Roddy Boyd, owner, and Director at 23 Creative, returns for part two of a two-part series on great business websites.
I invited Roddy on the show because pretty much every business has a website, but not every business has a great website.
Websites can sometimes be a bit of a mystery for businesses. Sure, they know they need one, and they know what a good one looks like, but they don’t know how to take ownership of their site and make that happen.
Most of you have and will use a web developer to build your site but, so often, it can be a frustrating process – whether it is taking too long, not exactly what you wanted, you don’t know how it all works, you don’t have control of and access to the backend, or it isn’t helping your business as it should.
Roddy knows that building a website isn’t enough and that you need to make sure it has clear and concise calls to action and is easy for your target market to navigate.
In this second chat with Roddy, we cover off the importance of website speed, usability, compatibility, SEO, hosting, backing up your website, what we need to do when a site goes live, customer relationship systems, how search engine marketing flows into your site, why your website is the lynchpin of your marketing, and a few war stories to make it really interesting.
You can get in contact with Roddy and learn more about how 23 Creative can help you at 23creative.com.au or connect with him on LinkedIn
Enjoy.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
As part of the service, I have had this episode transcribed. Transcribing, proofing, and editing a podcast episode is A LOT of work. That’s why I use a service called REV who provide professional freelance transcriptionists who are vetted for quality. While they offer a 99% accuracy guarantee, I do not proof-read their work extensively. Instead, I simply copy and paste below and, as such, please note that this is not be a verbatim transcript of the episode and I have trimmed things like the intro, close, and mid-show ad.
Daniel:
What speed means when we talk about websites and why it is important?
Roddy:
So that’s going to come back to your content management system and I’m just going to stay on WordPress because we’ve talked about WordPress this whole way through. What people don’t know, well, what I find a lot of clients that come to see me, they don’t know the difference between a print quality image and a web quality image. So your print quality images, you send to the printer, they print it on a big billboard and it doesn’t look all pixelated and have dots all through it. But if you use that same photo on your website, that could be a seven meg image, and if you put it on your website, that means your website, people have to download seven megs of information before your website displays anything.
Roddy:
So a good content management system should know that you’re going to do this, well a good developer, sorry, not a content management system, should expect a client not to know those differences and then set up the system so that when they upload the seven meg image, it downsizes it and then outputs to the smallest possible size.
Daniel:
Because it doesn’t need to be a high res, lots of pixels image because your computer screen doesn’t actually show it at that resolution. Does it?
Roddy:
Yeah. No, that’s right. And people don’t need a seven meg image on their computer screen. Because even… If we really wanted to get technical about this?
Daniel:
Here we go. Settle in.
Roddy:
Yeah. HD screen is 1920 by 1080. An image that’s 1920 by 1080 should only come into about 250 to 300 kilobytes and we’re talking seven meg images. So that means it is 14 times bigger than it needs to be to display on a HD screen.
Daniel:
I gave an example. This is years ago now, I was trying to explain to a student at a college I worked at, they were putting images into a PowerPoint presentation. It’s the same thing here right? They were copying these images from outside PowerPoint and dropping them in directly. And they were dragging them and making them smaller in the PowerPoint. But then they couldn’t figure out why the PowerPoint was still a million gig, or whatever stupid number it was. And I tried to explain to them that it’s like if you have an A3 piece of paper and that’s your photo that you want to put on your website, just because you fold in half and fold it in half and fold in half again, and it’s much smaller, there’s still the same amount of paper in there.
Roddy:
Yep, exactly right. That’s really good way to explain it.
Daniel:
Thank you. I thought it was.
Roddy:
Yeah. So yeah. And that’s where… and speed comes into it. So if you’re on your phone and you’re on a 4G connection and you’ve got a seven meg image on that phone before it even loads, it will take you four seconds for the page to display anything. And if that’s the case, people are going to get annoyed and then go well, this is too hard I’m leaving.
Daniel:
But also, and I’m going to ask about SEO later on, but it also impacts on Google ranking your website because they can tell that it’s slow and they don’t want to give people bad experiences.
Roddy:
Exactly right. So Google makes money by sending you to the most relevant bit of content that you search for. That’s their business model. But if your website takes six seconds to load, they’re not going to send you that way because you’re going to get the shits with them and you’re going to go, well, I don’t want to go this website. I’ll go back and I’ll go to number two. Google knows that. Google is smart enough to know that an average page load should be less than two meg. And if your website’s got a seven meg image on it, it’s going to go, well, this is too big. And you’re competing against someone who has similar or same content, they’re going to put you underneath that person.
Daniel:
Well, you also mentioned compatibility. That sounds super nerdy. More nerdy than some of the other stuff that we’ve spoken about. What does compatibility mean, and why is it important? Surely when you build a website it’s just on the internet and it just works.
Roddy:
It can.
Daniel:
And it should.
Roddy:
Yeah. It should. So if you get the right developer, it should. So when we talk about compatibility, you talk about all the different types of devices that people are going to view your website on. And then all the different types of software they’re going to view that website on. So you’ve got PCs with Windows computers, and then you’ve got your Macs that come with, Safari built in. Chrome. Everyone uses Chrome. And there’s a reason for that, because Chrome’s a really good browser. It’s obviously a Google product. Or you can use Firefox so…
Daniel:
And sometimes an organization will dictate the browser. People have to use for example, at work.
Roddy:
Yeah, exactly right. So I’ve had a client years and years ago and this is probably showing my age a bit, but they had, one of their biggest clients was Department of Defense. Department of Defense at the time was running all their computers on windows XP. And we could tell that they were using Internet Explorer Six and Seven, which if anyone is a developer knows how horrendous Internet Explorer Six was.
Roddy:
But we had to build their website to be compatible on that because we knew the client was viewing their website in that software. So again, it comes back to your research stage and your persona stage, who is this person? What are they viewing the system on? There’s no point in us building it in the latest version of Chrome because when they fire it up, it’s going to look horrendous and everything’s going to look poorly made, and text is going to be everywhere and colors aren’t going to be right.
Daniel:
Often when I’m talking to businesses, usually when I’m chatting about a businesses’ existing website, and often when they may be they’ve neglected it for a few years. So they put a website up and they’ve just left it and didn’t really need much attention. But hosting has become an issue for whatever reason. And I ask questions like, well, who hosts your website? And often they have no idea. It was done years ago and Mary’s left or Bob knows, but he’s overseas or whatever it is. They just see their website live on the internet, and life is okay so to speak, and hosting, it is actually a really important aspect of your website. And it doesn’t always get hosted by the person that develops your website does it?
Roddy:
No.
Daniel:
So tell us what hosting is?
Roddy:
So hosting is, we think of it at it’s most basic term it is a computer in a data center that has your website on it. And the reason you need it in a data center is because they have 24/7 availability. They have a really good internet connection, and then they can serve lots of information really, really quickly. You can host it yourself…
Daniel:
But it has to live somewhere. It doesn’t just live nowhere.
Roddy:
Yeah. That’s exactly right. So yeah, it has to live in this server that’s in the data center. You can get it to live on your computer in your office, but your computer has to be on all the time. You have to have a good internet connection to your house. You probably can’t be able to serve 10, 15 people looking at your home internet connection and look, long story short, is it’s…
Daniel:
Don’t host it at home. Don’t go down that path. It’s a pain.
Roddy:
It is really, really painful. So yeah. So then I would say majority of web developers will not host your website themselves. And the reason for that is it’s a nightmare to do. What a lot of developers will do, we’ll either give it to a third party, or have a wholesale account with I guess a third party as well. The reason you want to have good hosting is when shit hits the fan, you need to be able to get in touch with your host quickly.
Daniel:
What does shit hitting the fan look like? When a client rings you and the shit has hit the fan, what does it look like?
Roddy:
It’s your website’s down, when you’re on click frenzy and you’re going to make 60% of your sales that weekend. It is you’ve had a bit of advertising come through and you’ve been shown in the TV and radio and you’re getting a lot of people come to your website and it’s then returning an error because it thinks it’s getting a DDOS attack.
Daniel:
A DDOS attack is a…
Roddy:
Denial of service.
Daniel:
Denial of service. So listeners, helping Roddy out here, I’m doing your job.
Roddy:
Thanks mate.
Daniel:
It’s just when so much volume of people are going to your website that the host is just not able to handle it. Think about it. We’re in COVID-19. It’s like a thousand people turning up to your restaurant. Can’t handle it. Have to close down. We’re too busy. We’ve run out of pizza.
Roddy:
Yep. Yeah. And so then as we go back, shit hits the fan. If you’re making 60% of your sales that weekend and your website goes down and you can’t get in touch with your hosting provider, what do you do? There’s nothing you can do about it, but it’s-
Daniel:
And sometimes websites get hacked. It’s not totally avoidable, but we need to be able to recover them easily right?
Roddy:
That’s right. And you should have a good backup system in place. There’s a lot of hosting providers will, and this is not what a lot of people know about, but a lot of hosting providers will have a seven day rolling backup. And that means the oldest backup they have is seven days old. And a lot of the time when your website’s hacked, you don’t know about it for two, three, four weeks. And then if you roll back to the oldest backup they have, it’s only seven days old, it’s still got the hack in it.
Daniel:
You’re not getting rid of the problem.
Roddy:
No, that’s right.
Daniel:
You’re not getting rid of the problem.
Roddy:
So you need to have a system in place to then create backups and make sure those backups are there. And there’s lots of systems out there that do that. A good developer should be able to tell you about those systems.
Daniel:
Let’s say we’ve made all the good choices that you’ve educated us on so far. We’ve got the right CMS. We’ve found an amazing developer. The site has great usability and compatibility and speed. And we’ve developed it around our specific personas. Grandma searching for pink unicorns on her mobile phone. Does a new snazzy website mean that we can just brush the dirt off our hands and all the business is coming in? It’s cool.
Roddy:
Nah. It’s a first step. It’s a first step in many. It’s that old saying, if you build it, that will come. That’s not with a website. If you think about it, how many people you know have built a new website and then told you about it, you don’t go out and then tell everyone, hey, such and such has just got a new website. You should go check it out. You need to have a plan in place to attract people to your website. And if you’ve done Marketing Builder, you’d have all that in place. And you’d have all the structure that you need to do to make that happen.
Daniel:
I like that little plug, that was good, well done.
Roddy:
No worries mate. You can pay me after this for that one. So yeah. So that’s where you go. You’ve got your website. I find usually the website is a linchpin in a lot of other marketing activities. So it could be getting all your ducks in a row, you got your website. So now you’ve got to set up your marketing system. And that might be a third party like MailChimp or Campaigntrack or whoever, and then start building your content around that. And you might be showing the blogs from your website, but you need to start engaging with people and letting them know that you’ve got a new website.
Daniel:
You start to make a good point because of course a website is just one part of your marketing. You call a linchpin. I quite often talk about it as the hub and all the other things are the spokes, but it all comes back to the hub because that’s the one big piece of your marketing you have amazing control over. And so we drag people in and attract people in and then we send our communications out of it. And clearly it’s a super important one, but it doesn’t operate in a silo and it’s not self fueling. If you aren’t doing other things, it probably won’t work that hard for you. And it’s like buying a car and not putting petrol in it or not servicing it and then wondering why it doesn’t work right? So clearly putting up a website and just hoping that lots of business comes in is not a great strategy.
Daniel:
And this is where our worlds really do start to cross over. And we’re often working together with clients on this stuff and that’s things around SEM, so search engine marketing, and we recently heard from Aaron Wilde from Reach Local about some search engine marketing in Google Ads. And there’s also SEO, search engine optimization, all the little things that you can do to your website to make Google go that’s a great website, let’s give it to people on that first page of results. And also you mentioned MailChimp and Campaigntrack, and there’s lots of others. Those CRMs, those customer relationship management systems. I’m interested to hear from a developer’s perspective, not a marketer’s perspective like mine, how do you see those working on a website and why are they important?
Roddy:
So I’ll go back to, you said Aaron’s been on. Did he talk about PPC and…
Daniel:
Yes.
Roddy:
Okay. Sweet. So if your SEO’s right on your website, pay-per-click relates to Google’s marketing is how much you pay for someone to click on your ad in Google. If your SEO is set up properly and your campaign’s set up well in, in AdWords, your PPC will be much lower than what it is if you haven’t done it. So straight off the bat, if you’re going to do search engine marketing, if your SEO is done well, your spend for your advertising, you’ll get much more out of it because it will be cheaper in the long run. And your SEO. Your SEO has to be, or if you’re… Okay, let’s say, if you’ve got a new website and you start it from scratch and you don’t have anybody that’s ever been to it before, and you need people coming to your website and that’s part of your marketing, you need to kick it off with SEM. Because nobody knows about it. And you can have a launch party and you can invite people to it, and you can tell friends and family, but they’re going to help-
Daniel:
People still have launch parties for their website?
Roddy:
Not anymore.
Daniel:
They were the good old days.
Roddy:
It’s got to be what, four square meters and socially distanced?
Daniel:
Yeah, that’s right.
Roddy:
So, yeah. So I’d say you need your SEM. You should always be kicking it off with an SEM. And if you don’t have the budget for it, you should not be expecting huge amounts of traffic. And while you’re working on your SEM, you should be paying for your SEO. And there’s a lot of companies out there that do SEO that promise you the world, and don’t deliver on it.
Daniel:
We hear it all the time don’t we?
Roddy:
Yeah. I’ve got mates who… good friends of mine. I played footy with for five, six years, who are now a real estate agent in Noosa and the poor bloke paid three and a half grand to get his guaranteed first page of Google. And-
Daniel:
And let me guess, didn’t, and now can’t get hold of the people.
Roddy:
Got nothing our of that.
Daniel:
Yeah.
Roddy:
So yeah, it happens to everyone. And if it does happen to you, it happens to the best of people. Just chalk it up as a learning experience. So what I’m saying is you should be working on your SEO and your SEO should be ramping up. It usually takes about six to nine months for your SEO to get going.
Daniel:
It’s a long game.
Roddy:
Yeah. So that’s where you should have your SEM at the start to do your marketing, to attract people to your website.
Daniel:
Just to bring that point together. What Roddy’s saying there is the search engine optimization is optimizing your website with all the little signals and things that Google wants to see, so that they serve up your website on that front page of results underneath the ads that Aaron’s been on the show speaking about.
Daniel:
But the thing that people have to remember is there’s lots of other businesses. There’s lots of other Gold Coast real estate agents that are trying to do the same thing. So Google wants to see it being done well, and wants to see it being done over a long period of time so that you’re positioned as a good option for people. But that is a long game. It can take six, nine sometimes longer. And it’ll generally be something that you have to continually keep doing and updating. Some of it’s very technical. Some of it’s just about writing content that has lots of the keywords in it and publishing blogs and other content on your website. But search engine marketing is more about that immediate need from somebody. So think about that as relationship building versus advertising. So SEO is more about that longterm positioning as an authority, but the search engine marketing stuff is, there’s an ad, I need money tomorrow.
Roddy:
Yep, exactly right. And then following up from those two, once you got those two battened down and you’re happy with it, then you’ve got your CRM. And we’ve got a lot of acronyms here. So CRM is a client relationship management system.
Daniel:
A database.
Roddy:
Database. It could be as simple as a spreadsheet, but if someone fills out your form, you want that information to go somewhere so you know you can track that person and get in touch with them and know who’s a good lead, who’s a bad lead. What was our interaction with those people? And I’m terrible at this myself because I’m flat out, I’m a lizard drinking. I can’t get anything done right. And I get inquiries in and I’ll just go, I’ll get back to that person in a second. And it just sits in my email inbox, and I’ve got 300 other emails in there, and it gets lost and I never do anything. So I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to that, I know, but I’m working to get a CRM in place. Because I know that that’s a problem. So I get people leads from our website. They go into the CRM and then the CRM harasses me until I get in touch with them.
Daniel:
Yeah, I’ll help you out here. I’ll save you a little bit. You’re a great developer. You’re busy, you’re in demand. But if you’re a business that has spent a lot of time and effort and energy in getting your website right, and then you’re spending a lot of time and energy attracting people through it, whether it’s through search engine optimization or search engine marketing, because you need the work and you need the money and those are important channels in your marketing, you can’t do all that work and let it flow into the business and then not actually manage it properly.
Daniel:
You’re a little bit different because you are busy and you’re doing lots of work. It’s not like you’re sitting around doing nothing for half the week, are you?
Roddy:
No. I wish I was.
Daniel:
No, good. But if you’re a business, that’s doing those things because you need the business, then you’ve got to treat that information properly, those customers properly when they come in.
Roddy:
Treat them like gold. Have an automatic campaign set up. So if they fill out your form, they go into some type of mailing system that says thanks for getting in touch. We appreciate you getting in touch with us. Here is some really cool information that we have on our website that might be suitable for you. And if you can, set up to automate to send another one in a week’s time going thank you very much for getting in touch. Here’s some other information we think is really good. And then you might have a third one that just says… you do that nurturing, and then you go, well, do you mind if we set up a meeting to have a chat about why you got in touch with us? And you might leave it at that after that, I don’t know. But you got to treat them like gold.