Transcripts
Hello, welcome to the Close The Loop podcast.
Kevin Dieny:Today, we're going to be talking about how to build better websites.
Kevin Dieny:How do small businesses build better websites?
Kevin Dieny:How do businesses who are local businesses?
Kevin Dieny:How are businesses that are of all types, get a better website built?
Kevin Dieny:And this is a topic that's probably in that sphere of like, oh man, you
Kevin Dieny:got to talk about it every six months, every couple of years again, because
Kevin Dieny:the internet is always changing.
Kevin Dieny:And while that I think that's true, to some extent, there is a lot of
Kevin Dieny:what happens in websites that is core.
Kevin Dieny:That probably doesn't change as often as we think it does.
Kevin Dieny:And to talk about that with us today, I a really special guest.
Kevin Dieny:I brought Ryan Lonac, on with us, and he is the president of RWL design,
Kevin Dieny:where he leads a focused team that works with businesses and nonprofits
Kevin Dieny:to build effective online presence's.
Kevin Dieny:Together, they have helped many companies grow and succeed for more than 15 years.
Kevin Dieny:So he comes with a lot of experience and over a long span of time.
Kevin Dieny:Ryan cares about providing value and setting their agency apart
Kevin Dieny:with dedication and integrity.
Kevin Dieny:He and his wife have a lovely two year old, the terrible twos, I love that
Kevin Dieny:age, and an incredible labradoodle that they love to bring and join
Kevin Dieny:in on their adventures; hiking and exploring the Pacific Northwest.
Kevin Dieny:So welcome, Ryan.
Ryan Lonac:Thank you, Kevin.
Ryan Lonac:It's great to be here.
Ryan Lonac:I really appreciate, being on the podcast with you.
Ryan Lonac:This is fun.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:This is a topic that I think some businesses are like, uh, I'll only
Kevin Dieny:worry about the website when it's time to rebuild or build my website.
Kevin Dieny:But there are some really important things in here
Ryan Lonac:Oh, for sure.
Ryan Lonac:No.
Ryan Lonac:And it's, it is true.
Ryan Lonac:It always seems like, the website can sometimes be some of the
Ryan Lonac:latter part of the priority list.
Ryan Lonac:And unfortunately, I think that can impact a lot of how that marketing push results.
Ryan Lonac:So this is a great, I'm glad we're talking about this today, because it
Ryan Lonac:is something that's very important and something that should be top of mind
Ryan Lonac:and in the planning phase for whether a business is starting out, or if they're
Ryan Lonac:planning a new product line or a new push or a new market expansion, for sure.
Kevin Dieny:Its not necessarily a once every few years type of thing,
Kevin Dieny:or however often a business thinking about refreshing their website.
Kevin Dieny:Because it does guide the marketing strategy, the marketing plan,
Kevin Dieny:how a business is thinking, how am I going to acquire business?
Kevin Dieny:How am I going to keep the business I have?
Kevin Dieny:How am I going to continue to grow my business?
Kevin Dieny:How that works and how that functions for each business is
Kevin Dieny:definitely something to consider.
Kevin Dieny:But the website is something that's come up before in other
Kevin Dieny:conversations we've had on here.
Kevin Dieny:And it's often been referred to as the central hub of how a
Kevin Dieny:lot of marketing will connect.
Ryan Lonac:And that's a good, that's actually a great point.
Ryan Lonac:If you're starting a new marketing campaign, it's incredibly important
Ryan Lonac:to test messaging, to think about what's going to be the funnel
Ryan Lonac:for these marketing campaigns.
Ryan Lonac:But a lot of times what we see a lot of customers, just don't put an
Ryan Lonac:emphasis on what is the experience going to be when a new customer engages
Ryan Lonac:with the ad and reaches the website.
Ryan Lonac:That's almost as important as planning the campaign itself is what's the goal.
Ryan Lonac:What's the outcome?
Ryan Lonac:What are the barriers people are going to face if a company is spending money
Ryan Lonac:on advertising because pay-per-click advertising, content marketing,
Ryan Lonac:they all have long-term costs.
Ryan Lonac:And if part of that cost budget doesn't include thinking about,
Ryan Lonac:what is the user going to do?
Ryan Lonac:When they get to the landing page or the website.
Ryan Lonac:Then a lot of that marketing dollars can be not utilized as well,
Ryan Lonac:because maybe they won't convert as to the needs of the company.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:I think every business is thinking every dollar I spend here is a dollar
Kevin Dieny:I could have spent somewhere else.
Kevin Dieny:It's always that trade off, like opportunity costs kind of an idea.
Kevin Dieny:And so here's a question for you, Ryan, this has cost wrapped around it.
Kevin Dieny:Sometimes a large cost for a smaller business, but it is so important.
Kevin Dieny:So why is a website so important for a small business?
Ryan Lonac:I think there's a lot of really good answers to that.
Ryan Lonac:But one of the most important ones is that the business has a platform
Ryan Lonac:that they manage and control.
Ryan Lonac:Social media is so important.
Ryan Lonac:Customer interactions are vital and a lot of that, begins and happens on
Ryan Lonac:Twitter, on Facebook, depending on your type of business, maybe LinkedIn
Ryan Lonac:or even Instagram or Snapchat or any of the, popular social networks.
Ryan Lonac:But those are all profiles owned by other companies and you're using
Ryan Lonac:those profiles under their terms.
Ryan Lonac:For the most part restrictions that are good, but some things
Ryan Lonac:sometimes don't make sense.
Ryan Lonac:Like for example, we had a customer that, uh, we were scratching our heads.
Ryan Lonac:They lost access to their advertising account, on a whim.
Ryan Lonac:And it took a couple of weeks to figure out that the platform had mistakenly
Ryan Lonac:blocked their account and they were like, we're sorry, we didn't mean to do that.
Ryan Lonac:But that was like two weeks where they couldn't advertise on the platform.
Ryan Lonac:So, if all your eggs are in other people's baskets, I think
Ryan Lonac:that can be a long-term issue.
Ryan Lonac:On the other side of the scale, if it's a local restaurant, being able to
Ryan Lonac:just have a dedicated place for your regular customers to look at the menu,
Ryan Lonac:you know, it's sometimes a simple thing as that is, I'd love to get ordered
Ryan Lonac:takeout, but how do I know what to order?
Ryan Lonac:And even if having a website just for that is hugely vital for your core customers.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, I think it something where.
Kevin Dieny:If the business has a website, there's something about credibility
Kevin Dieny:that, that tells the consumer.
Kevin Dieny:Whether it's a business that may not think that a website like a restaurant
Kevin Dieny:is probably a really good example.
Kevin Dieny:Dental practices, healthcare may think, look, they're trapped in their insurance.
Kevin Dieny:They're going to come wherever they have to go.
Kevin Dieny:What do we need a website for?
Kevin Dieny:But there's a lot of reasons to have the website.
Kevin Dieny:So do you want to highlight some of those reasons?
Ryan Lonac:Yeah.
Ryan Lonac:I mean, also too, you know, in today's age, everyone is researching a
Ryan Lonac:business before they go there, right?
Ryan Lonac:They're searching in Google, they're asking for, feedback from their friends.
Ryan Lonac:Like, hey, I need an XYZ.
Ryan Lonac:Who do you recommend?
Ryan Lonac:And chances are, they're going to look at the social profiles they're
Ryan Lonac:going to see, are they on Facebook?
Ryan Lonac:Are they on Twitter?
Ryan Lonac:How often are they posting?
Ryan Lonac:What's their website?
Ryan Lonac:Can they get the information they need from the website before
Ryan Lonac:they make decision to call?
Ryan Lonac:Cause that's one thing too.
Ryan Lonac:We have remember if you put on your consumer glasses and point of view
Ryan Lonac:as a business owner, it's easy to get tied up and just always think of
Ryan Lonac:your business from the business side.
Ryan Lonac:Once you stop and take a moment to think about whats your experiences when you're
Ryan Lonac:looking for the things you need at other businesses, it's just as a consumer
Ryan Lonac:is like, can you contact the business?
Ryan Lonac:Do they have helpful information?
Ryan Lonac:Does their website load, is it slow?
Ryan Lonac:Can you access it on your phone?
Ryan Lonac:There's all these little barriers that could prevent you from
Ryan Lonac:choosing to call a business.
Ryan Lonac:The website is just a great place because you can have your information there.
Ryan Lonac:You can highlight new services, especially if you're an e-commerce store.
Ryan Lonac:The last year, how many, there's been a lot of businesses that have had to,
Ryan Lonac:move forward with an online e-commerce solution that maybe with the roadmap was
Ryan Lonac:a little farther down the road and because everything that has happened, right?
Ryan Lonac:That's been pushed up, you know, showcasing the breadth of your categories
Ryan Lonac:or your services or products on the homepage is vital because then they
Ryan Lonac:see, oh, they offer this, this and this.
Ryan Lonac:They're not just selling this.
Ryan Lonac:And that's incredibly important for e-commerce.
Ryan Lonac:Not, not just to highlight the what's on sale or what's new, but what
Ryan Lonac:types of products are available?
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, that's a really big deal.
Kevin Dieny:Business only doing one specific thing may think well...
Kevin Dieny:People know what we do.
Kevin Dieny:But what about packages?
Kevin Dieny:What about other services you offer, websites that place that people
Kevin Dieny:can see more about you that makes this becoming more important too.
Kevin Dieny:Who is this business?
Kevin Dieny:What do they represent?
Kevin Dieny:What are their values?
Kevin Dieny:Sustainability, things come up, questions like that.
Kevin Dieny:How long have they been around for?
Kevin Dieny:The research that consumers are doing, even if you don't believe in it, and you
Kevin Dieny:think, oh, they're just going to call whether, they have a problem or whatever.
Kevin Dieny:That's becoming more and more important to consumers.
Kevin Dieny:So it's gotta become a little bit more important to businesses.
Kevin Dieny:You also mentioned a huge point there.
Kevin Dieny:The calamity that has happened to the world recently.
Kevin Dieny:It's forced businesses who were like, I'm only, an in-person kind of a business
Kevin Dieny:to then rethink well, maybe I should jump into e-commerce, e-business,
Kevin Dieny:e-marketing, maybe I should have more of an internet based presence.
Kevin Dieny:It does allow for scaling.
Kevin Dieny:Whereas a business may be localized, maybe thinking well I'm only
Kevin Dieny:serving the customers around here.
Kevin Dieny:Now it's opened doors for businesses in a huge way.
Kevin Dieny:Like you've mentioned.
Ryan Lonac:Yeah.
Ryan Lonac:And also, like you said, it humanizes a business if your blog is active.
Ryan Lonac:Not only are you always wanting to to write about and push why the services
Ryan Lonac:you offer are great, but you know, you can humanize, like, what's the story.
Ryan Lonac:Why, we have this new initiative to, support a local charity.
Ryan Lonac:There's a lot of local businesses here just north of Seattle.
Ryan Lonac:One comes to mind, our accountant that we use, it's really neat to know how they
Ryan Lonac:support the local arts and they make note of that and they support that on their
Ryan Lonac:website and they make that clear and that's one way to help them identify with
Ryan Lonac:their customers in a more personal way.
Ryan Lonac:So there's exactly there's ways to showcase the business, on the website
Ryan Lonac:in more than just highlighting products or services and that social
Ryan Lonac:proof of reviews and testimonials, that's huge and it's hugely important
Ryan Lonac:for business to have a place that can centralize and display those.
Ryan Lonac:There are a lot of services that make it easier to get testimonials,
Ryan Lonac:but again, it's great to have a website where you can place those.
Ryan Lonac:That's not on the whims of another service as well.
Ryan Lonac:And that's, I guess that's another side reason for having your own website.
Kevin Dieny:Those are some really good points and you've laid out a lot of
Kevin Dieny:things that some might consider, like are essential components of a website.
Kevin Dieny:So do you think you could break down, in terms of what a company
Kevin Dieny:should be thinking about, what are the components of a website that are
Kevin Dieny:essential for most businesses that they should have on their website?
Kevin Dieny:What are the basics, probably the things that we had alluded to earlier that are
Kevin Dieny:probably not going to change as much that are typical standard norms that
Kevin Dieny:people expect to find on a website.
Kevin Dieny:What things should a business be thinking have to be on the website
Kevin Dieny:to make sure that it is successful?
Ryan Lonac:I think in the long-term, a lot of those questions are going to
Ryan Lonac:have to involve some customer research.
Ryan Lonac:That seems to be really evident just in a lot of customer projects
Ryan Lonac:is that we can make guesses.
Ryan Lonac:We can make decisions from experience or from customer feedback or previous
Ryan Lonac:customer feedback, maybe business insider knowledge of the client, but
Ryan Lonac:when the rubber meets the road, the customer is visiting that website.
Ryan Lonac:They may have a completely different experience when they get there.
Ryan Lonac:And so we have to do the best job we can to do best practices,
Ryan Lonac:to build a good website.
Ryan Lonac:But we also need to get that feedback once it goes live.
Ryan Lonac:And that's, I think that's part of the conversation we've alluded to, is
Ryan Lonac:like, how often does the website get updated, what's that feedback cycle.
Ryan Lonac:Launching a website it's like, an introduction to a novel.
Ryan Lonac:You're setting the stage and then once it's live, you're going to have to revisit
Ryan Lonac:it fairly often just to make sure you're reducing those barriers that come up
Ryan Lonac:that prevent users from taking action.
Ryan Lonac:But as far as the website, it's great to have your value statement very clear.
Ryan Lonac:There's a few things like we try to avoid now.
Ryan Lonac:Like I love carousels.
Ryan Lonac:I always have, but users for the most part, just don't interact with them.
Ryan Lonac:There was a time period when carousels were the big thing
Ryan Lonac:on the top of the website.
Ryan Lonac:And what happens though is they might see the first slide.
Ryan Lonac:They may see the second slide and then they will like never see the other slides.
Ryan Lonac:So having that clear call to action basically that value statement and
Ryan Lonac:then letting the user know who you are, what's the value, what's the outcome
Ryan Lonac:of them choosing you and then some kind of call to action to let them know
Ryan Lonac:what action you're hoping they make.
Ryan Lonac:There's also great to have, social proof testimonials, that can be customers
Ryan Lonac:you've worked with, or if it's big, if you're a business that has worked
Ryan Lonac:with, common names, listing those businesses that you've worked with,
Ryan Lonac:that can be a huge credibility boost.
Ryan Lonac:People will scan websites, they won't read everything until they do,
Ryan Lonac:which is kind of a funny thought.
Ryan Lonac:The idea is that writing for the web is different than writing for
Ryan Lonac:a paper or a novel or an email.
Ryan Lonac:Right?
Ryan Lonac:So having clear defined headers that can guide a user down a page
Ryan Lonac:and then let them stop to read more information when it resonates.
Ryan Lonac:There's an idea of what's called a screen full.
Ryan Lonac:There's the hero of the page where the top above the fold, which is usually
Ryan Lonac:the portion of the screen of a website you see before you start scrolling down.
Ryan Lonac:We consider a screen full, like every section of the website, that's
Ryan Lonac:visible on one screen at a time.
Ryan Lonac:If the hero section is the top above the fold, as you start scrolling
Ryan Lonac:down, the next row of content would be the next screen full.
Ryan Lonac:Having a clear way to contact that business or to take an action on every
Ryan Lonac:screen full is helpful, especially in the days where, we're designing for
Ryan Lonac:companies that the experience, the websites on the desktop, it's on a
Ryan Lonac:laptop, it's on a tablet, it's on a phone.
Ryan Lonac:So having that website scale down so that when you're browsing on the phone
Ryan Lonac:versus browsing on a desktop, you're not just seeing walls of text on a phone
Ryan Lonac:and really great white space on desktop.
Ryan Lonac:You're seeing the website scale appropriately and every screen
Ryan Lonac:full, whether it's the height of the iPhone or the height of a
Ryan Lonac:desktop, there's ways to contact that business if that's the outcome.
Ryan Lonac:I think having an about page, about pages are huge because Kevin, like
Ryan Lonac:you were alluding to is, what's the longevity of the business?
Ryan Lonac:What's their mission?
Ryan Lonac:What's their goal?
Ryan Lonac:Who's on the team?
Ryan Lonac:Having a blog is great for long-term marketing.
Ryan Lonac:Organic search is fantastic in the longterm because that can help you
Ryan Lonac:drive traffic to your site, without relying on paying for traffic.
Ryan Lonac:It's a longer term goal, but having that content is there.
Ryan Lonac:And then the great thing too is if you have a blog, not only can you do, posts
Ryan Lonac:that talk about your services or promote your services or answer questions.
Ryan Lonac:They can also be like, FAQ's, it could be, a common question
Ryan Lonac:about a product or a service that keeps coming up again, and again.
Ryan Lonac:You could do an in-depth article to answer that and then that could be one resource.
Ryan Lonac:Your customer service team could refer people to.
Ryan Lonac:There's great ways to integrate that.
Ryan Lonac:Making it easy to contact a business, whether it's through a live
Ryan Lonac:chat, live chat can be effective.
Ryan Lonac:There's a lot of chat bot options there.
Ryan Lonac:You can link to articles.
Ryan Lonac:You can have a chat bot that helps find people, but if you do do a
Ryan Lonac:chat bot always make it clear.
Ryan Lonac:How to get in touch with a real person.
Ryan Lonac:I think that's a barrier that people forget about is they want these
Ryan Lonac:automated chatbots to feed people to FAQ's or to support things.
Ryan Lonac:But, always give an option to talk to somebody if it's possible.
Ryan Lonac:Contact pages, making it clear how to contact someone.
Ryan Lonac:The service pages are really important.
Ryan Lonac:You have to plan and think ahead, what's the problem the user's having.
Ryan Lonac:What's the solution your business is providing, and what's the
Ryan Lonac:outcome that, that person's going to have by choosing your business
Ryan Lonac:and making that clear on the page.
Ryan Lonac:And sometimes what we think is clear is not always what users think is clear.
Ryan Lonac:And that's why I'm so glad we're doing this podcast because there's
Ryan Lonac:this mindset that I think everyone has to get into is that when the
Ryan Lonac:website is done, the page is launched.
Ryan Lonac:That's just the beginning.
Ryan Lonac:And that can be hard to budget for, but if, if you stick with it and you
Ryan Lonac:watch what problems users are having and address those problems, then
Ryan Lonac:those pages will be more successful.
Ryan Lonac:The website will be more successful and the business will be more successful.
Ryan Lonac:Another plug there's a service that we love to use called Wynter.
Ryan Lonac:They do incredible copy and messaging testing, which is sort of a new thing.
Ryan Lonac:User testing has been around a long time.
Ryan Lonac:We like to do a five second test is fantastic, where you take a screenshot
Ryan Lonac:and you select the panel and then they get five seconds to look at it.
Ryan Lonac:And then you ask one question, like, what is this page?
Ryan Lonac:What product is selling?
Ryan Lonac:Where was the contact button?
Ryan Lonac:Things like that.
Ryan Lonac:And if they can't answer that in five seconds, then you
Ryan Lonac:know, there's a design problem.
Ryan Lonac:But you don't know unless you test it right.
Ryan Lonac:Same way with messaging with Wynter, you can do, content testing.
Ryan Lonac:And so once you've spent all that time writing the homepage or writing the
Ryan Lonac:about page or the service landing page.
Ryan Lonac:You can test with your own demographic panel or you can use
Ryan Lonac:their selected panel and they give really good feedback and they have
Ryan Lonac:a great set of default questions.
Ryan Lonac:They're great because then you can see, is the messaging clear?
Ryan Lonac:Does it resonate?
Ryan Lonac:Does it communicate what you're wanting to communicate?
Ryan Lonac:Because the problem we've seen a lot with customers over the years is that
Ryan Lonac:they'll just spend so much on advertising, but then never address the website.
Ryan Lonac:They're sending all these people to the website, but then once they get to
Ryan Lonac:the website, the messaging of the ads does not match the messaging of the
Ryan Lonac:webpage because maybe it's out of date.
Ryan Lonac:And then they don't know what to do and they bounce.
Ryan Lonac:And then they're like, well, we're spending money on advertising,
Ryan Lonac:but we're not getting customers.
Ryan Lonac:So that's, that's almost like you gotta close the loop, close the loop.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, exactly.
Kevin Dieny:So you'd laid out a lot of really, really awesome essentials
Kevin Dieny:there for building a website.
Kevin Dieny:And I want to touch on something that's been an undercurrent through this whole
Kevin Dieny:thing, which is, what is the business trying to use the website to achieve?
Kevin Dieny:You mentioned they're trying to, you know, there's FAQ's or maybe
Kevin Dieny:we're trying to educate people, is that what our websites for?
Kevin Dieny:You mentioned menus, right?
Kevin Dieny:We're trying to help people understand what it is we do.
Kevin Dieny:You mentioned chat, are we just trying to engage, are we trying to
Kevin Dieny:bridge a conversation with people?
Kevin Dieny:You also mentioned customers, are we just, at the end of the day selling?
Kevin Dieny:What are the purposes behind a website?
Kevin Dieny:And what is it a business's ultimately using a website, from the
Kevin Dieny:business perspective, to achieve?
Ryan Lonac:That's a really great point and it's easy to skip over.
Ryan Lonac:A homepage, for example, doesn't have to do everything for an organization.
Ryan Lonac:A service page, doesn't have to do everything.
Ryan Lonac:And I think that was part of the problem, like 10 years ago with the idea of
Ryan Lonac:those really fun, fun, fancy sliders.
Ryan Lonac:Everything was trying to be everything on the homepage.
Ryan Lonac:I think that's something the business has to decide, or maybe he gets
Ryan Lonac:help to decide of, what's the goal?
Ryan Lonac:What are they trying to work with?
Ryan Lonac:And that's the same, as I love that you bring this up.
Ryan Lonac:Cause it's the same on social media is the same on your Facebook page.
Ryan Lonac:It's the same with this podcast, what is the outcome?
Ryan Lonac:What is the purpose?
Ryan Lonac:And what are we trying to do?
Ryan Lonac:The size of the website kinda needs to basically be the size of
Ryan Lonac:the objectives of the business.
Ryan Lonac:And how does that get realized and how many pages does it
Ryan Lonac:take to answer those questions?
Ryan Lonac:Google has done a lot in search over the last 20 years, right?
Ryan Lonac:Like, think about where it started, where it is now.
Ryan Lonac:they're always pushing out updates.
Ryan Lonac:How Google indexes a business is always changing.
Ryan Lonac:And I, but I think the one constant thing that a business can do is make sure
Ryan Lonac:that there's good content on the page.
Ryan Lonac:That's written by them or written for them.
Ryan Lonac:That's not copied from somewhere else that answers the questions that
Ryan Lonac:communicates what they're trying to present to the users for their
Ryan Lonac:services and reduce that biggest thing is just like reducing those barriers.
Ryan Lonac:I ordered some takeout for dinner yesterday and it was
Ryan Lonac:kinda hard finding the menu.
Ryan Lonac:It's a place that I go and love, but we were like, well, let's try
Ryan Lonac:something like something new on the menu, but it was hard to find.
Ryan Lonac:So I think if you're a restaurant, the website's always at the
Ryan Lonac:bottom of the list for sure.
Ryan Lonac:Cause there's so many costs of launching the kitchen, getting
Ryan Lonac:employees, getting all the certificates and the local codes, regulations.
Ryan Lonac:The website's always kind of last thing, but if your purpose is a restaurant,
Ryan Lonac:then, making the menu really accessible, really easy to find, and also too...
Ryan Lonac:Think about the customer experience.
Ryan Lonac:Most of the time, if someone's looking up your menu, they're
Ryan Lonac:probably looking on their phone.
Ryan Lonac:So having a contact button for a click to call.
Ryan Lonac:I see a lot of restaurants, they don't have a button that can just trigger
Ryan Lonac:a phone call with their phone number.
Ryan Lonac:The phone number is just text on the page.
Ryan Lonac:Having that a clickable link, is huge.
Ryan Lonac:Just something like that.
Ryan Lonac:We haven't really talked about accessibility too.
Ryan Lonac:Having the website up to date modern, and accessible is huge because
Ryan Lonac:there's a large portion of everyone's customer base that have disabilities
Ryan Lonac:of some kind that influences how they use and interact with the web.
Ryan Lonac:There's many, many different types of issues that a person can be facing.
Ryan Lonac:I think a lot more people have some issue than people recognize.
Ryan Lonac:And there's a great service that we have to recommend to almost all
Ryan Lonac:our customers is called AccessiBe.
Ryan Lonac:Basically what it does it's a great JavaScript solution that goes on the
Ryan Lonac:page and then parses it and looks at traditional patterns of web design and
Ryan Lonac:sort of smooths out the wrinkles so that, someone visiting the site has
Ryan Lonac:a great tool set to adjust font size, colors, accessibility, descriptions, easy
Ryan Lonac:access to navigation, whether through keyboard or through screen readers, and
Ryan Lonac:they help your site be more accessible.
Ryan Lonac:It's always great to be compliant with those new standards, but the specs for
Ryan Lonac:those are really difficult and long.
Ryan Lonac:So a service like this is so great because it can help a lot
Ryan Lonac:of people use the website that may not have been able to before.
Ryan Lonac:So that's another thing to think about.
Ryan Lonac:And that's an ongoing cost.
Ryan Lonac:I feel like every year there's like some new costs, like there was SSL.
Ryan Lonac:That was a new cost before their websites didn't need to be secured.
Ryan Lonac:Well, every site needs to be secure now that's the one thing that
Ryan Lonac:everything we put on the list.
Ryan Lonac:But there's great solutions for that.
Ryan Lonac:Let's encrypt is a fantastic organization that's funded by almost every major tech
Ryan Lonac:company to provide free SSL certificates.
Ryan Lonac:The entry level barred entry on that has, is so much lower
Ryan Lonac:because you can use Let's Encrypt.
Ryan Lonac:Same with now Accessibee.
Ryan Lonac:It used to be really, really hard to make sure the website was accessible.
Ryan Lonac:It's a little easier now, that costs money, but that's okay because
Ryan Lonac:there's a larger benefit for it.
Ryan Lonac:I think that's an important thing that needs to get addressed too.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, there's a few things in there that I think
Kevin Dieny:are really, really important.
Kevin Dieny:I didn't even consider the accessibility component of this, which is a huge deal,
Kevin Dieny:especially something that has come off and come up for me, like during testing.
Kevin Dieny:But one of the things I like to think about is some pages
Kevin Dieny:definitely have a purpose.
Kevin Dieny:If my website is built for acquisition, then it's going to be super aligned
Kevin Dieny:on SEO, super aligned on ad keywords.
Kevin Dieny:I really want to acquire people.
Kevin Dieny:It's going to be ultra designed to bring people in.
Kevin Dieny:Now, if that's all it is, then that website is going to
Kevin Dieny:fall on the next two things.
Kevin Dieny:I got to get people to scroll, to click, to navigate.
Kevin Dieny:The behavioral bit will drop, will fall through.
Kevin Dieny:And then finally the conversion part, right?
Kevin Dieny:If all you're focused on is getting people to the site and there's
Kevin Dieny:no way for people to contact your business, that's a fall through too.
Kevin Dieny:Right.
Kevin Dieny:So you have to do the three and juggling the three is a little difficult, I
Kevin Dieny:think, because you're trying to bring the right people to your site, how
Kevin Dieny:interested are they at this time?
Kevin Dieny:What's their behavior?
Kevin Dieny:Are they clicking, consuming, reading, watching a video, scrolling, you know,
Kevin Dieny:are, are they just bouncing that sort of, even if it's the right people that
Kevin Dieny:sort of indicates maybe not right now.
Kevin Dieny:Once they've decided that they want to contact your business,
Kevin Dieny:is there an easy way for them to do that somewhere, somehow?
Kevin Dieny:And so, doing the three is difficult because you might make a lot of your
Kevin Dieny:website about educating people, but then not as much heavy on converting them.
Kevin Dieny:Some websites today are all about converting and it gets a little
Kevin Dieny:heavy there, go ahead Ryan.
Ryan Lonac:Yeah, I think that can makes another point too.
Ryan Lonac:If you're just always selling, then that is exhausting as a user, right?
Ryan Lonac:One other way to lighten that is building your newsletter list.
Ryan Lonac:That's a huge thing that can be centered around your website.
Ryan Lonac:You can have interstitial popups, that help someone or maybe they offer them a
Ryan Lonac:coupon as a way of exchanging that email.
Ryan Lonac:That email list is huge and still email today is still one
Ryan Lonac:of the highest ROI channels.
Ryan Lonac:It's worth every dollar to get someone into your email list,
Ryan Lonac:just so that you can message them.
Ryan Lonac:You can tell them about sales.
Ryan Lonac:You can tell them about new initiatives and you can humanize.
Ryan Lonac:Every email doesn't have to be a sales email.
Ryan Lonac:You get a lot of emails from large companies that are just always
Ryan Lonac:pushing the sales, and that can work.
Ryan Lonac:That's fine.
Ryan Lonac:But you know, if you can differentiate by offering that human side, like
Ryan Lonac:that's another way to bridge that gap and, and make a more holistic
Ryan Lonac:experience for the customers.
Kevin Dieny:I think some businesses also look at this too, like, okay,
Kevin Dieny:I put all these resources and all this time and effort and energy and
Kevin Dieny:got all the experts in and built a really amazing website five years ago.
Kevin Dieny:Maybe eight years ago.
Kevin Dieny:So you brought it up earlier, so how often should a business be re updating
Kevin Dieny:their website or, and then if you could also touch on how often should a
Kevin Dieny:business be trying to optimize or improve the current website that they have?
Kevin Dieny:Cause you said getting the website builds kind of the starting line.
Ryan Lonac:A lot of it depends on the size of the business and the scale.
Ryan Lonac:You and I met through CXL.
Ryan Lonac:They have amazing resources for learning how to do a lot of these things.
Ryan Lonac:Of testing and researching and understanding the behavior of users.
Ryan Lonac:A lot of talks or a lot of their articles referenced booking.com and they're always
Ryan Lonac:testing, like they're running dozens, dozens of tests, like simultaneously
Ryan Lonac:because they have enough traffic to do so.
Ryan Lonac:That testing mindset is, is we present our best idea.
Ryan Lonac:Our best guess of what we think is gonna be useful, but you have to set aside the
Ryan Lonac:ego and be humble and be like, okay, how does this actually work for our users?
Ryan Lonac:And they're just gathering it because they want to provide the
Ryan Lonac:best answers for their customers.
Ryan Lonac:They want them to find the best hotel, the best airlines for their customers.
Ryan Lonac:And I think that applies to all the businesses too.
Ryan Lonac:Testing is a regular thing.
Ryan Lonac:The great example of, of like when we did this optimized process five years ago,
Ryan Lonac:you know, just in the last five years, it was in huge legal changes in privacy.
Ryan Lonac:So if you're business did all that work for optimizing, you're probably
Ryan Lonac:using cookies and you've got to have a cookie consent and a cookie policy.
Ryan Lonac:Otherwise your ad accounts might get flagged because they don't
Ryan Lonac:have that or the privacy policy.
Ryan Lonac:But also too, you might have trouble down the road and a lot of that stuff
Ryan Lonac:is still being tested in courts.
Ryan Lonac:But you know, it's better to be on the compliance side,
Ryan Lonac:than the non-compliant side.
Ryan Lonac:Just from the standpoint of limiting liability, having that
Ryan Lonac:website updated regularly is good.
Ryan Lonac:Plus the other side is, with how Google algorithms change
Ryan Lonac:speed is a big indicator.
Ryan Lonac:What was fast five years ago is not fast now.
Ryan Lonac:And that's just because of how the technology changes.
Ryan Lonac:We went from HTTP one now we're HTTP two and there's HTTP three.
Ryan Lonac:And that protocol of basically how browsers connect to servers change.
Ryan Lonac:There's the big change of how it prioritizes loading files.
Ryan Lonac:Before the idea was okay, let's bundle everything into one, JavaScript file one
Ryan Lonac:CSS file and make it as small as possible.
Ryan Lonac:So there's only one connection.
Ryan Lonac:But now, now it's like, oh, we can get by with, many connections to the same domain.
Ryan Lonac:So let's split up the file so that they can download asynchronously altogether.
Ryan Lonac:Those technology shifts happen probably on a year and a half to two year cycle.
Ryan Lonac:This is a great example.
Ryan Lonac:Images are typically the largest bottleneck on a page loading.
Ryan Lonac:If the images aren't optimized, you could be adding multiple seconds of load time.
Ryan Lonac:Just in the last few years, there's many better ways to load images.
Ryan Lonac:The standard strategy used to be to lazy load the images if the image wasn't
Ryan Lonac:on the screen was that on the current screen full, it would get delayed
Ryan Lonac:to loading until maybe just before.
Ryan Lonac:And you had to use JavaScript to do that.
Ryan Lonac:Now with these wonderful evergreen browsers, Chrome Firefox, Edge,
Ryan Lonac:they can do that natively now.
Ryan Lonac:You probably don't need that old JavaScript file.
Ryan Lonac:And then that way you can prune stuff you don't need.
Ryan Lonac:And that will make the site faster too.
Ryan Lonac:Because you can do a lot of that stuff natively now.
Ryan Lonac:Technological changes in the hosting of websites that has changed that could
Ryan Lonac:make your site faster, which would make your site more profitable as well.
Ryan Lonac:I think a business needs to have an annual budget for regular testing, because
Ryan Lonac:think about this too, let's say a website launches in January and then a new product
Ryan Lonac:or a new marketing push starts in June.
Ryan Lonac:The messaging in January may not match the messaging needed
Ryan Lonac:for that campaign in June.
Ryan Lonac:So that's one reason why I like to try to always get feedback from users.
Ryan Lonac:Hotjar is a great service that websites can use to get feedback.
Ryan Lonac:You can do polls, you can do mouse tracking is really, really a neat feature.
Ryan Lonac:If you have a desktop presence, cause you can see if they're browsing and then their
Ryan Lonac:mouse gets really erratic, that means, oh, they're, they're probably frustrated.
Ryan Lonac:Which is fine.
Ryan Lonac:It's great to know these things because then you can fix it.
Ryan Lonac:If you know users are having a frustrating experience, then you
Ryan Lonac:can address that and then you can give them a better experience.
Ryan Lonac:Cause that's what we want to do.
Ryan Lonac:Right.
Ryan Lonac:We want to help the users make the best decision.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:That is absolutely true.
Kevin Dieny:That the better you serve your consumers, the better and happier and the easier
Kevin Dieny:they're going to find their way through the path that you want them to go through.
Kevin Dieny:Everything you've just said, brought up something partway through that.
Kevin Dieny:I was like, I got to remember to ask this.
Kevin Dieny:I just remembered it again right now.
Kevin Dieny:And that was okay.
Kevin Dieny:A business has decided they want to build or rebuild or something
Kevin Dieny:to get their website going.
Kevin Dieny:Right.
Kevin Dieny:There's what I would call on the shelf, like template types of sites.
Kevin Dieny:A lot of entrepreneurs are going to be like, look, I don't have any money.
Kevin Dieny:I'm just going to grab a Squarespace or Wix or a WordPress theme, and
Kevin Dieny:I'm going to throw it in there.
Kevin Dieny:I'm just stuck with what I have and move forward.
Kevin Dieny:But at some point, when they're ready when they're their businesses
Kevin Dieny:that small business and they're ready to pay attention to it,
Kevin Dieny:get it going, invest in it.
Kevin Dieny:What are some of the things that you would suggest they do in the next 90
Kevin Dieny:days of beginning this process, what are some really important things they should
Kevin Dieny:consider to build a better website?
Ryan Lonac:I think you have to do you're best trying to do customer interviews.
Ryan Lonac:Schedule a few, especially using this on like recurring customers.
Ryan Lonac:Try to figure out what troubles do they have?
Ryan Lonac:What was, what was their experience?
Ryan Lonac:What was the one thing that almost stopped them from buying
Ryan Lonac:from you or contacting you?
Ryan Lonac:And that's something that you can start asking even right now, before you do a
Ryan Lonac:redesign or an expansion of your website.
Ryan Lonac:I always try to think like A, how do they find you ask how they, how they found you.
Ryan Lonac:And, what was the one thing that almost stopped them from choosing you?
Ryan Lonac:Those two pieces alone can be really valuable.
Ryan Lonac:And if you just ask that and you get a steady flow over like a couple months,
Ryan Lonac:that's some really good actionable data.
Ryan Lonac:And that can start small.
Ryan Lonac:At launch make sure that there is a site map.
Ryan Lonac:Site map is submitted.
Ryan Lonac:Make sure that there is SSL.
Ryan Lonac:One thing that actually we've seen a lot of people forget to do is
Ryan Lonac:if you're using a contact form and that contact form is using a mailing
Ryan Lonac:service, a transactional mail service to send them the notification.
Ryan Lonac:To make sure that that transactional outgoing email has the correct DNS, so
Ryan Lonac:that it's authenticated to your domain.
Ryan Lonac:Are they authorized to send the email to a customer A on your behalf?
Ryan Lonac:And that's one little check thing.
Ryan Lonac:Analytics is always huge to make sure you have set up.
Ryan Lonac:If you're doing analytics, you want to make sure you're having a privacy policy,
Ryan Lonac:a cookie policy, cookie consents banner.
Ryan Lonac:Those are all things now, even if you're in the United States, not every state
Ryan Lonac:requires that, that consent for cookies.
Ryan Lonac:So ever since 2018, that's been a big thing.
Ryan Lonac:You want to make sure that's active.
Ryan Lonac:The only tricky thing though is to consider, even if you use a
Ryan Lonac:cookie compliant or GDPR compliant, analytics, you're still probably
Ryan Lonac:using cookies in some fashion.
Ryan Lonac:Like if you're embedding a video or you have social sharing buttons, so
Ryan Lonac:chances are, you're still probably going to need a cookie consent banner,
Ryan Lonac:even if you're just using analytics.
Ryan Lonac:One thing we try to always do too, is if you're launching, if you're doing
Ryan Lonac:a relaunch, try to, look at all the URLs that are in search and you can
Ryan Lonac:do that with search console, or you can even just do a Google search and
Ryan Lonac:do a site search and just find all the URLs that, Google has listed and
Ryan Lonac:are there redirects to the new pages.
Ryan Lonac:You want to limit 4 0 4 is as much as possible.
Ryan Lonac:404s would be like a, not found error page because that just takes
Ryan Lonac:away your gamut of space on Google.
Ryan Lonac:So like making sure that the links, if you do a URL structure change, make sure
Ryan Lonac:that those get redirected accordingly.
Ryan Lonac:So you don't lose those search listings.
Ryan Lonac:Making sure that, Google local, your profile set up with, your hours,
Ryan Lonac:your information, your contact.
Ryan Lonac:You can also use it like a mini social network.
Ryan Lonac:Like you can post, if you post an update on Facebook, you can
Ryan Lonac:also post that on your Google local listing, which is helpful.
Ryan Lonac:If you're in an area with a large Microsoft presence, then, Bing local
Ryan Lonac:pages is worth considering too.
Ryan Lonac:Moz local is really cool.
Ryan Lonac:Moz is a great platform for understanding, how your site is
Ryan Lonac:ranking and how to research and better position your site for ranking.
Ryan Lonac:But one of their, one of their services is a local feature.
Ryan Lonac:Just helps you keep your information up to date on various local citations or,
Ryan Lonac:or properties and they can use Google local and Bing as sort of the canonical
Ryan Lonac:listings, and then use that data to submit it to all the other search directories.
Ryan Lonac:That that's a helpful thing.
Ryan Lonac:That's pretty minimal cost.
Ryan Lonac:Making sure that your social profiles have the right links that they're
Ryan Lonac:interlinked to the website, all that.
Ryan Lonac:Making sure that the site is working, that, the hosting is squared away.
Ryan Lonac:You don't want to launch a big campaign or new or service and trigger that ad spend
Ryan Lonac:and realize there's like a JavaScript error that's preventing the contact form.
Ryan Lonac:Test that stuff, which can get forgotten for sure.
Ryan Lonac:I mean, we've done that even before.
Ryan Lonac:No matter what scale of business, think about like, like
Ryan Lonac:Kevin, you had a great point.
Ryan Lonac:What's the purpose of this page?
Ryan Lonac:What are we hoping the user to do?
Ryan Lonac:Are we helping the user understand and know what to do?
Ryan Lonac:And that can be as simple or that can be a complicated sale, right?
Ryan Lonac:That can be, range of difficulty of objective, but, it's something
Ryan Lonac:that you can take, pause and consider at any scale of business.
Kevin Dieny:Wow, so I would say if you were to draw three main
Kevin Dieny:bullet points from this episode, I would say the first one would be.
Kevin Dieny:My websites hugely important, no matter who and what I am.
Kevin Dieny:So what does that mean?
Kevin Dieny:That means pretty much most of your marketing is going to use a
Kevin Dieny:website, like a nervous system.
Kevin Dieny:It's going to be the hub of a lot of email, a lot of advertisements.
Kevin Dieny:A lot of your branding's coming from there.
Kevin Dieny:The designing of everything comes from there.
Kevin Dieny:You're going to learn a ton about your consumers on your website.
Kevin Dieny:There's so many tools to help you understand and get a better idea of them.
Kevin Dieny:It's really a critical place.
Kevin Dieny:The second thing you may look on it as the website has to be serving the business.
Kevin Dieny:It's built for consumers, but it's got to serve the business.
Kevin Dieny:And by that, I mean, the business has to know what's going on there.
Kevin Dieny:They have to have an idea of what tests are doing there, what the
Kevin Dieny:purpose of its pages are, what it's trying to get out of the website.
Kevin Dieny:Get consumers, get sales, get more interaction, educate people,
Kevin Dieny:and they have to have a good foundation of what that's doing.
Kevin Dieny:I don't think it's, a...
Kevin Dieny:have someone else build it for me, it's built and then I never look at it again.
Kevin Dieny:It's got to be something that is, is actually serving the business.
Kevin Dieny:Not necessarily getting in the way, eating up budget, just to eat a budget.
Kevin Dieny:There's gotta be a more profound purpose for it.
Kevin Dieny:And there, there are tons of them and you can get help figuring that out.
Kevin Dieny:And you can find people who know what they're talking about, who
Kevin Dieny:can help you, who can guide you.
Kevin Dieny:It's something that's so hard for businesses who are wearing a lot of hats
Kevin Dieny:to switch to okay, right now, I'm building this and over here, I'm doing marketing.
Kevin Dieny:And over here, I'm trying to have an equal balance of my life and my hours
Kevin Dieny:and trying to stay alive and healthy.
Kevin Dieny:I wouldn't say maybe the best word to call it is a mess, but that's
Kevin Dieny:sorta what it sometimes feels like.
Kevin Dieny:I think if you put some time into getting the website built, that's the first
Kevin Dieny:part, like Ryan said, the second part is, okay, now I've got the website.
Kevin Dieny:How do I make sure that all the guesses and assumptions we made, which
Kevin Dieny:is pretty much a lot, are working?
Kevin Dieny:Start with the most important thing.
Kevin Dieny:I would usually suggest start with the thing that's closest to the sale,
Kevin Dieny:because that's probably gonna mean dollars and cents and then work back.
Ryan Lonac:That's a really good point.
Ryan Lonac:That's a really good point.
Ryan Lonac:Yeah.
Ryan Lonac:Like start at the end of the funnel.
Ryan Lonac:When you start in your, in your optimizations versus the broad view.
Ryan Lonac:That's great point.
Kevin Dieny:I always start there and it's usually because well, okay, I can justify
Kevin Dieny:my tests because it's affecting dollars.
Kevin Dieny:The visitors are super critical, but it's not in the bandwidth of every
Kevin Dieny:business to be able to run a thousand tests and tests are so important.
Kevin Dieny:So it's like, I need, a thousand, 10,000 visitors, it's going to
Kevin Dieny:take me six months to get that.
Kevin Dieny:So if I'm going to spend six months testing, only one thing, that one
Kevin Dieny:thing has got to be important.
Kevin Dieny:That one thing has got to be useful.
Kevin Dieny:There is some technical stuff that has gone on in this.
Kevin Dieny:And that's looked at like, maybe I shouldn't be doing this, but it is
Kevin Dieny:something, a business owner can.
Kevin Dieny:They don't necessarily have to be the expert the rocket scientist here.
Kevin Dieny:There's proper terminology for this, but at the same time, it can be translated
Kevin Dieny:in a way that makes sense to you.
Kevin Dieny:If someone who can help explain that to you might be a good way to get started.
Kevin Dieny:You're not necessarily looking to walk away with a PhD in web design here.
Kevin Dieny:A lot of businesses can get by, by having that fundamental understanding
Kevin Dieny:of, okay, I'm just trying to accomplish this on this page.
Kevin Dieny:I don't need to necessarily know all about the CSS, the JavaScript, the HTML.
Kevin Dieny:It can be, you can look at it in a simple way.
Kevin Dieny:There are critical components to look at in a technical way and understand,
Kevin Dieny:okay, this is essentially what their function is and breaking it down.
Kevin Dieny:So it, it helps.
Kevin Dieny:I think business owners not be so scared.
Kevin Dieny:Let's say of all that's wrapped up in this.
Ryan Lonac:Yeah, that's a great, that's a really good point too.
Ryan Lonac:You shouldn't be afraid to make changes, right?
Ryan Lonac:You kind of know if it's not working, if you're not seeing results.
Ryan Lonac:So even if you don't have a lot of traffic, like don't focus
Ryan Lonac:on changing a button color, change on change something big.
Ryan Lonac:Yeah, like swap out the image on the hero and the text and
Ryan Lonac:see if that makes a change, do bigger changes at the same time.
Ryan Lonac:If there's not enough traffic to get really focused feedback.
Ryan Lonac:And try things and don't be afraid to try things.
Ryan Lonac:There's a lot of tools out there, like Git that can save a
Ryan Lonac:timeline of what the website was.
Ryan Lonac:So if you make a change, you can always roll it back.
Ryan Lonac:A lot of hosts too have versioning, so you can always roll back
Ryan Lonac:to a different version if that version needs to get changed.
Ryan Lonac:There's no reason not to try and not to try to make these changes and adjust.
Ryan Lonac:When you're making these changes, don't make changes for the sake of changes.
Ryan Lonac:It's easy to say, oh, our websites, five years old and it looks
Ryan Lonac:outdated, we've all seen it, right?
Ryan Lonac:There's examples of rebranding, right?
Ryan Lonac:A brand will just rebrand their business.
Ryan Lonac:And it falls flat because people are so attached to their old, the
Ryan Lonac:old brand icon or the brand logo or the logo type, letter type.
Ryan Lonac:And then they can't find the business when they're at the store.
Ryan Lonac:So same kind of thing with a website where, don't make changes for the sake
Ryan Lonac:of changes, make changes to help your customers, have a better experience.
Kevin Dieny:I totally recommend doing a little bit of research.
Kevin Dieny:This is one of those things that the website is so important to the business.
Kevin Dieny:I wouldn't slate it as a low priority, like when it comes
Kevin Dieny:time to actually doing it.
Kevin Dieny:I would do the research that was mentioned.
Kevin Dieny:I would make sure that we're getting this done right.
Kevin Dieny:And having something that's done right.
Kevin Dieny:It makes it a lot easier for them.
Kevin Dieny:If you're like, hey, every five years, I'm gonna do this for the next five
Kevin Dieny:years for it to make a big difference.
Kevin Dieny:Because if the website declines at 10% a year...
Kevin Dieny:After five years, you're looking at 50% less conversions than you had, if
Kevin Dieny:everything else held constant, you're looking at a loss of 50% in five years.
Kevin Dieny:So how important, how much it declines, how much it benefits your
Kevin Dieny:business, how big of a jump it has.
Kevin Dieny:It's all so critically important.
Kevin Dieny:So website is a very serious, part of the business to consider, besides it's
Kevin Dieny:another expense hah hah marketing has.
Ryan Lonac:Right.
Ryan Lonac:Well, you, but you bring up a really, really good point, right?
Ryan Lonac:You don't have to make huge gains in there.
Ryan Lonac:You bring it like a drop of 10% per year.
Ryan Lonac:If you just make a small increase per month over a long period of time,
Ryan Lonac:like that that's positive motion.
Ryan Lonac:So you don't have to see skyrocketing advances every month, every
Ryan Lonac:year, if you're making progress.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, we looked at it like compounded returns through
Kevin Dieny:experimentation, testing, and website optimization are huge.
Kevin Dieny:Especially when we are dealing with, average conversion rates
Kevin Dieny:of, you know, 2% to 12% or something is in that worldly range.
Kevin Dieny:So, yeah, I think we've really, I think we could really, there are
Kevin Dieny:entire podcasts dedicated websites.
Kevin Dieny:I know, but, uh, we've, we've glossed over this topic pretty well.
Kevin Dieny:I hope all our listeners got a lot out of this and that you have a
Kevin Dieny:good footing for building a website.
Kevin Dieny:So again, again, Ryan, thank you for coming on.
Ryan Lonac:You're welcome, Kevin.
