Hello and welcome. It's episode 27 of the
Website Mastery Podcast series. We are
live on YouTube, we're live on LinkedIn
and for the first time we're live on
Instagram as well. So if you're there,
Let us know. And if you're listening to
the repeat on the podcast, thanks for
being here. As always, we love our
listeners and viewers. This is the
companion to the 90-day website mastery
program. We wanted to find a way to
continue to share more advice and
insights about making your website work
harder and for you to feel proud about
your website again. Pascal Fintoni is
with me, my co-host, and each episode we
go through 4 segments. We have the You
Ask, We Answer where we take a question
that's been submitted by the community or
that we've seen online. We've got the
website stories, which is segment number
2. We have the website engine room where
we share an app or a piece of kit that's
gonna make your life easier as a website
manager and content creator to start
feeling proud of your website again. And
of course, we always finish with the
website call to action. What piece of
content can't finish with a call to
action? That's 1 change or adjustment
that you should be making to your website
right now. Pascal, episode 27, what have
we got in store?
Well, you know, what's interesting about
listening to the presentation, you do say
we're doing this with prepare, we
research, we capture this in the show
notes for our audience, but we're doing
it for ourselves. I mean, you know, what
luck to have a profession that is also
your passion. I mean, your week, my week
is spent talking at events, doing
one-to-one coaching. My week has been
about branding a lot, lead generation,
AI, using AI to make good decisions, to
get support with your website decisions.
And right now I'm working on 3 website
projects for clients from brand new
startups to well established companies
who just seem to have everything about
their user experience.
But you make a good point because we are
in the creative industry. I'm currently
reading a book by Rory Sutherland, who's
really got me to stand back and think
about, don't just use logic. And that's a
very good point. We're in this creative
industry where we've got to have the
space to be able to think and brainstorm
and come up with ideas and more
importantly make mistakes. You know we
need to test and try and make those
mistakes because actually the faster you
make mistakes the quicker you can find
out what works and be ahead of the game.
So this space as you say is just as much
for us to be able to be that creative and
move away from the logic and, well, I
don't mean fully, but in terms of just
having that thinking space and yeah. We
should move
on to our first segment, but before we do
so, very, very quickly for our audience,
the way in which we structure those
episodes, it's almost the agenda of a
meeting you should be having with your
colleagues. So what you should do is by
all means is listen to Johnny and I take
away the information, but use what we are
sharing for your next get together with a
team or with your suppliers and so on,
saying I've got a question or I've got
those apps I want to experiment with in
the same kind of R&D department. So yeah,
there are a lot of value to be gained and
we do this in a very compact way. Half an
hour, It's more so unlike us because we
are long form content creators. But the
value you get from just the learning but
also the structure for your next team
meeting I think is very important.
Let's start with you ask, we answer.
Now this is a question from a coaching
session that I had about a week ago and
we were really wrestling with the client.
So here it is. It is obvious to me that
my customers are using my name when
searching for my business online.
Therefore, should I change the website
address and domain name to my first name
plus family name and add .co.uk.com or
shall I leave it as it is? This is
interesting, isn't it, Jonny?
Yeah, I mean, well, I personally have a
marketing agency, Fleek Marketing and the
website, the domain for that is
fleek.marketing. I also have my personal
brand, which is JonnyRoss.com. I think
some of it comes down to what people know
you as, what people know the business as,
and also where you see the future. So Do
you see the saleability of the business?
Do you see the wanting to perceive as a
big business? Or is this about personal
branding? I think there's huge benefits
to changing a domain name or using a
domain name that's got your name in it,
but there are downsides as well. So
you've got to sort of take everything
into account. And I guess what I was
insinuating is that I've cheated by
creating both.
But maybe that's what you need to do to
give you time actually to really reflect
and make the final decision. What I will
say, and certainly that's what I did all
those years ago, that will prevent you
from setting the business if that's part
of your strategy. If you have an exit
strategy that says, I'm going to build
the business, whether it's B2B, B2C or
something in between, no one's going to
be able to buy or there'd be a lesser
value and appeal if it is committed to a
personal brand. But if that's not part of
your plan whatsoever, and you've looked
at the data, you know that that's what's
happening, you do a lot of work, I'm
thinking, Johnny, about putting your
personal brand out there as a speaker, as
a guest blogger, maybe you're on
podcasts, maybe you're writing columns,
intra-publications, who won, then the
argument will be that people will
remember you and they'll make an
association with your services, but they
may not remember the product brand or the
service brand.
Yeah, and what a way to build authority
and to build that personal connection as
well. So if they do know your name and
they associate your business with your
name, you can still build that
professionalism and even in fact, even
more trust by having that personal
connection and the memorability of it. So
there's huge advantages, but yes, as
you've said rightly, a big disadvantage
is the exit strategy, but also perhaps
your name is, what's the word I'm looking
for? Common is, I guess is the word I was
looking for, that John Smith, for
example, perhaps you're not gonna stand
out by using your name and you also need
to do a bit of research to see what
appears in Google already for your brand
name, because you might have some stiff
competition in terms of actually getting
high in the ranks. So there's pros and
cons.
Sure, you reminded me, I'm gonna go back
10, 15 years ago, but that was a similar
exercise with a client. So we did just
punch in first name, surname in Google.
And what came back was a murderer in
Australia. Now in other way you get
based, but that story of the murder with
that name was over dominating the search
results. We could try it again today,
maybe things have changed. So I think,
yeah, do the research, do the prep. I'm
kind of tempted to go back to my clients.
You know, I'd rather think about it. I've
spoken to a guy called Johnny Ross, and
let's cheat and do both. Because what I
like about doing both, that means that
your personal brand website can then
become a signposting website to different
programs and campaigns and different
facets of what you do. And then you can
retain the product-based or the
service-based website at the same time
and give you just more months and years
to reflect before making that final
decision.
And I think 1 of the big points you've
just made there, which is do the research
because forget about personal brand,
forget about name. I've got 2 clients
that I can think of within the last 3
months where they've gone through a
branding exercise prior to engaging me
and at no point has anyone thought let's
Google this new brand name and it just
it's like it beggars belief it's like
you're you are senior leaders you've got
you I can see that you've got lots of
strategy and all sorts of stuff, But no 1
has thought of Googling it. And these 2
significant companies. And I was just,
and in both cases, we've found big
problems. But anyway, there we go.
Let's move on then because we can make
this but into that almost a mini rant
about the lack of research. But I get it,
it's so much more fun to get into action
mode than it is into reflection and
research mode, but you've got to do it.
That's part of your duties as leaders and
marketers, whether that's your full-time
or part-time occupation. Let's move on,
if you don't mind, with our next segment,
website stories. So for episode 27, we've
chosen a video that came from a great
company that I'm very fond of called
Orbit Media. Orbit Media, if you don't
know them, they do some incredible
research and data crunching on website
user experience. They also sometimes
partner up with other specialists. And I
have to tell you, Johnny, I've been a
student of their research papers because
it kind of helps you reflect and keeps
you right on the way in which a website
experience should be crafted. And they
have years, if not decades of... This
video was recorded or hosted, should I
say, by Andy Creston-Dinna, who is the
co-founder and chief marketing officer of
Orbit Media. And the title is that
follows, 13 things to remove from your
website immediately. So sounds very, very
dramatic. I'm very aware of that. And
what I was able to do then is watch the
video, I know you've done it as well.
I've got a list of 13 to go through and I
picked 3, because time is against us, and
1 where I'm not totally in agreement with
Andy, and 2 where I'm like, exactly, and
you're not actually share this advice. So
very, very quickly for viewers and
listeners, I'm gonna go through all 13.
So remove immediately vague homepage
headlines. And actually similarly,
generic navigation labels. Meaningless
subheadings is number 3. Number 4, long
homepage sliders. I mean, everybody's
trying to shove in their information. I
get it, the poor marketing team is being
bullied into having 8 to 10 sliders for
all the different departments, but a
visitor would not go beyond the first 2
or 3. Annul D, but still happens, avoid
stock photos of people, or should I say
nowadays AI photos of people. Number 456
now, social media icons, remove them from
the homepage. Remove the dates on blog
posts, interesting 1. Remove long
paragraphs, think about mobile phone
viewers. Press releases, stop copying and
pasting press releases as is, You've got
to rework them and add more media
content. Question mark on PDF files. Do
they help really the traffic, the
experience that you want? We move on to
testimonial pages. Long list of people
saying wonderful things about you but
unsupported by evidence. Email links,
contact forms are better, or are they?
And finally, the dead end thank you page
or the dead end call to action page where
you do something and then suddenly it
goes blank or there's like a tiny message
on the top left corner saying done or
submitted and you have no idea what's
happened. So please everyone watch the
video, it's great. Here Andy's
essentially a case that he makes for all
those 13 things to remove immediately.
But I wanna go back for the 3. I've got
social media icons, press releases, and
testing on all pages. I can't be sure
that I agree with what is being claimed
that social media icons on the homepage
are a distraction and you can lose
visitors. My position, they are there to
be glanced at, a form of reassurance, but
nobody that I can think of is gonna click
on the social media icons if the intent
is to visit the website and know about
the business. Press releases, I agree,
they are ugly as hell on website. People
are lazy. They copy and paste the press
release as it is written. It's written
for the press. The title is enigmatic.
The first paragraph is usually weird. And
it's just flat on the webpage. This is
not how we write on the web. So stop
doing it. And yes, I mean, my biggest
kind of pay-peave when testing with all
pages, it's like a long, long list of
quotes from people, but without any
reasons, or they're not grouped around
the product, or they're not grouped
around the product or they're not grouped
around the service and so on and and
often it just leaves you thinking where
are they real are they not real and so on
but yeah great great video great 13
things that you can use your next team
meeting or website meeting and these were
my top 3. But did you have any that maybe
you were not sure about or that you are
clearly in agreement with as well?
A great video with lots of really good
advice and some obvious things that over
the years these things do need removing
from your website. I like your point
about the testimonial pages. We love
testimonials. They're keyword rich,
user-generated content, build trust, give
you that professionalism, but let's
integrate them into the content instead
of having just a testimonials page. Yeah,
press releases, you read them and they're
like, yeah, what's this? Write the story
yourself. So whatever story you're hoping
that was going to be produced from the
press release, write it yourself, put it
on the website instead of just copying
and pasting the, the, the, press release
social media icons. I do agree with you,
Pascal. I guess the halfway house is
removing them from the header of the
website and just having them in the
footer of the website is a halfway house
because the danger is that you've got
them there, they click through, and of
course, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,
LinkedIn, they're all designed to keep
you there. They're all designed to get
you looking at those adverts. So the
danger, I guess, is that you do click
through and you start looking at the
stories of cats and dogs and you totally
forget the business that you were looking
at a minute ago. So I guess having them
in the footer of the website is a halfway
house to build that trust. It certainly
do not remove them completely. But in
short, great video, worth watching, and
more importantly, a brilliant step in
starting to feel proud of your website by
removing stuff that just does not work.
That does not work. It doesn't actually
help people understand what you do
sufficiently and particularly when we
talk about the vague homepage headlines
or the meaningless subheadings. Quick
question before we move on to our next
segment, this business or the homepage
sliders. So in a way I kind of align them
as a feature on the website, but Andy's
point about, well, don't put too many,
because someone's gonna spend the time
watching it, and don't put the most
important message at the end of your
slider. Start with that. But I've seen
good execution on the sliders. I've liked
the 1 where actually it's just a text
that is changing as opposed to the image,
but where do you stand with the home page
sliders?
I think the data and the analytics show
that the drop off is very quick. And so
the chance of people getting to slide 3
or 4 is, you know, you've lost I think
80% by slide 3. So whilst as a website
owner and staff within the business want
to spend time and have a look at the
website and they spend time looking, a
user spends less than a second and then
scrolls down. So I think slides is full
stop. There's got to be a real reason and
an obvious indication to the user that
you can slide through to look at certain
things. But if it's just there because
you want to get across your 10 messages
on the homepage, then it's the wrong
reason, I think.
And therefore, you are almost telling us
that they may have a role maybe on a
product specific page, maybe on the
contact. Think it through. And I think
sometime in web design, and that's what
happens, isn't it? People just settle on
the first execution. So, many, many years
ago, came up with a home page slider, and
they really copied as opposed to actually
put the slider where people will take
time. And maybe it's the FAQ section of
your website. Maybe it's the resource
section of the website, but somewhere
where they tend to give you a bit more
time than the home page, which is 0.
Something seconds, you know?
Yeah, Yeah. Let's move on to our third
segment, which is the website engine
room.
Now in each episode, Jonny and I select
an app, a software piece of kit that can
make life easier as a website manager.
And I just remind you that we have also
recently released the ebook, the 50
essential kits that you will need for
your website. And Johnny, remind us
before we wrap up this episode where
people can get their copy of this amazing
ebook. Now what is your selection for
this episode in particular?
Yeah in terms of the ebook I have just
put that onto the screen if people are
watching. For people that are listening,
it's 90daymarketingmastery.com forward
slash e hyphen book. Certainly it will be
in the show notes as well, but that's our
ultimate toolkit, 50 tools that we've
mentioned in the first 25 episodes. But
today's tool from me in episode 27, I'm
going to highlight CloudFlare. So
CloudFlare is designed to make everything
you connect to the internet secure,
private, fast and reliable. It's a great
way to be able to manage the performance
and security of your website to improve
the performance, to improve the security,
but also to what I'm seeing in the SEO
industry is some clever techniques on how
you can inject certain elements onto web
pages very quickly and easily, so
deploying SEO strategies and techniques
without having to edit the code, without
having to edit the website, and without
even having to speak to web developers
because as an SEO agency, we can control
some of those elements within a tool like
CloudFlare. So whilst it's producing
websites that are faster, more reliable,
more secure, it's also opened a door in
terms of actually there's quite a few
benefits in terms of being able to
optimize and change things very easily
without having to go through development
teams, et cetera. So Cloudflare is my
suggested app for this episode.
Listen, everyone, you may be thinking,
well, I'm not technical, that's not
really my area of expertise, therefore
I'll pass. But I think back to my
statement earlier, This is what you need
to take to the next meeting with your
developers or with your colleagues who
understand this element. You should at
least do the research that's part of
being that decision maker and being
control the website want to be proud of.
So My selection actually came out with
something that I needed. Now emojis are
not part of the written form of content.
They will appear on occasion on video as
well. And I will confess, Jonny, I've
always been a little reluctant. I'm a
late user of emojis because actually I
was thinking, could there be
misunderstood? Could you try and express
something by adding a visual icon but
actually it doesn't match the intent,
doesn't match the tone, or you're worried
that maybe it could be misunderstood by
different individuals, different cultures
and so on. So very recently, I needed to
write an article, I needed some very
specific emojis. And I have mentioned in
the past this platform called Yatex,
Y-A-Y-Tex, Yatex. That allows you to do a
number of things including emojis, but
the library is limited. And that's the
point I want to make as well, Johnny.
People are using AI, that's all fine.
Please make sure you edit. But within
that AI, there's also a very limited
library of emojis because it's always the
rocket ship and it's always the explosion
or it's always the flames so please be
careful. But this platform is called
Emojis Wiki, emojis.wiki And not only can
you find a much richer selection of
emojis, the 1 was looking for was based
actually on a film, but also they give
you the meanings behind those emojis. So
it gives you a moment of reflection to
go, I don't want to use that, but
actually could it be misunderstood or
could you simply distract and people say
well there's this disconnect between the
words and the emojis. So emojis.wiki
gives you a richer library to stand out
from the crowd and avoid repeating the
same kind of icons and emojis as
everybody else, but also you get a moment
of reflection because it will tell you
about the likely meanings and
understanding from your audience.
I, emojis, whilst you were talking then,
it reminded me that I do use emojis a
lot. I like using emojis. They stand out.
But that certainly can be an overuse. And
1 of the things that I realized was I was
doing a LinkedIn ad the other day and it
got, I can't think the right word,
refused is the wrong word but you
understand what I'm saying, but the text
that came back from LinkedIn wasn't clear
at all and it was just saying that there
was an issue with the content, it wasn't
very clear. And I ended up on a LinkedIn
chat with 1 of their support. And it
turns out that their algorithm only lets
a maximum of 4 emojis in a LinkedIn
advert. So irrelevant of anything else,
if there's more than 4, it will
automatically get disallowed or whatever
the word might be. So yeah, you can end
up overusing them, but I do love an
emoji. And I think the biggest point
there is make sure you know what an emoji
means when you're using 1 to make sure
that it does fit the context. So that's
this week's or this episode's website
engine room. Pascal was talking about
emojis.wiki and I was mentioning
cloudflare.com. Let's move on to our next
segment, which is the website call to
action.
Now, as our regular viewers and listeners
will know, this is the 1 change, the 1
adjustment that can really make a
difference to your website for you, your
audience, and make you feel proud of that
online experience. Johnny, what is your
call to action?
I'm talking about structured data, schema
markup implementation. So this is about
understanding that Google, Bing, all the
search engines out there are robots,
they're computers and they, you are
relying on a computer or a robot to
understand the data about your business,
about your organization, about the
content on your website. If you imagine
that Google is just actually just a
massive Excel sheet with rows and
columns, you've got the ability to be
able to put your data into the correct
row and the correct column to ensure that
Google uses it at the most opportune time
and the most optimized position. So if
you want Google to feature you more on
search results pages, it's about making
sure your data goes into the correct
column, the correct row within the
massive Excel sheets. That's the best way
to view it. And you can do this by
implementing something called schema,
which allows you to mark the data up to
say, by the way, Google, this is the
official service name, the official
product name, the official company
address, the official name of 1 of our
members of staff, this particular piece
of content is about this particular
subject, this is the sale price, so many
different things. There's thousands of
different schemas. Just as an example, if
you're a dentist, if you're an estate
agent, there's particular schemas just
for you to be able to expand on your
services and to say to Google, by the
way, this is a particular service in our
dentistry. This is the opening times.
There's a schema for every business and
it's about using that schema to put your
data into the correct row or column so
that Google and Bing start highlighting
you way more than you're possibly being
highlighted right now. So this week's
call to action for me is schema markup
implementation. What's yours, Pascal?
So mine is actually linked to yours in
some ways, and AI is the bridge and the
glue because your recommendation is very
important. We've spoken about it over the
years, but people can't delay because the
way in which search results are changing
and where you have different windows and
different ways of things and all that,
but also using AI, you have someone like
Google and Bing would suggest the next
question or the next set of results that
you should be investigating. They will
need the schema marker. But 1 thing that
is obvious to me is that the search
engine want to display your FAQs a lot
more than they have done in the past. So
my call to action is actually to review
and refresh your FAQ section. I would go
as far as saying plan to have different
sections, a different part of the
website. So instead of having 1 almighty
FAQ section, almost like in all the
testimonials, kind of grumble that we had
a moment to go, think about dividing all
those FAQs into different parts of the
website. And then the question is, have
you and your colleagues answered new
questions recently? Because this is
really important and it has to kind of be
carried over to your FAQ session. And
then is it time maybe to introduce more
visual storytelling? You know, typically
when you start with an FAQ to begin with
is very short, so you need to expand on
that or put a link to a longer
explanation of what that might be. But
also, the stats are very clear that
people who can stop for a moment and
watch a very simple kind of almost
cartoon type things with different
scenes, different stages and different
steps, as well as the words. It's going
to be very, very important. So for me,
that's my culture actually. Review and
refresh your FAQs. Make sure that the
newer questions have been added. Expand
on your kind of answers if need to link
into others, but think about visual
storytelling and all this will help with
your search results as well.
And of course, mark your FAQs up using
schema. Make it very clear to Google that
this is a particular question, this is
the answer and it's related to this
particular piece of content.
Smashing.
So what have we talked about in episode
27? Well, it's been about maximizing your
personal brand and website performance. I
think We've absolutely touched on user
experience as well. Thinking about,
should you have your name in your domain
name in your URL of your website? Could
it be the way to really maximize the
personal brand to create that trust, to
create the personal connection? But also
let's get rid of stuff that we've learned
doesn't work on websites that distract,
that doesn't give the right messaging,
that doesn't help users instantly
understand and be able to engage. So
we've definitely covered usability. And
then of course we've covered lots about
performance, whether that be optimizing
content, whether it be optimizing speed,
security, using tools like Cloudflare, or
even just how to use emojis and making
sure you refresh and review your FAQs and
marking them up with schema. So it's been
an episode all about personal branding,
website performance, and for me,
usability as well.
I like it. And everyone just do what we
mentioned when we started, use to this
episode as the agenda for your next
meeting. And literally, there's 13 things
to remove, you know, according to Andy
from Obit Media. That's the checklist for
your next meeting. And then ask the
question, do we need to talk to our, you
know, contacts about the Cloudflare? Do
we need to talk about schema market? The
answer is yes, and get that meeting in
the diary.
This has been episode 27 of our new
podcast series, and I'm afraid that is
all we've got for today. It's the audio
companion to the new 90-day website
mastery program. For more information,
please visit 90daymarketingmastery.com.
You'll be able to book your discovery
call with either myself or Pascal. We'll
be back with another episode, but for now
I'll leave you with a fun video and audio
montage whilst you go through your notes
and actions. And as Pascal says, this is
the agenda for your next meeting. Let's
start feeling proud of your website. We
look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks
so much for watching or listening. Take
care. Thanks for watching!