Web Design for Dommies 003 – Live Web Design & Development Critiques

0:00:00
Yo, what’s up everybody? Welcome back. It is 2023. This is the first episode of Web Design for Dummies. Now, I’m going to get into what Web Design for Dummies is, just to make sure everybody’s on the same page as we kick off the new year with this episode. But I have some other announcements and just some things to talk about, some loose ends to tie up before we really get into it. But it looks like there’s already a few people here.

0:00:29
We’ve got Symphronics is hyped for today’s stream. Let’s see, ditto, happy new year everyone from Tripwire, grabbing a cup of coffee and waiting for the live session. We got Ruben here, Dan is here ready for his golden nuggets. Excellent, Ninjas here, happy new year. Yes, drop in the comments let me know where you’re watching from. Say hi, especially if it’s not your first time here. You know, say hi to everybody that you’re used to watching with. First thing you’re going to notice is we’ve got a little bit new setup here. We got a little bit new camera position. I figured that a straight on shot is probably going to elevate things a little bit, make things a little bit more personal.

0:01:20
It does for sure make it easier for me to talk to you guys, right? I used to have to like look off to the side when I wanted to talk to you and then go back to what I was doing here. But now I can just talk to you. And it’s kind of like, well, hold on, if the camera’s right there, where’s the screen? And so I kind of, I did a lot of work with some different setups I was really trying to fact I didn’t want I’m sure you’ve seen the traditional where it’s like you put the camera above the monitor and it kind of looks down on it did not Want that I don’t like that angle whatsoever. It’s like it’s like a webcam angle Not to mention that these screens are pretty large. So, you know, it would be pretty high it would it would it would look kind of Awkward so going above the monitor was not an option.

0:02:03
So I don’t know, I might take a picture of it cause I know people will ask, but basically what I did is I just have my two monitors and they’re kind of angled slightly and they, they basically merge at the lens of the camera. So I’m looking through like a small narrow crease, the camera is and then I have my two monitors right there on either side of it and they’re kind of angled in. So, you know, while I’m working, you’ll slightly be looking at the you know side of my face but mainly it’s just I get to talk to you straight on which is a lot more comfortable for me and I think that the final production value is increased by having the camera in this position I don’t know what do you what do you guys think is this a better this a better camera angle for for what we do here okay so that’s number one number two you’ll notice that we are doing web design for dummies today.

0:02:53
When in fact, this was the time slot or the actual spot on the calendar for digital agency table talk. So the question is, why are we not doing a digital agency table talk today? Why are we doing web design for dummies? We’re doing web design for dummies because we are going to be doing web design for dummies weekly now. Live every Wednesday at 11 a.m.

0:03:15
So if you like Web Design for Dommies, then go ahead and put this on your calendar because it is going to repeat over and over again. I will be here every Wednesday, live at 11 a.m. for Web Design for Dommies. That doesn’t mean that I won’t be doing digital agency table talk. Digital agency table talk is gonna be moving to a podcast format. And here’s why we’re doing this, right?

0:03:36
And I posted this in the inner circle. We all had a big conversation about it, a lot of feedback, a lot of comments. And I originally proposed it because digital agency table, hold on, I got to ban this spammer. Okay, digital agency table talk is not nearly as much of a visual show. Web design for dummies, obviously we have to be looking at the screen, right? So that makes sense to have on YouTube and be a normal live show, all of that good stuff. Web Design for Dummies, no, sorry, a digital agency table talk can absolutely just be a podcast.

0:04:10
And I’m actually going to build more structure into that podcast and I’m going to expand it a little bit. So we’re going to be talking about specific topics on each episode. So it won’t be random anymore. So there’ll be specific topics that I want to cover. It might just be me sometimes, but it also might be a special guest, like another industry expert person, or it could be another agency owner, like we’ve done in the past, or it could actually be a client, like a real client might be on a digital agency table talk.

0:04:51
So it’s going to be good, but you gotta give me a little bit of time to get everything set up. So I gotta get the podcast going, I gotta get some artwork created, I gotta get it into the iTunes directory, I gotta get all that stuff set up, and then we will be rocking and rolling with Digital Agency Table Talk. And the really good benefit of that, I’ll still post it on YouTube, so all the Digital Agency Table Talk episodes will still be posted to YouTube.

0:05:16
But for those of you who like to listen to things while you’re driving, while you’re doing yard work, while you’re running errands, whatever you’re doing, you wanna, or you’re just laying in bed at night, you wanna listen to something and not have to watch it, you can get Digital Agency Table Talk, all those golden nuggets that come up in Digital Agency Table Talk, you can get those just through a podcast format now, so that’s gonna be good.

0:05:38
All right, so that’s one big change. We also got a new microphone. It’s not a new microphone, it’s my old podcasting microphone. So I brought it back out to get ready for Digital Agency Table Talk as a podcast, and it’s gonna improve the audio situation here on these live streams. This thing is temporary. This is, it’s gigantic.

0:06:02
It’s one of the alternate wind screens that they give you with these SM7Bs. I’m waiting on I reorder the normal windscreen. So this will not be quite so big and in my face when the actual real windscreen comes. But yeah, audio should be a little bit better. There is a new lens on the camera, which is going to improve dramatically, because if you watch the old episodes and all my trainings and all of that, you see right, hold on, right there, all in this area, there would be a vignette. And a vignette is not something that I was adding in post-production because who would do that?

0:06:39
It looks kind of corny. And it was actually physically caused by the old lens because my old lens needed an adapter for my camera because it’s a mirrorless camera and that was not a mirrorless lens. There’s a lot of technical things, right? But I actually got a RF lens for this R six over the holidays and now no more vignette. And so, uh, that’s really, really good. It’s also a little bit sharper as well. Okay. So I don’t know. We got a lot of stuff out of the way. We’re about to pull up our first website.

0:07:06
Let’s talk about web design for Dom. He’s what we do here. We pull up real websites that people submit. If you want to submit your website for critique. You can go down in the description below this video and you will find a link. You click on the link, you fill out the form, and then your website is in the queue to be critiqued. Now here’s how this works. We are going detailed in our critiques. We are going through different areas of a critique. So a lot of people who do website critiques will just critique the SEO.

0:07:43
I critique everything. I critique as in-depth as we possibly can. UX, UI, copywriting, conversion optimization, SEO, the whole gamut, right? And then I actually will often critique the development quality as well. We pull up the DOM. It’s a famous saying around here, show me your DOM, right? We pull up the DOM, we inspect the page, we take a look at how certain things are done, see if a website is following best practices in terms of HTML5 or accessibility.

0:08:15
So really when you think about website critiques, these critiques should be blowing all the other critiques out of the water because we cover so much and spend time, the appropriate amount of time on every single website and we really dive in to the details. So we should make these critiques way better and way more valuable than critiques that anybody else is doing. But because we don’t go fast, you know, we spend each episode is like maybe two or three websites that we critique instead of 10 or 12.

0:08:49
It is a little bit harder to get your website critiques, but make sure you fill out the form, make sure you are in the queue. You can see Ian right here. Ian says, the critique you did of mine was incredibly helpful. And that’s the whole point here. We wanna give value to the person whose site we are critiquing, but also we just wanna give value to everybody who is watching equally, right?

0:09:12
So it doesn’t even matter if your site is getting critiqued or not a lot of the things that I talk about are concepts that you can immediately take to your own website make the same kinds of approved improvements and adjustments and You’re getting value just the same So yeah, it’s great if your specific site gets pulled up and we do a critique on that But it’s just as good if you’re just watching other people’s websites get critiqued doesn’t even matter if they’re in the same industry as you or what have you. Now a couple things I wanna say about this. I am developing a checklist. It is a critique checklist. And what I would like to do, because right now I just kind of go on feel.

0:09:51
I just pull up a site and I’m like, all right, let’s look at this first, let’s look at that next, whatever. I wanna make it more structured if possible. I wanna develop an actual checklist and literally for every website, we just go down the same checklist. Let’s look at the same exact types of things in this specific order and what I think that’s going to do for people is it’s going to be able to, it’s going to help you take that checklist to your own website and run down it the exact way that I run down it with other websites.

0:10:20
It’s going to be able to make it easier for you to critique your own sites, but when you’re doing client work, make sure you’re checking all these appropriate boxes, all these really critical boxes for the sites you are building for clients. It’s gonna make the work that you do even easier and even better, all right? So I think that’ll, you know, bringing a little bit of structure to how we do things here should help, okay?

0:10:44
You’ll notice, and you know, just hopefully I make it through this whole stream. I didn’t even know if this stream was gonna happen. The last week and a half I’ve been sick. Really the only thing I’ve had is just a really bad cough, but like two days ago I ended up losing my voice. And I was like, oh, I don’t know if Web Design for Dummies is gonna happen. Miraculously, my voice has returned, but I’m just hoping it stays here throughout the entire live stream.

0:11:11
I think it will, but just warning you in case, okay? All right, guys, are you ready for the first website? Let me go ahead. Before we get started, I’m gonna pull this up. While I pull this up, I should say, go ahead and hit the like button, okay? It’s really important on these live streams to get some likes going so that we can get this live stream in front of other people. You gotta feed the algorithm a little bit.

0:11:34
So drop some likes, and I’m gonna go ahead and pull up the first website. Okay. All right. Let me screen share right here Okay. So what we have here is GS LAS G slash best dose dot a you I don’t know what the GS LAS means It’s a little bit GSL G GS L. Okay, the logos is GSL. Okay, so right off the bat, I’m a little confused. And we don’t want people to be confused when they arrive at the website, but it’s like, okay, hold on, what company is this?

0:12:15
I can see obviously it’s in Australia. I don’t know if GSL is the brand name. I don’t know if this is a location in Australia. I don’t know exactly what’s going on. That kind of looks like Australia to me. A little, is that what we’re looking at here? In terms of the logo? So I don’t know. Little confusing there. Asbestos removal, I don’t know how to pronounce this word, guys, I don’t, asbestos, is that it?

0:12:38
Okay, asbestos. Some people say asbestos, I’m sure. I don’t know, asbestos. I’m just gonna do it as it’s spelled. Asbestos removal and demolitions. We remove the harmful products, recycle the unwanted materials, and help you reclaim your home for the future. Okay? We’re going to come back to the copy in just a minute.

0:13:03
I’m just going to read as we go. Professional and qualified services. Okay, I’m going to tell you right off the bat that this headline does absolutely nothing for SEL, for sales, for nothing okay that’s okay oh you know what I just saw I just took a peek I took a peek at the DOM and it looks like this is a site built with frames all right so that’s good to know but I’ll just tell you copywriting wise here we go again this is like the general test when you write copy let me talk back to here, when you write copy, read it and ask yourself, could anybody say this about anything on any website on the internet? Like any services based website? If the answer to that question is yes, you have not written good copy. Okay, so again professional and qualified services. I have a business doing a service, it doesn’t matter what service it is. Could I write professional and qualified service? Yes.

0:14:06
So because anybody can say it, it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t have any value. And you know you’re not it’s not relative to asbestos removal. It’s not it’s not relative to anything. It’s just it’s extremely generic. So this is an automatic rewrite. Okay because it doesn’t pass the first test. The first test is can anybody say if I took this out of context and just slapped it on another service website, could it be there? Could it exist? Yeah, if that’s the case then it probably doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t have any value. This would be another example of that. Let’s run it through the exact same test. A quality job Now, this part probably may not sit on any other random service-based website, but it also gives zero inclination to the person here of what’s going on, of what leaves no trace of what behind.

0:15:02
You’re assuming that I already know a lot about asbestos and, you know, how the removal process works and do other, I don’t know, do other asbestos removal companies leave asbestos behind? I would imagine that they don’t. So could they all just say this? It doesn’t have any value. It’s way too generic. Therefore it’s not going to do the job of convincing anybody or selling anybody on the service. Ensure the health and wellness of your friends, family, staff, and neighbors.

0:15:37
Asbestos is a hazardous material that is often discovered when you least expect it, and one that must be removed properly to prevent future harm to those you care about. Okay, I’m not big on this paragraph as well, because these are, if I’m looking for an asbestos removal company, I already know it’s hazardous and I need to get rid of it. So we talk about, you know, classic in sales, classic in copywriting is like you define a problem, so the problem is asbestos, right?

0:16:07
And then you agitate the problem, so you go into detail as to why this problem is just horrible. It’s just a horrible problem to have. I need those details. The fact that it’s a hazardous material and then it needs to be removed, I already know those details. You’re not agitating anything, right? You’re not making this worse in my mind. You’re not giving me any urgency, okay? You need to tell me some things here that scare the, hold on, wait, hold on.

0:16:36
No, dang it, which one is it? Hold on, I had it, guys. For all of those of you who are like, Kevin, you gotta stop, you gotta stop cussing. And plus, I did hear that YouTube is scanning content and because they don’t know what’s supposed to be on YouTube kids versus normal YouTube, whatever. I don’t know. They’re they’re like, you know, demoting content that has that has cursing in it. I don’t know unless I don’t know how it works, but in case they are. Here we go. So I don’t know what I was about to say. Oh, yeah. You’ve got to have some points that scare the out of me.

0:17:08
All right. You see that you see live censoring. We’ve got live censoring now on the show. I thought about that over the holidays. I was like, you know, I got to, there’s got to be a placeholder there or something for it. Okay, so you’ve got to write content that scares the ever living s*** out of me. You understand? Not, you know, not literal, but right now this doesn’t do anything. It does not agitate the situation. And so it doesn’t move the person further towards, you know, converting here Reconciliation acknowledgement GSL asbestos and demolition. Okay, so we finally get our way to the company name I’m assuming that’s what’s going on here. This needs to be at the top. You know like this this logo Does not communicate anything for anybody So let’s get you know, at least the name of the company up there and By the way, you have keywords in the name of your company.

0:18:02
So it would make sense to have them up here as well. Lets people know right away that like, hey, this is the company for me, right? Okay. GSL. I don’t know. What do they do? They could do a lot of things. Do they just do asbestos removal is like one of their services or are they like experts at this? Well, if you just put the name of the company, I would probably know, Oh, these are experts in asbestos removal. So you’ve got the tool right here, you’ve just got to use it, put it up here. All right, acknowledges and pays respect to the past president.

0:18:34
Okay, this is some government, you know, you need to have this because of some policy, I’m sure. All right, so GSL group, PTY, LTD. Here’s another, I’m just, I’m really want to harp on the copy right now. We’ll get to the rest of it in just a second. This is again does nothing for anybody. Great Southland, this is the area that they that they service I guess. Asbestos and demolition. It’s a very literal heading and I’m not usually a fan of literal headings. So we need to bake some you know we need to bake some extra impact in here.

0:19:15
Asbestos removal and demolitions are core services that support the future growth development of communities and the greater well-being of its people. I’m not sure I understand. Okay, you’re trying to get at your company values here. I’m not sold. I’m not sold on like, okay, we got some asbestos removal, and that’s just going to change the future growth and development of communities. I guess. All right.

0:19:48
We’re guided by the well-being of people, environmentally sustainable practices, training and skill development for quality outcomes, industry best practices, legislative requirements. Again, these are kind of like, what separates you, is what I’m trying to figure out, from your competitors? Well, they can all say all these things that you’ve written so far. They can probably, I’m sure, all say this. So I’m just still left looking for, but what’s the difference?

0:20:18
Why you? Are you the biggest? Are you the most trusted? Do you have the most reviews? So what else is missing, right? Aside from the fact that they’re having trouble explaining why you should choose them over other people, I also have not seen, I mean we can continue scrolling down, any social proof, is there any social proof whatsoever? This is a long page. It’s got FAQs, okay, so no social proof.

0:20:50
These aren’t even links right now. So this must be still in development. But we’re missing social proof here, right? That’s a big one. All right, let’s keep going a little bit through the copy. So then we have our services. This is where you put a literal heading. That’s fine. Putting literal here is fine, because it’s letting me know what we’re about to talk about.

0:21:10
But here you see again, guys, get the job done right the first time. I mean literally every service business in existence could say that and it would make sense on their website. And so you’re not saying anything by saying that. You’re wasting a space. Work with a team that places value on safety, quality, and the health and well-being of your family. Asbestos removal, demolitions, testing, and inspections. But these are not links. We cannot click on them so we can’t get any additional information. I assume that there’ll be links going forwards. Have you just found asbestos? Asbestos is often discovered when you least expect it. Renovating your home and found asbestos is performing.

0:21:49
Okay. Obvious stock photo here, not doing anything for anybody. This is, again, I would say this is a wasted space of a visual. I would love to see a video right there. Can I get the owner of the company, right, talking to me about my asbestos problem and how they’re going to come and fix this problem and maybe reiterate some of the really important differences between this company and other companies that I might be looking at. Okay, that’s a valuable use of this space right here. This generic stock photo of a dude in a lab attire, that’s not a good use of this space.

0:22:29
All right, so we come down, don’t let a quick cheap job shorten you or your family’s life. Okay, so anything in like mold removal, and again, any service-based business could say this. And we’re gonna talk about SEO in just a second, right? Google’s gonna have a very difficult time ranking this page with all of this generic copy. Because just as a user that isn’t getting any value from these headings, neither is Google.

0:22:58
So if SEO, which for a service based business like this that’s localized, that’s for something very specific, 100% SEO should be at one of the main marketing plays here. But we’re failing not just in the copywriting front, we’re failing in the copywriting front. We’re failing in the SEO front at the exact same time. Copy is both important for sales and it’s important for SEO. All right, so we’re getting a little bit of an about. Let’s see, over the last 20 years, I’ve been involved in the asbestos industry.

0:23:29
Okay, all right. I’ve project managed asbestos sites here in Australia as well as overseas. I’ve been involved in the training. Okay, so we’re talking about our expertise. All right, there’s been a decline in the industry to the principles that asbestos is harmful to everyone and money has become the dividing force to industry. Okay, this is a little bit hard to read. We’re concerned that your health is being compromised by industry being too hurried to get to the next job.

0:23:54
Okay, we’ve got a lot of, we just got to run this through, a little grammarly action here or something to help this out. All right, so you get a little bit about you. I’d probably want to see maybe a larger photo here. Service areas, when you need us, we will be there, generic headline. Okay. I imagine that these are going to be linked up at some point, because just having them as cards on the page is not gonna help for SEO. And I can, you know, we’re probably thinking about SEO because you’re doing service area pages, but we gotta continue to build all of this stuff out.

0:24:33
Okay. All right. So now we’re getting into, these are the things that, when I talked about agitating the problem earlier, these are the things that can potentially really agitate the problem for somebody who’s like, well I heard asbestos is bad and I think I’m going to get it removed. That is a person that’s like in a consideration phase. Well guess what?

0:25:01
If you can move, you can move them from consideration phase to I got to book this shit, I got to book this right now because I just learned that, hey, lung cancer, and you’ve got to get some stats going, right? Like, find some statistics on asbestos and lung cancer and the amount of time spent around asbestos and the rates of lung cancer, right? Asbestosis. I don’t even know what that is. You’ve listed it here, but scare me with it. What is this, right? Why should I be—I don’t even know. You haven’t defined it.

0:25:36
You haven’t told me more about it. You got to scare me with this. Mesothelioma. I’ve heard the commercials, right? I’ve heard the old guy on TV talking about he’s got mesothelioma and he’s going to sue some people. That’s all I know about it. Scare me with it. What’s going on with mesothelioma that I really need to know about in order to make my decision right now?

0:25:55
This thing. I can’t even pronounce it. Don’t even know what it is. It’s not scaring me by just listing it. And then if, you know, you got to consider this too what if I just do this and I go up here and I type it in and now I’m off reading this and then I’m like oh I really got to get that asbestos removed oh what was that website I was on a minute ago I can’t even remember okay I gotta go back to Google and I got a research okay so that kind of thing can happen don’t give people any reason to leave your site you’re telling them things that you’re not defining. Well, what are they going to do? They got to go Google it because you’re not telling them what it is. So you’ve got people potentially leaving your site here. This is the stuff that needs to be up here, right? You got to start talking about this kind of consequence right off the bat. Problem, then you got to agitate it, then you can introduce the solution. It’s a very basic formula. You haven’t done any agitation here. Okay let’s pause for a minute to see what everybody is thinking about what we’ve got going on so far and by the way guys put your questions in if you’ve got questions if you’ve got comments I want to hear what you have to say about what we’re looking at that’s the whole point of doing this live is your participation but if you do have a question, all caps question, write the word question, all caps, then post your question.

0:27:17
It makes it really easy to find in the chat. Asbestos sounds like a Greek restaurant or pizzeria. Maybe you guys don’t have that in Greece, I don’t know. With asbestos removal, I’m usually more interested in the process of what the job will entail. That’s a good, all right, so Mario right there, that is a good comment. I don’t think there’s any mention of what the process looks like what has to be done Yeah, you can get a quote. Here’s the about you got some FAQs No, no, no process section. Okay, that is another I said social proof was missing Process is actually it’s also missing and that’s a very very very important part of all of this All right, Justin says, in Australia, you don’t need a RAC or acknowledgement of country, but it’s customary in Australia these days, though I usually put it about the footer of the front page.

0:28:08
Okay, that’s good to know. Dan has a comment about the colors, but I think he was gonna say off there. All right, any questions, put them in the chat. Any comments about what we’re looking at, put them in the chat. Let me see how many people we’ve got live here. I took away my, let me go to my correct window here. Let’s see, comments and reactions. I don’t even know where to get that now.

0:28:29
All right, well, we’ll have to do it later. Drop a number in the chat if you can see how many people are watching live. I can’t pull it up right now. Okay, we’ve done a fair bit of overview of what’s wrong with the copy here and the general direction of a landing page like this. Now I wanna talk about the colors, the design, all of that. I don’t, I’m not sold on this background image right here. One reason I’m not sold on it is because it’s distracting with the text going diagonally across the background, competing with the text that I’m supposed to be reading here.

0:29:17
So I would like to see an image that kind of conveys what we’re trying to convey, but without having giant, you know, hazard text. It’s like, my brain’s like, I really want to read that, but I’m supposed to be reading this too. And they’re right over the top of each other. And it’s just, there’s a big collision here in terms of text. So I’m not liking that. You’ve got way too much padding going on right here.

0:29:40
So let’s take a look at what’s actually going on here. I don’t have to pull this down because it looks like, look guys, look how the padding is changing based on the height. That’s letting me know there’s probably some sort of a VH unit issue going on here. But let’s take a look at what we’ve actually got. So we have a section which its padding is just a normal clamp function. Okay, you’ve got your background image in there.

0:30:08
This is that, oh, the height is, there’s probably a min height on the section somewhere, maybe, let’s see. Okay, not seeing it. Let’s put this thing over there. Okay, now let’s take a look. All right, we’ve got our image here. Let’s see what’s on our image. Depending on how that image is, that’s position absolute, so that’s not doing anything to our, there it is right there.

0:30:36
Okay, there it is. Minimum height, 60 VH. Okay. Okay. I’m trying to figure out why that would need to be there. I think you did it, and that’s on the container. Minimum height, yeah, not really a fan of that. You could just do this with padding, right? There was your normal section right there. If you just add more top padding to this section, you can space it out even more.

0:31:09
What I would do though is more spacing in general, right? Just top and bottom, add extra section padding to this, which you’re using automatic CSS, it’s very easy to do. It looks like, I don’t know, was this put in? Okay, that’s just our normal default section padding. So if you just added a section class to this, right? Like we just go up here and we’re gonna put this in. So like pad section XL, like that. Now you get more padding and it’s not gonna be off, right? So this is how I would do it.

0:31:41
Now you have more even, you have even padding here, but more of it. So you’re creating more visual white space. You put a better photo in there. Now I’m gonna refresh and look at your version. So it’s currently refreshing, there we go. So your version has all the content way down here at the bottom. So we have a little bit of padding and then this giant gap right here, you can simply fix this by get rid of the minimum height of VH unit, the 60 VH that you had, and just put a larger padding class on that entire section and you’re gonna get a much better effect there.

0:32:21
Okay, colors. I’m not big on these colors. It’s very flat. I think it can be helped out with like maybe a subtle background pattern here. I don’t know what this is. I guess that’s probably some tribal thing to go along with this. But again, this section has, this has, if this does not have to be there, if there is no policy that this has to exist, like, like somebody else said, move this whole statement way down here to the bottom, put it in the footer.

0:32:56
I don’t care, but like, it does no value. I don’t think for anybody here, unless people in Australia are just like, they better have that statement or I’m not buying from them. If that’s the case, then keep it right. But if that’s not the case, it’s just not doing anything for the design. It’s not doing anything for any, anybody, uh, to have it here. So get rid of that. I think a very subtle background pattern here or gradients or something else. The overall design feels fairly basic. It’s not like doing any harm.

0:33:27
I’m not big on the borders, the thick kind of borders here. It’s not, I wouldn’t call it modern, right? It’s not like a modern design. It already feels outdated even though it’s brand new. Yeah, okay. That’s kind of my feelings on that. Same thing here, you know, we’re not, there’s not, for me, there’s not enough white space in here, in this container. Let’s see if we can find that actual container.

0:33:57
There it is right there. And so you have a gap in there, but you have no padding, right? So if we had some padding of space L, maybe that’s too much. M. But you would also have to change up your gap situation there. I have to dissect this whole thing to there. There’s your main gap, which is which is too large. If you’re going to use padding in this container. I’m trying to look through my microphone That’s that’s one bad part of this is the microphone arm There’s the gap right there, let’s just get rid of all of that okay, so Now we’re starting you might have you might retain a little bit of a gap in there But we just need this you know if I refresh this page. It’s just way too close to everything on the edges going on here okay that’s a large form that is a large form and the problem with having the form on this page I mean you can if the goal of this to be a one-page website that would I guess would be my first question because right now all of these links up here are anchor links now obviously these need to be their own pages. Services, we need our own services pages. And I’ll say this guys, a one-page website, if SEO is one of your top like we got to nail the SEO, then one-page websites out of the question. Mark it off. We’re not even going to try to achieve that because you’re completely harming the the SEO ability of that website by trying to make it a one-page website.

0:35:41
So I’d say right off the bat, you know, if SEO is obviously important to this business, we got to get rid of this one-page website concept, okay? Let’s get a services page in there, let’s get service areas as their own pages, and then we can have an inquiry page, right, where you’re going to send people that just has the form, okay? Right now, I’m free to just scroll past the form. I can ignore it. There’s a lot of other stuff for me to focus on. If I really want to capture people and probably have the highest conversion rate possible, I want call to action buttons throughout this page, like request quote, and when they click on one, it takes me to an isolated page, probably without a navigation, with a minimalized footer, that’s just focused on like, fill out this form. Don’t do anything else here.

0:36:31
Just fill out this form and maybe next to the form, I have a little bit more social proof to encourage them and yada, yada, yada, but I’m sending them off to a secondary page to complete this process of becoming a lead. And in doing that, I also get better analytics because right now I can’t tell really, sure you can put a heat map on this page and kind of get an idea of how much people are focusing on the form, but if we have a separate inquiry page I can track all of those page visits and I can see what page were they on before they got to the inquiry page. So which pages on the website are doing the best job of getting people to that inquiry page. And you can create better funnels in terms of your analytics when you make this a separate page. So I would encourage you to do that.

0:37:30
Then we have FAQs. Okay, this is all fairly standard. We’re about to move on to the second site. Because I think we’ve given this site enough. Trying to think about, this is a site I will say, so the other thing that would be missing in terms of SEO, this is a site that you need a blog. You need a lot of articles, you need videos, you need as much content as possible to really boost the SEO value of this website and whatever SEO campaign or effort that you are wanting to focus on here.

0:38:08
So that would be another missing piece of this. If we wanna get into a little bit of SEO and just kinda see how our targeting is looking, we can do that. I know that last time I did some of the SEO deep dive on Web Design for Dummies, people loved it. They said, you need to have more of that. So I’m more than happy to go in and just take a look at how you might start this process. Now I’m not going to do it in terms of Australia because I’m not going to be as familiar with stuff and I don’t know if they use the same you know nomenclature or whatever you want to call it. So we’ll just keep this within the US. But here’s how I would do it. First thing like generic I would put in asbestos.

0:38:51
And then I would hit search. And do I care about the stats of the word, of the keyword asbestos? No, I care zero about any of that. I don’t care at all. What I care about is this matching terms filter. And then I can get very specific with a phrase. Well, in this case, it’s just one word, so it doesn’t matter which one you choose. But I wanna start just looking at all of my options that are surrounding this key term and concept. And so we start to see asbestos removal and and I’m taking the look right now at okay what’s the overall difficulty, what’s the volume in these kinds of terms, what’s the traffic potential. We talked last time about traffic potential versus actual volume. See asbestos would not be a good term to try to rank for because you’re never gonna beat out asbestos calm You’re never gonna beat out to the United States Environmental Agency Wikipedia centers for disease control the freakin CDC you think you’re gonna beat the CDC No, and there’s no value in this because we don’t know why people are typing this in we don’t know if they’re doing a college paper on asbestos or we have no idea there could be a thousand reasons why they’re typing in this word so as a commercial keyword it has absolutely no value whatsoever what we need is a long tail variation of this term what does asbestos look like okay we could show pictures we could show video but again this is a very generic term.

0:40:27
Bob Vila has written an article on it, and he’s very popular in the US. You’re going to see all kinds of the same stuff going on. So these don’t really pique my interest, so to speak. I’m going down. There’s test kits, abatement, symptoms. Now some of these things, like asbestos symptoms, well, we could definitely write about this. It’s very competitive. You’re not going to rank for it. But what it does signal to Google is, hey, these people are experts in this topic of asbestos.

0:41:03
So we can do it for generalized topical authority. And you might make the decision to do that. Would I prioritize it? No, probably not. I’m not going to prioritize it. But at some point, we’re gonna publish an article on asbestos symptoms. Now, the other thing you can do with an article like that, everybody else would write an article literally listing the symptoms.

0:41:25
Like you go to webmd.com, the way that they would do it, that’s how everybody would do it. The way I might approach it is, because again, I’m not just using this for trying to rank, and I probably know I’m not gonna rank for this term, I’m looking at it more of a sales angle, more of a marketing angle. How can we really use this content in other ways? So what I might do is take stories of people who were affected by asbestos and in the article about the symptoms I would have them explaining their symptoms via their story which gives it a very unique angle that you’re not gonna get in other articles.

0:42:05
And that alone actually might allow you to rank over some of these other things, especially if people love it, people link to it because it’s different. And it communicates symptoms in a very different way. And what I would think is a more meaningful way than just listing them out like a WebMD would do, for example. So there’s an example of how you would take a concept that’s very competitive and just execute on it in a different fashion.

0:42:30
But you can see guys, there are 3,000 pages of results and you can start to get a lot of ideas. Now, in terms of removal, let’s just add the word removal in and see what this looks like. Okay, so asbestos removal cost, we need to be talking about that. Asbestos tile removal. I would make a services page that is dedicated to asbestos tile removal. Because it’s a very specific thing, right? If you have it in your tile, I don’t know all the things that it could be in. But we see here, you know, fairly low competition. Traffic potential is actually higher than the volume.

0:43:10
These are all really good signs. If you want to rank for asbestos tile removal, you need a services page dedicated to it. If we go back here and we take a look, let’s see, maybe they’ve done this. Nope. So they had removal by itself, they have demolitions, which this is not going to have any SEO value here because it’s a single word that’s not related. I would say asbestos demolition would be a good title here. Asbestos testing and inspections, we’re not seeing tile removal. So there’s a missing opportunity right there. Uh, we come down here, a lot of stuff associated with the cost, right? You see people asking about the cost in multiple different ways. That’s letting you know, we have to talk about costs somewhere on our website.

0:43:55
If I go here and I look this up, where are we talking about it? Okay. So you’re talking about it in an FAQ. I would actually write a detailed article on it. I’d mention it in the FAQ, but I’d write a detailed article, go into all of the reasons why the cost is the way that it is, educate people. That’s another way to educate people on the process, right? Um, and so this also, I want you guys to notice like when we do basic SEO research, it’s not just informing you how to rank. It’s also informing you how to sell this because it’s letting you know what people really care about, what they’re interested in, what questions they want answers to.

0:44:31
And sales is about answering questions, first and foremost, right? So I’m a big fan of, even if you don’t care about ranking a website, do some SEO research, because it’s going to give you just general market research advice. Here you go, asbestos popcorn ceiling removal cost. That could be another service area, a service page for me. Asbestos popcorn sealing removal. Okay, siding. There you go. So we’re seeing it’s in a lot more things than just tile. So I need a service page for asbestos siding removal. Didn’t see that on the main website. These are these long tail service pages that you want to be hitting on. A lot of stuff about cost, price, cost, price, over and over and over again.

0:45:13
Let’s keep going here. Asbestos removal DIY. That means do it yourself, okay? I would write an article on how to remove asbestos yourself. I am a asbestos removal company. And I’ve had these conversations with clients before. And the roofing company, yeah, I’ve had a lot of roofing clients So we talked about should we teach people how to do a roof repair themselves the clients like no no no no no We why would we want to do that? We want to sell them roof repair?

0:45:47
Why would you teach them how to do it yourself? Okay? There’s a lot of reasons you would want to teach them to do it theirself Let’s talk about Generalized marketing for a moment here, okay? You have something like and I’m gonna use the roof repair example because it’s easier for me to talk about than asbestos. But you got to transfer, it’s easy to transfer over to asbestos, right? If I was a roof repair company, I would absolutely teach people how to repair their own roof. And here’s why. Number one, it gives me an opportunity to demonstrate my expertise. Okay? So let’s say I put a video together.

0:46:23
There’s a specific type of roof repair. Here I am on YouTube showing people the ins and outs, just like I show you guys all the stuff that we’re doing here. It’s a demonstration of expertise. Number one, number two, it gives you an opportunity to educate people who have it in their mind that they’re going to do it themselves until they realize, Oh, there’s a lot more stuff involved in this than I previously was thinking. And now watching someone else do it, I kind of realized I don’t want to do that. I absolutely do not want to do that. I don’t want to get up on my roof.

0:47:00
I don’t want to go over all those steps that he just showed. I don’t want to do it. Now guess what? If I come to that conclusion watching your video, the chances that I’m like, but I want that guy to do it, because he looks like he knows what he’s doing. He just showed me how to do it. I want him, right? Especially if he’s in my area.

0:47:18
So there’s a percentage of people when it comes to DIY, there’s a percentage of people who believe that they can and should do it themselves. A large portion of those people can be persuaded not to and persuaded to hire you instead. And also if you come at the angle of guys, I’m going to teach you how to do this. You’re probably not going to want to do it, but I’ll teach you how to do it. Right. It’s an instant, like you’re, you’re not just demonstrating expertise. You’re immediately gaining trust because it’s like, you don’t have to hire me. I’ll show you how to do it for free. Right.

0:47:53
I’ll teach you every aspect of it. But if you don’t want to do it, then you can hire me. It’s just a, it’s a really easy way to build trust. Okay? And so you’ve got this DIY group that’s like, nah, I’m gonna do it myself. I’m gonna do it myself. So then they look at it, oh, how do I do it myself? And then they realize, ah, I shouldn’t do that myself. All right, I’ll hire this guy. Okay, that’s a big percentage of people.

0:48:16
Then there’s a smaller percentage of people who are going to DIY it no matter what. Okay? They’re gonna DIY it no matter what. It’s like people who change their own oil. They’re just going to change their own oil. They’re never going to take it to a shop to get their oil changed. Those people, you don’t care about them anyway. So sure, freely they can use your information, they can take it, they can do their own thing. No harm, no foul, no skin off your back, whatever saying you want to use, doesn’t harm you in the slightest.

0:48:46
But you know what? They might give a like, they might give a comment, right? I’ve seen on videos, other roofers will come into a video where the video is showing how to repair XYZ on your roof. And another roofer or someone who’s done it before will drop a comment and be like, this guy knows what he’s talking about. A hundred percent, this guy knows what he’s talking. Guess what? Now that’s more social proof for your video.

0:49:10
So the person who comes along who doesn’t want to DIY it or thought they were going to DIY it. Now they have confirmation that what they’re watching is actually the right thing. And now they’re even more inclined to hire you. There’s a lot of reasons, a lot of reasons why I would make that video. Clients sometimes don’t want to do it because they need to be educated. Let’s put it, let’s just be nice. They need to be educated as to why you would create content that seemingly contradicts your service or your offer. But you’re also, by the way, instead of just telling your potential clients, showing them your expertise, you’re also showing Google your expertise. And now we’re taking our SEO and we’re expanding it out into a multi-channel SEO effort. I write an article on DIY asbestos removal. To pair with that article, I have a video on YouTube about DIY asbestos removal and by the way, I’m not doing a generic one. I’m gonna do DIY asbestos tile removal DIY asbestos popcorn ceiling removal DIY asbestos siding removal I’m gonna hit every single one of them my friend and I’m gonna have an article on every one of them and that video is going to be embedded in all of those articles and this is how you build a web of SEO content and dominate on Google for a local company like this.

0:50:31
Most people won’t go to that length and put that amount of effort and design into their marketing, but if you want to dominate, that’s how you would do it. So it all starts here with the SEO research and coming up with different ways to execute on this content. I think that’s enough for this website. All right, I’m gonna pull up the comments, see what people are saying as we pull up our second website. Okay, and I do wanna answer a couple of questions.

0:50:59
We’re gonna have that time for Q&A in between our websites. All right, let’s get up here. Ooh, got a lot coming in. Okay, ooh, 78, all right, that’s good. First of the year, takes time to get back into warmup. All right, to me, some of the sections looks like a holiday or vacancy hotel. Okay, good feedback. Question, how would you display the regions instead of using cards? Or do you think cards are the right approach for that kind of information? Cards are okay to present service areas if there’s not going to be a lot of them.

0:51:29
So right here, we see three. Are these going to be the only three? If our plan, and this happens in the research phase, the game planning phase, the sitemap creation phase of a website, if I know that my eventual goal with this website is to have 37 different service areas, then no, I’m not making cards and all this other stuff for them. I’m not listing them out in the footer with all the links and areas, no.

0:52:02
I’m creating just a service areas page, okay, which they would have here if this were a real page, and then that’s where they can see all of my service areas. Typically I’m just putting a map on that page. I would use WP Grid Builder so that it’s a dynamic map facet. It actually pulls these cities from my custom post type for my service areas into the map as pins. So when somebody pulls up the page, they see the pins of all my service areas. On the left-hand side, they see all my service areas. If I have a ton of them, I might have a search box that allows people to search for the area that they are interested in.

0:52:35
Then all of those obviously are pages. They can click on it, they can go to the page, and then they’re on my service area page. So that’s how I would present them. I would not use cards unless we’re doing a very limited number of areas. But that is a good question. All right, should definitely keep that section but move it to the bottom. Okay, question, how do you decide on how much white space?

0:52:58
So this is a question from Andrew Tate. So listen, it’s not, there’s no rule, right? It’s everybody’s gonna have their own idea of what looks good to varying degrees. I think most people would agree to me that it doesn’t look good to have a giant gap here and then a small gap here. Okay, so we took that gap out, we explored making the top and bottom gap equally larger and I think most people would agree that that’s probably the way to go. Because it’s a hero section you typically want a little bit more white space. How much more white space? Ultimately, that’s up to you.

0:53:43
Now, there’s another reason why automatic CSS follows a mathematical scale. Because instead of just choosing random values, oh, yeah, that looks good, which if you’re not a designer, right, maybe you made a poor choice in the amount of white space that you put in there. When you follow a mathematical scale, there’s a greater likelihood that your design is going to continue to look good because it’s always maintaining some sort of balance, some sort of ratio related to everything else that’s going on.

0:54:14
So if you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s very helpful to follow mathematical scales. If you’re an amazing designer and you’re able to break rules because you know exactly what you’re doing, that’s a different story, right? So that’s another good thing about automatic CSS is it’s like, well I need more section padding. How much more? I don’t know, just one notch more. And one notch more is calculated off of a mathematical ratio.

0:54:39
So there’s really no way to answer that because everybody’s going to have a different opinion, but there are some design rules, obviously, and one of them is like, can we get some balance going here and this creates a this is very off balance Okay, so we’ve got our stuff being forced to the bottom. It’s like visually. It’s not pleasing So I think most people would agree that that has to go and then you just increase it top and bottom together Same stuff here. You know like I would have a larger gap between the edge of this image and this content. Why? Because visually there’s a giant gap over here. And so it’s looking to me like this is far too limited given the amount of space that’s going on over there.

0:55:25
Now, does that mean we need to equalize it to where the amount of space over here? No, you can’t do that. Then you’d have a tiny little column of content. But a larger gap here can make this look more balanced. That would be another example. All of this looks balanced. That’s all fine. Obviously you have a dangler, a dangler card down here. This is another example right here. Okay. And I’ve got to keep track of time so that we don’t run too much over on these. But I would come in here and we’ll do a font size of text S. Okay, and then what you need to do is you need to override your Small font size and automatic CSS to make it a little bit larger than that right now. You have it at 12 pixels and you need to that should probably be 14 or 15 or something like that But you see how the cards got a lot tighter, right? Let me just take away that clamp real quick. Let me inspect I’ll just show you what it should look like just using a standard value.

0:56:23
So if we went to 1.6 rem for example, there you go, something like that. So these cards are, you know, if I turn that off, look how large that this does not need to be that large, right? And it’s forcing these cards to be very, very tall, something like this. Now it’s a lot, it’s a lot better. And then I put a lot of work when I’m writing copy. The other hard part of writing copy is I have to say a specific thing in a specific way to get a specific reaction, but I also have to kind of say the same amount of things I said over here, right? To achieve some sort of balance in the design.

0:57:06
Because if this is like two paragraphs inside this card, well, that’s what we need to say to get the, no, we can’t. You absolutely can’t. You gotta trim that down, okay? Because we have to have balance in our text. I really painstakingly try to make every single card have roughly the same amount of characters, right? So I don’t want a card that’s longer than another card if I can avoid it. Sometimes you can’t avoid it, but if I can avoid it, I’m gonna try to avoid it.

0:57:32
I’m gonna put that extra effort into the copy to make it balance with the other points that I’m making over here. So that’s another example of how to work on balance. And guys, this is what when clients edit websites, my gosh, they will absolutely put two of these. They will absolutely do, I’ve seen them do this before. Hold on. I’ve seen them do this before. This is why you can’t let clients edit websites, right?

0:57:57
Like it’s, okay, oh, I just let them change the copy. Oh, really? So you let them screw up the entire design basically? All balance out the window? They will absolutely do this. So you have to be careful when you’re writing your copy about you know design balance comes from spacing it comes from but it also comes from content length and content structure. So you got to keep the content suitable to where that content is being placed. All right I think that’s enough on the on this site right here. Let’s go ahead and bring up metal decking supplier. Okay, let me get this tab up there. All right, now I can close this one. All right, this is number two structuraldeck.com. Okay, all right, let’s do a quick I’m going to pull up comments to see all for all looking for a little context on this one, the business is brand new, no history, no social proof, and is in the midst of being started.

0:58:55
Okay. To me, the chosen colors don’t relate to asbestos at all. Colors misled me in some way. I do want, you know, this feedback that other people are giving is important. So we’ll just take a minute to do this before we jump into the next site. Colors are 100% for long-term branding. It’s related to the ochre colors of Australia, the indigenous people. Okay. All right. As best as testing is a way to get people to know your company. Yep. Obviously, this is like, you know, we’ll do a free roof inspection.

0:59:18
Well, yeah, because they want to find the problems so that they can sell you on the Justin says that’s a short article, don’t. I assume Justin, you’re talking about the article, what was the concept? Can’t remember the concept. I think I know which one you’re talking about. Make no mistake my friend, I can write 1600 words on that topic, 100%. I didn’t say turn the FAQ copy into an article and leave it there.

0:59:44
I said take that concept of an FAQ and turn it into a legit article. You could absolutely write 1600 words on that topic. and turn it into a legit article. You could absolutely write 1600 words on that topic. Is there an alternative for Ahrefs for beginners with no budget yet? No, you got to pay to play. Yes, there are free keyword research tools. They are not alternatives to Ahrefs or to SEMrush.

1:00:08
Okay, SEMrush is another alternative. I don’t think the pricing for beginners is like for entry level is that much different though. So no, really, there isn’t an alternative. As best as DIY in Australia is a no fly zone, major health issues from mishandling by a few large companies. Okay, so exactly, exactly. So you still write the article, right? Because we can either be in the conversation or we cannot be in the conversation.

1:00:46
We need to be in the conversation. Now we get to warp how that conversation goes, but we better be in the conversation. So there’s people out there searching for asbestos DIY removal. They want to do it themselves. Your article pops up and it’s like, this is a no fly zone. You absolutely cannot do it yourself. Here’s X reasons why you cannot do it yourself. Here’s why you need to hire a company to do it. And you got 1600 words that covers this topic. So people search for it.

1:01:12
Your article pops up. They’re now informed. You can’t do this yourself, hire, well guess what, guess who they’re gonna hire? The site that they’re on that’s informing them of that. So you absolutely still create the content even if it’s not a thing that can be done because people are searching for it. They need to be informed on the fact that it’s not a thing and why it’s not a thing.

1:01:34
And if you inform them, you’re the one leading the conversation, you’re the one that has the opportunity to now steer them in the right direction, which is to your service. A video on process that walks people through it explains why it’s a very bad idea would work. Yep, okay, good. All right, so, mm-hmm, there are plan to be built. Okay, so question, do you use SEMrush?

1:01:58
No, I mean, I have a subscription to SEMrush, but I tend to not use it. Viewing issue, Kevin’s thumbnail is in front of the inspector. Ah, I always forget that. I need to make a little quick key right here that gets rid of my head for a minute when I do that kind of stuff. All right, let’s get into this page right here. Structuraldeck.com. Get your steel decking today, all right?

1:02:23
Okay, finish your construction projects on time and under budget. Okay, so this is right off the bat. I’m thinking this is a B2B. So we’re not we’re not selling this decking to consumers. I mean maybe consumers can buy but I this feels very B2B focused. So I’m gonna come at it with that lens the B2B lens. I’m not sure I like these cards down here because they kind of hide themselves away. They don’t really pop out. Now you could do this with a little bit of a background here, let’s see what’s going on.

1:03:02
All right, we’re using oxygen and okay, this is where my head would be in the way again, right? Let’s go and move there. There we go. We’ll just do this for a second. Okay. Hopefully, I’ll remember to move that back. All right. So, okay. So, there’s an example right there of, does that have a class on it? Hero value stack is the class. Okay. Hero value stack grid, hero value stack, hero value stack. Okay. There it is. All right. We’re using automatic CSS so we’ll go background color and we’ll do var of base ultra dark trans 20, 40, 60, 60, there you go, 80, 60, somewhere in there. And then I would add, okay there already is padding. I did not want to click on that. This is how I would probably try to do these. Where did it go? Okay, hero value stack. Alright. I hate how Bricks does that too, right? It’s like you don’t need all that. Alright, padding var of space L probably. Yep. And then on our grid right there, we can get a little gap of space. Uh, actually we’ll just use grid gap. Oh, you don’t have the next version. Do you have FR grid gap? No, you probably don’t have frames either. Nope. Okay. Space L.

1:04:41
Oh, we’re not getting a gap at all. Why are we not getting a oh, it’s up here. Oh Is that a section okay, hold on was I doing this on the card I was doing it on the card Okay, that’s gonna Do you have grid gap? Yes, you do have grid gap. Okay You could even do light on these Because those are still still a little dark. I’m just trying to give them a little structure basically but if I come into here and change this to light and then do like 20 10 something just something that gives them a little extra structure to stand out might be a good way to go and then of course you’d have to get rid of this little padding issue on the bottom I don’t know something that helps them stand out a little bit because if I refresh this they just kind of like they just hide away a little bit on me I don’t know maybe even just a light border ahead of them I don’t know there’s a lot of ways you could approach that and I probably wouldn’t have them going full screen across because they don’t really need to be full screen where’s that section at it’s right here this what’s the width on that width 100 yeah right there oh you’re using breakout on that.

1:06:01
Okay. See that now, now that they can just chill, right? They can just chill right there. Cause now I can see them. Now you might be building this on a laptop screen or something like that, where it kind of looks like this on your screen, but on my screen, it looks like this. I’m I see easy online order, but my eye is trying to stay in this lane right here.

1:06:21
And you got flying out over here and over here, okay? So it’s just too way off of view on a large screen. So I would just keep those kind of in the center. They don’t need to be stretching all the way across there. Is your job site a ghost town? I am 100,000% not a fan of centered text. If you guys are a fan of centered text, then it is what it is. I would love to see all of this left aligned right here. Just give this a little bit of breathing room.

1:06:52
I’d like to see this image be taller. So we’re clearly starting out on UI here on this site. I want this image to be maybe a square aspect ratio and then this stuff be left aligned right here. This could be centered for sure, but this needs to be left aligned. I am just not a fan of every all text being centered. So if you wanted to look at a little bit more, and you can see it kind of looks whacked out, right? It’s like, bam, bam over here.

1:07:19
So this is centered, but this is centered, but to the left, and that’s like a right away, there’s like a brain disconnect. Oh, hang on, what’s going on here? It just doesn’t look that great. So try one-to-one aspect ratio on this image. This is a, this box shadow right here, I’m not quite sure about that one. I would probably go a little bit more subtle there. I don’t know.

1:07:43
Maybe it’s just because the shadow is so big for such a small image, right? My brain is like, ah, that kind of small thing couldn’t create that big of a shadow. I don’t know. Maybe that’s what’s going on. But try a one-to-one aspect ratio, left align all of this stuff, and see how that looks. All right. A steel decking process designed around you. You’re a smart guy and probably already know these things, but in case you didn’t, here’s how we can help you win. Next day pickup, easy online order, custom sheet length.

1:08:12
Okay. All right. I’d make these buttons bigger. I want larger CTAs. These feel a little small and you know, this is like a steel, right? Men. It’s like this tiny little, you know, feminized button right here. I don’t know. It’s like it’s got nice little rounded corners and it’s just nice and just there. And it’s not like, Hmm, this kind of needs to be bold, right? Like I need some, I need some bold feeling. I’m not getting it from these CTAs and that’s the most important part of this page right here. My friend, you want people to be clicking on this.

1:08:44
It can’t be like little small and tucked away. You know, this, these buttons can be much more in our face here. Same thing with the font, right? I don’t feel like this is just kind of a, feels like a, it’s just like a generic font, right? It doesn’t feel stylized in any sort of way. Like you have your logo up here, which is, it’s like all caps and it’s like, it’s more, you know, it’s more bold, it’s more in your, but then everything else is just kind of like a dainty button and then it’s like a standard font it’s really nothing you know interesting about it you get the point I don’t know hopefully you get the point I would left align these headings right here we’re gonna come down and see this more centered text not a fan left align all of that and then you see on the right hand side we’re just missing we’re missing content I would put a checklist off to the side if there were like 10 items in it, right?

1:09:40
But there’s only three items. So it’s just kind of like, ooh, floating over here. It doesn’t have any anchor. It doesn’t, there’s nothing, it doesn’t need to be there. I’d rather see another visual or a video and then put these checks down here below this little bit of content. That would probably be a way to rearrange that section. I can tell you right now, the gap between these two items is way too big, way too big there. So get those two cards next to each other. Let’s see what’s going on in this section right here. So that’s got a gap of XXL on it. So yeah, that just needs to be, you know, grid gap, just standard little gap.

1:10:21
And then this button’s too close to these cards right here. But here’s the thing. Do I want to order decking in this section? I don’t think so. I want to get more information on these things. Like I’m gonna, the call to action of this section is click on one of these items. Which one are you interested in? The likelihood that they’re gonna order decking while looking at these two options is slim to zero.

1:10:47
Okay? They want to click on one of these things to learn more about them. So this call to action is a waste. It doesn’t need to be here. Let them click on these things that you want them to click on. So I go to B deck. We’ll get to that in just a second. Ordering decking is easy. Alright so here’s our process. But hold on. You talked about process here. What’s the difference between this process and this process? I think you’ve processed us out my friend. You’ve gotten too many process sections going. So choose one or the other on your process section.

1:11:17
We have social proof. That’s really good. I’m not, I don’t typically like light background images. Um, yeah, I, I typically don’t like them, especially you got white on white going on here. It’s less hard to pull off. It’s hard to pull, pull that look off right there. So I would do something else with this background. All right, we got a gallery. So that all works, okay, no worries. Definitely, you know, giving me B2B vibes here. This is not a home, you know?

1:11:53
Okay, so good. How is next day pickup possible? Okay, that might be an important part of the discussion. Got an FAQ section here, that’s always good to have. So you’ve got some general UI stuff to work on here for sure. Now let’s talk about UX in general. I’ll ask you the question. I hope you’re watching. And if people are watching, it’s like, you know, that’s even better because you can answer my questions as we do this.

1:12:19
When somebody arrives at structuraldeck.com, do they know what BDEC means and do they know what FormDEC means. Now you get a little bit more leeway in the fact that this is B2B. So B2B you can use a little bit more insider terms, right? If I’m talking about Salesforce, for example, and somebody’s looking for a Salesforce architect, right? I can use Salesforce related terms that like nobody else may understand. It’s okay, because we’re talking about a very specific thing and you already know it’s it’s good It’s all insider language for insider people I just need to know do they know because I have no idea what B deck is I have no idea what form deck is And so having these options up here means nothing to me that doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean anything to your target market but means nothing to me and I’m always a fan even though you can get away with some insider terms in certain scenarios, I’m pretty much always a fan of dumbing it down.

1:13:19
Dumb the language down to where if I didn’t know anything about steel decking, I could still use your site and know what’s going on here, which is not the case right now. The other thing is we’re missing some items up here, right? Where’s the about page? Where’s the contact us page? My only thing I can do is order decking. Let’s go down here. Service areas, locations, order decking, privacy policy.

1:13:42
Let’s go to locations. Okay, all right. So we’re going to click on this one. Now, so I had to go three clicks deep to be able to ask you a question. What if I have questions about structural decking, your steel decking? I got to go three clicks deep to figure out how to contact. And I’m a web developer, right? I knew, all right, I can probably get there through locations or service areas or what have you.

1:14:05
I’ll eventually find it, right? But you’re asking Joe Schmo off the street to do a lot of work, a lot of digging, to be able to ask you a question. Can we get a phone number up here? Can we get a phone number down here somewhere? Can we get an email address? Can we get a contact us link? Can we get something, something that people don’t have to go three clicks deep to figure out how to ask you a question?

1:14:27
Because I want you to make a lot of money. I want you to sell a lot of decking. If people can’t ask you a question, you’re not selling a lot of decking. Okay. I imagine this is not an impulse purchase. There’s going to be some questions. There’s going to be some, hey, how does this work? Or I need this or what can you do this? Right? We got to make it easy for people to contact you.

1:14:45
So let’s get that going. Let’s let’s hit order decking and see what our process looks like here. Okay, metal decking order form. All right, I want 20 gauge, 1.5 inch white bottom B deck. I need 9 feet, 3 inches of it. I need 10 sheets. Okay, there’s my price. There’s how I like the square foot coverage. I like the square foot coverage. This is good.

1:15:12
I bet I can’t put in my own square foot coverage though. That would be even better. Hey, I want a thousand. And then it reworks all of this stuff. I don’t know if that’s how that, you know, I don’t know if that’s possible, but if it’s possible, I would love for that to be happening. Okay, I can add a row, which means I can add some other stuff here. Is this WS form?

1:15:31
What are you using here? What are you using? I wanna know, put it in the comments. We need five of this. Okay. Order summary 3.99 squares, 795 pounds. Save 10% when you purchase six additional squares. 5.8. Oh, I like this. Okay, let’s go up.

1:15:53
I feel like this would be, I don’t know anything about ordering decking, but I feel like that this would be a good ordering process. It’s showing me the discount that I’m getting, average price, there’s a lot of good information here in my price breakdown. And then I’m gonna fill this out. So is this form attached to this form right here or is this just for like, you know, entertainment purposes? Is it actually gonna send my order through this form? Because you know, okay, that would be good.

1:16:28
All right, so I would fill all this out. Is there any? Okay, good. So we’ve got payment integration. We’ve got different delivery options. This is WS Form. I know it is. Now I’m 100% sure. Because now that I’m down here, I’m seeing the button. This is normal WS Form.

1:16:49
This is like their default styling. So 100% WS form. And this is, you guys see like, that’s why I say WS form is really slick. And I started using it, I’m like, is this, this kind of feels like WS form. It’s pretty slick. This is a very slick implementation. I like, I like this. I wish that this billing details area was like made to be the same width as what I, what you’ve got going on up here.

1:17:10
So yeah, it feels like two different forms? It’s like this one looks isolated from what’s going on up here. The design could be kept more consistent in the way that this is laid out. But general UX, I like the experience of all of this. Could it be a multi-page form, perhaps? That might even be a better way to do it. So here’s like step one, and then they click next, right? So next takes me to this form down here, which is now up here because it’s, you know, it doesn’t have to be buried way down here.

1:17:46
I think a multi, like a multi-page, multi-tab form is kind of the way to go there. So maybe look into doing that and just kind of keep the experience consistent. They, you don’t want to create a feeling of a disconnect where they go from this kind of visual to this kind of visual. It’s just a little jarring. I don’t know. All right.

1:18:05
You’ve got your process here after they order, you’ve got your social proof on the order form. Now we’re checking boxes right now. We’re doing stuff that we should be doing. This is all good. This is my, I’m the biggest fan of this page. I still think you’ve got gaps that are way too large. You’ve got, see how this is, you know, two lines, these are one line. This is a, has less space over here than over here. There’s a lot of visual stuff that has to be cleaned up, but in terms of the overall, you know, thought that was put into this page, this flow, it’s, we’re, we’re definitely heading in the right direction here.

1:18:42
Let me click on B deck and see what we’ve got going on here. So roof and floor metal decking B deck is the smart and affordable design for roof and mezzanine structures. Okay. Let’s go back to the homepage for just a second. We never did copy on this. I just want to do the hero section and maybe this section right here. Get your steel decking today. It, this, this is a situation where you need to go write 15 more headlines for this hero section. And then by the time you’ve written 15, you’ll probably have one that’s much better than this. This isn’t like doo-doo, but it’s not great. And if you just write, like a lot of people will just stop at the first acceptable headline that they come up with.

1:19:26
Oh, that sounds acceptable. And then they’ll move on, right? I will literally like, I’ll write 10 or 15 or 20 or 25 headlines. And then I will choose what I think is the best one. And then if you want to go the extra mile, obviously it depends on budget and all of that, you start A, B testing them and stuff. But this is just a situation where it’s not doo-doo, but it could definitely be better.

1:19:48
You need to write like 10 more of them and you’ll figure out a better one. What’s wrong with it? It’s very like bottom of the funnel. It’s very like this really is only gonna speak to somebody who’s like, I’m gonna have some steel decking right now and I’m tired of looking around. Okay, get your steel decking today. I’ll buy It doesn’t sell them on steel decking. It doesn’t sell them on buying steel decking from you It doesn’t there’s nothing else to chew on here. It’s literally just like very obvious Finish your construction projects on time and under budget But like why does work we’re back to the what I said was the original rule The original test is can anybody say that? Yeah, anybody can say that.

1:20:28
Okay, so why choose you over somebody else? What is your unique selling proposition? It’s not here anywhere in this hero section, except for this, next day pickup and delivery. So let’s talk about this. This is in journalism, they call this burying the lead, right? I believe that’s what they call, I’m not a journalist, but I believe that’s what they call it. But you’re burying what could be potentially your best talking point, because we’ve hit on something here where, let’s run this through the test.

1:21:00
Can any structural deck, steel decking company say that they have next pickup and delivery? If the answer is no, that can be your unique selling. Is that your, because all steel decking, I imagine, is the same, right? So if it’s not better quality steel decking, if it’s not, what is unique about it? Well, there’s nothing unique about it except for the fact that you can get it tomorrow. And that seals the deal on this line right here, which is finish your construction projects on time and under budget. Because guess what? If we’re doing a project and I ran out of steel decking, I got a problem. Okay.

1:21:38
Now, not everybody can get me decking tomorrow, but structural deck.com can. Okay. So when I land on the page, I don’t want to see get your steel. Well, okay. Now, now it’s starting to make sense. Get your steel decking today. That felt generic. Maybe this is why it’s not generic, but I need to know that that felt like almost as if you were just saying that, okay? So we need to expand this headline to where it says, you know, quality steel decking available for pickup or delivery today or tomorrow or what, like make that blatantly obvious in the heading if that is something other people cannot say and people will absolutely be purchasing right now.

1:22:22
Because if I’m in a situation where like I need it, I need it tomorrow, I’m gonna be searching around for like, can you really, can you really? And now I understand right here why you have this section, okay, how is next day pickup possible. Now it’s all coming together, right? But when I first arrived, I was like, well, they’re just saying that shit, right? That’s just marketing, that’s just marketing. Or it was just like something generic, but you can’t really get it today.

1:22:48
If you can really get it today, like make that super obvious, make it not feel like marketing, make it stand out that yes, that is the reality. Because it took me a while. It took me a while to realize that that’s the reality of the situation. Okay. Now, maybe it’s because I’m not in that exact situation and I’m just focusing on critiquing things, but I would still make this more literal and just more like blatant. Okay, SEO wise. I don’t know if, yeah, yeah, yeah, SEO is going to be an important part of this. Okay, steel decking. So let’s go to here. I guess that would be the main keyword that we would start with.

1:23:39
Let’s just see what our options are here. Let’s see what we see, as they say. Steel roof decking, steel decking posts, steel decking roofs, steel decking for concrete. Okay, corrugated steel decking. You know what I’m not seeing? Here’s what I’m not seeing. Quick scan, we’re down here in the 30s, Here’s what I’m not seeing quick scan. We’re down here in the thirties of volume. That’s no good anymore.

1:24:02
I’m not seeing B deck and I’m not seeing form deck. Okay. B deck plant plan B deck B roof deck. Okay. So now I’m in a situation where I’m like, I’m trying to figure out what’s form deck for sure. Is going to be super. I just feel like there’s going to be so many collisions with, look, Magic the Gathering deck list form. All right, Steel form deck, PEC deck form, Metal form deck, okay.

1:24:36
There’s a lot of different, it just feels like there’s a lot of different types of form deck here. 916 form deck. So we need more specificity, more long tail focus here I just think there’s a lot of opportunities being missed and then there’s also the fact that it’s like these are very industry insider terms that you know I guess your target market might know what it means but I don’t know. I feel there’s more that could be done here. I feel there’s some details that are being missed.

1:25:09
Alright, okay. Alright let’s take a look at look at Okay All right Let’s take a look at look at this see what I was talking about earlier with like some you know I want to see why this is happening right here because this happens on a lot of sites And I’m guessing it’s because there’s a maybe a height set on something here because normally guys this Line breaking to another line wouldn’t cause it to touch the bottom of this card. So I’m just I’m gonna move in to like show me your DOM here and let’s see exactly what’s can I put this on the left hand side that would be way easier for me. Okay now I got it oh and I didn’t I didn’t remember to move that back all right let’s put that there good all right let’s just check here and see what we got going for comments while I got this screen up. Okay those were back to the old site.

1:26:03
Good. OK. Kevin, what do you think about header? Is it better to build with Oxygen, in our case, with a header builder or with a div? All right. Simone is asking that. I’ll elevate that onto the screen. I don’t know if, Simone, if this is your site right here? Is this?

1:26:18
I guess I could go to the, who submitted this? Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Structural deck? No. Okay. Rubin submitted this. All right. I think Rubin’s here watching. I want to figure out why this is touching this. Okay. So you’ve got an article, article, article. I still think there should be a list though. More important. It’s more. Okay. Here’s the other thing. You’re using oxygen. Oxygen guys cannot properly create a list structure like I normally talk about if you’re using a repeater. That might be the situation here.

1:26:57
So if you’re using a repeater, it is better to use these article tags. If you don’t have challenge, if you can use a proper list structure, I think it’s better to be a proper list structure, but I still wanna figure out what’s going on with our height. So let’s go up here. Let’s see if we can start to investigate. Okay, we got a max width of 30 rim on the card. I don’t know why that would be there. Because this is a grid.

1:27:22
So when you have a grid you don’t need a max width on the items in the grid. And you can see if I turn that off it nothing changes, right? The grid parent actually controls the width of these cards. So you don’t you don’t need this on there. You’ve got your gap of 1M there. Margin left, margin right is set to auto on these cards. That also does not need to be there. So this is, see, and nothing changes when I remove it, right, doesn’t need to be there. So the problem is you have no gap in this little container right here, which is just your H, or you have no padding.

1:27:57
So it’s just an H3, it’s this div right here. Products card body wrapper, okay? Text align left, but it’s centered. That’s a conflicting rule, okay? Not sure why there’s a gap in there because there’s no other content in there. Got kind of a lot of stuff going on that doesn’t need to be there. Here’s where you ran into the issue. See that padding left and right?

1:28:32
Also doesn’t need to be there. What should have happened here is this. And then you need to get rid of the gap on the card. So if I go back up here, where is… Let’s get the actual card selected. Inspect. There’s my card right there. Here’s the gap. Gone. That’s what needs to happen right there. So now you’ll see it doesn’t matter how long this text is. Let me get in here and copy paste. Okay. So it doesn’t matter. The space is always going to stay consistent and grow as the text in the card grows. When you only have padding left and right and no padding on the bottom and then a gap between here, you ended up getting spacing here, spacing on the right, spacing on the left, and zero spacing on the bottom, which is causing your text to touch the bottom here.

1:29:30
And this is kind of a classic issue that people have when they build cards like this. There’s a lot of stuff going on that doesn’t need to be there. This Gap .75M is doing absolutely nothing. Flex One, I guess, is making that container the same height. Yeah, so you see what I’m just saying about the even padding on all sides of that? That’s the easiest way to handle that.

1:29:55
Okay. See the gap in your gallery. This is like a gap that you would expect to probably see up here. This gap is fine here, but it’s like why aren’t these the same? But then you’ve got gaps that looks visually equal to that. I’m not going to measure them all. That looks about the same, but we’re going to very small gaps to medium gaps to large gaps. Then you did this on one of the other pages where the gap was ginormous.

1:30:28
So yeah, just some visual, a lot of visual traditional just dev type stuff to clean up here. All right. I think we’re mostly done here. I would left align this logo right here. Doesn’t make sense for this logo to be centered. You’re creating a gap here that doesn’t need to be there. Yeah, just a lot of just balance. It’s just balance issues really on this site when it comes to the the UI. Okay, let’s fit in. No, we’re not going to fit in one last quick one. We spent 45 minutes on two different sites. Like I mentioned, we go deep. Okay, let me get back to camera here.

1:31:12
The goal is to go deep. It’s not to do as many sites as we possibly can. It’s to go deep. It’s to hit on a lot of different areas, give a tremendous amount of value in each of these different areas to really see how full sites need to come together when you focus on all these different areas. So I think that’s where the value is. Is that a live website review? Yes, this is live.

1:31:35
This is 100% live. Okay. All right, I’m going through comments now. So we’ll spend the last little bit here, five or 10 minutes, comments, questions. Comments, questions. If you have a question, put question in all caps before you ask it. Is it a good choice to put all in a page? I mean, maybe the second step, billing information could be in a, yeah, okay, exactly.

1:32:03
So what I said, that can be a multi-step form, would probably be the best way to do that. All right, I wonder if I see in smartphone, okay. You called it, yes, WS-Forma just looked. No, it’s not my site. Okay, all right, if there’s no questions, then we’ll just call this, we’ll just wrap this up. But I will give, there’s a little bit of a delay, so I’ll give people a chance to drop questions or comments that they have.

1:32:27
As far as getting your site critiqued, there’s a link below in the description. Click on that link, fill out the form, you can easily get your website critiqued. It’s 100% free right now. I think what we’re gonna do, because there’s a lot of stuff, I have a lot of sites in here that we can do, a lot of sites that I can pull up. We’re gonna be doing two at a time, that means two sites per week.

1:32:48
So what I think we’re gonna do is a premium lane and a free lane, right? It’s like, all right, you wanna be in the free lane, we’ll get to you when we get to you. If you wanna be in the premium lane, we’ll make sure your website is, we’ll do a premium every single week and a free one every single week. Sometimes I’ll get to three sites. Sometimes I pull up a site, there’s not a lot to talk about, okay?

1:33:08
In that case, we fit more sites in. These two sites, I felt like, had plenty for us to talk about and to focus on And I want to keep these to about an hour and a half I was doing two hours before but a lot of people said hey, that’s that’s really long I think ideally it would be 30 minutes per site And if you guys want me to I’ll put a timer on Right every side I pull up 30 minute timer starts now 30 minutes for this site And then when it ends it ends and whatever we got to is what we got to we’ll move on to the next site, okay? So I’m still open to taking suggestions on formatting.

1:33:43
And if you guys have suggestions, drop them in the comments below, not the chat. The chat kind of goes away. The comments I see for sure, 100%. Question, what’s that prospects bookmark? I’m in need of a CRM sales app. What’s that prospects bookmark? Prospects bookmark. Can you clarify that? Can you ask that question in a different way?

1:34:04
Justin says, great insights as usual, thanks Digital Ambition. Timer sounds good. Joe, if you drop this as a comment, I’ll be able to answer it for you. I can’t respond to live chat questions after the fact. That’d be another thing guys, drop your questions as comments after the video is done and I can definitely reply to them. Arnott says, will the free lane be randomly selected or in order of being received?

1:34:33
How about for ACSS frames or IC members? Right now what I do is I pull it up and I go through. One thing I will say, there is a limited amount of spots for digital agency websites because what I don’t want to do is review a digital agency site every single week. You know, it’s much more value if we can get into different industries, we can take a look at different sites that have different purposes. There’s a lot more we can discuss there, right? If it’s just all agency sites, it’s going to get really boring. So every now and then I’ll do an agency site. But if you have a website that you’ve done for a client in a specific industry, that’s probably gonna get preference.

1:35:16
So I go through and I look at what our options are and I look at one that seems like it’s gonna be a really good, like there’s gonna be a lot of lessons there and I’ll pull that one up. Some people have just sent me their entire portfolio. We’re not gonna do that. Okay, if you sent me your entire portfolio, that’s not something we’re gonna take a look at. You gotta send me an individual specific site. Joe Fletcher says in your browser bar.

1:35:38
What are you talking about? Are you talking about HRFs? Are you talking about structuraldeck.com? I still am not quite sure what you’re talking about. Because you said, what’s that prospects bookmark? I don’t have any prospects pulled up. I’m in need of a CRM sales app. I don’t have any CRMs pulled up either. Oh, oh, oh, oh, you’re talking about my actual bookmarks. Okay.

1:36:04
Prospects, prospects. Was that in here somewhere? I don’t know. Not sure. I still don’t know what you’re talking about. I wish I did. I’m like racking my brain here. I’m trying to figure it out. I don’t know. We’ll stick around for just one more second.

1:36:18
It would be, it would kind of be good to like maybe prioritize people at ACSS and frames or IC members, but It’s a lot more extra work on the front end to figure that out Ninja says question. I am redoing my personal site where I haven’t followed BIM classes What would be the best way to redo F’d up classes in oxygen start from zero? It depends on how you did them. If you use all utility classes, then it’s going to be a lot of work. If you use custom classes and they’re just not named properly, it’s still going to be a lot of work in oxygen. So in bricks, I feel like I always comes up. It’s like, why is bricks better than oxygen? Well, because in bricks, you can simply click on the name of the class, hit edit, edit the name of the class and move on with your life. All the styling is retained. All you do, you can go correct every single wrong name in seconds. It’s just another reason why it’s superior. So unfortunately in Oxygen, if you’ve named everything wrong, you have to delete those classes, which means deleting this. Actually there is one other way. You can create your new class name, copy the styles from the old class name, the wrong class name, and paste them onto the new class name.

1:37:46
Then you’re just going to have to make sure that they don’t get missed but it’s still going to be a lot of work. Far more work than if you were using Bricks. In your bookmarks next to EasyWeb. Oh, prospects. That goes to sales handy. Guys, I don’t even know. Delete, it’s an app I was testing out for some purpose. I don’t use it. I don’t know how it got up there as a bookmark.

1:38:12
Sometimes I hit a keyboard shortcut on my computer because I’m trying to bold something in Bricks or whatever and it actually bookmarks something. Like that thing right there just makes a bookmark. And I don’t know. I don’t use it. So I don’t know. But my CRM is HubSpot, which is right here. So this is what I use for a CRM. If that answers your question.

1:38:33
Thank you for clarifying that. I wouldn’t just prioritize, I wouldn’t prioritize between, just go through them by order. They got received in the 30 minute timer is a good idea. Okay. The thing with going through them in order is that there’s a lot of agency sites. And I don’t want to be agency site after agency site after agency site. So I kind of skip around.

1:38:58
And I do mark off the ones we’ve done, obviously, so we’re not going to hit those again. But yeah, I don’t know. We’ll keep playing with it. We’ll keep running through it. Thank you guys for showing up today. I hope you got a lot of value. And I will see you next week. Set your calendar. Set your alarm. It’s going to happen every single Wednesday at 11 a.m. Eastern. I will be here. Web Design for Dummies is giving as much value as possible. Peace.