Uh, so how much

is that?

This is the podcast editors mastermind.

If you're joining us live welcome, we're doing it without the intro music this week, because usually that's Daniel and he's.

And Carrie and I, we don't know what we're doing with technology.

So there you go.

This week, we're going to be talking about podcast editor, websites.

Why do you need them?

What do you need?

What do people get wrong?

What are some things to think about?

And our plan is to draw from a guest, but also to maybe do a couple of live tear downs.

So if you're joining us live, definitely stick, stick around for that video.

If you're listening to it later, you might want to check out.

The live stream, just so you can get that video part.

I'm Brian Ensminger.

You can find me@toptieraudio.com and over here is

hi Eric.

You can find me@yayapodcasting.com.

Our guest today is Tara Kelly.

Tara Kelly is an expert brand strategist.

She's a web designer, a web developer.

She does video and music and all kinds of stuff like that.

She's worked with nonprofit organizations, thought leaders.

Authors people from a variety of different industries.

And she's got a real specific skill set because she works a lot on websites.

We're going to talk to her about that today, but with her, even when we're talking about websites,

it's really going to be all about the story.

So, Tara,

welcome.

I'm really happy to be here.

We're going to be talking about website design.

And I know for me, when I got ready to build my business website, it was pretty much just like, what

colors do I want and what domain names should I get?

I feel like maybe there's a little bit more that could go before that.

So when people are thinking about building a website for their podcast at any business, what

should they think about before they even do

anything?

That's a great question.

You know, having a solid strategy for your business and who you're talking to is key.

When you think of the last time you hired.

Or reached out to someone for a service.

Why did you do it either?

One of you can answer that.

Why did you do it?

Uh, boy, last person I reached out to, I probably actually knew, so that's not really fair.

I don't carry.

Yeah.

So

I really do go look at people's websites.

So the last person I reached out to, I think really what caused me to take action is that like it was right there.

Like I knew exactly what.

And they made it very easy to contact them.

So it was like no effort and very

clear.

So Carrie, you basically answered the question for me.

Thank you.

What you're describing is really good positioning is how would that mean?

That's exactly what that means.

So most likely they did a strategy beforehand.

It's, you know, this will be called a brand strategy business strategy and they sat down and they

really thought through, okay, who is my audience?

And they dive really deep.

Right.

They think about their pain points.

You know, as brand strategists, we often will sit there and we will map out audience personas day, you know, what do they do?

What are they interested in?

You know, what do they need most?

And just really getting deep into that psychology and really understanding.

Because that is the best way to craft your messaging.

And as you mentioned, when you visit a website, that messaging, you feel like they're speaking directly to you

and it's resonating and it makes you want to stay because you know exactly what they do, you know, who they're for.

And that is so important.

And unfortunately, It's really difficult to do that without having a strategy first, you know, it's like if

you have a plumbing issue, would you hire the residential plumber of 20 years of experience or the neighbor down

the street who does a little of everything for 20 bucks?

You know, who would you trust more?

Who would you put your faith in more, same thing as if you want to hire a web designer, do you want to hire a

web designer that just does and specializes in podcast editing sites or someone who does it for small business?

You know, there's different ways of speaking to someone, but people really connect when

they feel like you are talking to them.

As I think about that, the first thing that I hear is time that it takes time to do that.

And in my position, I work a full-time job and I have an editing business.

So while I don't want to devalue the work that goes into creating a comprehensive brand strategy, I'm wondering.

For somebody like me who is not super early stage sort of mid stage, but not full time.

How do I go about beginning to build out that brand strategy in a way that's effective and useful, but also makes good use

of the fact that I'm balancing multiple priorities right now.

Absolutely.

And what you're saying is so true for most people.

I know, and I completely get it.

My partner and I, we're a small business.

It's just the two of us.

And when you're starting out, it can feel like time.

To hire someone to help you with this.

It seems like a big elaborate strategy or build you a website.

You think, you know, why can't I do it myself?

Well, you can.

I mean, there's a wealth of information out there.

There's a wealth of resources out there, but at the same time, everyone's situation is unique and

it's hard to be objective about your business.

Even as brand strategists, we hire other brand strategists to help us with our brand strategy because it's so hot.

To be objective.

And it's also, you know, what is your risk tolerance?

What are the pros and cons?

So, absolutely.

If you're busy and you feel like, wow, I don't have time to do this.

There are resources online.

There are places for you to start, but really a good place to start is just thinking about,

okay, who do I really want to work with?

Who am I, what are my core values?

What kind of business do I want to run?

What does it look like?

What kind of hours do I want?

What's important.

You know, is it honesty?

Is it integrity?

Do I want a really good work-life balance?

If you think about what's important to you and you actually want to build your business around that, a lot of people say, okay,

let's pick a target audience and then fit ourselves into that.

But the problem is if it doesn't fit you and who you are and your brand, it can be really hard to keep.

You know, you can burn out, you can, you know, the passion just isn't there.

So it's really important to figure out why you're doing this.

Why are you running this business?

Why are you podcast editing?

You know, asking yourself those questions and writing it down and then thinking about, okay, who do I really want to work with?

If I could work with my ideal clients, who would they be?

And trying to make that as small of a group as possible, because it's like what they say.

If you're talking to everyone, you're talking to no one.

So really thinking about.

Who you can serve best.

Those are really good places to start before even building our website.

And there's a lot more to it than that, you know, going into positioning and thinking

about where you can fill gaps in the market.

And that's really where, you know, if you can't, for instance, afford a whole brand

strategy, there are brand can sultans out there.

They can guide you and they can talk to you.

You know, on more of an hourly basis and give you exercises to do and things that can help you out and

maybe fit better into your schedule and your budget.

Um, I'm really glad that you said the thing about figuring out who your ideal audience is,

because while I feel like I've done that, as I listened to the dialogue in my head, I feel like I've figured out who

I want to work with and then develop the persona for who I believe I need to be in order to be attractive to them.

Instead of the other direction.

And so for me, it's not that I feel like I'm lying or being false, but it never feels a hundred percent authentic as well.

And so, yeah, I'm going to stop there while I ponder that.

I think what Brian's asking is can you show up to meetings and cat ears if

you have your ideal client and I would argue, yes.

So how do you bridge that between who you are and your ideal

client?

I would say.

Does your ideal audience not like, and accept cat ears, is that who you want to be working with?

No.

So then that audience needs to be refined is what you're saying.

Yeah.

Just really refined too.

You know who your brand is, who you are, who you want to serve, because that's where you're going to work with best.

So

let's say.

You don't have a ton of time and you've already built, or you've already kind of, you know, at least got an iteration of that

ideal client and that, what kind of business do you want to have?

What's

next?

So once you decide, okay, who am I?

Who do I stand for?

Who am I not for?

Cause a big part of it is saying no.

And that's hard because you're S you're when niching down.

Because you're suddenly saying no to a lot of people.

And a lot of people are like, wait a second, how I'm going to make an income.

I need to appeal to more people.

So making peace with that and really understanding that it's really hard to niche down too far.

It honestly is.

There is a, there is so much more market than people think there is.

So really the next step once you've decided, okay, this is who I want to work with is doing research.

So figuring out, okay, where do they have.

What are their interests?

What are they looking for?

And you can find that, you know, you can do a lot of that online.

That's not something you have to, you don't have to run focus groups.

Don't worry.

You know, you don't have to, unless you have access to people, you don't have to call them up and interview.

It helps to talk to people directly.

But if you have people in your life that you can interview, that might fit your target audience, that you can talk

to just have a chat with them, you know, ask them.

If you were to run a podcast or you were to start a podcast, you know, what, what would you be looking for?

What would really help you out?

And then obviously you, you're both familiar with Facebook groups, right.

And what a wealth of information that can be, you know, just joining communities, joining groups, where your target

audience is, and just observing, like, you're not, you don't want to go in there and start selling your services and you

know, that kind of thing, but just be curious, ask questions.

Yeah.

How you can help them.

I find that to be really valuable information because you can get a better understanding of who they are

by just having those casual conversations with them.

Uh, Reddit is believe it or not a really good place for that, too.

Just going through the Fred's and reading through them.

It's great for search too.

Yes, it is.

I am

always reading solutions and Reddit threads.

Usually not for podcasting.

For a lot of things.

So that's a good point.

So once you have that down, is it time to build a website?

Like when do we get to the building?

The one

that's actually down the pipeline a little bit.

Okay.

Once you have that research, you really want to, you know, compile it, look at it, pull some insights from

it and that's when you can start thinking about, okay.

Looking at maybe some of your competitor websites looking at what they're doing, maybe some gaps that they're missing,

because now that you've done the research, you're hearing things that people want, and maybe they're not finding it.

You know, when you're interacting on those groups, they're talking about, I wish I could find a podcast editor who does,

could do this or who specialized in that or whatever it is.

You're getting those insights and you're figuring out, okay, there's some gaps here that maybe I can find.

And that's when really, when you have that information, you can start crafting your messaging.

And it's really good to craft your messaging before you build your website, because you want to build your website

around your content, around the story you're telling versus lay it out first and then try to cram the content in.

That's just better for user experience.

That's better all the way around, because it can really help you organize your.

In a way that users are going to find it engaging and that's going to make more sense.

Uh, part of me wants to jump ahead to the people that have done it backwards like me, but

I feel like we should probably kind of pause here for a little bit, because we've talked about crafting it

around the, the content or the story by the same token.

I think there are probably some reasonably common things that an editor would, or really any business

specifically an editor would need to make sure.

Are part of the, what they put up.

Am I right?

Yeah, definitely.

There are things specific to podcast editing that you would want to consider, but yes, also things that are

common with any small business or large business, you know?

So some important things to have on your site, for example, like targeted messaging, like we talked

about, is it speaking directly to your audience?

Is it reflecting your core values and who you are?

Can they go to your.

And really feel like you're as distinct bread, you are talking directly to them.

They go to it and they're like, yep, I'm in the right place.

And generally people give you 15 seconds, they visit your site and you have about 15 seconds to catch their

attention before they're like up, I'm going to move on.

You know, so having an intuitive user experience, having a polished design helps obviously professionally.

But that's going to look different.

If you're a high-end editor working for fortune 500 companies, your site should probably look a lot different than an

editor who serves sex therapists, just very different looks and feel obviously a clear list of your services.

You know, an easy way.

People can reach you for a quote.

You want to be super, make it super convenient, super easy.

People care about experience, right?

Building that credibility.

So having your past work on there, if you have.

Podcast you've worked on, or if you don't, you know, good way to maybe build your credibility is to have some resources, some

articles, things that show your expertise as you're building your portfolio and believe it or not having your story on there.

And about page, because I have found, and this always surprises me about pages are one of the most frequently.

Visited pages across the board.

Every industry I've worked in, every website, people go to that about page and they want to hear about you.

They want to read about you.

They want to connect to that person.

I'm a data geek.

So I find that really fascinating, but it's true.

You know, even just personal tidbits you could add about yourself or what makes you tick.

People can really connect to that from a more technical point of view.

People forget about the.

Sites have to be responsive.

Okay.

Wait a second.

What does responsive actually mean?

Because I'm a little bit confused by that

when you click on it.

Yeah.

That is a great question.

So responsive means that the site works and functions and looks really good on mobile phones, tablets,

varying desktop sizes, because you think about, we have small laptops, we have big desktop screens.

We have so many different devices nowadays, and you really want your site to.

Adapt right.

Be responsive to all of those different device sizes.

And sometimes people forget about mobile.

When in fact, when you're building a site, it's important to actually start with the mobile design.

First, they call it mobile design or mobile first design.

Um, you know, sometimes I'll go to sites in, you can't read it.

It's not designed for mobile.

You know, it just breaks down.

And that's really important because about, you can pretty much half of your users.

Our visitors are going to be on a phone, visiting your site versus a desktop for

mine.

It's actually way more than half.

Yeah,

yeah.

Yeah, because then when I'm using my phone to browse the web, because I don't want to be

on my computer all the time, I get so angry.

Like I will click away from a website where I can only read half the page.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, okay, cool.

So that is responsive and it's, it's way more important than I actually

thought it is very important.

You brought up some thing, a good point, Brian, you know, knowing how many people who visit your site are, are using a phone.

How did you get that information?

I'm also a data geek.

So

Google analytics, exactly.

Having Google analytics on your.

Is gold.

Ah, it's so confusing though.

It's confusing.

It's complicated.

That is so true.

But being able to figure out where people are going, where they're coming from, what pages they're going

to, what their journey is like, how long they're spending on it tells you so much information about

how well your website is actually performing.

And if you maybe need to change something.

Yeah, I would say the two things that I tend to look at are what kind of devices are they looking on?

And what's my bounce rate.

Okay.

So what is a bounce rate?

Really?

Your bounce rate is essentially if somebody goes to your site and let's say they land on

your homepage, do they go to your homepage and just leave the site or do they go elsewhere on the site?

Do they stick around and go to another page?

So if your bounce rate is say 70%.

Meaning 70% of people are like this.

Isn't what I need.

That's really high.

If it's 40 to 50%, that's more the range you want to be in.

That's considered a pretty good bounce rate.

You know, if it's above 50%, you might want to work on some things on your homepage because you're getting the wrong traffic.

Essentially people are getting to your site, but it's not relevant to them.

So that's what that tells you in a nutshell,

it just really surprised me when you said.

About page should have your story, because everything that I've heard recently is that your

about page should be about your ideal client.

And while it might tell your story, it's really about them.

I'm assuming you have some kind of data, like you're seeing something that makes that like what you shared.

True.

Can you share a little bit

more about that?

Sure.

I think it's important for your site overall to be about the clients.

So when they land on your home page, all of your messaging, all of your copies should be about that and their needs.

But when they go to about us, our team, that's a really good place to tell your story.

Once they've gone through, they've read your messaging, it connects, they want to connect with you.

They wanted to know who they're working with.

That's important to people.

So it's good to have that information on there because people do enjoy that and they read stuff and they go, you know what?

I have a lot in common with this person.

I like.

Well, they have two adorable cats.

They wear cat ears.

I completely relate to that.

I want to call this person up.

So having those little tidbits on there does help you become more of a real human being to

them versus just another podcast editor's site.

I was going to

ask this cause pricing.

Should you have your prices on your page unless you were going to ask something related to the about page?

I was going to ask the very same thing.

You just.

That is the question.

Uh, the controversial question that everyone asks, not just podcasts editors, but everyone in the service business.

Should we put our pricing on the site?

Obviously there's pros and cons to both methods.

If you put your prices on the site, it does help you cut down on leads that are out of your budget, right?

They call you up and you realize if you've ever had that really awkward conversation with a lead and you realize

you're in two totally different universes on budget.

And there's that moment where you tell them, this is my rate and you hear that audible gasp

or that, excuse me, what are you talking about?

You know, most people want to avoid that.

You know?

So sometimes it's really, you know, if you're one of those people that get those types of things, And you've had a lot

of calls where you are in completely different universes.

You know, you might want to put pricing on your site, but a lot of that can also be somewhat reduced with your positioning.

So if you're positioned really well toward your target audience, you should be attracting those people regardless.

Um, that said, you know, you, what you could consider, and this is what I landed on, and I know other people who've landed on.

It's just thinking about.

What's my minimum engagement level.

What is the minimum?

I would even edit a podcast for and saying, you know, engagement start at this.

So, or rates start at this, that way.

You have a little bit of flexibility.

You're not like setting yourself in stone because every client is going to have different needs, but

you're at least telling people, you know, at minimum, this is what your budget should be to work with.

Helen says she has the prices on our website because she wants to avoid surprises.

Those aren't fun now.

And I actually have starting at on my page.

I think.

I thought you were taking pricing off.

Are you putting it back on to

be quite Frank?

I have not done anything to my website and probably way too long.

Leads me to the question.

How often should I be like doing stuff with my website

frequently?

Okay.

I am not

doing

that.

So, especially with WordPress.

Making sure you're updating your plugins that you, you know, depending on where you're hosted either the host has good

security or you have good security plugins, because what happens is if you're not regularly updating it, it can break and it

can fall apart and people visit it and it'll just look all one.

Okay.

So you know where to find me this weekend,

I guess kind of building on that.

You mentioned updating plugins and of course I've seen a number of people, whereas I take over their show.

Like start getting plugged in, set up for them.

There are tons of things out of date, which has turned into a value added service for me, if they want to take advantage of it.

But beyond that, are there some things that you see people getting wrong on their website on a consistent

basis?

Um, absolutely.

Like not making responsive, not doing the mobile first design.

So considering that there's different devices, so they'll come up with like really great design that they really love.

Uh, but it doesn't work as well because when you think of like a mobile phone, you have a desktop, right.

So everything, you know, you have multiple columns and things like that, but when you

have a phone, everything has to stack, right?

So you're taking all of those columns and you're stacking them on top of each other.

And some designs don't really lend themselves well to that.

So that's one thing that people sometimes when they do it themselves, don't really think about,

they don't maybe know, you know, to check for.

And that's one of those important things.

Another important thing is, and this one, a lot of people don't realize and just a disclaimer, I am not a legal professional.

So consult your legal counsel on this topic specifically, but a lot of people, especially if they're new to

business or they're a small business, they don't realize that legal policies might apply to them.

Uh, privacy policy is a great example of that.

Some states require that disclaimers, like if you're giving advice or health advice, having that, or cookie policies,

you know, a legal professional is going to be able to tell you more specifically for your business, what you need.

There's also services that specialize in helping you develop those and helping you figure out, okay, what do I need for that?

But it is really important to figure that out and now.

What you need on your site and what you don't need.

Is there a special attorney

you need to go to like a what?

So what would their specialty beds it's like business or

so a business attorney.

So whoever you use maybe to done your contracts before, because essentially it's like.

Contracts right as writing legal documents to put on your site.

So if you worked with, uh, you know, a legal professional to do your agreement, like your podcast editing

agreement, that would be a good person to go to.

And there's also, you know, companies you can sign up with that are lower cost that can help with that too.

And I don't know if you want me to name drop.

I will just leave it at that for now.

Let's go some name drops just in case people need an idea.

Okay.

Okay.

Um, I would start maybe checking out term again.

I know it sounds really ominous, but it's actually a really helpful site, uh, term mageddon.com

taking notes on that one.

Not that I might need it.

Oh, interesting.

Anybody else that you would name drop

there?

Um, there, I'm trying to remember actually, there's a couple of other companies that do stuff similar.

I want to say unless legal terms maybe.

Uh, but if you Google it, you'll come up with some names.

I've my experiences have been really.

With ptarmigan and they, you know, the, uh, lawyer heads it up and they specialize in that

and they keep up with all the state laws for you.

But yeah, I would definitely just do a Google search and see what people are saying about different places and how

reputable they are, because that's an important thing is making sure that they aren't reputable and they can help you out.

Cool.

Thank you for that.

Wait, where are we?

We got talk, went on a legal tangent

and I got to remember, we were just talking about things that people

get.

Yes.

Okay.

So what else does, is there anything

else that people get wrong?

You know, not considering user experience, user flow.

So considering it from a visitor's perspective, you know, I think a lot of times when we want

to build our site, we're excited about it.

And we put things that we like or designs that we like, and we're not maybe necessarily thinking

about the audience and how they might experience it.

So one area of that might be accessibility.

It's something.

A lot of people aren't aware of, they don't think about it's a big topic.

I won't get too far down the rabbit hole into it.

Um, it's a tricky area because the ADA doesn't explicitly address websites, but there have been like civil lawsuits on companies

for not meeting, you know, what's considered the gold standard.

So that's WC, AIG guidelines, web content, accessibility guidelines, and basically what.

Is, this is a set of guidelines to help you make your site more accessible to people with disabilities, but not just

people with disabilities, but let's see, for instance, you're in an airport or you're at work or in a really noisy place.

And you want to watch a video and you can't hear the sound and there's no captions.

You can't experience the captions that way.

So having captions for an example is really good user experience.

Another example of it would be if a person with low vision or a person who was blind goes to visit a site.

A lot of times they'll use their phone and like an app called voiceover.

And essentially what it does is it reads the site to them.

So as they're going and reading your homepage, it's reading off the different menu options.

It's reading off your title and all of the texts, the different links to click on.

Well, sometimes, you know, people have pictures.

If you don't have things like all tags on all of your pictures, that's describing your picture.

A lot of people will have something like edit underscore one, edit underscore two dot JPEG.

That's what's read off to the person experiencing your site.

So it's better to have something like person wearing headphones or person in the studio.

It podcasting.

Let's them experience your site a little bit more and makes things a little bit clearer.

So there's a lot that goes into that.

And like I said, it's really complicated, but there are some basic things that you can do to look at your site.

Accessibility are either of you familiar with Google's lighthouse, you ever run that on website.

Okay.

I will run it on your websites when we do the tear down.

So you can see it, but that will give you an idea.

You know, that's Google's lighthouse.

It'll give you an idea of.

You know, some of your accessibility, if you have some accessibility issues, she says, if most people do cause

there's different levels, you know, there's a there's AA.

And like I said, it's, it can be a really complicated topic, but it's really not about, you know,

being afraid of lawsuits or whatever, you know, that shouldn't probably be the primary reason.

It's more about just wanting to create a good user experience over.

For as many people as possible.

Great.

Yeah.

Speaking of the tear down.

I was just thinking that we've got more questions we can come back to, but if you

don't mind, I'd love to just go to the tear down.

We might have to do a part two of this to get to all the other.

Yeah.

There's lots of questions.

I just want to throw this out there.

If like Helen or, you know, Michael, you're still with us.

Maybe, you know, take my place, tear down.

I'm assuming we're starting with Brian's.

We can start with either.

I don't care

the first Brian, so you're up first.

Okay.

All right.

Let's do it.

How brutal do you want me to be?

Very nice way.

The nice gentle.

Okay.

So, you know, my first impression going to your site, by the way, you all use Devi, by the way, is there a reason for that?

Did you communicate and go divvies?

Awesome.

Just curious.

Pretty much.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, that's how it was before

I'm using it for a while before I met any of them, but I don't know that I've made them do it.

So

what do you like about Divi?

Easy.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Those were one of those tools.

You know, that you can use that if you're not a code wizard, if you're not a web developer

that drag and drop builder does make it easy.

If you want to build your own site and there are several builders you can use.

So we've got tops here, audio professional podcasts, production, you're a professional.

Your podcast should be professional.

I think it's really great that, you know, I love the green.

I love the yellow.

You're telling people, okay, this is what I do.

So there's no question.

You produce podcasts, you do podcast production services and audio coaching.

That's clear.

The thing I would advise for you, Brian, is maybe think about digging a little deeper with your messaging.

You know, what really makes you unique beyond being a professional podcast product?

Agency, you know, who are you speaking to specifically?

You say down here, you talk about for professionals, small business non-profit organizations,

that's a wide variety of organizations.

Is there something that ties them together?

Are there traits that they have values that they have, you know, that you work with specifically,

there should be a shouldn't there.

Well, okay.

So who don't you want to work with?

Like.

People don't you want to work or podcasts?

Yeah.

So I would say definitely don't want to work with the churn and burn entrepreneur crowd, as much as I'd like

to work with the hobby casters, they can't afford it.

They can't afford me.

I think my sweet spot is probably those businesses in call it like the one to $5 million a year where

there's enough of a budget to cover production, but not so much that they would want to bring their own team.

In-house beyond.

Uh, it's kind of

muddy, so that's some specifics there.

So I would encourage you to dig a little deeper there and think about, okay, I have some parameters

around who these businesses are, how much they make.

Maybe it's doing a little research and just figuring out who do I want to serve most within that group and who are they in?

What are their needs and, and dealt into that a bit more.

So you're speaking directly to.

Because there's a lot of professional podcast studios, right?

So you want to differentiate yourself a little bit more and really speak to that audience in terms of the design.

I love that it's clean and simple and very easy to read.

I think that's great.

Don't get a good sense of necessarily your personality though.

You know, I don't get a good sense of who you are as a podcast from it doesn't really come through.

So I would think maybe.

Making it a little bit more dynamic, maybe representative of what makes you special and unique, you know, just bring it out a

little bit more, you know, bring that, those unique Brian traits out a little bit more with it, I think would do really well.

So I will show you what light house looks like.

And this is you can use on Chrome.

What you want to do is right.

Click on it and you get this little window right here.

You hit and split.

And it pops this up.

And when I was talking about responsiveness and, you know, testing that out and seeing what that looks like,

this is what your site looks like on a mobile device.

So you can select different things.

So we can do the iPhone se as an example.

So right here, there is a bit of an issue as you can see, your apple podcasts is falling down.

So you want to like within Devi, you can actually select the mobile phone.

And you can catch that.

Or you can use this Chrome because sometimes that's a little more accurate, so you can spot some of these issues.

And then when you go into Devi, correct the mobile version of that and adjust it.

So it doesn't do that.

The rest of it.

Yeah.

It looks, it looks pretty good.

Looks like, yeah, everything is displaying nicely, but yeah, you can, there's like the iPads, so you can check it out on a tablet.

So that's really helpful.

The other thing you can do is I know this is kind of hard to see, but you click on these little

arrows over here and you want to go to lighthouse.

And what it's going to do is it's going to generate a report performance, best practices, accessibility, and SEO.

So it's going to give you some scores and tell you where you're at and give you examples of

how you might be able to fix it or improve it.

So if I generate this report, It's your heart racing

brain?

No, not yet, but while it's doing its thing, what are your thoughts about the cookie?

Pop-ups I kind of hate them, but I also feel like they're kind of required,

you know, that is a tough topic because again, you know, these are coming from laws out of

Europe and, you know, there's different laws in different states and I think it's good to have a cookie policy.

And again, something to that would be really good to ask, you know, legal professional about, okay, do I have to have this?

What are the consequences of, I don't.

I think it's really good to ask those questions and make sure that you have what you need for your specific site.

So these are your scores here.

And what orange basically means is you probably guessed it.

Improvement needed.

You just missed the green.

90 is green.

So you're pretty close performance means.

Right.

So making sure your site is speed, optimized and fast.

In some ways you can do that is making sure all of your images are really optimized and as small as they can be.

Well, obviously you still preserving the quality here.

It'll tell you the diagnostics, I'll warn you.

It gets really technical.

And a lot of it probably is going to make a ton of sense.

Um, but it does tell you what is slowing your site down or what you're slowing your page.

Up here.

You have, again, your accessibility score best practices is your backend and how your site is built.

Like security issues, things like that.

Do you, does everyone know what SEO is?

So your search engine optimization, which looks to be fantastic.

You must be one yourself or hired a specialist to help you there.

No, no.

Well, you did a good job.

I've

kind of studied.

But not really.

I do use the Yoast plugin, so maybe I accidentally got that.

Right.

Yoast helps a lot of, you know, this is scratching the surface.

These don't go in depth, but it's a good way to kind of get gauge an idea of, you know, how your site, well, it's

optimized, what the accessibility on a basic level is looking like, you know, what improvements can be made.

And again, how Google might see your site too.

So.

You know, in terms of accessibility, this is a big one and an easy thing people can fix and do

to make their site more accessible is thinking about their background and foreground pillars.

So making sure that they have a high enough contrast ratio to meet the guidelines and there's fabulous site called web

aim.org, where you can actually run your colors through it.

It'll tell you if it meets guidelines or not.

So for instance, you have.

A light yellow font on a light blue, black background.

That's going to be really hard for people to read.

And so that's a really easy fix to make your site more accessible.

Cool.

Yeah.

So let me go ahead and close out the best

I was to summarize what I think I heard you say my primary issue is actually messaging and the secondary

stuff is just a couple of tweaks in terms of design and speed.

Yeah, I think.

Digging a little deeper with your audience.

So you're positioning yourself better and really figuring out who your ideal audience is.

I think a little strategy on your part would be really helpful to you.

That's going to inform your messaging.

That's going to inform your design a little bit more really thinking through, okay.

Who is top tier audio?

What do I believe in?

How do I behave?

What, you know, when I'm interacting with clients, what am I like?

How do I want to be.

Just answering those types of questions is really going to help that come together.

And you know, you're not a designer or a copywriter.

I would suggest hiring someone for that, if you can, because unfortunately I would love it if we all could be

experts in everything, but sometimes that's really hard.

And so sometimes hiring an expert to be able to come and do that for you can really help you get to that next

level too, but it really is dependent on your situation.

I'm

sure people are asking, like how much would that actually cost?

Cause I think a lot of times we think, oh, it's going to be super expensive.

And then it's not always just have these small changes or to have your copy look bad or, you know, help you with your positioning.

So what would that cost around about like

an average?

So it's one of those things where much like podcast editing to a certain extent you might get what you pay for.

Um, Honestly, it ranges, there's a wide range.

You can go on a place like 99 designs and, you know, for instance, get logo made or, you

know, graphics made or something like that.

If they're done well, they might be, they might not be, you can hire on a place, obviously like Upwork or something, and there's

a variety of different freelancers on there and experts on there.

You know, you really have to do your homework, you know, to assess them and vet them, you know, in terms of a brand strategy.

You know that for small businesses like solo preneurs that can run you, I would say at least, maybe think around

a couple thousand dollars to do something like that.

And that's something more stripped down and catered to a solopreneur, you know, brand consultants can charge

anywhere from, you know, a hundred, an hour to 500.

Yeah.

It really depends.

Copywriters.

You can find copywriters who charge hourly or do flat rates for really good copywriters that are experienced and have

done copy and messaging and are really well-versed in it.

Again, I would look at budgeting, you know, least I would say at least in the 75, an hour range or a flat rate.

And that's really going to depend on, you know, how much messaging needs to be done.

How much website copy there is, for example, thinking about it,

that was like, yeah.

How much did podcast editors cost, but you know, it just to get a rough idea, the different levels, I think might

be helpful because I think that it is a valuable service.

Like, I mean, we're getting our money's worth, right.

I mean, like more than our money's worth because we're not paying.

So if we're done with Brian's Helen King, actually, if you, if I can spring one on you, Helen King

would love to have you tear down her website.

And if you looked in the, can you see the private chat?

Because I put it, I put it in there.

You can click on the.

I'm just trying to run out

the

clock here so I don't have to

carry.

I know I'm just, I'm teasing.

I'm totally.

Okay.

I just I'm teasing cause I haven't done.

Uh, all right, Helen,

are you ready?

All right, so I want you, I, I didn't get to cheat and look at this one first, so I will share my thoughts as I experienced.

HK productions, podcast management and launch services.

Are you ready to amplify your voice through podcasting?

You know, I think that's really good.

Again, it's really clear what you do.

Obviously you offer a podcast production services.

Okay.

So you specialize in empowering entrepreneurs to create an impact through podcasting.

I think empowering entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs is a huge broad audience.

You know, pretty much anyone, you know, might consider themselves an entrepreneur.

So who specifically, what types of entrepreneurs do you work with?

Who are they in terms of, you know, in order to talking about accessibility?

So the white font on the light background here, people with low vision, for instance, or people who are more.

Might have trouble deciphering this.

They might have trouble reading this.

So that's something to consider there.

I love that you have earned really nice clean design, and again, it's, it's really easy to read and the colors are uplifting.

And like, I feel like I go onto the site and it feels very warm and inviting, and I think that's good.

But again, you know, there's a lot of content on here in town.

And so I'm wondering if, when users visit this homepage, if they're maybe gonna read all this information

and it sounds like there's an important story here.

So I get the entrepreneur journey and you talking about, you know, your story and it sounds

like it's a really important story to share.

And so I'm wondering if there's a way that you can feature it even more.

So people do pay attention to it and do.

So, what I might actually do is where you say what I can offer you, that's way down here.

People don't see that right away.

And that's not super clear.

So I might actually move that under here.

So between these two sections, so people, it makes it super easy for people to see like your main services right away.

And it's really clear because again, anything above the.

You know, people give you 15 seconds.

So you want to put your most important things, your most important call to actions above the fold.

And what I mean by above the fold is where you don't have to scroll.

So whatever appears above this, that you're seeing that's in the

leads, me to the question, like what called actions should absolutely be above the fold,

like on that.

Definitely how to contact.

What your main focuses are, right?

What your main services are, is really helpful to have any really important messaging where you are directly

targeting your audience and you're speaking directly to them.

So I think it's great to have, like, are you ready to amplify your voice through

podcasting, but maybe dig a little deeper with.

You know, everybody wants to amplify their voice through podcasting, get a little bit more specific than that.

So people feel like the people you want to work with directly are speaking directly to you,

or rather you're speaking directly to them.

Is there

anything else so like that about, so should the services be above that fold like listed kind of

clearly or as close to it as possible?

You know, if you can get them above the full great, but try to have them as early on.

On the page as possible because people tend to gravitate toward that right away.

Yeah.

People obviously will use the menu up here too, but the services really stand out and if you can succinctly

describe them and it really, I hate to use the word, like almost, you know, hook the reader, so to speak way

where they're like, okay, this is exactly what I need.

I'm going to click on this.

It's a really good one.

To, you know, get their attention quickly.

Because when you think about when you visit a website, do you spend the time to read all of the texts?

Or are you skimming to see what's relevant to you?

What pops up?

If you're looking for a specific service, are you skimming?

Okay.

Do they offer this?

So if you have a lot of content here like this, you might have some really great content and some great things to say, but for

people skimming and just trying to quickly see what you're doing, they have to go all the way down here to get more of an idea that

makes sense.

And Helen, I don't know if you have any questions, but if you do leave them in the chats, I'm curious too.

What Helen, she's just taking notes, maybe furiously.

Do you want to like, just look at it on, can you look at it unless you have anything else to add?

I'm going to let you, okay.

How far you're going to go with this?

Do you want me to do yours, Carrie or yeah, you can do mine.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, Helen says that makes sense.

When I look at the traffic and where.

Yeah.

And that's where Google analytics is so helpful.

And they even have like services.

You can buy that show you heat maps, where it'll actually record a video in a sense, or replicate how a user, you

know, went through your site and it'll show you all the hotspots that people click on the most like visually.

And so some people find that really helpful too.

Um, My first impression is I wasn't actually sure what you did.

I loved the colors.

I love the purple and the white it's like it's really environment what I did

either at the time.

And it fits the personality that, that I get to meet.

But I was confused as to if you are teaching people RX seven, or if you actually offer like podcast production services.

So here you see solutions, quality, critical ears, expert service.

I love the smiles and high fives keep that that's really like specific.

And it instantly gives you this vibe, but solutions, quality, critical ears.

I feel like what type of solutions are you offering?

Who are you speaking to direct?

Um, here you have a typo production.

That's an easy fix, luckily, but I, I kinda stopped.

I was like proud duction.

Was that on purpose?

Is that, that

could be cool.

Yeah, it could, I could totally make it a thing.

I mean, I was just pretending like it was on purpose,

but a, I like that.

It's like, well, I haven't seen that before, but yeah.

So one big thing that I would say, and this might be, cause you said, you mentioned you haven't had

a chance to update your site in a while, is it?

It's not secure?

Yeah.

It's supposed to be.

Okay, but it's not secure.

Yeah.

So that can cause you issues with Google.

It can cause you issues with visitors because they'll get the big security warning, you

know, enter at your own risk sort of screen.

Yeah.

And I couldn't even tell you, like, that part has confused me for a while, but all right.

So that that's, that'll be top of the lake.

Is that a top of the list thing?

Yeah, I would absolutely prioritize getting that sort of.

Right away.

So your site is secure because it can hurt your ranking on Google, especially with our new algorithms.

I'm wondering if your site is sending me emails from Russian bots and my

fee, although my internet is secure, I could tell you that, but I don't know about my

website.

Yeah, definitely update your plugins for sure.

Make sure your theme is updated.

Um, the other thing I'd mentioned is it looks like you have the text justified here.

I would actually justify it because it can cause some funky spacing between your words, just from an aesthetic perspective.

And again, considering accessibility and maybe thinking about, you know, changing this would darker color the background.

So you can see the white text and you're able to read what you have here a little better.

I'm not, I'm not real happy with that.

I like pie.

But, um, that's what it is, is a picture of pie.

Oh, nice.

And you've got some great testimonials on here.

Those are always a good thing to add.

You know, if you have those and you can put those on your home page and what our clients are saying, it helps,

you know, people tend to skim them, but it still helps.

So have I answered everything I can answer?

I know we're getting close to time.

Yeah, I think it's

been great.

That, yeah, that is absolutely fabulous.

I feel like we could go on, I would love to have you back in a few months, if you were available, we can do more of this because

I would like to answer the rest of the questions that we have.

And then I would like to redo my website.

Um, And just to see how it works out and hopefully other people would love to do that.

Like, I would love to make this a regular thing.

You know what I mean?

Because a website is so critical that presence is so critical.

It's it's, I mean, I have gotten not in a while, but I have gotten customers from my website, obviously.

Now I knew why, because nobody knows what I do.

Um, so I would love to have you back and maybe think about these websites.

Issues and things and problems.

Cause it's, you know, we're not website experts and

yeah.

And that's the beauty of it.

Like I'm not a I'm on a podcast editing it.

So I'm admire what you do, what my partner does, you know, that's, that's hard work.

That's developing a good ear.

That's tough.

Yeah.

Developing a good website.

It's tough too.

So it

can be, are to be beasts and all the things that can go wrong with them and the technical issues.

And as you've both discovered, the upkeep can be a lot.

The maintenance can be a lot.

So how often do you update your own website?

If you have WordPress, I have WordPress there.

You can enable plugin, automatic plugin updates.

They, you know, recently I would say within the last couple of years have started allowing you to do that.

I find that to be helpful because it updates it for me.

Yay.

The theme you have, like divvy, for instance, you need to update yourself manually.

It doesn't have auto updates for that.

The only other thing with plugin updates is especially if it's an old plugin or it's not a vetted plugging.

Really watch what plugins you install, make sure they're reputable, make sure that they're compatible with your

current version of WordPress because every now and then you can install something or update something and you

get the white screen of death and that's not too fun.

Uh, sometimes they can take your site out.

If you have a good host, you might be able to talk to your host and they might be able to help you out.

Or you hire, you know, you can talk to a web developer and they can get that fixed and sorted out for you.

If you have a website manager or something like that.

So you're at Tansy astor.com or Tansy Astor, audio.com

podcast, right?

Yeah.

If somebody has been watching this and they go, Hey, I would like to have terror helped me with my website.

Like, who's your ideal client?

Who's the right person to

contact you.

I specialize in working for disruptors who love, who want to embrace change.

You know, they want to do things differently than maybe.

Been traditionally done.

Maybe they might be a little afraid of change.

They wear cat ears, they wear cat ears.

You know, they're a little bit rebel.

They want to better their community.

I work with a lot of purpose driven organizations and purpose-driven thought leaders who, you know, want to

change the world, but they're not arrogant enough to think they can actually change the world all by themselves.

But they know that doing small things matters and they're not afraid to take.

Wow.

That's that's well said.

Um, it takes a minute to digest that before we sign off, I do just want to kind of run around and well,

before we do that, Carrie, if somebody else is thinking, Hey, I'd like to be a guest on the show, or I have

something that I'd like for them to cover, how would they

do.

You can always email.

If you want, there's something you want to cover.

You can always email us, drop a message on the Facebook page, but you can email us it totally bombing this.

Um, yeah.

At podcast editors mastermind.

And if you would like to be a guest.

You can go to podcast editors, mastermind slash be a guest, fill out the little form it'll be kicked off

into Daniel's email and you will not get to his family.

And we will be in touch.

Did I get that right?

More

or less as right as I ever did.

So we did mention Daniel Daniel Abendroth was not able to be with us tonight, but if you want

to connect with him, he's at Roth media.audio.

I am Brian.

It's being here.

You can find me@toptieraudio.com.

Over here is

very Caulfield.

Eric, you can find me@yayapodcasting.com or on Instagram at Carrie

Eric and our guests

tonight.

Tara Kelly of Tansiast or creative, you can find me@tansiastor.com.

Thank you so much for having me.

Oh, thank you.

And for everybody that joined us live.

Thanks for being here.

We love having those questions and.

And knowing for sure that what we're giving you is what you need because you asked for it.

So thanks for joining us.

Yeah.

And if

you want us to do more of the like website stuff, please let us know and send us your website link.

So when we do schedule the next one with Tara, because I'm really going to do this, that you are

in the queue, so I'm going to end the broadcast now.

Uh, how much is