Welcome back to Season 2 of More Than A Brand! Grab a glass of wine and your iPad to take notes, because I’m going to be dropping jewels all season long.

Today, let’s start with your website. A lot of people like to set it and forget it, but don’t forget that your website is your 24/7 employee. 

People throw the term “optimization” around a lot, but what does it really mean and how can you do it? Listen in while I share…

• Tips and pet peeves about viewing websites on mobile devices and how to fix them
• Tips for videos and photos, and how that can help your SEO
• Optimizing your site for speed
• How are you getting users from point A to point B? Are your menus too long?
• How and why to check your analytics

You get less than 10 seconds for someone to decide whether they’re going to stay on your website and give you their money. Is your website getting them where they want to go or is it turning them away?

Connect on IG @fierceified.agency

For more tips, connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fierceified-creative-consulting/

Learn more about Fierceified Creative and Consulting at https://fierceified.agency/

Music credit: Trust The Vibes by Vincent Tone

A Podcast Launch Bestie production

Hey y'all, and thank you for tuning in to season

two of More Than a Brand podcast.

I'm Lindsay Tramel Jones, your host, your website extraordinaire, the owner

of Fierceified Creative and Consulting.

Now, when you was with me on season one, let me do a little.

Season one.

We were doing business under our llc, organized chaos design company.com.

Hey y'all, that name ain't going anywhere.

It's still there.

It's the llc.

But now we are realigned and we are doing all things web for the

bonafide fierce woman of color, fem.

traditionally marginalized person

that's a trailblazer, that's a change maker that is just ready to set this

world on fire and make it a better place for the next seven generations.

So I can't thank you enough for tuning in.

Now y'all know I'm gonna get down and dirty when it comes to talking to

all things branding and specifically all things websites because your

website is your 24 hour employee, and so often with your website,

people like to forget about it.

They like to set it and forget it, and designers like to hit it and quit it.

I'm not the hit it and quit it type of designer.

I'll let you know that right now.

I'm here for the long run.

I'm the Nina to your website's Darius.

Okay.

and if you need to get that Love Jones.

If you haven't seen Love Jones, first of all, and I'm going off

on a tangent, but my best friend, we've been friends forever.

We met in Johnson c Smith University as freshman, and that was back in, uh, 2002.

And Love Jones is one of my favorite movies.

Like so much so that I even went to see the play the musical with my sister.

but my best friend had never seen Love Jones.

She just recently seen it.

So I told her like, look, we got to renegotiate this

friendship . But anyway, I love her.

But let me get back to the point.

So your website, your website has to be optimized to do the heavy lifting.

What does that mean?

So I know people's like website optimization.

And they just throw it out there.

But website optimization, it includes a lot of things.

Specifically the number one thing.

If you don't take anything else from this podcast episode, I

want you to take this away.

Your website must be optimized for mobile.

, it has to be optimized for mobile.

If it isn't, you are going to lose out on your customers.

And the reason why you'll lose out is because over 50% of those people that

are on the web are using mobile devices.

So if you do have a website if you or your designer did not go back

and check, that is optimized for mobile and the changes are optimized

for mobile users, your website is gonna throw money out the window.

Well, Lindsay, how do I know if my website is optimized for mobile users?

There's some, some visual things you can see, so pull out your

cell phone, open up your website.

can you click the button?

on your site from your mobile phone, like spacing is a thing.

there's tools and I'll get into some of the tools in later episodes, but there are

tools that'll tell you like, Hey, that.

button that you have on the mobile version is too close to the other

button and you can't click it.

You need to fix that thing.

Okay?

Another way to know if your website is optimized.

popups.

Now, I'm not a big fan of popups.

I don't like popups.

It is what it is.

Some people love them, some people hate 'em.

It's not a right or wrong thing about popups.

It just depends on the person.

But when you have these things that pop up, A opt-in or whatever it is.

If you have these things that pop up, you need to ensure that the people on

the mobile browser can close that shit.

You know what I'm saying?

So what happens is I go on websites, and this is a, I'm gonna tell you,

this is a pat peeve as a pain in ass, is when you are trying to.

, give someone your money and then they get this popup that shows up.

You don't care nothing about the popup.

It is what it is.

You still gonna buy the same.

But what pisses me off is when the X.

To get that popup off my screen, I can't get it.

I can't get to it, and I have to close the whole browser.

close the tab cause I got 50 million tabs open on my cell

phone and on both my computer.

And you can't close it out.

You can't exit out.

You should not make it hard for people to give you their money.

And if you got this popup to just take it up their whole screen on their cell

phone cuz the apple pay on their cell phone, they just trying to put the thing

in the cart, double click, face, identify.

You let me get this thing and send it to my house, but if you got this

popup on my screen and I can't take it off and I can't get to what I

need to do, I'm gonna get frustrated.

And that's how most users are, especially when most people are

browsing from their cell phone.

So it has to be optimized specifically for mobile.

Another thing that you need to think about why your website needs to be

optimized, another way to optimize it.

, don't embed your videos in your website.

Don't have huge photos on your website.

And there's yes you can have videos on you.

I'm not saying don't have videos cause video is a number one way to convert.

Some people, people don't like to read, so they'll watch your video of you.

Look.

Now, don't give them the whole dissertation cause ain't nobody

trying to watch all that.

They trying to get to the good stuff and keep it moving.

But short form video.

on websites help because it keeps people on there longer, but when you

have them actually embedded inside your website, it has the potential

to slow down the loading time.

When you have these beautiful, large photos on your website, it

has the potential to slow them down.

What you should do is you should optimize the photos by compressing

them because it will, help speed up your load time and you should have

your videos on YouTube, on Vimeo.

Y'all always have to think about Vimeo.

I'm like, is it Venmo or is it Vimeo?

I always mix them two up.

So if you ever heard me say Venmo and we talk on video, just know, I mean Vimeo.

Just let me have it.

Okay.

Anyway.

optimize your visuals.

your photos, and speaking of photos, make sure that you add, tag words and

rename your photos to things that you want to show up when search, using

seo, using search engine optimization.

let's say You went to a photographer nine times outta 10.

, they're either going to leave it as photo dsc, 1,600, whatever.

That's not gonna help you with seo.

Or they may specifically have the name of the photo, the name of their

business, so it could be Lindsay Terrell Photography, photo 1 21.

So when it comes to the seo, . Anyone that's searching Lindsay Tramel

photography, your photos that's on your website will come up.

If people are looking for executive coaching, you know, you can, when

everybody does it, you search for something and you can look at, you

can look at the actual articles or the websites themselves,

or you can look at photos.

An easy way to help with your SEO is if you say like, black woman executive.

And that's the title of your photo.

So when people type in black woman executive coach, and they looking at

the photos cuz people are visual and I just said people don't like to read.

if your photo shows up and they click on your photos, it's automatically

gonna go to your website and they can see the information that you have and

the services that you have to offer.

So you must optimize your website so it can do the heavy lifting.

You should not be out here shaking that ass all the time on

Instagram and on LinkedIn and on Facebook and all the social media.

Platforms to get people to your website.

And even if you are at that point where you are out here getting it on all the

social media platforms, once they get to your site, once they're like, all right,

I'm about to go to this person's site.

It should not look a hot got on mess.

It should not.

They are expecting a certain level of.

experience when they're looking into your site to get the services that they need.

They not looking to be trying to get that stupid popup off of their screen.

They don't wanna do that.

They uhuh, they're not waiting 10 minutes for your large poster size photos to.

Ain't nobody got time for that.

You have a maximum of.

Less than 10 seconds.

Less than 10 seconds for people to decide if they want to stay or leave on your

website if you don't have spacing, right?

If you are not optimized for mobile, if you're not optimized

for speed, if your website is all over the place, people are going to

decide to leave on the first page.

. I'm telling you, I'm giving it to you down and dirty.

Nobody has time to be trying to figure it out.

I ain't trying to figure this out.

I'm trying to get on here to pay you so you can figure out

what I need you to figure out.

I'm not trying to figure out your website now.

You are wasting my time.

And now yet now we aggravated and we not giving you the money.

Also when talking about optimization, I don't wanna just dwell on

the mobile optimization alone.

Okay?

There's other, and I don't wanna dwell on just the speed, the load time.

Those are two ways to optimize, but you also have to optimize the user experience.

How are you getting those users from point A to point B?

Are you giving them too many options in the menu?

. That's one thing that I've seen a lot of people wanna put

every damn thing in the menu.

If you get people too many things to choose from, you

confuse 'em, you lose 'em.

And I'm telling you that right now.

So you want to make sure that your menu has no more than five things.

You don't necessarily need a fax page.

I get asked that all the time.

You don't need a fax page.

I honestly, I think a fax page is a waste of time because, Look at it.

Think about it this way.

You have a service, and let's say you provide group executive coaching and you

provide one-on-one executive coaching.

And with that executive coaching, people that want group coaching and

people that want one-on-one coaching, they're gonna have different questions.

If I'm doing one-on-one, I don't need to know what's the maximum size

of the group cuz it's one-on-one.

. And when it comes to the facts, if you look at any websites that

I've done recently, you know that this is, it's even on my website,

Let me do a plug versified.agency.

Anyway, if you go to my website, if you go to any of the websites that

I've done recently, you will see that the fax section is actually on

the pages that the fax belong to.

So the fax for those that need one-on-one group coaching, those frequently

asked questions are also on that page.

Instead of having a fax page alone, those, people that need

that group coaching, those facts are on that group coaching page.

. Why?

Because when users are on your website, I told you, you ain't got

that much time to keep them there.

First of all, they ain't trying to read all that, but second of all, if your fax

on a different page and your service is on a different page, They gotta be talking

back and forth to read the facts and read the services and see if the question

that they have is on the fax because it ain't on the page with the services.

That's too much.

Mm-hmm.

People don't want you doing too much.

They want your website to be optimized for a great user experience.

Remember, the website is there to make you money, but the website is also not us.

Set it and forget it.

if you have services on your site that you know you are not

offering, take that shit off.

Go in there today and take it off.

If you can't take it off, you better send me a dm, send me an.

I'll get you right, but you definitely want to make sure your site is

optimized so that you have the best user experience for the people that

do decide to come to your website so that they stay on your website so that

it helps your numbers, it helps you climb up the rankings and, Google.

And the last thing I'm gonna talk to you guys about when it comes to

website optimization, this is one of my favorites, I'm trying not to

talk your head off about it, is you have to read the data, the analytics.

I'm trying to tell you, if you don't have some kind of analytics, software

plugin on your WordPress site, you are wasting your time and wasting your

energy cuz you have to be able to.

Check out the KPIs.

What is working, what's not working, what do you need to do better?

This will help you make decisions when it comes to design, when

it comes to placement of things.

And if you like, this ain't even in my wheelhouse.

You, you speaking French to me.

That's okay.

That's why you get to hire somebody.

Once again, I'm gonna say 55 agency if you looking for someone . But, um, this

will help you with your website, optimiz.

website optimization as a whole is just the process of using tools and

different strategies to make sure that your website is constantly evolving.

If you do a set it and forget it website, it is not gonna evolve.

It's not gonna be optimized.

It.

The point of a website is to drive traffic and to also increase the conversion.

And if you increase conversion, that means you increasing that money.

All right?

So you want to make sure that you have in place such as analytics.

Analytics can go so deep.

It can, I could probably do a whole episode on analytics, y'all, but analytics

gives you so much information as to what people are doing, how long they're staying

on your site, where are they going.

I told you I'll get into tools later, but one of my, two of my

favorite is Google Analytics and the other one is, um, hot Jar.

if you don't know what neither one of those is.

I've talked about Hot Jar.

And Google Analytics and how I use it for my clients in depth in a couple of

posts on LinkedIn and both Facebook.

So check those out.

But those things are amazing tools.

But if you don't use them, if you don't check the numbers, cuz

the numbers don't lie, then your website's not gonna be optimized.

So let's, let's do a recap.

Lemme do a back brief one.

optimize it for mobile because 50% of your users are going

to be using a mobile device.

Two, make sure you have your, photos compressed so they're

not taking 50, 11 years to load.

If you have the option, which most WordPress does, so I'm gonna

speak specifically for WordPress.

Don't host your videos on your website.

Have them housed in Vimeo or in, YouTube.

and that way it doesn't slow down your site.

People don't like to wait for sites to load.

Also, make sure that you use, the analytics.

I guarantee you will help your website to stop throwing money out the window.

You have to optimize your site, and if you don't know how to do it,

find somebody else that can do it.

All right y'all.

I enjoyed episode one.

I will be back with episode two.

letting you know if you need to just throw the hell a damn side

away, throw that side away, sis.

It's a hot mess.

. Uh, if you please like comments describe, and I would love to hear

from you guys, and thank you for listening to more than a Brand.