Shownotes
Transcripts
What is happening, everybody? I'm Larry Roberts.
Sara Lohse [:And I'm Sara Lohse. And this is Branded, your comprehensive guide to creative branding.
Larry Roberts [:And on this very insightful episode of the podcast, we have an amazing guest with us. And I love the fact that James has joined us today because literally just yesterday I was on a call with a website slash SEO expert that I had met at a networking event and I was telling him, I was like, man, you know, I'm just not getting a lot of traction from an SEO perspective. And he goes, well, hey man, let me check your site out. So he goes to my site and no sooner does the page load and he goes, oh, well, right, there's your issue. And I'm like, well, oh, that kind of sucks. I mean, it was that obvious. So I think we're going to get a lot of value out of this conversation and ideally we're going to identify some very common mistakes and help you miss those common mistakes with your website. So James, welcome to the show.
James Hipkin [:Hey, I'm really happy to be here. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Websites is a passion. Got a backstory on why it's passion and I think we can have a lot of fun and hopefully share some useful information that your audience can, can gain an understanding of some of the pitfalls and a way to think about this that applies to any business of any size.
Sara Lohse [:But I was going to say, let's get into it because I know when we were looking at your website and the things you talk about, there's a bunch of things that really caught our interest and one of them is the mistakes. I will definitely get into that. But you also have a way to grab people's attention on your website and 6 seconds.
James Hipkin [:I think it was six ways to engage website visitors in 6 seconds or less.
Sara Lohse [:That, yes. Can we dig into a few of those? Because I know in my mind I'm already redoing my website based on everything you're about to say.
James Hipkin [:Well, and it's, it's great. And the 6 seconds thing comes from, you've probably heard about the myth that a goldfish has an attention span of.
Sara Lohse [:6 seconds and so does a human.
James Hipkin [:You know, and honestly, as a business owner, you should be so lucky. That's why it's six ways to engage a website visitor in 6 seconds or less.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah, I know. In hookpoint they say it's three.
James Hipkin [:Yeah, well, I'll tell you, there are a few things, and the funny thing about this is the 6 seconds doesn't start when the page has loaded.
Sara Lohse [:Oh.
James Hipkin [:The 6 seconds starts when the page is asked for. So page load speed is the first of the six ways.
Sara Lohse [:Okay.
James Hipkin [:And page load speed is also a trust event. When your website loads quickly and instantly is there, that leaves a very positive impression in people's mind, which builds trust when they have to wait and it's there and is it coming, what's going on? Suddenly they're thinking about stuff that you don't want them thinking about. And then when it eventually gets there, it's. They're already on the wrong foot.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, even if I go to a website today and it doesn't load like instantly, first I wonder if my ISP is down again because I have a very unreliable Internet service. But then I wonder, oh my God, do they even have a legit site?
James Hipkin [:Yeah. Are they still in business? Because a little bit of a tangent here, but one of the questions I often ask a small business owner is what's the primary objective of your website? And they'll give me a litany of things and then we'll have a little discussion around the definition of the word primary. There can only be one.
Sara Lohse [:I know three came to my head, so I already lost.
James Hipkin [:Well, and eventually they'll usually get around to conversion, right, which is the knee jerk. Everybody will nod their head going, it's almost always wrong. Conversion is clearly part of it. But remember, your audience is on their journey, and when they get to your website, they're not ready to convert. When they get to their website, they're there to find out if you understand their problem and do you have a solution that makes sense to them. So, truly, in the majority of situations, the primary objective of the website is not conversion, it's confirmation. That brings us to the second way of the six ways. If they're getting to your website, they've probably heard about you somehow, either through social media or through a networking event or word of mouth, and they're going to your website to confirm that you, in fact, are a legitimate candidate for solving the problem that they have.
James Hipkin [:If they're searching for your name, make sure your name is prominently displayed on the website. Don't put up an obscure logo with an obscure business name that nobody's heard of. I'm sorry if you spent a bunch of money with a designer to get this all done, but make sure that you're consistent. Make sure you're consistent about the ways you use colors. That the colors you use in social media are the same colors you have on the website, that the fonts you use in social media are the same. These are all subtle things, but they all confirm, because what you're trying to do is instantly in the, in the consumer, in the visitor's mind. Am I in the right place now?
Sara Lohse [:Okay, this is interesting because Larry didn't, wasn't that the thing, the name thing, what the SEO guy said?
Larry Roberts [:It's, it's really interesting, Jay's, because what sarah's pointing out, yesterday, when I was talking to the SEO gentleman, he went to my website, opened up the very first page, and when he said, that's the problem right there, that's why you're not ranking or one of the many, I'm sure that he saw right out of the gate. But my landing page, when you go to Larry Roberts.com, comma, the very first landing page is my name, Larry Roberts. And he said that was the problem because no one's searching for Larry Roberts. And I countered that by going, well, yeah, some people are. And that's the whole goal, because for my particular company, I am the brand. Now, granted, if you go Google Larry Roberts, I'm still way down in the rankings because, I mean, there's like a, a Nobel Peace Prize winning scientist, I think that was, yeah, there's all these dudes that are just crushing it and always will. And I mean, literally, when I got the URL, I had to wait for the original owner of the domain to pass away.
James Hipkin [:Yeah.
Larry Roberts [:So, and then had to negotiate with his, with his estate and blah, blah, blah.
Sara Lohse [:But be honest. Did you kill him?
Larry Roberts [:I did not. I didn't want it that bad. So, no, I did not. But, but that's exactly what he said. He goes, nobody's looking for Larry Roberts. And for one, I knew he didn't know who. You don't know who you're talking to, bruh. But I'm just kidding.
Larry Roberts [:Not really.
Sara Lohse [:He has no idea who you think you are.
James Hipkin [:Well, and that's an interesting side note, because I tell you, for most small business owners, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, folks that are, you know, getting up into, even getting up into six figures, be aware of SEO principles. Be aware of how SEO works, but do not make SEO your primary strategy. It's a long, difficult challenge that takes a lot of time. And domain authority is an absolutely key part of SEO. And that's all a function about how other people are seeing your website, the backlinks you've got, the traffic that you're getting to the website, etcetera. SEO is difficult and challenging. So, Larry, you're much better off focusing on Larry Roberts because that's how people are finding you. And when they get to your website, they're going to go, yes, that's what I'm looking for.
James Hipkin [:I am in the right place. And, you know, that's another trust event.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, yeah, I see that. Sure.
James Hipkin [:If suddenly they're at their website and they're thinking about, am I in the right place? Who is this person? What is this thing that I see here? This doesn't, this doesn't fit with what I was expecting. You've got them thinking about the wrong things. You want instantaneous recognition. I am in the right place so that they can move on in their journey.
Sara Lohse [:If not the name, because Larry was told not to, though. You said, yes, it also shouldn't really be the business name. Am I right? That it should be a very cohesive statement of what you do?
James Hipkin [:Yes, it should be a cohesive statement of what you do, but it should be. How are you talking about yourself in the marketplace? Like, when I'm in networking events, I am very focused on my branding, and it's an easy thing to remember. And when people get to that, they stay very consistent about how I present that in all of the different places that we're in. So people know what, when they get to our website, they're going, yes, this is what I was looking for because they've seen it before.
Larry Roberts [:I think I've seen it before. Now that I see your logo, as soon as you logged on and we started talking, I'm like, I know that that logo innately, I've seen that somewhere. I don't know exactly where or when, but it looks very familiar to me.
James Hipkin [:Right. And so that. And there's a downside to going with a name. Sorry, Larry. You know, that that does. It's hard to. If you ever have a plan to sell your business, selling a business that's built around an individual's name is difficult unless you're, you know, have really actively built out your infrastructure so that it is a viable business without you being involved.
Larry Roberts [:And that's so interesting you say that because I've been having some high level conversations with people going. My issue right now is I've become a bottleneck in my business because the company is red Hat Media. And I think I do pretty good branding, that everywhere I go from, you know, ice shakers to pullovers to everything around in my office here, but people don't really know that. And because with me being the bottleneck, people want to work with the red hat guy. And that's something that I'm experiencing right now. They want to work with me. They don't care to work with the company red hat. They want to work with the red hat guy.
Larry Roberts [:So you make a very, very valid point that I'm actually experiencing right now during this season of growth.
James Hipkin [:Exactly. And there's no right answers to this. I mean, you've got to be comfortable with it. But the bigger point is to be consistent, because your visitor to your website is on their journey, and you need to be consistent with their expectations. And when you do that, then you've got, your page is loaded quickly, and they've instantly, yes, I'm in the right place. Then they can move on to the third thing, which is give them a benefit oriented reason. To stay benefit oriented is a challenge for a lot of smaller businesses, entrepreneurs, inexperienced marketers. Don't tell them what you do.
James Hipkin [:Tell them about the problem they have, because, again, they're on their journey. They're there to confirm that you understand their problem. There's a copywriting framework that's quite famous and popular. It's called pass. That's an acronym for Problem. Agitate the problem, solve the problem. And you'll see it being used in ads. You'll see it being used online.
James Hipkin [:It's also very effective in website copy. You lead with the problem that you're best customer has. You may agitate that problem. Agitate in the sense of, you know, and it's, you know, it's really impacting how your business is growing, or it's impacting how you're thinking about. There's various ways to agitate, and then you present a solution. If you do that, if you lead with a benefit oriented reason to stay, they will stay because they'll go, yeah, this person gets me. If you meet somebody for the first time and instantaneously, all they do is talk about themselves. How keen are you in that conversation?
Sara Lohse [:Not very.
James Hipkin [:Not very. Exactly.
Larry Roberts [:I had a response, and it came out, but I was muted, so it didn't work out very well. But you make a valid point there, James. Thank you.
Sara Lohse [:It's his first time. He's new at this.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah. I was just bragging about how this is my 10,000th rodeo, so I think we'll be fine. And then I. Then I mute myself. So anyways, I'll remove myself and let you continue.
Sara Lohse [:James, if I tell you what, like, the headline on my website says, can you, like, judge it like, one out of.
James Hipkin [:Sure.
Sara Lohse [:Okay. So my company's favorite daughter, mediataindeh and mine.
James Hipkin [:Who's your audience?
Sara Lohse [:I feel attacked by this question. People, any, like, entrepreneurs and business owners who want to do something positive in the world, but want to do it through creative media. I'm working on it.
James Hipkin [:You really need to be honed in on who your audience is. And remember, in marketing, it's as important to repel the wrong people as it is to attract the right people.
Sara Lohse [:The sad thing is, like, my background actually is marketing. And this is stuff I tell other people, but I just don't do it for myself because.
James Hipkin [:The struggle is real.
Sara Lohse [:Yes, yes.
James Hipkin [:I can empathize it, absolutely.
Sara Lohse [:Other people pay me to say it to them, but I'm not paying myself, so I'm gonna ignore me. So my headline is brand storytelling. That makes an impact.
James Hipkin [:Okay. That's a little inside out. That's a little bit focused on. That's what you do.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah.
James Hipkin [:What's the problem that you're solving? Lack of the headline was something to the effect of, and I'm not trying to write copy off the cuff here, but feel free. Make an impact in the noisy digital world.
Sara Lohse [:Okay.
James Hipkin [:That's a problem. You know, are you make an impact in a noisy digital world. Are you struggling to be heard now? I've agitated the problem. You know, use storytelling to set yourself apart.
Sara Lohse [:Interesting. So I just updated it to this, and it used to be something else, and now I feel like the old one you would have liked better because it was creating connections, not just content.
James Hipkin [:Right. That is, that is a benefit. That is a, that is a better headline than what you've got currently. But I would still, I would still lead with more clearly with the problem. One of the fundamentals of website UX is don't make them think.
Sara Lohse [:Yep.
James Hipkin [:Instantaneously. Grab them by the collar. And, yes, this is for you. You know, you don't have to be cute. You don't have to be clever. You just have to be real.
Sara Lohse [:Well, unfortunately, I am super cute and clever, and I just, I can't help it.
Larry Roberts [:Okay, James, my turn, my turn.
Sara Lohse [:We'll send you an invoice after this.
Larry Roberts [:Okay? Yeah, or you could send us an invoice, actually, so, yeah, that. All right, here we go, James, unleash your brand's potential. Shaping the future of brand storytelling through innovative podcasting, branding, and AI solutions.
James Hipkin [:Yeah, that's getting there.
Larry Roberts [:It's getting, it's like, well, no, it sucks, but I don't want to crush your hopes and dreams. So it's getting there.
Sara Lohse [:It's fine. They were crushed yesterday. Just keep, keep piling on.
James Hipkin [:But this is important because a lot of times people overthink this.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah.
James Hipkin [:It's just, you know, you, it's. Particularly if you have a business that's established to some degree and you have clients, this is a shocking thing. But ask them.
Sara Lohse [:Yeah.
James Hipkin [:Why are, why are you here? Why are we doing this together? What, what were you struggling with before you found me? Get them to tell you their story and then present your, on your website, use real consumer language.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, that's an interesting point because we do tend to over copy or over, you know, write copy in a way that doesn't sound like people talk. It's like using chat. GPT. Pretty obvious that a lot of this AI generated content is AI generated because it sounds so verbose.
Sara Lohse [:And let's delve into a deep dive.
Larry Roberts [:On this deep dive into this journey.
Sara Lohse [:That we're going to delve into it with us.
Larry Roberts [:With em dashes everywhere.
Sara Lohse [:Okay. I put em dashes everywhere. That is not an AI thing.
Larry Roberts [:Nobody really uses em dashes ever. Nobody does. No, they don't. James, do you ever use an Em.
James Hipkin [:Dash and using col, using colons and headlines?
Sara Lohse [:That is very AI, but I will die on the hill of Em dashes. They are my favorite punctuation. I don't care what anyone says.
Larry Roberts [:Oh, my gosh.
Sara Lohse [:This is interesting, though, because we had a conversation on the show earlier. I think it was, was it sunny dublic that was talking about when she works with a client, with her, for her marketing firm, the first thing she does is say, let me talk to your customers. And people are always shocked. And what the customer says that they like about the company or why they're working with the company is never what the, like, actual business says their customers want.
James Hipkin [:Absolutely. And it's such a simple thing to do. And just don't try to be clever or cute. Just speak to real people in a real way and you will engage with them just like in a real one on one conversation like we're having today.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, yeah. Where do we end off?
James Hipkin [:We're talking about benefit oriented reason to stay. And the next piece of this is a bit controversial.
Larry Roberts [:Oh, here we go.
James Hipkin [:And I know you guys love a little bit of controversy.
Sara Lohse [:We got this.
James Hipkin [:One of the things I'll tell people is stop saying call to action.
Sara Lohse [:Okay, hold on. Clarification question. Stop saying the words call to action on the website.
James Hipkin [:No, just stop. Just take it out of your vocabulary altogether.
Larry Roberts [:Oh, this is, I mean, that's what being, you know, we launch podcasts for we launch branded podcasts for brands, businesses and organizations. And that's one of the things we say all the time. You have to have a CTA. What is your call to action?
James Hipkin [:It's like when I say this, people do exactly what you guys are doing. They're like, wait, what?
Sara Lohse [:Say more.
James Hipkin [:You know, this is. No, no, wait, that's. No, this is crazy talk. Let me explain, please. Call to action is a marketer shouting at customers, telling them what to do. People don't want to be shouted at, they don't want to be told what to do. Your customer is on their journey. So rather than creating calls to action on your website, what you want to be doing is you want to be creating pathways.
James Hipkin [:Make their pathway clear. Where should they go next and why should they go there? How does it support their journey? Now, effectively, a call to action and a pathway are exactly the same thing, but the mindset shift is really important because when you start thinking about it in terms of I'm creating pathways, you're thinking about it in terms of how I'm supporting my buyer's journey. And when you do that, when they pick that pathway, two very powerful things have happened. They've told you exactly who they are and they've given you permission to give them more information. When I audit websites, the most common problem that I see is not copy and design, although that's often a disaster too. The most common problem I see is an absence of strategy. Yeah, it's all very pretty. Sometimes they've spent a boatload of money with a designer to get something that doesn't function.
Larry Roberts [:That's interesting because the more we talk and it's really. Again, after the conversation yesterday, my mind was already spinning here. So having this conversation is just really interesting to see how things line up. But if you look at my website, I think it's fairly pretty. I think I did a pretty good job from a design perspective, but it's really just factual. Go to this page, here's some facts. Go to this page, here's some facts. Go to this page, here's some facts.
Larry Roberts [:There's not really any pathways or any overall strategy to the site, except the strategy is really jump on my calendar and let's have a conversation about whatever page of facts you've landed on. But beyond that, that's about it.
James Hipkin [:Most businesses, 80% of their revenue is coming from 20% of their customers, Pareto's principal. Now, the specific numbers are probably going to be different, but that concept is valid. Inside of that 20%, there might be two max, three sub segments. If you create a pathway, a people like you kind of call out for those two or three sub segments, you're going to be attracting and giving support to your best customers, because if they're already representing, if that kind of person is representing 80% of your revenue, you want more of them. So call out to them, make it clear that you've got something special for them. They pick the pathway, they click the button, they go to a landing page, they've told you who they are. So now you can present your services, your offer, whatever it is you're doing, in a way that's very germane to who they are and they will pay attention because they've selected to be there. And your ultimate conversion event might very well be set up a schedule.
James Hipkin [:But now you've got individual forms on each one of these landing pages. So when somebody sets up that schedule, you already have information about who they are and what they're looking for, as opposed to a generic contact us form where you have no idea.
Larry Roberts [:Sure.
James Hipkin [:Right. Does this make sense? This is why I'm saying that pathway and call to action are effectively the same thing. But the mindset shift is really important.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, it's absolutely critical. And it can be very difficult to understand the need for that mindset shift because traditionally we just come up going, hey, if we present our services, we're going to answer the questions that they're asking and they're going to buy. I mean, that's just what we inherently think. Not that it's in any stretch of the imagination. Correct. But when you start thinking about reframing the value of whatever those services are and presenting it in a way that solves a problem that answers their question without them having to dig. I can see where that opens up these pathways for engagement, you know, for your. For them to purchase your services, whatever it may be.
James Hipkin [:Right.
Larry Roberts [:It definitely makes sense.
James Hipkin [:Seconds. You've given them a reason to stay. Yeah, they're engaged, they're leaning forward, they're paying attention. Yeah.
Larry Roberts [:It catches them.
James Hipkin [:You're not asking them to sort through. You've regurgitated everything you do on homepage and asked the consumer, well, you can sort through all this and figure out what's for you and what's nothing. You've done the work and people will appreciate that. When I was back in the day, my background is big brands and big budgets and all that good stuff, and I was working with a long distance telecommunications carrier and loyalty was a huge problem. People were switching from at and t to MCI to sprint and all around. And we commissioned a research study. I don't remember any of the details from the research study, but I remember one sentence that the researcher who specializes in loyalty research, one of the things he said in the preamble, he said in his experience, 90% of loyalty problems can be traced to a flawed sales process. And that one sentence is sort of one of the underpinning principles that have influenced how I think about these things.
James Hipkin [:Make statements like stop saying call to action, because call to action is a marketer shouting at a customer and telling them what to do. A pathway is supporting the journey that your customer is on and giving them the next step that they need to take to get the information that they are looking for. Which would you prefer?
Sara Lohse [:Pathways, right. Not getting LDAP.
James Hipkin [:So. And that brings me to the next thing, and I've talked about this a couple of times already. Trust. Inspire trust. I want everybody who's listening to think about their website, and they probably have testimonials on their website because they've been told that you need to have testimonials.
Sara Lohse [:Okay, don't attack my testimonials.
James Hipkin [:And where are those testimonials? Usually at the bottom of the page in a carousel. Okay. Waste of digital space. You need to get a powerful. Just one. You just need one. Because the purpose of that testimonial is to provide reason to believe, to inspire trust. Get it high up in the page, make it loud and proud.
James Hipkin [:Position it prominently. Sprinkle your testimonials all throughout your website. If somebody has selected a pathway and gone to a landing page that's been tailored for them, feature a testimonial on that landing page from somebody just like them. A whole bunch of testimonials jammed into a carousel at the bottom of the homepage is not helping you.
Sara Lohse [:You're giving me so much homework.
Larry Roberts [:Well, Sara, ruin your day.
James Hipkin [:I really apologize for that.
Larry Roberts [:No, you're doing great, because, Sara, I just spoke this morning and I was like, you know, I think I need to set some time aside this weekend and dig into the old website a little bit, do some homework. So I appreciate what you're doing here. Granted, you're adding some line items, but it's perfectly fine because I want to take full advantage of the opportunity that I invest this weekend in making these improvements.
James Hipkin [:And trust is such an important thing. Page load speed inspires trust. Are you in the right place? Inspires trust, being relevant to them by leading with a benefit oriented reason to stay. Inspires trust. Now pay it off. That could be a little bar with, you know, brand logos of companies you've worked with. I have a client who is a high end coach and consultant and he works with C suites and he has the Apple logo on his website. Do you know how hard it is to get the Apple logo on your website legally?
Larry Roberts [:It's really easy. You just download it off Google images and hit upload.
Sara Lohse [:I mean, it's a lot of business through my iPhone, so I feel like I qualify.
James Hipkin [:Yeah, yeah.
Sara Lohse [:No, he said no, that's not how it works.
James Hipkin [:He is the executive coach who supports the C suite at Apple. And if you've got, if you see that logo at the top of the web page, do you think instantaneously. Oh, this is credible?
Larry Roberts [:Oh, of course.
Sara Lohse [:You know, I think my thought is like, oh, this is going to be expensive.
James Hipkin [:So logos work, testimonials work.
Larry Roberts [:I love how, James, you didn't even touch that expensive comment. You're just like, yeah, yeah, it's going to be expensive. Moving on.
Sara Lohse [:No one that's working with Apple is in my budget.
James Hipkin [:Inspire trust is the, is the next thing you want to do. And it needs to be conscious and it needs to be active and it needs to inform and be infused throughout the site, not buried at the bottom of the homepage in a carousel.
Larry Roberts [:Makes sense.
James Hipkin [:The final thing, make the content easy to consume. Recognize that people skim. Use the visual hierarchy. Your h one tag needs to be bigger than your h two. Your h three needs to support the h two. Most people are right handed. They scan a webpage from the upper left hand corner to the lower right hand corner. Don't put your button in the lower left hand corner of the web of the hero section.
James Hipkin [:It's the least eye tracked spot on a page. And yet I see it all the time. Pictures on the right words are on the left. No, put the picture on the right, on the left and put the words on the right so that the button is sitting right down at the lower right hand corner, which is where people instinctively scan.
Larry Roberts [:And, oh, man, that's a good one.
James Hipkin [:Okay. And when you're picking pictures, remember, and this is the challenge with stock photography. Stock photographers frame their pictures so that they're easy to sell. So you'll see lots of things in the center. You'll see lots of models looking out. But if you go to a professionally designed website, particularly e commerce website, where they've been able to pay for photo shoots, you'll find that the model is not looking out. They're looking at the looking over, he's, they're looking over at the headline, they're looking over at the product description. People will look where the model in the photograph is looking.
Sara Lohse [:I've also seen that with people are pointing and they're like, the person in the portland, in the picture is pointing directly at the like, buy now button.
James Hipkin [:Exactly. Yeah, it's, it seems a little cheesy. Oh, no, I do it too, but it works. And yet people don't do it all the time. They've got this beautiful headshot of themselves smiling beautifully and it's lovely. And they're staring right out at the person. And the person is engaged in their eyes because they're looking right at them. And you know what they're not doing? They're not reading your headlines.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah, but my profile, I've got this little turkey neck thing going. I don't really like my profile picture.
Sara Lohse [:Photoshop.
Larry Roberts [:Photoshop. There you go.
Sara Lohse [:Just remember to take the, I actually, I had a client that set up the, one of the worst websites I've ever seen, and it was to sell a book. And they made every possible mistake you can make, I think. I don't think the website ever went out. And when I gave them a list of, like, here's simple changes, they responded with, we're not currently accepting feedback, which I thought was what they're paying me for. But they had a picture of a person and easily could have flipped it to be looking at the button instead was looking towards the outside of the screen, which you're never supposed to do. All of the text was in capitals, which you're never supposed to do. It's harder to read. You can't skim it as much as you can regular letters.
James Hipkin [:Another really common mistake is long line links. How many times have you been to a web page? And they've got lines of body copy that are running all the way across.
Larry Roberts [:The screen, literally from edge to edge to edge. Yeah, it drives me insane. I'm like, come on, man.
James Hipkin [:Newspapers are printed in narrow columns for a reason. Narrow columns are easier to read. Use images. Make sure your images relate and support the words. Pictures tell copy cells, so don't let the images get in the way of what you're trying to do with the words.
Sara Lohse [:Before, when you said you're going to say something controversial, I thought you're going to bring up a different controversial topic. So I want to ask you, why do you tell people they do not need a website?
James Hipkin [:Okay, that's a great question. And I, and this happens oftentimes people will call me up and they'll, you know, when websites is what we do. And I'm like, yeah, no, not yet. There's so many inexpensive and free ways to create a presence online. And the most important thing you can do first is sell something to someone. You don't need a website to do that. You need a list job. One is build your listen.
James Hipkin [:And with a lot of your email service providers, like, we're, we're a Mailchimp agency, so that's the one I'm going to talk about. And we do mailchimp, not because they're particularly better than everybody else, just that all my staff are trained in Mailchimp, so it's easier. Just makes it more efficient. Mailchimp offers a free landing page as part of their free subscription. Buy a domain, redirect that domain to that landing page. Put some nice copy on the landing page. Ask people for their email address.
Sara Lohse [:Okay, but that's still. It's a mini website.
James Hipkin [:It is a mini website, but it's not thousands of dollars spent on a website for something that you don't really know what it is you're trying to sell.
Sara Lohse [:See, you said it would be controversial that you just said not to have a website, and I thought I was going to highly disagree with you, but it's more of like a budgetary thing. Don't invest in it until you're ready. But still. Okay. Nope, we're on the same page. We are on the same page. I support this. I endorse this message.
James Hipkin [:Yep.
Larry Roberts [:I love how Sara's always looking for a scrap. She's like, I'm ready. Come on, let's fly.
Sara Lohse [:Well, because we always tell people that you can't rely on things like social media. You have to have your own website and your own list, which is still true. And the website is how you get people onto your list. You're just doing it in a little mini form, and that's fine. I. Size doesn't matter.
James Hipkin [:And then maybe the next step might be you go to one of the services, like card, for example, which offers a very inexpensive way to create a one page website. So you want to gradually add technology to your proposition as you get clarity on what your proposition is. What I, what I really have a challenge with is people who come to me and want to spend, you know, a boatload of money, love to take their money, but it's just not ethical because they don't know what it is. They don't know who their audience is. They don't really understand what their product is. They're still trying to figure out a lot of these things, which is fine, everybody goes through it. But focus on that, not creating a website.
Larry Roberts [:So basically you're saying that you wouldn't take Sara on as a client simply because she couldn't define her audience 20 minutes ago.
James Hipkin [:Well, I think in a quick conversation we'd have our audience sort it out pretty quickly.
Larry Roberts [:I think you would too, in all honesty. Yeah. I just have to, have to take that dig. Have to take that dig.
Sara Lohse [:But it's interesting, though, what you say, because. So we work in the podcast space, obviously, we're on a podcast. And I think his name is Brendan created podpage.com, which is a very simple, you put in the RSS feed of your podcast and it builds you a website for your podcast. And it's very inexpensive. It's like 15, $20 a month. But I heard him speak at a conference and he even said, this is your starter site. I don't want you to stay on podpage forever. I want you to graduate into a WordPress or some, into a real website when you get to that point.
Sara Lohse [:So it's really interesting because you're saying the same thing.
James Hipkin [:I'm saying the same thing, yeah.
Sara Lohse [:And he's even telling people, don't use my product forever.
James Hipkin [:Yep, I'm saying the same thing. And even. There are only two digital assets that you own, and you brought this up a second ago. Everything else is rented land. And those two digital assets are your list and your website. Start with the list. Most of the email service providers have a free entry point, mailer Light, Mailchimp, etcetera. You know, it's very simple, it's very rudimentary, but it will get you started.
Larry Roberts [:Yeah.
James Hipkin [:You know, if you, if you're feeling a little bit geeky, you even. Google and Gmail has a thing called mail merge where you can add a script to a Google sheet and it will call up a draft email in your Gmail account based on the subject line and send out personalized emails from your Gmail account.
Sara Lohse [:Did not know that.
James Hipkin [:I do this for a lot of times when I'm just trying to reach out to like a sub segment of customers is faster and easier to do that way than it is to go into mailchimp and do a segmentation and blah, blah, blah. Right. I'll just whip up a quick list of people in Google sheets and create a draft of an email and merge them together and off it goes.
Sara Lohse [:Now I want to ask you a controversial question and this is kind of a deep cut because I think we talked about this on episode one or something. And since we're talking about lists, if someone gives me their business card, they hand me a business card, I put them on my mailing list. Larry for some reason thought that was not a good thing to do. Where are you on this?
Larry Roberts [:I'm going to answer it for him. And then he can confirm or deny. He's already used the word ethical once in this conversation.
Sara Lohse [:Not unethical. They handed it to me saying like, you have permission to contact me but.
Larry Roberts [:Not put me on your email list. Those are two entirely different questions. So James, please, please, I'm with Larry on this one.
James Hipkin [:They have given you permission to contact you and that's where the Google sheets and the Google script can come in handy. But you want them, you want your list, you want it to be of high quality. And you get a high quality list by inviting people and having them take action. You can absolutely invite them in your first email to them. Like we're publishing content about this and that and et cetera, et cetera. And we would really value it if you would give us permission to put you on our list. And if they respond back and saying yeah, man, that would be awesome, then you're at the next step and you can put them on your list. List quality is really important.
James Hipkin [:You want to keep your list quality high. You want to clean your list. I would much rather be dealing with somebody with a list of 2000 or 3000 people and an open rate of 40% to 50% than somebody with a 10,000 person list and an open rate of 5% 100%.
Larry Roberts [:And I love the way that you laid that out, James, because basically what you did, you didn't even really offer a call to action. By accepting the business card, you really created a pathway to guide this new relationship to join your email list. So, uh, see what I did there with my callbacks?
Sara Lohse [:Edit this whole part out. I don't like the answer. I'm still putting business cards on my mailing list. They can unsubscribe if they want to.
James Hipkin [:Yeah, that makes sense.
Larry Roberts [:Does it, James? Doesn't really make sense. Oh my gosh, man. Hey, I gotta, I gotta tell you, James, we're, I love the conversation. You provided a ton of value here, a ton of insight into building a website and some of the things that, you know, it's really easy to overlook. But before we wrap it up, I love for people. I mean, you've got it here on the image for those audio only listeners tell us how people could reach out to you and take advantage of the opportunity or the pathway that you've created and work with you.
James Hipkin [:Well, if you go to sixseconds or less.com, you can get some time on my calendar, get 30 minutes on my calendar, and we'll do a quick audit of your website using the six ways to engage in 6 seconds or less. It won't be a super in depth conversation, and it might be a surprising conversation because I typically spend more than half the conversation not talking about the website at all, but talking about who is your audience. And do you really understand the journey that they are on? Because that strategic foundation is really what sets an effective website apart from something that's just pretty nice.
Larry Roberts [:Nice. James, I can't thank you enough. Again, very, very insightful. So appreciate having you here today. This was good.
James Hipkin [:It was my pleasure. I enjoyed the conversation. I think we had a lot of fun.
Larry Roberts [:I had a lot of fun. Sara, did you have fun?
Sara Lohse [:At first.
Larry Roberts [:At first? Well, folks, if you're listening, I'm trying to create a pathway here. Guys, can I have a line?
Sara Lohse [:No.
Larry Roberts [:Hey, if you're listening or watching and you want to continue to take in these amazing episodes with Sara, myself, and our amazing guests, do us a favor and hit that subscribe button. So we continue to bring these episodes each and every week. And with that, but to be clear.
Sara Lohse [:We're not telling you to do it. And with that, we're giving you the opportunity to.
Larry Roberts [:And with that, anybody else? Anybody else? Going once with that. I'm Larry Roberts.
Sara Lohse [:And I'm Sara Lohse, and we'll talk to you next week.
