Web Design for Dommies 006 – Live Web Design & Development Critiques

0:00:00
Yo what’s up everybody, welcome back it is another Wednesday, it is 11am, that means it is time for another episode of Web Design for Dummies. I’m going to go ahead and let everybody stroll in here. Go ahead and drop a comment below, let me know where you’re watching from, say hi. And let me know how are you guys liking this web design for Dommie series, now that the fact that we’ve moved to this weekly? Justin says, what’s up, fellow Geary heads? Hola from Western Australia and all the other night owls slash poor sleepers. Yes, we do have a very international audience.

0:00:44
Justin says, Kevin’s broadcasting from outside his office, it sounds like. Is the audio weird? What’s wrong with the audio guys what’s wrong with the audio mic sounds a little off off how I need any more details I need more details let’s see audio is very quiet okay hang on hang on hang on hang on we can try to fix this. Settings, audio, speakers. OK, hang on, hang on, hang on. All audio.

0:01:25
Test SS1-2. I’m not using this mic? Is that what it’s on? Oh, it’s like a room sound. OK. Hmm. All right, hang on. Sound levels. Uh huh. Okay.

0:01:44
Alright, hold on. There’s 80,000 windows. Hmm. Sound. Input. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, hang on. Hang tight. Hang tight. Hang tight. Test 1, 2, 3. Are we back? Waiting on chat to let me know. Test two, three, are we good? Are we ready to rock and roll?

0:02:34
Still low. Okay, hold on. Ann Marie says much better. Now I’m getting thumbs up. There it is. Okay. Rasul, you’re giving me bad intel, my man Okay. All right. Thanks. Yes. All right. I went into the sound panel and I was like, well What’s my input and it’s like all of my my whole all my mixer inputs are just not there in the list So I just unplugged the you know, you call tech support They’re like did you did you unplug it and plug it back in? That’s what I just did and it worked All right, so we’re off to the races now.

0:03:16
All right, we’ve got a bunch of people here watching. That is good, fantastic. We’re gonna go ahead and get started in just a second. Just to let you all know what we do here and I got something to tell you guys, something that you’re really going to like that’s coming up very soon. What we do here with Web Design for Domies is we do live web design critiques, but not just like typical web design critiques, we do very in-depth web design critiques.

0:03:44
We look at as many different aspects of a website as we possibly can in the allotted time. We are here for an hour, hour and a half, two hours sometimes, and that might be three sites that we look at. This isn’t a situation where we just roll through and quickly talk about some UI stuff and then move on to the next site We’re looking at SEO. We’re looking at UX design. We’re looking at you know general site structure. We’re looking at copywriting we’re looking at every aspect that’s important and Here’s the thing you guys get to participate in the chat So as I’m giving my feedback on the websites you get your give your feedback as well You can even give your feedback on my feedback.

0:04:28
OK, so we all get to have a little discussion here. You can also ask questions. If you have a question, you want me to dive into a specific area. All caps, question, and then write your question, and then I can see it in the chat. OK, a tourist is high from Mexico. I’m a livid. Why I hope you are. I hope you’re happier as we go through this. But he says, remember to thumbs up guys yes thank you what is happening with DATT the Hunzi wants to know digital agency table talk is what he’s talking about a series that I was doing live on YouTube where we talk about all things digital agency life and I was bringing on other digital agency owners and all this stuff well I’ve got I’m getting blown up on my messages.

0:05:17
Let me see if I can, do not disturb. Do not focus, focus mode. Do not disturb until this evening. Thank you. Okay. Digital Agency Table Talk. So, it is being converted into a podcast. It’s a good question. It’s being converted into a podcast. I’m completely rebranding Digital Ambition to a personally branded site.

0:05:39
And as soon as that, that’s almost done, it’s almost done, almost ready to rock and roll. I can’t wait, I can’t wait to get it out. It’s gonna fully replace digital ambition. When that happens, then DATT will be released as a podcast. You can subscribe to it on your favorite podcast app, and you can listen to it on the go. And you don’t have to sit here and watch on YouTube. It will be, because I know you’re going to ask this question, it will be posted to YouTube, but it won’t be live on YouTube.

0:06:08
It’ll just be a normal traditional podcast. And we’re going to do it a little bit differently, right? Sometimes it might be me just talking, teaching, whatever about, and it’s all going to be focused on digital agency growth, all of that. Like it’s like inside a digital agency, okay? And sometimes it might be me and a client. Sometimes it might be me and another agency owner. Sometimes it might be me and another industry expert. And like I said, sometimes it might just be me by myself. So it’s gonna be a really, really good variety.

0:06:40
And we’re gonna focus it on actionable stuff that you can implement in your agency or freelance business to really grow. But that’s what’s happening with digital agency table talk, okay? So we are not far away from that. Now let me talk about the thing that I’m working on that I think you guys are gonna be excited about that is related directly to web design for Domies type stuff, okay?

0:07:07
I am putting together a like master web design checklist slash scorecard. You guys see when we do web design for dummies that we talk about the same things a lot right? We’re always coming back to is this done? Is this done? Is this there? Is that there? And it’s like what if there was a master list in that was categorized in all these different categories? UX design, UI design, SEO, dev, on down the list and you could literally take this scorecard and you could grade a client’s current website with it. You could grade the websites you build with the scorecard and it’s not just a way for you to grade it’s really a way for you to just go through and make sure because guys are so much stuff that we have to remember and think about and consider and at every single project, it’s really good if we had a master list that we could just go down and make sure nothing got missed.

0:08:11
Make sure everything is accounted for, everything is the way that it should be. And then you can also grade on that as well. So this is going to be like the go-to resource. And if anybody else asks you, hey, how’s my website? You guys know in like Facebook groups all the time, it’s like, oh, I just built this one. What do you guys think of it? Okay. Now you can break out the scorecard. Now it’s like, oh, you don’t have to just look at things randomly.

0:08:36
You can break out a structured, here’s how we go through and audit a website and really make sure that everything is accounted for, not just from a design standpoint, not just from a development standpoint, from, from a conversion standpoint, a sales standpoint, a branding standpoint, everything that is important to making this website effective is gonna be in this checklist. And you just roll through the checklist and grade it up. Really good tool for you to use with clients because it’s going to show that you’re paying attention to all the right things, okay?

0:09:10
And it can really be a good eye opener for a lot of clients because they don’t know half this stuff. They don’t know half of shoot. They don’t even know 5% 10% of what’s on this list most likely. So it’s also by the way, not just good insight for them into understanding how websites work and what needs to be there and all of that, but how much work and expertise goes into the work that you do for them. So they really, if you break out a checklist like this and maybe walk them through it or just at least show them Here’s here’s all the things we think about here’s all the things that we focus on Instantly they’re going to see you as a consultant and not a pixel pusher They’re gonna see you as an expert as somebody that they need to look to Because they don’t know what all this stuff is going on on this checklist and they need someone like you To take care of these things for them.

0:10:01
That instantly increases your value to them, which means higher revenue, longer relationships, and on and on and on, more projects down the road. Okay, so this checklist is gonna be a really, really, really good tool. Okay, last bit of news, last bit of news before we hop right into the critiques. If you are on Bricks Builder, and you feel like you are a beginner or you feel like you are intermediate but you still are missing some of the fundamentals you still aren’t sure about all the things going from start to finish on a website you don’t know if you’re doing all the things the right way you want to refresh her on all this stuff this is you I’m describing you right now you have to know this in the inner circle in my inner circle we just started a brand new series we just kicked off a brand new bricks beginner series and it’s called teach me bricks like I’m in fifth grade and I’m not just doing that as a concept I’m literally it features my daughter who is in fifth grade and I’m literally teaching her bricks and if she can learn it then anybody can learn it.

0:11:17
Okay, so if you feel like you’re in that kind of situation and you want a fundamental start to finish training of if you came to me and you sat down next to me in my office and you were like, Kevin, I don’t know, you got to teach me bricks. I got to know how to do this. Okay, that is this series is. And we go slow and everything is like dumbed down. That doesn’t mean we’re skipping anything. That doesn’t mean I’m letting her off the hook. Just because she’s in fifth grade doesn’t mean that, well, you don’t have to know that yet.

0:11:49
No, no, no, you’re going to know it all. You’re going to have to know it all. You’re going to have to do the math. You’re going to have to do the complicated stuff. You got to figure it out. Okay, so we’re not skipping a bunch of stuff that should be covered. We’re covering everything. Everything you need to know the build decide the right way That’s what we’re covering that series just kicked off inside the inner circle So there’s a link below if you’re in that situation. I would highly recommend you drop down there obviously There’s way more stuff available to you in the inner circle as well. It’s not just that over a thousand awesome members But go down there and click the link get in the inner circle and get started on that series Already two and a half hours of training in that series.

0:12:28
Okay, and we’re going to be doing, you know, one a week, one every couple weeks. So get in there and get that done. All right, let’s go ahead and hop into our first website. I’m going to go ahead and pull this onto the screen. We’re going to screen share. We don’t want anything that happened last time where I’m just talking like we’re screen sharing and I’m not actually screen sharing that was toward the end though, in all fairness. It had been a long session already and I’m going to avoid switching back to camera and then back to screen because then I forget. I forget stuff. So we’re just going to leave the screen up the whole time. We’ve got Tradecast.tv as our first website. I’ve got three websites in our queue today. None of, well, one of them is an agency site. The other two are not agency sites.

0:13:14
So here we go, we are ready to rock and roll. So the first thing I want to see, without scrolling around, do I know what’s going on here? Do I know what the company is? Tradecast, alright? Video solutions provider. Guys, right off the bat, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me, tell me. What is the first, I went on a rant, one or two episodes ago I went on a rant about something that is in this hero right now. What is it?

0:13:45
Can you identify it? Can you identify it? What did I rant about last episode or the episode before? Go ahead and drop that in the comments. Let’s see if anybody can pick up on it. Your own video player, a ready-made video platform under your own management or custom OTT apps. Tradecast is your specialist in online video solutions and thinks along with you from A to Z.

0:14:12
Technically always up to date and fully supported by our experts. So what we’re going to do first is we’re going to take a little bit of a copy analysis. Just to reiterate, copy is the most important part of a website design is great UX is great understanding all the stuff is great okay dev show me your Dom classes BIM got it okay copy is the most important part of the website you can have the ugly ass poorly structured website that sells like hotcakes just because the copy is amazing okay so copy copy copy copy copy we really have to focus on copy anytime we are auditing a website. Now I’ve given people plenty of time to put answers in the chat so let’s hop over yes there you go. Ann Marie says don’t use the word solutions. Got it. That’s it. Hit the nail on the head. Hit the nail on the head. Why do you not use the word solutions? Because it doesn’t say anything and it doesn’t mean anything. You’re wasting a word. Okay? Video solution. Guys, what if I just told you I do, I offer video solutions. Well, does that answer any… you ask me, what Kevin, what do you do? I offer video solutions. That didn’t tell you anything.

0:15:28
It told you nothing. That’s a waste of a word. It’s a waste of a phrase. It’s a waste of space. This headline gives you the… this is the most important thing on this page, this headline right here, okay, and if you waste it, you just, you lost. Before you even got started, you, the gun went off, you started running, you tripped immediately. You just, your feet just, bam, you’re just on your face now. The whole time, now you’re on your face the whole time, okay? You’re picking yourself up, you gotta dust yourself, this is not a good situation to be in. Don’t wanna be in that situation. You got to start off strong. Okay. This is not solutions. The word solution should not be used anywhere. If you find here it is right here again.

0:16:10
If you find yourself using the word solutions, that should be an immediate trigger in your mind. Find a better word. Got to find a better word. Got to find a better word. Okay. There are way better words. Solutions is a placeholder. Okay. You could put solutions in a wireframe. Don’t put solutions on a real thing. All right, now, let’s talk about this paragraph because it’s super wordy. It’s very wordy. I want to read it again, just so you can try to make sense of it. Your own video player, pause, because there’s a comma, I got to pause.

0:16:44
Your own video player, a ready-made video platform under your own management or custom OTT. I thought it was going to be a list, right? Your own video player, a ready-made video platform, and then something else, but then it just ended. There was no list. And then it ended with industry jargon. I don’t know what OTT app is, okay? And I live on the internet.

0:17:07
I don’t, so, I mean, maybe the people that you’re trying to reach really, really know what that is, but still you’re never going to go wrong when you dumb down the copy. Okay. If you can make the copy understandable by a fifth grader, for example, you’re never going to go wrong. You’re never going to go wrong. So the, we have to clarify this. I don’t know what’s going on here with this sentence. And then it’s a colon. It’s not even like the end of the sentence. We’re just going to keep going. Okay. So Tradecast is your specialist in online video solutions. There it is again. So it’s like you’re using, it’s like if you were defining a word, okay? Someone’s like, what does that word mean?

0:17:46
And then you just use the word again in the definition. But I still don’t know what it means. I still don’t know what we’re doing here, right? So you’ve told me you have video solutions, and I’m like, oh, well, maybe they’ll clarify that down here. No, no, just more video solutions, okay? And thinks along with you from A to Z. I’d remove this immediately, okay? Because I get the feeling this is a platform, it’s an app, it’s not people, this is not a service.

0:18:11
Okay, it’s like a software as a service probably, but it’s not like a web designer that you’re hiring. That person can think along with you, that’s a real human being. An app and a platform, a platform can’t think along with you. Okay, so I don’t know this is all needs to be it’s it’s wordy. It doesn’t tell me much. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. See and this again is like you have before people decide that they’re going to take the time to scroll around and look at what else is here on this website and what are the products and what’s you know what is the offer before they do any of that.

0:18:47
They need to be interested. They need something’s got to grab them and be like, well, you really are, you’re going to want to hear this. Okay. This doesn’t grab you. It doesn’t tell you anything. It’s just wasting the opportunity. Okay. So once again, you’re tripping out of the gate. We’ve got to make this really clear. Why should I care? What does it do? Why should I care? Why should I keep reading? And really what I’ve got is abstract video solutions, things along with you from A to Z, abstract, can’t decipher that, don’t know what it means.

0:19:20
Technically always up to date and fully supported, doesn’t matter, don’t care because I don’t know what it is. So there’s just a lot of wasted opportunity right here. So this whole thing’s gotta be rewritten. All right, we’re gonna scroll down. Now that we’ve gotten past our hero, okay, we’ve gotten to the place where most visitors would not get to because they haven’t been made to care yet, okay? So now we’re just free to just scroll and look at the general overall kind of UI design.

0:19:51
As far as the hero goes, I am torn on background videos. Sometimes they’re distracting. I don’t think this is a bad one by any means. I don’t, I don’t think this harms anything other than potentially like, you know, paid speed. These videos tend to tend to be a little, you know, heavy. We’ll go ahead and let that run over there while we continue to poke around. As far as the design standpoint, I mean, I kinda, I kinda like the vibe that’s going on. It’s a dark theme. I like the layers effect here where certain things are overlapping other things.

0:20:33
In general, in general, I kind of like what’s going on here. HTML5 video player, and I’m still trying to figure out exactly what we’re offering. So it’s a video player and a video platform. But I guess that means video hosting. So it’s like a Wistia or a Vimeo or something like that. So if we go to like wistia.com or we go to vimeo.com, it’d probably be more along the lines of Wistia. Alright, so let’s just see where video meets marketing. Create, host, market, and analyze the impact of video all with Wistia’s video marketing platform.

0:21:22
So you see how it’s very concise, it’s very clear, there’s no abstract, there’s no let’s nebulous think about it, or just learn along with you, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, right? It’s very clear, very concise. Hey, we create, we host, we market, analyze the impact of video, all of the Wistia’s video marketing platform. We come down here, we got a nice video, right? I would like their little landing page here to be a bit longer, right?

0:21:50
Because it forces you to come up here and start, yeah, now we got a lot of options. See, you know, we can even be critical of like the Wistias of the world. But if you look at their headline and their lead, it’s very clear, and then we also have immediate calls to action. If we hop back over here we do have video solutions, I don’t know, I don’t know, that’s that word again and then products and here’s another question right off the bat like what’s the difference between a product and a solution? Isn’t your products the solution?

0:22:19
Aren’t these two things exactly the same? So if we click on video solutions what do we end up getting? Build together, okay, okay, your partner in online video, solutions, see there it is, there’s your products, yeah, there’s the player, okay, platform, let’s talk about how the pricing’s set up here in just a second. But you’re effectively, here’s the thing, a solution is like you have a problem, it kind of begs the question like you have a problem here’s the solution so if I go to the solutions page I should see a problem defined first right and this is the whole general copywriting framework is problem agitate solution so you define the problem you communicate the problem to the person who has the problem so they know they have the problem and now they know you know they have the problem all right so problem then you agitate it you’re talking about all the details about how awful this problem is and then you provide a solution. Well I came to the solutions page but I don’t see any problems.

0:23:24
You haven’t really told me what’s wrong what’s wrong with the way I’m currently doing video and why should I consider changing to something like tradecast. What’s the unique selling proposition? See these are the things, the challenges, the problems, the unique selling propositions, the agitation, that’s what should be here, here, right? But we’ve wasted it on the word solutions and abstract concepts and see, that’s how we tie it all back together. Okay, alright, we’re jumping around a lot, but that’s okay, we got to jump around a lot because there’s a lot of things that tie in and they interact with each other and they’re important to discuss. Okay, so if I’m back on my homepage here, oh gosh, all right, oh there we go.

0:24:08
Let’s check on PageSpeed Insights real quick. All right, so yeah, we’re looking at 5.4 seconds, failing Core Web Vitals, some issues there. And I’m guessing that if we, oh, you’d have a server response time issue as well. That’s a big part of that impact. But the video is not really helping that out. And, you know, I always ask the question, like, if we did a, just do a simple split test, like have the video as one and then do something static as the other and see what wins. Because I’m not convinced these video backgrounds really do much of anything for the end conversion rates or anything like that.

0:24:44
They, you know, they look cool and clients like them and there’s this whole list of like, well, here’s why we put it there. I get it. I get all that stuff. OK, I hear the clients say the same thing. Oh, we want that flashy video background. But my question is, did it help? And what did it help? What did it help with? Did more people click these buttons? Did more people buy the products? Did more people scroll down the page?

0:25:09
Give me some data. Did it help? Because if it doesn’t help and if it hurts then you know it’s you shouldn’t have it for sure if it doesn’t help or hurt then I guess it’s your preference all right so we know that we have a video player for sale and we have a video platform for sale let’s take a look at the platform side of things I’m gathering you know a player is a player and maybe there’s some unique features whatever but I really want to know what the platform is all about. Because I’m probably not going to buy it just for the player. I really need to buy into the platform, yeah?

0:25:46
And should you talk about the platform first? And that also begs the question, can I get the player without the platform? Okay, so a lot of questions that come up. And this is just good for you to know from the standpoint of like, hey, it’s always beneficial to watch somebody go through your site who doesn’t really know anything about your products or service because you need to know how they think and what kinds of things are popping into their head. All right, let’s look at the platform. Your own video platform with full control. Your own video platform with full control.

0:26:19
This once again is a little abstract feeling because I don’t know what it means. I feel like if I was with Wistia, that I would pretty much have full control. Or Vimeo, I don’t know, I feel like I have full control of my videos with Vimeo. So it’s not telling me anything. It’s not highlighting a problem, because I don’t feel like this is a problem for me. So is it a problem for anybody?

0:26:43
I don’t know. If it’s not, then it’s a waste of headline. Manage your own content, data, users, and revenue models, all from your own easy to use dashboard. Okay? Manage your own users. Because I’m thinking to myself, I don’t have my Wistia account, I don’t have users, there’s no users. I guess that means your team? This is your team? I was thinking about viewers.

0:27:11
I don’t know. Maybe a little clarity here. And revenue models all from your own easy to use dashboard. Reach your target audience on the screens that matter. Broadcast your videos on a platform that can be viewed anywhere. On web, iOS, Android, Apple TV, and various smart TVs. Can’t everybody say that? Can everybody not say that? If everybody can say that, is this a unique feature that you really need to be highlighting?

0:27:34
Or is there something else unique about the platform? Full data ownership from viewer profiles. See, there it is, there it is. A viewer profile data ownership. I don’t know, that sounds very technical. This sounds like some, I don’t know, I don’t know. All the data in your dashboard is and remains completely your property. Okay, because most viewer data is anonymous, is it not? I would think so.

0:28:03
I mean, if you’re not, maybe Wistia cookies people and you don’t cookie people and now we’ve got a GDPR situation. If that’s the case, like I need to see GDPR language. I need, like you’ve got to be, make that more obvious, more clear. Cause right now I don’t even know what a viewer profile is. If I log into Wistia, I don’t, there’s no viewer information or data whatsoever. It’s all anonymized, right?

0:28:25
But there’s not individual stuff. Your platform, your branding, and your design, your video platform will be completely custom designed by Tradecast Agency, our in-house marketing and content. Okay, this is something Wistia can’t say. This is something Vimeo can’t say. Why is this last? And is this something that people really, really, really care about? Like, if my videos look branded, I don’t know. We got to know more about what’s going on here, right? Because I can customize the colors on a Wistia player, I can embed it, people think it’s mine, it doesn’t say Wistia, I don’t know, right? Is this more than that? I’m not sure. At a glance, and the fact that I don’t know at a glance and I got to keep digging, it’s like we’ve got to make this copy better, more clear. I’m gonna click on video platform and see if we can get more answers. 500 this is some sort of viewership metric I’m guessing but I don’t know and I’m not you know I’m not an industry video expert and I would imagine maybe that a lot of your clients are not either and they don’t know, I mean that could be per month, honestly.

0:29:41
It could be per million, it could be per month. It could be, like there’s a lot of different, you know, you get into PPC type, pay scales and stuff. There’s all these like, you know, per thousand views and yada, yada, yada. So this just really has to be cleared up. It’s never been easier to launch your own video platform, including a complete video management system. I have a problem with this word as well. Like I don’t what does it mean to launch my own video platform? A website for my videos? Just video hosting? I don’t really know. With the Tradecast video platform and the Tradecast video management system, okay so now I’m introduced to another concept. Okay so now there’s two things that I have to figure out.

0:30:27
You can launch your own web-based OTT video. Okay, what OTT video platform? I feel like I’m just not in the loop. Okay. Oh, okay. OTT video. So Netflix, I can create my own Netflix. I can create my own Hulu. I can create my own Apple TV. Is that what we’re doing here?

0:30:46
All right. Now I’m a little bit, I’m starting to understand a little bit better. But this should just be, this has been made obvious, like from the very, from the jump. Video content available worldwide, on demand, linear, and live. Alright, your own video platform, start broadcasting in no time, thanks to Tradecast. Alright, hold on. This visual right here seems irrelevant.

0:31:13
I need to see what the platform looks like and somebody using the platform perhaps or like give me a an example video player right here I don’t need to see up what looks to be a pricing table inside your app when I’m just trying to figure out what the app does and how it works and like because you’re telling me about the platform but then you’re showing me a pricing table inside the platform that doesn’t give me any insight whatsoever into what’s going on here. Your own video platform can be launched within days and you will receive access to the Tradecast video management system, your own video content management system, okay, get it? On-demand, linear, and live with your own Tradecast video platform, the ability to offer videos, both as categorized on-demand content and continuously repeating linear broadcasts.

0:31:56
All right, start one or more live streams with just a few clicks. This is an example maybe of like, and I see this a lot, on demand linear and live. Maybe people in your target market know, maybe this is a problem, that other platforms you can’t do linear streaming or whatever. But look at this, but read this sentence.

0:32:27
Start one or more live streams with just a few clicks. What if that was this title right here? Do you see how this is like clearly, you know, because we’re talking about how easy it is, right, or how simple it is to get started. That’s why we’re highlighting like the three most important things. So let’s say your clients really care about, hey, just, can I just, is it easy to get like a one or two live streams up with just a few clicks?

0:32:52
Is that, like that would be a question that they would ask. That would be something that they would think. So you thought, oh, we should say on-demand linear and live. But that doesn’t really connect with that person. What does connect with that person is when the headline says, hey, start one or more live streams with just a few clicks. It’s like plain language, it’s simple, it’s easy to understand the value in that. That’s an example of, in journalism, they call that burying the lead, right?

0:33:17
You put the most important thing at the end of the paragraph that they were, instead of at the beginning, as the headline. So that’s an example of how you can, sometimes you write good copy, you just put it in the wrong place. And if you just move it, then it improves everything. Comprehensive management system. With your own fully protected and cloud-based, so you can manage your uploaded videos, add interactive elements, analyze data, and generate new revenue with the AVOD, advertising-based video on-demand module.

0:33:48
Okay, I don’t know. I think I’ve done enough on the copy here and all of that. You get the point, right? You probably have enough feedback to figure out how to rework some things. We need to talk about this pricing. Here we are back with solutions. Video platform expansion. Video platform play. Video platform prime. Hmm. Hmm. Okay. Hmm. Play seems like it should be first. Custom design web-based video platform. Just the words.

0:34:30
Expansion assumes that we had a base and then we expanded it, right? The base would be like play, all right, just get started, whatever. Expansion is like next, but I still don’t even like that word. And then prime, I guess, is fine up here at the top. But I still don’t know, you’re selling me the video platform, so I come down here, and I guess there’s just three levels of the video platform.

0:35:00
Everything from essential, but I can’t see essential. Maybe that’s why I’m confused. There’s another, maybe was there supposed to be something else here? Maybe there’s supposed to be something else. Template based, but see I’m confused, and anytime somebody’s confused, your sales go right in the tank.

0:35:20
Okay. Template based HTML video platform. That scares me. HTML video platform. You never said that ahead of time. You said you were gonna custom design something for me, or maybe that happens over here. Oh, there it is. Custom design. So we got the, we got the womp womp, I guess.

0:35:37
You choose this one and you’re all up in the HTML world doing stuff manually. It sounds like On demand and linear content, okay Yeah, and I still don’t know what this is right if I don’t know what P slash M means let’s see if it’s down here anywhere Yeah, I don’t know this I have no idea what these numbers mean whatsoever. This, a lot of this has to be rethought out here, made much more clear. At least you’ve got some, you know, FAQs down here, but the FAQs should do a lot of reiteration of what you already said in the main copy. It shouldn’t be that somebody has to run to your FAQs to figure out what the heck is going on, because they’re just not gonna do that.

0:36:28
All right, let’s go look at cases. Johnny’s World. Okay, does anybody see that weird, like, I don’t know, everything just scaled down. All right, I don’t know. Let’s see, I might need to turn this down. Johnny’s World is just an investment in the future. My name is John Williams and maybe some of you know that I love R&B old school music. I can go live on Johnny’s World whenever I want, how I want, with whom I want. It’s my rules.

0:37:07
Look how happy they are. Alright, I have no idea what he’s saying, but it’s a well-produced video, so that’s good. On his own video platform, Johnny’s World, John Williams can give live performances to an infinite audience to his heart’s content. The live chat module allows his fans to react live to the show. Okay, got it. Okay, now it’s becoming as clear as possible. Okay, now here’s the thing. Put your mind, let’s look at this. This is going to be very very important. I just want to look at the chat real quick just to see what we’ve got going on. PM per month okay yeah just say per month please or just write slash month like we don’t need codes okay.

0:37:54
Question is in the play button on the thumbnail the top of the landing page interesting enough to click. Okay we’ll get through this demos I went to a landing page for a SAS it was never shown what it looked like nobody is buying it if they can’t see it correct okay good good good all right everybody seems to be liking what what we’ve got going on so far so now this is going to be a very important thing we’re gonna hit case studies right here you’ve got Johnny’s world this is a guy that live streams. All Guitar Network, broadcast. So this is like a performer type thing. This is an educator. I’m starting to define the buckets, right?

0:38:39
Deltion TV, inputs different types of viewers. Educational institution, Deltion, another educator. Defense TV, the Ministry of Defense. Okay. Human and Horse Academy. Another educator, basically. Content producer, educator. So you’ve got like these down to earth people. This is not a video platform for like, you know, government agencies. There’s one in there, right?

0:39:08
But it’s not a platform for ginormous corporations. It’s a platform for everyday people is what it sounds like. So on this homepage, right, a video platform, a live streaming platform, a something something descriptive platform for everyday people or for everyday creators or for small creators or for like define, tell me who I am. And so I know I’m supposed to be here, right? That’s what you can do in this space right here. Call me out. You’ve got your avatars, right? Here’s the primary people we go after.

0:39:45
Good, talk to them. Talk to them with your headline. Talk to them with your lead paragraph here. Tell them they’re in the right place and that you’ve got their back, right? And then start to lay out, what are the challenges with all these other streaming platforms that they’ve looked at? Like, I know you’ve looked at other streaming platforms. Here’s the problem with them right because I know your situation We are experts in your situation. Here’s the problems. You’re gonna run into here’s how our platform is different, right?

0:40:11
That’s the simple framework. So you’ve already got Your avatars like there’s real people right here pretend like you’re talking to these people if this man right here What’s his name? John Williams John Williams. What do you do? Well, we’re a video solutions provider, John Williams. It’s what we are. It’s what we are. Is he going to sign up with you? You just you got in an elevator with John Williams. You understand me? And John Williams is like, what do you do? You better not tell him you are a video solutions provider.

0:40:40
You better say, John, oh, you live stream. Here’s what we do, my friend. And then lay it all out for him. Make it exciting. Right. Tell him all the things that he would want to know. You got to talk to him. He does not care about video solutions. Got it? Hopefully that ties it back and shows you this type of copy does not connect with anybody. So you’ve got a great page right here. Your goal right now is to sit down and put yourself in the situation and say, Johnny just got on an elevator with us.

0:41:15
Delteon TV just got on an elevator with us. And they just said, what do you do? We’re looking for a new video platform. What do you guys do? Now you gotta answer. And those answers, whatever you’re gonna tell them, has to go all over this page right here, okay? So they know, wow, that is for me. That’s exactly what we’ve been looking for right there. Okay you get it? Makes sense? So a lot of work to do on the copy side of things. Alright let’s go to resources. Blog. Let’s see. Okay.

0:41:49
What is fast and why is she using fast OTT? Okay. What are the terms AVOD, SVOD and TVOD mean? Discover new help features in your VMS. Alright. Discover the All right, discover the brand new video management system. So this is kind of a mix of like educational content and like news about your platform. You’ve got new features in here. I would personally separate this out. Like if you’re gonna use, and I do this all the time for clients. If you’re going to blog for SEO, then have a blog.

0:42:25
And that is all, look, let’s go, you know who does this? Like, they crush it, Wistia, we were just there, right? Absolutely crush it. And I know this is a different kind of platform, okay? We got it. We understand the differences now. So Learning Center, blog, got it, here we go. It’s all education. It’s 100% education, okay? Okay, then they usually have a different place where they’ll do their news.

0:42:58
And then a different place where they do their events. And these are all, if you’re using WordPress, which obviously probably you are if you’re watching this, these are all custom post types, right? Well, your blog is not. That just uses the normal post feature in WordPress. But then company news, okay? That’s a different custom post type. Then you have events. Guess what?

0:43:17
That’s a different custom post type. Then you have maybe feature releases. Great, that’s a different custom post type. You’ve gotta use WordPress as your content management system so that I know where I’m at in any situation on your website. If I go to the blog, right, which you could probably not say blog, you could say like articles or education or whatever, but that’s all I, I should just be looking through all like, here’s all my education I can get.

0:43:42
Why are you guys experts? Teach me all the things I need to know. And then if I wanna know about platform updates, I can go to a different section and I can just see all platform updates. If I wanna see your company news and then your events, I can go different places to see those. I don’t really like it when it’s all mixed in here, okay? All right, so that’s good. We scanned that.

0:44:02
I don’t think we have to go too deep into that. Plus we’re running up against time on this website. And I think your main issue here, right, is your copy, the flow of the content, how you’re presenting this platform and player to the visitors that are arriving on your website. That is your biggest problem right now. Everything else, I mean, the UI is fine. General, it’s a website. It looks like a website.

0:44:29
Your main issue is the narrative and the copy. And if you fix that, it’s gonna go a long way. Way more than anything else we could take a look at here today. Okay, so that is your official feedback. All right, let’s go to the comments because I saw some questions that people had. Let me get my window back up here. Okay. All right.

0:44:52
I think the point is more don’t leave room for assumptions with potential customers, be explicit. Justin says that, that is correct. Question should the homepage always be top of the sales funnel, meaning it should cater to the majority audience and then subsequent pages should be middle and bottom of the sales funnel. Typically when we talk about top of the sales funnel I mean there’s a little bit in content there but no there’s there’s a basic formula right the headline of the page needs to be captivating it needs to be intriguing it needs to somehow speak to the problem and the solution kind of all in one it needs to let people know that they’re in the right place if they’re the right type of person.

0:45:39
It kind of has to do a lot of things. That’s why it’s hard to write really, really good headlines. But then you have your lead paragraph to assist your headline in doing some of that as well. But it should really be speaking to the core of what you do as a company or a product or a service so that anybody arriving immediately, it doesn’t really matter where they’re at in the pipeline, so to speak, they understand what you do, who you do it for, and why they should care.

0:46:05
If it answers those three things, then you’re really off to a good start. If it doesn’t answer one or more of those three things, then there’s a lot of room for improvement there. And when I release the checklist, I think this is gonna help people make a lot more sense because again, when we talk about top of the funnel versus bottom of the funnel, a lot of that has to do with how aggressive you’re talking, but it also has to do with the offer itself, right?

0:46:34
So if there’s a very specific offer, like buy now at this price, that’s like only bottom of the funnel people are gonna click that, okay? So you can have a secondary offer that’s like, hey, if you don’t wanna buy right now at this price, you can do this other thing over here, which is a lot less barrier to entry, and that’s the thing that the top of the funnel and middle of the funnel people would probably choose.

0:46:57
And so in certain situations, because you can’t talk to everybody at once and make them all happy and make them all click the button to buy. So you have to have a few different things, not a few, but like two, different offers or calls to action to put in front of them. And you’ll see this a lot on sites where it’s like, okay, book an appointment with us or give us a call, right? That’s just a simple version of that.

0:47:18
It’s like, hey, if you don’t want to book an appointment, you can always just call and ask us questions. Download this thing. Oh, no, you have questions? Contact us. Okay, so you’re giving two options and that’s part. So we don’t have to look at the hero and try to make the hero do everything. We just have to make the hero do something very, very important.

0:47:36
It has a very important role and we have to make sure it fulfills that role. Question, isn’t the play button on the thumbnail at the top of the landing page interesting enough to click since that also explains a couple of things? I don’t have the website up anymore, but let me see if I can get back to it real quick. Maybe I missed the play button up there. Scroll down in my list one second. I’m going to grab the link, bring it over, pop it back in.

0:48:07
Okay. What are you talking about? All right, hold on. Oops, don’t want to open VS code. That’s not something we want to do. Here we go. All right, play button on the thumbnail at the top of the landing page. Which, are you talking about this one? Or are you talking about something else?

0:48:21
Hmm like this? I mean yeah, I can watch here. I wouldn’t say that this is a strong video. The trade cast video player is the HTML your own broadcast video management can add titles, descriptions. Yeah, this does answer a lot of questions, but it also asked the video, the visitor to spend a lot of time. You don’t want again, tell them so that they don’t have to watch the video. The video should support the copy, right? So the copy needs to really get the job done.

0:49:17
The video then supports the copy. Some people are visual, they love watching videos. They’re gonna click on the video. They might not even read this. That’s great, we’re not worried about them. We’re worried about the people that may not wanna watch a video. The copy’s got to speak to them in case they don’t watch it. So when you write this copy over here and underneath or whatever, like here you have three kind of feature benefit things, and I’m not saying this is your site, the person asked the question, I don’t know whose site this is, but yeah, there’s three feature kind of benefit call out little cards here, but none here.

0:49:50
Why, why was it determined that logos, which by the way, just repeat over and over and over again, and I doubt Stripe uses your platform and Apple, these are my just be placeholders, I don’t know, but I would put these three. This is way more important than this little strip of social proof. This can go anywhere else on this page. What you need is more content surrounding this video to get the job done of communicating the benefits of this player.

0:50:16
And you have to write these things with the idea in mind, they’re not gonna watch the video. They’re not gonna watch the video. So I’ve got to communicate it in words, because they’re not going to watch the video. If they watch the video, great, fantastic, bonus. If they don’t watch the video, they still have to know everything that they need to know. All right, so that’s how those two things need to really work together.

0:50:38
Right now I feel like this was written because you’re like, they’re going to watch the video. They’re just going to watch it. They’re going to watch the whole thing. They’re going to study the video. They’re going to know exactly what’s going on, right? But they’re not, they’re not going to do that. Most people are not, I promise, okay? So write all of this as if they are never gonna watch that. Okay, hopefully that answers that question.

0:50:58
How about I leave it up until we’re done answering the questions? All right, I think we got enough done on that. I recently rebuilt this website since it was technically not scoring as it should. Now I’m looking for more improvements. Yep, yep, yep. D123 wants to know, is it accessible? Okay. So right off the bat, we can focus on all of these things.

0:51:27
That’s not right there. See how it, so just for anybody who’s curious, right? When you tab over, it opens the submenu and then forces me to go through the submenu options really you the visitor should should just be able to keep going across the top menu and Only interact with the submenu if they choose to interact with the submenu And then if we go back here, all right, there is at least a skip link, but mmm skip to footer No, that’s that that’s that uh, oh no, baby. What is you doing? We don’t want to skip to the footer, we want to skip to main. The skip link is for getting past the navigation to this, to the main content right here. So the skip link should take people to the hero, okay, past all of these options.

0:52:16
Basically just so they don’t have to scroll through this on every single page with their keyboard, right? You’re taking people all the way to the footer which your skip link is making the website inaccessible. You added an accessibility feature that made the website more inaccessible because you’ve now skipped me, I just skipped the entire page, right? I’m stuck in the footer now and I gotta go backwards to get to where I wanna go. So that would be a misuse of an accessibility feature.

0:52:48
Oh, there’s a skip to main. Okay, hold on. There’s two of them. All right. I don’t know. I don’t see that very often. Skip to main content. Okay, that worked at least. Okay, but there’s two of them there. See, I don’t know.

0:53:08
I don’t know how I feel about that. Skip to main. I just do skip to main. I just do skip to main. But you’re also going to force them to like go through the skip to footer link every time they’re on a new page. Because a lot of people are like, well, how much of a deal is it to go through the navigation real quick to get to the rest of the page? Well, it’s not on page one, but every page I go to, I’ve got to go through the navigation. So that’s why the skip link is there.

0:53:36
But now I’ve got to go through the skip to footer link as well and then get Then gets where I’m going my desk is Apart, it’s just fell off my desk. I didn’t even touch it. I didn’t touch it all right, so But I can keyboard navigate everything. This is good. All that’s good. You know what I can’t do I can’t get to these players Which I guess that doesn’t even matter anyway, it’s not like we’re gonna be watching videos This is good Okay, yeah more or less let’s check these buttons out let’s let’s do this Voiceover on Chrome link took me all the way back up here. Hang on Ready Back it on LinkedIn pagina, footer, link, back it on Instagram pagina, link, back it on Facebook pagina, link, link, trade voiceover off.

0:54:23
I mean, I can’t translate it. I don’t know what it’s saying. I think it was saying follow us on LinkedIn, follow us on Instagram, follow us on Facebook. So yeah, this is all correct down here. Because typically I see with these icons, because they have no text, that it’s done improperly, right? These were done properly and when they were done with let’s see here’s the a so an aria label right there so that’s how they were announced probably some people do them like we do them with frames with hidden text inside of the link wrapper you can do it either way hidden text inside the link wrapper I think is a little bit better because a lot of translations Notice that this page was translated for me in English But the aria label was not translated because a lot of translation apps cannot go into the aria and translate the aria So if you have actual hidden text that hidden text gets translated along with everything else Therefore the accessibility side of things is more translatable.

0:55:38
That’s why that’s why because a lot of people ask me that they’re like do I use an ARIA label or why would I use hidden text when I can just use an ARIA label? That’s the main argument that I give them. All right. All right. We got to move on. We got to move on. Number two. Here we go. Law firm web design. Okay, we got Fletcher digital. I’m not gonna scroll. Okay, we’re gonna do the no scroll test what’s going on here modern law firm web design I see it right there grow your practice with a law firm optimized website make your website generate business for your firm get a design that edges out your competition build your practice smarter better faster ok we’ll come back to that copy in just a second right off the bat though you can get the general sense that this is more clear, this is more obvious, this is it’s just easier to read.

0:56:33
We have a little bit of a visual over here, kind of a standard web design visual. Hey, here’s an example of a page we built. There’s a little mobile view for you. Just get an idea of kind of work that we do. I’m going to scroll down. Before we do more copy analysis just get a general overview of UI and UX. So we look at our sections we’ve got a hero we go immediately into kind of like an education of what is a law firm optimized website. Then we go into the process. Then we go into kind of another random feature benefit.

0:57:15
And then we go into, okay, this is all feature benefits here. So we’re starting a grid, a crisscross grid of feature benefits. And then we do a big social proof. Or this is like a talking point with a social proof card, a testimonial card, and more testimonials and social proof and a little bit of an about us blurb to go along with it. Okay, so you’re kind of hitting all the kind of things that need to be there are there.

0:57:46
From a visual standpoint, I’m not really liking this visual. It takes up a lot of space on the page and a lot of space relative to the size of the content that’s next to it. It also seems to be a technical sort of thing, right? And like I am just asking myself, all right, put yourself in the shoes, lawyer, do they care about any of this? I don’t, I’m not convinced that they care about any of this. This might be a little confusing of what they’re looking at. This might be a little technical for them. So I think a better, more approachable visual here would be a better choice. This for sure, this looks like clip art, okay? So this ain’t selling anybody anything, as we say.

0:58:36
This has to be swapped out immediately. These I have no problem with, but they’re shrunken up. Like you’re trying to show me three websites in a row and there’s a big gap between them. And what happens is it just looks very small and I think a lot of lawyers might be like I don’t really know what I’m looking at here they all look very similar the colors are just different I can’t really see any of the content I can’t really get a sense of what’s going on on the site so I would rethink this a little bit it’s just a little small it’s just it’s hard to especially the mobile I mean I can’t I got really squint to see what’s going on there.

0:59:15
So that may be, you need to be, here’s a better version, right? Now I get here, you’re just showing them the hero really, you’re not really showing them the rest of the page. And I get that it’s hard, it’s hard for us. This is a very common thing in web design, right? The pages are long. So how do you show somebody in a snapshot your work, right? It’s tough. I’ve got to find creative ways to do it. But I’m just saying that this is probably not working as well as other methods. All right. I am interested in copy at this point. So what is a law firm optimized website? Our websites are custom-built specific needs of law firms with a strong focus on building credibility, generating leads, and boosting search engine rankings.

1:00:04
Okay? So I would gather that they care about credibility, they care about generating leads, they care about boosting search engine rankings. I don’t see anything in here about, you know, getting more clients, because, and I even tell, and you know, you be very upfront with your prospects and clients about this? Because they’ll come to you and be like, we need more leads, we need more of this, we need more of that.

1:00:31
And I’m like, well, I’ll just let you know, you can’t pay your bills with any of those things, okay? What you really need is more clients. We have to figure out how to get you more clients. Because those you can pay your bills with. You can’t pay your bills with anything else that you just said, right? And they need to know you know that. Because a lot of agencies are just like, we just got you the leads.

1:00:49
That’s all we do here. We just get you leads, okay? You can’t close them, that’s your problem. Bad leads, your problem, right? You gotta let the client know you’re on their same page. Hey, I know you can’t pay your bills with leads. I know you can’t pay your bills with SEO rankings. You can rank number one for some irrelevant right? And you can get a lot of traffic on that irrelevant.

1:01:09
There we go. Sorry, I’m a little, I need a producer. I need a producer to sit there and do that. You could get a lot of a lot of vanity type metrics going and they can still have $0 in their bank account. So you need them to know that we’re on the same page. Okay, we need to get you clients. So you’re not you didn’t call that out here, right? Get them new clients. Yeah, all these things are great. But where’s the client set? Awards and accolades, ratings, testimony. Okay, you’re telling them, you know, stuff that’s important to put on their site, attorney advertising, disclaimers, legal policies, okay, you know all of this. What this long list is basically saying is we know law firm web design. All right. I would make that your headline.

1:01:57
Like what is a law firm? That doesn’t, it doesn’t matter, right? These things, yeah, okay, they need to be there. But you’re obfuscating the main point. The main point is, hey, we know law firm web design. That’s all we do. We do this day in and day out. Everything that needs to be on your site to get you more clients, we’re gonna make sure it’s there. Because that’s what we do, right? Plain language, make the connection with the person.

1:02:28
You felt, oh, they probably need to know what it means to optimize. They don’t give a, right? What they care about is, are you the expert in this? Because I got to practice the run, okay? I can’t be looking over your shoulder, wondering if you put my accolades on there, wondering if you did it. That’s the gist, right? That you’re trying to communicate here, but it’s too many words, too much technical stuff, right?

1:02:52
Just tell them in plain language, this is what we do, so you can run your practice and we can get you more clients. We do this day in and day out, we’ve got seven gazillion law firms under our belt, right? Tell them these things. You don’t have to tell them, you know, how you make the food in the kitchen, right? They just need to know, are you an expert chef? Is it gonna taste amazing?

1:03:13
Good, you’re hired, right? Like, I don’t need every little detail of how to cook it up. All right, now we’re going to go to law firm web design process. Our law firm web design process is fast, easy, and worry free. Oh, here, let me just, because it just popped in my head. Sometimes things pop in my head, I got to go backwards. Put all this stuff, all of this technical stuff, the what would be like education, hey you want to build your own law firm website, here’s the things that need to be on it right or this is what makes the difference between a winning law firm website and a you know a generic law firm website that doesn’t get any new clients.

1:03:53
Package that up as a PDF, a freebie, a video series, a something something something and now you have a way for them to, you can say, hey, do you want to know what goes in to a winning website? And do you want us to give you some case studies about how our websites with these features, the kind of numbers that they have done to grow law firms? Drop your email in here, I’ll send it over, right? Now you’ve got a top of the funnel slash middle of the funnel offer that goes along with your bottom of the funnel offer.

1:04:25
And you can educate them on this stuff all day long in exchange for email address right but it doesn’t really need to be here just on your general web page. Alright our law firm web design process is fast easy and worry-free well I could have guessed that nobody says it’s slow and difficult and you know troublesome. In our experience lawyers are super busy and have little time for drawn-out projects. Most agencies require an onerous amount of involvement and lawyers get stuck along the way. Okay, so this is an example. This is good. This is an example of, and I just said it a minute ago, and I just guessed, right? Anybody knows lawyers are busy people, okay?

1:05:09
You’ve got to speak their language and speak to the challenges and problems that they face. This is one of them. You’re super busy and you don’t have a lot of time for drawn-out projects. You don’t have a lot of time to handhold the agency that you’re going to hire. This is a good reason to hire a niche agency. Yeah? Because if you hire someone that’s, yeah I’ve done a law firm website here and there versus all I do day in and day out is law firm websites. The lawyer who’s doing the hiring for this agency knows, man, if I hire this agency over here, and you gotta kinda tell them this explicitly, you’re gonna be holding their hand.

1:05:46
They’re gonna do a lot of things that are either wrong, that you have to correct from a legal perspective, or they’re just not gonna put the right things on the site. There’s gonna be stuff missing that lawyers actually need. So you need to be going with us. This is good copy. It speaks to that. Most agencies require, sorry I already read that, our process is simpler and streamlined requiring less work. You provide your content and some guidance and we’ll build you a well designed website based on best practices. I don’t think that they, they probably feel like that that just happens at every agency. Like hey I just give you the content and you know you give me some guidance and you do your thing and we end up with the website. I think that’s just how they think that this process works.

1:06:27
So if you really want to differentiate yourself, you have to get more specific. Okay? So here’s a way, when you talk about your process, it gives you an opportunity to create juxtaposition between you, the way you do things, and the way a generalized agency would do things. Okay? And let’s see, you’ve got to crisscross things, so structure your site for results, every agency’s gonna say that.

1:06:52
Optimize content for leads and SEO, every agency’s gonna say that. Gorgeous design on desktop and mobile, every agency’s gonna say that. Design, build and profit, every agency’s gonna say that, okay. So this whole section, you feel like you’re hitting on the right things, right? But everybody’s gonna say that. You, and this is the challenge, okay?

1:07:14
How do you mold this into, we’re talking to a lawyer right now, okay? So structuring the site for results. Is there anything in here? I’m not seeing it at a glance, okay? I’m reading it, reading it, reading it, reading it, reading it. Nothing about law firms or lawyers that’s unique here. Now I come down here. Anything, okay, you said this is where most lawyers get stuck, providing strategic well-written copy.

1:07:38
We can help you get over the hump with content that will position you as a practice area expert. Man, buried the lead again. You buried the lead again. You wrote the good copy, you just put it in the wrong place, right? We help you get over the hump with content that will position you as a practice area expert. Or something along the lines of, we know you’re a busy lawyer, right?

1:08:05
Let’s go back to the, you’re a busy lawyer. You don’t have time to write all the content for your website. We write law firm content all the time. So you’re not going to have to come back to us and say, Oh, we can’t say that. We can’t say this. We can’t. You see what I’m communicating right now. That’s what needs to go right here. This is generic copy. You have an opportunity to speak to the lawyer client you’re trying to sell, you got to give them specifics, right? Hey, we write law firm copy done for you. Law firm copy. How about that? Done for you. Law firm copy. And then under here, you just tell them, right?

1:08:38
You’re a busy lawyer. You don’t have time to write all your copy, but you want to make sure that there’s no legal issues and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? It says everything it needs to say. We do that day in and day out. We write copy for law firms all the time okay and so now they’re instantly comfortable oh gosh they’re gonna take that off my plate and they know what they’re doing and they do this all the time that sounds fantastic I’m in right that’s the difference between generic copy and copy that speaks directly to the person that you’re trying to sell all right we come down here gorgeous design on desktop and mobile all right leveraging our experience building modern, okay, you’re kind of calling it out here, but like, is there something that gets done on law firm web design that really makes it an impact versus how other agencies might approach that?

1:09:29
If there’s something specific there, and you know this better than I do, because I don’t specialize in law firm websites, you kind of need to call that out. Because just saying, hey, it’s going to look great on desktop and mobile, congratulations, every agency is gonna say that and do that, right? So why as a lawyer should I care about that? Give me something specific to chew on.

1:09:51
Design, build, profit, don’t just trust any web designer to build your website, pick someone with expertise working with lawyers, not only to build an outstanding website to provide a high level of professional support before, during, and after you launch your site. Okay, I think you got enough feedback to kind of mold that a little bit better. I mean, you’ve got all the ingredients there, it’s just gotta be a little bit more specific.

1:10:12
All right, About Us. Fletcher Digital’s award-winning web design agency, led by Joe Fletcher, who has over 25 years of experience designing and building sites that produce results. We’re passionate about creating beautiful branding for lawyers and other legal professionals. We’re excited to help you launch and modernize your web presence. Okay, you call out branding here, but you know that’s, we’ve talked about websites the entire time and now suddenly in your about page you’re like, we’re an expert in beautiful branding for lawyers.

1:10:46
So there’s a little bit of a disconnect there. Talk about web design here. And it’s me focused, right? Me, Fletcher Digital, me, me, Joe Fletcher, right? I have over 25 years of experience. This can be reworded a bit to be more you focused. So we talk about me focused copy versus you focused copy. So it’s about you, like you, like me, but it can be you focused in terms of client focused. It can be written to be client focused even though it’s about me.

1:11:19
But again, I would be harping on this like, this is what we do. Your first sentence said nothing about lawyers, okay? So you talked about 25 years of experience designing and building sites that produce results generic, right? Doesn’t have anything to do with lawyers. Okay, you say you specialize in law firm design, yeah? So is that 25 years of experience in law firm design? Or have you been doing websites for 25 years and you have three months of experience in law firm design?

1:11:55
I don’t know. So make it super clear. How many years have you been just doing law firm websites? And then harp on that year in and year out. For 12 years, we’ve been helping lawyers, you understand the difference, right? So get very specific. All right, let’s go up to about, is this gonna say pretty much the same thing? All right, you’ve got, oh, a little bit on the UI here.

1:12:20
I mean, it’s clean, right? I don’t know if y’all can see this. There’s a very thin divider line, a very light gray divider line separating these sections. Typically we like to see, you know, background colors separating the sections. And you could still, all right, we’re using ACSS here. You can still keep it very clean by just using very light, you know, colors, right? So this background color could be your shade ultra, if I could type, what just happened to my variable? I was writing shade, ultra light. Okay. See this as a kind of giving it, just a little design structure, because without this, there’s just too much white space. So if you’re not going to have the background color I would actually shrink these sections up just a little bit and make them tighter. So this can be let’s just drop this on here pad section S as an example. I don’t know I don’t do this in the inspector much I know that’s not gonna work either I don’t want to do it on all sides anyway change this from M to S and you could do that across the board really with ACSS that way all of them tighten up if you’re gonna keep this kind of like we’re not gonna use background colors to separate I mean you did right there right but then you know you could change that on a one-off instance.

1:14:05
But I would just, or you could just change the spacing scale. That would probably be the easiest thing to do. Your section spacing scale, just tighten that up and all these sections will automatically just get a little bit tighter. Because there’s just a lot, it’s very hard to see that divider line. It almost looks like stuff’s just floating around the page. And there’s a lot of gap between one section and the next.

1:14:26
It’s a lot of scrolling. So I would just tighten that up a little bit or do what I just did with the very light background color and kind of section this out a little bit better. All right, let’s hop over to blog and see what we’ve got going on. Cause this is gonna be a very, and I wanna, we’ll do a little bit more on the SEO side of things with this. We’ve done a lot of talk on copy so far in this episode let’s you know maybe look at a little SEO stuff and we’ll start with the blog for that. So effective law firm marketing strategies for 2023. Okay so I can tell right off the bat this is targeting an obvious keyword. Why a well-designed website is crucial for your law. Hmm I think I suppose say law oh law firm success. Okay so you’ve got a little bit of an issue with your cards here chopping off content at least put a dot dot dot You know put a little ellipses down here. I think that’s what it’s called Generating leads are must-haves for your firm’s website This is not specific enough to rank in SEO I think this title needs to be rethought out Like the keyword is probably like law firm lead generation, you know, that would probably be like a primary keyword.

1:15:40
Let’s look at actual structure here. It’s scannable, it’s list driven, that’s good. The one thing missing, we’ve got some, you know, bullets put in here. The paragraphs are a little thick, a little on the thick side, right? We can break those up a little bit But just image it. I’m we’re missing a lot of images, right? I just don’t think these are going to be ranked very well without more visuals without more stuff going on here. No Internal there’s one link. Okay. That’s an internal link. We have one internal link Here is linked that’s a no no go can’t link the word here. That’s got to say something else. So you can learn more about live chat for your law firm.

1:16:32
Learn more about live chat for your firm. That’s the anchor link text right there. Switch that link to here. You got to give these links context. But we have two internal links, reviews and testimonials, conclusion. This is just a link to the homepage, doesn’t count. Contact us today, doesn’t count, law firm web design services, okay, is the third internal link. Zero external links, gonna have a hard time ranking, okay. You’ve got to have and I know people don’t want to put them, they’re like, oh it hurts me, pains me, they might leave my site. Open in a new tab, you got to have external links to stuff. Google is just this day and age like it looks for, hey is it healthy internal linking and is it healthy on external linking. Google doesn’t want to send people into a closed system that they’re never going to escape from right and it doesn’t reference other places because they don’t know you know what you’re talking about unless they can follow your references around the web. So external links are very important. Let’s go back to any of these have images. No. No. No.

1:17:36
No, okay? I know it’s a lot of extra work, but this is what’s required. I’m working on a brand new article, I wish I could show it to you. It’s on my new site, my personally branded site. I’d pull it up right now. I have spent three hours just on the formatting of this blog post, getting all the screenshots I need, optimizing them, putting them in, putting all the alt tags, all the title tags, all the captions, doing this, doing that, like it’s a lot of headings and little paragraphs and bullets and images and visuals to go along with it.

1:18:06
And it’s like a 2,500, 3,000 word blog post, right? Hours of time, but that’s what it takes, right? This just like, hey, let’s slap an article up, no visuals, you know, not much internal linking, not much external linking. Google’s like, meh, meh, we can find better, okay? And they are gonna find better, and they’re gonna rank better. So I hate to see people do like 70% of the work, and then they left out the last 30%, so they’re really not gonna get much in the way of results, when they just do the extra 30%, and your results can go gangbusters.

1:18:47
All right, how a top-notch website promotes law firm legitimacy and trust. Legal blogs, how a blog benefits your firm. Okay, this would be a good one to look at. Finding ideas, can we do this please? Thank you. Okay, thank you. Alright, so I’m guessing legal blogs is the keyword being targeted there. Yeah, legal, yeah, and this is legal bloggers. So legal marketing blogs, this is what I was afraid of. Right when I saw the keyword, you found the keyword legal blogs and you’re like, okay, how can we spin that? Alright we’ll write an article on how a blog benefits your law firm but the intent of the people searching for legal blogs does not match that and the number one rule in SEO, this is the number one rule, I don’t think this is debatable, the number one rule in SEO is that your content has to match the intent of the search.

1:20:03
And nothing else matters beyond that. Because you can do every other thing right. You can check every other box. But if the content you created doesn’t match the intent of the search, Google has zero interest in it. It will just not rank it. It doesn’t care because you didn’t match the intent of the search. So what is the intent of the search for legal blogs? Well, Ahrefs is telling you the parent topic of this. Should I zoom in?

1:20:28
Maybe you guys can’t see very well. Ahrefs is telling you that the parent topic is legal bloggers. And that right away should be a red flag. Oh gosh, are people looking for legal blogs like to read them? To find people who blog about legal topics? Kind of seems like that. Legal marketing blogs. This is people looking for examples of blogs that are doing legal marketing the right way. Like I need to know what other legal bloggers are doing to see what I should be doing for my legal blogging, right?

1:21:00
Best legal blogs 2016. This is not lawyers looking for why is a legal blog important. That’s what you kind of wrote the article for, right? But that’s not what these people searching for this are wanting to find. And so there’s a mismatch on the intent versus the content and it’s going to fail to rank for that reason. Why a dated website hurts your business? Ok, it’s kind of generic. Ok, alright let’s go back to the main page to check SEO here. So I want you to see this. I’m guessing, yeah, so there’s your H1 right here.

1:21:41
So this is actually your H1. This is your H2. So what we need to know is modern law firm web design. I’m going to type in, I’m going to leave out the word modern. I’m going to type in law firm web design. I’m also going to type in some variations like lawyer web design. There’s also, we can actually leave the word web out just for a second, because there’s going to be discrepancies between web and website and all of that.

1:22:15
And then I’m just curious of how the word design interacts with lawyer and law firm. Attorney would be another one. There’s a lot of variations of these words that we would have to look at. I’m just thinking off the top of my head. Alright so now we’re going to go in and just see what our matching terms are. Okay so law firm web design is right at the top of the list along with law firm website design. These two keywords just everybody’s on the same page can be combined together. Google understands these two things to be the same thing. You don’t have to write different variations of them over and over again. You don’t have to make two different pages targeting one term.

1:22:55
You don’t have to do any of that. Google knows that these two things are the exact same thing. So you literally, you can combine these volume stats and traffic potential stats to, well, the traffic potential kind of does that for you. So you see the volume is 900, the traffic potential is 4,000. That’s because Ahrefs knows that this keyword actually represents a group of keywords, a cluster of keywords.

1:23:18
And the traffic you can get from ranking for that cluster, which you’ll probably rank, if you rank for this keyword, you’ll most likely rank for the cluster, then that’s the kind of traffic that you can get for the cluster, okay? Web design for law firm, lawyer website design. And see, Ahrefs is kind of cluing you in over here with the parent topic of like what is in the cluster and what’s not in the cluster. So law firm web design is also in lawyer website design.

1:23:45
They’re in the same parent topic. This one is showing, hey, something else is going on here. Web design for attorneys, okay, is the parent topic for web design for law firm. So that’s interesting But you’ve done a basic, you know, pretty pretty good job here I don’t I don’t know that the word modern is helping you out here This may just be clouding this h1 just a little bit. I would be Inclined especially if you’re struggling to rank to get rid of this word modern Probably it should just say that law firm web design, right? Okay. Grow your practice with a law firm optimized website. So, I’m going to do now law firm website, and I want to see some variations around this.

1:24:41
Okay. Grow your practice with a law firm optimized website. I think what’s hanging me up is the word optimized like injected here. Law firm website is the thing, right? It’s a law firm website. Grow your practice with an optimized law firm website. But optimized is also like the word solutions. So it doesn’t really say a lot of much. I maybe let’s do this, take out the word optimized and let’s put something else with more specificity. Group these things together, law firm website, that’s the keyword, ok, so that stays grouped and then before that you can find something more specific to say. That’s the big change I would make there to that hero area. Make your website generate business for your firm. That’s good.

1:25:40
Do lawyers use this kind of terminology generating business or do they say get more clients or do they like what do they say? Whatever they say inject that right here. I’m not convinced that they say generate business. I would think that they would say something else. So figure out what that thing is and put that there. Get a design that edges out your competition. Hmm okay build your practice smarter better faster. I don’t know I don’t know. There’s a lot of things that go into building a practice right well the website’s you know a very small part of that so I don’t know that this is the best talking point to put here. I think you can fit something else more important here that actually has to do with web design.

1:26:29
Okay. All right. I think we’ve done enough on this site. Let’s look at Get Started today just so we can see what their call to action is. Okay. Tell us about your law practice, initial thoughts. All right. First name, last name, phone, email address, message, send message. I’m not big on this. When possible, I’ll just kind of say this as a general CTA kind of thing, when possible, have somebody opt in to an action that they can, it is after all like a call to action, but like something productive.

1:26:51
A contact form is the least productive thing that they could do. Because what’s going to happen is they’re going to fill this out and immediately they’re going to think to themselves, in fact let’s just hold on, sorry, you’re gonna get a dummy thing. Test person, I’m just being nice and I’m just gonna let you know right off the bat, this is a test, okay? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, zero. And we’re gonna do, let’s do kevin at digitalgravy.co because it came from me.

1:27:32
Sorry, was just testing. Okay, actually, I’m gonna write this, wanted to see how savvy your thank you page is and how well you used it for a secondary instruction slash offer. Okay, send message. All right. Ah, okay. So good thing to talk about here. We haven’t talked about this much on web design for dummies. I’m a really big fan of after they do something like a contact form, like let’s say you really just want their lead information.

1:28:14
I mean, I still don’t think it’s a good, let’s back up. Let’s put yourself in the position of a lawyer is interested in getting website. Okay, they got to fill this out. And then what do they immediately think to themselves? All right, well, how long am I gonna have to wait? Is this person busy? When are they going to get back to me? I got to check my email. I got, I got to like monitor my inbox now and wait for this person to get in touch with me. Or are they going to call me and pester me? Uh, you know, what exactly is going to happen when I fill this out? It’s not like a, Ooh, I know exactly what’s going to happen when I fill this out. For example, if the call to action here was, Hey, book an appointment, right?

1:28:50
Or get a discovery call. And then instead of just filling out a form, I actually, it’s like a Calendly. I get to just select a time and a day, and like I know, okay, there’s my time and my day. We’re gonna talk on this time and day. And I’m gonna get links on where to show up and all this other stuff. They know what’s gonna happen. So if it’s just a contact form, it’s too open-ended, it’s too like, you know, they fill out forms and the person never gets back to them, or they miss it, or it goes to spam, or like, it’s just not the best call to action that you can come up with.

1:29:19
Now, what happens after they fill it out? You have an opportunity right here, okay, to put other things, here, look at this. Let’s go to bricks.getframes.io. Just popped into my mind an example of, let’s go, it’s probably one of our heroes. Something like this maybe, could be that one or I’m having a hard time seeing. Let’s do this one just so you guys can get, oh, here it is right here.

1:29:51
Kilo, hero Kilo, okay. Imagine that they just fill out your contact form, right? And immediately they see testimonials again. So it’s almost like a reiteration of, hey, you just did the right thing, right? It’s a fantastic agency you just contacted. Look at all these happy people. You can even use the one that has headshots in it if you wanna make it more personal, right? This was more for like a SaaS kind of thing in mind, but again, you can reuse these frames for anything you want.

1:30:23
You could pop your own headshot into these. It’s open-ended, it’s flexible. You can do whatever you wanna do. You don’t have to use them as is. But then you said, hey, I think I did this on my old website. I was like, hey, you just filled out the form, that’s fantastic, I’m going to contact you within 24 hours or if you’d rather be more proactive, here’s a link to my Calendly right here, just click on it, get on my calendar and then they feel like, oh, okay, cool, I’d rather do that, right? So it’s almost like you’re doing two in one.

1:30:49
Like you got them to fill out the form, but now if they prefer to take a more proactive action, they can do that. Or you can use this page to just butter them up even more. Hey, here’s what we’re gonna talk about. Here’s the things we like to focus on. Like you have an opportunity here to expand your connection with this person, right? There’s a lot of different things you can do. What you’re doing with a general this right here is mostly a wasted opportunity.

1:31:17
And this is a big thing that I see where if you really want conversion, optimization, all that to go to the next level, do something really unique and powerful with your thank you pages. A lot of people will be like, oh, they already took the action, we won. No, no, no, you can keep winning. You can win even more. You can win bigger. Use the thank you page to win bigger. There’s more things you can do here before they leave. All right?

1:31:42
So use that space and opportunity to do something cool. All right, let’s do the last site. We’re gonna get to our questions before we do the last site. All right, and how are we doing on time? All right, we got enough time to finish this up. Is that what the parent topic indicates. What’s the other part of your question? The parent topic indicates the kind of the cluster of keywords when you see that parents match other parents. See, law firm web design, or here’s one, lawyer website, lawyer website, lawyer website.

1:32:19
This is the cluster, and lawyer website is these three terms right here. Now the clusters are much, much, much, much, much bigger. This just gives you a glimpse so you can kind of understand how things are grouped together. And how does Ahrefs know this? It knows this by analyzing the top 10 results in the SERPs, the main keywords that they are ranking for and or targeting. Because they could be ranking for this, but this is the main thing that they’re ranking for over here.

1:32:46
Hopefully that makes sense. All right. Where can you submit sites? Good question. Wilco, comment down or the description area. I was like discussion, comment, what’s it called? The description area down below has a link to a form you fill out. Just fill out the form and you’re on the list. All right. Brian, it looks too thin at least when watching Kevin Navigate.

1:33:10
It’s probably better on the actual site. I haven’t checked. Okay. You guys, oh, the language should be specified for accessibility. It’s just because you guys didn’t see when I first arrived on I have them open over here. And when I first arrived, Google asked me like Chrome asked me to translate it. And I say yes, there wasn’t actually a translation feature on that site that I saw. It was just Chrome translating and I had already said yes to translate it. That’s why you didn’t see that happen. And yeah, I try to say this every single time.

1:33:45
When I translate a website, I still have to analyze the copy. And the copy may be mistranslated. And if that’s the case, then just take what I’m saying for what it’s worth. Don’t take it as like a criticism of your actual copy because it was mistranslated, but I have to, I still have to talk about the copy so everybody can learn about better copy. Right. So I get it that it’s, that’s not what I wrote. That’s not what I wrote. I promise. That’s not what I, it’s not, not a big deal. Right. I’m not like, we’re not wet noodling you and like, you know, banishing you to the basement. So if you didn’t write that and it just translated it that way, then I totally get it. All right. It’s not, I don’t think less of you. All right.

1:34:24
We’re just going through it so everybody can learn. Is there also frame-specific content in the inner circle? All frames content is free. So, I would subscribe to the Automatic CSS and Frames YouTube channel. It’s one and the same, and then you’re going to get a lot of frames content there. Then there’s frames content in the Automatic CSS community that’s there too. But none of the frame stuff is really behind the inner circle paywall.

1:34:53
What’s the recommended way to handle URLs for blog? Should it be prefixed with slash news slash article title or what’s the best practice? A lot of people will tell you that it’s better to have it top level to where there’s no slug like blog or news or whatever. What I’ll tell you is it really doesn’t matter at the end of the day. There’s a gazillion websites ranking number one and slash blog is in the slug. So it’s not like, definitely not the most important factor or thing to worry about. From an architectural standpoint, when you look at visualizations of site maps, it’s better when they have a slug like blog because it compartmentalizes all that content together.

1:35:39
And in my opinion, it makes it easier for Google to crawl and understand. And we don’t know how the algorithm works and whatever, but to me, if you can look at something visually and it makes more sense, then to robots who can’t actually see what they’re looking at, those visual maps, by the way, are created by robots. And so if it makes more sense visually, it probably makes more sense to the robot as well that can’t see.

1:36:04
So I think it helps to have things compartmentalized because Google’s main thing is like, all right, we gotta understand the content on the page, but then we have to understand how this content is related to other content on this page, and then we have to understand how this content is related to other content not on this page, like on other websites in general, because we’re trying to figure out where to put it, where to rank it, where to index it, okay?

1:36:26
There’s a lot of questions that Google has to find the answer to. If you can help them understand, this is what internal links do, this is what external links do. It helps the crawlers understand how this content is related to this content, is related to this content, is related to this site in general, is related to this other set of sites. That’s all the crawlers are trying to figure out. So the more architectural organization there is, the better. Now can you go too deep with the architectural? Yeah, absolutely, it can go too deep. And that becomes a problem in its own.

1:36:58
But at just a simple top level, hey, all of our blog articles are contained under slash blog, to me that’s a benefit. All of our news is contained under slash news, to me that’s a benefit. It’s also, by the way, a benefit to the user. Because they can immediately see what kind of page they’re on on the website by glancing at the URL bar. Oh, I’m reading this, because some people make blog posts look like pages, right?

1:37:23
And then you’re like, am I on a page? Am I on an article? What am I on? Quick glance up here. Oh, I’m in the blog. Got it. And then I know, by the way, so I land on an article. Is this an article? Let’s say the article doesn’t have a blog slug. So is this a one-off article that was published on this website? Or is there somewhere I can go to see more articles? I don’t know, because there’s no slug. But if there’s a blog slug, I now know immediately, oh, let me just take out this article URL and go right to the blog, you can see all their articles. Okay, so it’s beneficial for the user. If you were doing breadcrumbs, it’s beneficial because it’s going to show up in the breadcrumbs. So the latter reasons I think it’s beneficial That’s my answer.

1:38:01
Okay. All right. We’re good there. Last one. Backlinking. How, when, what’s best practice? Well, that’s a big topic, Mick. That’s a giant topic. So, backlinking typically describes you getting links from other websites. What we’ve been talking about more today is internal linking and external linking.

1:38:11
So, if you’re a web developer, you’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites.

1:38:21
You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. You’re going to want to make sure that you’re getting links from other websites. What we’ve been talking about more today is internal linking and external linking. Okay we got to get this last one done. Here we go. Manicure, pedicure, this was a translated website. Okay let’s keep that in mind. So I am going to scrutinize the copy but just to know it is it is a translated site so the copy may be translated improperly I don’t know. Alright no scroll right we always do the no scroll test. I am first I’m having trouble with the logo so pedicure manicure NISSI I’m actually having trouble with the URL as well pedicure I think this is Nissy.

1:39:19
Pedicure and manicure Nissy takes, is Nissy a location? That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Is this a location? Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I don’t know. I don’t know. Takes, or is it just the brand name?

1:39:38
Takes care of your feet and hands with attention and care. After all, your feet have to carry you all day. Okay. Call to action is book a treatment. We have a visual. I don’t know that this is the best visual. Maybe seeing somebody like happy and relaxed and getting their pedicure or their manicure or whatever, like a real person. This is almost like I just pulled up a booth and I’m like, you wanna be the first one?

1:40:11
That’s kind of the vibe that that’s giving me right here. I wanna see other people doing it. I wanna see other people getting this treatment, right? And I wanna see the look on their face because if they’re happy, maybe I’ll be happy. So that’s the kind of vibe I think you want to give here. Not really giving this the vibe. Also, this almost looks like a dentist chair. It’s like there’s a light coming down from the top. It’s giving me like dental work vibes.

1:40:38
I don’t think that’s what the vibe you want to get, right? Okay. Possible treatments. Here’s the guys. We’ve talked about this before okay here’s the test here’s the test what am I going to talk about right here in this section go go to the comments run to the comments run to the comments what am I going to talk about in this section what do you see actually I see one two I see many things so you could have many right answers here it’s not just going to be one thing there’s many right answers what are we seeing? All right, let’s see the comments if we can get some answers rolling in here. What are we looking at? Amanda says question, when do you choose using CPTs versus taxonomy or something like for something like press releases, company news, etc. I use CPTs for them because they’re really different types of, it’s not the same kind of content, but categorized differently.

1:41:45
It’s an actual different type of content. So if it’s a different kind of post, then it makes sense that it’s a custom post, right? So it would be a CPT card or a CPT. Sorry, I was reading the next comment that said uneven cards, length of copy, inconsistent description lengths. There you go right there. So long copy, short copy. These are more similar, but they’re still too long. So let’s read this. I don’t want to read it. I don’t want to read all this, especially because it’s one, right? Basic pedicure treatment.

1:42:29
This should be like that long right there. You’ve got to get this to be this long, as long as this highlight. And then every single one of them is that long. Is that long. So you’ve got to put some extra thought and time and effort into what you’re going to say here. Now here’s what I think the problem is. We have a site structure problem, okay? This card is not clickable.

1:42:53
This heading is not clickable. The only thing I can do, guys, is book now. I can’t learn more about the basic pedicure treatment. I can’t, I don’t know, this is definitely translated wrong. I can’t learn more about this. I can’t learn more about this. I can’t learn more. So, and because of the fact that I can’t learn more, you’re trying to tell me everything I need to know inside of this card, and that’s where this is all falling apart.

1:43:20
These need to be individual posts. Also, or really pages, okay? Also, if you want to rank for these things, you ain’t ever gonna rank just because these cards are here. They have to have their own page. So until these things have their own page, this is failing the SEO side of things it’s failing the copywriting side of things because you can’t possibly tell people everything that they need to know inside this little card and then it’s failing the UI design side of things because of what it’s forcing you to do is breaking your visual flow so that that would be a big thing to to fix an update and we can also talk about pricing here we can talk about clients saying, oh, we just need one page for our services.

1:44:07
We don’t need to pay for all those, you know, individual services pages. Well, actually you do, you kind of do. Cause this is the problem you run into when you don’t. So we can’t get the job done copy wise. We can’t get the job done UI wise. We can’t get the job done SEO wise. What are we doing here? You got to invest the money for us to do things the right way.

1:44:27
The right way is to create a page for each of these things. Now we have a whole page where we can break up content and we can talk about the things we want to talk about and we can really sell people on why a pedicure is different here than somewhere else, which I hope you have something to say about that. Hopefully the whole goal of this brand is not to say we do pedicures and manicures just like every other place. Choose us, why? I don’t know. Just maybe we’re closer. Maybe we’re a little cheaper.

1:44:58
I don’t really have another reason for you. If that’s the whole play with your copy, then you’ve already failed, right? All right, scroll down. About me, years of dedication to provide you with the best service. See I don’t necessarily want to see this either. Put yourself in the shoes of, this looks like a dirty foot to me, right? It’s like, oh God, it’s not appetizing, right? Put yourself in, here you go, McDonald’s, right?

1:45:31
Guys you know, you go through the drive-thru at McDonald’s, it looks like this. It’s not far off from looking like this, right? You get that little mash together sandwich with the bun half fallen off and shit. That’s what you get when you go through the drive-thru. But when you pull up a McDonald’s advertisement or you go to mcdonalds.com, that shit’s all plump. And it’s like, it’s perfect. It’s shiny. It’s sweating. It’s got like, you know, you know what I’m talking about, right? You got your visuals. Okay. There’s something to say about that, right?

1:46:05
It’s not McDonald’s is lying, right? You don’t want to lie, but you want to highlight something. That’s like fantastic. That looks good. That’s like appetizing. That’s that makes people want to do it. I don’t know that I want to do what’s going on here. Okay. So better visuals can really, really help this situation out. And again, I want to see people.

1:46:26
I want to see faces I want to see smiles I want to see you know the kind of person the feeling I want to get you’ve got it what is the feeling you want me to have now make a picture that communicates that then put that on your website that’s what photography should do in marketing okay now you can go too far right you can do what McDonald’s does. They’re lying. 100%. They’re lying. That’s not what you’re going to get when you go to the McDonald’s drive-thru. Nothing on that screen is what you’re going to get that they show you, okay? So they take it too far, in my opinion. What they would be better served to do is actually make their food look like what’s in the picture. That would be the best thing that they could do, right? But still, you want to have a really good visual that’s going to create that feeling. It’s not just, hey, let’s show them a pedicure.

1:47:18
No, no, no, no, no. We gotta get them to have a specific feeling when they see the photo. That’s what needs to happen here. My name is Leslie. There you go. My, I, okay? I, a dream I’ve had, okay? I, got it? I, I, I, we, we, we, me, me, me.

1:47:37
That’s all gotta go You focus copy Client focus when I say you I’m talking about the client. That’s you focus copy not talking about me. I’m talking about you All right So we’ve got to reword this to be you focus copy All right treatments and prices Got a little table down here. Oh, oh we can view treatments. So that’s just gonna take me to the same grid. Okay, let’s look at what your booking is like. What happens? What happens when we book?

1:48:09
Immediate confusion, immediate confusion. This is gonna be, this is the deal breaker right here. This is the deal breaker. So right off the bat, what did I ask? I asked for a basic, to schedule a basic pedicure treatment. And the first thing I met with is, okay this is steps, that’s a lot of steps. I’m just going to let you know right now, it’s a lot of steps. For something this simple, that’s a lot of steps. But immediately I’m asked, hey would you like an additional 15 minutes? Well, I don’t know. Uh, I haven’t even chosen a time. I haven’t put in my info information yet.

1:48:55
I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d like to add an additional 15, but let’s just, let’s go with it. Okay. So I click on that. All right. If I don’t click on that. All right. That was weird. That just popped out. Okay.

1:49:04
Let’s, let’s not, let’s not click on that. Let’s go to next step. Okay. Now I choose a, this should be the first step. I just asked you to book a time show me a scheduler that makes sense. Showing me more options may having me spend more money not yet not yet okay show me the calendar first. So now this step makes sense all right let’s go to here all right now I can choose a time now I can go the next step. Now it’s gonna ask me for my name and info. Okay can I go the next step? No. All right so test one two three four five six seven eight nine zero. All right yep it was me. Sorry just testing. Okay next step.

1:49:53
Okay um if you only have one person to choose from, auto select them. Don’t make me select the only person that’s in the grid. That would be a helpful optimization step here. This does not need to be another step, an independent step. You should ask me that when I entered my information. But I’m just going to go ahead and click this. First, breakability, do we break it? No. Okay. It opened in a new tab at least. I would open that in a, we’re already in a modal, so, it’s a little tough.

1:50:33
All right, we come down. Okay. All right. We appear to be booked. I can add it to my calendar. I can print it. That was right before we booked. You can ask me if I want to add additional time. That would be a good time to ask that initial question. So overall, that can be streamlined more.

1:50:54
Your biggest hurdle is that first step. When somebody says, I want a book, show them a calendar. Don’t show them like, whoa, what’s going on here? Now I got to read it. It’s not intuitive. Like if I don’t intuitively know, hey, this is what we’re doing here, then I got to start looking around and now I’m uncomfortable, especially since you’re asking me for more money right off the bat. Okay, so we can optimize that a little bit.

1:51:22
Let’s go to, we did treatments already. Let’s check out your reviews. All right, we just got a bunch of Google reviews. But see, here’s the thing. Reviews pages are very, very popular. We got to have a page for our reviews. Why? I don’t think I’ve ever, I will create them sometimes when people really request them, but I do it on top of what should already be done, which is you surround your offers and your products and your services with the social proof that go along with them.

1:51:57
So what is this page missing? Well, it’s got the reviews way down here. So that’s, that’s good. All right. You’ve got it there, but sometimes people will not have this. And I would even make, maybe like to see them higher up on the page almost. Cause you, you go right into like, all right, here’s what I do. Here’s all the things. Okay. Maybe give me a little social proof up here. Since you haven’t put any other, you know, features, benefits, problem, agitate solution, nothing is there. So you could just put social proof there. But a lot of people are like, well, we have a page for our reviews. But you know, I can Google and get reviews.

1:52:32
What I really want is when I’m in the midst of reading about a pedicure, I want to hear from other people that had that pedicure right then and there. If I’m reading about that, I wanna hear from people that got that done right then and there. I don’t wanna have to go to a reviews page and then, you know, is any of these people talking about nail reconstruction? I wanna hear from those people where, oh, I can’t?

1:53:06
Oh, I just gotta wade through this giant grid of testimonials. Look, but you see what I’m saying? If I was reading about nail reconstruction on a nail reconstruction page, and then right there was testimonials from people who got nail reconstruction, I don’t even know what that means, that would be a much better user experience, much better helping me make the sales decision, right?

1:53:30
When it’s all just, hey, here’s a reviews page, go read our reviews. Ah, okay, but a lot of these aren’t for the service that I was thinking about getting. So this is why I always say reviews are a CPT. And by the way, when you use this as a generated, I’m guessing this is a generated grid from some sort of reviews plugin. You need to take the reviews and make them a custom post type and either bi-directionally relate them to your services or use taxonomies or whatever, something that gives you the ability to show certain reviews in certain places or I should say specific reviews in specific places. So that when you create a page for manicures or pedicures, here’s all your pedicure reviews.

1:54:18
Manicure page, here’s all your manicure reviews. Nail reconstruction, here’s all your nail reconstruction reviews. That is extra work, but it goes so far to increasing conversion rates, making the sales funnel more effective. It really, really, really helps. So I always say do the extra work and get that done. All right, we’re running out of time. I’m going to do questions before we jump off. If there’s any last minute questions, drop them in. Wilco says, do you use custom taxonomies or just use a CPT and a relational field? For the most part, CPT, bi-directional relationships. Why? Somebody just asked this question in the inner circle. And here was my answer.

1:55:06
Because you can do it both ways. It’s one of those situations where you can get the job done either way. but in my opinion one way is more effective than the other. Here’s an example five services you put in your five services as a CPT so every service has its own post in the CPT. Then you have five reviews let’s just make it perfect and say there’s one review for each service okay. So you create a CPT. There’s your five posts. Now if you bi-directionally relate them, you could say this service goes with this review. This service goes with this review. This service goes with this review. This service goes with this review. That’s one way to do it. That’s the way I prefer. That’s the way that I believe is objectively more efficient. The other way you can do it that people do it, services CPT, taxonomy, okay?

1:56:04
Now, you create a taxonomy for your reviews, for example, of services, let’s say. This is how I’ve seen it done. There may be other ways to do this, but this is where I’ve seen it done, right? Because they’re like, we’ve got to categorize our testimonials by the service that they go with. So they create a taxonomy with the services. And then what happens is you add a sixth service.

1:56:27
So what happens, how do you do this structurally? You’ve got to add the sixth service as a post, and then you have to go add that to the taxonomy options as well. So you have to create, you have to manage two different databases, unless there’s some other magical way that I’m missing, right? Versus bi-directional relationships, you add the service, here’s a review, you relate them together.

1:56:50
There’s no other taxonomy system to manage. So you’re basically taking a middleman out effectively. And to me, that’s much more efficient. Now, if I’m missing something there, I’d love to hear it because I’m always for making things better and more efficient and easier. But to me, one-to-one or one-to-many directional relationships is the way to go. It’s got special lacquer on it to make it shine. Okay. I don’t know. I must have said something funny at some point.

1:57:24
The color palette for booking is out of alignment. Ooh, okay. Let’s look. Yeah, you’re right. It is. That it is. It’s got this like mint, it’s all minty, very minty, where this is like a darker, the call to action here, or darker green. And now we go mint with it. Wait a minute, hold on, what’s happening now? Okay, hold on. Okay, because this is for a specific thing. But this, oh, I’m not liking this either. Not liking this either. I would not make this part of the flow Hmm Hmm yeah, we could I we could analyze this all day this whole checkout flow could be analyzed all day long There’s there’s a bunch of stuff going in there Okay Can you place an individual pop-up within a you got cut off there, Bobby.

1:58:26
Gonna need the rest of your question. Oh, here we go. Can you place an individual pop-up within a query loop? Yes. Yeah, I think you mean a modal, but yes, the answer is yes. Do you do the same thing with FAQs, re-bidirectional relationships? Yes, yes, 100%. The only time I use a taxonomy. So for example, for frames, I am building out a custom library slash documentation.

1:58:58
We’re using a custom post type for the frames. So a frame is a custom post type, so you can add a bunch of frames. I can actually bidirectionally relate one frame to another frame because there’s children frames and there’s parent frames right so for example header Bravo might have a sub frame called menu Bravo because that menu Bravo could be used in any header right so it’s a separate frame so in the documentation I want to say when you’re looking at header Bravo that menu Bravo is a related frame if you care to go investigate that next, right?

1:59:40
So we can bidirectionally relate a frame to another frame and that creates those relationships. However, we also have a taxonomy. And don’t worry guys, I will do, when I’m done building this out, because I know people are going to say, how is this organized? How did you build it? Okay, we’ll do a whole overview of how it was built. But I also have two taxonomies for that frame assigned to that frame CPT. So one of the taxonomies is what type of frame is it? Is it a single frame? Is it a template frame? Is it a grid frame? Is it like what kind of frame is it? What type of frame is it? That is where it makes sense to have a taxonomy. I have another taxonomy of what category does this frame fit in? Is it a header? Is it a hero? Is it a CTA?

2:00:28
Is it social proof? That makes sense as a taxonomy. But when you’re relating something to another thing, like a review, it’s in the name, you’re relating it, right? These things are related. So use a relationship, not a taxonomy. If you’re like, what type of thing is it? Now we’re in taxonomy land, okay? So that’s how I separated it in my brain the problem is the here’s what I think happened a lot of people use taxonomies for relationships because they didn’t technically know how to create the relationships there wasn’t a lot of infrastructure back in the day taxonomies was baked into WordPress from the start right but bi-directional relationships a bit more technical.

2:01:15
And if people couldn’t do the technical, how about I talk right, implementation of it, they resorted to taxonomies. They were like, well, I can’t do that, but we can get by with taxonomies. And so I think that’s where that came from. But if you can, and BRICS, MetaBox, very easy to manage bi-directional relationships. So you should do it that way, right? You should not use a taxonomy there when a taxonomy is not the best thing to use.

2:01:47
Okay, Wilco says, I have brands, news, reviews that I want to connect to a type of product categories. That’s why I’ve got custom taxonomies, okay. You have car batteries, car chains, car accessories, and then I would connect news or reviews or brands to the taxonomy. Here’s the thing about site architecture, especially when there’s a lot of options, a lot of ways to relate the options, a lot of ways to categorize the options. Now we’re getting into a situation of architecture design.

2:02:18
So you have to design the architecture of the website. This has to be a line item on the SOW. This has to be something that you have accounted for because it takes a tremendous amount of time and expertise and it’s something you do not want to get it wrong because going back and reworking it after a site is built and you determine, ah man we didn’t really think that through, did we? That’s not the time, right? So there’s a lot of risk there. It is something that takes care. So this, if you’re not billing clients, if you have a website where it’s not immediately clear what the site architecture needs to be in these kinds of cases, then that should be a line item that goes into the discovery process, something way ahead of time, right?

2:03:11
That they actually get billed for. And you make it a point to the client, Hey, we’ve got to figure this out. This is super important. We can’t start building until we know exactly how this is all going to work. Okay. So people often tell me, Kevin, this is what my site has. It’s got 8,000 products and 70 categories. How would you do it? Dude? I don’t know. I’d have to sit down for hours and map out different ways that we could approach it and figure out which way is going to be the best. So until somebody cuts a check, I can’t really answer that question.

2:03:42
So that’s kind of how that goes. All right guys, we are out of time. I hope you got a lot of value out of this episode. If you did, please pay with a like, pay with a comment. That’s all you have to do. Drop a comment, drop a like, make sure you’re subscribed, make sure you join me every Wednesday 11 a.m. for Web Design for Dummies. And that’s it for me. I’m out. Peace.

2:04:05
Love you guys. for web design for dummies. And, uh, that’s it for me. I’m out peace. Love you guys.