website.

Exactly, exactly yeah so it’s really important that you actually invest some time and energy thinking about the photography on your website so it really doesn’t matter actually if you’re hiring a photographer or maybe you can’t afford a photographer. So you get a friend with a half decent camera to come and take photographs of you, we’ll just be running through our advice to get the most out of your photography. So this is really from a web designers point of view on what they kind of want to see and what would work well on your website.

Yeah okay so might you say that it’s about … if you hire a photographer or even if you hire a friend or a family member, you still … the list that you’re going to give us today is actually beneficial for all circumstances …

Exactly, exactly.

… No matter what your budget. Okay, perfect.

Exactly.

So what’s the first thing that you can recommend?

Well I think one really handy thing we did before we met our photographers was actually to think about the kind of images we needed on the website. So a web designer will love it if you send them a really good selection of both portrait and landscape images for your website. So it’s good to have a good mixture of both because then you can use them in different places and you’ll find that they’ll slot in in different places much better. But think about specific images too so we always talk about the hero banner which is essentially the first third of your home page. Normally that’s quite a wide image and people sometimes really struggle to fill that gap. They often want a picture of themselves and maybe some text to the left or right. So have a think about how that would work when you’re coming to your photography. So obviously you need a landscape image but it needs to be quite wide. So think about where that would be and what you want in the background and things like that. But it’s just good to have these things in mind so you’re aware of what photographs you actually need.

Okay so have a look around at other websites, see how they’ve done it. Have a kind of mental note of the kind of size of the images. If you are talking about the hero image, then understandably you kind of have to be … there’d have to be a lot space in the picture for you to place text over the top, so if you do have an image that stretches like the full 1500 pixels of your webpage, if that’s the size you’re looking at it on, then you have to think, okay well do I want to be in the middle, where’s the text going to go. Do I want to be on the left, then is the text on the right going to fit, is there enough space in the image. If it’s a picture of you next to a wall, then have you got enough image of the wall in the background, that’s really what you’re talking about.

And Martin has this thing when he comes to design because he does a lot of the design of the website and I know that when people send you pictures, if they’re next to a wall you sometimes have to make more wall on Photoshop, don’t you?

Don’t reveal my secrets.

I revealed his secret.

What are you doing?

He makes more wall but yes, so you do have to …

I literally did this yesterday.

He did do this yesterday where he has to …

I’m practically a builder, aren’t I?

Yes, where you have to cut sort of … magic cut these things but particularly if you’re doing it yourself. If you’re designing your website yourself, you might not have those skills like Martin to magic up a wall. SO yeah it’s good to actually have a think about that before you go into it.

Okay that’s great. So we always recommend that people act like themselves in photographs as well and this is quite important especially because I stumbled across someone on Twitter the other day who had this great image of themself and they had a great bio. And I clicked onto the website and it looked like a completely different person. It looked like a completely different business altogether. And I think sometimes we get a little bit more personal on social media and then we link to our website it’s like okay we have to be formal again. So is this kind of what we’re talking about?

Exactly yeah it’s just about showing your personality and that’s so true. People feel freer on social media I think, particularly with photographs of themselves.

Which is great. It’s nice to see the business world be more personal.

Exactly yes but then when you get on the websites, all of a sudden this person’s wearing a suit and they’re kind of looking very, very serious in these photographs. And I think it just doesn’t work for your brand if that’s not how you are in real life and with your clients and in your business. So if you’re quite relaxed on a day to day basis then make sure your photography reflects that. Don’t get all suited and booted if that’s not what you look like on a day to day basis, wear the kind of things that you’d normally wear and just look how you’d normally look. I’m not saying go all pajamas or anything like that but just be comfortable and be true to yourself really, definitely.

If it was you, you’d be in your dressing gown on all of your images.

That’s because it’s winter.

Yeah. And pregnant.

Yes, exactly I’ve got an excuse. I don’t think anyone would buy from us if it was just a picture of me in a dressing gown.

I think it’s probably worth testing out.

No.

I’m going to wear my pajamas, my Star Wars pajamas all day, see what happens when we go on a Skype call.

So this actually also applies to your surroundings too. And you shouldn’t have to worry about a really professional looking set up. So we all had out our Star Wars crap, didn’t we?

Mm-hmm (affirmative) yeah. I don’t know about crap. Star Wars collectibles actually. Correction.

Sorry, Star Wars collection, we had out our Star Wars collection out and Harry Potter, important Harry Potter stuff as well.

Unapologetically out for everyone to see.

And our desks, they weren’t super tidy, were they?

No.

Or anything like that.

Although we did have to kind of tidy your desk. I was a bit more worried about health and safety than anything else because …

That’s mean.

Lyndsey is the messy one, she absolutely is. Honest to God, you kind of have to walk on tip toes around her desk just in case you crunch something on the floor, yeah.

I’m really not that bad, I’m not but yeah we did have to tidy my desk for the health of the photographers. It was important to us to do that.

Yeah you don’t want to come in here and go, “What’s that smell?” That sandwich has been there three days.

No, it really isn’t that bad. I’m going to make him edit this out. He’s not going to let me edit it.

I’m joking, I’m joking.

But the point is you do want it to be natural and give people an insight into who you are and how you work so don’t worry about hiding your Star Wars crap.

No.

Or your Harry Potter stuff or pictures of family on your desk or the drawings that your kids have done for you, whatever it is you don’t have to sort of make it really pristine if that’s not how you work in real life. I think just make …

No it’s nice to have a bit of personality isn’t it?

Exactly, yeah exactly.

Okay, so what else should we be thinking about when it comes to photography for our websites?

Well one thing actually accidentally happened and I can’t take credit for it because it was a complete accident was we kind of made our own stock photos when we had our photographer come visit us. So we had a lot of stuff out, our notes, our website’s frameworks, our laptops and plants.

And sketches of mock ups and websites that we …

Exactly, exactly and they made great photographs on their own. So what we ended up with was kind of like a bank of personalized stock images. Yeah so where you’d normally buy perhaps an image of a laptop on a desk, we already had that but it kind of had our twist on it because you could see all our stuff as well. And we’ve used those loads actually in all sorts of things.

We’ve used them in slides and for webinars and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah exactly, exactly. They are actually really, really handy. So it’s actually good to think about that in advance because you do get your own bank of stock photos which will save you money but it also makes it personalized as well, looks really professional and good. And I think another thing to think about is your location. So if you can try and think about three or four different locations of where you’d like your photographs to be taken. SO we had our photographs taken in different rooms in the house because we actually use different rooms within our house anyway for our business. But we also went to the beach, which was fun. We got a few weird looks.

I was freezing.

Yeah it was freezing and we got some strange looks. Yeah it was …

You have to be careful on Blackpool beach, there’s some questionable fol out there.

There are some questionable … including us actually. I think we were the most questionable folk on Blackpool beach which says more about us than anything I think. But try and think about different locations where you live that you like. There might be a nice park or next to a nice building or whatever it is, try and get some different shots so it creates something interesting on your website. And that’s another point actually because we actually also had outfit changes …

True.

… throughout the four hours. We kept getting changed and that really worked as well as the different locations. That worked really well because it kind of made it look like we had this photography going on over months of time.

We had our photographer living with us like everybody does.

Yeah, totally normal. And yeah so we had different outfit changes. So it looked like different days and then on your website it doesn’t get as boring, you’re always looking different. You’re in a different location wearing something different, looking different and it doesn’t get the same … kind of the photography isn’t the same all the time throughout your website so it’s always kind of interesting. And that did actually work really, really well.

Yeah I think so. And I mean from my point of view, there are a few things that I would probably change next time we have a photo shoot. I don’t think we really got enough head shot type photos. I think when it came to it and we got our photos back, we’re like, I can’t believe we didn’t get any normal, regular head shots. And I know the term head shot is kind of used in different contexts sometimes but just pictures that I can use for LinkedIn, Twitter, when I’m appearing on a podcast episode by myself for instance. We had plenty of images together and we had plenty of images of me working in the office looking at my computer or on the phone and you were on a Skype call and stuff like that, which is all great but actually remember you have to think about where your images are going to go. So that’s something I probably would change.

Another thing we did is we had a lot of photographs taken, we kind of wanted a lot so that we had lots to chose from. Partly because we’re not experts in photography so when we’re planning all of the different ideas that we have, some of them are not going to be great ideas, some of them are going to be really bad.

Some of them really didn’t work.

Yeah I think …

I remember getting some balloons at some point.

Yeah what was that about?

I don’t know.

I’m just like, “Yeah, you want some balloons? Yeah we’ll see how that goes. I don’t know, we’ll give it a go.” And we had some umbrellas at some point.

We did yeah. I just wanted to make you look as stupid as possible really on Blackpool beach.

I think that was your goal really. Yeah you don’t embarrass easily, let’s test that. So yeah we had a lot to choose from. That meant that the ones that didn’t work didn’t matter as much. We had a lot of them that we could pick from. So yeah it was a fun day and we …

Yeah definitely.

… do kind of look back on it and I think that’s what it has to be. It has to be a bit of an experience and if you’ve got a great photographer or a great friend who makes you laugh, makes you smile, makes you feel comfortable, then that’s going to come across in the photographs as well so yeah we had a great time.

Yeah absolutely.

I’m looking forward to the next one. I kind of want to book another one now that we’re talking it.

I know, I do as well. I do.

Not now, let’s wait until you’ve had the baby, shall we?

Yeah definitely.

I mean there’s no judgment, I’m just assuming that’s how you think.

Did you hear that listeners? You heard it here.

You look great.

I am slightly humongous right now.

Next photo shoot we might actually have a little boy in the photographs.

Yeah we might have him in the photographs.

That’ll be interesting.

Definitely.

Dressed up as Darth Vader, absolutely. And that’s it on that note.

Yes.

So yeah great tips there. I think you’re going to find this pretty helpful. I wish that we’d had something like this to listen to when we were preparing for our photo shoot. So yeah let us know if you have a photo shoot, send us your images. We want to see what you’ve done and yeah don’t take any balloons.

Balloons definitely don’t work.

So I hope you found this episode useful. I know lots of our listeners are looking to have a photo shoot so hopefully this should help. If you didn’t already know we have a free Facebook group. If you go to jammydigital.com/facebook and we will let you join the group. We do training, we do free website critiques and we’d love to help you get better results from your website as well so feel free to join and say hello. So that’s it for today’s episode, we’ll see you next time on the Make Your Mark Online Podcast.

The post Ep 18 – How to prepare for a photo shoot for your website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 17 – How to get great testimonials for your website

Martin Huntbach — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 09:46:21 +0000

Testimonials help build trust, authority and make it clear what kind of clients/customers you want to work with.

Anyone can get a testimonial and add it to their website but getting an effective testimonial can be difficult.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- What makes a ‘bad’ testimonial
- What makes a great testimonial
- How to get the kind of testimonial that connects to your target market
- What questions you should be asking your clients to get the perfect testimonial

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

0.54 – Benefits of testimonials
2.15 – How testimonials can help attract your ideal clients
2.42- Examples of bad testimonials
5.15 – What kind of testimonial should you be looking for?
8.32 – Avoid web designers with bad websites
12.32 – How to get the answers to these questions without emailing
16.10 – Marcus Sheridan and the power of three

Useful Resources and Links

World Class Communication

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to episode 17 of the Make Your Mark online podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about how to get client testimonials for your website, but before we get into the show, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark online membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. The doors for the membership are now closed, but you can check out the details at makeyourmarkonline.net and you can join in the wait list and we’ll notify you as soon as we open the doors again in January. So let’s get on with the show. So we’re talking about testimonials. What kind do you need or how to get them. Isn’t that right?

Yeah, it’s absolutely vital that you have some kind of proof of the work that you’ve done in the past. I mean, they help you build trust instantly depending on the type of review, they allow you to show results that you’ve gotten for people who’ve worked with you in the past, which is another great thing that people look for when they’re on your websites and they can actually help you elevate your level of authority. So if you’ve worked with people in the past, their authority is quite high and they’re quite respected in the industry and you’ve got testimonials from them, that can immediately allow you to kind of increase your prices and charge a lot more than your competitors. So they also help on that level as well. They also help you showcase the types of clients you want to attract. We noticed this for ourselves because we like to work with personal brands and we mainly feature, examples of websites we’ve built for personal brands and the testimonials that people have left. So yeah, it really, really helps build trust and authority and allows you to position yourself differently.

Yeah, definitely. And people forget that don’t they? Because I think people just like to collect testimonials and particularly the showcase and the types of clients that you want to work with, some people have testimonials that were given sort of five, 10 years ago from there.

Yeah. 2013.

Yeah. Next door neighbor Barbara type thing and your clients or your ideal clients have probably changed a little bit since then. So that’s a really good point. But I think the big question is, and we get asked this quite a lot, is do you people actually trust these reviews these days? I mean, it seems like everywhere you look, everyone has these big boastful testimonials that only promote themselves. I mean, do people actually trust them?

It’s true that not all reviews and testimonials are created equally. They’re not all as effective as one another. And that’s the problem I think, especially for anybody starting out in business. You just want to get some testimonials on there and that’s fine. If you need to ask a friend or a family member, do a little bit of work for them in exchange for a testimonial. Then fine, if you’re just getting started, but if you have an established business and you’ve got reviews like, “Oh, I really enjoyed working with Martin. He’s very friendly and professional and I would highly recommend.” These are the kind of reviews that you don’t want on your website. They don’t offer anything in terms of content or contacts at all and they don’t allow the reader, the visitor on your website to imagine what it’s going to be like to work with you. That’s one of the biggest problems.

Yep, that’s absolutely true. We do see those kinds of fake testimonials all the time. Don’t we? The kind of often nothing and just say, “Oh, this person was really friendly and professional.” And yes, kind of the minimum that I would expect from working with any company. So it’s-

Does that mean the people that haven’t left you a review, don’t think you’re professional or friendly?

Exactly. So it’s not really that impressive as it. If someone says that you’re professional and friendly.

No. But I do feel as though, there’s so many review websites out there like TripAdvisor, like Yell, like all of these other places that have an abundance of these types of reviews. Everyone just cares about the star rating on these websites. I just need five stars. I just need more than 4.5 stars and I want to get my scores up so an abundance of these reviews helps on those websites, but it doesn’t help on your website. We need some actual value here because you don’t have a star rating that everybody uses and funnily enough, every testimonial that you add to your website just happens to be five stars. That’s just … Because you’re not gonna add a three star review to your own website and that’s where this trust thing comes in and that’s why people have a problem sometimes and why sometimes people glaze over when you have 15 reviews that say you’re professional and friendly.

Yeah, definitely. I totally agree with that actually, that there is a difference between TripAdvisor reviews or Yell or whatever it might be, and the reviews on your website you do have control over and it should be about appealing to your potential customer by using those reviews. That’s really interesting. So what kind of reviews are we looking for then?

Okay, so now that we’ve discussed what kind of reviews we’re not looking for, I want you to kind of reframe your mind a little bit really, always remember that people don’t care about how amazing you are. They care more about the results that you can help them achieve. So having 25 reviews on your website that just say you were great is not as effective as having two or three that actually walk people through the story of that client. Actually walk people through the ups and the downs and what’s happened throughout there project and what results you’ve gotten out of it.

Now we don’t want to [inaudible 00:05:49] on kind of a case study here is just a testimonial, but I still want you to think about your client as being the hero of the story essentially, and you’ve probably heard the analogy quite a lot and it is important that you think, this visitor that’s coming to my website, they want to know how this other person, Julie or Bob, what problems were they having before they hired us, what did we help them achieve and what results did they get at the end of it and how are they happier? It’s a tall order actually getting someone to leave your review without some guidance here. And this is exactly why we wanted to record this episode.

Okay. So yeah, you were talking about getting those kinds of reviews from Julie and Bob, but that’s quite difficult to get out of a client, isn’t it? I mean, how do you actually get that good meaty review that’s going to appeal to your website visitor as well? How do you do that?

Well, I’ll tell you what you don’t do. You don’t email them after the website’s gone live or after you’ve finished working with them and saying, “Please can you leave me a few lines of text?”

Like we used to do.

Like we used to do. Yeah. This is the biggest problem. If you are in the routine of kind of emailing them afterwards and just asking a vague question or, “Please would you leave me like a Linkedln recommendation?” That’s fine if that’s what you want, a LinkedIn recommendation or just a general review, but we’re talking about actually allowing your testimonials to act as a little bit of a sales tool. If Bob has had a problem that he’s been struggling with for years and you help him achieve all he’s ever hoped of from his business and his life.

All his dreams came true.

All his dreams came through and is now rich and living on an island. Why would you just say, put his testimonial on your website. That’s great, “It was friendly and professional and it helped me get what I wanted.” You wasted that amazing project that you’ve worked with people on. I mean, especially from our point of view, when we work with clients for months on end, we have lots of different ups and downs and stories to tell and for us to leave a kind of vague review like that it wouldn’t work very, very well. You’ve wasted it. So we actually created a system that we try to use as much as possible and we want to talk to you a little bit about that in this episode, about what you can do to get the answers that you want without manufacturing them, without getting your sister to write them. Actually asking specific questions that you want the answers to that allow you to create a testimonial.

Okay, that sounds really good. So have you got any examples of what kind of questions we should be asking our customers or our clients?

Yeah, I mean it completely depends on your industry and the types of questions that you might ask, but on an overall level, we’re trying to get people to answer questions about, what frustrations they were having, what problems they were having before working with you, what were they really struggling to do that they couldn’t do so they needed to hire you for? And again, this is going to change quite drastically depending on your industry, but for us, for our example, we might say the first question would be, what problems were you having before working with us? Another question might be, why did you hire us? There’re two very different questions there and it’s important that that person answers them individually. For us, we might say, how does your new website solve your original problem? So you’d have to work out what that would sound like for your business.

So if you are a fitness trainer, then how did the new fitness class or fitness regime help you lose all that amazing way that you’ve lost? Another question might be, what results have you got since going live? That might be a question for us. It might be what results have you got since implementing the tips on the coaching call that you had for whatever industry that you’re in? Another question might be how did you find the service you received? So this is a question that sounds a little bit kind of like the previous reviews we’ve been talking about, about actually, what did you like about us? But it actually is a nice question because it allows you to do a little bit of research, what did you like about the service? What didn’t you like about this service?

I’m not saying you have to include all of these different elements in the testimonial, but you might as well get a little bit of honest feedback from your previous clients to ask them, what did you like? What didn’t you like? What can we do to improve? The more questions that you ask like that it shows that you care. Not that you’re just ringing up for a testimonial, it shows you that you’re asking specific questions that will allow you to improve your service. So these kinds of questions are the ones that we’re talking about and they should help you formulate a testimonial that you could potentially add to your website.

Yeah. So we’ve actually had, for my asking these types of questions, we’ve had some really, really good answers that we never would have gotten, just like you said, just from emailing a client. So what problems were you having before working with us? A lot of clients said that they’d had nightmare experiences with the web design industry before and-

Absolutely.

… Things that aren’t, and you actually uncover things. You actually discover more things and problems perhaps within your industry or that people are having and you learn so much from these testimonials don’t you? And you start to actually talk to your customers on their level. You really start to listen and understand your customers. So these testimonials are really, really powerful in actually helping you understand your customers and your potential customers. And so they really work very, very well.

Definitely. And this is the important thing as well, is we’re only sort of data gathering at this point. It’s a case of asking the questions first so that we can think about the testimonial second, and this is where we’ve got kind of from asking these questions from a research purpose as well as an information testimonial gathering phase. We’ve got lots of great ideas for content as well. I mean sometimes when we’re in the business it becomes very difficult for us to see it from a brand new perspective, clients perspective. And this is why it’s really important that we ask these questions because it gives us lots of content ideas actually reaching out to people after you’ve worked with them as well. And asking these questions just in general is a good idea. It’s just a great thing for customer service, but we’re talking about testimonials here and it gives you lots of different information that you can use for the testimonials as well as blog content and podcast episode content. Hence, the reason that we’re doing this episode is because of what people ask us this question.

Okay, so I mean we’ve established how good these questions are and that we need to use them, but if we send like a client, someone who’s really busy, like a big list of these questions, it might take a while to get this back up them. What’s the best way of actually getting these testimonials and getting them quite quickly?

Well, what we like to do is shortly after we take a website live, we like to actually set up, a final call with our clients. So we just want to tie a few loose ends. “Are you available at 3:00 o’clock on Tuesday? We just want to give you a quick call.” Or you can do it over video call. We do all our calls over video mainly.” And actually say to them. “Okay, so we just finished the last few bits. This is how you update your website. This is what you do. Let us know if you need anything, but we just wanted to ask you a few questions that we’d like to use in your case study and some testimonials on our website.” Nine times out of 10, everybody’s going to say, “Yeah, of course. Ask me whatever questions you want.”

So you’ve got these questions prepared. You then actually ask them the questions on the call, “So what problems were you having before you worked with us, what were you struggling with, what was keeping you up at night?” Ask them in whatever way that you like, but get the problems that that person was having and the struggles that they were having. And then ask them the other questions as well. The trick with this is to actually write them down or record the call if you feel comfortable doing that. If your client’s happy with you doing that, then record the call or document the answers and then repeat them back to them. “Okay, so you said you were struggling because you couldn’t find a web designer that could build a website within your budget that allows you to have a blog and have all of these fancy features. Okay. So that was the problem you were having.”

Great. You write it down, you repeat it back to them, and then you say, “Okay, so then why did you hire us? What specifically was the reason that you came to us?” And they may say, “I stumbled across a blog post from these people.” And before you know it, you’re creating your own client story with each question that you ask, and by repeating it back to them, they’re not in a haste. They’re saying, “Yes, that’s true.” And you actually go through these questions, create the testimonial, live on the call, and then once you’re done, you just say, “Okay, so I’m going to write this up for you and I’m going to send it to you and I just want you to make sure that you’re happy with it. I’m not going to add anything that you’ve not said yourself, but you ask the questions you want to ask so that you get the answers that you want,” And this works so much better than just relying on them to give you the testimonial.

Yeah, definitely. So these are really, really good points and I think you also have to probe a little bit, don’t you? When you’re on these calls, because we’ve been on calls with clients and let’s say for example, that problem was that they’ve had bad experiences with web designers in the past. You have to say, “Okay, so what effect did that have on your business?” You have to push a little bit further and then they might say, “Well I was wasting so much time and so much money.” And then you start to get to the real core of the problem then. Don’t just kind of take the first answer to the question because they need a little bit of pushing to get the actual answer that’s going to be really good for a testimonial.

So you’ll know kind of what kind of answers you want them to give, but just kind of, really kind of coax them a little bit and ask more questions. Don’t be afraid to ask them, “Well, how did that make you feel? Or was that having an effect on your business?” Ask those deeper questions and you’ll get some really, really good answers out of that.

Yeah. In the past. I mean, I’ve been on the WCC, which is World Class Communication speaking course with Marcus Sheridan and Chris Maa. This is something that Marcus talks about a lot about the rule of three, which is the first answer that somebody gives is usually the surface level answer. It’s only when you ask three times that you really get down to that root cause of the problem.

That’s good.

I know. So it’s like, “Okay, so why did you hire us?” “Oh, well your websites were great.” “Okay, well why did you think that was going to be beneficial?” “Well, I wanted an amazing website for myself.” “Okay, so why is that important?” “Well, because it will allow me to attract my ideal clients.” You get in deeper and deeper and you get in to the real juicy stuff. This is the kind of like proper stuff that everybody wants is just if you just ask the questions, like you said, you’re going to get surface level answers.

Now, those are still pretty good because you’re coming up with the questions yourself, but it makes it more of a conversation. It shows how much you genuinely care about your previous clients. When you’re going that deep and you’re allowing them to uncover their own thoughts and feelings. It might be six months ago that they initially got in touch about our website and they may have forgotten those immediate emotions, those first emotions that they had that made them pick up the phone and call us, and what you’re doing now is you’re bringing those new feelings to life so that they remember and that’s when these people go out and there’ll be like, “It feels amazing that I hired these people. I’m going to recommend them.” And they’re going to be more than happy to let you use this testimonial because you pulled out all of these amazing feelings that they had when they initially got in touch.

This is a very feely podcast episode.

I know. I’m getting emotional right now.

That’s the way we want. We want people to get emotional. Okay. So those are all really, really good points and I think that’s great for actually a written testimonial. How would you go about getting a video testimonial about that? If you’ve interviewed someone, you’ve asked all these questions, would you say, “Okay, that’s great. Would you mind just doing a quick video testimonial just straight after this call?” Or how would you do that?

Yeah, well, video testimonials are absolutely amazing.

They are.

Lots of people are afraid of videos. So if you work with people that don’t mind doing them, then literally it is going to be the best thing.

Jump on it.

Definitely. And that’s why it’s so good that we work with personal brands because usually, they’ve got video going in their business and recording in a quick iPhone video is not going to be a problem. It might be different for you and your industry, but more than anything, I mean you’ve got the testimonial there by setting up a call with somebody and asking these questions. All you have to do, what you’re going to have to do anyway is actually put it into a document, something that they can read potentially on a video and the only final step rarely is you’ve got that testimonial in text that you’re going to add to your website.

Why not just send it to them and saying, “Would you mind recording a video?” Some businesses actually hire a video company to go out and sit with the client, actually shoot a video and do it all professionally. So it all depends on what industry you’re in. But for us, our clients generally don’t mind sticking their iPhone on a tripod and actually just reading the testimonial back to you, especially if you’ve gone through the effort of asking these questions and getting to the root cause of why they hired you in the first place and what amazing results that you got out of it in the end. And that’s the important thing. That’s what everybody wants. It’s what results did you get for these previous clients that I can imagine that you’re going to get for me as well? And that’s kind of overarching theme here, is to allow your potential customers to imagine getting the same results for them that you got for your previous clients.

Yeah, that’s a really really good point to end on it. It’s all about how they relate to the testimonial. Definitely. Okay. So I hope you found that episode useful. I thought it was really good there.

I found it useful.

Yeah. I found it useful. I was learning still. I know many of our listeners struggle with this. So maybe now you have a few action points to take away with you. If you didn’t already know, we do actually have a free Facebook group. We’d love you to join it. So head to jammydigital.com/Facebook. We do training, we do free website critiques and we’d love to help you get better results from your website. So feel free to join and say hello. So that’s it for today’s episode. We’ll see you next time on the Make Your Mark online podcast.

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.

The post Ep 17 – How to get great testimonials for your website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 16 – Warning signs of a bad web designer

Martin & Lyndsay — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 21:22:39 +0000

The web design industry has a bad reputation. It seems like every business owner you speak to, from large, corporate companies to freelancers, have had a crappy experience with a web design agency.

Why is this happening?

Personally, we know many fantastic web design agencies and freelancers. Are people just not finding them? Or is there something else going on?

In this episode, we unpack how to find the right agency for YOU, and how not every agency will work for your business. We also give you our run down on how to spot a bad web design agency or freelancer.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- Why some agencies might be right for others but not for you
- Why we’re a bad agency for some people
- How can you find the right web design agency for your business?
- Signs of a bad web designer or agency

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

0.58 – Business owners have had a bad experience with a web design agency
2.20 – People aren’t finding the right agency for them
2.50- Examples of agencies that won’t work for some business owners
5.53 – How can you find the right agency for you?
8.57 – Avoid web designers with bad websites
9.26 – No access to a content management system
11.32 – Using jargon to confuse
13.33 – No faces on the business
15.31 – Obscure content management system
17.57 – Look at the portfolio
19.38 – Is there a discovery phase?
22.20 – Jumping through hoops for pricing

Useful Resources and Links

Agency Trailblazer

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to the Make Your Mark Online Podcast where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. Please welcome your hosts, husband and wife team Martin and Lyndsay.

Welcome to episode 16 of the Make Your Mark Online Podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about how to spot a bad web design agency. But before we get into the show, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online Membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. The doors for the membership are currently close, but you can check out the details at MakeYourMarkOnline.net and you can join the wait list and we’ll notify you as soon as we open the doors again in January. Let’s get into the show.

Today we’re talking about how to spot a bad web design agency before you invest your money. Is that right, Lyndsay?

Yes. We wanted to in this episode because so many business owners have had a bad experience with a web design agency, haven’t they?

We hear it all the time.

We’re not a good industry.

No.

We actually had a discovery call with one of our members in our community. She said in the past finding a web designer you can trust or even recommend is really difficult. That made us kind of sad.

Yeah. We cried that night.

I know. We did. No. I mean we have friends who are web designers. We’re not all at each other’s throats. We might be competition, but we know ourselves some really good web designers. We’re part of a community called Agency Trailblazer run by the wonderful Lee Jackson, who’s a fantastic web designer.

We love you, Lee.

We love you, Lee. The community there is full of amazing people. We know that good web designers exist. We know plenty of them ourselves. It’s just why aren’t people finding them?

Yeah, exactly, because we know they are out there. We absolutely do. We’re part of our own membership community that Lee Jackson runs for agency owners. There are people in there that are constantly looking at ways to improve their business and improve their client’s websites as well, but why is it that people actually struggle to find them? If there are so many out there, which we know that there are, then what is the problem?

I think it’s a really interesting one because I don’t think people actually struggle to find a good agency, although that’s how they perceive it. I think people struggle to actually find the right agency for them and I think that’s the real issue really with it. Sometimes when people say they’ve had a bad experience with a web design agency, it can mean they haven’t found the right agency for what they need. Take us. We’re probably a bad agency for some people, although we shouldn’t really say that, should we? But we are.

If someone wants a lot of handholding and they don’t even want to touch their website once it’s live, they want someone to do the text and image changes and writing blog posts and all that kind of stuff and they need that much support, that’s not what we do. We work with people that are quite proactive, who want to learn and don’t mind getting their hands dirty. We support them through training videos and emails. We don’t just leave, but we want them to get stuck in. That means we’d make a terrible agency for some people because some people need that level of support.

Of course. Yeah. I mean if you take for instance somebody who just refuses to do anything, often they’re see clients, if they’re not prepared to market their business, I understand that marketing’s important, then absolutely don’t hire us as your web design agency.

Even if they’re a big business and they essentially want to throw 20, 30, 40 grand day and they need someone to manage their marketing on that sort of level, there are only two of us, so we’re not the right agency for them in that sense. Yeah, there’s loads of different factors really. I remember speaking to a florist who said she’d wish she’d gone with us and that’s not being big-headed. The website that she had was fine, but she had her website designed by a big agency. I think she spent a lot of money on it. A lot, a lot of money. This agency worked with big players like BBC and Cadbury.

They specialize in so many different areas, but what she actually needed was just a great looking website that ranked her locally for her keywords. She was annoyed because she felt like she paid a lot of money. The problem was the agency just wasn’t right for her. It was too big for her business almost.

Yeah, exactly. People get drawn in by these big industry leaders. We’ve worked with BBC. We’ve worked with Virgin. We’ve worked with Barclays. People think, “Oh, well, if they’ve helped them, they can help me,” but actually a big agency like that is right for those kind of businesses. They’ll be there if you need them to. They’ll have the company retreats. They’ll have bean bag chairs and coffee machines. They’ll wow you. But for a little small business, you just need someone that gives a crap about your business. Somebody who’s prepared to ask you what you want to achieve and that’s why there is such a problem out there in the industry.

It’s that people hire because of the big shiny things and they don’t actually hire the agency that’s right for them based on exactly what they need and that’s what you’re saying really.

Yeah. Essentially yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Really the problem can actually stem from both sides. The agency might not be clear who they’re a right fit for. We take the responsibility personally to say, “Look, we’re probably not the right fit for you.” Usually in our website and in our content marketing we say who we’re kind of not the right fit for and who we are the right fit for, but some agencies don’t do that. In the case of the florist, the agency might have or should have arguably said, “We might not be the right agency for you,” but it’s kind of your call whether really they should have said that.

What can you do if you’re looking for an agency then? How can you spot these signs to know if they are the right agency for you?

I think be very, very clear about what you need. Take the time to establish what support you want from an agency, what kind of agency you want to work with. You want to work with a big fancy agency? Then it’s fine. If you want to work with a local freelancer, that’s fine too. Take the time to understand the differences between them and the sort of plus points and sort of negatives of working with both. Just identify what is important to you. You could want to rank highly in search results. Then an agency with SEO knowledge is going to be important. You have to think about all these things. What is actually important to you.

If you’re a luxury brand and design is absolutely everything and you want it to be absolutely perfect, then find an agency for that. Just think about your business and how it’s unique and try and find an agency that really sort of fits with that.

Yeah, great point. Okay. Fantastic. This is why we actually wrote the Website Buyer’s Guide, isn’t it?

Yeah.

We wanted to give our listeners and our website visitors a tool so that they can go out and find a web designer that’s right for them. This absolutely isn’t just kind of a sales pitch tool that we use. It is actually pretty useful. We put quite a lot of time and effort into it for you to sit down and go through the Website Buyer’s Guide before you even think about hiring a web designer or even speaking to a web designer. You may go into like Lyndsay said thinking, “I just want a website that looks incredible.”

Then you pay out a few thousand pound for this amazing website by this award-winning designer and then you can’t rank in Google or they don’t know what they’re doing in terms of content marketing. We see that quite a lot.

We do. Yes. Yeah. It’s a good point about the Buyer’s Guide because I think a lot of people might think that yeah, we just promote us, but we don’t because like we said, we’re a right fit for some people, we’re a wrong fit for some people, so it is quite an impartial guide. If you are looking for a web design agency, then definitely check that out.

Absolutely. But there are still a few warning signs that you can use as indicators even if you don’t actually take a look at the Buyer’s Guide. You can actually have a plan when you’re out there looking for a web designer. Is that right?

Yeah. There are some kind of indicators of a terrible web designer should I say or perhaps one that you might not want to work with or consider perhaps delving into doing a bit more research on definitely. We are a packed industry. There’s web design agency industries. There’s thousands of us. Probably millions of us. There are going to be some bad ones are out there. That’s inevitable. We’ve made a little list really of things to look out for in terms of a bad web designer. I suppose the first one would be if they have a bad website.

Yup. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it?

That’s always a clear indicator, but it’s amazing actually how many people do sort of go with web designers who have bad websites.

I think it’s partly down to the fact that they might be friends. They might be kind of word of mouths. Someone’s said, “Oh, you should go with them. I know them. They’ve been to my networking group that I go to every Wednesday morning.” People naturally want to recommend people, but yeah, clearly a bad website should be a bit of a warning sign.

Yeah, exactly. Another one is no access to a content management system and this really, really irritates both myself and Martin because we …

More so you. You get really angry about it.

I get really angry about it because we’ve talked to so many business owners who say, “I want to make a change.” It could be a simple change of a word on their website, but they are not allowed access to the backend of their website. If you’re searching for a website, ask the web designer, “Do I get access to the content management system?” You should get access to it. If not, pay for the access to it because it’s going to work out a lot better in the long run because you don’t want to be making small changes and being charged a horrendous amount for doing so. It just makes people so angry and I totally get why.

Absolutely. This is something that we find with really kind of like codey web designers. “We want to hard code everything and you’re just a business owner. You shouldn’t be accessing the website. If you want me to do it, I’ll do it for you and I’ll make sure you don’t break anything.” But there is a balance there. You should have access to be able to make basic changes such as text changes. I want to add an image. I might want to change some information on the contact page. You should be able to do the bare minimum without having to pay for a web designer to do it.

But I would say that most of the things on your website obviously you probably have to pay for to update if you want to change the layout or the images. But if you don’t have any access at all, that’s a bad sign there.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, of course, there’s some things. If you’ve had purposefully designed your homepage and you’ve got actual specialist designs that are bespoken from scratch, that’s kind of hard for you to change. You should be able to go in, edit the text, maybe change some images on your further pages on your website. Maybe add further pages and things like that. You should be able to do those things, so certainly ask your web designer about that. It is sometimes a way of some web designers making extra money.

It is.

That they can charge you when you need to change your telephone number or something ridiculous like that. Make sure you do have access. Another thing is the use of jargon which we see all the time which irritates us. HTML and CSS and PHP. If web designers are mentioning all these things on their websites and you’re like, “Oh, this sounds very technical. This sounds very confusing-

These guys must be right for me.

… These guys know what they’re talking about,” then they just don’t have respect for you because they’re not explaining things in a way that you will understand. It’s like when I go to a garage, or both us, a car garage because we know nothing about cars, do we?

No. I’m not even ashamed to say that I know nothing.

Nothing. If the guy was like, “There’s something wrong with the left falange, you need to pay £500,” we’d be like, “Oh, okay. I don’t know what that is, so I’m just going to pay it,” but you kind of feel like you were being ripped off a bit I think. It’s kind of the same thing with web designers. We do get into this sort of or I’ve seen a lot of web designers get into this sort of codey language on their website. There’s no need for it at all.

I don’t actually understand why they do it. I mean it’s just crazy. It’s like when people put on the wrappers the ingredients. It comes with all of this like blah, blah, blah.

All the different names for sugar.

Yeah, exactly. It’s like I don’t really care about it. Just tell me exactly is it healthy? Is it not healthy? This is part of the problem with using language like this is because they know that you don’t know what it means. It’s just they put it in there to make themself, “Oh, well, we’re specialists because we know what this jargon means.” I can’t remember the last time we mentioned HTML or CSS on our website because it doesn’t actually mean anything to anybody, so it’s a waste of space. We are quite pretentious about that I think. We don’t want to waste any space on our website. Why would we put something on there that has no relevance to anybody?

I think it might even be an ego thing for them.

I think so.

They want to impress other web designers, but if a web designer’s got other web designers in mind or other designers in mind and not you, then that’s not the kind of person that you want to work with. That’s something to think about definitely. Another thing that a lot of web design agencies do for some strange reason is not put their faces on their business.

Hermits.

Hermits. Yeah. They are hermity. A lot of them. It’s difficult I think when you’re looking at a website and you can’t actually see who you’re going to work with. It’s kind of off-putting and you don’t really know who it is. Sometimes they’ll put cartoon images and things like that, but it’s very, very difficult I think not to see sort of who someone is. They’ll kind of hide away. I’d just do some further digging as to what kind of agency they are. I wouldn’t say it was a major point, but I would say do some further research.

I think people naturally are a little bit more timid about putting their face on their website like many of the listeners to the show. It’s just if you’re going to be picking up the phone and speaking to somebody, every time you phone, every time you want a question about your website or you need some help with it, you’re probably going to be speaking maybe one or two different people. What’s wrong with actually showing your face on your website?

More often than not, we see agencies do this all the time where they’ll just use like big agency stock images or they’ll use like a weird video that makes it feel like it’s this big exclusive agency when really it’s just Jenny who … She started up a web design agency in the back of her Truman. That’s all well and good if you’re open and honest about it.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean Jenny might be perfect for some people. But if she’s pretending to be a big large web design agency, then that’s not going to work because you think you’re investing in one thing when actually you’re not.

Exactly. It’s more misleading than anything else, which is exactly why we wanted to include it in the list.

Yeah, definitely. Another thing is sort of using an obscure content management system. Now what we mean by that is using a kind of content management system, so the backend of your website, that hasn’t really been heard of before. Now you may have heard of things like Magento, WordPress, Shopify, things like that, Joomla, and that’s fine if you’ve heard of those things. But if you’ve not heard of the content management system, just do a little bit more research. The reason we use WordPress is because it’s so popular and well-trusted.

If you have a problem with your website and me and Martin get hit by a bus, I don’t know why we’re getting hit by a bus, but let’s say we get hit by a bus.

Are you planning on it? She is the most skeptical I must admit.

It means that you can actually google a problem about … Someone on the internet will have answered the question about WordPress because it is so popular. Agencies that use sort of very specialist content management systems, quite unique ones, you’re reliant on them a bit more to help you. You haven’t got that outside resource. You can’t just go to YouTube and watch loads of videos and things like that to actually help you with it. You are relying on them a lot more. That can be a little bit of a warning sign, but as I said, it’s not a major point.

You just want to do a little bit more research on that content management system that they’re using.

Because it kind of ties you in. I mean we remember a few years ago actually when we used to like bid for work and stuff like that and go up against other agencies. There was an agency that used something … I don’t even think I heard of it, but they insisted that all of the websites they built … This was a big agency. Clearly they just wanted to tie you in. They knew that most people will be out there recommending WordPress. If they built on this obscure content management system that nobody ever heard of, then it would literally tie you in.

If you ever wanted to leave, other web designers don’t do it, so you’ll have to pay them the £500 a year hosting fees, whatever they were charging.

That’s a really good point because if you need to leave them, move to another agency, we’ve had people come to us who have a WordPress website and we can kind of take it over and look at it. But if you have a really obscure content management system, a web designer might say, “You know, I’m not used to this,” it becomes more difficult definitely.

Absolutely.

Another one is having a questionable portfolio. Check out the web designer’s portfolio. Have a look at the kind of websites that they’re designing. As you go on the websites themselves, do have an understanding that when people take over their websites, they can change it. What the web designers featured on their portfolio can look different on the actual website if the owner of the website has changed some certain elements, but you’ll get a sense really of what kind of level they’re at, what kind of websites they’re designing, what kind of industries they also specialize in as well. If they do a lot luxury brand websites and you’re a luxury brand, perfect.

That’s starting to look quite good. But if they do something completely different, if they do a lot of online shops and you’re something else, then you might just want to have a look at that really.

If they’re ticking a lot of boxes for you and the one kind of problem might be the portfolio, then reach out to them and say, “Is this up to date?” Because we know ourselves, finding the time to update your portfolio can be tricky. We’ve got loads of websites that we’ve built over the past six months and we’ve not just had the time to add them. It might be worth actually reaching out to some of these agencies and saying, “Look, I’m a personal brand or I own an online shop. I see that you sell online shops, but I can’t see any on your portfolio. Please could you send me a few that you’ve done so that I can actually have a peak?”

There’s nothing wrong with that. It shows that you’re interested and you’re doing your research and you’re being due diligent.

The web designer will appreciate it because they’ll go, “I really need to update my portfolio.”

Exactly. Exactly. If they ever get a chance.

Yes. That’s a really, really good point. Yeah. Not to rely on it completely. Just to actually ask as well. That’s a really good point. Another problem that a lot of people have with agencies is there’s no kind of discovery phase is what a lot of agencies call it.

This is so important.

What we call it too. If an agency or a freelancer doesn’t really talk about how they’re going to find out more about your business and what we mean by this is we have a discovery phase with our clients where we talk about who’s your target audience, what do you want to achieve from your website, what kind of goals do you have for your business in the next five years. We delve into all about their brand and all about their business. We really get to know a lot about them in this phase. The only way that you can design a good website for a business is by doing this discovery.

If a web designer doesn’t really indicate that they do that, that’s kind of a warning sign really that they’re not very invested in your business.

This is something you’ll tend to find when you start spending a little bit more on your website. The agency that you hire for £500 might not even know what a discovery phase is. Whereas the agency that might charge 5,000 might actually understand that this is a vital aspect to the web design process. It’s funny because when we do discovery phase, sometimes due to clients going on holiday, things like that, we could get delayed up to six months when we’re building a website.

It makes it great because if a client’s ready to go live with their website and we say, “But in the discovery phase you wanted a video live brought into your website. We’ve got it written down here,” and they’re like, “Oh yeah. I did want that,” and then we can build it for them and it worked well.

Yeah, definitely.

But if you don’t have a discovery phase and you’re completely reliant on, “This is what you said you want via this email and this is fine. That’s what I’ve built for you,” and you’ll be like, “Well, I’ve got all of these amazing business goals and these big ideas,” but you’re not going to get a website potentially that will allow you to do that unless you have a really in depth discussion with your web designer before you hire them.

Yeah, definitely. I would actually say just as a caveat really, it really does depend on how much you’re spending. I mean if you have a budget for 300 quid, you’ve got to be realistic. You can’t expect someone to spend hours trying to understand your business because then they’re going to be on, I don’t know, four quid an hour or something.

Might as well work at Marky’s.

Yeah, by the time they’ve actually finished everything. You do have to be a bit more realistic with that. But if you are spending a bit more money, then it’s something that I would expect from a web design agency certainly.

That’s quite interesting actually because it brings us quite nicely onto pricing. Is there anything pricing related that we can look for on an agency’s website?

We are huge believers of putting our prices on our website, even just an indicator because our prices vary depending on what people need, and people need a lot of extra things going into their website, which adds the price on, but we have a minimum package that we sort of advertise on our website. A lot of web designers don’t display their prices on their website. It annoys me, but I won’t say that it’s an indicator of a bad web designer because it isn’t.

It’s just so like you kind of think people copy each other. People are like, “I can’t really give a price because it’s a bespoke service and it depends on what you need,” but what you’re saying is, “Give people an indicator.” That’s all.

I would like it if web designers gave people an indicator, but they don’t. But what really irritates me and sort of shows me that you’re a bad web designer is when web designers make you jump through hoops for prices. I mean if someone gets in touch if someone calls, if you call a web designer and you kind of don’t still have an indicator of price after that phone call, that initial phone call or email, then it’s very, very difficult I think to start trusting them. If they want to have more meetings with you, if they want to have like three or four meetings before they actually give you a price, that’s going to be very, very irritating for you.

I think it’s a big warning sign really. I only say this because I used to work for a university and I had to find a website. I had a budget. I was going to quite large agencies. Actually getting a price out of them was so difficult. In the end, it was just sort of they were asking, “Well, what’s your budget? What’s your budget? What’s your budget,” and all they wanted to know was what was my maximum and then they said, “Oh, believe it or not, that’s exactly how much we’re going to charge.” That process took about four weeks and it was just so irritating. It was just very, very awkward for me.

It’s because they don’t respect your time as much as they respect theirs. It’s this old fashion sales mentality, which is tell me what you can afford and I will work out a deal for you. There is a simple way to do this. Just say, “Look, I don’t know what I’m supposed to pay for a website. I don’t even have a budget in mind. What is the average, what is the minimum that generally you take on clients for?” You can ask these kind of questions. I’m not going to tie you into anything, but I don’t have a clue. I don’t have the foggiest how much it should cost for a website.

We find a lot of people have said that to us in the past and that’s exactly why we put a minimum price on there. We are a lot more expensive than some other agencies, so it would make no sense whatsoever for us to just have an hour long conversation with every single person if we know that they literally don’t have that much money.

Yeah, definitely. Oh, sorry. I think as well that’s a really good point about you asking what the average is because if someone ask what our average price for a website is, we’d be able to answer them within the click of our fingers really, giving them sort of an approximate average, but yeah. When a web design agency is looking to take you through lots of hoops for prices, that’s when it gets difficult. Understandably, they have to understand what exactly what you need because a basic website is very different if someone needs a lot of extra sort of software or extra sort of page designs and things like that.

That does add on to the price. You’ve got to expect a web designer maybe to ask you some probing questions, but if it’s taking a lot of time, certainly if it’s taking weeks, then that’s a sign that they’re not respecting you as Martin said. These are just a few things that may give you an indication of what kind of web designer someone is, but the best thing for you to do is to try and find someone who is going to move your business forward and who you can actually connect with and have a good kind of relationship with. I mean our clients, we’re actually quite close to our clients, aren’t we, because we find out so much about their business, don’t we?

Yeah, exactly. It’s just a more enjoyable agency for us to run I suppose. That’s why we do it that way. But like you say, a lot of that comes down to we know you might have these concerns, we know you might be looking at our portfolio, we know you might have a budget in mind, you might not know exactly what you want to spend and that’s exactly why we’re putting off a lot of work into our website to make the communication easier for you to understand as well. It’s exactly why we don’t put HTML and MySQL and all that kind of codey stuff on our website because we always think about our visitors more than we think about our competitors I suppose.

But yeah, those are the things that we found over the years of people … Mistakes that people might make.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Okay. I hope you found this episode useful. I know many of our listeners are building their own websites, so it should help. I hope you found that episode useful. If you are looking for a web design agency, then hopefully there is lots of information in this episode that you’ll be able to use when you’re out there looking for one. Please check out the Website Buyer’s Guide. Again it’s not a sales pitch. It’s a tool that you have to be able to print off and go through and take your time with because a website’s such a big money investment, but also a massive time investment as well. You don’t want to make a bad buying decision.

Hope you found that episode useful. If you are not a part of our free Facebook group, then feel free to check it out. Every Wednesday afternoon we do some free website critiques where we review your website for around 10 minutes telling you what you can do to improve it. We’d love you to check it out, if you go to jammydigital.com/facebook. That’s it for today’s episode. See you next time on the Make Your Mark Online Podcast.

Site Ground Website Hosting

The post Ep 16 – Warning signs of a bad web designer appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 15 – How much does it cost to build your own WordPress website?

Martin & Lyndsay — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 19:38:22 +0000

Building your own website is much cheaper than hiring a web designer. However, sometimes there are hidden or unexpected costs to building your own website.

In this episode, we walk you through how much you’re likely to spend if you DIY your own website and where the best places are to invest your money.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- When you should build your site yourself rather than hire an agency
- The danger of ‘free’ domains
- The difference between expensive and cheap hosting
- Should you get a free WordPress theme?
- The difference in prices and where you should invest your money
- The additional cost of plugins

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

1.05 – When should you build your own website?
4.50 – Domain names and costs
8.18 – How much would you expect to pay for hosting
10.09 – How much does a WordPress theme cost
14.39- How much do plugins cost?
17.01 – What do page builders cost?
20.09 – Being wary of annual charges
Useful Resources and Links

Episode One Podcast: Should You DIY Your Website?

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

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 and Lindsey.

Welcome to episode 15 of the Make your mark online podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about how much it costs to build your own WordPress website. But before we get into the show, the podcast is sponsored by the Make your mark online membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. The doors to the membership are now closed but you can check out the details at Makeyourmarkonline.net and you can join the wait list and we’ll notify you as soon as possible when the doors open again.

Okay so let’s get on with the show. So today we’re talking about the cost involved if you choose to build your own website using WordPress, but I suppose my first question would be why would you want to build your own website?

Yeah it sounds strange coming from a web design agency [inaudible 00:01:03] build your own website-

Just a little bit.

But we have spoken about this quite a lot in the past and we are strongly in favor of you building your own website. If you’re limited on funds. You can’t really afford to hire an agency to build your website, then you’re left with no option than to build your own website. And not only that as well is if you are just starting out, sometimes your business can shift quite a lot within the first six to 12 months and if the first thing you do is go and pay a web designer, then your business shifts or changes. Then you may have to essentially pay a web designer again, a year down the line just because your business has shifted. So it’s a nice exercise actually to start by watching a few youtube videos, learning a bit about it and then actually taken some action yourself.

Definitely. We actually talked about this in episode one of our podcast where we say, when is the right point to actually hire a web designer and it’s a lot further along than people think, what we advise anyway. So I think you should check that episode actually as well if you haven’t listened to it yet. Okay so let’s get into it. How much can we expect to pay to build our own websites?

Well this is where it gets interesting because there’s not one set price, it doesn’t kind of bundle itself in and say you know, you just pay 50 pounds and you can have a new website. There are lots of different factors that go into it. So for example, a domain name that’s like your website.com, that will cost a certain amount depending on where you get it from. You then have hosting, which is where you actually rent space on the internet so that you can actually have a website. There’s things like content management systems like WordPress, some of them are premium content management systems. You have to be careful, but some of those do come with a cost.

Your WordPress theme, so the style and the design of your website, you’ll need to buy a theme potentially. And some of those come with a cost and a price tag not something else, plugins. So these act as like little add ons to your website so that you can achieve better features. These sometimes are chargeable, so some of them are free, some of them are not. And we’ll be getting into this in the show. There’s also the possibility of page builders, which is kind of an assistant for you to build website pages easily. So you can use drag and drop features and some of those come with a price tag as well.

Okay. So that sounds like a lot, when you actually lay it out there and I think a lot of people probably go into sort of building their own website, seeing perhaps something on Wix where it says, you can have your website for 14.99 or whatever it is and actually become a little bit more surprised about how the costs adopts. So is it really expensive? How expensive are we talking?

Well it can be. You can actually get started for free. This is the thing, for you to actually launch a website and get started. There are a few free options. There’s also a few options if you’ve got a little bit of a budget and then obviously you can spend as much as you physically want with the website. So the point of this episode is to make you feel, it’s okay if you don’t have a big budget right now, there are a few options available, but the more that you can spend here and there, the better it’s going to be for you and the more potential customers that you can reach. Because there are a few features that you might prefer to invest in now, and actually see a return on that investment sooner rather than spending far too much time on free stuff. And then it takes far longer to actually see results.

And in that time you’re not gaining anything from clients, you’re not moving your business forward and anything like that. So yeah, it’s kind of weighing up that time and money thing, isn’t it really? Okay. So let’s firstly start with the domain. You mentioned domain, so how much do they normally cost?

So the first option you have when it comes to a domain name is you can actually get a free domain name providing that you don’t mind using the company name within your domain name. So mywebsite.WordPress.com or mywebsite.wix.com, that’s the kind of thing that you might have seen online and it’s because that website owner has not paid for that domain name.

Right.

So you can actually buy a domain name. They are only cheat. They’re only 10 pounds a year, and some of them are more expensive, if you have a domain that’s already been paid for before by somebody else, if it’s a really popular one, they could potentially sell it back to you. And that’s where it can get really expensive. We’ve seen big companies in the past acquire domains just for the sake of owning it. Some people have paid over 100000 pounds or millions potentially to buy domain names that they really, really want. So that’s not what we’re talking about. If you can find a domain that’s not been registered then you can generally register it for around 10 or $20 or pounds a year.

Okay. And would you say that would be somewhere where you would invest? You would say to yourself, “Okay, yeah, I can get it for free, but I’m going to look a little bit more professional if I do actually invest in something that is 10, 20 pound per year?”

I think so. I mean for the price of it, I think you’d be silly not to. I mean if you take on one customer, just one customer over the year, then you’ve probably paid for your domain multiple times over. So I think for us I can’t imagine a scenario where somebody thinks it’s actually going to be better for me to register a domain name for 10 pounds a year. I might as well-

Yeah. I think it’s an automatic signal isn’t when someone has .WordPress.com that they’ve not invested in that business or it kind of confuses people. It looks quite odd. So yeah, I totally agree. I think it’s worth spending that little bit of money and getting an actual proper domain.

And not only that as well is that when you actually have one of these company names inside your domain name, you don’t actually own that domain name. So when you’re working on your website, you’re building up quite an authority blog maybe, and you’re getting lots of back links and people sharing it at the end of the day, you can’t do anything with that credit. Google credit in that domain name, and that’s not your domain name that’s owned by.WordPress.com. So that’s another reason if you’re going to spend time and money and effort into it, then buy the bloody domain name.

Buy the bloody domain name, that’s the one key takeaway from today’s episode. So what about hosting then? I mean, there’s so many variants with hosting. So what’s the best route for people to go down with that? How expensive is it?

Well, again, much like the domain name, you can get started for free potentially depending on what tool did you use. But again, WordPress.com, you know the managed WordPress, that potentially does come with free hosting. But again, it’s a case of what features you have available, how much time it’s going to take, hosting isn’t the expensive part of building a website. I mean you could pay 20, $30 a year for hosting or you could pay closer to 100 depending on what level of support and service you need. And that’s what it comes down to generally, you tend to find that the cheaper options don’t come with as much support or guidance and you may potentially have issues with site speed and stuff like that.

Okay. So, I mean we always recommend a company called Site Ground only for hosting-

Absolutely. Yeah. Because they are more affordable than most, but also they have really, really good support. So you can expect to pay closer to the 100 mark for a year of hosting with Site Ground, 70, 80 pounds will probably get you a years hosting, and that support is phenomenal. I mean you can use live chat and they are usually there within 30 seconds and yeah, it’s great. If you want to check them out just go to jammydigital.com/hosting, check them out. Have a chat with him, live chat, ask them if they can help and they’re more than happy to help you on a presale basis as well before you actually give them any money. They’ll answer a few questions for you and potentially move your site over if it’s hosted elsewhere. So it is a great tool.

Yeah. Definitely. And I think it’s again weighing up that time versus money isn’t it and how much time you want to take to look into hosting and sort of set it up? There’s many different variances how long it’ll take.

Yeah, absolutely. And there is the third option which is you can have kind of really premium hosting. So there are some companies that people might prefer to pay 25 pound a month plus. These are more expensive naturally, but they do come with an extra layer of support as well. Companies like WP engine, Fly wheel, these are the kind of more pricey options that you might opt for and that come with an extra layer of support and guidance and not something potentially you might want. If you don’t want to do anything yourself, it all depends because Site Ground will help you and point you in the right direction. But if you actually want someone to do it for you and you just want to send the support ticket off, then you might want to actually spend a little bit more.

Okay, that’s really interesting. So yeah, and again, there’s variants, so like the domain and the sort of free, middle and expensive option there. So what about the theme? You mentioned themes before and how expensive are they? What are we talking?

Well, themes are something that you could potentially use a free version of. So there are lots and lots and lots of themes within WordPress that will allow you to install it, have a play around with it, and actually have your website up without actually buying a theme at all. There’s a big plugin and theme library for you to be able to use on WordPress itself. And you can have a good look through those themes. Maybe do a Google search and say the best WordPress themes of 2018 and actually have a good look through. The only problem with those themes is you don’t get any support whatsoever. I mean, there is kind of an open forum in WordPress that you can ask questions about, but because you’re not paying anything, you can’t really expect them to get back to you that quickly.

No.

So that’s the only problem with free WordPress themes. Plus this is another area that I think you should invest in, especially because you can actually get a theme for really, really cheap, 20 or $30 up to 50, $60. You can really get some amazing templates or themes. And those actually come with support. So it is important that you do invest in that because you need to know how to change the things on your website, you need to know that you’re going to get the latest updates to that theme if they release any updates. That’s another good thing about it. And for the sake of even 50, 60 pounds, absolutely. I recommend buying a template. If you starting out though, it’s not the end of the world if you have to use a free one.

So with the, you said it was either 60 pound maximum for a decent theme. Is that per year sometimes? Or is that just an outright cost?

Well, some of them, it’s an outright cost, however, some of them, and this is where you got to be careful, some of them will allow you to use the theme forever, but you’ll only get updates for a year unless you pay each year.

Right.

So there’s that to weigh up as well.

So you’ve got to look out for that really and seeing how much it will be annually going forward?

Yeah, definitely. But like I say, it’s relatively cheap and it will have a massive impact on your user experience when they visit your website, if you actually have a good looking website and it’s a very quick way to actually achieve a great website just by paying 50 quid for a new theme. And in some instances as well. And we’ve noticed this in the past, is this is potentially what your web designer might do anyway. We’ve spoken to lots of people in the past where they’ve spent 500 to 1000 pounds on a website and the web designers said to them, it’s actually gone to be a theme at this price. So I’m gonna look around for you. I’m going to get a nice high quality theme and this is what I’ll be building on your website, which isn’t a problem-

No not at all

I don’t have to tell you about it. It’s when they don’t tell you that they’ve used the theme and they’ve charge you that much. But it’s more than anything if you can do this yourself and cut out the middle man, you might save yourself a few hundred pounds.

Yeah, definitely or potentially a lot more really, and particularly if a website designer is charging you 1000 pounds or whatever-

yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, that’s not to say there’s not work involved with it though. There is-

No yeah, absolutely.

There is work actually involved in changing a theme and making it your own, but we always advise, it’s kind of worth doing because you get that experience of WordPress and all that learning that you do is so valuable for the future because you’re able to update your website constantly for the future. You don’t have to rely on a web designer every single time you want to make a text changed on your website or change something on your website. It’s very, very powerful that you do learn that stuff.

Exactly. And there is a third option. Obviously you can spend as much as you want on a theme. Some themes will set you back over 100 pounds. So $120 I think, there’s plenty of things out there that will cost 150, maybe 200. And these usually they’re direct from the maker. And you’ve got a kind of ongoing support with them. Some of them even charge you a monthly fee to have access to the theme, if they offer quite a considerable support as well. So it might be kind of 30 pounds a month and you’ve got access to all our themes and you can email us whenever you like. So there’s that option as well if you’d like to change things around quite a lot.

Okay. So you also mentioned plugins as well. How much do they cost?

Well, you’ve got a lot of plugins available for free and you should always start with the free plugins, so this is one where we’re like, use the free ones if they’re available. But you can potentially spend a lot time looking for plugins. So let’s just say for instance you want an events plugin, you want to actually list events on your website and you need a way of displaying them easily so people can view the different events. You can find lots and lots of plugins that will allow you to do this for free. However, you may find that if it’s important enough, you actually do need some ongoing support. So usually what you can do is you can try the plugin for free, see if you like it and then you’ll notice that in the back end of WordPress you might be able to upgrade it for 30 pounds or $30, and actually get a premium our pro version of that a plugin.

So that might be something you want to do if it’s important enough, but for the most part you can install your SEO plugins for free with Yoast, you can install a 301 redirect plugins, you can install free social media sharing plugins. But you can always upgrade if you feel as though it’s important enough. But we use lots of free plugins on our websites and our clients’ websites and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. As long as you do your due diligence and you check out the reviews, you make sure they are compliant and they’re actually built well.

Yeah, definitely. And it’s good also to look at the last time it was updated, wasn’t it?

Yes.

We always look for plugins that were updated very recently because that means the developer is making sure that they’re free of any books and things like that and they’re compatible with the latest version of WordPress. So it’s always good to check out how recently they’ve been updated. If it says last updated 2012, then definitely avoid that one. Yeah. So that’s a really good point. I think there’s a theme actually building really where you can see sort of if you’re going for free, you’re not going to get any support with it. If you’re going for this sort of middle one, you get a little bit of support, but you do it yourself and if you go for the more expensive one, generally someone will either for you or you’ll get a lot of assistance. So yeah, I can see that theme running through. So finally you mentioned page builders, what about page builders? How expensive are they? How are they different?

Yeah, so you might want to use a page builder if you need a little bit more control over the design of each of the pages on your website. So page builders are things like Divi, Visual composer, you’ve got Elemental, you’ve got Thrive themes, you’ve got Beaver builder. These are all page builders that you can actually go out and install on your website that will allow you to use drag and drop features. We generally don’t recommend people use a page builder unless you absolutely need to, partly because you know they can potentially slow your website down. You’re adding this extra big bulky thing to your website, and if you don’t really need it, then we recommend don’t using it. However, if you are struggling with the normal WordPress editor and you need something with a little bit more control. Then by all means, you can install a few page builders.

Some of them you can start for free, Elemental, which is absolutely fantastic if we’re being honest, it’s one of the better ones. They actually offer a free version that you can install on your website and have a play around with it. That way you can drag things around and drop them and you’ve not paid anything for it. You can always uninstall it if you don’t like it, and obviously there’s a premium version of that that you can use. So that’s one option.

You can also choose to pay a little bit upfront for one of these page builders. So Thrive themes, you can start for around $67, I think it is at the minute or Divi, which is around $ 89 I believe, but some of them are more complicated than others. Some of them might take you more time. It’s up to you what you need out of it. But feel free to tell us what you need in the Facebook group as well. That’s what it’s there for. If you are saying you’re looking for a page builder and this is why, then we can generally recommend which page builder’s going to be better for you. And it can be a bit frustrating if you just paid out for something that everybody’s recommending, but it’s not relevant to you. So feel free to use our Facebook group for that.

Yeah, I’ll drop the links into the show notes on our website. But yeah, it’s an interesting one with page builders because I think they look so easy. Don’t they? And particularly when you’ve watched the videos and you see kind of how easy it is to drag and drop. I think in reality, and I found this myself because I used Divi this year for something. And I did find it a little bit frustrating I think, the amount of time actually took to actually sort of get used to it was quite a long time really. And that’s someone who’s quite experienced with more web design. So yeah, I think it’s just something to be quite cautious of. And if you can try it out for free first like with Elemental, then that’s a good option. So you can see if it works well for you.

Yeah. But they are kind of all a similar price really, you can expect to pay less than $100 for a plugin at least to get started to allow you to use drag and drop features. So yeah, you can start for free, but you can expect to pay up to $100 if you need that.

And is that, [inaudible 00:20:04]so much you charged yearly for that?

Yeah.

Yeah. It’s something to be wary of isn’t it?

Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Because I think sometimes you think, oh, it’s $100, and then next year it comes out of your account and you thinking what was that? So yeah, do check out if it is actually yearly, I think a lot of them are an annual charge. So make sure you keep an eye on that when you’re actually looking at buying them.

Yeah. So to sum everything up really, I think it’s a case of how much time versus money you’d like to invest. So if you know what you need to get a domain name or you might already have one, but you just need to get hosting and maybe you’ve got $50 to spend on a theme, then great, you can start quite cheap. It’s not going to cost you more than 100 to $150 a year at least to get started with hosting because that’s an annual fee. But if you wanted to go, I want lots of plugins and I want all of these fancy features and I’m going to use a page builder as well. Then costs might set you back around four or $500 depending on what you want to invest. It all depends on you and how much time versus money. We absolutely don’t recommend that you stay on any free plans for long.

If you’ve got a free domain, if you’ve got free hosting, use it to get to know the systems, use it to get to know plugins and how those all work and then as soon as possible, get a proper hosting account. Get a proper domain and get a relatively nice looking template, it’s relatively cheap. And that’s usually where most people stay because there’s so many free plugins available. People don’t like paying for plugins when they need to, but for some features on your website, especially if it’s a pinnacle part of your website and your business, like you might run an events business or you might say, “You know, I’m actually going to spend $50 on this plugin for events.”

It might work out instead of using something like Event Brite which takes a percentage.

Exactly.

In the long run, that might be more financially viable. Definitely.

Exactly. So there’s longer term financial benefits as well for spending money now and then reaping the benefits later.

Yeah, definitely. Okay. Well that was a really interesting episode I think. And hopefully we’ve given you some ideas of how much it will cost, which is brilliant. So if you didn’t already know, we do actually have a free Facebook group. We’d love you to join. Just head over to Jammydigital.com/Facebook. You can ask us any questions in there. Any questions you’ve had from this podcast episode, just fire away in there. Every Wednesday we review websites for free and this is usually a paid service where we offer, but at the minute we are doing a number of these for free little mini website critiques in our Facebook group. So that’s it for today’s episode. We’ll see you next time on the Make your mark online podcast.

The post Ep 15 – How much does it cost to build your own WordPress website? appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 14 – How to appeal to more than one audience on your website

Martin & Lyndsay — Tue, 09 Oct 2018 20:55:59 +0000

Trying to appeal to more than one target audience on your website is tricky.

It’s difficult to make sure our message connects with each audience we’re targeting. For example, a recruitment agency must appeal to businesses to work with, but they must also attract good candidates too. How would they go about appealing to both audiences on the one website?

There are methods of achieving this and it’s something we carefully consider when we build websites.

In this episode, we walk-through the ways you can do this successfully.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- Examples of business who appeal to more than one audience
- Should you set up a new website for your separate audiences?
- When you should set up your own website and when you shouldn’t
- How to signpost your particular audience to the right place on your website
- Using CTAs and your big, bold statement to appeal to more than one audience
- Do you need different layouts and page designs for different audiences?

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

1.18 – Who would need to consider more than one audience on their website?
2.39 – Is it worth setting up a new website for each target audience?
5.52 – How to signpost people to the right page on your website
6.45 – Using your CTAs to direct your end users
7.52 – How to write a big, bold statement for multiple audiences
9.50 – Getting your promo area to direct people to the right place
10.39 – Having unique pages per service
11.00 – What to write on the services pages to appeal to your audiences
13.42 – Thinking about your users’ journey
14.12 – Do you need different page designs for different audiences?

Useful Resources and Links

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to the Make Your Mark Online Podcast, where we help personal brands building grow a successful business website.

Please welcome your hosts, husband and wife team, Martin and Lyndsay.

Welcome to Episode 14 of the Make Your Mark Online Podcast. Today, we’re gonna be talking about how you can use your website to appeal to numerous audiences.

But before we get into that, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online Membership. This is our signature membership community, where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. This actually launched on Monday, the 1st of October, and we’ll be closing the doors on the 14th of October, 10:00 p.m. in UK time. So, if you wanna get in at the lowest possible price ever, then visit makeyourmarkonline.net We won’t be opening the doors until January, and then we’re gonna be charging $39 a month. So, save yourself $10 a month if you sign up before the 14th.

So, let’s get into the show!

So, today we’re talking about our websites, and what we can do with them if we have a number of different audiences, different target audiences. So, Lyndsay.

Yes.

Why would somebody want to do this, or need to do it?

Well, actually, it’s more common than you think. And we’ve come across it so many times with our clients, and people that we talk to on a regular basis. A lot of business owners have to think about completely different audiences for their products.

So, recently, we had one lady ask about this in our Facebook group. She’s a fitness trainer and dance teacher who came up with a kind of like a new exercise routine. And her website needed to appeal to two audiences.

So, the first one was actually just getting customers through the doors to her fitness studio. But the second one was other fitness trainers looking for a new routine that she could franchise to.

Got it.

So, they had completely different goals. There was the customers who were looking to get fitter and healthier in like a fun way, and then there was the fitness trainers, who were looking for a new routine they could use to get more customers.

So, that’s completely different. And their needs were completely different. And there’s loads of examples of this. Kind of like if you think about recruitment agencies. You know, they’ve gotta appeal to the candidates, where they get people’s CVs and information. But they’ve also gotta appeal to businesses. You know the people that actually pay them and, you know, the people that they want to work with, and provide candidates for.

So, there’s a lot of examples of this. And this is something that comes up time and time again, and a question we get asked quite a lot.

Yeah. So, we see this when we’re building websites as well. Lots of our clients have different segments of their audience that they need to appeal to. And one of the questions that we get asked quite a lot is whether or not it’s worth setting up an additional website for the audience.

Is that the right thing to do?

It’s an interesting one. It’s always really tricky when people ask should they open another website. I’ve know business owners with five or six websites. And the difficulty is, is that websites take a lot of work. Or should I say, they should take a lot of work because, you know, you need to be updating your website constantly. You need to be adding content. You need to be driving traffic to that content. And that takes an awful lot of work. I mean, we know just having one website, that it takes a lot of work. Having more than one is difficult. It is tricky. So, you have to think very carefully about whether it’s worth setting up a brand new website for your separate service with a separate audience.

Yeah, exactly. And we’ve actually just been through this with our new membership. So, our agency, obviously, as you guys know is Jammy Digital. This is where we build websites, and we help people redesign or start a brand new business, and they need a website.

So, when we launched the membership, we had to think long and hard whether or not we wanted to include the membership on the main website, or whether or not we’d set it up elsewhere. And again, it’s not an easy decision, but in the end we decided, you know, it needs its own home. It needs its own membership site. It needs its own face, and its own branding.

So, although it’s very closely linked, it is separate.

Yeah, definitely. And that’s a really good point, actually, Martin. It needed its own brand. So, I think that’s always a clear indicator as to whether you need another website. Because if something needs its own brand, it needs its own close, it needs its own logo, it needs lots of pages of content, you know, that kind of thing, then that’s a good indicator that yes, it probably will work on another website.

If it just needs a page, and it can kind of fit into your brand already, then you might just wanna look at having it housed on your website itself. Because like we said, there’s a lot of work. You have two websites, that’s automatically double the work there.

Yeah. And that’s twice as much marketing, that’s twice as much Facebook posts, that’s twice as much LinkedIn-

Exactly.

… that’s another Twitter account, potentially.

Yeah, exactly.

So, I mean, we’ve very much kept it close to home. You know, we are using the same social media platforms. It’s just that we have Make Your Mark Online as a product, which is why it kind of works, because we can still kind of group it in, and talk about it on our main social media platforms.

We got away with it, didn’t we?

Yeah, exactly. But that’s what you can do if you create additional product within your business. But if you’re creating a separate business website altogether, then that’s where it might not be necessary. That’s what you’re saying.

Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

Okay. So, let’s say we want to use our existing website. We know we can do that. We just want to appeal to more than one audience. How can we actually go about it? What kind of tangible stuff can our listeners take away and action today?

Yeah, it’s a good question, actually, because a lot of people get this wrong, but it’s so, so simple to actually do. And it all starts with a homepage. I mean, we talk a lot about the homepage. We could talk for hours and hours about it. But we need to use this page to signpost people to the right places on your website.

If you think of yourself and your website like you’re kind of directing road traffic. So, imagine you’re just … stood in the middle of the road with your little whistle, and-

Yeah, don’t do that. It’s dangerous.

No, don’t do that, please. But imagine you are and, you know, you’re directing cars left and right, and straight on. That’s exactly what you need to do with your website. You need to sort of stand there and say, “Okay, you need to go over there. You need to go over there. And you need to go this way.” And people always get that wrong on their homepage, but that’s the biggest thing that you can do. If you’re appealing to more than one audience, then you need to quickly get them to the areas that they need to be on their website.

So, for example, we’ll often have two call-to-action buttons in the big, bold statement area. And, basically, the first third of the homepage, where you see it kind of straightaway. So, if I’m using a recruitment agency as an example, then you might have two buttons. One might say, “Looking for an exciting, new career.” The other might say, “Looking for the perfect candidate.” And automatically then, the audience knows, “Okay, I need to click on that button to get to the right place.”

It’s very, very, very simple, but a lot of people forget to do it.

Yeah. It does sound simple, but that’s because it is. I mean, we’re not talking rocket science here. We’re just talking about giving people the information that they need, and making it easy for them. And a minute ago, we were talking about redesigning an entire new website for a new business. But actually, just by labeling these buttons, and giving people that clear direction, that’s generally enough. That’s what you’re saying.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Perfect. It’s interesting, actually, that you mention the big, bold statement, because we talk about this a lot. But actually coming up with a big, bold statement is a little more tricky when you have two audiences, isn’t it?

Yeah, definitely. It is. So, just so our audience knows, a big, bold statement is essentially the sort of summary of your business, and what it is that you do. So as soon as someone lands on your website, they should be immediately hit by a sentence that kind of summarizes what it is that you do, so your audience knows they’re in the right place.

And, yes, if you are appealing to more than one audience, then this can be a little bit more tricky, ’cause you kind of have to be a little bit more vague with your big, bold statement, I think.

Yeah. So, it might take you a little bit longer than it normally would if you have a number of different audiences. But it is actually quite interesting because we did an episode just on the big, bold statement, and we’ll link to that in the show notes. And we came up with nine different ways to create a big, bold statement. And some of these, you can’t actually use if you have a number of audiences.

So, for example, if you do blog-writing services for start-ups. If that’s your products and service that you offer, and you have an additional audience, maybe you are trying to appeal to agencies, maybe you offer white label, then you can’t just say, “Blog-writing services for start-ups.” It’s important that you actually think about both of your audience.

And so, for instance, you might come up with something like, “Creating better content for the world,” or whatever. That’s a really bad example, but-

Yeah, but it’s about making it a little bit more … having that bit more broader appeal, isn’t it?

Yeah. So that you can reach the two audiences, I suppose. The more specific you go, the more direct you can go, which is great. But if you do have two audiences, then that’s when you have to kind of step back a little bit, and think about your communication, in general, what it is that you do.

Yeah. But then, if you have two buttons underneath that, so you have, you know, “Writing for start-ups,” or “White label service,” then it kind of clarifies then what it is that you do, and then gets people to the right place. So, you can start with a more broader, I think, big, bold statement. That’s absolutely fine.

And the promo area too. The promo area is essentially the area where you kind of house your services. So, normally, this is under the big, bold statement, and you have your sort of three or four key main services, and people can click on them and go to the right sort of page. So, that’s where you will, again, start to direct people where they need to go.

You don’t just do it once on your homepage. You kind of need to keep reminding people, “Okay, you’re here, and you need to go over here,” you know. It needs to be a constant reminder on your homepage. Get your audience to the right part of your website. We always say this: “Your homepage is just to get people to the next page of your website. That’s all you need to do.”

So, constantly remind them on your homepage to get to the next page of your website.

So, you mentioned all the pages, actually getting your visitor to another page on your website.

Yeah.

Are you saying that we should have a unique services page for each service?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think this is another thing that people get wrong. Because people just have, sometimes, just one page that kind of appeals to both audiences, which is-

Yeah, we see that a lot, don’t we? And especially on website critiques-

Yeah!

They kind of group their services and their audiences together, and-

Yes. Yeah. We’re constantly telling them, “Keep it separate.” Because there’s no point. You know, if you’re a recruitment agency, and you’ve got a candidate who’s looking for information about what jobs you’ve got, there’s no point in them learning about what you can do for companies. There’s absolutely no point in them even looking at that content. So, why are they on that page? You need completely separate pages. And you need to think about, on these separate pages, the kind of needs and problems that the people are having, that your audiences are having, and write that content specifically for them.

So, for example, on the page for people looking for a new career on a recruitment agency website, you need to say, “Okay, so you might be feeling underappreciated at work. You might be looking for something new. This is how we can help you.” Everything should be geared towards that person, and there should be no content that isn’t specifically for them on that page.

Yeah. This is where we come back to each of your web pages is kind of its own tool. It’s kind of its own salesperson, really, to get people to fill out the contact form or, in your example, submit your CV. Like you are the recruitment agency that I go in to find me a job that I am appreciated in. You’re talking about using your copy to convert these people to become leads.

Yeah. It’s not just your content as well, it’s actually everything on the page that you need to think about. So, if you were having testimonials on that page, don’t just have any random testimonials on there. So, if we take recruitment agency for an example, and you’ve got a candidate thinking, “Should I work with this recruitment agency? Will they find me a good career?” There’s no point in having a testimonial on there for some, you know, CEO of a big business. You’ve gotta have a testimonial on there from someone who was a candidate, who has found your service really helpful. And you’ve gotta think about all these things. If you’ve got links to your blog content on there, make sure it’s relevant for the actual person that’s on the page. So, you have to think about all these things, and really appreciate that every page on your website should be geared towards that particular audience segment. And this is even more important if you’re appealing to lots and lots of different audiences.

Yeah, ’cause each of these audiences has their concerns, their problems, that they faced in the past. And they have a … yeah, essentially, a problem that they need you to solve. And if you just start speaking to them in general terms about the fact that, “You know, we do recruitment, and we are great people.”

“We’ve done recruitment for 25 years,” and all that kind of stuff. No. Make it really specific. Exactly. Don’t make it general. The most of it can go on your individual pages on your website, the better. Definitely.

Yeah. It’s about thinking about your visitor and their journey. What journey are they going to go on? When I say journey, I don’t mean philosophical. I mean, actually, what pages are they gonna click on, what images are they gonna click on, what length, where they’re gonna go. And map out all of the different sort of points of that journey, until they get in touch, and then how you use their recruitment agency.

Exactly. Exactly, yes. Yeah.

So, this seems like quite a lot of work. That’s the only problem. That’s the only thing-

That is the only problem.

… our listeners might be concerned with. So, if they’re creating lots of page designs, and lots of different things for each audience, do they have to create a completely unique design? Are they gonna have to kind of contact the web designer, or create a new page completely?

No. Definitely not. And, you know, if you’ve got sort of different audiences, there’s no reason why you should have a completely different design. I mean, in an ideal world, it might be nice, it might work, but your time is precious. So, you can keep the same design. You have some content, you have some images, you have testimonial, you have links to your blog post. That’s absolutely fine, you know, to keep that on every page. Just make sure the content is different. Make sure the content and the call-to-actions speak to your individual audiences.

Yeah. So, think about your images, and what your audience are gonna connect to. It’s gonna be different things. It absolutely is.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. You just have to switch them out really. You have to switch out the content. You have to switch out the images. You probably have to switch out testimonials, and the blog content. But you don’t have to kind of make each page a different design.

No, it can follow the same layout, and structure.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Which is gonna save you a little bit of time. And know that it’s time-consuming this way, and know that it’s easier to talk in general terms, and have one page that tries to suit everyone. But it’s just not gonna convey as well. So, it’s worth putting the time and effort into actually thinking about your different audiences, exactly what they need, exactly what problems they’re facing, and writing specific pages for them.

Okay. Well, that all sounds quite achievable. I think it’s … We’ve given a few tips away there for somebody who does want to introduce additional audience, or is concerned that they might need to pay out for a new website. Clearly, you don’t. I mean, in most scenarios, we would very rarely recommend that someone has an additional website. It’s quite easy when you think about things the way that we’ve explained, to actually imagine how it might look if you do have completely different audiences. And, yeah, I think our listeners will find that valuable.

Yeah, definitely. I think it can seem very complicated, and kind of scary, but it’s not really. And if you think about like you said, your customer’s journey, that person’s journey, you know, starting at the home page, okay, how are they going to then try and get in touch with you? How are you gonna get them to do that? And what pages will they click on? What process will they take?

If you think about it from that point of view, you can easily kind of plot it out, generally, and get them to the right place.

So, hopefully, you found that episode useful. Let us know if you have any questions at all. Join the Facebook group as well. If you go to jammydigital.com/facebook And ask us any follow-up questions about it. We don’t ask this enough actually. Get involved in the community. Share a link to your website, and let us critique it. At the minute, we are doing free website critiques in our Facebook group every Wednesday afternoon at 4:00 p.m. And we’ll happily take a look at it, and point you in the right direction, and tell you how to improve it.

Don’t forget, there are only a few days left until we close the doors for three months for the Make Your Mark Online Membership. This is our signature membership program, where we teach personal brands how to build and grow a successful business website. We teach you all about WordPress. We teach you all about SEO. We teach you how to define your personal brand, and really build a website that you could be proud of as well.

So, check that out at makeyourmarkonline.net

And we’ll see you in the next episode!

The post Ep 14 – How to appeal to more than one audience on your website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 13 – Why we launched a membership and what’s inside

Martin & Lyndsay — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 20:31:55 +0000

We recently launched a membership community aimed at helping personal brands build and grow a website.

Since our launch, we’ve had so many questions from people about the membership, and it made sense to answer these in our latest podcast.

In this episode, we go through what’s included in the membership, who it’s for and why we started it.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- Why we decided to launch the membership
- What courses are included inside the membership?
- Who is the membership for?
- Who is the membership no for?
- How much does it cost?
- Do we have original content?

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

3.42 – Why did we set up the membership?
9.08 – What courses are included in the membership?
11.29 – Who is the membership for?
14.32 – Who is the membership not for?
17.51- How much does it cost?
18.36 – Can you join if you don’t use WordPress?
21.42 – How much support do you get?

Useful Resources and Links

The Membership Guys

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to the Make Your Mark Online podcast where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. Please welcome your hosts, husband and wife team, Martin and Lindsay.

Hello and welcome to episode 13 of the Make Your Mark Online podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking all about our new membership community.

Yeah we are.

Yeah we are. Because we have loads of questions from people and we really want to delve into what it’s all about.

But before I begin the podcast, the podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark Online membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website.

This has launched. It launched on the first of October 2018 and we’d love for you to check it out. You can check it out at MakeYourMarkOnline.net. The doors will only be open for two weeks so we will close them on the 14th of October. And it will be available at its lowest ever price so don’t miss out.

Okay. Let’s get on with the show.

So, it’s very exciting, isn’t it? Because we’re actually recording this podcast the day after launch. So we’re looking a bit bleary eyed, aren’t we?

Yeah. We’re absolutely shattered. Yay.

Yay.

No, it was such a fantastic day. Obviously, with any launch there’s a mad rush to get it right …

Absolutely.

… get it done on time. Then we had obviously to send out the email to everybody and let everybody know, which is always nice. And it’s great that we’ve had such a great response.

So, yeah, we’re recording this the day of actually releasing it.

Yeah.

So well that’s providing my podcast editor doesn’t leave us because we’re sending him so last minute.

We love you, James.

Yeah we do.

Hopefully that will help.

So, yeah, it’s just been a world wind, hasn’t it?

Yeah, definitely.

But really exciting stuff.

It’s been an amazing 24 hours actually, yeah.

Yeah.

It’s nice to say that. You can always say that actually afterwards though, can’t you?

Of course you can.

When you’re in the middle of it you’re like, “When are we going to get there?”

Yeah, don’t talk to me at all.

Yeah.

Why did you do this thing? Yeah.

We go through these experiences a lot. And it kind of helps us understand what our clients go through, doesn’t it?

Of course, yeah.

Because we all go through this when we’re launching something new. All this excitement but all the hard work and everything that goes into it beforehand. It all kind of makes it a very crazy, crazy time for people. So yes, we can fully appreciate any websites that go live.

Yeah. And it’s really interesting actually because we always say this to clients when we’re building websites. That it doesn’t matter what kind of website it is, there’s always going to be something that doesn’t happen as you expect. And that definitely happened …

Absolutely.

… with our membership site …

Yep.

… and a few different things obviously out of your control. Like convert kits, sending out emails later than we expected. But it all happened as it should have done in the end and we’re really happy. Got a fair amount of signups and obviously we’ll see lots of people trickle through.

Yeah. Any web designer that tells you that everything goes perfectly is either a superhero or a liar.

Yeah.

I’m going to guess the latter.

Yeah.

Yeah. There’s always [niggly 00:03:19] bits. But it’s having someone there, isn’t it, to be like, “Okay, this is what we need to do.”

Of course.

And yes. So we were kind of up until … well, you were up later than me … but I like my sleep.

Yep.

Martin was up quite late sorting out issues. But yeah, everything’s all okay today.

Yeah.

So we’re looking good, touch wood. So I just wanted to ask a few questions that we’ve actually been asked ourselves …

Yeah.

… about the membership. Firstly, why did we decide to do this?

Yeah, it seems crazy.

Why did we decide?

Seems crazy after the past 24 hours. I have no idea why we decided to do this. No, I think there are a few reasons we really wanted to do this. One of the main reasons is: We have lots of people wanting to work with us but they might not be in a position right now to pay a few thousand pound for a web designer, for instance.

Yeah.

And this gives us an opportunity to help people if they don’t have a big budget. But they still have our knowledge and experience, and we’re able to help these people move their business forward by helping them create an amazing website. So that’s one of the reasons.

Plus even if they did spend 500 or 1,000 pounds with a web designer who designed a website that you might think is going to move your business forward, quite often we find at that kind of price point it’s difficult to find someone …

Yeah. It doesn’t really work.

Yeah, it’s difficult to find someone who has an awful lot of experience. And this is our way of teaching you what to do with your website so that if you ever did hire a web designer, then you know what your website needs to include, you know what your home page needs to include, you know when you’re writing the content for your website how you need to write it. And you obviously can keep an eye on your SEO elements and stuff like that.

But having the knowledge is underrated. People just think, “I’m just going to give this money to the web designer and my computer’s just going to start kind of throwing money out of it.”

Yay.

“And it’s all going to work magically.” But that doesn’t happen. Your website is just a tool and you need help to make it a successful tool.

Yeah definitely. And the website critiques as well have really sort of kind of helped us really in sort of forming this membership as well, haven’t they?

Yeah, they really have. We got so many questions that we never would have thought of answering. Like how to do a website backup, for instance. And what’s the best way to do this? And what’s the best way to do that?

Sometimes because we deal with sort of high end website problems like FTP and DNS and all the technical stuff. Sometimes we get away from, you know, the basics. What are people struggling with day-to-day and how can we help them. And we wouldn’t have known that without doing the website critiques and offering sometimes two hours of our time each Wednesday to actually answer people’s questions and critique the website and point them in the right direction.

Yeah, definitely. And I think from a personal point of view because we’ve been asked by people … not particularly people that are interested in joining the membership but perhaps more kind of colleagues or different kind of people … you know, “Why are you doing this because you charge obviously 5,000 pound plus sometimes for a website, and people are happy to pay for that? Why bother sign up a membership?”

Yeah.

And that’s true. To be honest, designing and building websites for clients is not something we’re ever going to stop because we absolutely love it. But the reason we wanted to set this up is just because we really love teaching.

Yeah.

And we say every week … and we genuinely mean it … Wednesday afternoons are our favorite time …

Yeah.

… because we just love helping people who want to improve their websites. And getting feedback from people saying, “You know what? I made those tweaks on my website and I got a new client from it.” Or, “I got some more sales from it.” And that’s what excites us so much.

It’s amazing. So good.

So, it does. It feels so good to actually teach that to people. And we wanted to start a membership for a long time. I think I remember you mentioning it, I don’t know, three or four years ago.

Yeah.

But at that time I don’t think we felt like we had the knowledge or experience to kind of give to people.

This the thing, yeah. This is the thing that we found mostly is: There are lots of people who offer kind of memberships out there. And it was after speaking to Mike Morrison a few years ago from The Membership Guys, Member Site Academy.

Who we love, by the way …

Who we love, yeah.

Because we’re a part of their membership …

Man crush.

… and it’s amazing. It’s truly amazing.

Yeah, he’s a great guy and Callie obviously lovely as well. And they’ve just go such a wealth of knowledge.

But actually speaking to Mike a few years ago when we first met at a conference, I actually realized that it probably wasn’t the right time for us to launch a membership. There’s so many people out there who actually just teach without actually doing first. And that’s what we really wanted to master. We wanted to master the doing of building amazing websites or the doing of ranking clients highly on Google. And so many people actually don’t … They miss that step off. They don’t do the thing that they say you can do.

And that’s why we really wanted to master that first, which is why we stopped doing the membership and we kind of put it to the back of our mind for a few years. We learned how to build amazing websites. We got feedback, we got results for our clients. And then we felt that it’s the right time to launch a membership.

Yeah, definitely. I think that’s, yeah, a really, really good point.

So, we’re just going to go through a few questions now. Particularly ones that we’ve been asked because we’ve asked so many questions over the past 24 hours …

Yeah.

… which is great. Please keep them coming. We sell Drift on our actual sales page, MakeYourMarkOnline.net. People have been getting in touch on their. But also on Facebook and email. So we’ve got some really sort of common questions that have been [crosstalk 00:09:05]

Yeah, definitely.

So we really want to make sure that we answer those.

So firstly, what courses are inside the membership?

Okay. So this is going to be a bit of a quick fire one. So we have an introductory video, which is really, really important that you watch that one. And actually a lot of our content stems from this very idea of how we brand websites. How you can build a website based on five core principles. I’m not going to go into too much but that’s the first video we want you to watch.

We have a how to brand yourself course, which teaches you how to position yourself in a certain way so that you can get a certain type of customer.

We have a how to build a website from start to finish course, which is going to teach you how to install a template, and how to hook everything up, and how to install menus, and make your life a lot easier.

We have an on page SEO course where we teach you how to create title tags and meta descriptions.

So lots of things included in this course. So it’s not going to stop. We’ve got lots of ideas. Even things further down the line which is, you know, how to integrate your email marketing system within your website. Because it’s a common problem we have.

How to create landing pages. That’s going to be further down the line as well. So there’s an endless amount of content that we could create.

Yeah. That’s the thing with web design. It’s not just, you know, the actual website. It’s everything else that’s part of it as well. So we also have a course on your website copy, which is obviously a huge part of the website. And we also have a course on how to use WordPress, which is going to be incredibly important for a lot …

Especially for beginners, yeah.

Yeah, especially for beginners it’s going to be really important for them.

But, yeah, like you said there’s so much actually connected with a website. And we’ve found that dealing with our clients as well we don’t just design the website. We hook up emails, we start talking about content marketing, and we start looking at their website copy. And everything else. And they’re brand. There’s so much that actually goes into it. Far more than you actually think.

And yeah, this is what we wanted to put into our course, essentially everything that makes a perfect website. But obviously that’s a lot of content there. So we’re going to be constantly updating our membership with all this fresh content which will make your website better.

Absolutely.

Okay so, the next question that is a common one as well is: Who is the membership for?

So the membership is for anybody who really understands that their website is important. Yes it’s a tool. Yes it’s there to make you money. But it’s absolutely vital. And some people don’t actually think that it’s as important as it is. And they think, “You know, I’ll just throw up a quick website and it’ll be fine.” But the website is absolutely vital in your marketing efforts.

So another common question we’ve been having is: Who is the actual membership for?

Well, there’s a few types of people really who would benefit from being inside the membership. Number one, if you understand the importance of a website then this is going to be right for you. I mean not everybody treats a website as sort of a marketing tool that you really should invest your time and your effort into.

So it’s especially going to be beneficial to the people who really get that. Who really understand that the website is a big part of your business.

Yeah. I mean we always say kind of a website is kind of the heart of your business, isn’t it? It’s everything. And kind of social media and content marketing and SEO that kind of gets blood to the heart but your website is everything to do with your business and you have full control over it. It is 100% yours.

So, yeah, we always kind of hammer home the importance of a website. But you’ve got to understand that if you want to be part of the membership.

Absolutely. And it’ll absolutely be beneficial to anybody who doesn’t have a big budget. I mean, like Lindsay said, we charge thousands for a website and you might only have a small budget. It might be brand new business for instance, and you might not have a lot of money to spend. So when we price it at $29 per month or $290 per year, we did that deliberately. We didn’t want price to be a problem. So that’s another reason why we did it.

Also, if you already have a website that you like and you’re happy with it, you might just want to change a few things and you have some support along the way but you need traffic. Part of the reason we launched the membership is because having a website by itself doing nothing on the internet isn’t going to help anyone. And we understand the importance of driving traffic and highly qualified traffic to our website. And that’s a major benefit of being inside the membership.

Yeah, definitely. And also conversions as well because, you know, like you said, it’s great having a beautiful website even if you get traffic to it a lot of people actually still are going to rely on converting that traffic.

So yeah, it’s about trying to help people also grow their website. And, you know, as a buy effect kind of grow their business at the same time. So, yeah, it’s also suitable for those people as well.

Yeah. And this leads us nicely to content as well because content … just website content in general, you know, for your about page, for your service page, but also for your blog it’s absolutely vital that you create ongoing content for your website visitors. And if you are looking for help with that then the membership’s going to be great for you.

Definitely. So another question we’ve actually got which is an interesting one is: Who is the membership not for?

Okay. This is an interesting one. So I think it’s going to be a lot of work. I think that’s the crux of it all really.

Yeah.

If you feel as though you’re just going to install a quick theme and everything’s going to work magically then it’s probably not going to work for you, the membership. It is going to take time and effort. But we did make the course bite sized enough. I mean, most videos are between five or 10 minutes. Some of them are up to 25, 30 minutes but we only give you the information that you actually need. But if you’re not prepared to take some time out of your week to learn bits of information and grow your business and you think it’s all just a one click button software then you’re not really going to find the membership that beneficial.

So another thing that we wanted to mention is: We didn’t create this membership to be kind of a technical help desk. So this is the important thing. Is that with websites there’s always going to be technical things that you’re struggling with and we absolutely encourage you asking questions like that in the community.

But more often then not, you do get support from your plugin developers and from your WordPress themes. So we wanted to create a membership that is focused on, you know, how to grow your business, how to attract the right clients, how to drive more traffic.

We didn’t want to be: Why is this plugin not quite working with this thing very well?

Yeah.

So, I mean you do have a lot of support out there for that kind of thing. Lot’s of help and advisors available. There’s an abundance of it. But what there isn’t an abundance of two web designers teaching you what actually works with a website and how to drive more highly qualified traffic and get more qualified customers.

Yeah. That’s a really good point actually. And I was speaking to a lady on Drift actually yesterday on the actual sales page. And she said she’s got a website that she doesn’t want to change, it’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination she said. But she doesn’t want to change it. She doesn’t want to spend too much time sort of learning this stuff. But she does need help with technicalities. And I did say, “You know, we’re not the guys for you.”

No.

“What would be better is for you to just get someone to make those tweaks as and when you want them too.” And, yeah, I think people can post in our community and we will help them with techy stuff but we’re not going to go in and solve those problems …

No.

… and that’s not what the membership is primarily for. So if that’s what you’re primarily after, then it’s not for you.

Yeah, it’s about bigger picture. And it’s about us putting our experience inside a membership community. We know from building lots and lots of websites over the years that the things that make the biggest difference aren’t the little technical things …

Yeah.

… the little technical problems that you have. And those can be quickly fixed. You can get someone off Fiverr or Upwork or pay WP Fix It if you’re having some problems. But what moves the needle the most is your positioning, is your traffic, is actually making your website look good enough to attract the right customers. And those are the ideal sorts of courses that we feel will help you move your business forward quicker.

Yeah, definitely. Okay. So moving on. How much does the membership cost? And I think you’ve mentioned that actually previously. But let’s go through it just one more time.

Yeah, so the actual cost of the membership is actually $39 per month, $390 a year. But for these two weeks we’re actually doing a $29 and $290 per year on the annual plan. If you go with that then obviously you save money, but you also get a 30 minute coaching call as well which can be redeemed after the first 30 days.

That could be six months time. It could be, “I’ve done everything that you said in the membership. And now we just want to grow our traffic. Or we just want to find, you know, some blog post ideas. Or what can we do?” Then that’s fine. You’ve got that in the bag and you can redeem it later on down the line.

Yep, definitely. So next one. If you don’t have a WordPress website should you join? And we’ve had this question quite a few times. It’s been a really popular one where people have thought about joining but they don’t actually have a website on WordPress.

Yeah, and this is interesting actually because I would probably say that most of the courses, most of the videos that we’ve produced they do talk about the bigger picture. We talk about color schemes, and we talk about your big bold statement. All of that kind of stuff can be applied to any website. And the success of your website isn’t limited to WordPress. It’s just that we only build WordPress websites so a lot of the information that we’ve gathered over the years is related to WordPress.

But if you need to create title tags and meta descriptions and ALT hacks for your website then you can do that on any content management system. It’s not exclusive to WordPress. It’s just that a lot of people understand that WordPress is probably the best platform and it’s the most reliable platform and there’s loads of helpful information out there on the internet. And this I why we wanted to build our membership around WordPress.

So, yeah, I mean you were saying last night, what, probably 60/40, weren’t we? Or 70/30?

Yeah, 60/40. I’d say 60% of the content is more geared towards WordPress, 40% not so much. It’s kind of for everyone. It also depends what you want. I mean, if you want accountability. So we’re going to be running challenges of every sort of, you know, six week mini bite sized challenges. We’ll be doing that.

If you want someone to talk to on Q & A calls. If you want a forum. If you want those kind of things along with the 40% of content that isn’t about sort of WordPress particularly, then it might be for you.

It’s entirely your decision. We can’t kind of give you a direct answer on that one unfortunately. But, yeah, I think there is still a lot for people …

Yeah.

… who don’t have WordPress websites certainly.

Absolutely.

So just a question that we had actually yesterday as well. Do we have original content on the membership?

Yeah, it was quite interesting getting this question actually. I didn’t expect it. We actually have our own unique content. So we’ve come up with our own ideas, we’ve come up with our own formulas for things like creating title tags and creating meta descriptions. But also the five core principles that every website should follow. And this is all our original content.

Obviously how to install a WordPress theme and how to create title tags in general is something that you can find anywhere. It’s just that we have our own spin on it. And not everybody is going to agree with what we say. We don’t agree with what everybody else teaches in the marketing space. But it’s about you finding a community and some experts who can help you move your business forward. And it’s sometimes nice to have a balanced discussion about it. “Well, these people say that you shouldn’t have your pricing on your website. And you say that we should.” And that’s really interesting because we can obviously use our experience and our past clients as examples. And that’s what’s great about us building websites first and then relaying that information to you guys.

Okay. So the final question: How much support will you get inside the membership? And this is a really important one, isn’t it?

Yeah, we wanted to put a big emphasis on support. So we have a community that you could be a part of where you can ask any questions at all. We have a general chat channel as well so if you just want to talk, if you want to have a bit of a bitch and a moan about your day, or what’s happened, then feel free to do that. But we have our weekly calls as well. Everyone’s there. At 9:30 we have a Q & A call.

And we can change this. Again, we’re at the early stages here. If it fits in better in the afternoon and the general consensus is we want it to be a certain time, then we’ll work around you. You are the founding members and we want to build a membership around you.

We also have the accountability that you mentioned, Lindsay, about the six week mini challenges. This is going to be something that we’re taking part in as well. So we’re going to do a video challenge. So if you want to get better at video then we’re going to create a challenge in the community where it’s, “Okay, we’re going to post a video every day for six weeks so we can get better on video.” And you can do it in the safety of our community. You don’t have to take part but that’s the kind of challenge that we’re going to do.

We’re going to do blogging challenges.

We will be hard on you though.

We’re not going to be hard on you.

No, we’re not going to be mean.

We were terrible at video when we first started. And the only way that we learned how to get remotely good … which I still don’t think we’re there yet but … is by doing it all the time. And doing it in the safety of a community …

Yeah, definitely.

… is very helpful.

I think what I mean is that we will hold you to account.

Yeah.

And that’s what people want. I mean, that’s what I want all the time. Because sometimes I need that accountable to really kick me on the ass and actually get things done. So we will be holding people to account and saying, “Hey, where’s your video today?” Or, “Where’s your blog post this week?” Or whatever it might be. So yeah, we will be doing that.

But it’s amazing about that accountability. When you’re actually paying for something like a membership … whether it’s monthly, annually … you’re in there and you’re committed to it. That means that you want to get the most out of it. So yes, you’re going to get a great looking website, yes, you’re going to get rankings. But you need to consistently move forward and having that accountability is absolutely priceless. It is the only way that we would have produced as much content this year and last year and this podcast is by actually having some accountability in our own mastermind groups.

So it’s absolutely vital and it is completely priceless.

So, yeah, that’s pretty much all the questions we’ve had over the past 24 hours. Please keep them coming. Throw them at us. They really do help us with creating content just like this, which is really, really helpful for a wider audience. To find out more about our membership.

We are on hand answering your questions and welcoming our founding members which is very exciting.

Yeah.

If you are interested in learning more or perhaps signing up, just go to MakeYourMarkOnline.net and you can sign up there via PayPal or Stripe.

So that was episode 13 of our Make Your Mark Online podcast. We hope you enjoyed listening. We look forward to seeing you next time.

Waitlist for Membership Community

The post Ep 13 – Why we launched a membership and what’s inside appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 12 – How to Create an Effective About Page for Your Website

Martin & Lyndsay — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 15:24:11 +0000

Writing your about page is usually treated as an after-thought. A place to stick your education history, that award you won in 2004 and talk about your favourite pizza toppings.

If this sounds like you, then you seriously need to look at your about page again.

In many cases, an about page is a highly trafficked page on your website. Sometimes, it’s the second most popular page after your homepage.

If you haven’t thought carefully about your about page, and how you’ll build trust and increase conversions, then you could seriously be missing out on leads and sales.

In this podcast episode, we go through the ways you can create an effective about page for your business.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

- What is the most common mistake people make on their homepage?
- What you should do before you put pen to paper
- How to create a great opening sentence to your about page that gets people hooked
- How to connect with your readers and build trust on your about page
- How to format your about page so it doesn’t look too text heavy
- Why you shouldn’t forget your personality
- What else you should include on an about page

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

2.17 – What do people do wrong on their about page?
3.21 – How to reframe your mind when it comes to writing your about page
4.19 – How to open your about page
8.06 – How can you connect with your readers on your about page
11.47 – How to break up all the information on your about page
13.30 – Getting some personality on your about page
15.38 – What else you should include on an about page

Useful Resources and Links

Content Marketing Academy

Marcus Sheridan: They Ask You Answer

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to the Make Your Mark online podcast where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. Please welcome your hosts, husband and wife team Martin and Lyndsay.

Welcome to episode number 12 of the Make Your Mark online podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about your About page and what you need to do to make it highly effective. But before we get into the show, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark online membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. And this will be launching on the 1st of October, 2018 and we would love you to check it out. We currently have a wait-list that you can sign up to if you go to jammydigital.com/wait/

We’ll only be opening the door for two weeks. That is the lowest ever price. Two weeks, not long, so please check it out. So let’s get into the show.
So, yeah, the About page. It’s actually a really, really important page on your website, isn’t it?

It is, yeah, and I think a lot of people don’t actually realize how important an About page actually is. It’s a really heavily trafficked page in many cases. Sometimes we’ve seen it’s actually the second most popular page on a website with our clients.

People look at it.

Exactly.

I don’t know why.

Well I think if someone wants to find out more about your products and services, they just go to your About page. It’s sort of been there since the home page, really, since the dawn of the internet. So I think it is a really popular page. Often people kind of treat it as an afterthought or they don’t really put much effort into it or they do put a lot of effort into it, and they kind of get it a bit wrong, because you really want to take advantage of your About page. Because it’s so popular and people really go to it quite often, you want to make sure that you use your About page to your advantage and actually kind of think about increasing conversions on your About page and getting people to really connect with you.

Okay, so you mentioned that people sometimes do it wrong. What are the things that people are doing that are probably not working well enough?
Well, it’s quite often we see this, and you might do it yourself. They’re kind of like, hi, my name is Bob and I graduated university in 1987 with a 2:1 in Engineering which has nothing to do with what I’m doing now and has zero interest to you and oh no, you’ve gone. Bye. Yeah, I think a lot of people do that, and I totally understand why. You automatically think About page, that’s about me and what I do and what I think and what my experience is. Sometimes you get a real life story, don’t you, when you were born, where you were born, where you went to university and that’s very easy to write because you know you and your life very well, but it’s not great at sort of connecting with your reader. So I think that’s the biggest mistake that people actually make and it’s really easy to fix, to be honest.

Okay, so that’s how not to write an About page.

Yeah.

So what can we start doing to improve our About pages and how do we actually write them?

Well, the easiest tip I give, well actually it’s Martin’s tip that I’ve just stolen.

Thief.

I’m a thief of Martin’s tips, is when you come to write your About page, instead of About at the top of the page, put About how I can help you, and this will really reframe your mind when you come to write your about page and sort of think of it from your audience’s perspective rather than your perspective. It’s kind of like flipping it on its head, really and talking about how you can help your potential customers and your readers and doing it that way.

So we’re not talking about actually using that as your title for your About page, we’re just talking about while you’re creating the About page, actually call it About how I can help or About how we can help you, that kind of thing.

Absolutely. Yeah. Although, I have actually seen a few, a very small number of people do put About how I can help you, but yes, this is just for the purposes for you when you go to write your About page.

Okay, got it.

Yeah, definitely.

Okay, so how do we lead into the About page because starting these pages is always more difficult.

It is, yeah. I think starting any new piece of writing, new piece of content even though I do a lot of writing, the start is always the trickiest part. You just kind of have to figure out a way to get into it. And I find the best way to start an About page is just reaffirming to your reader that they’re in the right place. It’s a really, really easy thing to do. It’s a really easy tactic. You could say something like, are you looking for whatever it is? Then you’re in the right place. If you need a whatever you offer? Then you’re in the right place. It’s just reaffirming to the audience that they’re in the right place, making them feel secure, making them feel like, okay, this website and the content is for me. That’s great.

Okay. So rather than say, we’ve been running this giftware business for 20 years, it’s more about, I use [inaudible 00:05:09] to decorate your child’s nursery, for instance. Are you looking for lots of Star Wars things to put on the wall?

I don’t know where Martin got that from.

No, completely out of the blue. Completely out of the blue. But that’s what you’re saying. You’re talking about actually empathizing with their potential problems or what they’re searching for, and actually giving that information to them straight away rather than making them find it through the boring corporate information about how you started and how long you’ve been going.

Yeah. Exactly, exactly. It’s about, just sort of, you can talk about what makes you unique in that sentence. So if you’re a gift website you could say, are you looking for a gift that isn’t the typical flowers and chocolates? Then you’re in the right place. That type of thing. It doesn’t need that much thought to be honest. You just kind of are reaffirming to people and getting them to nod their heads and go, yeah, that’s great. Okay, I can continue reading type of thing. Yeah. And it’s a good way to sort of really get into the About page, because as we said, starting off these pages feels like an impossible task sometimes. That’s a really, really easy way of doing it.

Yeah, so this is the sort of thing we did on our About page when we went live with a new website in February.

Yeah, actually, we were one of the sort of naughty people to begin with who just talked about ourselves on our About page probably about five years ago. And yes, we sort of reframed it with our latest website update. We say, if you’re looking for a web designer who gets your business, who isn’t afraid to say what works and what doesn’t, then you’re in the right place. And it’s quite a simple sentence that we use. I didn’t put too much thought into it, but one thing I did want people to understand is that they’re in the right place if that’s what they’re looking for, if they’re looking for a web designer who’s quite honest with them, but equally if someone thinks, I’m looking for a web designer I kind of just want to boss around. I’m looking for a yes man or a yes woman and they come to our About page, they automatically know that we’re not for them. And that helps us because then they don’t get in contact with us and waste our time, but it also helps them because we’re not going to waste their time equally, It’s a good method to think about who your ideal clients are and who they’re not. We talked about this on the last couple of episodes of the podcast.

Yeah, episode 10, I think it was.

Yes, yeah, and just really thinking about that and actually highlighting that in the first sort of sentence makes people either think yes, that’s definitely me or think no, these guys aren’t for me and just leave, because ultimately you don’t want to be dealing with people you don’t want to be dealing with, do you?

Yeah, and it’s a very quick, it’s so much quicker actually talking about the who you are and who you are not on your About page because it’s just so easy.

Exactly.

People click on the About page to work out whether they actually want to work with you, maybe find out a little bit more information, and it’s a good opportunity to actually use as a filter really.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So once we’ve done that, what else can we do? How can we use the About page maybe to connect to the reader a little bit more?

Yeah, so we need to talk about how we can help out potential customers or clients, and the way to do this is to think about the problems that they’re having. Now this is something that we actually got off someone called Marcus Sheridan who we spoke about before.

A legend.

He is a legend, and also Chris Marr who also teaches this as well. I will put them in the notes. I think they are in our notes on every podcast episode.
I think they would be insulted if we didn’t link to them in every episode, really.

I know. So yeah, this is something that we’ve actually learned from them and talking about the problems that your potential customers and clients are facing and how you help solve them. Now what Marcus’ advice is, is to have that on a Problems we solve page. We actually find that this also works quite well on an About page as well because your customers are already kind of there, your potential customers are already kind of there. They’re trying to figure out if you’re right for them. So the About page is the perfect page to put this on and it’s really about talking about, okay. I understand your problems. I know they’re an issue. Here’s how I can help. Here’s the service that I offer which helps, and talking about that on your About page works really, really well.

Yeah, because everybody knows well, when we get inquiries, we get inquiries like I’m struggling with traffic. I’m not getting enough traffic. I need a new website. Or, my website’s really old and we need a new website because it needs to be more reflect our business. We know these problems because we have conversations about them every single day.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean if you just listen to your customers and clients and hear what they say in terms of the problems they’re facing, they will tell you. Often it will be the first thing they say to you in their email or when they call you up. Look, I’m having a nightmare with this, or I want this to change or whatever it may be. You can easily figure out what the problems are that your customers are having. So it’s very easy to put that on your About page, definitely.

So when it comes to layout then, how do we structure this on our About page? So we understand the problems you solve and it’s important, but how do, what’s the best way to make it look good?

Yeah, it’s different actually, because people often say to me, well how do I actually word this? How do I get this into words and paragraphs? And we do it quite explicitly on our website and our About page. We just list the problems that people are having sort of in an FAQ style sort of section on our About page. We kind of list the problems. We have four main services. So one of the services is web design, so we list the problems people are having in terms of web design. So are you having a lack of traffic? Okay, this is how we can help. We build websites in a certain way, blah, blah, blah that will increase your traffic blah, blah, blah.

Are you having a lack of conversions? That’s rubbish, it’s great getting loads of traffic to your website but a lack of conversions is really not good. We’ll make you a conversion friendly website and etc. So you kind of, you’re talking about, you’re acknowledging the problems that they’re having, you’re sympathizing with them, and then you’re saying how you can help and it’s very, very, very explicit the way we do it on our About page. There’s many different ways you can do it, but that’s probably the easiest way to actually do it.

Yeah, and it’s actually really interesting because how nice would it be for you to go to a page on a website and say, and just see in black and white, you’re having these problems, and we know that you are, and this is how we can help.

Exactly.

It’s just so simple I don’t know why more people don’t do it. The About page makes it so easy for you to include this. Again, it’s just so easy and I think that the way we’ve designed it, it makes it less kind of text heavy, which is always a good idea, I think.

Yeah, definitely, that’s a really good point, actually, because we’ve seen About pages that look like War and Peace and you’re kind of waiting for a paragraph for some air to breathe. This is a good way of doing it in nice little bullet points. Just give it some space on the About page, most definitely, very easily digestible information that people can use. It’s also a good opportunity to, once you’ve highlighted what the problems are that they’re facing, how you solve that problem, it’s a real opportunity then to get them to that particular page. So say on our web design, when we’re talking about, okay you see a lack of traffic or a lack of conversions, here’s how we can help, visit our web design or website redesign page, or whatever it might be. You are kind of directing people to the page that you want them to go to. Then they can learn more about that particular service. So it’s a great place to have your call to action, to really get people to the places where you want them to go and hopefully take action with you from there.
Okay, so that’s really interesting because I don’t think anybody or many people will have thought about an About page as a kind of sales tool, but it is.
Exactly. It is. It is. And this is what we always say to people. You need to take advantage of this page. Don’t talk about your engineering degree that has nothing to do with what you’re doing now. It’s boring. This is a page where you need to kind of think, okay, what are my audience after? How do I connect with them? How do I get them to move onto the next page to sort of build trust with them so they eventually get in touch? That’s all your About page is for, really.

Okay, so we’ve spoke quite a lot about using your website to empathize and to be able to touch on the problems of people and then converting them. But we should have some personality on the About page, shouldn’t we?

Yeah, absolutely. That’s a really good point. I think, from the people I’ve seen this do this well on their About page where they empathize and talk about the problems and things like that, one of the common mistakes I do see sometimes that people make is they lack personality because they’re so focused on their audience and that’s absolutely right. If there’s a choice between all about you and all about your audience, I’d say go for all about your audience, but you have to find that balance. The About page is a great page to show some personality, to show who you are as well. Don’t be afraid to do that on your About page. I’m not saying you have to do it in the first sentence as we’ve said, but it needs to be in there somewhere.

A great way of doing this is including pictures of you and your team, obviously so they can see your face. If you haven’t got your face on your website, get your face on your website.

Put it up.

Don’t be afraid, because people want to connect with you and the way to do that is showing who you are and who your team is. And another way is actually to talk about yourself as well. We have parts about ourselves on our About page. We talk about our cats and Star Wars and Harry Potter and all those kinds of things. It doesn’t take up a lot of the page. It’s probably couple of paragraphs, but people need that information. They want to know who they’re dealing with, so don’t be afraid to also include that as well. Just make it quite succinct. Make sure it shows personality as well through your writing. We’ve actually covered this on another podcast episode which was tone of voice. I’m not sure which one that was, but I’ll put it in the show notes. Don’t forget that as well. You don’t want to be kind of a robot. You do have to show personality as well.

Okay, so what else can we put on our About page then? What can we do to really kind of tie it all together really and start thinking about finishing it off?

So after that, after all of that, which is a lot to do, sort of reaffirming someone’s in the right place, talking about the problems that you solve, talking about yourself and having a bit of personality, it’s again thinking about, okay, well what will build trust now? What will make people connect with me? Having some testimonials on there from your clients and things like that having them patch your portfolio or something like that. I’m not talking about making it too long, so don’t stuff everything in there, but at least have something that gets people to other pages to explore all the parts of your website, and to also build trust as well. So I definitely recommend having testimonials on your About page if you can.

Yeah, we definitely wanted to make an effort to include a couple of results that our clients have got and we put that quite small, but we do include it. We’ve got a quote of a couple of people. One thing we haven’t done which is actually a great place for you to put this is if you’d won any awards, then you might want to use this opportunity to maybe have a section that talks about your most prestigious awards. We don’t really talk about shouting about your achievements as an organization that much, but this is the opportunity where you can actually have a section where you say, well we won the best blogging award this year at Content Marketing Academy.

Yeah, we did.

Yeah, we did. We actually should go back and add that in, but again, if you’re struggling to think about where to put things like that then you can put them on the About page.

Yeah, absolutely.

It all helps build trust and credibility and things like galleries, that helps as well. You could, potentially, write a lot for your About page, but you don’t have to include it all. You could just include some of the things that we’re talking about.

Yeah, definitely. I think our About page is probably a couple of thousand words, and we’ve seen About pages that are about 300 words and you don’t want to give people too much, but the way you design as well, you’re breaking it up as we talked about. The problems you solve, the bullet point lists, there are things you can do to sort of break up the text particularly on your About page so it doesn’t look like War and Peace. So yeah, definitely think about that as well. Things like testimonials as well and things that really break up the page and make it a little less text heavy certainly.

Okay. Perfect, so hopefully you’ve got a lot of information from this episode that you can go out and action straight away. Just make sure that if you are including a lot of information like Lyndsay said you’re using some visual aspects to break up the content a little bit ad that should help. It’s all about building trust. And the thing is when somebody visits your About page, they do actually want to find out a little bit about you. So don’t think that you can’t include this, but you should be thinking about sales and conversions first, whilst also including some information about yourself. That big transition changed everything for us. We say to every client that we’ve ever built a website for, be careful of having too much information about you too soon because people won’t have any reason to read on.

Yeah, exactly, it’s just all about connecting with your reader and making them feel comfortable with dealing with you and actually building trust with them. That’s essentially what the About page should be about, definitely.

So that we can then convert them into customers and [crosstalk 00:19:00] .

Exactly.

Wonderful. It all works out in the end.

Yep.

Perfect. So really great episode. If you have any questions or you want to leave us a review, then visit our iTunes page at jammydigital.com/iTunes. Tell us what you’d like to see in future episodes, but the big news this week is that our membership community is launching on the first of October and we’re very, very excited. If you are listening, shortly after this podcast has been released, then you should be able to at least join the wait list or join up, but we’re only opening it up for two weeks, the lowest ever price. It’s $29 a month. I mean, that’s nothing.

Bargain.

$29. Crazy.

$29 plus VAT, I should say.

Yes, if you are a UK or EU business. So yeah, it’s really exciting. We’re very, very excited about it.

We are.

In our next episode, actually, we are going to be answering some of the questions we’ve been getting about the membership as well, so if you are interested, and you’ve not got much time to contact us then, make sure you’re listening to the next episode where we actually answer some of those questions and potentially some of those concerns that you might have about joining another membership community. So, we’re really excited about that and if you want to join, go to jammydigital.com/wait/ or you can just go to the same page and it will redirect you to the brand new sales page that we created, so that’s exciting as well. But yeah, we’ve already got lots of people interested, so it will be nice to have you as part of the community as well.

Yeah, definitely. And the thing we’re looking forward to is those first two weeks when we get that those first founding members, isn’t it really? And we’re going to be able to work with them quite closely because we’re going to close off after two weeks. Get your membership so those members will be our founding little babies. We’ll be able to work with them closely, helping them build a great website and a great business. So, yeah, it’s really, really exciting. So we’re really, really looking forward to it.

Fantastic. So we will see you in the next episode of the Make Your Mark Online podcast.

Waitlist for Membership Community

The post Ep 12 – How to Create an Effective About Page for Your Website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 11 – How to choose a domain name for your website

Martin & Lyndsay — Wed, 19 Sep 2018 08:05:56 +0000

Choosing your domain name can take forever!

Should you have your name as your domain name?

Should you use your business name as your domain name?

Or even, should you include a keyword within your domain name?

It can be tricky. In this podcast episode, we go through the pros and cons of different domain names and which ones are right for you and your business.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

The pros and cons of using your business name as your domain name
The pros and cons of using your business name as your domain name
The pros and cons of using a keyword within your domain name
Our favourite method for choosing a domain name

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

1.40 – What are the options available to you when choosing domain names
3.40- Why would you use your name as your domain name?
6.10 – What are the downsides to having your name as your domain name?
8.37 – Why would you use your business name as your domain name?
11.18 – What are the downsides of having your business name as your domain name?
14.39 – Should you use keywords in your domain name?
16.34 – The downsides of using keywords within your domain name
18.25 – What’s our favourite method for picking a domain name?

Useful Resources and Links

Content Marketing Academy

Smart Passive Income

Marie Forleo

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to episode 11 of the Make Your Mark online podcast. Today we’re going to be talking about how to choose a domain name for your website. Before we get into the episode, this podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark online membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. It will be launching on the first of October and we’d love for you to check it out. We currently have a wait list you can sign up to, if you go to jammydigital.com/wait. We will only be opening the doors for two weeks at its lowest ever price, so don’t miss out. Okay, let’s get on with the show.

Today we’re talking about domains. This is something that’s really important, isn’t it Martin, for all businesses?

Yes, of course. I mean if you want a website you’re going to have to, at some point, buy a domain name or hundreds of domains that you never use, which is exactly what we’ve done [crosstalk 00:01:09].

Yes, Martin’s got loads.

Oh, God. For some reason I just keep renewing them every year. It’s like-

You do.

I’m really going to start-

I get the invoices. I’m aware.

The craziest business ideas that we had five years ago and for some reason we’re still buying domain names.

Yes.

Well, we’re actually talking about your main domain name, so what you’ll actually use for your core personal brand business website. It’s really important because there are a few different ways you can go about this, which is exactly why we decided to have a chat about it.

What kinds of different domain names could you choose?

Okay, so when it comes to domains then for personal brands, what are the ways that you can go about it? What options are available?

Okay, so there are three main things that we see people do with domains. The first thing is you actually use your name, so martinhuntbach.com or lyndsaycambridge.com. A few of the highly successful entrepreneurs out there, like Marie Forleo, uses her name within her domain name. Chris Ducker, he uses his name. It just means that you’re essentially taking your name and you’re the personal brand, so that’s what I’m going to have and whatever it is dot com, dot call it UK, dot net but it’s your name. That’s one option that you have.

Another option would be to use your business name. For instance that’s what we decided to do, Jammydigital.com. Although technically it’s not a personal brand type business, lots of other personal brands decide to use a business name like Pat Flynn, for instance, has Smart Passive Income. Chris Marr has the Content Marketing Academy. That is a fairly common way to go as well.

The third option isn’t used as much but it used occasionally. It’s where people decide to use a keyword. Potentially something that somebody might search for on Google and you actually use that word as your domain name. Now I’m not sure this is exactly what Mark Schaefer has done with his website businessgrow.com, but potentially he could have used MarkSchaefer.com or he could have used MarkSchaefersolutions.com if that’s his business name. For whatever reason some people decide to try to include a keyword within that domain. You do see it fairly frequently with local businesses, web design companies. I’ll just use WebDesign.com or WebDesignBlackpool.com. You do see it from time to time and occasionally with personal brands as well. Those are the three potential options you have available.

Why would you use your name as your domain name?

Let’s break it down then. What are the best options? Why would you use your name, for example, as your domain name? What are the advantages of doing that?

Well it’s a lot easier to remember somebody’s name. If you bump into someone at a conference, for instance, or a local networking event people generally remember people more than they remember business names. It’s just more memorable and that’s a great thing that you can do if you use your business name, people can actually refer to you when they’re making recommendations or check out this person. It makes it a lot easier to find you online.

Yes definitely, and it’s a good point that you say that actually because whenever I Google Pat Flynn I always put into Google Pat Flynn, I never actually put in Smart Passive Income. Not that I forget it, I know actually that that’s his business name, I know that it’s his domain name, but for some reason just psychologically I think I just Google Pat Flynn because yes I remember his face and his name. Yes, it’s much, much more memorable. That’s a really good point.

Yes definitely

What are the other reasons someone might use their name as their domain name?

Well it’s easy to change business direction. We know from our own experience that we’ve changed our business quite a lot in the past five years, and sometimes you offer one service, you might offer something else, and if you use your name as your domain name it’s quite easy to make that transition and nobody bats an eyelid. If one day you decide that you’re no longer a SEI expert, you’re a web design expert, then nobody would know because you got your name as your domain name. If you decide to sell houses one day nobody would bat an eyelid, well they might do, but generally speaking it’s not going to raise any red flags if you decide to change your business direction because your name is something that you own and you keep, and you can take it in whichever business direction you want. It’s more adaptable.

Yes, that’s very, very true actually. Yes because, say for example Chris Marr, Content Marketing Academy, he for some strange reason decided he wanted to do social media management instead. Then Content Marketing Academy wouldn’t make sense obviously as his domain name. Whereas if his name was ChrisMarr.com then he would be able to change direction. That’s just an example, but yes it’s a really, really good point actually that you can sort of change direction quite easily. Which I supposed if you’re new to business we noticed that when we were quite new to business that we changed quite a lot at the beginning so that’s always quite a good advantage, isn’t it that you have that sort of flexibility really and space to move without sort of feeling restrained just by something simple, by your domain name.

What are the downsides of having your name as your domain name?

Yes exactly, but there are a few negatives to potentially having your name as your domain. For instance it would be quite difficult for the likes of Chris Ducker and Marie Forleo to sell their website if they ever decided to pack it all in and do something else because their name is their domain name. Unless you find somebody else with the exact same name, that offers the same services, and has a similar reputation, it’s going to be fairly difficult if not impossible for you to sell a domain with your name and have somebody else take over it. That’s one of the downsides to it, it’s not saleable.

Another reason is that it’s not immediately clear what it is that you offer.

Yes.

If you use your name MartinHuntbach.com or whatever, it’s not immediately clear how that person can benefit. For instance, we have Jammy Digital as our name and it’s kind of digital. We’ve included the word digital in it so you can kind of start to think about what it might be.

Yes.

Whereas if we only used our name then it’s not going to be clear at all, I could be doing anything.

I suppose the advantage of having the flexibility of having to move around in your business is also a bit of a disadvantage because then it’s kind of not really clear what you do.

Exactly.

Yes, so that’s kind of the downside of it really.

Yes exactly, and it can make it even more difficult using your name as a domain if people struggle to spell it or if they struggle to say it like our names, for instance.

Like MartinHuntbach.com.

Exactly. I actually do have MartinHuntbach.com but it just acts as bit of a landing page.

No one’s going to be able to spell that.

Nobody’s going to be able … Exactly, which is part of the reason why I didn’t decide to build my brand on my name. It’d be great if I had a nice comfortable name that everybody could spell and say without kind of cocking the head to one side and saying, “What? What did they just say?”

That’s an interesting one actually because you bought MartinHuntbach.com and originally it was you started the business, but I actually joined and now sort of co-own. If you’d have put MartinHuntbach.com that would have been really difficult kind of transition.

It would have.

Why would you use your business name as your domain name?

I’d have just been plus Lyndsay, the end of it. That’s also a really good point actually. Sometimes if other people join your business that can be a sort of downside to just having one name, although it’s probably quite rare. Yes, that’s a really good point as well. What about the business name then? This is fairly common for personal brands too. What are the benefits of that?

The first thing is that it’s very saleable. We’ve already discussed this in the previous point. If you have a business name as your domain name, then somebody else can buy your business off you in the future, they can buy a domain name that’s linked to a business because it’s not linked to a person. Generally speaking you’d probably get a lot more money if you ever did decide to sell a business. For instance, Pat Flynn, I know that he has the domain name PatFlynn.com, but he has now built his brand around Smart Passive Income. He could potentially sell that for a lot more than he could if he just used PatFlynn.com. People might buy it for the domain name quality, they might buy it because of the amount of traffic he’s got, but definitely going to count in his favor because he’s using SmartPassiveIncome.com, it’s a lot easier to sell.

Yes, it’s a really good point actually. I think a good example of this is actually from Martin Lewis who had MoneySavingExpert.com and he sold it recently, in the last couple of years, for a lot of money.

Millions and millions.

Millions and millions of pounds. Perhaps if he was called MartinLewis.com rather than Money Saving Expert it might not have been as easy to sell, so that’s a really, really good point actually. I suppose it depends if we want to sell or if we think we’re going to sell in the future.

Exactly, you just never know. You never know, and the thing is is technically speaking Money Saving Expert is definitely still Martin Lewis. When you say Money Saving Expert, you might not know it if you’re not in the UK, but he advises people on how to save money and how to save money on bills and whatever. He is deeply ingrained within Martin Lewis, the Money Saving Expert. They actually, when they bought it, they actually hired him, I believe. He knows how it works. He then got paid even more money for working with them. Yes, swings a round about.

If you can build Money Saving Expert.

Yes.

If you can build that business you’re golden.

Exactly.

What are some other good reasons to use your business name as your domain name?

Well I mean you can really make it clear what you do. That example, for instance, Money Saving Expert you know pretty much exactly what you’re going to get.

Yes.

Whereas with MartinLewis.com you’re not sure. It could be an insurance broker, it could want to fix your roof, you just don’t know. That’s the thing really. A major benefit is you potentially can explain a little bit more about what you do rather than just using your name, which can be a bit cryptic sometimes.

Why would someone not use their business name as their domain name?

Okay then, so why might we not use our business name as our domain name?

Okay, so if you use a business name it does actually tie you in. When we said before that you can change your business direction with your name, you can’t do that as much, especially if you’ve got something like Smart Passive Income. If you decide to change your business it does tie you into a niche or whatever kind of industry. Sometimes you can have quite a broad explanation and that gives you a little bit more wiggle room, but if you want to dramatically change it, it does kind of tie you in, which can be frustrating.

Yes, I think that’s a really good point actually because when we set up Jammy Digital we offered SEO, we offered web design, I think we offered social media logo design, everything in the world. It all at least fell under the umbrella of digital, so we’ve slowly got rid of some of those services, but it didn’t actually matter because it was quite a broad word that we used, digital, which covers all our things. Whereas if we wanted to be estate agents then that’s obviously not going to work, but at least it was broad enough to begin with where we could kind of move around a little bit in at least our niche, which was digital marketing.

Yes absolutely.

That’s a good point. Are there any other reasons why someone might not want to use their business name as their domain name?

Occasionally when you have a business name as your domain name it can be a little bit less personal. It’s not as easy to connect with somebody, especially if they’re a personal brand. I can refer to you by your name. I want to build a little bit more rapport with you. I might consume some of your content. It’s just not as easy if you use a business name, but again there are pros and cons to it, but that’s one thing that we’ve found.

Yes definitely. I think they are obviously things you can do to kind of combat that. I think there are quite a few examples. I know Pete Matthew comes to mind. He runs Meaningful Money, so that’s his … Obviously business name is his domain name, but a lot of people know Pete Matthew because he puts so much effort into his podcast, into his content marketing. I think it’s about yes, if you’re going to sort of use your business name as your domain name then you kind of have to put yourself forward as well for a lot of it. It’s the same with Chris Marr at the Content Marketing Academy. Everyone knows him just as much as they know CMA, Content Marketing Academy. You kind of just have to make sure you ramp up that effort really in terms of content marketing and getting yourself out there and putting yourself out there and your face out there.

Exactly, and another thing that you might potentially find if you use a business name is that like Lyndsay said before, it can actually be quite difficult for people to find you. When you were searching for Pat Flynn, which is naturally what people do, they’ll remember a name, they’ll remember a face, and they go and type into Google. If your business name is your domain name then it kind of takes somebody a split second to work out okay, which result do I click on here?

Yes.

Because if someone types in your name-

Your Twitter comes up.

Exactly.

Yes, all sorts of things come up. Yes, that’s a really good point.

Your actual website might be knocked down the rankings a little bit. It might be on the first page but it might be the fourth or fifth one, which takes people an extra second or two to find your website, which can be frustrating.

Should you have a keyword in your domain name?

Yes definitely. Okay, so what about the last one then, which was using keywords in your domain? Is that a good idea?

I understand the appeal with this one. I understand that if you are a public speaking coach, for instance, and you have PublicSpeakingCoach.com then the appeal is that okay, when people type that into Google they’re going to get to my website. In reality that used to be the case, it used to be easier to rank higher on search engines for a keyword if you had it in your domain name, but it’s not the case anymore. It actually does have some weight, but not as much as it used to. I generally wouldn’t recommend this one unless there’s a real reason for it, but I’m yet to find one. One of the main pros is the fact that it does offer some weight but not enough for me to decide to build my entire website on it.

Okay, so I mean I know that it’s not one that you’re very keen on but are there any other reasons why someone might just want to use a keyword in their domain?

Yes, obviously you’ll make it abundantly clear what it is that you do. I mean if we chose, for instance, Web Design Blackpool then people know what they’re going to get. It’s immediately clear, it wouldn’t be immediately clear if somebody used their name. There’s that I suppose.

Do you think this is quite good for businesses then that are very, very local, quite small local businesses? Do you think it would be suitable for that? I mean I’m trying to find some good points of using this, sort of Accountants Blackpool or Web Design Manchester. Is there any kind of good stuff coming out of it?

What are the disadvantages of using a keyword in your domain name?

It depends really on how much competition you have. There’s still an argument to say that if there’s no other accountants in Blackpool that know anything about SEO, just by buying that domain name and adding some content to your website you might potentially rank highly on the first page of Google. Yes, but there’s so many websites popping up all over the place now that there’s too much in regards to SEO and branding are going to add more than just stuffing your keyword within your domain. I would say that this one is not so great of an option, but I do see people do it, which is why we wanted to include it. More often than not it can be a bit confusing. I mean if you search for somebody online you want their name to pop up or at least their business name. It’s kind of like three layers deep. It’s not the name of the person, it’s also not the business that they run, but it’s something else and it just looks a bit spammy I think in this day and age.

Yes definitely. I think it looks a little bit old fashioned as well, doesn’t it? Just not very professional. Yes, I absolutely agree with that.

Also it ties you in. You can’t get away from it. If you’re stuffing WebDesignBlackpool.com into your domain name and you decide to move house in five years to Manchester then it’s not really going to work. You kind of shot yourself in the foot a little bit there.

Yes, plus it just you just so … It’s just kind of boring if I’m honest. I mean imagine if our domain name wasn’t Martin Huntbach or MartinandLyndsay.com, it wasn’t JammyDigital.com, it was web design Manchester.

Oh God.

It just doesn’t excite anyone, does it?

No.

It’s just really boring.

No, exactly.

We can definitely see the bad points on that one, can’t we?

Exactly, but some people do still ask that question, “Is it best if I pop the keywords in my domain?” Ninety-nine times out of 100 we say no. It’s far better to choose a domain with your name or your business name.

What’s our favourite domain name option for personal brands?

What’s the best option then? Have you got a favorite personally?

Where possible I think you should try to use your name. Again taking everything into account, the pros and cons, and I think that the benefits far outweigh the negatives when it comes to choosing a domain name and including your name. The fact that you can change direction, the fact that you can brand yourself as much as you like, and it doesn’t actually take anything away from your name and your business. Again, including your business name has it’s benefits, but for personal brands people search for you online. People will recommend you. People won’t always remember the name of your business. It all depends if you want to sell it further down the line. If that’s your main objective then by all means. I would always choose to go with a brandable thing, whether that’s branding you or branding a business name, there are pros and cons to each and there’s no clear defined answer that’s going to work for everybody. Generally speaking if I was to go out by myself and want to build a business behind my knowledge and my experience I would generally build it behind MartinHuntbach.com.

Okay, that’s really interesting. Even if you couldn’t spell Huntbach.

The thing is you still have people refer people to you. People hear us on podcasts, people see us speak at local workshops, and people read guest posts. People will naturally find your name and there’s lots of people on the internet who have more complicated names to spell but they still make it work, especially if you’ve got the full weight of your business behind it. It’s still a great idea. I do understand the appeal of a Smart Passive Income, for instance.

Yes.

You can still do it, and like I say, if you go all in on it people will closely link the business name with your name and that’s fine if you can find that balance, but more often than not the best case scenario for most personal brands is to actually just put your name behind it. There is one last thing that I wanted to say, which is even if you decide to go for a business name domain name, you should still buy your name. I mean I did it. I didn’t intend to use it originally. We’ve got LyndsayCambridge.com. It’s the best thing to do is even if you decide to go with a business buy the domain name. You can set up forwarding, so you can actually if somebody does type your name into the address bar at the top of the page you could potentially redirect people to your main website. Especially if you decide to use it in the future just get it, pay the 10 pound a year, whatever it is, and then just store it. If you don’t decide to use it then that’s fine, but I would always recommend buying it.

Yes, it’s a really, really good point actually. We have MartinHuntbach.com, LyndsayCambridge.com, don’t visit LyndsayCambridge.com. There’s some really crap videos on there.

Now everyone’s going to visit.

That sounds actually really dodgy. It’s just some videos doing book reviews, not very exciting I’m afraid. Yes, that’s a really, really good point. Buy your name as your domain name. It’s always good to have that anyway because you don’t know when it’s going to be useful. I actually read, I forgot where I read it, but people are buying their children’s name as their domain names and then give … I don’t know if Martin might be doing that, [inaudible 00:21:38].

Thought I’d buy it today. Thought I’d buy it today.

Don’t worry Huntbach will be available, it’ll be fine.

It will be.

It’ll be available, we don’t need to spend 10 pound a year until he’s 18 and needs it or whatever. Yes, people actually do, they’re starting to buy their children’s names, the domain name.

Crazy.

The Make Your Mark Online Membership

Because in the future you don’t know when they’re going to need it. Yes, that’s a really, really interesting one. That was a really, really good episode actually on how to choose your domain name, episode 11 there. Just before you go I just wanted to remind you that our wait list is up for our Make Your Mark online membership community. Pop your name and email address in there and you’ll be signed up to the wait list, that’s when you can join us at the lowest ever price. We have confirmed the price now, it will be $29 per month or $290 each year.

How cheap is that?

It’s very cheap.

So cheap.

Cheap, but that will be a limited price Martin. It will only last two weeks that price and then it will be going up after that. Get your name down quickly, make sure you join us for that really, really low price offer. Thanks for listening.

Waitlist for Membership Community

The post Ep 11 – How to choose a domain name for your website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 10 – How to Attract Your Ideal Clients Through Your Website

Martin & Lyndsay — Tue, 11 Sep 2018 11:26:50 +0000

Working with your ideal client is the dream, but sometimes it’s difficult to say who you want to work with and who you don’t.

In this episode, we discuss the many ways you can attract your ideal clients and put off those you don’t want to work with.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

How to work with people who will respect you, your knowledge and your time
Subtle ways you can say who you don’t want to work with through your website
How you can tweak your website to attract your ideal clients
Why making it clear who you want to work with creates excellent customer service
The benefits of helping people who aren’t your ideal client via your website

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

1.00 – Why should we limit ourselves to one type of client?
2.45 – Telling someone you don’t want to work with them
3.58 – Pricing and how to position this on your website to attract your ideal clients
6.08 – You don’t have to have a specific pricing table
7.02 – Who we’re the right fit/wrong fit for
9.45 – Does this mean you can’t help people you aren’t the right fit for
11.24 – Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not
14.00 – Why the Internet has changed how we work
15.50 – Having a strong opinion
17.25 – Niching down
20.55 – Content marketing and attracting your ideal clients
26.00 – Be specific about what services you offer

Useful Resources and Links

Member Site Academy

Why You Shouldn’t Work With Us

Website Buyer’s Guide

Karen Reyburn: The Profitable Firm

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

Welcome to Episode 10 of the Make Your Mark online podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about how you can attract your ideal clients using your website. This podcast is sponsored by the Make Your Mark online membership. This is our signature membership community where we help personal brands build and grow a successful business website. This will actually be launching on October the 1st, 2018 and we’d love you to check it out. We currently have a wait list that you can sign up to, if you’re interested, if you go to jammydigital.com/wait. We’ll soon be opening the doors but we’ll only be opening the doors for two weeks at the lowest ever price, so don’t miss out. So let’s get into the show.

Why You Shouldn’t Just Take On ‘Anyone’

Today we’re talking about clients and how your website can actually dictate what kind of clients you get. And one question you might have, especially if you’re new to business, is, “Why should we only limit ourselves to a certain type of client? Shouldn’t we just be taking on anyone?” And it’s a question I put to you, Lyndsay. Shouldn’t we be taking on any client? Anyone who’s willing to pay us?

Yeah. It’s a good question, actually. And I think particularly when you’re starting out this is a question that a lot of people ask themselves. Because even out of necessity really, when you’re starting in business, you probably feel like you have to work with anyone and everyone. But I think the minimum that we should be asking is that we work with people who respect us and respect our time. That is the sort of minimum aim that we should be going for in terms of who we want to work with. I think when you’re more established, that’s when you can start thinking about your ideal clients because that’s going to make your business and your life a lot more enjoyable. And it’s going to be much, much better for you and your business.

It’s exactly what we did when we first started out. Like we said a few episodes ago, we’d just work with anybody wouldn’t we?

Exactly, yes. We worked with anyone and we worked with lots of types of different people, I think, when we first started out but now we’ve really honed it down and it is a lot, lot better for our business and for our lives really.

And we definitely do feel like we’re working with people that respect us, respect our time [crosstalk 00:02:24] had to pay a little bit more because we’re seen as more knowledgeable. And I suppose it’s a case of getting from that initial stage when you’re setting up a business to working with everyone to, as quickly as you possibly can really, getting to the stage where you are being a little bit more selective.

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

So it’s understandable if some of our listeners might be feeling a bit nervous about this. It is a big step-

It is.

Actually talking about attracting a certain type of client rather than just everyone. So it can be a bit nerve-wracking.

It can, definitely, and everyone feels nervous about it. We still feel nervous about it. No one wants to tell someone that they don’t want to work with them. It’s actually incredibly scary but there are ways of actually doing it that are quite subtle, particularly through your website where you can do it quite politely and the benefits of it do really outweigh the scariness, you know?

Yeah.

The Benefits of Saying Who You Want to Work With

You put your weight behind a real small selection of clients that you do want to work with and the whole thing becomes much more enjoyable, like I said, for you and for the client too. So it may seem scary but it’s definitely worth it.

Plus, I suppose your visitors, they won’t really know that much. I mean, you’ll know that you’re making a big step because it’s your website.

Exactly.

But, like you say, there are a few subtle ways, which we’ll be going through now in regards to what you can do to tweak your website to start attracting your ideal clients.

Exactly.

So let’s begin then. What’s the first one? What’s the first tip?

How Talking About Pricing Can Help You Attract Your Ideal Clients

I think probably the biggest thing is pricing. Talking about pricing on your website. Now, this really polarizes people. [inaudible 00:04:07] we’ve got a real big ‘no’ camp and, “Never do it.” And we’ve got a real big ‘yes’ camp all for it. We are definitely in the ‘yes’ camp, aren’t we?

Yeah, we are.

And I think this is, obviously, you can see the benefits of how that’s going to attract your ideal clients. Also, on our website, we say that we charge a minimum of 3-4-9-7, that’s the minimum price. And in doing that, we sort of really sort of pinpoint who we’re targeting. So it’s not, obviously, people with 500 quid. But equally, it’s not huge corporations with 25 grand to spend because we’re also not the right fit for them. So with your prices, and you’ll know this more for your industry, but with your prices, you can really start to hone in on the kind of clients that you want to attract.

And in doing so, it saves you so much time because the amount of conversations that we used to have, I don’t even remember, but we had to [inaudible 00:05:02] so many conversations with people before we put our prices on our website, didn’t we? Where we would just speak to them for so long, we’d eventually get to the pricing talk and then they’d be like, “Oh no. I can’t afford you.” And you’ve already spent two hours actually talking to these people. And you’ve wasted their time, and you’ve wasted your own time and neither of you are happy. So I really don’t see why anyone wouldn’t put their prices on their website.

And it’s not something you necessarily have to do just because you’re expensive. It’s something you can do if you’re incredibly cheap as well.

Absolutely.

And we’ve had our prices up on our website and then we’ve taken them off. They’ve been up and down like yo-yos. But it really is something that we’ve struggled with over the years and we’ve tested both and we’re finally happy with having our price indicators on our website. We don’t necessarily have a pricing table. It’s obviously different projects are completely different prices but it allows us to position ourselves as a certain type of company who only work with certain types of companies.

That’s a really good point actually, Martin, that you don’t have to actually have a really specific price, you know?

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

You don’t have to have a pricing table that tells people exactly what you charge. If you go on our website, if you go to the pricing page, we say the minimum, but obviously it can go up and down. And you don’t have to give an exact amount if that’s what really scares you but try and give some sort of indicator to price. I think … and that actually works. So you don’t have to fully commit to one set price but just give a little bit of an indication.

Exactly, just choose your ideal audience and choose a price point that you’re happy with. You tend to find that people who you might struggle working with sometimes might not be in your price point anyway. So you’ll automatically stop a few people coming to you and just get the ones who actually can afford you. Makes the sales process a lot easier as well. So what else can we do other than putting out prices on our website to be able to attract our ideal clients?

Highlighting Who You’re the Right Fit/Wrong Fit For

So a lot of people actually put on their website a ‘don’t work with us if’, a sort of section on their website which is basically a bit of copy listing the reasons why you shouldn’t work with the company. And this works really, really well and for a really great example, check out The Membership Guys. And I will pop these links into the show notes as well, but check out The Membership Guys on their website because they essentially say, “Don’t work with us if you want a really quick solution, if you’re not willing to put the effort into building a membership site.” Those kind of things and that … it really helps clear it up because they don’t want to be working with people that just want sort of a fast, quick, get-rich-quick scheme type thing. They really highlight who they want to be working with and that again, it saves them time from having to speak to people that aren’t right for them. And it saves the people who aren’t right for them their time, actually trying to go through and find out more about the product and things like that.

It really is helpful from a customer service point of view, doing things like this, because it saves time and gets to the point straightaway.

That’s right. So I think you’re talking about the Member Site Academy, [inaudible 00:08:17] the sales page.

Yes.

So if you want to check it out there, then you’ll be able to see who we are a right fit for, who we’re a wrong fit for. And it’s really, it’s funny actually, because it’s so scary when you sit down to write that list because it’s like-

It is.

“I really don’t want to put anyone off from working with me.” And we found this because we actually wrote a blog post, “Seven Reasons You Shouldn’t Hire Us As Your Web Designers.” And we struggled with this for weeks and weeks and weeks. And we swapped it around and eventually we published it but it wasn’t easy because you do feel like you’re kind of putting a barrier in the way. It kind of goes against, “I want to sell my services. Please hire me.” And it actually puts a little bit of a [inaudible 00:08:58] in the works but it is incredibly powerful if you do it right.

If you do it right, what it should do is, it should put off the people that you don’t want. But it should kind of encourage the people that you do because the people that you do are like, “Okay, yeah. I really fit into that, actually. I embody everything that they want in a client or a customer and they have the same values as me.” So our clients are quite similar to us in terms of values and kind of what they want to achieve and things like that. And I think that’s what you’re trying to do really. So yes, you’re going to put people off but you’re also really going to strengthen that connection with your ideal clients, which can only be a good thing.

Definitely. But does that mean that you can’t help the people who aren’t your ideal clients? Is there some way that we can at least throw them a bone if we don’t want them as clients but we can potentially see them as future clients maybe?

Can You Still Help People Who Aren’t Your Ideal Clients?

Yeah. That’s a really good question because we’re not talking about being rude here. We’re not talking about saying-

“Get off my website.”

Yeah. “Go away. We don’t like you.” I’m not saying do that. There’s no reason to be kind of horrible. We’re definitely not encouraging that and I think you can still help people that perhaps aren’t your ideal client. We have a website buyer’s guide aimed at people who are buying a website for the first time. A lot of people who download it are buying … want to buy kind of a cheap website and we tell them what to do. We are not the ideal client for them. A lot of our content, as well, is aimed at people who are perhaps building their own WordPress website or just want to find out more about website or [SEO 00:10:41] in general. And that’s absolutely fine, but what we’ve found is that when people have consumed this content, when people have downloaded the website buyer’s guide, people come back when they are perhaps more of our ideal client. And then they’ve wanted to hire us. So there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t help people who perhaps don’t fit into your ideal clients because you never know as well.

They might come back a bit later when they’re perhaps more of your ideal client and they’ll remember you and the help that you gave them. So definitely don’t shun them. Don’t tell them to go away.

No, [crosstalk 00:11:17].

We definitely wouldn’t recommend that.

Perfect. So what else can we do then to start attracting these perfect customers?

Don’t Be Someone Your Not

I think being yourself is a big one. And that sounds really cheesy and it probably is but we … just own who you are. [inaudible 00:11:34] I’m not sure [inaudible 00:11:36] she blocks it out of her memory. But we pretended, I think, we were a lot bigger than we were. Originally it was Martin who was full time in the business. I worked full time on our website. We said ‘we’. We didn’t say ‘I’. We did loads and loads of things to try and appear much bigger than we were and it just didn’t work. We were constantly kind of trying to look so much bigger than we were. And now we say, “Do you know what? There’s two of us. We don’t have a fancy office and we … we’re fine with that. We just have us two and our cats and that’s it.” Because we thought that people would value a bigger company when sometimes they don’t. Actually, people value the expert with the experience and the knowledge, not the faceless big company. And there’s no point trying to be something when you’re not. Definitely not.

And we see this a lot with brand new businesses where they start talking, they don’t put pictures of themselves on there because they’re afraid that they might look a little bit amateurish. But, in reality, that’s how we started and we’ve gone back around again and now we’re trying to be seen exactly as who we are which is, “We work from home, we live by the sea. If you don’t want to work with us then don’t work with us, but we’re happy in what we do and we’re proud of the websites that we produce and the experiences that customers have with us.” You shouldn’t have to act different than you are. You should just own it and be proud of it. And the more confident that you are in that, it has a real significant impact.

It does, definitely, definitely. And I think we say, “If you want to work with a big agency, if you want to go to a big, fancy office and get a coffee from their fancy coffee machine and-

Play foosball.”

Exactly. We’re not the agency for you in that sense. And that’s okay because that’s never going to work if someone wants that from us and we’re just sat in a home office. It’s never going to work, is it? So why pretend not not to do that?

Although, to be fair, I think a foosball table might be on the [inaudible 00:13:42]. I don’t know about you. Would you ever consider-

No. Definitely not.

No ‘meet in the middle’?

He’s going to-

[crosstalk 00:13:48] ping-pong set?

No. No ping-pong set. Actually no, I’m kind of intrigued by the ping-pong set now actually.

There we are, we’re making steps. We’re making valuable steps forward. Perfect.

But yes, I think there’s this thing with … I think the rise of, really, the internet and personal brands and the power of personal brands. I think things are changing in business. And I remember when we started in business, we had a crappy … well, I’m not saying it’s crappy because it was our first lovely car. But we had a lovely Nissan Micro, didn’t we [crosstalk 00:14:21]? And it was ten years old and Martin would go out and meet clients but he was so conscious because the kind of clients that we were attracting were Audi drivers. They were suit wearers. And you would park like a mile away from their office.

Oh, so far.

So that [crosstalk 00:14:34] they wouldn’t see your car.

I’d be sweating by the time I’d get there. I think one of the wheels, actually, had lost its wheel rim, so-

It did.

Whenever I had to park close by, I had to park and turn around so that the empty wheel rim wheel wasn’t on the side of the business, so.

Well, that’s the thing. I mean, now, we don’t even have to worry about any of that, do we?

No. Exactly, because part of what we love to do is to help lots of clients all across the country. And by driving out to a little local business who might not have picked up our content or listened to our podcast. And those just … it doesn’t fit in with what we want to do.

No.

So we decided to flip it on its head. And we actually say to people who get in touch locally now, we actually have kind of a template email that says, “Unfortunately, we won’t meet you locally. Although we are local, we … ” Or potentially to some customers, “We do all our meetings over video call as it makes us more efficient and we can help more people.” And if that … and sometimes that does rub people the wrong way and that’s fine. We’re not the ideal company for that person, so, and that’s fine. But we own it and we’re proud of it. That’s the difference.

Exactly. Exactly, and I think another thing is, is on that kind of route, is having a strong opinion as well, really, really helps. A lot of people are quite scared to have a kind of a strong opinion. It doesn’t matter what that opinion is, usually it’s about your products or service or the business that you’re working in, but I think having a strong opinion, again, helps strengthen your relationship with your ideal clients and helps put off your clients that aren’t ideal for you. We love the website Joy Junkie. She’s quite sweary, isn’t she, on there?

Yeah.

She gets straight to the point.

[crosstalk 00:16:20] be bold, memorable.

Love it. Exactly. Exactly, and some people might think, “Do you know, I don’t like swearing.” Or, “I don’t like the way that her … she words things.” And things like that. But it doesn’t matter because those aren’t her ideal clients.

Exactly.

And I feel like, we’ve done this as well, we’ve kind of put people off, I think, sometimes with our views. But we stand by them because a lot of our ideal clients actually agree with us. So that helps sort of strengthen that really and build that bond and really kind of get our ideal clients really behind us. And it kind of doesn’t really matter about the other people because they’re not going to be people that we work with anyway.

Exactly. It’s nice to work with people that truly get you and are okay with it. You don’t want to act like somebody you’re not and then have to do that throughout the entire customer relationship. It’s much better if you’re just open and honest about who you are, your views. Your branding will feel a lot better, you’ll enjoy it a lot more and you’ll enjoy your customers a lot more as well.

Niching Down

Exactly. Exactly, and I think another thing would be to probably niching down. Now, this is perhaps something that you want to do maybe when you’re more established. Although, we recommend it to anyone really, even if you’re starting out. But by niching down, obviously to a particular … could be to a particular type of audience, the particular industry that they’re in, it doesn’t particularly matter. But it helps you sort of segment a place in the market where you want to target really. So great example of this is The Profitable Firm run by Karen Reyburn who talks a lot of great stuff about niching down. We saw her at CMA Live last year and she was just fantastic. If you haven’t seen her, when you do see her, she will convince you about the power of niching down. It’s impossible to ignore the benefits that she really outlines. But she runs a company that basically does marketing for accountants. It does some really, really good stuff and it’s a real good example of how niching down to your specific audience really, really helps you. Because that’s who she works with and that’s only who she works with.

And again, this is extremely scary if you can think about taking your services, who you serve, you might currently serve everybody, to actually taking it down to just one industry, might actually scare the crap out of you. It’s actually petrifying to imagine giving up 99% of your customer base. But again, if you ever do see Karen speak, then she will convince you that that 1% or whatever it is of your audience that is in your niche is just … it’s so much more comfortable running a business when you have a niche. And again, it’s not for everybody but if you can find a middle ground like what we do. For instance, we only build WordPress websites and right now, we’re transitioning more into personal brands because we enjoy working with solo entrepreneurs and personal brands. So we are finding that it’s a lot better for us because our content changes. It can be a lot more tailored and we actually … we’ve seen a lot of people think, “Well, if I’m niching down, doesn’t that mean I’m going to have to reduce my prices because I’m only working with one person?”

But that’s not always the case, is it?

No, definitely not. Definitely not and I think it’s actually a time where you can think, “Do you know what? I’m going to increase my prices.” Because you specialize in that area. You are like Karen is, the marketing expert for accountants. Now, she understands not only marketing and everything about marketing but she understands accounting as well. And you’re bringing those two specialisms together and becoming an expert in it and that’s what you’re paying for. You’re paying for someone’s real niched-down expertise that actually is completely involved in your area. And so, it’s very, very powerful for actually being able to increase your prices because you’ve got such a strength of knowledge in the area that people … you’re ideal clients are interested in.

And it’s about taking that niche and making it obvious on your website. I suppose that’s what we’re talking about [crosstalk 00:20:28].

Absolutely. Absolutely and really going into town with it on your website, making sure it’s very, very clear. If you go to The Profitable Firm’s website, it’s extremely clear who her target audience is. And that’s what you want to be doing. You want to be making it very, very clear on your website.

Perfect. So something to think about, maybe not right away, but something to think about later down the line absolutely.

Definitely.
So what else can we do with our websites? What can we start doing right away to be able to start taking on more of our ideal clients?

Content Marketing and Attracting Your Ideal Clients

So one thing we can all do is use our content to show how knowledgeable we are. And this is something that everyone can do. It doesn’t matter who you are. Even if you’re new to business or you’re more established, by using content marketing, you can really show that you are an expert in your industry and that’s extremely powerful for attracting your ideal clients. Because we’ve found, since doing content marketing, we have people reading our content and getting excited to work with us. I think we’ve mentioned this before that we used to have to have sales call. People would ring and you’d kind of have to sell to them, which I am crap at by the way, I’m terrible at it. Whereas now, since we’ve been doing content marketing, people are like, “Hi, I’ve seen your prices. I’ve seen how you process is and how you work. I’ve consumed all your content and it’s been super helpful for me. I just want to work with you. When can I start?” And it’s like, “Oh. That’s amazing.” And I feel like I would say, “Okay, do you want me to go through anything or … ?” “No, no.” And just like, “When can you start the project?”

“Send us the invoice.”

Which is amazing. And when you start getting those phone calls, it doesn’t happen straightaway and it takes work, it takes time. But it does happen if you do it right. And it’s just so wonderful when it does because you just start attracting people that want to work with you. They’re not sort of encouraged by price or they’re not kind of tire kickers that just want to kind of see what you can do and see what they can get out of you. They actively really want to work with you and everyone wants that. That’s everyone’s ideal client, isn’t it?

Yeah. Absolutely, and it’s interesting actually, because we still get a few inquiries trickle through who haven’t really consumed any of our content, haven’t spent much time on our website. They’ve just kind of maybe googled web design or a service that you offer. And they actually just ring up and they say, “Oh, I’m just starting a business and I ain’t got much of a budget and I want to work with you.” And it can feel a bit awkward sometimes because it’s like, “Well, we might not be the best fit for you but check out the website buyer’s guide.” And, “We actually work with people who are a little bit more established.” And you actually notice the difference whereas before, when we didn’t produce content, 90% of our inquiries would be that. Whereas now, it’s flipped. So it’s like 90% come to us and they say, “We know who you are. We’ve read your content. We want to work with you.” And 10% are the people who have never really heard of us before.

But as Martin said, you can actually tell a massive difference between people that have consumed our content and people that perhaps googled something, seen our number and given us a call. There is a huge difference between those people. They know nothing about us. People now ring us and they say, “Hi, can I speak to Martin? Can I speak to Lyndsay?” They ask us about our cats. I think we go on about our cats a bit too much but that’s fine. And you’ve already kind of built that relationship. You’ve built that trust already. You’ve built that authority. You’ve done it all. There’s no need for anything else, but there is a massive difference between those people and the people who’ve just called from seeing our number on Google or whatever.

Absolutely.

And definitely the first ones are our ideal clients. Second ones, you just don’t know and you could spend an hour or two hours on the phone trying to find out. And again, it’s a waste of your time and it’s a waste of their time if you’re not the right fit for them.

Exactly, which is exactly why we created the website buyer’s guide and why we created lots of blog posts that aren’t for our ideal clients but are for people who are not our ideal clients. For instance, “Five Ways to Get a Cheap Website Built.” That’s a blog post that we created. We created the website buyer’s guide for that as well and “Why You’re Not Ranking in Google and How to Fix It.” These aren’t necessarily blog posts for our ideal clients but it makes our content and our website a little bit more of a resource and a little bit more of a hub. So don’t feel like you have to only provide content for those people. Some of that content drives a lot of traffic to our website. And as Lyndsay says, “The more content they consume, the more comfortable they are with you, your brand and how you position yourself.” They may well be in a position, going forward, to hire you.

And we definitely have had people that have said, “I’ve been following you for two years.” And … or people that … I think one lady said she’s been saving her [crosstalk 00:25:29] for the website, to actually come to us. And I think she’d been looking over our content for 18 months. She’d built a business in the meantime and then she was finally in a position to actually delve in with us. And it is really, really nice and it does work. You just have to kind of commit to it even though it’s scary. But it’s a really good point that you said that you don’t have to just write content specifically for your ideal, ideal clients. You can broaden out like we do because you never know, further down the line, who you’re going to attract.
Exactly. And that brings us on to our final point, which is-

Be Specific in What Services You Offer

Yeah. So be specific in what services you offer. So we’ve talked about this before. Right at the beginning, when we started in business, we kind of were a marketing slash digital agency. We did social media, we did web design. We did a logo design. I made the joke last time that we would take your [inaudible 00:26:19] out if you paid us. Anything, we would do anything for you.

We would even take checks. We would even take checks off you. Not anymore though.

Martin has a thing about checks.

Oh god, they are crap [inaudible 00:26:31]. We can all agree that check are crap.

You’re going to have to write a ‘don’t work with me if you only send checks’ blog post.

That’s the next blog post. I already got in on draft.

That’s pretty much it, one line.

Web design for people who don’t have checkbooks.

That’s a niche-ish. But yes, I think just being very specific in the services that you offer. And again, if you’re starting out, it’s very tempting to try and offer everything but you spread yourself very thinly. And your clients then can be very, very varied. Social media marketing is very different from web design and so, when we were doing everything, we had very, very different types of clients with very, very different types of needs and we were spread very thinly. Now, you might think, “Okay, well if I reduce my services down, aren’t I reducing my audience?” And that doesn’t happen at all. It just strengthens the people that want to work with you.

Definitely. And it’s funny though, because all of the truly successful online business owners that we spoke about in previous episodes, they only really focus on very few services that they know throughout. They don’t do everything. People like Chris [Tucker 00:27:50] don’t talk about social media marketing. They don’t talk email marketing. They don’t talk about doing everything and offer services to promote that. They focus on one specific thing done well and they say ‘no’ to a lot more people than they say ‘yes’ to.

Absolutely. It is about that. It’s about doing one thing well rather than trying to cover a lot of things. And we attract people that are very much sold on WordPress and they want a very specific WordPress web designer. Now, we do get people get in touch and they have got the money and they’re like, “Can you build me a website in Magento or Joomla or whatever. And we have to say, “No. I’m sorry.” And because … that’s going to take us time. We’re going to be learning about something, a new platform. And also, we’re not the right fit for them. They could actually get an expert in those platforms which would be better for them. So this is about adding value to your customer and also making your life a lot easier as well.

Perfect. So I think we’ve given a fair … a few points away there on how you can test out this idea of transitioning and becoming more of an ideal client attraction business really, aren’t we?

Yes. Definitely, definitely.

We should trademark that phrase.

I do. No, I don’t think … no, it doesn’t work (laughs).

Worth a shot.

Definitely.

But we hope you found it useful. Episode 10, I can’t believe we’ve just finished Episode 10 already.

I know, in double digits.

Double digits.

Oh god, we were talking there at the same time. We’re saying the same things. We’ve become that annoying married couple that say the exact same things at the exact same time.

Not good.

It’s never good.

No. That’s it, now we’re canning off this podcast. No Episode 11.

Everyone’s rolling their eyes. So annoying. But yes, no, it is really good to do Episode 10. We absolutely love doing these podcast episodes. It’s really, really nice.

We’ll be at hundred in no time. Perfect. So if you’ve like this episode, please head over to iTunes and leave us a review. We’ve not iShared for a while but if you have been listening, then head over to jammydigital.com/iTunes and tell us what you like about it. Tell us your favorite episode. We’d love to do more content based around what you like and what you want to hear so feel free to drop us a comment. And don’t forget, on the First of October, we are releasing the brand new membership. So if you’re interested in checking out the information for that, then go to jammydigital.com/wait. And we will see you in the next episode.

Jammy Digital SEO webinar

The post Ep 10 – How to Attract Your Ideal Clients Through Your Website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Ep 9 – Why Our First Website Failed Miserably

Martin & Lyndsay — Tue, 04 Sep 2018 10:58:33 +0000

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

DIY Website vs Agency

Website Buyer’s Guide

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

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.

Jammy Digital SEO webinar

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

Ep 8 – 8 Tips to Increase Website Conversions

Martin & Lyndsay — Tue, 28 Aug 2018 11:27:33 +0000

Converting your website visitors into paying customers doesn’t just happen by accident. There are so many things you can do to increase conversions on your website.

In this episode, we’re going to be going through eight very simple tweaks you can make on your website that will transform your readers into leads.

In this episode, we’ll cover…

What is a conversion
Are there a simple set of rules to increase website conversions?
How to make your buttons stand out
Why you shouldn’t use ‘sign up to my newsletter’
How to create conversion-friendly forms
Signposting on your website
Making sure every page on your website has a purpose

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

1.12 – What is a conversion?
2.28 – Is there a simple set of rules to increase conversions?
3.24 – What can we do with our websites to get warmer leads?
3.45 – How to make your buttons stand out
6.14 – What to have instead of a ‘newsltter’
9.20 – How to create conversion-friendly forms
12.13 – Adding your images to your website
13.41 – Having no call to actions
16.24 – SSL Certificate
17.55 – Your Big, Bold Statement
19.17 – Too much clutter

Useful Resources and Links

How to Create a Big Bold Statement

What To Do Next

Thanks for listening to our episode. If you found this episode useful, please feel free to share it via social media using the links above.

If you want to know about search engine optimisation (SEO), website conversions, content marketing and website copy, then join our FREE Facebook Group.

We would love it if you subscribed to our podcast and left us an honest review. This helps us reach more people and produce more podcast episodes.

If you have any questions about this episode or you want us to cover something new, then contact us on hello@jammydigital.com or leave a comment at the bottom of the page!

Episode Transcript Below

Martin: Welcome to episode eight of the Make Your Mark Online Podcast. In today’s episode, we’re going to talking about conversions, and we’re going to give you eight simple rules to follow to improve the conversions on your website. Now, before we get into the show, I just wanted to remind you that we are hosting a brand new webinar on the 6th of September, and it’s going to be all about SEO and how to improve your search engine rankings for your website. It’s going to be really fun, isn’t it?

Lyndsay: Yeah, yeah. Really excited about it. It’s going to start at 8:00, that’s UK time, or 3:00 p.m. EST. Make sure you pop it in your diaries, and go and visit the webpage which is JammyDigital.com/webinar, to actually get your unique link for the actual webinar, because you won’t be able to get in without that.

What is a website conversion?

Martin: Yeah, and make sure you turn up early as well, because we do only have a limited number of seats, so it’s really important you show up 15 minutes later. We’ll be there. Okay, let’s get into the show. So Lyndsay, when we talk about conversions, what do we actually mean? What is a conversion?

Lyndsay: It’s a good question, actually, because we work within obviously web design, so we talk about this quite a lot. But I think it’s a little bit of a jargony term really, because it’s not quite obvious what it is. But it’s essentially up to you, the business owner, what you classify as a conversion. It’s getting your reader of your website from the status of reader and actually taking some action.

Lyndsay: You decide what the action is. That could be signup to your email list, it could be get in touch with you, it could be to buy something from you. Ultimately, that’s actually your decision, but it’s essentially about getting your reader to take some form of action with you.

Martin: Okay, so it’s about taking someone from potentially a cold lead on your website to making them into a warm lead or maybe a hot lead where they’re ready to buy.

Lyndsay: Exactly.

Martin: It’s about taking somebody through that funnel really, to become more of a customer or more of a potential customer at least.

Lyndsay: Exactly, yeah.

Martin: Okay. That makes sense. It’s pretty straightforward then. It’s just yeah, there’s lots of info on the internet that makes it more complicated than it needs to be.

Lyndsay: Yeah. It doesn’t need to be complicated at all, no.

Is there a simple set of rules to increase conversions?

Martin: Okay, that’s pretty self-explanatory then. Okay, so with SEO, and with web design, we like to give quite a few tips away. In terms of action steps that our listeners can do with their websites, is it easy to give that away with conversions? Do we have a simple set of rules that people can follow to be able to improve their website conversions?

Lyndsay: Yeah. I mean, broadly speaking, we do go through this with our clients and also in website critiques as well, about how you can actually improve conversions. Now, conversion, it is all about testing, so your business is unique. Your audience is unique, your brand is unique, so one thing that might work for one person might not work for the other, but in this episode we’re going to be speaking very broadly about what will work for 99% of businesses. Everyone will be able to get something from it.

Martin: Okay, that makes sense. Okay, so let’s get into the juicy bits then. What can we do with our websites today to improve the conversions? How can we get people to become a warmer lead?

Making your buttons stand out

Lyndsay: Yeah, well there’s plenty of simple things that you can do, and I’ll focus in this episode on really simple tweaks that you can make. You can probably just go in today to the backend of your system and make these tweaks. The first one is your buttons. Now, what I mean when I say buttons is essentially mean your call to action buttons.

Lyndsay: This might be like, “Get in touch with us” or, “Sign up to our webinar” or any of those kind of buttons on your website. It’s about actually making them really stand out, because making them stand out really does improve conversions. You see this, I always give this example of Amazon. Amazon is a really ugly website. No offense website. Not that they’re going to be bothered, they’re making a lot of money.

Martin: Yeah, don’t sue us, Amazon. Please.

Lyndsay: We can’t afford that. But if you look at their website, it isn’t the prettiest, and their buttons really stick out like a sore thumb. They’re not attractive at all, but they get people to click, and that’s what you want to be doing on your website in a way. I mean, we see a lot of people that make their buttons really go in with their color scheme, they’re nice pastely colors, you can’t really tell.

Lyndsay: Or, they don’t have any color in the background of them, they’re not in a box, it’s just a text link and all things like that.

Martin: Yeah, ’cause sometimes they don’t actually look like buttons.

Lyndsay: Exactly.

Martin: We were doing a website critique last week and we were like, “Oh, didn’t realize this was a button.”

Lyndsay: Yeah, suddenly you accidentally click.

Martin: ‘Cause it blends in. Yeah.

Lyndsay: Because it blends in so much, and I think this is about really making those call to actions stand out, and that will definitely improve conversions.

Martin: Okay, that’s a good point. It doesn’t necessarily matter what color you use. I mean, on a broad level-

Lyndsay: On a broad level.

Martin: … it’s just about making it stand out.

Lyndsay: Yeah, on a broad level, no. Actually there’s a pile of research to do with button color psychology. If you’re a geek like me, it’s all very interesting. But it is dependent on the business. Once you’ve actually made your buttons stand out on your website, then you can start testing things. Is green better? Is orange better? You can start testing these things out, and believe me, big corporations spend hundreds of thousands of pounds actually doing this.

Lyndsay: You can certainly do it yourself, but the first step is just make those buttons stand out, and it’s amazing how many people just don’t do that.

Martin: Yeah, so that by itself is such a big action step for our listeners to be able to go onto the website now, change the button colors, make sure that they stand out with all the other stuff on the website, and then see some improvements, which is great.

Lyndsay: Yep, definitely.

Martin: Fantastic. Okay what else have we got?

Sign up to our newsletter

Lyndsay: Another thing that we constantly say, don’t we Martin, is about sign up to my newsletter? We see it all the time, don’t we?

Martin: Absolutely love it, we do.

Lyndsay: I think we’ve mentioned this before. I probably mention it on every episode really, but a lot of people say on their website, “Sign up to my newsletter to get my weekly thoughts” or something like that. We always say, “No one cares.” Unfortunately, as much as we’d love to think that people care about our monthly newsletter where we talk about the award we won in 2014 and our new office plant, no one does care, unfortunately.

Martin: To be fair, you are partial to the nice office plant.

Lyndsay: I am. Well, I always kill them, don’t I?

Martin: You do.

Lyndsay: I always buy them and kill them. I could put that in a newsletter, no one would read it. But yeah, unfortunately no one really cares that much about your updates in your business. Now, you might, I don’t know, you might be giving away the best content ever in this newsletter. I don’t know, but if you’re calling it a newsletter, I’m just going to be bored.

Lyndsay: The way to increase conversions in terms of email signups is to offer something for free in exchange for someone’s email address. This could be anything. It could be an eBook, it could be a video series, could be a guide, could be anything. I’m not saying it has to be really extensive. Just give away something.

Martin: Okay. That’s great. We’re talking about making it I suppose, if we’re making it really clean and simple, this information, it’s about making it customer focused rather than focused on what we have, which is our newsletter, our news, our information, our updates, and about this is your guide, this is your free giveaway, this is your action step, this is your cheat sheet. We’re talking about flipping it, aren’t we?

Lyndsay: Yep, absolutely. I absolutely agree with that. It is taking the focus from us and putting it onto them. When you make something about the customer, and make them feel special and that they’re going to gain something from it, then you’re going to increase conversions.

Lyndsay: Again, this could be tested so once you’ve gathered that, once you’ve got rid of the newsletter, you’re replaced with something else, perhaps a cheat sheet as you said, you could test different things and think, “Well, actually a video series works a lot better for conversions and getting email addresses than my cheat sheet.” You can test different things, but the first step is get rid of the newsletter, replace it with something juicy.

Martin: Yeah, unless you’re Richard Branson, newsletter isn’t that appealing.

Lyndsay: Yeah. I mean, I have seen the big guys do it. When you are Richard Branson, or any number of these huge influencers, yes you can get away with saying, “Sign up to my newsletter” because people genuinely do have an interest in your daily life and what’s going on, but until you’re there, until you’re Richard Branson, just hold off on that.

Email sign-up forms

Martin: Okay, no problem. Okay, so before you mentioned getting someone to get in touch with us as well, and I suppose that could be related to email signup forms as well, but what tips do we have in regards to getting people to fill out forms on our website?

Lyndsay: Yeah, that’s a really good one, because we’ve seen from … We’ve done hundreds and hundreds of website critiques haven’t we, over our years? And we’ve seen a lot of people put forms on their website that are very long. They ask for name, address, your pet’s name, your blood type, and your favorite film.

Lyndsay: No, they don’t really ask that much, but they ask for so much information. I mean, seriously, just completely useless information. Ask yourself, do you really need someone’s address when they’re filling in your form on the website? Are you going to send them a letter? Is it 1952? Well, maybe not that early, but you know what I mean. Do you really need to ask all these details?

Lyndsay: Think about what you actually do need to ask, and this is good for obviously GDPR, as well, because you have to ask for the maximum amount of data that you need to actually do the process that you need to. If you don’t need an address, don’t ask for it. If you don’t need someone’s website URL, don’t ask for it.

Lyndsay: There’s no point. It’s tempting to get as much information as possible, but if someone sees a big huge form and they think, “I can’t be bothered with that. I’m going to come back to it later” and they’ll just hit the backspace button.

Martin: Okay, and I suppose as well, as we noticed in the past, is there can even be a difference between asking people to fill out two fields on the form versus three fields on the form. I’ve seen MailChimp as well, their standard signup form for an email list is actually first name, last name, and then email address. Now, that last name you have to ask yourself, is that actually vital? Do we need somebody’s last name or can we speak to people normally on our email list by just saying, “Hey Lyndsay, here is the thing you requested.” Do you really need a last name?

Lyndsay: Yeah, exactly. It’s the same with asking for Mr. Or Mrs. Or Ms. Like, do you really need that? Again, are you writing them a big long letter? Because most of the time, you don’t refer to people as Ms. Cambridge or Mr. Huntsbatch in email, so it’s completely useless. Yeah, have a think about that and make it as short and easy for your end user as possible.

Martin: Yeah. On the flip side, I would say that there is an argument to say that you should get more than an email address, so asking for somebody’s first name actually might help as well.

Lyndsay: Yeah. I definitely agree with that actually, because yeah, you would need a first name and an email address. Don’t just ask for an email address, ’cause certainly when you’re emailing people, you want it to be personal, so you want to say, “Hi Lyndsay” or “Hi whoever.” You don’t want to just say, “Hi subscriber” because that just makes it very, very impersonal.

Martin: It limits things.

Lyndsay: Exactly.

Martin: I’m sure it works, I’m sure you’ll probably get more signups, but how personal can you be if you’re just asking for an email address?

Lyndsay: Yeah. It’s fine in that balance, but yeah definitely.

Martin: Exactly. Okay, perfect. What else can we do to improve the conversions on our website?

Lyndsay: I think another thing that we try and push a lot of people to do, and they’re sometimes quite reluctant, is put pictures of themselves on their website. This is particularly important for personal brands, but for any business I would argue, to put your picture on your website. There’s nothing worse than going to a website and feeling very cold and clinical about it.

Lyndsay: We hear the phrase all the time, “People deal with people.” We want to actually see who we’re dealing with.

Images of you

Martin: Okay, so this is a really interesting one, because when we talk about conversions, we talk about signing up, we talk about buttons, we’re talking about email lists, but this one is a bit different, because it’s like, well, before they even get there, they need to trust you. You they need to know you. They need to build up some kind of rapport via your website, wherever they are in the world, and actually getting somebody to fill out an email list and sign up to do this or buy a product is a lot easier if you think about it from a person to person perspective, which is why having an image of yourself is so important if you’re a personal brand.

Lyndsay: Exactly, exactly. As you said, it’s just all about building trust, isn’t it? You have to get that trust built before someone takes action with you. A good way of doing that is obviously featuring your image on your website.

Martin: Okay. Perfect. That will absolutely help someone take the next step with with you.

Lyndsay: Definitely, definitely.

Martin: I agree. Okay, no problem. What else can we do?

Signposting

Lyndsay: There is another thing that people do in the fact that it’s not even about button colors now. It’s the fact that there is no call to action on your website at all. A lot of people rely on the fact that they just have a contact me button perhaps in their main menu header, but they have nothing on their website that tells people what you want them to do.

Martin: Yeah, that direction you want people to take.

Lyndsay: Exactly. It’s really not good in terms of conversions. What you want to do is actually tell people what you want them to do. Be a bit bossy about it. Say, “Get in contact with me now” or even just signposting them around your website. We always say on the homepage, signpost people where you want them to go.

Lyndsay: If you’ve got three different services, feature those three different services on your homepage, and get people to the relevant pages that they need to go to. I always say think of yourself like a traffic, like you’re directing traffic and you’ve got a little whistle in the middle of a street.

Lyndsay: Imagine that’s your website and you’re the person who has to direct the traffic. You need to be really clear, “Okay, you need to go over there, you need to go over there, you need to go over there. You can get in touch with me if you want” and you need to be that explicit with people.

Martin: Yeah, it is about taking control of the buyer’s journey throughout your website, and one thing we’ve done actually is with our webinar coming out over the next few weeks, I don’t know if I’ve plugged it enough, but what we’ve actually done is we’ve gone through all of our previous blog posts related to SEO, and we’ve actually signposted a few of those and included these little redirection sections, which is, “We’ve got a new webinar coming. Click here.”

Martin: They’re reading the blog post, they’re actually consuming the content, and then they see a call to action which says, “Please go over here if you’re interested in getting an SEO webinar.” That’s what we’ve done and that’s something that you could potentially do, especially if you have a relevant offer on now that might not be there in the future. You can still go back through your content, and start redirecting these people while they’re consuming your content.

Lyndsay: Yeah, that’s a really good point, actually, Martin. Because a lot of our content gets a lot of our traffic and you might be the same. You might find that your blog content does get a lot of your traffic, so don’t miss also your blog posts for those clear call to actions. A lot of people write these amazingly wonderful blog posts which are full of great content, and then there’s nothing for the audience to do at the end.

Lyndsay: Or even you can put it in the middle of the blog post, where you have, “Sign up for my email list” and give something in exchange for that. But to have a purpose for every blog post, have a call to action, yeah, is extremely important and that’s another really good point.

SSL Certificate

Lyndsay: Another thing that’s important for your website is something that’s nothing to do with design, but it will really help conversions, and that is something that we recommend now that every single website has, and that’s an SSL certificate.

Martin: Got it.

Lyndsay: Now, this was mainly applicable for more eCommerce websites, because people were going in and they were paying for products and an SSL certificate just shows that your website is secure. You’ll notice a little padlock in the top left hand corner saying it’s secure. But now I’d recommend that all websites have it. Because it makes people feel more secure when dealing with you.

Martin: Yeah, and obviously Google are making people aware now that your website isn’t secure if it’s not showing the green padlock, if you haven’t got yourself an SSL certificate. It will actually prevent people from becoming a conversion on your website if you don’t have it. It’s important because people are expecting to see it.

Lyndsay: Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think people are becoming more and more aware of it.

Martin: Yeah, with GDPR, which we hate talking about it, but people have got that in the back of their mind, that when they fill out their name and email, how secure is this data? Is it just going to you for what I want to give you for, or is it potential that your website’s going to be hacked? I mean, not secure is a very, very strong statement that somebody might be reluctant to even spend anytime on your website if it says it’s not secure.

Lyndsay: Exactly. Just don’t give them an excuse to leave.

Martin: Exactly.

Lyndsay: A nice and easy fix, as well.

Martin: Course it is, yeah. Perfect.

Big Bold Statement

Lyndsay: Another thing that you can look at as well, and we’ve talked about this before actually, in episode five of our podcast, is a big, bold statement. Now, a big, bold statement is essentially the first phrase or sentence that your end user will see when they land on your homepage. It’s normally in the first third of your homepage, above the fold, and it’s essentially a summary of what you do and who you help.

Lyndsay: If you don’t have that on there, it’s crazy how many people don’t have this, because it’s really not clear what it is that they do, is it?

Martin: Yeah, and much like the image of yourself as well, this becomes well before a conversion takes place, but it’s absolutely vital. If somebody clicks on your website, or finds you online, or however they get to your website, if you don’t have a clearly defining statement that explains who you are and why they should care, then they’re not ever going to get to the level where they are giving you their email address, or buying a product for you.

Martin: It’s more about the psychology of making people feel welcome when they get to your website, without using the word welcome, which we hate. It’s about making sure that they’re in the right place, so that when it comes to a conversion, they’re much more likely to take it.

Lyndsay: Yep, definitely.

Martin: Okay, perfect. That’s a really, really good point. That brings us onto the final point. What’s this last thing that’s really important that people cover on the website?

Too much clutter

Lyndsay: Okay, so the final point that we want to talk about is something that we see quite often on websites and that’s that there’s too much clutter. There’s just too much crap on your website pages. What we advise everyone is to make sure that every single page on your website has a purpose. There is a reason why that page is there, there is one topic that that page is talking about, and there is a clear call to action of what you want someone to do.

Lyndsay: We see this on homepages quite a lot, where people want to tell you all about all their services that they offer, all about who they are and why they’ve started this business. Everything from all their social media links to how to contact them, all these different things rammed into a homepage. It’s just so overwhelming for the end user, they just don’t know what to do next.

Martin: Yeah. It’s like having a business card that’s just completely filled with text and content. It’s not the purpose of a website, is to just dump all that information on people.

Lyndsay: Yeah, exactly, exactly. There’s just this temptation in trying to convert people, we speak too much. Imagine a sales call and you’re going on and on and on and on, and your person that you’re talking to, your customer’s droning out, because you’re so desperately trying to convert them that you’re actually putting them off by telling them all this needless information. You just need to be very, very clear and like I said earlier, make sure every page has a specific topic and a specific purpose that you want to talk about. Don’t start going on about lots of different things on your pages.

Martin: Yeah. It’s definitely a case of less is more, and understandably when we’re talking about business and we can’t to convince people to become customers, we think that more information is going to be better. The more informed that people are, the better, which means that it needs to be an extremely long page, filled with content, filled with images, filled with links, and then what happens is we dilute the main messages that we want people to take and the next steps we want people to take.

Lyndsay: Yeah, definitely. I think this is also an argument of where your content should come in as well. Because a lot of people who write all this extra crap that goes onto their homepage or main webpages could actually be made into really great content. People talk about their processes, or what they do during their service, whatever that might be. That could also make great blog posts if you want it to. Not everything has to be a webpage. Think about what could also make a great blog post as well, and don’t be scared to make it into a blog post. There’s no problem with doing that.

Martin: Okay, so clean, simple, directive design, as in which direction you want people to take, is much better.

Lyndsay: Yeah, definitely.

Martin: Okay, perfect. Great tips. I think our listeners have probably got a few notes there that they can actually go back to their website and actually make some adjustments.

Lyndsay: Yeah, I think it’s difficult with this one, because there is so much we could talk about, and like I said, for button color, I could just talk two hours just about button colors, but these are meant to be very broad strokes, about what you could do really quickly to increase some conversions on your website.

Martin: Yeah, and you could literally talk about buttons ’til you’re blue in the face, but I don’t think our audience want to fall asleep right now.

Lyndsay: No, they definitely don’t. Let’s not do that to them.

Martin: Especially not if they’re driving. Okay, perfect. That was episode eight of the Make Your Mark Online Podcast. I hope you found it useful. Please don’t forget to register for our webinar in the next few weeks on the 6th of September, and that’s JammyDigital.com/seo-webinar, or /webinar. We’ve got both, we’ve covered ourselves.

Lyndsay: We have both, we’ve covered ourselves, yes.

Martin: Definitely. Like I said, there are limited spaces available and please turn up early to get a space. That’s it. We’ll see you next time on the Make Your Mark Online Podcast.

The post Ep 8 – 8 Tips to Increase Website Conversions appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Why you NEED a maintenance plan for your website

Martin Huntbach — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 17:21:04 +0000

So you have a new website that you love?

It’s taken months of planning, designing and building and it has cost a small fortune.

Now it looks exactly how you want it to, and you want to keep it that way.

The problem is, websites are prone to tech issues, downtime or even hacking.

Scary I know.

So what can you do to keep your website safe and secure?

In this post, I want to tell you why setting up a maintenance plan for your website can save you lots of time and money when things go wrong.

What is a maintenance plan?

A maintenance plan is something you can set up with your web design agency for an additional fee. It’s a monthly service that they charge to keep your website up-to-date and secure.

Usually, prices range from £50–£200 per month depending on what’s included in the package and how much support you need.

We don’t sell maintenance plans. Sorry

Before you ask, this is not a sales pitch. We don’t sell standalone maintenance packages unless we have built your website.

We only offer this service as a special offer to our web design clients.

The reason I wrote this post is not to sell to you but instead explain all the potential risks of managing your website without extra support and guidance. Read more about why we won’t touch your website unless we’ve built it.

1. You might break something

When you get access to your website, it’s understandable you’ll want to have a play around and make some updates and amendments. After all, you need to feel confident that you know what you’re doing.

The only problem is, you might make a mistake and accidentally delete something that you shouldn’t or change the layout when you didn’t mean to. It happens to the best of us. But this does mean you might spend hours trying to get it back to the way it was.

Surely your time is better well spent building and growing your business rather than sifting through your website working out what went wrong.

If you have a maintenance package, this often means your web designer (or the company you’re paying) can fix it for you. At the very least they’ll be able to restore a previous version of your website to put it back the way it was.

2. Save money on hosting and domain name renewals

Hosting is like renting space on the internet, every website needs it and you have to pay annual fees to keep your website and domain name live.

Normally, this would cost you anything between £50–£500 per year depending on who you choose.

Some web designers include these fees within their monthly maintenance plan so you don’t get a surprise invoice every year.

This is exactly what we do with our clients and they save between £100–£150 per year on hosting fees. A nice little bonus at no extra cost.

3. Protection from hackers

The security of your website is VERY important, and you as the website owner need to take this seriously. I don’t mean to scare you but websites get hacked all the time. It sometimes happens without you knowing and it can cause a lot of damage to your site. Not fun.

It’s not just your website that’s at risk. Most websites collect and store personal information about customers and potential customers. If you don’t have efficient security on your website, you could put all this data at risk.

With a maintenance plan, you will have an extra layer of security to protect your website. This could include:

Spam detection (that detects any suspicious activity)
SSL certificate (this helps protect passwords, credit card details and other data that you and your customers use on your website.)
Monitoring AT RISK plugins and extensions (that could cause your website to be hacked)

Those are just a few of the things that a maintenance plan could include to help keep your website safer and more secure.

4. Website Backups

A website “backup” is a saved copy of your website from a previous time e.g. a day ago, a week ago, a month ago and so on… This can be stored in the website files and can be restored if something goes wrong with the website.

If you don’t have regular backups of your website then you are leaving yourself open to one big headache if you break something or you get hacked.

When you have a maintenance plan, a backup of your website will be stored (usually daily) so it can always be recovered if need be.

In the past, we’ve had customers call us and say, “we accidentally messed up the website and can’t get it back” in that case, I can go back to a specific date and recover all the previous settings.

With our maintenance plans, we actually do two backups of your website every day for extra security. One backup with the host and one stored AWAY from the website, so it can always be recovered if your website is not accessible.

5. Software needs updating constantly

Your website is ever changing. Even if you don’t make website changes yourself, the tech behind the scenes will need to be monitored and kept up-to-date. Most websites have additional plugins or themes that have new releases all the time. You NEED to stay on top of these to keep your site running smoothly.

Content management systems (like WordPress, Joomla and Opencart) should also be kept on the latest versions too to prevent any potential issues.

Trying to manage all these updates yourself can be a tedious and time-consuming task, especially if you’re not a techie.

With all these updates you have to do, it’s not uncommon that something can go wrong. Plugins can stop working or they’ll stop playing nicely with other plugins. In the meantime, your website might not be working properly.

When you have a maintenance plan, these updates are done for you so you don’t have to worry. They’ll be kept up-to-date and if something goes wrong during an update, it will be fixed and your website will be back to normal in no time at all.

6. Additional support and questions you might have

If you’re a forward-thinking business owner, you’ll be learning about new ways to promote and market your business online such as social media, SEO and content marketing. You might have lots of questions and want some advice on how to use these tools to your advantage.

Some maintenance plans include email support and/or phone support as part of their package. This means if you have any nagging questions or need some extra guidance you’ll always have someone on hand to help.

The level of support you need will determine how much the maintenance plan will cost each month. For instance, we have some clients who pay hundreds of pounds per month for regular online coaching sessions as part of their support plan.

7. Ad hoc website amendments

In addition to support and guidance, you might need someone to work on your website on a regular basis. This could include, creating new pages, adding images and text and making structural changes.

You can try and do this yourself if you like but if you have better things to do and you have the budget, you can pay for a maintenance plan that includes a certain amount of development hours per month. If this is something you think you’ll need, my advice is to start with 1-2 hrs per month and go from there.

8. Peace of mind

You’re in safe hands. Managing a website can be very time-consuming, especially if something goes wrong.

It’s nice to know someone is there taking care of your website behind the scenes. Even if they’re simply keeping track of the basics. Having an extra pair of eyes look over your website will help you sleep easier at night.

Summary

I get it. You’ve spent potentially thousands on a new website, and you don’t want to spend more each month. However, investing in a maintenance plan only serves to protect your original investment. Unfortunately, we cannot leave websites. At a minimum, we need to keep them healthy and up-to-date. You have to decide whether you want to spend the time doing this or pay for a maintenance plan. Either way, you’ll have to take some action, or you run the risk of damaging, or even losing your website.

Please note, having a maintenance plan doesn’t guarantee you won’t get hacked or lose some of your work. Every website is susceptible. But it will significantly reduce the chances of it happening and limit the damage if it does.

Like I said before, you CAN’T sign up with us unless we’ve built your website but spend some time researching different companies.

Over to you

Have you ever been a victim of hacking? Maybe one of your out-of-date plugins caused your website to go down. I’d love to hear from you, please leave a comment below.

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.

The post Why you NEED a maintenance plan for your website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Lessons We Learned From Our Business Photoshoot

Lyndsay Cambridge — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 14:53:39 +0000

We’re currently in the process of rebranding and redesigning our website. It’s a super exciting time, and one of the most enjoyable tasks so far has been a professional photoshoot for our new website images.

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.

[envira-gallery id=”1781″]

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!

[envira-gallery id=”1785″]

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!

[envira-gallery id=”1787″]

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?

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

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

7 reasons you SHOULDN’T design your own website

Martin Huntbach — Tue, 15 Aug 2017 12:13:00 +0000

I get it. You want to save money.

And I don’t blame you. Getting a new website is expensive.

After all, you might be pretty IT savvy. How hard can it possibly be?

I just want to make one thing clear.

Creating a good website is NOT about technical skills.

It’s about much more.

There are many experienced IT companies out there that have terrible websites. IT skills alone won’t deliver a profitable website.

So if you’re thinking about creating your own website, please take a few minutes to read this post. It could be the most important article you’ll read all year.

Drag and drop web design

For those who have limited technical skills, it may be tempting to design your website using drag-and-drop software via companies like WIX, Weebly or Squarespace.

These companies would have you believe that you can knock up a quick website within a day, sit back and let the money roll in.

It might seem easy enough to get started but you’ll quickly realise that there is a LOT more to it. Especially if you want to add or change anything which is outside of their restrictive templates.

Even if you do spend a few weeks or months getting it to look exactly as you want, chances are the final design is not what you’d get from an experienced web designer.

This is why I wrote this article. I wanted you to be fully aware of the complications before you waste time and money trying to build your own website.

Here are the 7 main reasons why you should avoid building your own website without any help and support.

1. Design limitations

Design is not something you can simply pick up in an afternoon. You can’t learn how to design a website without years of experience.

It’s about how it looks
It’s about how it makes people feel
It’s about how it makes people act
It’s about user experience
It’s about the character of your business
It’s about your message to the world

Above all else, website design is about building TRUST.

Without a solid understanding of design, you’ll almost certainly get it wrong. Your competitors on the other hand, might choose to hire a professional web designer and avoid any mistakes.

If you feel like your design skills are limited, then it’s best to stick within the confines of a theme or template. Most people go ahead and try to change a lot about the theme, but this is where you can look amateur.

And if you can, get feedback on your website from a professional website designer, even if that means paying for something like a website critique.

And if all that scares you, then hire somebody to help. You’ll save yourself a lot of time and get something that looks professional.

2. Lack of SEO knowledge

SEO or search engine optimisation is an ever-changing landscape. Search engines change their rules all the time and what worked last month might not work this month.

I’ve been helping clients with SEO for years and I’m still constantly listening, watching and testing to see what’s changed with Google and the other search engines.

I need to have my ear to the ground to be able to keep up to date and build search engine friendly websites. Not only that, if you build your own website, you’re going to have to have an understanding of:

301 redirects
Backlinks
404 error pages
Schema markup
DA and PA
Anchor Text

If you don’t feel comfortable with SEO, you could be making some critical mistakes with your website. Mistakes that could cost you 100’s or 1000’s of monthly visitors to your website. We at least recommend you get to know the basics of SEO if you’re designing your own website, such as investing in our SEO Starter Pack.

3. You are NOT your customer

Nobody knows your customers better than you. You live and breathe your business every day and it’s fair to say you know your stuff. We like to think we’re exactly the same.

However, when you’re so involved with running the business, it’s sometimes difficult to see things from your customers’ perspective. It’s difficult to imagine what it might look like seeing your website for the first time by a prospect. This is known as “the curse of knowledge”.

That’s where we can help. We run a membership community where we help and support people building their own websites (and our own plugin page templates to help!) We give regular feedback to our members on their websites. Here are just a few of the common errors we see on websites, just within the first third of your homepage!

No prominent contact details
No clear call to action
No statement explaining succinctly what it is you do

4. You might need help along the way

Like anything technical, building a website is not easy and there will be hurdles along the way. You might be able to pull something basic together with some tutorials and the odd YouTube video, but what happens if something goes wrong?

How will you be able to fix it?

You could try to figure it out yourself by digging through lots of forums and using trial and error, but this could take days. You could hire a techie and pay for a 1hr consultation but this can cost hundreds of pounds.

It’s worth either using a web designer or joining our membership where you get help and support along the way.

We’ve spent years educating ourselves on the technicalities of designing websites and have come across plenty of problems and solutions over that time.

There’s no need for you to do the same.

5. You won’t have the right tools for the job

Designing websites is a specialist skill. Like any creative skill, it requires a number of tools to ensure the job is done correctly.

Here is a list of tools we use to build highly successful websites;

Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
WordPress
FTP
Premium Plugins
Technical Audit Tools
Rank Tracking Software
Competitor analysis software
Email Marketing tools
Landing page software
Cross Browser Software

Most of these tools are expensive but they are necessary. Especially if I want to create high impact websites for my clients that perform well in search engines.

If you don’t have these tools and/or know how to use them, then you might not get the result you’re hoping for.

It took me a good few years to learn how to use these tools and even longer to use them effectively.

Hiring a web designer or joining our membership will help. A web designer will already have such tools and in our membership, we give you access to tools and templates which make your life so much easier.

6. It will take you much longer than it needs to

Learning to build a website from scratch can take a long time, especially if you aren’t very technical. Even if you’re using drag and drop tools you may need to do a lot of tweaking to get it right. Not to mention all the image editing and resizing to make it look good and load quickly.

As you know, time IS money and whilst you’re learning how to build a website, you’re not managing or marketing the business.

In our membership, it takes our members around 2-3 weeks to build their website and that is because they have our support. A web designer will probably take longer but your time isn’t taken up with building the site yourself.

7. Your competitors

Even if you do have the time to create your own website, chances are your competitors’ websites will look superior. I’m not trying to be mean, but if they have paid for a professional website to be designed and you haven’t, the likelihood is that theirs will work better.

Many businesses understand the importance of quality, which is why they choose to pay a web design company instead of doing it themselves.

If you are trying to stand out then you’ll want a high-quality website then looks better than your competition.

When you should build your website yourself?

Now it’s not all doom and gloom. Not every business owner should go to a website design agency or freelancer to build their website. Some can and should build it themselves. These are business owners who are just starting out, or who aren’t clear on their audience, products or services just yet.

Also, remember, it doesn’t have to cost thousands for a new website. You can get a website at £1000 or even £500.

For those who are wanting to learn and don’t want to spend thousands on a website, our membership is a great option.

And for those who do have the funds, we recommend using a good web designer to help you.

My biggest frustration

This may appear like a shamelessly unbiased blog post. And it is! But the reason I’m writing it is that I’ve had client after client tell me their frustrations when trying to build their own website completely on their own with zero support.

Believe me, at some point you’re going to have to pay a professional (even if it’s just a small amount) if you want your website to be a success and not a time-suck!

Over to you?

Remember, the next step once your website is live (whether you build it yourself or get someone else to do it) is to drive traffic to that website! And you can do this through something like our SEO content writing service.

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.

The post 7 reasons you SHOULDN’T design your own website appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Web Design & SEO Jargon Buster

Martin Huntbach — Sun, 28 May 2017 20:32:53 +0000

It’s confusing, I know. Everywhere you look, people are talking about how to grow your business online. They use fancy words like SEO and Conversions or Lead Capture and Domain Authority.

With all the jargon floating around, how can you even begin to get started?

It’s not enough that you have to manage your website yourself, now you have to have a degree in marketing to work out what people are talking about.

That is exactly why I wrote this blog post; I wanted to break down all the different words and acronyms you might come across and explain what they all mean.

Let’s get started.

301 and 302 redirects

A redirect is used if you want to redirect your visitors from one page to another. You might do this for numerous reasons:

You’ve changed your domain name
You’ve altered a URL,
You may have deleted a page.

The difference between the two: A 301 is a permanent redirect and 302 a temporary redirect.

404 Pages

A 404 page is the error page that appears on your website if someone mistypes a URL or tries to visit an old page that no longer exists. They will reach the 404 page. The standard 404 error page is usually not very attractive, so it’s a good idea to amend it if you can.

Alt Text

Alt text is short for alternative text. It can be used to describe your images as you add them to your website. Search engines will use your Alt text to determine what is depicted in the image so they can list it in search results. You can read more about ALT text and how to use it in our blog post: how to optimise your blog posts.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text you use within a hyperlink. For instance, the anchor text used in this sentence is “web design”, and it links to the web design page on our website. Search engines take note of the word/phrase within the anchor text when ranking a website in search results.

AMP

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. It’s one step up from having a responsive website. A website that uses AMP will load instantly, creating a better experience for your mobile visitors. It will get rid of any unnecessary clutter that slows down the website. It’s still early days, and in my opinion, it’s not necessary right now for you to use AMP.

Adwords

Adwords is Google’s advertising platform. It is a pay per click service that will display your advert in the paid sections of the search engine results page.

Backlinks

Backlinks or inbound links occur when another website includes a hyperlink back to your website. Generally speaking, the more high quality backlinks you have, the more credible you are to search engines. You can learn more about backlinks in our blog post, SEO for Beginners.

Back-end

The term “back-end” refers to the back office of your website. This is the login dashboard area where you can make changes to your website.

Browser

A browser is a tool used to access the internet. Popular browsers include Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

Black Hat

The term “black-hat” refers to a type of SEO (search engine optimisation). Black hat tactics are used to manipulate search engines into believing a website is more credible than it actually is. This includes buying lots of backlinks, spam comments, keyword stuffing.

Generally speaking, black hat techniques work well for a very short period of time but then you risk having your website penalised.

CMS

A CMS or content management system is a simple editing system that allows you to make changes to your website easily. Most people will be able to make changes without any technical web design background. As long as you learn the basics of the framework, you’ll be able to add, edit and delete text and images on your website.

Content

Website “Content” refers to all information that’s visible on your website such as blog posts, regular pages, images and videos. Generally speaking, websites that have more valuable content will perform better in search results. It will also help your potential prospect to gather more information before they get in touch.

Content Marketing / Inbound Marketing

CM or content marketing is the process of using your own content to attract more interested customers. This could involve blogging, recording helpful videos and spreading the word with social media. This is usually cheaper than paid advertising and has proven to be a lot more successful than traditional forms of advertising.

CSS

CSS stands for Custom Style Sheet. It allows you to take your basic HTML website and add some styling. Everything from colours, font styles and font sizes right through to the width of your website, the size of your header and footer and everything else in between. Without CSS every website would look exactly the same.

Conversion

A website conversion means you have taken your website visitor and ”converted” them into an enquiry or sale. You have taken them from a browser into a genuine opportunity. Learn more about how to ‘convert’ your website visitors into leads or sales.

CRO

CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimisation. This is the process of fine-tuning the style and layout of your pages in the hopes of increasing the number of enquiries and sales.

CAPTCHA

CAPTCHA is short for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. That’s a mouthful. Essentially, it’s a tool that’s used to prevent spam messages. You can add it to the comments section of your blog posts or at the bottom of your contact forms. It will validate that the user is human.

Domain

A domain name is essentially the name of your website. It’s the address for anyone looking to visit your website.

E.g. Jammydigital.com

You can buy as many domain names as you like but you would normally only use one per website.

A lot of people ask us if they should use their name or company name as their domain name. And it really does depend. Have a read of the article to find out more.

DA

DA stands for Domain Authority, and it’s calculated by MOZ (an SEO software company). It measures your domain and scores it out of 100 based on a number of factors. A brand new website will score 1/100 and Facebook.com scores 100/100. DA is calculated based on the number of backlinks you have, the quality of those backlinks, your social media activity and a few other metrics.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content refers to website content that is the same (or very similar) to another piece of content on the internet. This can happen by mistake on your own website or content can be stolen and placed on someone else’s website. Either way search engines may penalise the websites in question.

Dofollow

Every single link on the internet will either be classed as a do-follow link or nofollow link. Dofollow means that the website who created the link wants search engines to take note and count the link as a “valuable resource”. This is generally done by default and you don’t have to do anything else.

DNS

DNS is short for Domain Name Servers. Without getting too technical, DNS will translate your domain name (which is what humans see) into an IP Address (which is what computers see). Each website has it’s own identity and by checking the DNS you can find out more information about the domain and hosting.

Disavow

Building backlinks is an important part of SEO. However, not all links are high quality. If you do have a number of bad links, Google will allow you to remove or DISAVOW them using Google Search Console.

EMD

An EMD stands for Exact Match Domain. This relates to a domain name which includes the exact keyword you want to rank for. If we had chosen to opt for an EMD we might have bought webdesignmanchester.com or web-design-manchester.co.uk

Editorial Calendar

I use an editorial calendar to plan my blog posts. It’s like any other calendar but it allows me to see the status of a piece of content (to-do, draft, pending review and scheduled). It’s a great way for me to stay ahead of the content I’m planning to produce.

Favicon

A Favicon is the small icon that appears in the tab on any given website. It usually measures 16×16 pixels, and you can create your own and add it to your website.

File Name

Each image that you upload to your website will have its own file name. It will be whatever it was saved as. E.g. image3215.jpg. Google recommend that you use a descriptive file name e.g. black-cat.jpg. That way you have more chance of search engines listing your images in search results. To learn more about how to name your images correctly, read our blog post on how to optimise your blog posts.

GeoTagging

GeoTaggging allows you to tag images and videos with a specific geographical location. This is useful for anyone wanting to rank highly for a location e.g. A restaurant in Manchester. Google are more likely to list images of your business for these search queries.

Google

The light of my life. When Google says jump, I say, how high?

Google Analytics

GA or Google Analytics is the go-to visitor tracking tool for most website owners. It’s free and provides a lot of information about your visitors e.g. number of visitors, how they found your website and your most popular pages. You can add your website to Google Analytics here.

Google Search Console

Previously named Webmaster Tools, Search Console is the best way to check on the health of your website. Providing you add your website sitemap to your search console account, you’ll be able to check for any broken links, crawl errors and check for new backlinks.

H1 tags and H2, H3, H4, H5, H6

H tags are headings on a page. You can label certain text as headings to show search engines that the content is important. Pages headings and subheadings are also important for your users, as it breaks up the content making it more digestible. H1 is usually the main heading on a page and H2 to H6 tags are used for the sub-headings. Learn more about how to use headings correctly for SEO.

Hosting

Every website on the internet needs hosting. It’s the only way people will be able to access your website. Think of hosting as like renting space on the internet. We recommend using Siteground as a host as they offer great support (online chat, which is always handy!)

HTML

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It’s the main method used to build most websites. HTML will allow you to create a website using tags such as;

-

to assign headings on a page

to assign standard paragraph text
to add images

Websites that only use HTML look very basic and it’s very rare that this will be the only method used to create a website. If you want to add any kind of style or theme you will need to use some CSS.

Indexed

The word indexed refers to your website being listed in search results. New websites usually take a few days to be indexed by search results, and this also goes for new pages that you add.

Infographics

An infographic is an image which is usually made up of statistics and graphs. It’s a more interesting way to take bland research and make it more visually appealing.

Inbound Links – Backlinks

An inbound link is a hyperlink from someone else’s website to yours. You can check how many inbound links you have using various online tools such as Majestic SEO.

Internal Links

An internal link is a hyperlink on a website that points to another page on that SAME website. For instance, this link goes to my about page so it’s classed as an internal link. To learn more about internal links, have a read of our post, the Ultimate Beginners’ Guide to SEO.

Jetpack

Jetpack is an all-in-one WordPress plugin that allows you to add additional features to your website easily. It’s a great tool for beginners who want to quickly add contact forms, extra sidebars and related blog posts.

Javascript

Javascript is a method used when creating websites. It allows web designers to improve your website with additional features like image sliders and pops ups. It’s very uncommon for a website to NOT use javascript.

Keywords

Keywords are words/phrases that you are trying to rank for in search engines. You might have a number of keywords you would like to be on the first page for. It’s a good idea to collect these and include these phrases throughout your website.

E.g. Hotels Manchester, Manchester hotels.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the process of finding better keywords to target. You can use free and/or paid tools to search for popular phrases people use online. You can accumulate a list of keywords and then plan how you intend to include these topics on your website. One of the biggest mistakes when it comes to SEO is a lack of keyword research!

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is classed as a blackhat method. It’s trying to manipulate Google by including too many of the same words. It’s very easy for Google to spot and it makes for a terrible user experience. When your write a sentence like this: “We do web design for people looking for web design services. Check out our web design experience here…” It does not read well.

This happens a lot and my advice is to keep things natural and avoid this practice.

Logo

A logo is your company identity. It can be created using a combination of text, icons, images or all of the above. It’s usually saved using the following file type .jpg, .jpeg, png.

Lead

A lead is a sales opportunity for your company. It might be a phone call, an email enquiry or a call back request.

Lead Capture

A lead capture is how your website captures your customer’s data. This might be a form on your website that allows people to fill it in so that you can speak with the prospective customer. To understand more about how to capture leads on your website, have a look at our blog post: how to create a lead generating website.

Lead Magnet

A lead magnet is used to increase the chances of gaining leads through your website. This could be a free gift in exchange for your customer’s contact information e.g. a free ebook, a free video course or a free consultation, which are all common forms of lead magnets.

Long Tail keywords

Long Tail keywords are longer keywords that you’re trying to rank highly for e.g. “WordPress web designers in Manchester” as opposed to shorter keywords such as “web design”. Yes, the long tail version is not searched for as frequently, BUT it’s a lot easier to rank higher because it’s not as competitive. One of the biggest SEO mistakes people make is not considering these longer keywords, and instead, aiming for a highly competitive keyword.

Meta Data

Metadata is the data for your website. It’s used by search engines to find out what your website is about. You might not be able to see this information from looking at your website but search engines can so it’s important you optimise it.

Meta Description

Each page on your website can have its own meta description. You can use it to describe the content on that page using 155 characters. This snippet is displayed in search results in grey beneath your website URL. Although search engines do not use this text as a ranking factor, it is still extremely important. It is best practice to have a unique meta description for every page. We teach you exactly how to write a great meta description in our SEO starter pack.

Meta Keywords

Adding Meta Keywords to your website is no longer effective. It used to be a great way to optimise your pages by adding a list of keywords that you wanted to rank for. I haven’t used them in years and you don’t have to either.

Nofollow links

There are some occasions where a website may want to class a link as “nofollow”. By creating a nofollow link, this means you are telling search engines to not pay attention to it. There are many reasons you might want to do this e.g. paid links have to be nofollow. Links within blog comments are usually nofollow to prevent them from being spammed.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is the process of editing the different elements on your website to make it more appealing to search engines. Everything from your title tags to alt tags can be optimised for a more search engine friendly website. We cover everything you need to know about on-page SEO in our SEO Starter Pack.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO can also be described as online PR. It’s the process of building a strong reputation with search engines using guest posts, social media and business directory listings.

Opt-in

An opt-in is when someone signs up to your email newsletter or a free giveaway. They “opt-in” to receive some kind of information. This is sometimes called a conversion.

Plugins

Plugins are like add-ons for your website. If you want a new image gallery or an email signup form you don’t have to build it from scratch or pay a developer. You can simply find a plugin. If you’re using WordPress, then you can search the plugin library and install it yourself in seconds.

PPC

PPC stands for Pay Per Click which is a form of online advertising. It’s different from traditional advertising such as radio ads and billboards because PPC only charges you if someone physically clicks on your advert.

Quick

How quickly your website loads could impact your search engine rankings. Test your speed using GT Metrix. Providing that your website loads in under 5 seconds you’ll be ok.

Responsive

Having a responsive website means your website takes the shape on any device, no matter how big or small it is. Having a responsive website is very important, and Google will penalise you if your website is not classed as mobile friendly/responsive.

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It’s the process of increasing the organic rankings of a website in search results. Google use over 200 different rankings factors when deciding how high you rank in search engines. An SEO agency would optimise as many of these ranking factors as possible to give you the best chance of ranking highly. SEO can be split into two major categories: On-page SEO and Off-page SEO.

Have a read of our article, if you’re not sure whether to hire an SEO agency or do SEO yourself.

SERP

SERP is an abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page. This is the page that appears after someone has typed in a phrase in the search field using Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Title Tags

Title tags or page titles are an extremely important ranking factor. It’s vital that every page on your website has a title tag so that search engines know what that page is about. You have around 55 characters to use and it’s always best to include your main target keywords within the title. You can also see the page titles in search results. It appears in blue above the URL. We teach you exactly how to optimise your title tags in our SEO Starter Pack.

Themes/Templates

Themes or templates allow you to create a good-looking website quickly. You can install a free or paid template to make your website without the need of a web developer. Websites like ThemeForest allow you to install templates for less than £100.

UX

UX stands for user experience, and it’s used to describe the experience a website visitor has navigating through your website. There are lots of web developers that don’t consider users when designing their websites and this could have an impact on your enquiries and sales. User experience is one of the 6 key elements that make a successful website.

Voice

You may have heard of the term “finding your voice” when discussing website content. It means finding a style that suits you and writing in a way so that people would recognise you. It takes practice to write like this, but when you do find your voice, people will generally engage more.

WordPress (.org)

WordPress (.org) is the most widely used content management system. It’s a free tool that you can add to your website that allows you to make changes easily without the need of a web developer.

WordPress (.com)

The .COM version of WordPress is completely different from the .ORG. It’s confusing I know. It’s far less popular and has far more restrictions. It’s quite handy if you want a simple personal blog but not so useful if you want a high-quality business website.

White Hat SEO

White Hat SEO is classed as the ethical method to increasing your organic rankings in search engines. It involves following the rules that Google set, such as earning backlinks with valuable content and avoiding any unethical tactics that may harm your rankings. White Hat techniques are what we teach in our SEO Starter Pack.

WYSIWYG

WYSIWYG is short for What You See Is What You Get. Most content management systems come with an easy to use editing system that allows you to make changes using a WYSIWYG editor as you can see below. It allows you to format your page or post with ease.

XML-Sitemap

A sitemap is a list of web pages that you have on your website, and an XML sitemap is a file containing the list. You can download your XML sitemap and give it to Google so they can list your pages in search results.

Yoast

Yoast is one of the most popular WordPress plugins. It allows you to optimise your website easily to make it search engine friendly. It’s free and fairly simple to use. Click here to find out more information about Yoast.

ZIP

A zip file is an online folder that holds large documents. It has been compressed so that it doesn’t take up much memory whilst being downloaded or sent via email.

Summary

There you have it. 80+ words and phrases that you’re likely to come across at some point or another. At least now, you’ll know what they mean. I will keep adding jargon to this list so be sure to bookmark this page and come back to it as and when you need it.

Over to you

Have I missed anything out? I’m sure I have. Feel free to leave a comment below, and I’ll add it to the list and let you know once it’s done.

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.

The post Web Design & SEO Jargon Buster appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

How good is your website? Grade it yourself

Martin Huntbach — Sat, 20 May 2017 07:57:21 +0000

How good or bad is your website?

It’s not always easy to answer this question. If you’re not a designer or a techie, then how would you know where to start?

You might like the colours and images, or the general layout and design but a website is so much more than that.

Friends and family could offer feedback and tell you what they like and don’t like, but with so many conflicting views, who should you listen to?

In most cases, you’re going to trust that your web designer has delivered a high-quality website, or that the software you’ve used to build your site is good enough.

But what if it isn’t?

What if you’re missing out on enquiries or what if your design is turning people off?

What makes a website great?

From experience, it’s not enough to simply HAVE a website. A website should deliver you results, and if it’s not, then something is wrong.

I’ve created a website self-assessment tool. You can use it to grade your own website and get immediate feedback on what you can do to improve.

How does it work?

Having reviewed so many websites over the years, I realised that most businesses make very similar mistakes.

I’ve put together a list of the 30 questions that you can answer about your website. The answers will give an indication of how well your website is performing.

Each topic has three scenarios. All you have to do is read through each of them and select which statement is most accurate for you.

Once you’ve done you’ll be given your score.

What do the scores mean?

Score	Grade	What does this mean?
80–90	Grade A	Seriously sexy website
70–79	Grade B	Great job. Well done!
60–69	Grade C	Pretty good but still work to do.
50–59	Grade D	Not good. Lots of work to do.
40–49	Grade E	Back to the drawing board.
30–39	Grade F	Warning! You're losing customers!

Please be as honest as possible when answering the questions. If you need any clarification feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of this page.

Let’s get started.

Grade my website

Or…

use the guide below and add up your scores

Q1 – How would you describe your use of taglines?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You have been fluffy or vague with your tagline. It’s not easy for someone to understand what you do by reading it. e.g. We help you prosper, live happy, we help businesses.	1
It’s clear from your tagline what you do. It might not be memorable or descriptive but it’s enough to get your point across. e.g. Accounting services, We help you sell your house.	2
Your tagline is strong. It clearly explains who you help and what you help them to do. It’s memorable and includes a benefit or it differentiates the business. e.g. “A safe place for all your files” - Google Drive “There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard” - Mastercard.	3

Q2 – How accessible are your contact details?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
Your contact details are hard to find. You don’t make it easy for people to find your contact number or email on your homepage. People have to click through to another page in order to find key information.	1
You display your contact details on the homepage but it’s not in a prominent position and it could be missed. It might be quite small and placed in the footer area.	2
Your contact details are easy to see, and they are in a prominent position on each page. The contact number is large and clickable from a mobile device. There is a link that redirects to the contact page on your website.	3

Q3 – How does your logo look on your website?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
Your logo isn’t clear. It might look pixelated and some of the elements within your logo are difficult to read. It doesn’t look right if it’s resized.	1
Your logo is easy to see but it’s too big. You take up more space than you need to and this means other information gets moved further down the page.	2
Your logo fits perfectly and it doesn’t take up much space. It looks in proportion with the other elements on the page, and it resizes without losing clarity.	3

Q4 – Do you have a strong call to action?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You don’t have a clear call to action on your site. Your website doesn’t direct people where you want them to go. You haven’t thought about what action you want people to take.	1
You have buttons on your website such as “get in touch” and “find out more” but they are not easy to see at first glance. They might be further down the page and could be missed.	2
You have a strong call to action on your homepage and it’s clear to see at first glance. It’s enticing and inspires some kind of action.	3

Q5 – How would you describe your use of images?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You don’t have many images on your website. Your site looks bland and has blocks of text that make it difficult to digest.	1
Your website has a few images but they are not consistent. They might be free stock photos that you added quickly when you launched, but they don’t add much to make you stand out from the crowd.	2
You use images on your site that ADD to the overall appearance. The images are consistent throughout your website and make your visitors feel welcome. You might use professional photographs or high quality stock images. The images complement the content and make it more readable.	3

Q6 – Are you clear about what services you offer?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
From looking at your homepage, it’s not clear what services you offer. The descriptions are vague and you don’t go into much detail about your products and services.	1
You talk about your services, but it’s difficult to see at first glance. You might have to search or click through to another page to find it.	2
You clearly explain what services you offer and make it easy to understand. The information is easy to find on your website and the services are near the top of the homepage. They might even be included in your main menu items.	3

Q7 – How much content do you have?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You have very little content. You may have less than 300 words on each page making it difficult for search engines to class your website as valuable or helpful. It’s not easy for potential customers to find out much information about you using your website.	1
You have between 300-400 words of content on each page. This is the minimum recommended word count and search engines will consider this when ranking your pages. The content is quite helpful but could easily be improved with a little time and effort.	2
You have more than 400 words on each page. You go into detail about your services and focus on the questions and concerns of your target market. You are seen as knowledgeable and search engines will rank you highly because of this.	3

Q8 – Is your website customer focused?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
Your website is mainly about you and your company. You talk a lot about how good you are and how long you’ve been in business, but you don’t talk about your customers' problems and how you can help fix them.	1
Half of your content is about your company and half is about the problems your customers face and how your product solves that problem. You may include features and benefits of your products and services but you could go into a lot more detail.	2
Most of the content on your website is directed at your target audience and you speak a lot about the problems they face. Your customers are at the heart of the content you produce. It allows them to understand more about your services and how you can help them solve their problems.	3

Q9 – Do you use jargon on your website?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You use industry Jargon without explaining what the terminology means. For instance, abbreviations like SEO, CRO and CMS can be difficult for people to understand and it can make your visitors feel confused, like they’re out of their depth.	1
You use some Jargon but try to explain as much as possible using brackets. e.g. SEO (search engine optimisation) This allows your users to understand more whilst they browse your website.	2
You use very little jargon on your website and when you do, you write a sentence or two to explain what it means e.g. You can make changes to your website to improve visibility in search results. This is known as search engine optimisation (SEO for short).	3

Q10 – Do you capture your customer’s email address?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You don’t have an email signup form on your website and you’re not building your contact list. This means when people visit your website, you aren’t capturing their contact information.	1
You may have an email signup form on your website but don’t have a free giveaway to entice people. It may say something generic like “signup for updates” or “join our newsletter”.	2
You have an email signup form on your website and you offer an enticing free gift in exchange for their email e.g. free video, ebook or email course. This means you have more chance of capturing their email address.	3

Q11 – How useful is your blog?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You don’t have a blog on your website and you don’t update your website with fresh content on a regular basis. If you do, it’s mainly industry news and updates about your company.	1
You have a blog but you don’t update it regularly. It has some interesting content but it mainly consists of list posts. Your blog posts could be more focused on helping your customers learn more and make an informed buying decision.	2
Your blog is a valuable resource for your website visitors. It’s helpful and answers questions that your prospective customers might have. You update it regularly (1-2 twice per month min) and each post contains either helpful advice, entertaining content or a new insight. It’s clear from your blog that you are an expert in your space.	3

Q12 – How would you describe your menu/navigation?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
Your main menu or navigation bar is difficult to use. It might not be visible at first glance, and it might not look like a standard menu i.e. Horizontal or vertical. Some important pages are hidden and cannot be accessed by using the menu.	1
Your main menu is clear and it’s easy to see, but it’s not entirely obvious what you do at a first glance. Your visitor may have to click through to another page to work out what you do to find out more.	2
You have a clear, useful navigation area. It’s easy to use and it’s obvious what services you offer from looking at the menu items. You avoid wasted space and each page on your website is accessible within three clicks of the mouse.	3

Q13 – How would you describe your use of colours?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You have chosen your website colours at random and no real thought has gone into it. You don’t have a style that matches your brand. It’s inconsistent with your social media profiles and doesn’t look very appealing.	1
You have have used a very basic colour scheme on your website (1-2 colours). You might use a main colour but you haven’t considered why you use it and how you might improve the look and feel with more variety. The sections you want to highlight don’t stand out on the page because of the lack of colour variation.	2
You have chosen a specific colour scheme for your website, and you’ve used 3-5 colours throughout the design. You may have used colour swatches or online tools to come up with the ideas and the colours are consistent with your brand style and social media profiles. Your colour scheme keeps people engaged and allows you to highlight call to action buttons throughout your website.	3

Q14 – How readable is your content?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
Your text is very small. You use a font size 10 pts or smaller which makes it difficult to read for most people. The colour is fairly light on a white background and the headlines don’t stand out. This means people will find it more difficult to read.	1
You use a font size of 12-14 pts and it’s relatively easy to read your content. Your headlines are clear but the colours are similar which means it might not be as readable as it could be.	2
A majority of the text on your website is font size 14-18pts This means it will be extremely clear and easy to read on desktops and mobile devices. You use a variety of bold headings and bullet points to break up the content and you may use some colour to make certain sections stand out.	3

Q15 – How would you describe your choice of fonts?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You use more than 3 font styles on your website and no real considerations has gone into why. You may have included non-standard fonts like Lobster and Comic Sans that bring down the quality of your website.	1
You use basic fonts that are easy to read. You might have chosen your fonts quickly when you launched your website and have kept them the same ever since. The site might be lacking some personality.	2
You have chosen your fonts carefully. You use 2 main fonts and the style is consistent on each page of your website. It’s in-keeping with your brand and adds personality to your website. The font choices look good together and make it easy to read.	3

Q16 – How do you use internal links to your advantage?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You have no links to other pages on your website. You may even have some broken links that lead to 404 error pages. This makes for a bad user experience and will impact your Bounce rate in Google Analytics.	1
You have some internal links throughout your website but generally use hyperlinks like “click here” or “visit this page”.	2
You have links on every page of your website that allow your visitors to click through to your other content. You use your Keywords as the hyperlinks e.g. Web Design or Website Critique Service rather than “Click here”	3

Q17 – How quickly does your website load?

(Note. You can check your page load speed using GT Metrix)

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
Your website takes longer than 5 seconds to load. It feels sluggish and this means it’s a bad experience for your website visitor. This may also affect your rankings.	1
Your pages take between 3–5 seconds to load. This is within Google’s recommended speed which means it won’t affect your rankings but it could still be improved. There are still things slowing down your website and this could cause your website to slow down in the future.	2
You page load speed is under 3 seconds and your page size is under 2MB. This means your users get to see your website quicker and are more likely to stick around.	3

Q18 – Is your website mobile friendly?

(Note. You can check if your website is responsive by using the mobile friendly tool)

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
Your website is not mobile friendly, It doesn’t look neat and tidy when viewed on a smartphone or tablet. It may require dragging and pinching to view the whole page.	1
You have a website that looks ok on mobile device. No dragging and pinching. It passes the mobile friendly test but you don’t have a dedicated mobile design. Some key information is harder to find when your site is viewed on a mobile device.	2
Your website has been built with mobile devices in mind. It’s more than “responsive”. It’s been designed to be efficient on smaller screens rather than just accessible. The call to actions are still visible and the contact information is easy to access.	3

Q19 – Do you use a variety of media throughout your website?

E.g. video and audio podcasts

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You don’t use videos or audio on your website. You only use text and images to communicate with your visitors.	1
You use one or two videos but they are used to explain what you do. But you don’t use it to help, educate or entertain your website visitors.	2
You include videos within your pages and/or blog posts to enhance the user experience. You may use a video on your homepage to explain more about your products and services. You may even include video testimonials from your clients. You use videos and or audio to help, educate or entertain your website visitors	3

Q20 – How do you use social media within your website?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You don’t include any reference to social media or have any social sharing facilities on your website that increase your authority in Google	1
You have links to social media but you don’t really have a strategy on how you can use social media within your website to increase exposure.	2
Social media plays a big part of your content strategy. You use social media throughout your website to make sharing easier.	3

Q21 – Do you use testimonials on your website?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You don’t have any testimonials from previous clients. There is no proof that your services have impacted anyone in a positive way.	1
You have some customer feedback on your website but there isn’t any in-depth details about the project and the journey that lead to the testimonial.	2
You have authentic testimonials from your clients. They go beyond “would highly recommend” and they talk about where they were before working with you and where they are today. They are relatable to prospective clients and they help people imagine themselves having the same transition.	3

Q22 – Do you use case studies on your website?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You don’t have any case studies on your website. There is no way that your website visitors can see the journey of your previous clients.	1
You may have 2-3 case studies on your website but you focus mainly on the project and what you did. You’ll talk about analytics and results and you don’t really focus on the client and their story.	2
You have produced a number of case studies from previous projects. You tell the story of your client rather than stats about the project. You walk through the transition honestly including the ups and downs.	3

Q23 – How unique is your content?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You have used the same or similar content on numerous pages. You may have copied and pasted some text on each page to increase your word count.	1
You have used different content on each page but it may be very similar. You may have used snippets from other pages.	2
Each page on your website has completely unique content. It has been written as an individual page and offers valuable information.	3

Q24 – Do you use added software on your website?

E.g. drag and drop software that may slow your website down.

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
Your website is entirely built using drag and drop software. This can cause your website to load slower and be less accessible to search engines.	1
You use a standard content management system like WordPress but you use additional software to make changes e.g. visual composer, Divi or Elementor. This software creates a lot of unnecessary code and it tends to affect your page load speed.	2
You don’t use any extra software on your website. With the exceptions of themes and plugins, your website is managed using standard web design practices and this keeps it running smoothly.	3

Q25 – How many content web pages do you have?

*Not including shopping pages.

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You have less than 10 pages on your website, which shows search engines that you offer very little value to your end user.	1
You have 10–30 web pages. This is a good indication that your content may be of value to your website visitors.	2
You have more than 30 pages on your website. This may consist of regular pages and blog posts. You have a content driven website that acts as a resource to your prospective clients.	3

Q26 – Does the personality of your business shine through?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
Your website is plain. It lacks character and doesn’t fit with your personality or that of your company. This could make it difficult for people to remember.	1
You have considered the look and feel of your website and you’ve tried to make it interesting, but there is room for improvement. There are still things you can add to bring it to life.	2
From looking at your website, it’s clear that you have a strong brand. Your personality shines through and people are likely to have a memorable experience.	3

Q27 – Do you show your staff/team on your website?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You don’t display pictures of yourself or your team on your website. This can feel impersonal and isn’t very transparent.	1
You do include images of yourself and your team but it’s quite basic. You may have standard photos with professional bios.	2
You have an entertaining meet the team page. It’s fun and everybody’s personality shines through. It’s less professional and more honest.	3

Q28 – Do you answer customer questions?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You don’t answer prospect questions on your website. You don’t have an FAQ and you don’t use your blog to answer questions.	1
You may have an FAQ on your website and/or answer questions via your blog but you don’t go into detail. You have 1-2 sentences for each question and it acts as a Q&A.	2
Customers questions drive your content. Most of your web pages will allow prospects to find answers to questions they never knew they had. Your site makes it easy for people to make an informed buying decision.	3

Q29 – Does your website look cluttered?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You have a lot of options on your homepage. It’s difficult to see the important elements because you have too much going on. You may have tried to include as much as possible in an effort to not miss anything out.	1
You have been quite selective about the options you have available on your homepage but there is still room to improve. You could be strict and eliminate more if you wanted to.	2
You have no clutter on your website. Everything earns its place and everything else gets eliminated. You have been extremely strict and only kept the crucial options available. Fewer options are often appealing to your website visitors.	3

Q30 – Do you discuss cost or pricing on your website?

Which statement is most accurate?	Points
You don’t talk about cost and pricing on your website. You avoid giving too much information away in the hopes that the prospect will get in touch. This means you’re holding back information which may frustrate your website visitor.	1
You do have some information about prices on your website. You may have a pricing table or some basic indications, but you don’t go into much detail and explain why you charge what you do.	2
You openly discuss costs and pricing on your website. You provide honest and transparent information and write blog posts to help your prospects make an informed buying decision. This builds trust and will set you aside from your competition.	3

What score did you get? Comment below!

Score	Grade	What does this mean?
80–90	Grade A	Seriously sexy website
70–79	Grade B	Great job. Well done!
60–69	Grade C	Pretty good but still work to do.
50–59	Grade D	Not good. Lots of work to do.
40–49	Grade E	Back to the drawing board.
30–39	Grade F	Warning! You're losing customers!

Summary

Hopefully, you now have a better idea of how good (or bad) your website is. You shouldn’t be disheartened if your score is low, but you will certainly want to look at the questions again and spend some time planning how you’re going to improve it.

If you would like our help, why not book a website critique via the link below. We’ll record a personalised video telling you exactly what you can do to improve it.

Book a website critique

Over to you

How did you get on with the self-assessment? Were you surprised with your grade? I’d love to hear from you so please let me know in the comments below.

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.

The post How good is your website? Grade it yourself appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

How we build your website from start to finish

Martin Huntbach — Wed, 19 Apr 2017 11:25:08 +0000

Hiring someone to build your website is not an easy to decision to make. Every web designer is different, and their process is likely to be completely different too.

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!

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.

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

Why Do We ONLY Use WordPress To Build Your Website?

Martin Huntbach — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 20:53:49 +0000

It’s true, we work exclusively with WordPress when we build your website. We’ve used many different platforms in the past but now we ONLY use WordPress. In this article I’m going to tell you why I believe your website should be built using WordPress too.

Common misconceptions about WordPress

“WordPress is that crappy blogging thing isn’t it?”
“Why would I pay a web designer when I can get WordPress for free?”
“WordPress is drag and drop, I need a proper web designer who knows code.”

I’ve heard these concerns plenty of times before. Usually from first time business owners who are just starting out or old fashioned web developers who are too stubborn to change their ways. Either way it’s time to set the record straight.

WordPress.org vs WordPress.com

Before I go on, I just wanted to clear something up. We use WordPress.ORG to build your website and everything we talk about in this article is in reference to that. WordPress.COM is different. This is a separate product all together and is usually used as a DIY blogging tool and it tends to be very restrictive. I wouldn’t recommend it for a business website.

Below I’ve outlined 9 reasons why wordpress.org is the only platform you’ll ever need.

1. You can make changes yourself easily

First and foremost, this is why I love WordPress. You, as the client have control over the website which means you don’t have to pay your web designer for every little change. WordPress is a content management system (CMS) which means that once the site has been built you can add, edit and delete things yourself.

It comes with a basic editor that looks like this…

As you can see, it’s very similar to the formatting palette on Microsoft Word or any email provider such as Outlook or Gmail.

If you’re still worried about the learning curve then please don’t be. We send all our clients helpful training videos on how to use WordPress. We’ll teach you how to make changes and keep the site up to date. There are also plenty of resources on the web that teach you how to use it, some of which I’ve included further down the page.

2. Complete control over the design

Some people think WordPress is a basic platform and doesn’t allow for much customisation. This is simply not the case. WordPress allows us to build completely bespoke websites that are tailored around your business.

Some platforms don’t allow for advanced customisation which make it’s difficult to create truly awesome websites. They only have basic options that deliver basic results. It is important to have complete control and you might not have this option with other platforms.

We design your website using Adobe programmes such as Photoshop and Illustrator. We make it look exactly how we want it to before we touch a line of code. We then build your site on WordPress by transferring each design element over one at a time. Your business is unique and your website deserves to be too.

3. Free & paid plugins

Another huge benefit of using WordPress is that you can install extra “add ons” to your website. These are called plugins and they will make your life so much easier.

Let’s just say you want to add an image gallery to your website, this can be achieved very easily by searching the WordPress plugin library for “image gallery”. You can then browse the extensive list of free and paid plugins, most of which can be installed in less than a minute and you can start adding your images.

There are over 45,000 plugins in the WordPress library and most things can be accomplished if your know what you’re trying to do. Below I’ve added a list features you might want to have on your website. I’ve also included a link to a FREE plugin so that you can achieve it.

An online shop facility – Woocommerce
Social media sharing buttons – Sharaholic
Image Gallery – Envira Gallery
Email signup form – Email Subscribers
Display your testimonials – Strong Testimonials

We will obviously install what you need whilst we are building your website, however you may want to add additional features once you’ve gone live and plugins are a great option.

There are great benefits to using plugins. Imagine having to build everything from scratch – gallery, calendar, contact form etc. All that costs money, and it could send your web costs spiralling. Most of the time a free plugin will give you what you need for a fraction of the cost.

4. Free and paid Templates

WordPress allows you to quickly install pre-made templates very easily. Much like plugins, there are 1000’s of free and paid themes to choose from, each with their own own style and layout.

If we are building your website, you don’t have to worry about this as everything is built from scratch. However, it’s nice to know that if you wanted to change the style of your website in the future you can do so using a 3rd party template.

WordPress have their own template library you can browse to see if anything takes your fancy.

5. Free Online help

Obviously, if we build your website we are always happy to help where possible, but most of our clients end up learning a lot themselves too.

WordPress is the most popular CMS of its kind. This means that if you get stuck along the way, chances are you’ll be able to find articles and videos online to help you.

WordPress Support

WordPress do have their own support forum which is free to join and very useful.

Google

Google is the first place most people go to if they have a problem. A simple Google search for “how to install an image gallery on WordPress” will give you more than enough information.

YouTube

Youtube is a great resource for WordPress help. If you’re like me and you’re more visual, watching a few Youtube videos will save you some time.

Udemy

Udemy is another great resource. Technically Udemy is a paid service but they do have free WordPress courses from time to time. Here’s a cheeky link from me to you.

Udemy WordPress Training (free)

6. Paid support

Sometimes, free WordPress support just doesn’t cut it. If you need more urgent assistance and advice, then there’s no shortage of companies who can help.

If you’re looking for an in-depth WordPress course that walks you through the A-Z of what you need to know, then WP101 is a great option. They also have a very helpful community where you can ask additional questions and get support from a dedicated team member. For me, the WP101 community is the real benefit of this service. It’s also very cheap with prices starting at $19 per annum.

If you are a technophobe and you need (done for you) tech support then you might want to consider something like Go WP who offer dedicated monthly support for around $79 per month. They’ll make small changes for you and will keep your site running smoothly.

You can also find an abundance of WordPress experts on Upwork who are available for you to hire on an hourly basis. You can post your job and have people reach out to you or you can simply search the Upwork database for freelancers and approach them individually based on their skills, reviews, price per hour etc.

7. WordPress works with (almost) anything

This is another reason why we love using WordPress. We never have to worry about integrating 3rd party software with your website.

Due to it’s massive popularity, companies tend to bend over backwards for WordPress. Whether it’s an email services provider like Mailchimp or industry leading payment processor like Stripe, it has to be COMPATIBLE with WordPress.

Many software companies create their own WordPress plugins because they know how important it is. They also understand that if they didn’t make it easy for people they would lose a lot of customers. It’s in everyone interest to create WordPress friendly software.

8. Search engines love WordPress

In my experience, WordPress websites ALWAYS rank better in search engines than other platforms such as Joomla, Wix and Squarespace.

Why is this?

Clean URL structure

Your page URL’s are extremely important in how Google rank your website. They look at the keywords within your URL to determine what you should rank for. WordPress is great as it allows you to create unique URL’s for each page very easily and doesn’t add any messy gibberish like so many others do.

Website Speed

Some of the other content management systems and website builders are built with a lot of unnecessary code. This extra code can cause the site to feel heavy and load slowly. WordPress on the other hand is fairly lightweight and most themes and plugins are built with this in mind. There ARE some exceptions but generally speaking WordPress websites are quicker.

SEO plugins that allow you to optimise your pages easily

Every page on your website will need to be optimised for search engines. That way you have more chance of ranking on the first page of Google.

There are hundreds of different plugins that you can use to improve your on-page SEO in different ways but perhaps the most widely used plugin is Yoast.

Yoast SEO Plugin

The Yoast SEO plugin is free and you can use it on multiple websites. It comes with an extensive number of features that you can use to make your website more search engine friendly.

9. Mobile Friendly

Having a mobile friendly website is no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity. And if you want to keep Google and your users happy you’ll need to make sure your website passes the mobile friendly test.

When we build your website we make it responsive. This means it looks great when viewed on a mobile device or tablet. This is nothing new and should happen anyway but with WordPress it makes the whole process so much easier.

Responsive Plugins

Most plugins are built to be responsive. This means they look great on smaller screens and we don’t have to customise them manually which saves us a lot of time.

Responsive Templates

Again, because we are building your website for you. you won’t really need a template but it’s good to know that if you did in the future it would likely be responsive.

You can make your website responsive

WordPress have a number of tools that can actually turn your website from non-responsive to responsive. That means, if Google change their guidelines in the future you can use the tools to stay inline.

All round, WordPress will make it easier for us to deliver a fully responsive website.

Summary

So there you have it, 9 reasons why we only use WordPress to build your website. As you can probably tell, I’m pretty fond of WordPress and hopefully after reading this article you now understand why. I need to be able to trust the tools I use 100% so I can continue to build the best possible websites.

Over to you

Have you tried using WordPress in the past? How did you find it? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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.

The post Why Do We ONLY Use WordPress To Build Your Website? appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Show Us Your Face

Martin Huntbach — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 13:55:49 +0000

It has always been popular to be seen as a big established business. Even if you have a small team or you’re a one man band, people tend to exaggerate the size of their organisation in an effort to be seen as trustworthy and capable.

You see this all the time, small businesses using stock images of smiley, shiny people in board rooms. You see fluffy jargon and taglines on their website like, “We’ll help you prosper”. They use words like “solutions” and “consultancy” all the time, when they might just be “Steve” who works from his home office and helps people save money on their mortgage.

This kind of tactic might have worked well ten years ago but not anymore. Your customers can spot bullshit a mile off, and it’s time to start doing things differently.

Now’s the time to step out from behind your logo and cheesy stock photos and show everyone who you are.

People buy from people

It’s much more than just showing people what you look like, it’s about creating a culture of honesty and choosing to be approachable rather than sophisticated.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a one man band or a big organisation, I want to get to know a little bit about you before I get in touch. This all starts with your website.

Get over yourself

I know the feeling. You’re about to hit publish and add your image to your website, but it’s not quite right. It’s not your “good” side, and that plant in the background needs watering. Sigh.

I’ve been there, I know the feeling and guess what? I got over it. And you will too. People don’t care what you look like, they only care that you can help them.

The quicker you get past this, the faster people will trust you and will want to work with you.

People love small businesses

If you are concerned that people won’t do business with you if they know the truth, then don’t be. There are so many benefits to working with a smaller team or a freelancer as oppose to a bigger business. For instance:

Bespoke service
A personal approach
Lower fees
Less red tape

The worst thing you can do is to misguide people and claim that you are big business with lots of capacity.

It’s much better to be honest and attract people who are right for your business rather than wasting someone’s time.

Your website

So what can you do with your website to become more approachable?

Include an image of yourself on your homepage

If possible, include images of you and/or your team on the homepage. Your homepage is the most visited page on your site, so you may as well build up some trust immediately. I do this myself and it’s always nice when someone calls and asks to speak to “Martin”. They know who I am and what I look like before we even speak.

Staff profiles on the about page

Have an image and bio for each staff member on your about page. If you take a look at your Google Analytics stats, you may be surprised by how popular this page is with your visitors. It just goes to show that people actually care about who they do business with. Who’d have thought, eh?

You can have fun with it too. Talk about hobbies, interests or your favourite Disney films, I don’t really care! But try to be as human as possible and stay away from the “Linkedin bio” approach.

You might think that your business is “different” and this kind of approach is not appropriate. I’m currently working with one client who is a funeral director. His customers have commented how nice it is to see a smiley face on his website, as they’re accustomed to seeing glum, grey pictures everywhere else. Don’t be afraid to show the real you, no matter what industry you’re in.

Check out the team page for video hosting company Wistia to see how they’re using their individual personalities. Not a grey suit in sight.

Include a group shot

If there are a lot of people who work at the organisation, then you might want to consider a group photo. Make it fun. Something that shows a diverse group of individuals with their own personality. This will go a long way in breaking down the corporate image that so many websites try to portray.

Show people behind the curtain

It’s always nice to see you and the team in action. Showing the team working away gives your customers an insight into how your company is run. You could include images of the office, people working, people chatting on bean bag chairs, whatever you like! It’s nice to see real people in a natural office setting.

Include a video

There’s no doubt that people love video, which makes it a very useful tool in building trust online. Why not include a video of yourself or your team on your website? It could be a simple welcome video or you could use videos on your blog to answer questions that people might have. Either way, video can be very powerful.

Social Media Tip

I use my personal Twitter account for Jammy Digital. I tweet about design, SEO, walks on the beach, cats and Star Wars. (Follow me here you should) The point is, I don’t hide behind my logo or the twitter egg. If you have an egg as your twitter picture, please remove…right now. People want to see and hear from the real you. So show it to them.

Summary

The internet can feel like the wild west sometimes. Your customers know this and it makes them very cautious. This is why it’s so important that you make it easy for them to trust you. Transparency is the only way you can set yourself aside from your competitors and make people feel at ease.

Over the you

Do you find it frustrating when companies do this kind of thing? Or maybe you ARE one of these companies and you’re kicking yourself. I’d love to hear you thoughts on this so please leave a comment below.

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.

The post Show Us Your Face appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Problems that occur when you get a new website… and how we prevent them

Martin Huntbach — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 10:15:28 +0000

Getting a new website is exciting. It usually means the start of a new venture or a fresh start with an existing one. Whatever the reason, you’ll probably have lots of ideas running through your head and want to get things moving quickly.

But wait!

Before you run off and hire the first web designer you find, you might want to take a minute. Over the years I’ve reviewed hundreds of websites and had many conversations with customers who have been burnt in the past. There are quite a few mistakes people make when getting a website and I want to help you avoid the pitfalls as best I can.

1. The final design doesn’t look how you want it to.

This happens a lot. You pay for a new website, and you wait weeks or even months to see the final design before it goes live. It’s only then you find you don’t like it or it doesn’t fit within your style or branding.

This is a common issue. It’s too late to start the project again and trying to change it to something else entirely can take just as long. You’ve spent money, and you’re now stuck with a design you don’t like or want. It’s not your fault, you trusted a designer and their expertise.

We’ve heard this story plenty of times, and in most cases you’ll end up sticking with what you have. A lot of people end up resenting their website. Not much fun all-round.

Before committing to a project, ask your web designer how they will prevent this issue from happening. Will they show you a mockup or at least a wire frame of their proposed design before you invest too much money?

What we do to solve this problem.

At Jammy Digital, we don’t take a penny of your money until you know exactly what your website will look like. We design a mockup of your homepage before we send you an invoice. That way, we can talk about the design together and what you like/dislike about it before we build it.

If you decide you don’t like it, you can simply walk away. No harm done.

2. The website doesn’t appear in search results

Your website is live and has been for a few weeks. But there’s just one problem. You can’t find your website in search results. Maybe you’ve searched for your business name and you’re nowhere to be found on Google. Understandably, you’re a little concerned.

This can happen for a number of reasons, there might be a technical issue preventing it from being indexed by search engines. Your site might not have been released to Google or maybe there is an underlying issue with the website that’s causing search engines to ignore you.

What we do to solve this problem.

All of the websites we build appear highly in search results. This is because we use our extensive knowledge of search engine optimisation (SEO) to plan and build your website.

The way your pages are laid out, the menu structure, the URLs all count towards a search engine friendly website. This means that you will already have a solid foundation to start with, even if you don’t hire an SEO company further down the road.

On the day your website goes live, we create an account with Google Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools). This is the system that communicates with Google and tells them that your website is live. We then give them a list of your website pages so they can start listing them in search results as soon as possible.

If there are any technical issues with your website, we will receive an alert directly from Google. That way we can address any issues immediately.

3. You don’t have access to update the website yourself

It always surprises me when business owners don’t have access to update their own website. I understand if you’d rather NOT do it yourself if you haven’t got the time or skills, but still, the choice should be yours.

These days you don’t need a web developer to make minor changes to your website. Most websites come with some kind of editing system which makes it very easy for you to change text and add images.

Your website will continue to change and evolve, and you will need to be able to update it when you want. You really don’t want to have to ask your web designer for every simple edit. Knowing how to make changes yourself will save you time and probably some money too.

What we do to solve this problem.

Every website we design is built using WordPress. WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that makes it very easy for you to make changes. Even if you’re a technophobe (like my dad).

WordPress is by far the most popular CMS and it’s used by some of the biggest companies in the world.

The main reason WE use WordPress is so you can update the site yourself whenever you like. We will also send you a training video on how to make changes. You will get to log into the backoffice of your website and edit things as you wish.

4. The website is difficult to use on mobile devices

Over the past couple of years, search engines have made it essential to have a mobile friendly website. This means if your site doesn’t work smoothly on mobile devices (smart phones & tablets) then you are less likely to appear in mobile search results.

Although your site may work on mobile devices, it may not be classed as responsive. This means that it’s more difficult to use than it should be.

To check if your website is “responsive” you can use Google’s very own mobile friendly test.

Some web designers treat this as an afterthought, so they don’t spend the time and effort to make an effective mobile design and opt for a “smaller version” instead.

Before you hire a web designer, tell them that site will need to be RESPONSIVE – no, you don’t want a “mobile version”, you don’t want the website to be just “accessible”, you need it to be responsive. You shouldn’t really have to ask as it should come as standard. But you’d be surprised by how often I see new websites that are terrible when you use them on a mobile device.

What we do to solve this problem.

We build responsive websites that pass the Google test every time. Simple. This means that you are more likely to appear higher up in mobile searches.

However, we go one step further. We build your website with a “50/50” mentality. This means that when we design your desktop site we are also considering how this will work on a mobile phone or an ipad.

Your site will not only work on smaller screens, it will be user-friendly and convert more visitors into enquiries.

5. Your traffic numbers are low and you don’t know why

This happens all the time. Your website is finally live and has been for a few weeks but when you check your visitor numbers you want to cry. Nothing but crickets.

Yes. It can take time to build up your numbers, but there are things you could be doing to speed the process along. You shouldn’t be waiting around, hoping that it will naturally increase by itself.

Ideally, you would have a strategy in place before you launch. Marketing is much more than clicking “go live” and shouting about it on social media, which is why having a plan as vital.

What we do to solve this problem.

When we take you on as a client we first spend some time understanding your business. We send you a questionnaire to fill out before we begin building your site so we can discover your goals, your target audience, your place in the market. This will help us develop a site that performs well from day one.

As well as this, we also include a free digital marketing strategy session which consists of a 1 hour Skype call to enable you to get off to the best possible start once you’ve launched. This is where we’ll discuss a plan of action to increase your visitor numbers and enquires as quickly as possible.

This might consist of things like:

An email marketing strategy
How to develop a content marketing plan
How to use videos to reach more people

This will be a unique plan built around your business. We’ll only give you the advice that will work for you.

6. You don’t know how to track your visitors

So you have a new website which you love. There’s only one problem. How do you know if anyone is visiting it?

You should be able to check some statistics on how your website is performing. Things like:

Visitor numbers
Popular pages viewed
How people found your website
How people are accessing your site

These are basic stats that will allow you to measure your success and it’s important that you know where to find this information. In my experience, what gets measured gets improved.

What we do to solve this problem.

Every single website we build will have visitor tracking enabled. We will create a Google Analytics account and link it to your website so you can view your stats any time you like.

We will also send you a free training video on how to use Google Analytics, so you don’t have to scratch your head trying to work out how to use it.

7. Your pages take too long to load

If your website runs slowly, you might have a problem. Slow loading websites can be very frustrating for your visitors who won’t stick around if they have to wait.

Search engines care about their users and want to deliver the best possible experience. This means you have to keep your site running smoothly if you want the best possible rankings.

There are many reasons your site may take longer to load, such as:

Images not optimised properly
Bad web building software
Low quality hosting
Too many add-ons or plugins
Unnecessary functionality and code.

All of these are contributing factors in slowing down your website.

You can check your page load speed for free using GT Metrix. It will measure your load speed in seconds and will also give you a performance grade out of 100.

What we do to solve this problem.

All our websites are built to be lightweight. This means we’ll keep the site updated and free of any excessive plugins and extravagant code that may slow the site down.

We’ll optimise your image sizes individually before we add them to the website so they are the smallest possible size without losing the quality.

We also use a high quality hosting company to keep your website running smoothly. Our hosts come with unlimited bandwidth, 20GB of disk space, 2GB Ram and 99.9% uptime.

Wow, that sounds geeky!

Essentially, it means our websites are speedier than a Gazelle, and yours should be too!

8. Your website isn’t generating any leads or sales

Getting traffic to your website is one thing, converting your visitors into enquiries is another. Your website should have one main purpose and that should be to generate its own leads and sales.

Here’s a list of things you might want from your website:

More phone calls
More email enquiries
More call back requests
More applicants
More donations
More prospects to build your database

Whatever your intent, if you haven’t thought about this before your website has been built then you may find it hard to convert your users.

What we do to solve this problem.

As part of our discovery session at the start of the process, we’ll find out what the overall purpose of the website is.

Before we even think about coding, we will know exactly what you need from your site, meaning we build it with your overall goal in mind. This will then inspire the whole design, including the layout, the colour scheme, menu structure, images, the headlines. Everything.

Before we begin building the site, we’ll design you a mockup of the homepage and record a video walkthrough explaining the different elements of the site. In this video we’ll show you how the design will persuade your visitors to do what you want them too .

Summary

Take your time to find the right web designer for you. Please don’t buy based on price alone. It’s almost always the wrong thing to do. The majority of the issues in this article can be avoided as long as you find someone who really understands your business goals and has the experience to advise you correctly.

Over to you…

Have you faced any of the problems listed above? Or have you encountered any other problems that gave you a headache. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

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.

The post Problems that occur when you get a new website… and how we prevent them appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

What is a 301 redirect and why should you care?

Martin Huntbach — Sun, 14 Feb 2016 19:33:46 +0000

A 301 redirect is a permanent page redirect. You would use a “301” to take your website visitor from one webpage to another automatically. This will also tell the search engines you would like them to forward the website traffic to the new webpage.

Why use a 301 redirect?

1. Changed your company domain name

One of the main reasons you would use a 301 is because you have changed your business name. The likelihood is, you’ll need to change the domain name too.

Example

KFC used to be known as Kentucky Fried Chicken. When they changed their name to KFC, they needed to add a 301 redirect to their new domain name.

So now, when you visit kentuckyfriedchicken.com you will notice that page redirects to kfc.com. They are doing this with a 301 redirect.

If they didn’t have a 301 setup, then they would technically have two separate websites on two different domains, which can cause massive confusion to users and search engines.

Moved or deleted a page on your website

Another common reason for using a 301 is if you want to change the URL on one of your pages.

The reasons for doing this include; deleting pages, changing categories, changing menu items or amending anything to do with your overall website structure. Ordinarily, you would lose all of the link power going to the old URL but by using a 301 redirect search engines will allow you to keep most this power.

Example

Let’s just say you have an online shop, and you were changing a URL for one of your products to make it easier for search engines. *Hint the shorter the URL the better.

Old URL – myshop.com/products/mens/shoes/black-leather-shoes

Change to

New URL – myshop.com/mens/shoes/black-leather-shoes

The problem is that search engines still have a record of the old URL. That means that they will still continue to list it in search results for the some time and if you’ve changed the URL path, your user will probably land on a 404 error page which is bad, especially if you want to continue selling shoes. This is why you need to use a 301 redirect when you amend pages.

It will tell search engines that the old page is no longer available, and they need to send all the traffic to the new page.

Duplicate page content

Another reason you might need to use a 301 redirect is because of duplicate content issues.

Search engines need your content to be unique, and they may penalise you if you have too many pages on your website with similar content.

On the face of it, you might think your website is OK, but this issue is more common that you’d think. And it needs fixing asap.

You can check Google Webmaster tools for any duplicate pages or use a free online tool such as www.siteliner.com to see if any of your pages have this issue.

www. vs. non www. – Canonical URLs

This leads on nicely from the last section, but I delve deeper, I want to clarify what we mean by canonical URLs.

Another reason duplicate pages arise is because you haven’t chosen a preferred URL.

As you’re probably aware, some websites come with (www.) in front of the domain and others are seen as a “naked URL” without the (www.)

According to Google; there is no real SEO benefit to choosing one over the other, it’s personal preference. However, if you don’t pick one, it WILL affect your SEO.

Once you’ve decided, you will need to setup a 301 redirect to fix it.

How to add 301 redirects

Adding 301 redirects can be very simple, but it all depends on how your website was built. If you have access to your content management system, then you may be able to make changes without messing around with any code. WordPress is the most popular CMS, so I’ll walk you through the different steps below on how to set them up.

Simple 301 redirects with WordPress

If you use WordPress as your CMS, then you’re in luck. Just follow the simple instructions below and add the 301 redirects via your dashboard.

Step 1. Once you’ve logged into the WordPress dashboard, hover your mouse over the plugins tab on the left and click ‘add new’ from the drop-down menu.

Step 2. Using the search bar on the top left of the screen, search for “simple 301 redirect” and press enter.

Step 3. Install the plugin and click “Activate Plugin” on the next page.

Step 4. Hover you mouse over the settings tab, and you will see “301 redirect” on the drop down menu. Click to open.

Step 5. Using the plugin, you can assign which pages you want to redirect and where you want to redirect them to.

Step 6. Click Save Changes, and you’re done.

Setting up 301 redirects without WordPress

If your website is not built using WordPress or any other CMS, then you will need to add the code manually or send the information to you web developer.

Step 1. Head over to this website https://www.rapidtables.com/web/tools/redirect-generator.htm

Step 2. Enter the URL for your old page and your new page.

Step 3. Select the type of redirect, in other words, how do you want to add the code to your website.

Step 4. Select generate code and then paste that code onto your website.

There are many different ways to add 301 redirects to your website, and hopefully, this post should make things a lot easier in the future.

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.

The post What is a 301 redirect and why should you care? appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

9 most ‘clickbait’ headline techniques – we like number 5 the best! (Oh, the irony!)

Lyndsay Cambridge — Mon, 01 Jun 2015 16:21:05 +0000

‘Clickbait’ gets a lot of bad rap, and sometimes, it’s for good reason. If you click on something and find yourself on a slow-loading page, rammed with ads and content completely unrelated to what you expected, then you’re going to be pretty annoyed.

However, clickbait has been prevalent for centuries, just in different forms. From the summary at the back of a book, to the Oliver Twist look-a-like kid shouting ‘extra, extra read all about it!’ – these are all ways to get you to engage with the author’s content.

There’s no problem at all with readers being lured into clicking on your article but only if they’re rewarded for their curiosity with good quality, engaging content.

But how do you get them to click? Below, I’ve listed the most common ‘clickbait’ techniques, with the ones I think you should be using and ones you should definitely steer clear of!

1. Lists posts

Yep, we know, we’re guilty! But lists are a great way of gaining visitors to your content.

The user knows the article or video is going to be in easily digestible, bite-sized pieces and that’s always more appealing than big chunks of text. It’s also more likely to be actionable content, with facts instead of opinion pieces.

2. Boobs

I can’t believe I have to say this. But please don’t use women in bikinis unless your article/content is directly related to bikinis! The amount of times I see articles that have nothing to do with the female anatomy, using a picture of a woman dressed in barely anything is scary. And it’s not just prevalent in content marketing but advertising in general.

Don’t get me wrong, for some companies it may work where that kind of thing is part of your brand – just look at ads for gambling and gaming, but for most it just makes you look desperate and kind of confused about what you’re selling. Plus, you’re potentially putting off 50% of your market.

3. Being mean/horrible/bitchy

I know it sounds cheesy but I treat people how I like to be treated, so causing unnecessary hurt or anger would be something I’d certainly steer clear of.

I’ve seen articles with headlines such as ‘Celebrities with ugly partners’ and ‘Stars who have piled on the baby weight.’ Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure these ‘articles’ – if you can call them that – gain a lot of traffic, but it’s not something I’m into. We’re all human, including celebrities, and I would hate to think I’d hurt someone purposefully over something I’d written.

4. Sarcastic headline

16 reasons you shouldn’t wear sunscreen, 12 reasons not to visit New York, four reasons you should put a fork in the plug socket.

This particular one is a real Buzzfeed favourite and although a little annoying at first, it does have that punch to the stomach value.

For example, what’s a more powerful message…

Neglecting to wear suncream over long periods of time could cause skin cancer

Don’t bother wearing suncream, who cares about skin cancer anyways!

The second one certainly has the shock factor.

I’m not a big fan of this method but I do see its benefits. I’d advise to use with caution.

5. We like number 5 the best!

Which one do you like the best

Yep, we’ve gone and done it again in the article headline! By stating which one out of your list is your preference/the most shocking/made you laugh etc. your intriguing web users. They want to know what number five is and they want to see if they agree.

Overall, it’s not the most advanced strategy but it does work!

6. Humour

Sometimes, you don’t want to learn anything or digest a load of information. You just want to laugh and be entertained – hence the sheer popularity of cat videos.

So inject some humour into your headlines (if applicable to your brand, if you’re a funeral director maybe not – although it would make me laugh!)

7. Controversial headline

This can be tricky.

Firstly, I see a lot of people use a controversial headline to lure people in, and then backtrack the headline in their article.

Someone did this recently using the headline ‘SEO is dead.’ I clicked on it and the guy went through all the benefits of SEO. What he actually meant was some methods of SEO have been phased out – but of course, that’s not as exciting as ‘SEO is dead.’

I think controversy is good, if you truly believe in your opinion and you have stats and facts to back yourself up. Healthy debate is what keeps us up-to-date. However, using controversy to gain links should be avoided, because essentially, you’re just going to annoy people. See example above!

8. Stupidity

Again, like the boobs, I’m not really sure why I have to say this but some people think that being purposefully stupid will attract web hits. And it will, but from people who want to tell you that you’re an idiot.

Please don’t resort to stupidity to gain links, instead be an expert on your chosen topic and earn respect for your knowledge.

9. What happens next will make you cry…

Tearful content

This is actually one of my pet peeves! But I understand why they work so well.

You can usually spot these on Facebook; it’ll link to a video featuring puppies and sad music and annoyingly, you may start to get a tear to your eye!

I hate them because I don’t like feeling manipulated but some people do enjoy them and overall, they seem to receive positive comments. I suppose this one is down to preference!

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

The post 9 most ‘clickbait’ headline techniques – we like number 5 the best! (Oh, the irony!) appeared first on Content Marketing & SEO Agency | Get More Sales From Your Website.

Top 5 excuses to get out of content marketing – and why you should ignore them.

Lyndsay Cambridge — Mon, 25 May 2015 14:35:13 +0000

Yep, we’ve heard them all. We’ve even said quite a few of them ourselves. But the truth is content marketing is here to stay. Google loves it. People love it. So if you want to be successful, stop making these excuses and do it!

1. “I don’t have time.”

Ahhh that old chestnut.

This is the one I use most. How can I possibly find the time to do all this content marketing stuff!

There’s one very simple answer…

Make time.

I know, I’m sorry. I wish I could give you a magical machine that would stop time, but if I had one I’d probably be swanning it in the Cayman Islands drinking cocktails or something.

Content marketing should be an integral part of your marketing strategy. It builds your brand, helps SEO, and creates authority and trust with your audience. The benefits far outweigh the time.

But I would say this. Be smart about your Content Marketing. Don’t join eight different social media sites if you can’t keep up with them. Just have two or three you do really well. And aim to create a video/infographic/blog post etc. in realistic times frames. So if that means once a week/fortnight/month, then so be it. But make sure you do it.

2. “I don’t know what to write about”

Sure you do.

YOU are an expert in your field. Whether that be; gardening, roofing, hair and beauty, money management, budgies, cosmetic surgery, divorce settlements, underwear or spider monkeys, you are unique because you know more about your industry than the average man or woman out there.

So what does this mean?

It means you get to talk about the thing you love!

I love writing and content marketing. But often, when I start yabbering on to my friends/family about it, they roll their eyes and their head hits the desk.

But online, it’s different. Your audience are after the very thing you’re passionate about. And you get to talk about it without someone snoozing! How amazing is that?

3. “My writing isn’t good enough.”

Content isn’t just about writing. There are plenty of other things you can do. You can tweet about it, use Facebook, do videos, interpretive dance, create infographs, and take photographs.

If all that seems a tad scary and you do just want to stick to writing, remember, the majority of people are just after great content – answers to their questions, entertainment, something to make them laugh or cry or both.

They’re not going to be going through you’re work with a red pen giving it a big fat ‘F’.

And so what if you make a mistake? And some smartarse in the comments section tells you you’ve spelt necessary wrong (*cough* true story *cough*). Then just say, ‘silly me!’ and move on.

You will notice that as you keep writing it will improve over time. I recommend everyone use Microsoft Word for the handy spell check. Just remember to select the right word. For example: definitely and defiantly are often confused via spell checker!

You can also use software such as grammarly, that will check your spelling and grammar for you.

4. “What if people just do it themselves?”

So many clients say this to me and I always go back to the same example.

I had this discussion some years ago with a lady who now owns a successful bakery. I advised her to do YouTube videos on how to make and decorate cakes. She looked at me like I was an idiot.

“Won’t they just go away and do it themselves if I tell them how to do it?” she asked.

And she was right. There’s always a risk that some of your potential customers will go away and do it themselves. But the risk is very small.

Do you think that anybody will be able to copy what you’ve spent years and years learning and crafting? No.

Do people have the time to spend learning what you’ve learnt? Generally, no.

So she did it. And it allowed her to become an authority as a cake making extraordinaire and her business grew from strength to strength. She’s even introduced bakery classes!

5. “I’m afraid of putting myself out there.”

Now, this one I can sympathise with. Putting yourself out there is scary and there’s always that niggling feeling that people will judge you.

But trust me when I say this, I have only ever seen a hugely positive response to people putting themselves out there, if they do it in a helpful and engaging way.

People are generally good people. Yeah, the Internet is full of a few weirdoes but they’re easy to spot and ignore. But what if someone disagrees with you view? Then great! That means what you’re doing is working; you’re creating conversation and debate.

The hardest thing to do is that first blog post or video. You want it to be perfect and wonderful and for everyone to just love it. Well, that would be lovely but the chances are it won’t get all the attention you want it to. Content Marketing is a slow game and you will improve immensely over time. But the trick is to keep going, make sure your work is the best it can be but don’t overthink it. Just shut your eyes hit the post or upload button and I swear only good things will come of it.

No one ever got anywhere by being too afraid.

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