WDD LIVE 038: Detailed Web Design Critique + How-To / Q&A / AMA

 

0:00:00 Hello, hello, hello.

What is up my friends? WDD Live is back.

It is another Wednesday. It is 11 a.

m. which means we are about to dive into some in-depth website critiques.

We are going to be doing some Q&A. We’re going to be taking a look at a few little updates here and there.

Oh, we got some good, we got a good viewership already coming in hot out of the gate where is my I need hold on here we go options where are we at window I need chat I need chat where’s chat here we go all right here we go Sylvia welcome Alex well Alex says he waited three hours last week just kidding yeah we did not have one last week we were not scheduled. Got a lot, a lot, a lot of stuff going on.

I’m actually still extremely busy this week, but my goal is to never have to miss more than one of these in a row. So we’re doing it, and I’m almost certainly gonna miss next week because I’m gonna be speaking at a conference next week in Orlando.

And so I will not have the logistics or probably the time to be on next Wednesday. So it’s got to happen this week.

It has to happen this week. Okay, Suzanne is here.

Andre is here. Sebastian’s here.

Tobias is here. Daniel, a lot of familiar faces.

Kevin, welcome, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

Don’t put any questions quite yet. I saw one or two.

Well, this one’s an easy one from Charlie here. Are these meetings every other week instead of every week?

No, it is every week. But you know, this is a treacherous time of year, right?

We’ve got, there’s just a lot of stuff going on. There’s holidays that we’re going to have to, you know, bob and weave around.

So we’ll just see. But yes, it is a weekly thing.

You can, you can, for the most part, plan on it happening every single week unless we otherwise put a notice out. Ruben says, what’s on the agenda for today?

Really good question. So agenda for today is a website critique.

I think we have a good one lined up for us today. We’re going to take a look at two new inner circle trainings.

And these inner circle trainings, we’re just going to kind of make sure everybody knows what’s available, what’s new to them at the current time. Pretty much because these two are trainings that if you follow them and actually implement them in your agency, I mean, they can easily, easily generate tens of thousands of dollars in additional revenue that you otherwise would not have collected.

And so they’re just very, very, like they’re mission critical trainings. And so I just want people to know that they exist and what they mean and why they’re important and so we’re going to take a look at those two today and then we’re going to do a bunch of Q&A stuff it’ll be you know if you want live how-to’s like how do I do this in bricks how do I do this XYZ and frames and automatic CSS whatever it happens to be we can do some of that we can do business Q&A, pricing, sales, all that good stuff, whatever you guys want to do, SEO, whatever you want to dive into, we’ll be able to dive into.

All right, Bricks Components, I did see I did see the sneak peek of Bricks Components. It’s looking pretty pretty dope.

Carlos says, What headphones are you wearing? And are they good?

I don’t know. Let’s see.

What are these? What are these right left?

They have no oh, they’re Rode. They’re Rode headphones.

I’d have to look in my Amazon account and see which exactly which ones they are. I do really like them a lot.

They’re very very very comfortable. They’re not, I wouldn’t say they’re like, you know, crazy top-of-the-line headphones or anything like that.

Let’s see. Okay, I think we’re good to go.

What we’re gonna do is dive straight into the first critique. If you’re new here, we do in-depth web design critiques.

So we look at everything that makes a website successful, the UI, the UX, the copy, the general imagery, content, the SEO, the site architecture. We look at underneath the hood.

That’s why it’s called web design for Dommies, right? We look at the DOM, we look at code quality, accessibility, we look at everything.

We look at as much as we possibly can. Now, here’s what I will say.

Most people who have been here before understand the pattern, right? We look at the most important, highest level, most critical stuff first.

And if the website doesn’t pass on those things, there’s really no reason to start to look at all the other detailed stuff. If you’re working with a client on, hey, how do we improve our current website kind of thing, that’s what you want to do as well.

You want to hit the most important things that are going to have the highest impact. Now if a website passes on the highest impact things, then we get the opportunity to go into much more detail and look for other areas that we can improve on.

So that’s how we do things here. If a website needs a lot of work, we don’t really get too in-depth into certain areas because we have to focus on the big, we got to fry the big fish, all right?

But if we get past the big fish, then we get into other pretty interesting areas. All right, let’s see.

Yeah, don’t put questions in yet. I see a couple coming in.

Number one, it has to have a question in all caps or a Q or something like that to denote that it’s a question. And number two, wait until I say, let’s ask questions now, because I’m not going to go, you know, a mile back in the chat to try to find questions.

All right, let’s go ahead and screen share. This is our first, well, it’s our only, it’s our first and only website that we’ll be doing today.

Hit the like before we get started. That’ll, you know, maybe that’ll help the algorithm or whatnot, get some other people over here watching.

Oh, I will say somebody said, you know, the other day, they were like, you know, I much prefer, you know, traditional training videos over, you know, watching you review and critique websites. The thing is, is like, if you don’t know what makes a website successful, and guys, I mean, there’s no shortage of websites that need a tremendous amount of work, okay?

And just are not nailing the majorly important aspects of a website. We see that there’s just a laundry list of those kinds of sites out there, right?

And so to say like, well, I only want to know, I only want you to teach me how to build them. Well, if you don’t know what you’re building or why you’re building it or what needs to be built, like what makes it successful versus unsuccessful, then all the development training in the world does you absolutely nothing.

You have to pair that with the knowledge and the experience of what makes a website successful when visitors arrive to it. And how do you get visitors to arrive to it?

If you don’t know the answer to those things, doesn’t really matter how good you are at building. Right, so I feel like this is probably the most important thing.

And then you take what you learn here on WDD Live, and you implement that in your entire process of building websites. So, tremendously important.

Like don’t be like, oh, well, you know, this area is of most interest to me, therefore I feel like it’s the most important part. No, no, no, no.

If you don’t know what you don’t know, you need to just follow along, right? We’re doing this for a reason.

It’s very, very important why we do WDD Live. All right, this is Pineapple Hotel.

The first thing that we do is a no-scroll test, which means I’m not allowed to scroll around to figure out what’s going on here. What is this business?

What do they offer? What do they do?

And what else can we glean from just what’s on the screen right here? Pineapple Hotel established in 1864.

That’s some history. That is some history.

I see a very good, well, relatively good hero image. It’s very pixelated very pixelated I would like to see a higher res photo here but the lighting is really good I love the Sun flare behind the building I love the green grass I love the framing of the image all of that is really good it looks like a very welcoming place it looks like a very you know happening happening place I don’t know if that’s still a term that the kids use but looks like a very happening place Even though there’s no, you know real people.

Well, I guess I can see some heads. Yes, I can see some heads But it’s a great.

It’s a good photo. It’s a good opening photo.

It sets the tone I’m not real big on the headline not real big. I’m not real Well two things here that I’m not real big on I’m not big on the headline and I’m not big on the font.

You know this font, what font is this? What font is this?

Let’s go to compute it, Nunito. Nunito Sans.

Okay, it’s not like a default font. It was chosen, but it gives a default font vibe, doesn’t it?

It doesn’t, this font has zero personality, in my opinion. I think that this could be spiced up by going with a better font here And I’m not real big on the size of the headline either now I I know why it’s done like this.

I I get it right Maybe even the design started with this headline being much bigger But the client you know Bev Bev got her hands on this I think at some point was like oh the words can’t cover up the photo You know and so suddenly the the font the headline font got smaller and smaller and smaller until it was just in the grass down here. Which yeah, I mean, it does help with readability and it does help seeing the image and all of that.

But there are other alternatives to go with, right? Like, and I’ve said this many, many, many times.

Let me go to, let’s go to this get frames. Let’s go to this recent frame that we’ve done.

Because I just want an example of a route that you may want to go, okay? So let’s just open this frame right here.

If you have a very important photo that you need people to see all the details of, and in this case you could argue, yes, we need to not cover up the actual, you know, hero location image with a big headline, then don’t choose a hero section like this, right? You have other options for a hero section.

So look at how we can put a nice big bold headline on the page with some lead text and then follow it with a hero image. This is still a hero section, but the text, the big headline part, doesn’t actually cover up, excuse me, doesn’t actually cover up the image, the important image.

And you don’t need the overlays and all this in this case. Like you could just get rid of this lead text, or this CTA text right here, get rid of the overlay if you don’t want the overlay.

But this kind of layout lends itself to being able to use whatever headline you want, whatever lead text you want, and not impact or negatively impact the image that people are going to see when they immediately arrive on the page. I’m just not a fan of like, you know, this feels tucked in here and then on top of that the font’s really boring, so it doesn’t make you want to read it.

It doesn’t really like, you know, grab your attention or anything like that. And then the copy is not great either.

So serving up the good times since 1864. How do we describe this?

Why is this not great copy? To me, I guess if I had to describe what’s going on here, when you use copy that’s like an abstraction of reality, it doesn’t really connect all that much.

It doesn’t land very well. And so, serving up the good times is like an abstracted way to describe what would go on in this and I don’t even think it’s a hotel I think it’s a restaurant right but it’s called pineapple hotel let’s just say it’s a restaurant we’re gonna poke around more and figure out exactly what’s going on here but like I’m looking down here garden bar beer garden park bar alehouse functions gaming it doesn’t you know there’s no hotel aspect to this even though that’s what it’s called.

I’m just thinking that it’s a restaurant, right? Serving up the good times is an abstraction of what really happens here, right?

It’s like if you boiled everything that happens down, you could just be like, oh, well, that’s good times. That’s how we’re summing that up.

The problem is, is like, when you use an abstraction right off the bat, I don’t, all I’m left to do is just like maybe try to use my imagination or something, but I don’t have time for that. I don’t have time for that.

So the solution to make the copy better is to give specifics. Instead of using abstracted language, use specific language.

What exactly is the benefit of going to Pineapple Hotel? What exactly is the experience I’m going to have?

This abstracted, generic, nebulous, like, oh, just good times happen here. I don’t I don’t know it doesn’t really connect.

It doesn’t Make me want to go there. It’s just you know it’s it’s a waste of a headline in my opinion Okay, so let’s let’s go ahead and start scrolling around because I think we can we kind of figure out what this is without scrolling Which is good, which is good, but I think there’s some things to improve on here, so we’re going to scroll down and You know as far as the layout goes, the UI in general, I don’t know if a brick’s background, like this staggered brick effect, I don’t know if that fits.

This isn’t a brick building, right? Maybe it’s brick inside, I don’t know.

But I don’t hate it, I don’t hate it, but I don’t just love it love it I do love the staggered images right this helps break up the flow it helps break up the what Bev would refer to as the boxiness of the website so I like the staggered overlapping images I guess I like this design accent right here I don’t immediately know what it’s for I don’t know why there’s ferns or what they mean, but you know, it’s not like bad. It’s not, I just don’t know what they mean, but it’s not bad by any means.

I wouldn’t say it’s distracting. I don’t hate it.

I don’t hate it. I don’t know what I would immediately change.

Probably something more bar restaurant oriented, right? Wouldn’t that be a little bit better if we’re gonna have a visual element there?

And I understand why it’s there. We gotta take up space.

Maybe it definitely wouldn’t look as good if this was just more white space over here. I don’t think it would not feel as like, you know, active.

But I think we can do better than a fern. All right, let’s read this.

Family owned is our headline here. Is this an H2?

Let’s make sure this, okay, that’s an H2, good. All right, so basic, you know, basic dom checks here and there.

The Pineapple Hotel is a proudly family-owned establishment. I will probably rewrite that.

Just minutes from the CBD and the world-famous Gabba Sports Ground. We love to grab cold beers with our mates, sip on freshly made cocktails with the girls, and catch up with the crew.

Okay, so this is a good example. Having stood proud for nearly 160 years, it’s safe to say we’re doing something right.

So remember I said up here, serving up the good times. Very abstracted language, nebulous, hard to wrap your brain and feelings around.

Most importantly, it’s hard to wrap your feelings around. But if we read this, and it’s like grabbing cold beers with our mates, sipping on freshly made cocktails with the girls, catching up with the crew.

Now, this is more specific. I’m like, ooh, I wanna do that.

I wanna grab cold beers with my mates, right? If I was a girl, I might wanna sip on freshly made cocktails with the girls.

I wanna catch up with the crew, and I want a great place to do that. You see how this more specific language is easier to wrap your feelings around, okay?

And your brain, both the logic side and the feeling side is kind of more engaged when you’re given a specific thing to visualize. That kind of approach to copy needs to be put up here in our main headline.

That’s kind of my main argument here. Okay, I think these are great images.

Really, really good. Okay, let’s scroll down.

So these are events that are happening and And by the way, I don’t even know we’re gonna still figure this out. I don’t know what a garden bar is Beer garden.

I’m not a big beer guy. I’m not a big I’m a cocktail.

I’m definitely on the cocktail side of things I don’t know what a park bar is. I don’t know if these are like Australian more Australian terms for things.

I understand what an ale house is and functions of like parties and such. And then gaming, that’s an interesting little like, hmm, one of these, like this test back in elementary school, which one of these things doesn’t fit?

I’m curious to see what the gaming aspect of all of this is. But we’re gonna keep going.

So we have events, New Year’s Eve, 60s event. All right, live music, tequila and chill.

This is good. So it’s showing the four upcoming events, I suppose.

I’m not a big fan of the fake concrete backgrounds, especially when it’s pixelated, especially when it’s probably doesn’t appear to be a repeating pattern, which is definitely the way to do this. This feels like a just, yeah, that’s just a background image.

And you know, it’s 85k. 85k is not horrible.

But when you do a section like this, what my recommendation would be, let me check chat and just make sure everything’s good on our technical side of things. Yeah, people inside enjoying their meal picture would work better for sure.

If the images could overlap the sections above and below, swap out the pattern for something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

These are all good suggestions. By the way, again, if you’re new here, this is a participatory event, right?

You get to put in your own comments in the chat. What are you thinking about what we’re looking at?

What do you think could be improved? And I’ll point out some of the really good ones.

And then if there’s some feedback I don’t necessarily agree with, we can talk about why. I don’t necessarily agree with it.

Well, it’s fair game, fair game, put whatever you want in the chat. 0:19:18

Okay. 0:19:18

What was I on about? Oh, this background pattern right here.

So we go to like, go to like subtle patterns, something like this. There’s a bunch of different places to get these things.

Uh, they used to, you know, fucking top towel bought this out and it’s just kind of gone downhill since then. There used to be like a search feature.

Um, let’s see, let’s, you used to be able to like type in concrete. Here’s dark patterns right here.

I just wanted, let’s just choose one as a, like here’s a corkboard pattern, but that already looks terrible. Prism.

Hmm. Hmm.

Oh, you used to be able to like preview it on the page too, and you can’t. Okay, well in any case, these are all repeating patterns, right?

So the actual image file is very, very small. It might be like eight kilobytes instead of 80 kilobytes.

And then you add that as your background pattern. Not only do you have a much smaller file to manage and to load, but you also have the ability to scale the size of the background pattern.

You have much more control over that. When you use a repeating pattern rather than a very large image of a pattern, right?

And it’s gonna look a little bit more refined, a little bit more realistic. It’s not gonna pixelate, it’s gonna be more performant.

There’s a lot of benefits to doing it this way. And this is just one of the free resources to get a bunch of different repeating patterns.

But even like woodgrain, right? I think a lot of people would go immediately to grabbing like a 1920 pixel image of wood grain and throw that as a background image when you really should be looking for a repeating wood grain pattern and doing it that way.

All right, just wanted to point that out. So I think if we got a better background image here, I don’t even, again, I don’t, you know, the dark concrete thing.

It’s like it’s like we’re the vibe I’m getting is you know we were hunting for ways to not have a plain background and This was the best we came up with but it’s not really Fitting with the vibe of this place in my estimation And this is where I would I would want to see more of the interior like what’s going on inside of this We’ll look at that more in a minute. And are there any real patterns and elements that happen inside of this establishment that I could incorporate into the website?

Well, first of all, it’s the Pineapple Hotel. So wouldn’t a pineapple-y background make more sense in some of these places?

Like it would definitely make more sense than bricks, right? Or concrete.

So I would definitely be looking at something with pineapple patterns for sure, but then there could be things inside the establishment that we can incorporate into our website design to really tie things together. Now I’m seeing, okay, all right, well maybe this is why the fern exists.

Is this, is, okay, I don’t, a function, or yeah, we’re gonna have to look at more photos of this place. Maybe ferns are a thing.

Maybe they got a whole room of ferns. I don’t know.

Maybe that’s why we’re seeing, but I’m seeing them more. Okay, so that might clue us in a little bit there.

We’ll keep going. 0:22:34

We’ll keep going. 0:22:35

I feel like these cards are also a bit boring. They’re also a bit square.

They’re very sharp. In fact, everything here is very sharp.

I don’t know. I guess it’s all right, man.

0:22:46 Even if you’re gonna go sharp,

0:22:48 I got a tiny little border radius there, tiny little border radius.

It just kinda looks, yeah, a little plain. And maybe it’s just the font.

Maybe it’s the font that’s really killing me. Does anybody else agree?

Is this font just kinda detracting from everything? Is it just kinda make it look like, mm, mm, it’s like a system font almost.

You know, there’s really nothing, nothing, it has no, this font has no personality whatsoever. And I think that might be what’s throwing me off.

It’s also, you know, these cards, 0:23:24

I think they would look better 0:23:25

if we weren’t looking at ugly concrete in the backgrounds. Like ugly pixelated concrete is not helping this section out right here.

I think that’s what’s, that’s what’s mainly going on. All right, we got a CTA here.

We have more, what is this, an Instagram? Yeah, Instagram feed.

And then we have a CTA. Okay, let’s talk about this CTA right here.

This is like, you know, we don’t have a conversion expert, maybe like a marketing expert here. And so we just phoned this section in.

It’s like, well, we need to get people on an email list. It’s like, you know, we’re all gathered in the boardroom and then somebody brings up this very important point.

Guys, our website does not have a way for people to get on our email list. And so the immediate question is, all right, what are we gonna do?

What are we gonna do to get people onto the email list? And, you know, our brains start churning and I guess at the end of this session there were no ideas.

There were no ideas and so they were like you know what or maybe or maybe somebody actually was brave enough to stand up and be like let’s put a section in that says our mailing list and the button will say subscribe and everybody else was like well fuck I don’t have a better idea let’s go with that right and that’s what happened in this section right here the conversion rates on a section like this are going to be in the absolute toilet like not just in the toilet but the toilet was also flushed multiple times this is going nowhere This right here is going absolutely nowhere. It’s it’s um Yes, we need a strategy What is the strategy for getting people onto the mailing list?

Because you know it’s one thing if you have like a super cool like 0:25:29

You know 0:25:30

Like you’re known for just giving tons and tons of insights and information. Maybe you can get away with that kind of thing.

Because people are just like, nah, I like to know what this person or this establishment has to say, and I wanna stay up to date. Like they already are itching.

Like I gotta stay up to date with what’s going on here. That’s not really like, you know, a restaurant for the most part.

We gotta have like a more, we have to have a more strategic way of getting people onto the list. We gotta have some sort of carrot to dangle out there in front of them to make them bite.

Got to have some sort of strategy here and this is not it right here. So we would need a brainstorming session to figure that part out.

Alright down in the footer here we just have our main address. You know I would like to see this.

We’re kind of missing an opportunity it feels like here. I mean I assume this place has a Google My Business, right?

Let’s go ahead and link this up right here. Link this up to the Google My Business.

Is there an about page? There’s an our story page.

I bet none of these pages link to Google My Business, which is a critical missing link. Yeah, this page does not appear to.

We have a contact page, maybe this does. Call us, oh, got another address.

Follow us, send oh no Google my business backlinks going on here like linking out to Google my business, Google my business hopefully I mean hopefully they have one pineapple hotel Australia. See if we got a Google yeah see we do I look at I mean a tremendous amount of reviews and then a link to the website.

So you’re getting the link there. We need to link back to our Google my business From the website we want like a little reciprocal link kind of action happening there Let’s just while we’re here.

Let’s just go through. Oh wait hold on this does this look like this yeah, it’s it’s the same establishment, okay?

Well hold on where are these photos come that’s a very nice photo. I recognize that one.

Okay, now we’re getting a little glimpse of the inside. We’ll go back to the website in just a second make sure all this stuff is well represented on the actual website.

0:27:46 Okay.

0:27:48 All right.

All right. Just wanted to check.

Just wanted to make sure, you know, cross T’s dot I’s. Okay, let’s go to our story.

Let’s just get a little bit more of an idea of what’s happening here. I kind of want to know why it’s called the Pineapple Hotel when it’s not.

. .

Maybe it used to be a hotel. Is that what we’re gonna find out?

It used to be a hotel. It’s been turned into this like hipster kind of eatery place.

One of Queensland’s great treasures. Five years after Queensland became a state.

It’s the fifth oldest pub in Queensland. Okay.

Its name stems from the pineapple plantations that dotted the Kangaroo Point area. Its unique name and long colorful history make the Piney not only the Queensland’s oldest pubs of one of its favorites.

The hotel. .

. Alright, okay.

It’s just a pub. It’s just a pub.

Yeah, so I don’t know, is that common in Australia? Do we have any people down under who can answer the question?

Is this just a thing that you guys do? You just like to call pubs hotels?

Or is this truly unique to this place right here. Because it almost is like, like the headline almost needs to mention pub, right?

Why isn’t the word pub in the main headline in the hero section? Because you’re already creating some confusion of like, pineapple hotel, but it’s not a hotel.

So you already know people are gonna be thinking in one direction, like you better course correct them very quickly with your other copy so that they’re not, you know, confused for longer than they need to be. All right, our story, let’s go back here.

All right, this is good. What’s what do we got going on here?

Yeah, we got an h1. All right, fantastic.

What is this? I’m interested to see.

What do they got going on here? Oh, paragraph tag.

Okay, good. Good.

Good. Good.

Okay, so Dom so far looks fairly clean. I am noticing, looks like they’re using automatic CSS, not frames, but automatic CSS.

Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, okay, good. Just getting a little peak, just getting a little peak.

Let’s go on to, I wanna know what a park bar is. I am, I have no idea, no idea what a park bar is.

Park bar, crafted for your thirsty soul. Best casual dining venue.

We’re getting some more keywords in here. It’s interesting with the buttons up here.

Interesting, interesting, interesting. You know I would think here we might do a little bit with this live.

We might do a little bit with this live. In terms of a hero.

We might come back to this. Let me screenshot this.

I just I’m not liking these buttons. This looks very day carry you know like it’s like a it’s too it’s too too many colors too many styles it’s like we got some yellow solid buttons we got some outline buttons we got some gray solid buttons we got them all in a little grid right off the bat it’s hitting me in the face it’s like oh I don’t know I don’t I think there’s a better way to do this.

We might take a look at that in just a second. All right.

Still don’t know what a park bar is. Oh, it’s just called the park bar.

It’s not a thing. It’s not, see, I didn’t know.

See, I’m confused. I’m like, is this another Australian thing?

Is there something that is well known in Australia, these park bars phenomenon? Or it doesn’t appear that that’s the case.

It appears that they have kind of branded areas of this non hotel hotel this hotel non hotel concept see it’s very confusing to somebody who’s just seeing these things for the first time it appears to be like different branded areas almost and now I’m like is this the same building it’s got it’s I guess it is I mean if we go back to the front I guess it does appear to be a fairly large establishment. I can’t see how wide it is.

0:32:04 Hmm, there’s a lot going on here.

0:32:06 This is a very interesting place.

Lot going on here. Now, in terms of imagery, and I was gonna say energy, I was like combining those two words together.

This is really fantastic. I mean, this image right here gives me a great, you know, bird’s eye view of a room.

But more importantly, it communicates instantly and directly that people love this place, that this is a place that is on and popping. Like if you want energy, this is the place you come to.

So the fact that like if you did this with an empty room, it would not have nearly the same impact people would be like, awesome, nice room. Yeah, it’s a nice place.

I can maybe imagine myself eating there, right? Or, you know, pubbing there, whatever we want to say.

But when you show it just full of people, it instantly says this is the place to be, right? This is the place everybody wants to be.

See this, this is the empty version of it. If you just showed a bunch of emptiness, it’d be like, yeah, it’s a nice place, you know?

Maybe I’d go there. But this place, this right here, really ties all that together.

It really makes you want to be there versus just showing you that it’s a nice place. So I would say well done on the imagery going on here.

We got our hours on the side, all right. Still didn’t, yeah, it’s like, why is it called the park bar?

I don’t know. Now, casual dining.

To me, this is just a bar. This is a bar bar.

This is not that There’s a little bit of a disconnect here. This does not scream casual dining this screams like we’re fucking drinking or drinking and we’re watching sports and we might get rowdy and You know, I’m not doing much dining here shoulder-to-shoulder with people I am doing drinking but I’m not so much doing dining.

So I don’t know. There’s a little bit of a disconnect there, but it’s okay.

It’s okay. Now I know what park bar is.

Let’s see what garden bar is. 0:34:07

I was gonna say, you know, 0:34:08

what does not help me understand what’s happening in these different areas is the fact that this headline says exactly what the link, oh, that’s a problem right there. You might wanna fix that.

The hover color of the text and the hover background color are the same, and that’s not a good combo. So, you know, you need to use a different headline here.

Like, immediately explain what’s going on, because, you know, I clicked on it to figure it out, and you just said the same thing, right? It said garden bar there, I clicked on it, and it says garden bar here.

And then where nature meets happy hour doesn’t, but I’m seeing where the ferns come from. Where nature meets happy hour, that doesn’t, you know, tell me a ton either.

Newly redesigned, step into our garden bar, experience a breath of fresh air. Okay.

The thing that’s missing here I think is like why? Why?

Why? What?

Who came up with the concept for this room? I need a little more background on why this room was designed the way that it is maybe because I’m like, okay All right ferns like unless I’m just fucking in love with ferns I don’t really have a you know, any other reason to be interested in this part of this establishment Unless you gave me a real like what is the story behind the garden bar?

Is it listed anywhere? I can watch it on the big screen.

I can in our garden bar Prime’s is a friend Garden Bar, Prime Minister’s Vine, relaxing and enjoyable atmosphere, complete with lush greenery. So, I mean, that’s even better.

So you just wanted to create a relaxing and enjoyable atmosphere. Maybe that’s the only reason, I don’t know.

Why don’t you, we’ve talked about this concept before. In journalism, they call it burying the lead.

Like you buried the most important description of what’s happening here in the last section on the page. Take this, right, where it’s like a relaxing and enjoyable atmosphere complete with lush greenery.

Now, enjoyable atmosphere, no. A relaxing and enjoyable dining experience complete with lush greenery.

Because atmosphere doesn’t really, you know, if we’re gonna use this as a heading, it needs more key words in it. So take that and stick it up here so that immediately I can just at least understand more of what’s going on.

Your open table area has a bunch of echo. I’m just being, I’m sorry, I’m being like very random right now but I’m just seeing things.

They’re catching my eye. What’s going on in the section?

Why does it have so much white space on the bottom? Okay it’s this widget, maybe the iframe, one of these has a height on it, can almost guarantee.

And it’s probably two people find a table. Oh, that takes you to a new page anyway.

I thought something was gonna happen in this area right here. What’s this for?

It’s like a placeholder for something, but nothing actually happens. Find a way to fix this height issue right here.

Okay. I see.

All right. All right.

Hmm. Hmm.

So what are we looking at? Oh, this is the, it’s a different view.

Okay. I see a big screen right here, but this image is next to trading hours.

When I was down here and it says, watch it on the big screen. My eye went to this photo and I was like, I don’t see a big screen.

There’s no big screen in this photo. So maybe, you know, take this image and put it up here and take this image and put it down here.

Cause at least this now I see a big screen, kind of a big screen. I mean, is this a, maybe Australians don’t really know what a big screen is.

You know what I’m saying? Cause in the US, big screen is like a movie theater screen, like big, big, big, big, big, big screen.

That’s kind of a, yeah, it’s a decent sized screen. It’s a decent sized screen.

Okay, moving along. Yeah, let’s go to a different page.

I kind of understand what the garden bar is now. But you can see I’m like having to, like, here’s the main point.

If your visitors are not going to study your website, they’re not going to study the images and study the copy and put all the pieces together. You’ve got to like make it super obvious for them.

They got to know instantly what is going on here and that’s why a headline like Garden Bar is a waste of a headline. Where nature meets happy hour, alright cute whatever.

It doesn’t really help. Newly redesigned.

Don’t care. I just want to know what’s going on here.

And so the first three headlines don’t answer that question. So we have to rework this, right?

We’re not making it obvious enough. We get to it a little bit here in the lead paragraph, but we need to, we need to hit it up here in these headlines.

Same thing when I went to Park Bar, you know, I’m going to park bar like what’s that? And you’re like, it’s a park bar.

That’s the see it’s if we were having this would be awkward, right? If we were having a conversation and you’re telling me about your establishment, you’re like, yeah, we have a park bar.

And we have a garden bar. And we have a lounge bar.

And you’re like, Oh, park bar. That’s not what I don’t know what that is.

What is that? You’re like, Oh, it’s a park bar.

0:39:30 That’s what it is.

0:39:31 It’s a it’s a it’s a park bar.

I mean, we crafted it for your thirsty soul. 0:39:36

Right. 0:39:36

And you’re like, what the fuck are you talking about, dog? Can we talk like we’re actual human beings right now?

Like, what is this like code language you’re using? Just tell me what it is.

That’s how your copy needs to connect with people. Just tell them what it is, stop hiding it.

Stop hiding it from them. You know, this does a better job, like you’re at least telling them it’s a casual dining venue.

But again, it’s like, we need more copy improvement here. We’ll say that, improvement in our copy.

Hells Beasts, let’s see if this does the job, okay? What’s a Hells Beast?

Well, it’s a Hells Beast, just as it says. I mean, why are you confused?

It’s a Hells Beast. We told you it’s a Hells Beast, it’s a Hells Beast.

Say, I don’t know what this is. Ales and Tales Await.

Still don’t know. Our charming.

. .

Oh, it’s an ale house! Okay.

I thought the whole thing was an ale house, but I guess not. Charming character of Hellsbee’s ale house where gentlemanly ambiance meets a playful lyric and spirit.

These must be Australian words. As you step through the doors, you’ll feel the warm embrace of a traditional ale house combined with a modern.

. .

Okay, again, stop burying the freaking lead. Look at this.

Let me help you here. Okay, let’s do this.

I’m just using your own copy. I’m like, what is a health bees?

Oh, it’s a traditional ale house combined with a modern twist. Now, this is still not great, because what, why are we still keeping the secret?

What is the modern twist? What is the, you know, we have to work on coming up with a way to describe that.

But at least like when I arrive, I’m instantly like understanding what’s going on here. This is kind of what I’m getting at here.

Don’t just tell them the same thing they already knew. They already knew it’s a Hells Bees or it’s called Hells Bees, whatever.

They don’t need to know that again. Let’s give them something.

And by the way, I mean, if we’re trying to rank for like Ale House, Ale House in Brisbane, Brisbane, is it Brisbane? Brisbane?

How do y’all prefer this? How do you prefer we pronounce this?

But like now we’re even like putting key when you get more specific good things happen So not only does the visitor understand better what’s going on? But you manage to put extra keywords into your h1 that otherwise weren’t there Nobody’s probably only people that know about health bees are searching for health bees people searching for an ale house nearby Are not going to find it when it’s just called health bees, right?

So and then we look up here in our title tag, our traditional bar. I don’t think anybody’s searching for traditional bar.

And that’s not what you called it down here. You called it an alehouse.

If people are searching for alehouses, you want them to find Hells Bees. So you need to use the term alehouse here.

You need to use the term alehouse up here in your title tag. All these, this is what crossing T’s, dotting I’s looks like.

We got to tie all this stuff together. Brisbane, Carlos is Brisbane.

0:42:48 Okay.

0:42:48 I’m going with Brisbane.

We learn new things every day. Larrican, Australian plus New Zealand, a boisterous, often badly behaved young man.

Okay, then yeah, let’s use that term in the headline. We have a lot of opportunities here.

Lot of opportunities here. Okay, Derek says the fonts are all over the place.

Hmm, I think they’re using the same font everywhere. Oh no, this is Roboto, and this is the Nunito, Nunito Sans, I think, but they’ve used this everywhere.

This is the same combination. If we look at the, oh by the way, that attempt to not cover up your photo, it depends on the device size.

Look at that. This is a problem with vertical with using vh for the size of your sections.

Is that what happens here? Let’s see.

Let’s take a little jaunt. See now see we have to kind of in some ways be very ADD with this.

Section computed styles Height height height is there any height set on this Yeah, cuz it doesn’t have a lot of padding. That’s it with like no padding.

I Wonder if the image is controlling the height No, that’s position absolute so that’s definitely not doing it Min height right here 50 VH is on the container. See I and I covered this in PB 101 I’m not not not not not a fan of doing that and in fact this is how Elementor this is how I believe Breakdance they encourage you to use minimum height for your sections and containers and I do I am not on board with that and I explained why in PB 101 and it’s just not it’s not a great approach.

You end up with a bunch of random whitespace values, and you end up with issues like what we just saw. So what is the solution?

The solution is section padding. So you have, we can’t use section, we can’t use padding block here.

I mean, we can, we just need to add one. So padding block start and padding block end and then this is going to be space s because that’s what they wanted here it’s actually section space oh geez come on sometimes I hate the hate doing this in the inspector block end just let me edit this thank you section space s and then we can come up here and we can go section space like XXL or you can have your own we probably need like a calc Section space XXL times like 1.

2 3 4 5 something like that this gives you the same effect right but now watch the difference the difference is See how I’m moving the DOM, which basically makes the page smaller, okay? And it’s no longer responding to that.

It has like a fixed size now. The padding that I used gave it a fixed size, and now you’re never gonna have an issue with the text encroaching on the image, where you had that before because your whole section, the inner, was based on the height of the device the person was using.

This is no longer based on the height of the device. And that’s not the only problem that that technique causes.

The idea that you should immediately run, let me see if I can show you this, because I think it’s a big deal. I think it’s a really big deal.

I see this mistake all the time and I hate the fact that, I’m going to pull up an Elementor site. I hate the fact that page builders Encourage people to do this because it’s it makes zero sense whatsoever Let’s go to pages sample page whatever edit with Elementor All right.

Here’s the contain remember Elementor doesn’t have sections Yeah, right here. Look at this.

Look what they want you to do and you watch Elementor tutorial after tutorial after tutorial, and people who teach Elementor use this all the time. And this, I will tell you, my friends, this is a violation of fundamental web design principles.

This is the absolute worst way to manage white space in a section. Absolute worst way.

And they’re like, here it is, front and center. There you go, have at it.

What is going on here? And you can see this is like the more, look at, this is the amount of white space we currently have.

Because I just set a minimum height. Now watch as I add content, which theoretically, you’re always going to do, I mean, that’s why you put a section there to add content to it, right?

So I start adding my content, adding my content, adding my content, and I’m like, you know that white space that I had, where the fuck did it go? Like, it’s gone.

It’s gone, because there wasn’t any. It was virtual white space, is what I call it in Page Building 101.

It was only white space when there was no content. But the content doesn’t influence that white space at all.

That white space is not maintained unless you maintain the exact same amount of content. Your white space is gone now, it’s not there.

And so what do these people do to fix that? Like, well, we have to have white space.

I mean, we can’t just, we can’t be absolute psychopaths and let our content touch the top and bottom of our section. We got to have that white space back.

What do they do? I’ll tell you what they do.

They go back to the container and they just have a little bit of a white, like this. And then they center everything in there and then they’re like that.

Now measure this, measure this amount of white space and now let’s go create more sections and let’s keep playing with this little slider right here. Do you ever in a million years think that the white space from section to section is going to be consistent?

Absolutely not because they’re just putting random min height values in based on how much content that is in here. So every section has like a varying degree of white space when you use this method.

Not to mention that it’s just it’s so annoying. Look at this.

You duplicate. You’re like, I need to add more content.

Every time you add more content. Okay, back to changing the white space again.

More minimum height. This is so dumb.

It’s so dumb. It’s so inefficient.

It’s just not smart. It’s just not.

I don’t have a better way to describe it. It’s just not smart.

Never, ever use this to manage white space in sections. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.

0:49:48 Padding, it’s just padding.

0:49:50 Padding accomplishes exactly what you want.

And padding will stay there regardless of how little or how much content is in the section. Never will you have to adjust it when you add more content or subtract content from a section.

And the fact that Elementor has not figured this out yet, the fact that I don’t understand, you have how many gazillions of dollars does the Elementor team have? Do they not have anybody that doesn’t realize that this is the worst way to manage white space in sections?

I don’t understand. Somebody make it make sense because right now it doesn’t.

Okay, anyway rant over. Let’s continue.

By the way I just want to say about this website before we go any further. When I’m pointing out all of these different areas I actually, if you’ve been here before you probably already got the vibe, but I actually like this website.

As far as like, first of all restaurant websites in the United States are all absolute trash cans You will almost never find a like a decent or good restaurant website in the United States I don’t know what the epidemic of like it’s just we own a restaurant So it’s imperative that we have a shitty website. That’s like the that seems to be the trend in the United States I don’t know if it’s the same everywhere else But as far as like a restaurant website goes, this is a good website.

Like visually, it’s appealing. It’s like this would be an all-star restaurant website in the United States.

So if we’re grading by that measuring stick, but in general, it just, it accomplishes, other than the copy adjustments and things like that, the overall website, it accomplishes the job, right? I think it’s a good website.

So while we’re going to be critical of it and find a bunch of different things to fix and improve and all of that, I do want to make sure that we understand, you know, the general vibe here that we’re looking at is a good website, right? We have a good website.

There are a bunch of ways we could absolutely make it a lot better and really knock it out of the park, but it’s a good website. It’s not a bad website.

So I just want to make sure that that’s clear. All right.

Let’s see. Just joined Pineapple Hotel is just down the road from me.

Don’t know why we are looking at it, but what a coincidence. Yeah, isn’t that crazy, Darcy?

That’s crazy. That’s crazy.

Let’s see. Entertainment value 10 out of 10.

Let’s see. White Space, the final frontier.

It’s not just Elementor by the way. Let’s see if that, I want to see if the same is true because I think I remember and of course it would be, it would make sense because Breakdance is a builder that you know basically there wasn’t much vision there it was just let’s steal Elementor’s audience I guess.

Let’s go to pages and let’s go to edit and breakdance. I don’t even know if this is an up-to-date version of breakdance, but layout, okay, size, height.

Hold, see, I just, people say breakdance is easy. Guys, like, I mean, granted, I haven’t opened this in forever, but it’s not intuitive.

Let’s go to exit, to me, it’s not intuitive. To somebody who, I would say, to somebody who knows what they’re looking for and what should be there versus not there, it’s not intuitive.

It may be intuitive to absolute beginners, right? Who don’t really know what’s supposed to be there in terms of controls.

But for somebody who knows what’s supposed to be there, it’s not intuitive. What version is this?

Let’s go 1. 4 beta two.

I don’t even know what breakdance is on. But let’s see if they were doing that.

Because I think I remember that they were doing this. 0:53:43

Layout. 0:53:44

What? 0:53:44

Gap, okay, backgrounds, text color, size. 0:53:48

I don’t know why this is here. Spacing, okay, they do want you to add padding.

I thought at one point I was seeing, where’s the structure panel? Yeah, I thought at one point I was seeing minimum height as like almost having a minimum height value or slider just like Elementor did.

Maybe I was imagining things. But I don’t know, like, you compare this to bricks.

Let’s just do a little, I mean, we go off on tangents here. It’s what we do.

It’s what we do. We investigate philosophy, philosophy behind these things.

Let me pull up a Bricks right next to this. And I don’t really care what page we’re looking at.

Let’s, okay, a hero, sure. So I click on this section and I’m like, what do I need?

Like, what makes sense to see here? Well, it makes sense to see that I have a section tag as my HTML, which is great that we have that by default.

It’s the same thing in Breakdance but it’s good to see and verify that that’s what’s happening. The display of whether we’re using flex or grid or blah whatever okay that’s that’s important.

And then you know directional type stuff gaps you know all of that seems to make really good sense. We have alignment here but I don’t see my display right so like alignment only makes sense if it’s flex, but there’s no way to set it to not be flex here if I needed that to be the case.

I’ve got to go hunt somewhere else for that to happen. The background of this section, fairly important to get to probably, but what’s the most important?

The most important is the padding in a section. Like immediately you have to establish white space.

Now, whether you do that from global styling or some other method it should be from global styling. But, and in fact I don’t even, I want that open.

Okay, there we go. Yeah, so I can immediately go into doing something here like, you know, to rim or whatever.

Like whatever I want to do to control white space I can do here. Probably variables and stuff like that.

That should kind of be front and center. A margin top and a margin bottom on a section is a, okay, so let’s just talk again about fundamentals.

Never ever, ever do this. Why is this control here, is what I would ask.

Like, this is a section element. Fucking get rid of those, dude.

Beginners all day will do shit like this. They’ll put margin top or bottom on a section.

Never in 100 million years should you ever do that. I don’t know why you would ever want to do that.

Look, this section is far away from this section. You have created a no-man’s land that is unselectable and unstylable between these sections.

Horrific, absolutely horrific. Should never do it.

Cover this in page building 101. On a section element, don’t use margin.

Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t do it. But Breakdance seems to think, well, not only should you, we’re going to put it front and center.

We’re just going to beg you to do it. Hey, why don’t you try it?

Why don’t you try it? Let’s add a little margin there, top or bottom.

0:57:02 Go ahead.

Go ahead. 0:57:04

Go ahead. 0:57:05

Dare you. 0:57:06

Dare you. How many beginners have done this?

I don’t know. Couldn’t tell you, but it’s wrong.

Don’t do this. Shouldn’t, these controls should not be here It’s just stuff like I just unexplainable stuff in page builders certain page builders Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, all right, so let’s get back to where we were In fact I if we’re gonna knock if we’re gonna knock I would I would say the same thing about About bricks they have the they have the margin box now in bricks.

It’s this it’s in the style tab like that’s where you’re gone So it’s it’s like you you’re going to the style tab to do that kind of stuff And I guess if you ever needed to for whatever rare reason It’s not preventing you from doing it, but it’s not on the main panel encouraging you to add margin to sections, right? But I would still almost hide it even more in bricks because beginners will try to do that shit.

And I think in some cases you almost need to protect beginners from themselves a little bit, a little bit, you know, on stuff that should just not happen. Okay, we can get rid of that.

Alright we’re back. I want to look maybe at the SEO side of this because again I think the UX, the UI, all that general stuff is actually, you know, pretty good.

What needs to improve most is the copy, but now I want to take a look at some different areas. And I actually, I mean, we could look at, okay, got an unordered list, got some LIs.

So we’re really good on a lot of stuff, you know, accessibility, you can test that. Oh, look at this, you know, they’ve got the focus correct on here.

I was going to see if this is a dummy button or a real button. So that’s the button.

That’s a real button. So tell me this is not a button, right?

When I see that this is the real button, which is not, this is not correct. Okay.

Ah, see, see, see. 0:58:59

Okay. 0:59:00

Got to bring them out. 0:59:00

Got to bring them out. 0:59:01

Uh, you never want for accessibility purposes, two links in a card. They go to the same place.

This should be a dummy link right here it could look like a button but it’s not actually clickable. Remember the end.

. .

oh wait hold on we’re not using clickable parent. Okay this is all.

. .

got to go back to this. Got to go back to this.

Okay this is very very very important. If you’re.

. .

and so for those of you are like I just want to know how to build websites. Okay, well, here we go, here we go.

You’re about to learn, you’re gonna learn today. If it’s not a clickable card, do not hover style the card.

That’s number one. You are indicating with a hover style that this is a clickable element and it’s not clickable.

That’s a problem, okay, that’s number one. Number two there are two links that go to the same place.

That’s another X on the grading scale right. Number three you’ve created a link with non descriptive anchor text and not one but the whole loop is going to be full of them called view event.

But I don’t know what event I’m viewing necessarily, unless you’ve done something with ARIA labels or ah, you have, okay. At least you did.

You went to that length right there. So this is going to announce, I’m sorry, I deleted that on accident.

Let’s refresh the page real quick. So at least this will announce as view new year’s Eve 60s event.

But the problem is, um, let me see if we, did you use clickable parent? What is going on here?

This is very confusing. Because I can focus on the entire card as well.

But what you guys can’t see, and I’m gonna describe what I’m doing here. First focus goes on the card.

I’m gonna hit tab again, and nothing happens. Every card requires a double tab to get to the next card.

So there’s the next card. I’m gonna tab again Nothing happens and then I’m gonna tab again That’s so it’s a double tab and the reason for the double tab is because it’s selecting this link first But the focus is showing on the entire card and then it’s going to this link next but the focus dial does not change to indicate that and that is the cause for the double tab on every single card.

And that shows you that that’s why it’s technically incorrect. Um, so yeah, here’s what we need to do to fix this.

Cause there’s no reason to have, look, if I just linked new year’s Eve, sixties event, that’s what it would announce as I wouldn’t need ARIA labels on these buttons down here. These should just be fake.

These are fake buttons right here and this is the real link. And then when you need to use clickable parent and focus parent to make the entire card clickable and focusable and then we’re done.

Got to get rid of the double links and got to get rid of the hover style on elements that are not clickable. Okay should be should the h4 not be h3 let’s take a look I didn’t even look at the heading level.

So good catch here we’ve got h4 cards. If I have h4 cards I better find an h3 somewhere else in this section.

I’m gonna inspect this which can’t be an h3. Ah!

See I was gonna say I was clarifying that as I was doing it I was like I better find another h3 in this section but this can’t be it right here. Why?

Because this is the section heading. This is the section heading has to be an H2 because there’s no H2 above this.

We have to use a logical hierarchy so because this is the first heading it’s got to be the H2 which means these have to be H3s and so yeah there should be no H4s here. So who was that?

Let’s see. Carlo.

So good spot by Carlo on the heading hierarchy here. Marco says hi from Holland.

Hello, Marco. All right, comment mobile needs serious help.

We can look at that too. And why yes, it does.

Why yes, it does. That is a layout issue.

Yeah, and it’s related to this one specific section right here. What are these cards doing on these cards have have lost their mind on mobile devices flex direction is still column which is interesting why if that’s a column are those things side-by-side so we go into here and we see okay all right that’s over there.

Oh, this is just very interesting. What is causing this?

1:04:09 It’s not that translate.

1:04:10 Oh, this is I hate this.

1:04:13 I hate this.

1:04:13 I hate this.

I hate this It still shouldn’t this is this is caused by bricks Bricks has a habit. I call it a habit.

I mean they added it on purpose But it shouldn’t be happening with flex column When you add things Flex Row in Bricks, it will be no wrap by default on your larger breakpoints and Bricks will decide for you to wrap on mobile. And this causes a lot of problems.

And a lot of people don’t realize it’s happening. And it actually should not be happening.

Bricks does it, I believe, to save people from creating overflows in certain situations, because flex row without wrap will overflow. But the overflow alerts you to the fact that there’s a problem that you should fix.

It shouldn’t attempt to fix it itself. And I think in this case, it’s causing some sort of weird issue.

But like flex wrap on a column, I mean the column is already wrapping, like everything’s stacking on top of itself, so it really shouldn’t be causing an issue. 1:05:47

That needs more inspection 1:05:48

on what exactly is going on here. I’m looking at this flex direction.

Oh, okay. Well, maybe we’re getting.

. .

See it’s row, oh, because it’s got a modifier. This is, and this is why you use BIM, because the convention of how this card is named is lending me information.

It’s letting me know this is a modified version of the What’s On card. And we’ve modified it with Home, which is not a good modifier, because I could very easily use these cards on another page that’s not the home page.

So the home modifier doesn’t make sense here. This would be tall.

Yeah, wouldn’t that make more sense as a modifier? This is the tall version of the what’s on card because if I take this modifier off, we have a wide version of the what’s on card.

This was the original design of the what’s on card. And then they created a tall version, which they called home, but it should be called tall the changes the flex direction to column and Some stuff went wrong with it when they did that See the what’s on card is a row by default.

Yeah. Yeah So yeah, this needs to be looked at for sure need some adjustments there Okay, move your face we can’t see the inspector.

Oh, I can’t move my face, but what I can do is I can move, we weren’t really uncovering much of anything there. I can move the inspector.

1:07:19 All right.

1:07:20 But that’s what’s happening.

So if this is your website, your home variant of these cards is not properly getting this to be flex at these breakpoints, flex column at these breakpoints. So you need to look into that.

Once you fix that, your overflow issues will go away and everything will be back to normal. What are we at for time here?

Oh, we’re over time on this site. Does anybody have any questions that they wanted me to dive deeper into on this particular site before we move on?

I want to, cause I don’t want to run out of time for questions and live stuff. I was gonna maybe look at some SEO stuff but I Can already tell like right off the bat we need so pineapple hotel the title tag on their home page is their Headline which has no keywords in it whatsoever So from an SEO standpoint you can already tell there’s a bunch that can be improved here like you go to park bar Food full service bar and live sports, so that’s much better from that perspective garden bar See garden bar just says garden bar pineapple hotel so no SEO done there.

I think we already looked at Hell’s Beasts Traditional bar with a relaxed attitude, but we determined it’s an alehouse that needs some improvement there We didn’t go to the lounge bar I’m gonna do this unless anybody objects and wants to do something else I think it would be good to maybe try to create recreate this hero a little bit and show what I might do instead of This whole Button, this is like the comic sans of button layouts on On a site like this definitely needs to be improved there. If you fit it in, could you advise about the best approach for adding over 18 age verification to a website?

Also, can that impact SEO? I think the way it’s done often,

1:09:26 I think what a lot of people do is make their homepage

1:09:28 the age verification a lot of times, and then they’ll take you into the website from there.

1:09:39 Yeah, I would do it with an overlay, most likely.

1:09:42 Okay, everybody says something else, please.

Okay, we’ll move on then. All right, we will close this out.

I have a screenshot of the, I have a screenshot of that, Hero, if we wanna do it. What we’re gonna do next, before we do questions, you can put in your questions now and I’ll go and look for them.

But I wanted to just point out these two new trainings in the Inner Circle available now because they’re very important. I said at the very beginning, we’re looking at these because they can literally add tens of thousands of dollars to your agency revenue that you otherwise would not have gotten.

They’re mission critical trainings that I would rush to the inner circle to go watch. One of them is a part two to a part one.

You’re gonna wanna watch both of these, okay? How to dominate local search with service area pages.

Part one outlines the strategy of creating what’s called a service area page network for your local businesses on their website. It’s not a separate website, it’s on their website.

Part two right here, which I just published, goes into the technical implementation of this. So how do you set up the CPTs in the custom fields?

The parent-child hierarchy, the main directory page, how do you manage conditional logic for dealing with parents and children? Dynamic data, query looping for the parents and the children, we use the WP Grid Builder Map Facet.

So you have a dynamic map facet that shows all of your service areas dynamically on a map with pins or radius circles. And how do you AJAX search your loops and tie that into the map facet so when people search, the map dynamically updates along with the query loop.

All of that is covered in this training right here. If you are working with local businesses and you are not implementing service area networks, you are leaving, number one, a tremendous amount of organic search results on the table that you’re not getting for them.

And number two, you’re leaving tens of thousands of dollars in revenue on the table. This is one of the most important areas of a website for a local business.

So if you’re not doing this, and you don’t already know about this strategy, and you don’t know how to implement it, and you aren’t billing for it, you need to drop everything that you are doing and run to these two trainings right here, part one and part two. Watch them, absorb them, implement them into your pricing strategy.

You can create retainers off of this. Very easy for a sizable client to create a 12 month retainer just off of this one strategy.

That’s how important this is and how lucrative it is. So you need to run, not walk, to these two trainings and watch them.

The second one is on how to run a technical website slash SEO audit. I cover the many reasons why you want to do this for every single client that has an existing website and then I show you how to actually perform the audit and how to analyze the audit results and again this is one of those things that can generate in various ways tens of thousands of dollars in additional revenue so if you’re not doing a technical website audit you don’t know how to use what tool to use how to use the tool what to do with the audit report once it is available to you.

Don’t walk, run to this training and watch it and then get it implemented in your scoping and your proposal process and your pre-proposal process. It’s very, very important for many different reasons.

All right, so those two trainings are available now inside of the Inner Circle. Just wanted to make sure everybody’s aware of those because literally every week that goes by where you’re not doing these two things, you are losing out on lots of revenue and lots of results for your clients.

Okay, so get that done. All right, I think I went up too far.

Let me start scrolling back down. Nicholas says you should start bringing on the developers during the critiques.

1:14:11 It was good to get that background.

1:14:13 I don’t know what background you’re talking about.

I’m going to scroll back up. Okay.

Okay, yeah, I would have to wade through a lot of comments to figure out. Whose site is this by the way?

I have it on the submission form, but I don’t have that available to me right now. What are your thoughts on not having any navigation in the footer?

I’m not a fan, Richard. I’m not really a fan, unless it’s a very small website, right?

Very small website, okay, whatever. But that was a, you know, it’s a decent-sized website.

I think they need a Navigation in the footer for sure 1:14:56

Okay, all right, I’m just gonna look for questions 1:14:58

But Nick that is a good suggestion. It adds a lot to the logistics But I can look at that.

Maybe we’ll try Doing that on one plus the other thing on it. Just being honest, you know, it’s hard to find people who are, we’ll say, brave enough to do that, right?

Would they actually come on video? And it’s not just because we’re looking at their website.

It’s just hard to get people to come on video and audio on a live stream on YouTube. It’s not as easy as it seems.

But I can ask and we can try it. 1:15:31

Okay. 1:15:32

We’re back to larrikin definitions. I’m reading some funny comments.

Let’s see. 1:15:44

Okay, all right. 1:15:45

That was literally what Lewis said on that live stream. I don’t know what you’re referring to, though.

Hmm. Why do you keep helping that?

Yeah, he’s not going to take my suggestion anyway to improve it. So I don’t think you have to worry.

We should see BP 100 episodes boiling point 100. Where Kevin must build a page in a random page builder voted on by us.

So so fun. Hey, I’m, I’m up for that.

I don’t know if my blood pressure is up for that but for entertainment purposes I might do one or two I don’t know if we’d learn anything though would we learn anything all right let’s see Brendan says only 60 likes with 123 watching got to pump those numbers up yes definitely hit the likes okay question if you can fit it in oh we already did that one okay all right let’s keep going see I did scroll up way too far. 1:16:51

Okay, how about filters? 1:16:54

I don’t know what that means. All right, does the hero image have a overlay logo in the bottom right corner or is it the picture?

It was a different image. Good morning, everyone.

You’re late, Ruben, you’re late. Can Pio, Pio, I think you meant Pioneer.

I don’t, you’ve got me all confused, but it’s not Piotrnek for sure. Grid be even slightly useful compared to WP Grid Builder.

I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think it is. WP Grid Builder for fastening, in my opinion, is the best thing to go with.

Why are we looking at the pineapple and also what would you say on how to approach them for a redesign if they already have a company they work with? Oh, is Darcy I think Darcy’s new here.

Okay. Someone explained it to her.

So we’re good. What do you think about the new reloom sitemap AI builder?

I haven’t it so I don’t know. Didn’t know you cover this prototype okay.

Damn didn’t even see these trainings come out awesome. Yes yes yes yes yes they are they are good.

Very important trainings. Are the Zendesk sections going to be available as frames?

I mean some of them some of them already are some of them will be yeah Ruben super chat Ruben’s paying money now Ru Ruben is literally paying money now to protect to protect breakdance from scrutiny Was that a real super chat? I can’t even tell because I’m in a different app So I don’t even know if that’s a real super chat.

I got to refund your money, Ruben. Profile grid golf loop.

Oh yeah, Manny asked this and I said, hey, ask it on live and we’ll try to do it. So what we’ll do is we’ll go in profile grid golf.

Manny claims that profile grid golf is not working with a query loop. So what we’re going to do is look at that real quick.

So profile grid golf, publish, publish, edit, let’s see. Does anybody want me to rebuild that little restaurant hero section and get rid of those buttons and just see what a different approach might look like?

Put yes, rebuild it. Don’t just write yes in the chat because I won’t know what you’re, in a minute when my brain is off somewhere else I’ll forget what the yes applies to so put yes rebuild it and then I will know all right we need profile grid golf So I’m gonna refresh here.

Just make sure we’re bringing in the correct thing Profile grid golf how about we just bring in the whole section? all right, and You know bricks.

I just really wish bricks would toggle that shit by default import images, okay? Let’s try that again profile grid golf need some dummy images to see what the heck is going on here all right in order to query loop this we’re gonna need something to loop through and that means we’re gonna need yeah we don’t have anything on this install right here so we’ll just go people all right and let’s save I don’t even think we need anything else.

Oh, no, that was a field group. I’m sorry.

Post type, add new, people. People, person, persons, people.

I’m just playing around. All right, so add new post, person one, publish.

Let’s give them a featured image. Person one identifies as a Porsche.

Okay, let’s go back. You can identify as anything you want these days, you know, apparently.

Person two identifies as a flower. Okay, very good there.

We really only need two people to see if the loop works. So now what we’ll do is we’ll refresh the builder and I’m gonna switch microphones because I hate doing that with a microphone in my face.

Okay so now what we’ll do everybody good on audio we still working it’ll be a little more echoey but it should be okay we will get rid of this list item and this list item and we’ll use this loop right here and we will loop through our people which we’re already doing and we will go into our content wrapper and our media and we’ll get rid of that and we’ll say hey pull in the featured image and then we can go to the heading and we can go to the title and we can pull in the post title here and then we can refresh and Manny, oh wait, hold on, Amy Walker. Wait, where’s the, oh, right here, I’m sorry.

Title, ah, yeah, yeah, because it uses, this uses a modal. This does not take you to another page.

So what we need to do is go post title here. The title is their position, which we don’t have yet.

Okay, their position, which we don’t have a custom field for. So we need to pull their name into the button and then in the frames modal we need to go in here and our avatar needs to also be our oh it was already our featured image so that’s good and then in our info their name is going to be the oh it was already the post title look at all the stuff that’s just already done for you refresh person two person one right yeah yeah click on this.

I see a Porsche, I see person 1, I click on this, I see a flower and I see person 2. Manny, Manny, what’s not working my man?

What is not working? It looks, it looks good to me.

So did you see anything Manny there that you didn’t do on your version? I guess would be my question.

Did I just do anything that you didn’t do? So make sure that you and I have done the same things But this looks like everything is working just fine with a query loop and If you have any more information, or maybe what’s not working Drop that in as well Okay, let’s go on to the next question.

Will the sticky stackable card frame come out? Yes Is it possible to query posts from different post types in the same loop?

Two types of events mixed inside the same loop? Yeah.

Yeah that should not be a problem whatsoever. See this?

I can query posts and people in the same loop and you could actually just click in here and just do a you can just keep going I mean you could you can query damn near everything now would you want to probably not but with events let me what your questions again two types of events exhibitions and shows well oh hang on hang on hold the phone okay that would not be done with this right here you would want to do is so I can say people right and then you would come down to the terms area and this is where like your types of events exhibitions versus shows that should be a taxonomy not a different kind of post type. Post type describes the type of content and then taxonomies allow you to categorize that content.

And so an exhibition is a is a category of event and a show is a category of event. That’s taxonomies that are going to sort that out.

But an event is like a specific type of that’s why it’s called a post type, right? It’s a type of content, not a type of event, a type of content.

1:25:17 Okay.

1:25:17 But yeah, you can absolutely come in and say,

1:25:19 well, this particular loop is only gonna show events from this category and this category, and then I got a loop over here that shows events from this category and this category.

Yeah, yeah, you can do all that kind of stuff very easily. Very common stuff.

No, no, no, I will not watch Kevin build shit and a shit page builder not here for that. Okay, so yeah, there is an argument that while it would be fun and entertaining, you may not learn a lot.

It may just be for, you know, for those of you who like, who like to watch people’s blood boil, you know, but beyond that, not much more value. Are you planning a long live stream for Black Friday?

No, because I’ll be in Florida and I will not have all of my typical stuff. And so no.

Could you do a quick look tutorial, maybe a little deep on WP Grid Builder? I mean, yeah, I can look at it.

And I guess, you know, people that don’t have it may not know, but you know, you have to see me using it in I don’t use any. Here’s the thing.

WP if anybody, you know, send us the WP Grid Builder, right? Features.

Why don’t we just roast their site for a minute? It’s a beautiful site, by the way, beautiful site.

But here’s the thing. You know, we talk about extended compatibility with all these places.

Here we go. Advanced filtering system.

This needs its own page because they kind of just gloss over it. Look, now we’re into a card builder and now we’re into grid layouts.

And I’ll tell you right now, I don’t use any part of WP Grid Builder except for the facets. It’s the only reason I have it.

In fact, I wish it was a standalone thing that you could buy. Like you have to buy everything just to get the facets, unfortunately.

The facets are the best part about it. I don’t need grids.

I don’t need cards. I can build those on my own.

What I need are facets, and that’s really what this does. It’s not even really like a, it’s just kind of a glossed over feature it’s like the best part of WP grid builder is like been completely glossed over yeah they need to they need to improve that maybe make it a standalone product that’s what I would do okay I can show you like kind of you know what it does though would your WordPress theme plugins that be for somebody with a low budget $500 or $750?

No it’s not like a budget stack I wouldn’t call it a budget stack but I would also say that the amount that you invest in the stack the question is are you going to build a site for yourself and that’s it or do you aspire to be a freelancer or an agency that’s gonna have clients because if you’re gonna have clients then the prices for my stack are Inconsequential like a drop in the bucket like an afterthought like doesn’t even matter doesn’t even compute the people like oh I can’t afford XYZ in that stack either they don’t have clients or They are not charging anywhere near what they should be charging and they’re not running a management plan in a lot of cases which they should be doing. So it’s not a stack cost problem, it’s a service pricing problem or just a you know you don’t really have a business yet, maybe your business is just now getting off the ground and you don’t really have any clients or you know whatever the case may be.

But the minute you get even one serious client, the stack pays for itself. And so you don’t, it’s not like you need a big agency to afford the stack or justify the stack and you could be a freelancer with like, what’s the one serious client and if you plan on getting a second serious client at any point in the future, the stack is already, it’s already paid for.

So it’s not a big deal. But no, I wouldn’t say it’s like a cheap stack or anything like that.

It’s the necessary stack and you just do what’s necessary and then you price accordingly and you and but again it’s still a drop in the bucket. I mean what are we talking about?

Automatic CSS $99 a year. I mean you should be able to pay for that in like the first 1% of a real project.

Frames again, you charge for two wireframes even at you know minimal prices. If it’s a more than a two-page website and you’re billing for wireframes you just paid for frames.

So again it’s a drop in the bucket. It’s like, and then there’s ACF.

It’s not even a big stack. And Bricks is cheap.

Bricks is dirt cheap. All these page builders are dirt cheap.

I don’t ever wanna hear anybody complain about the cost of a page builder. Like, look at what you are doing with these tools.

I’m making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year using Bricks, and you think I don’t even know what it costs I don’t even have these tools when I go to buy them I don’t even look at the price like it’s just it doesn’t make any sense that the value disposition between what these tools costs and what they generate and revenue $249 do you yes I will pay $249. I would pay $249 a month based on what I do with the tool.

These things are dirt cheap. This is dirt cheap.

And I’m not saying like if you’re from a developing country or whatever, this could be expensive 1:31:31

to you. 1:31:32

If you’re broke, don’t say you’re poor. Don’t ever say you’re poor.

If you’re broke, this could be expensive to you at the current time. But being expensive at the current point in your life or in your circumstance is not true for everybody or true for the situation that the industry finds itself in.

There are plenty of freelancers and agencies making lots of money and $249 is not expensive to them. It’s dirt cheap to them.

Does anybody, by the way, pop quiz, why you should never, let’s say you have a dollar in your bank account right now. You don’t know where your next meal is going to come from.

You are struggling, struggling, struggling, and by the way, I’ve been there. I’ve absolutely been there for years on end, been there.

Right? My parents didn’t give me anything.

They gave me nothing. My parents actually were very well off.

Didn’t give me jack shit. Started working when I was 15 years old.

Moved out when I was like 17 or 18 years old. Paid for my own apartment.

Had two jobs. Everything was built from scratch.

Okay? So I’ve been broke plenty of times too.

I’ve had good businesses that then for whatever reason went broke after that. Okay?

Been there, done that. So I understand.

You could have a dollar in your bank account, you don’t know where the next dollar is going to come from, you don’t know where the next meal is going to come from. Maybe you got kids.

Maybe you don’t know what your situation is. But here’s the pop quiz.

Why should you never describe yourself as poor versus broke? What is the distinction between I’m broke and I’m poor?

Put your answers in the chat. I think it’s very important from a psychological perspective, philosophy perspective, why you should never describe yourself as poor.

But in any case, if you look at these prices relative to what you are capable of doing with the tool, not relative to the amount of money in your bank account at the current point in time. Relative to what this tool will allow you to do.

What door will this open and how much is the opportunity worth? This is a dirt cheap price.

Automatic CSS, dirt cheap price for what it opens the door to. That’s what I’m using as a comparison.

And that’s how you should, if you are ever hoping to have a successful business, that’s what you have to look at this as. There are certain industries, okay, I actually use this all the time, because this leaks into how people price their own web design services.

Let me get caught up in the chat here so I can see. Okay.

Yes, I’m going to, yes, okay, good. People are getting the answer right in the chat.

This leaks into how people price their own services. They’re like, my clients, you’ll hear this all the time, my clients can’t afford a $1,500 website or my clients won’t pay $2,500 for a website.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, the same clients are literally paying $15,000 for a website, $25,000 for a website. But keep this in mind.

Those same people, like when I owned a martial arts studio, I co-owned a martial arts studio, right? And in fact, the guy that I was the co-owner with, the other owner, he kind of suffered from this mentality as well.

He’s like, oh, you know, we can’t invest that much in our website. We got to put money in other areas, blah, blah, blah.

First of all, dude had a fucking Porsche SUV. Give me a fucking break, dude.

So it’s just a stupid business owner mentality a lot of times. But, you know, think about these business owners who just to get our location where that studio was, $60,000 a year.

$5,000 a month in rent for just the location. That’s nothing else.

Right? So you’re signing on to I will pay to have this business in a physical location.

I’m signing on, signing a lease, signing a contract saying I will pay $60,000 a year for the opportunity to have a business in this physical location. That’s not even I’m paying for members, I’m paying for marketing, I’m paying for anything else.

All the stuff that goes in that physical location, you’re saying for the opportunity to have a functional, profitable business in this physical location, I will agree to pay you $60,000 a year. And then you turn around and you’re like, well this, that company, they won’t, they won’t pay me $2,500 once for a website.

No, like they absolutely will. They can and they need to.

They need to pay more than that, in fact. They need to be paying, you know, ongoing for SE, because what they’re paying for is going to turn around and generate their business more revenue.

You have to look at it as an opportunity, right? What you’re investing in.

I’m working with a new client and you know, we’re going to propose a website to them. We’ve actually already proposed the whole project but we’re doing the discovery phase separately.

We’re doing the discovery phase first and then the proposal may change based on the discovery. Anyway, it’s a crane company.

They rent cranes, okay. We sat down and if this gives you any recollection or like, I’ve talked about this before, in how people deal with numbers in their business.

We go in, maybe with all this nonsense in our head about 5,000’s a lot, $7,500 is a lot. That’s a lot for a website.

That’s a lot for a business to invest in a marketing tool. We sit down, I’ve told you before I’ve been in sales conversations where they were prepared to pay $80,000 for a website.

Okay, and I have to repeat myself, I have to repeat these stories because we always have new people listening. But if you’re here and you’ve heard the story before, then it just re-ingrains it in your mind, right?

But anyway, there’s a new client, haven’t told this story before. So we go and sit down in the office and this guy goes, yeah, you know, he’s talking to his partner, right?

And they’re talking about, you know, their investments in the actual cranes. Because we were asking a bunch of questions about cranes and how you come to acquire cranes.

And this is a phenomenally expensive business to be in. And he’s like, oh, yeah.

I just signed on for a $6 million crane last week. A new crane.

They have 50 cranes. 50 cranes.

He just bought a new $6 million crane or something last week. I don’t even know if it’s six or seven.

I can’t remember how much it was. It was immediately though, my mind was like, okay, these people deal with outrageous numbers every day of their life, right?

Imagine you yourself, imagine you’re starting up a crane company. You got to get the first crane, okay?

You don’t have 50 cranes. You got to get the first crane.

Just think to yourself, signing on that line, how much is your hand going to be shaking, signing on for that first $6 million crane or whatever it is. Like, I hope this works, right?

These are the risks certain business owners take and they’re okay with it. And they’re okay with managing these large numbers, right?

And here you are like, I don’t know if they can afford a $5,000 website. It makes no sense.

You’re bringing your own baggage into how you’re pricing and approaching clients and talking to clients. You’ve got to get this shit out of your head.

And so I can immediately just tell you, somebody sweating over paying $249 for a page builder Like you know how far you have to go in your development as a business owner? Anybody with like just decent business sense would be like $249 let’s go.

I’m planning on making six figures minimum at what I’m doing here. $249 versus six figures.

How big of a gap is that? A pretty big fucking gap.

So you cannot sweat over $249 at any point in time if you hope to be successful. Just the fact that you’re sweating over the $249 means you’re unlikely to be successful because it means you don’t know how to think about business.

You don’t know how to think about the value of the tools that you’re investing in to do your job, to do your work, right? It’s a fundamental flaw in business thinking.

These kinds of prices are a drop in the bucket. They don’t require any thought or consideration.

I own all the page builders, just because it doesn’t matter. It’s like the cost is nothing compared to what you are going to be doing with these things.

So I want you to understand that because, you know, so many people who are trying to build a freelance business or an agency are stuck because they’re keeping themselves stuck. Their own baggage related to how they think about pricing and how they think about money and how they think about investing in tools and how they think about investing in people and everything, everything is all skewed toward the bottom and so they’re destined to be stuck on the bottom.

You’ve got to get your thinking to be more high level, to be more, you’ve got to think like successful people think. You have to think like wealthy people think, right?

And successful business owners. And so I’m trying to help you see that right now.

Hopefully that’s happening. Now, to answer the pop quiz, why don’t you say you’re poor?

Why do you say you’re broke regardless of your circumstance? And a bunch of people answered it properly, but in my mind, I’ve always gone with the philosophy of poor is a state of mind and broke is a temporary situation.

Poor people are poor because of their state of mind. If you have something now, if you’re broke for 20 years, you’re poor.

And that’s because of your state of mind. Nobody’s broke for 20 years, like 20 straight years of being broke, unless it’s their mentality.

Now, mind you, in a country with opportunity everywhere. So I’m basing it off that.

If you’re in a country with opportunity fucking everywhere around you, then you’re either taking advantage of that opportunity to whatever degree you’re taking advantage of it in or you’re poor. Now what’s the distinction?

There are people who their mentality keeps them poor. It’s really nothing else.

The people who are successful are typically successful because their mentality lends toward whatever level of success they’ve been able to achieve. My situation I look at all the time.

I’m like, okay, I’ve done a lot. I’ve done a lot, but why the fuck am I still down here?

Like, you know, I call myself out on that all the time. I said there’s got to be something broken about my fucking thinking.

Why I’m not, I haven’t taken better advantage of the opportunities that are available to me. I think that all the time and wonder that all the time.

And do my best to then align myself with other people who are way above me, because it’s like, well, surely I can find out from them what may be missing in this equation, right? And by the way, your net worth, it is true, your net worth does determine your net worth.

If you hang out with a bunch of poor people, you will be fucking poor for your entire life. You have got to get away from the other poor people and start hanging out with people who are more successful than you.

And that’s, you know, some people do that or don’t do that because of their ego, whatever it may be. They’re like, I don’t want to be surrounded by people who are better off than me.

You know, some people say they want to hang out with people who are worse off than them because it makes them feel good. It like, you know, well, hey, I may be doing bad, but I’m doing better than fucking Bob over here, right?

But you are keeping yourself down. You are keeping yourself down.

You should always be befriending and networking with people who are more successful than you and be willing to say, hey, I’m not the most successful person in the world, but I’m still working on it. I’m still working on it.

Every day is a work in progress. Alright what do we think?

I mean has anybody, does this align with you? I know some people get offended of course people on the internet get offended by everything in life.

But people get offended by the idea that poor people are poor because you know it’s always like somebody else’s fault. It’s always some magical circumstance that only affects this person.

Okay, there’s all these reasons. But then of course, we can look to people who were in that same circumstance, had those same afflictions, and yet were wildly successful.

1:44:59 And so what is the difference?

1:45:00 The key difference is mindset.

It’s how you think about the world around you. And if you believe you’re poor and think you’re poor, you will stay poor 100% 100% hmm okay I’m going to work for myself should I just promote myself as the business or as a business just wondered about perception from a company’s point of view it’s a popular question there’s there’s ways to leverage it both ways properly.

I trend towards the idea of, and let’s just go on philosophy here. Jack of all trades, master of none.

So if you present yourself as one person, you need to present yourself as one person who is a master at X. If you try to say, well I can come in and I’m going to handle your design, I’m going to handle your development, I’m going to handle your SEO, I’m going to handle your PPC, I’m going to handle, and then the list just keeps on going.

Now there are some unicorns in the world, okay, but immediately most companies are going to be scratching their head like, don’t think you’re an expert at all those things. Like which one are you actually really good at that you’re gonna handle?

Now if you go in and you’re like hey I heard you guys need a designer and I’m just a fucking baller designer and that’s all you say you’re a baller at then they’ll be like oh yeah let’s get this guy 100%. Now we’ll go find a developer somewhere else or whoever we need somewhere else but we definitely got to hire this guy because he’s a baller right?

So that works but if you’re gonna try to be like oh start to finish we handle I handle everything that’s a much much much tougher sell but if you’re like start to finish we handle everything now that makes sense like now you’re like oh I’ve got this guy for this and I’ve got this guy for this and it doesn’t mean that’s a need to mean that they’re employees right it doesn’t need to mean that they’re on W-2 payroll right it just needs to mean that you have contacts, you have connections, you’ve got people that have the expertise to come in and do this work and knock it out of the park. And whether they’re contractors or partners, that part doesn’t matter.

So it really depends on how you’re approaching a business and what you’re offering them, right? I think that needs to be the key distinction.

Okay, let’s see. Company I spoke with don’t even think their website is important yet their business is one of the biggest in the area.

Nobody knows them. They struggle to make ends meet.

Crazy people. Great thing to bring up Scott.

If a company doesn’t believe their website is important, they should not be your client. That is the biggest red flag of all the red flags, right?

Don’t try to convince them, don’t try to get them, just walk away, just go find somebody else. And I said this on a previous livestream, but it needs to be said again and again and again and again and again, because everybody needs to hear it, and they need to hear it over and over and over and over and over again.

Because actually, one of the biggest mistakes I see in prospecting is people will go find businesses in their local area who have shitty websites from 2007 and they’ll outreach to them because they’re like, well, clearly this website sucks and look how old it is. I’ll easily be able to approach this business and say, hey, your website’s from 2007.

It absolutely sucks. We’ll obviously say it nicer than that, but you want to sign up for a new website?

Because that’s what I, I, I happen to do. And that’s the worst pitch ever.

It’s the worst strategy ever. That will completely waste all of your time.

Right? You have a limited amount of time to, and in that limited amount of time, you have to do work and you got to find clients.

Well, if you want to waste that time, use that strategy that I just mentioned. Okay?

Go find people with shitty websites that are old and out of date and try to sell them new websites. Worst strategy on planet earth.

Why? Because these people have already shown they don’t value their website.

They don’t value having an up to date website. They haven’t touched it or thought about it since 2007.

They just don’t care. They don’t think it’s important to their business.

They don’t know how to leverage it. And the idea that you’re going to convince them?

No, you may convince a very tiny percentage. You are going to waste so much time in the process going from person to person to person trying to convince these people.

The people you need to find are the people who have updated their website recently, you know, within the last three years. And clearly they’ve done some of these things but maybe they’re not getting great results.

Maybe they’re positioned 9 or 10 instead of 2 or 3 or 1 right. So they’ve shown though the important distinction is they’ve shown a willingness to invest in the site, they’ve shown a willingness to invest in online and digital marketing by doing SEO, by doing maybe the SEO wasn’t done right, but at least they invested in it.

Maybe the PPC wasn’t done right, but at least they invested in it. They’re showing an effort, they’re showing a willingness to pay for these things, and they want results from their website.

Those are the people you need to go after. Do not go after people who clearly do not value their online presence.

That is the most easiest way to waste all of your time and get zero dollars. All right again got to say that multiple times.

Yeah Richard says I’ve literally done this contacting a small local company because their website is dated. Yep.

Okay how do you manage freelancers costs on profit first method? Do you subtract these expenses before allocating the revenue or just use the expenses account.

Because your expenses in like profit first land are likely going to be around 35%, 30%. Obviously the lower you can keep expenses the better.

But within that 30%, let’s say it’s 30%. So within that 30% you got to pay for all your tools.

Here’s the thing, let’s go back to the martial arts studio example. What did I say you had to agree to?

$60,000 a year just to have the physical spot. Not the people that are going to be in it, not the equipment that’s going to be in it, not nothing else.

Just $60,000. And by the way, to have that physical location, it’s not just $60,000 because that physical location has water, it has electricity, it has gas, it has all these utilities that you have to pay for, it has a mailbox, it has all this shit, right?

And that’s what you’re agreeing to just for the opportunity to have a business. Now compare that to your web design agency that’s going to be run out of a room in your house, right?

There is no $60,000 a year agreement for a lease. The water, electricity, that shit was all being paid for already.

What are you having to pay for? Your computer doesn’t have, I don’t think, a monthly fee attached to it.

You bought a computer or you already had a computer, okay? So that’s not even a factor.

You’re looking at what we’re looking at right here on the screen. A few plugins.

And people are like, no, I only want lifetime plugins, we’re not going to do the monthly thing. You’re not going to do the monthly thing, because it’s what, $99 a year?

You know, the $9 a month is really putting your business over the top? What are we talking about?

What the fuck are we talking about here that we’re not going to pay some relatively small annual fees for plugins when other real businesses in the real world have to agree to an enormous amount of monthly expenses to even exist to even exist we’re using the tools to actually do the work that these businesses are having to pay money it’s just to exist that’s 20 times the amount that we’re complaining about in terms of plugin fees or whatever it is. So you see where it doesn’t, people complaining about this kind of thing are not business people.

They’re not, they have no idea how to build a business. No idea if that’s what they’re complaining about.

Real business owners don’t complain about that. I just, that’s just the facts.

Real business owners do not complain about that. Especially people who have built a business in the real world.

The idea that you would take somebody who bought a $150,000 franchise, right? Somebody who has to, that’s actually low.

Think about if I want to open a brick and mortar franchise restaurant near me or something. Write a check for $500,000 just to get started, right?

Just for the opportunity to run this franchise. Then all the expenses that come along with it.

Yet people do that, successful people do that day in and day out, day in and day out, gladly. Why?

Because they know it’s going to generate millions of dollars. So their expenses that they’re looking at, in their mind, are calculated not on the size of the expense, but the size of the expense relative to the opportunity that it gives them, that they know they’re going to be able to take advantage of because they’re smart people with experience.

And they know that they’re going to be able to turn that $500,000 expense into millions and millions and millions of dollars in annual revenue and profit. And they will take that deal all fucking day.

Every day they will take that deal. And yet here, and so you take somebody who’s used to those numbers, and you’re like, by the way, I have a business, the idea for you, you know, if you’re interested, it’s this concept of building a digital agency.

And they’re like, oh, how much does it cost to get started? And you’re like, well, brace yourself, brace yourself, you know, you’re looking at probably a few hundred dollars in annual plug-in fees.

Hope that’s not too much for you to handle. Like this makes no, the disconnect here, it makes no fucking sense, no fucking sense, that anybody would ever complain about that.

Who knows anything about business? This is just, it’s like the number one clue.

You know, we talk about red flags, like for clients. Number one red flag that somebody doesn’t know how to build a business is they complain about plug-in fees.

These things are, and by the way, I’m sorry if this is you okay sometimes the truth is hard to hear but the minute you free yourself from this poor thinking this is poor thinking okay the minute you free yourself from this the more successful you will be but complaining about annual licenses for plugins is poor thinking when you’re using these plugins to generate tens of thousands of dollars in revenue. Now if you’re like well I don’t generate that but that’s not the plugins fault that’s just the business’s fault right maybe your marketing sucks maybe your sales sucks maybe whatever but you got to fix those problems complaining about the plug-in is not going to solve those problems and it’s not going to make your business suddenly better and LTDs are not going to make your business better either.

Businesses have ongoing expenses. It is a fact of life as a business owner and an entrepreneur.

You have to figure out how to make revenue grossly outpace expenses. If you can’t do that, then you don’t have a business.

You have an expensive hobby, right? But complaining about the expenses is not going to make the business any better and it’s not going to make you a better business owner either.

Okay yes hobbyists complain about price and again there will be some people that get up in their feels because of this conversation and you know people call it like you know elitist and then you know people have said this stuff about my tools like oh it should be freely available to anybody to leverage to you It’s like man. This just makes no sense no sense whatsoever And but yeah by the way by the way So what Steve says mark plugins up and charge them out to clients to use sites blah blah blah blah blah You don’t have to do that there’s a concept in our industry that’s, I mean, widely exploited.

It is the website management fee. The fee people pay for their website on an ongoing basis for us to do hosting and backups and security and performance and yada yada yada yada yada and a laundry list of other things, right?

Well what comes along with that is our ability to also charge for the licensing of the plugins that we choose to use. Now if you’re like well my management fee is $29 a month and you’re like that doesn’t really pay for my tools I’m like yeah it shouldn’t be $29 a month.

Well what should it be? I don’t know at least like $99 a month or something and you can even go up from there and they’re like well I don’t I can’t get anybody to pay $99 a month.

Then your sales skills suck. It’s not like, no, I get it.

Like nobody wants to look at them. You know, the people who are like, my clients won’t pay $2,500 for a website.

You know why they say that? Because it feels better to them to believe that clients won’t pay $2,500 for a website than it is for them to believe that they suck at sales and that they like that’s my two options I can be like they won’t pay $2,500 for a website or I can just say I fucking suck at sales I don’t know what I’m doing I’m not a very good business owner therefore I can’t find people who will pay $2,500 for a website that’s not super comfortable to admit so we’d rather admit that magically these people I come into contact with just won’t pay $2,500.

When magically the people I come into contact with, they’ll never pay $2,500 because I won’t even propose a website for $2,500. We’re going to start at six.

Let’s just start at six and go up from there. And suddenly these people, these same kinds of people are paying eight, 12, 15 and up for websites that other people insist they would never pay $2,500 for.

So what’s the difference? What’s the disconnect?

Skill, ability, experience, whatever. But again, it’s uncomfortable for people to just be like, I suck at sales or I suck at XYZ, that’s why they won’t pay $2,500 versus, you know, the reality.

I work for times two fortune, oh I think you’re saying two fortune 500 businesses. As lead yet I’m trying to oversell myself to idiots making me the idiot.

Let’s see the moment you free yourself from a poor mindset you’ll want to slap a random person with a $10,000 invoice. Okay so let’s tie this up, let’s just wrap this up for everybody who is in that boat and watching, okay?

Because we still have good viewership here and I think a lot of people are in this boat. I want you to realize, first what I want to do is I want to empathize with you because when I was broke and when I first got into web design for making, for earning money right to try to whether it was supplement my income or whatever else I was doing or finally to just be like I’d rather you know try to do this full-time and I was in those more broke mindsets and had a you know very little experience and selling it’s a classic example of like you can build the websites and you have a lot of experience there but you don’t have experience in selling websites to people that’s another skill.

Go read the e-myth. The e-myth plagues our industry.

The e-myth describes a person who is great at the thing that they do but terrible at business. Right that’s that’s the whole reason that the e-myth book exists and if you’re if you’re wanting to be an entrepreneur or business person you’ve never read the email.

It’s like the first book every business owner should read. Any business owner who has a skill that they’re gonna build a business around, that has to be the first book you ever read.

You gotta read a lot of books beyond that, but that should be the first one you ever read because it describes what plagues most people with an actual skill who try to build a business. They’re great at the skill and they believe in their mind, because I’m great at X, I can build a great business doing

2:02:30 X.

2:02:31 That is a myth.

That’s why it’s called the E-myth, the entrepreneur myth, right? You’ve got to escape that myth as step number one.

Building a good business requires good business skills. It has nothing to do with the skill you’re building the business around, okay?

So that’s number one. Number two is when you are broke and you haven’t done great things in business like you’ve never gotten a person to say yes to a website over $2,500 let’s say.

So in your mind in your experience in your vision of the world let’s put on glasses that have you written on them. This is you, these are your glasses, I’m looking at the world through your glasses and these are glasses I used to have on where nobody’s ever paid more than $2,500 for a website.

That’s what my glasses are showing me, right? And somebody comes along and they’re saying you know you should be charging like 10 grand for that website, not $2,500.

In your mind, this is like, how the fuck am I ever going to get from where I’m at to getting someone to say yes for $10,000? I can’t even imagine that.

But then you take somebody who sold websites for $50,000 and $75,000 and somewhere in those ranges, right? And you go to them and you say, hey, I’ve got an opportunity for you, looks like a $10,000 website.

That person, see we have one person, their glasses are telling their brain, I can’t even fucking fathom that, I would love those opportunities all day long, hopefully with any luck, I’ll land one of them. But this other guy over here looking through his glasses where he’s normally doing $30,000 projects 50,000 whatever he’s like That’s a waste of my time like can you give that just give that to somebody else?

I don’t have time for that that’s a 2:04:33

gigantic 2:04:34

juxtaposition between these two people and here’s the thing that person that has that Disposition now or they’re like that’s a waste of time you can actually become that person you can become like I used to look at the $10,000 project as, man, can’t even fathom getting one of those. But now, I look at it as, I don’t even think I have time for that.

I probably don’t have time for that one. Let’s skip on that one.

The same person can live in both worlds. The person who couldn’t even fathom it can then, years later, live in that new world, in that new reality.

And what is the difference? The only difference is their mentality, their mindset and their skills.

You do have to have sales skills. You do have to have, you do have to know how to put a proposal together.

You have to know how to put a statement of work together. You obviously have to know how to build the website, right?

You have to know what makes a website successful. You have to know a lot of things.

You have to develop in a lot of different areas, but you absolutely can’t. That’s the whole point of the inner circle by the way is Going through that development process and people are doing it left and right so people that couldn’t fathom doing a website for $2,500 are now selling $10,000 websites And they’re well on their way to doing a $25,000 website And I’ve talked about the tiers that people go through if you can break the $5,000 tier your next year is 20,000 or 25,000 or somewhere in there.

Now the tiers get further apart as they go up so like when you do a $25,000 project the next year is like 50 right anything like 25 to 35 is not a big leap okay next year is 50 when you’ve hit 50 it becomes like 75 and so on, right? And by the time you get to like 25, if you hit 25 on just the first time, the first time you get a client to sign on for a $25,000 project, you will not be interested in the slightest in a $2,500 project.

It will not, the thing that is now your ceiling will no longer even be your floor. I’m not even interested in $2,500 projects.

Because you have this like newfound confidence and that’s why I say it’s all mindset. Confidence is like the biggest piece of this puzzle.

It’s why somebody can go in and propose a $2,500 website to somebody and be like shaking like oh I hope they say yes and another person can walk into that same person’s office and slap down a proposal for $15,000 or $20,000 and get them to say yes. And a lot of times a $2,500 person will be declined for the project because the client even knows.

I shouldn’t be paying $2,500 for this. I should be paying much more than that.

It’s like I’ve used the analogy all the time. You would never go buy a Porsche for $600, right?

Immediately your thought is like, what the fuck is wrong with it? So, but again, people who aren’t business minded, aren’t finance minded, they don’t even compute this in their head.

And it’s not that they can’t, it’s like that’s just their situation right now. We gotta get them out of that situation.

We gotta get them thinking in a different way, thinking in a different direction. I’d explain you invested in skills and your stack and have more experience now I was in the same boat a few years after starting out.

Yes, correct. How do you approach pitching a $3,000 redesign to a client you previously built a $500 site for I screwed up going cheap when starting out.

That’s very very very very easy to to approach approach and to tackle. And it’s going to start with the number one sales skill.

Right now, pop quiz, pop quiz, you have 30 seconds to write what is the number one sales skill. I’ve said it many times in the Inner Circle trainings.

So if you’re an Inner Circle member, you already know. But maybe there’s a chance you know outside of the Inner Circle.

But quiz. What is the number one sales skill?

Let’s see. Let’s see.

Come on chat. Oh!

OGC Digital right out of the gate. Puts it down.

Puts it down. He beat y’all.

He beat y’all to a sheet. I don’t even know.

Oh look, Amanda got it too. Amanda got it too.

Kudos, kudos, positive indifference. So let’s say I screwed up, I sold a site for $500 to this client and it’s what, two years later, three years later, time for a refresh and update.

I’ve learned so much between now and then and I realize all the things that I did wrong and I realize how you know they’re not getting the results that they need to be getting because we didn’t do SEO for them, we didn’t do PPC for them, I’ve learned all these new skills in the inner circle, I got so much more to offer and so I’m going to go back to the table and I’m going to say hey look I’ve grown a lot over this period of time. You know first I would start with I have not been seizing the opportunities that are available to you as a business, right, with this website.

The website should be your number one, your central marketing hub for all things digital marketing. That’s what your website should be.

You should be ranking number one, two, three for these keywords, but you know what? We didn’t build that a service area network for you.

I didn’t know that at the time, I know it now. I’ve done a lot of education between now, or between then and now.

We should be doing PPC for you all day. There’s so much tremendous opportunity in PPC and I looked at your competitors, they’re all doing PPC and you’re not doing PPC.

I want to do these things for you. I’m going to propose a new project, right?

And you propose it and you go into this proposal with positive indifference. You are excited about all these opportunities that they can now take advantage of because of the growth that you have had over the last couple of years.

You’re excited to do this for them, you’re excited to get the results for them, but if they say no because they’re a $500 red flag client who doesn’t really understand why they need to invest in all this stuff, you are 100% okay with just walking away. Right?

And you know, at some point you probably got to let them know you know I can’t afford to manage your website anymore. This is why I said you don’t want guys you again this is hard for somebody who in their mind is like I don’t even know how I’m going to get someone to pay $3,500 for a website.

In my estimation you don’t want someone that will only pay $3,500 for a website. You don’t want that client.

You want a client who is successful, who has money, and is going to be a good long-term partner for you, right? You want somebody who, after you build the $10,000 website, is signing on for the $2,500 a month retainer for SEO and PPC, or whatever it may be.

Somebody that literally tells you, we want to dominate our local area. We want to be the number one result in our local area.

We want to do XYZ on social media or whatever. We have the resources to do it.

We’re ready to invest. That’s the kind of person who you want.

The person you have to convince to do all of these things and it’s like pulling teeth. This is a waste of your time.

It is a waste of your energy. You’re not going to be able to scale a business around them.

You need clients who are willing to invest in these things and willing to invest good money and presumably get results. So I look at it as like a $3,500 client.

If you have to convince somebody, let’s say you propose $5,000. You say it’s going to be a $5,000 website.

They’re like, oh, man, they start sweating, they’re like, I think $3,500 is like, that’s the most we can do. Walk the fuck away, walk away.

Even if, I understand, some of you are like, dude, you know what I can do with that $3,500? You know how many meals are in that $3,500?

You know my rent is in that $3,500, right? And I’m saying, walk the fuck away.

Because what you’re going to do is you are going to do probably $7,500 of work if we’re being honest for $3,500. You’re taking a giant loss, okay.

You’re now distracted with a $3,500 project that yeah, will pay for your next meal and will pay for your rent this month, but won’t do jack shit for you after that. Yet you’ll be tied up thinking about this thing for the next two, three months.

We know that client’s going to have delays in getting you things that you need and this project’s going to drag on. And see, I’m fine with the project dragging on when they paid me $25,000.

They paid me $3,500, dog. Like that sounded good back when you gave me the $3,500.

That was three months ago. That $3,500 is long gone, right?

What incentive do I have to give a fuck about you anymore? Right?

Now, I need to honor my promises, but that’s why I’m telling you don’t fucking make that 2:14:10

promise. 2:14:11

Don’t, do not sign on that line. Walk away.

Walk away from that project. Go find somebody who when you say $5,000, they say, let’s rock and roll.

Let’s go. And then when you propose the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, they say let’s go.

And now you’re paying your bills on an ongoing basis because you actually have a good client. And then you go get another good client and another good client and another good client and you can only get the next good client by saying no to all the clients who are not good.

So when you say $5,000 and they say, oh I don’t know maybe maybe $3,500. Nope, see you later Jack.

I gotta go find somebody with money, who’s willing to pay, right? That is the best thing you can do, is turn down those kinds of projects.

You got a client who’s like, you know, oh yeah, well we just want the website. All we need is a brochure, how many times you heard that?

All we need is a brochure website, I don’t think we need to do the SEO and the PPC and the, well how are you gonna get traffic, dog? How are you gonna get traffic?

No, I’m not in the business of building brochure websites for people. I don’t want that money.

I don’t want that client. Why?

Because I don’t want that distraction. I am intently focused on finding businesses who want to leverage the internet to grow tremendously, right?

And so every client I say yes to that’s not in that bucket is a distraction from my objective. I do not want a client who wants a brochure website.

They are an anchor. They are going to drag you to the bottom of the ocean and drown you.

Slowly, and it’s going to be very painful. It’s going to be very, very painful.

You have got to cut them loose as soon as possible. Only look for clients who are willing to invest in the work that you do on an ongoing basis preferably.

Best advice I can give you. All right, we got to go.

We got to go. I got work to do.

We got to get out of here. Hope this was valuable for you.

We’ll be back, not next week, because I’ll be speaking at a conference. I’ll be back the week after that most likely.

And we’ll be back on track with WDD Live. Make sure you toss us some likes on the stream, drop some comments down below.

Those inner circle trainings that I told you about earlier, tens of thousands of dollars in revenue, don’t walk, run to those trainings. Watch them and implement them in your business.

Watch them and implement them in your business. Alright, I’m out guys, I love you, thanks for the support, thanks for being here, peace.