online with amor, the internet guy streaming today on your favorite podcast platforms. This podcast focuses on entrepreneurs and business owners helping them become more successful and conducting their business on the web without being stuck with technology.
Hey guys, welcome to another episode from online with Mr. The Internet guy. My guest today is Andrew Rickett from our marketing design, Andrea is a professional marketer. And she’s also a web designer and a graphic designer. We’ll be discussing web design in general. And we’ll be shedding a lot of light on Squarespace, Wix and WordPress. And just a quick note, before we start, we’re going to be referring to the website care plans, which is maintenance updates, upgrades, security and backups. If this is something that you’re looking to do for your WordPress website, we’ll be happy to help you. I’m going to be posting the links below the video and the podcast on all the channels. So let’s get in. Hello, hello. Hey guys, I’ve got Andrea Rickett with me here. Hi, Andrea. How are you?
I’m great. Thanks for having me.
Oh, thank you for being here. We’ve had some trouble last week, but we’re good this week. Yeah.
I think there’s been a lot a lot of trouble in the world the last week or so. Oh, God.
Yeah.
And here in the US. so
There was a lot of trouble right next to you like kind of next door? Yeah. So for those of you who don’t know where Andrea is, I think is West Virginia. Which my sources tell me that’s quite close to the White House. Well, maybe what? I don’t know half an hour.
further away than that. Virginia is closer. So Oh, well, you hours from there? Yeah.
Oh, funny. Because in my flying days, when I flew to DC, we stayed in Virginia, and I could see like the monument from the window of the hotel.
Well, there’s Virginia, and then West Virginia. West
is a bit further. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the one in the song country road.
Yeah, exactly.
So Andrea, please tell us a little bit about you. I mean, I was gonna ask you where you are, but I already gave it away. So right. But also, like, I know, there’s some links to California and Florida and, oh, yeah.
I lived. I’ve lived in a few places. So I actually did live in Maryland, right outside of DC. For my boyfriend was stationed at Andrews he worked on Air Force too. So that’s why we were there. But I’ve lived in I was born in Ohio. Then I moved to California when I was eight. And I left California. And I went to Ohio State for college. And I came back to California later on. We moved to Maryland, Florida. And now we’re in West Virginia. So Oh, yeah.
So it’s cooled hot cold again. Yeah. Cool.
Yeah, pretty much like to switch it up a little bit. And yeah, I spent most of my career in corporate I was marketing manager for about 14 years for the same company where I did all the graphic design, managed a team, where we had actually two, we started as one company, and then we bought one. And then we so we were running basically two marketing departments out of one just branded as two separate companies and worked there for about 14 years until they had a new president come in, they sort of restructured things, and they like, pretty much washed out the whole department, like one person at a time. And that’s when I started my own business. So now I’m doing graphic design, web design, social media, video editing, photo editing, pretty much, you know, anything a marketing department would do. But for these smaller businesses, entrepreneurs, I’ve also done some work in the fashion industry with Wrangler BB juicy buffalo jeans and a few others. So yeah, I’ve been able to do quite a bit. I had a lot of experience working in corporate. Because we did everything we did our own photography, we did all the catalogs and social media and everything. So that was really the starting point for all of it to now be able to do it for myself and do all these other things for other people.
Nice. So for those of you who don’t know, her business schools are our marketing design. And yeah, I did a mistake on our marketing design, because I sent an email to all our marketing. And it hasn’t come back to me so somebody else got it. But there was no secret there.
Yeah, our marketing design calm is the website. And it’s the same on Facebook and Instagram is also our marketing design. So we’re on all of those.
So we’ve met on the B schooler group, I think the first time we we we got to know each other and that’s for For people who don’t know, was the B school group because it has changed names, like maybe three times already. And I was called legacy or whatever the name is. That’s the Marie Forleo. School. So Marie Forleo, teaches entrepreneurs, new entrepreneurs, bits and pieces about business and kind of like, I love her content. But I’ve never been able to finish the whole course. That’s another story. And
you’re not alone. I haven’t either. So yeah,
I go back and have bits and pieces. And sometimes I go and say, Oh, this topic is interesting. And let me revisit it. But I’ve never done it like end to end. Mm hmm. And what I noticed was that you were like the queen of Squarespace. So I’d like to ask you a little bit about that.
Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, sure. That sounds great.
So yeah, yeah, what, what’s worse get to Squarespace.
Well actually started with Wix and which is similar to Squarespace. Squarespace just sort of stepped up their game a little bit, they’re a little bit better. As far as SEO, they’re better as far as the template availability. And I like the way it works. It’s not to say that you couldn’t use Wix or some of these other ones. I just prefer Squarespace, especially since I’m working with a lot of like, entrepreneurs are like a one person show or smaller businesses where they don’t quite have a team or they’re not techie at all. I have also done WordPress sites. But I noticed that the bulk of my clients were the Squarespace was a better fit for that, and then trying to do updates in WordPress, or if you don’t know what you’re doing, it becomes a little more difficult. So I really like Squarespace they put a lot into this new 7.1 you can do so much more with it. They keep adding ways to like Connect commerce and all these other things. So they just, they have really good customer service, and they just keep developing. So that’s why I like about them. That’s not to say that you couldn’t do more on a different platform. There’s definitely a need for WordPress, there’s a need for Shopify, there’s a need for all the other ones. But what I found in owning my own business was that you can’t be an expert at all the things Yes, kind of have to narrow it down a little bit. And that’s I took a step back and just focused solely on Squarespace. I do. I still do WordPress, I just put my focus more on Squarespace for my clientele. So
and our marketing is on Squarespace, right? Yes. Was that your first experience with Squarespace building your own?
No, I’m what would have been my facility
for people first and then you’ve decided to do it?
Well, no. Well,
when the beginning there was a bunch of different ones, right? There was Wix there was what was that other one called?
Visit GoDaddy? One? I can’t remember what it’s called.
Yeah. But even before GoDaddy, there was shoot, I can’t remember. Yeah,
the five that they’re like, kind of four or five famous network. Yeah.
And some of the ones that have faded off. And maybe my mind was No, I don’t think mine was the first. So yeah, yeah, I did it for other people first. I mean, it’s pretty similar. You just, it’s kind of like if you are using a PC, and then you move to Mac, same idea. You just find the different ways to navigate the menus and all those things. So, you know, yeah,
it’s hard for a WordPress person. I mean, I have one client only. I think that just made the move last week to WordPress from Squarespace. But while they were there every time, and it’s nothing against Squarespace itself is just me not knowing where to go to find the specific menu to use, right, because I don’t know the interface. And because of course, like I’ve been using WordPress from 2009. So you know, it’s kind of I can advise people where to do things without even opening my WordPress like, yes, from my head.
And there’s also so I think one of the things that I’m sure you recognize this in web design and web programming is two types of thinking, right? There’s front end and back end if you’re thinking about WordPress, there’s so there’s different ways of thinking it’s like right brain and left brain. So I feel like that’s the difference between like WordPress and Squarespace is you’re coming to it as a programmer. So WordPress is so much better for you because that’s how you’re thinking but for people that are more visual, that’s where Squarespace sort of is easier or more intuitive for them. So,
indeed, and I was always thinking that small businesses when they start, especially like, I know many entrepreneurs get ideas, it’s not necessarily a business yet. But you may have an idea that you want to test the market with. And you don’t want to go and dish out, I don’t know, $5,000 to build a new website that may or may not work. So we may want something quick for you to just, you know, kind of jot down your idea, put some photos, put a little bit of content, and start promoting it to see if it gets any traction. And specifically for those idea moments, Squarespace Wix like all these networks. If you’re not into WordPress already, they will make more sense. Oh, yeah, but but I always thought that this is also the School of people who want to DIY it. And then I was surprised to find that there’s a market for web designers doing Squarespace websites. And yeah, you know, that’s why I branded you as the queen. So yeah. So hi. Like, how does it happen? Like, why would people who get into Squarespace or Wix or something like that, suddenly, when would they realize that they need help? And isn’t the network already full with templates and modules and things they already made for you,
it’s when they start to add things, or they want to become more blog centric, or start selling things because you can sell things on Squarespace. But I think if I was really going to sell products, you know, WordPress, or Shopify, something like that would be a little bitter. And I think, and you know, when you start your business, you start with an idea. And during the course of five or 10 years, you will change your business quite a bit, you’ll change your offerings. So in that the website also needs to change. A lot of people don’t know how to deal with images, I’m sure you come across this all the time with optimizing and, or they just want more out of their site. They want to add capabilities, they want more blogs, more articles, more of a library instead of just a display of a few things. So I think it as it gets more complicated, or they want something more more capability to do something special, like not following a template, they want to like, make something different than that’s when WordPress definitely would open up to them that in the commerce, that sort of thing. So
so you would agree that there is a point in your business growth journey, where you think like, oh, that there is some limitation imposed by by the network that I’m using. Because I’ve seen people move from Wix to Squarespace and then stay there for a little while and then move again to WordPress. And I don’t know. I want to speak with some of them, of course to find out about the experience, like was it in full was easy? Like, what? What is?
Another thing to keep in mind is people get excited to distracted easily. So they see a brand new toy. And that’s available here. Let me try that. You know, so there is a little bit of that in there. But I do think because Squarespace is for people that aren’t quite as techie, but techie people can use it. There are restrictions, but the restrictions are placed to save you from messing up.
Yeah. You don’t break anything. Yeah,
exactly. So that’s, that’s, that’s the gift for those people is that they make it harder for you to just push a button and mess the whole thing up. You know, you can’t install anything that’s going to crash the whole. Yeah. So where you might find that limiting? That might be a lifesaver for someone that has Yeah, do so. Yeah,
no, it’s very interesting, because I most of my clients come from the same background like their small business owners, or people just starting out. And what happens that, as I see things unfold, they may try something on their own first, so it could be Wix, and they use templates. And then they’re unhappy after maybe like a year or so. They’re unhappy with the template and they want to try to go and do it on their own, like the Edit. I think somebody told me the other day, it took them a year and a half to find that there’s an edit button, like where you start fresh. But the problem with this is it gives you a blank slate. There’s nothing there and it’s a little bit scary for you to start like Lego. You start adding stuff together to build your website. And some like getting in dance themselves and that they just Go and get it done and something like this no one I wanted because now that it’s a blank slate, there’s no difference between this and something like WordPress, since I’m going to be kind of starting out again.
Yeah, you know, it’s really a case by case situation, it depends on the person number one, what’s their level of even wanting to be involved in their website? Because I get that from a lot of people, too. They don’t even want anything to do with it. So they wanted to just run by itself and then not have to think about it, or are they really techie and they want to get in there and do some things? Because I do have people like that, too. And I had some of them on WordPress, because they like to get in there. They like to do some things. They’re comfortable with some of the builders, you know, it really is a case by case because Also, I want to know what their plan is. Are they a service? Are they a product? are they planning on? Tons of traffic, tons of blogs? What’s the plan? Because based on that is where I would point them and for some people, it’s easier to start the DIY way. And sort of learn or get a
scissors out first.
Yeah. Because it’s, it’s cheaper to start with it really is. And I’m that doesn’t mean it’s better. It just means sometimes in the beginning, you don’t have a ton of funds. Yeah. I think that’s also one of the things that changes as people start to sell more and get bigger than they can move to a different platform that they might be able to hire someone or at least monthly maintenance support, that sort of thing. And I because for me, if you’re going to be on WordPress, if you were me, like, I’d be okay, but I recommend for other people to have a monthly maintenance for sure. So of course, yeah,
I always tell people look, you need a professional looking after your infrastructure, the back end part that you’ve mentioned earlier. Because people, you know, when you’re a business owner, you don’t want to spend a lot of time you know, learning about this stuff, you just want it to work. But the fact of the matter is technology changes like you know, we sleep we call this something new. And with WordPress, like okay, to give people an idea how I see it, Squarespace, Wix and the likes of that is like an aircraft flying on autopilot. WordPress is like you flying the aircraft. So if you’re if you like to be the one in control, the one who calls the shots, WordPress is the thing for you. If you just want to click a button and let it be, and just you don’t have to worry about anything. It will be wicks and Squarespace and the likes of these page builders. But the word of caution is that as you grow, and you want to add more features, and you want your business to grow, and you want to take more control over your search engine optimization, image optimization and things like that, you’ll find that all of the page builder software platforms have some limitations. Yeah, you could try and work around it or kind of not grow enough so that you don’t cross that threshold. Or you could move it. So it’s kind of there’s a point when you think like, when should I move out of a platform like this? And I don’t want to kind of I don’t want to scare anyone?
No, I think there’s a use for all that. For sure. I know saying
monthly maintenance or annual maintenance. The beauty of having WordPress and having this taken care of for you that it makes it a little bit like using Squarespace and Wix. Because somebody else is doing your infrastructure, you only have to worry about what you write, like your text and images. That’s it. So it’s kind of the same It is, yeah, it raises the playing field. But what’s better is that you have daily backups and and I can’t stress this out enough. Yeah, your website is with you is can be downloaded on your pc or mac at home. If your hosting provider just goes out of business, you’ve got your stuff, just buy a new hosting for whatever, 599 a month or 1099 a month. And within a couple of hours, you can migrate your website there and it’s up and running again. So you’re you have total control over your content. And this you don’t get with these networks. Most of them of course, they have backups, but their backups only work on their network. You can just take it and go somewhere else. And even if the pages can be exported, they won’t look the same. They’ll have to be redesigned.
Yeah, you have to recreate it. Yeah. And I think if you’re someone that’s looking to do all those things, then you probably won’t be in Squarespace. You know what I mean? If you’re looking at ways to get around Squarespace too much, that’s probably not the person that’s going to be on Squarespace. So, you know,
I just what do you find? People want to do, do they want to like set it and forget it? are most people like, you know, I’m here? Yeah, I don’t even want to know how you do it, just do it. Yeah,
um, there are a few people, like I said that like to be involved, they like to know. And when I do my Squarespace sites, I give people an hour or two hours of training, and I show them how to do the things that they want to do. So when they, I like to, when I send them off, and not that I’m abandoning them, I want them to be able to do something with it, I want them to feel empowered, for lack of a better word, I want to set it up for them. And I want to give it to them. So they could do something with it. I don’t want to hand it to them, and then just say, what, what is this? Now what you know, I want them to know what to do. And then of course, as time goes on, if they get somewhere where they can, they’re having trouble, then, you know, they hire me for a couple hours or whatever, and I fix it for him. But those are the people that aren’t making changes all the time. You know, it’s like you were saying sort of instead
of stealing, like, if you’re bad.
Like Yeah, right. If you have products that are changing all the time, or like I said, you have tons of articles or resources or or membership sites, and then you go a different direction. So but there’s, there’s a group of people that need all of these things. Yeah.
So as a starting point, when you want to have a website, that’s just maybe the regular five page about us our services, contact us, whatever, and you’re not going to be blogging or changing much in it. This is a great fit for you as a starting point.
Oh, yeah. because like you said, autopilot versus you. If you don’t know how to fly a plane, you should not be flying a plane and is the same, right? Because you know how easy it is to push something wrong and have it go south?
So I don’t know why I remember that. It’s probably from my days of flying. But
yeah, it’s like a safety net. You know, the platforms like Squarespace, Wix all of those or are like, here will make it safe for you. But yes, they have parameters and restrictions because of that. So, you know, there’s a place for everyone. So
yeah, I saw a plugin on WordPress, I think it’s called client security or client safety or whatever is the plugin is actually sold to web designers that you install on your WordPress to prevent the client from damaging their own website. So yeah, I was like, you know, what, just,
it’s a thing.
But yeah, with the daily backups, this is these if you do have this is very important. And as I was saying earlier, I always tell people, you don’t have to do this with me. Do it with somebody else, if you want to find somebody who’s going to do it faster, or cheaper or or you know, a friend, but always use a professional to look after your back end and infrastructure. And what a lot of people don’t realize is actually, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done on the hosting part. And this is the other thing. And now I’m going to leave the aircraft analogy. I’ll go in the house and analogy because this is the foundation you’re hosting. So now out of Squarespace and Wix. And if you’re using WordPress, or anything else similar, which is on your own hosting, there used to be some other technologies like Joomla and some other you know, you could even build a website, HTML, I don’t know, or PHP. I don’t know, why would somebody do that, but some people still do it. That’s why it’s way harder now. Yeah. But yeah, so the foundation is your hosting is where your website lives. And it’s actually funny, because many people would spend a lot of time and money on their website, but they just want to go and get the hosting this 199 a month.
Why? Because people don’t understand there’s a lot of people don’t understand that there is a domain name. Yeah, that is separate from your platform that is separate from your hosting that is actually then there’s SSL and they’re like, what the hell is that? And then, you know, and those as far as Squarespace, they don’t have to worry about that. And that’s the beauty of that. But if you have WordPress, you can pick your hosting, so you can pick the one that provides the best speed or the backups or the like WP Engine having all the themes. Oh, yeah, all that stuff. That’s a
Ferrari. Yeah.
Like you’d have to know what you’re looking for. That’s the thing. You know, if you don’t know,
I have a free tutorial. I’ll link it down in the in this podcast if people want to learn a little bit more about how how to Find the most suitable hosting for you. Because what’s suitable for you your business? what you’re trying to do might not be the best thing for somebody else. It’s not a one size fits all
right? Just like a website. It’s
just like a website. Yeah. And it’s funny, because I’m gonna ask you now since we said that, how would somebody know what they need? Like? How would they go about finding out? What do they need for the website? Or what? First
of all, there’s so much information. I mean, Google is your friend, you just go there you type in, what do I need for a website? What’s the best website for B, and you’ll find tons of resources. But I think you have to be clear. And that’s one of the things we learned in B school is being clear about what it is you’re offering. Number one, are you offering services? Are you offering products, because one of the things I’ve learned as far as products now, not only you got to have a commerce site where you can accept payments and has to be secure, but now you think about taxes, and shipping? So that’s something to keep in the fulfillment part. Yeah. So you just need to be clear about what it is that you’re doing, what are you going to be selling? Are you selling services, products, PDF, downloads, whatever it is, and that’s what you need to be clear on before you start to build a container for it, you need to know what kind of container you need. It’s like, you wouldn’t put water into a cardboard box. You need a Rubbermaid container or you know, glass bottle or something, you know. So it’s all about figuring out what it is you’re going to offer, you need to be clear about that. I will say though, if you’re not totally sure, you just want to put yourself out there, there’s landing pages, you can build in like a half hour. And you could do that on Squarespace. wix. There’s even lead pages there. I think GoDaddy has the landing page. I mean, there’s so many options for that. And that would be at least to get your name all that stuff out there. But yeah, I think you just need to be clear about what it is and your business is going to change. And you have to also keep in mind that your website is always going to change to nothing stays the same. Yes, it’s a living thing. It’s not Oh, I
love that. You said that all the time. Yeah.
Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s never done. You just, yeah. I mean, it’s a process. And I think that’s why there’s so much start in one place, go somewhere else, because you’re not fully clear. When you start, you know, you may think you need WordPress and then decide, wait a second, this is too much for me to handle. Squarespace fits better. Or you may start with Squarespace and think I can’t do what I want to do I need to move over here. But you’re not. You’re your business sort of goes on a learning
process. Yeah. Because your business is a living organism much like you. So yeah, no.
I mean, right now, I’m looking at options for one of my websites of taking it to WordPress. And the reason I want to do that is based on a plugin. So let’s say I see a nice shiny,
let’s tell the audience about it. Let’s tell them about the project itself, and the website name and what it does and what it’s supposed to do.
Oh, yes, the entrepreneur, Oracle is the name of the business. And it’s all about supporting entrepreneurs and their journeys. So if you own your own business, you know how every day there’s ups and downs, so that you start the day off, you got this brand new client, you know, everything feels great. And then 20 minutes later, they change their mind, or your bread and butter client says we gotta be out, you know, and then you’re down again, you know, and then you, you know, sometimes there’s some struggle with like charging enough money, or, you know, it’s just an emotional roller coaster. So basically, we created the entrepreneur, Oracle to help business owners navigate all the emotions that come along with running your business. So it’s great, you have a to do list, you have B school to learn how to do all the things. But if you can’t deal with the emotional or the stress that comes with it, then you’re not gonna be able to do the things. And that’s what the entrepreneur Oracle is all about. So it’s entrepreneur oracle.com. And what we created was an Oracle deck. And so it’s a deck of 44 cards. And you actually,
you probably have one lying around. Here it is
44 cards. So say, you know, you have a new client that has interested in one of your projects, you’re not really sure if you want to work with them or not. Maybe you’re I don’t know, maybe there’s just something about it. You’re not really sure you look through the cards and you pick one out.
Do you do this randomly like or like or you actually read some of the cards until you see the one
randomly? Okay, yeah, cuz you could let’s try that on your Will you Do however you want
this one this one, Andrew. Yeah, you know, this one,
one that came out is help, which is interesting, which is what I do. Because when you work with other people, we are not expected to do everything we do alone. We can’t be Yeah, everything. So help is not a perfect card. So it says to help you seek will guide you back to your heart. So if you’re having trouble making the decision, you can look into the book, which will give you a little more insight on the card. And you can make your decision or be get ideas on projects are whatever it is that you’re feeling at the time, it helps you navigate through it. So it’s not to ignore. It’s not every day, you’re going to be all bubbly and happy. Because that’s just not. It’s just keeping you going. So you’re not stagnant. So we started that I started that site on Squarespace, which is where it lives now. And it’s fine, and it’s great. But what I want to do is create a card picker. So what you do is what I just did for you here was spread out all the cards and you pick, I don’t know, one, two, or three or whatever. And the cards would flip over and you see which cards you got. And you would see the information from the guidebook show up. So all of its automated on your screen, and it still picks a random card every time. It’s not the same three,
same one. Yeah.
And what I pick are gonna be two different things. So I contacted some programmers, and it’s all totally doable with Squarespace. I just have to get someone to code it. Yeah, that’s like, you know, a few grant. Okay, so this one Oh, yeah, I know, some great people like you who sent me this link to this WordPress
plugin, I can’t remember what I was looking for. When I found it. It wasn’t that I just found it by mistake.
It’s a fraction of the cost. So I am now weighing the benefits of doing this versus paying someone to code a whole thing. And then if something goes wrong, or I want to change, I got to go back by
the same person. Yeah, so your
plugin, I can do all of that and get support from them just by moving my site to WordPress. So I’m thinking that site will move to WordPress, but I’m also thinking of putting WordPress back as part of one of my offerings, because you and I have connected. And now we can sort of partner in this where you’re the tech programming guy, and I could be the front and design, that sort of thing. So we’ve got your support for monthly maintenance, which I could trust you and I know your hosting is good. And, and it’s just another offering I can give to people. So yeah, it’s just I’m really excited about that, like I said, so I focus on Squarespace, but that’s I don’t think Squarespace is the only thing I like WordPress. I love WordPress, because you can do all kinds of cool stuff with it. So here’s another opportunity and another change in my business. So now, in the last year I’ve added copywriting and now I’m going to put WordPress and monthly maintenance and all that back on the menu. So
what’s what does it entail when you’re moving from Squarespace to WordPress? Well, yeah, I know the answer. But like I just Yeah,
yeah, you can’t just transfer one to the other. But it’s the same if you move from like Squarespace to Wix or
Yeah. But when you say start over, I don’t want to scare people. But like when you say start over. That’s definitely the design, of course, because the pages that have been created on another platform are not compatible design wise, like you can bring the text in the
same language. Yeah,
yeah, you’ll bring the text and the images like,
yeah, you can copy and paste text, you can do all of those things. But really, what I recommend, even when people are building a Squarespace site is they do all the copy and everything off of there anyways, so they already have Yeah, or a Pages document, or where you’ve got your Google Docs with all your folders. That’s the same as what’s already on your site. So if you happen to want to move at some point, you already have it all. But you will need to create all new containers, which are the pages in WordPress. So
that is a great advice because like some people think, Hey, you know, my content is already on the website. What happens if it crashes, like, you know, again, not scaring people away, but you always have, it’s a business, right? It’s not my space anymore, or it’s not my own Facebook profile that I don’t care about, but it’s your business. So you always should have folders that contain all your images and all your text, even if it’s already on the website. Because you may want to edit that don’t go on Edit live like just edit the document. First, and yeah, and that’s
really a good habit to get into. And I’ll say like, I have not always been that way, I’ll just go into Squarespace and edit. But then you run the risk of not having that information. And I’ve never had a problem with Squarespace just like taking it all away or anything. But if you came to this place where you’re going to move from Squarespace to WordPress, now I don’t have to make it a project to go through and gather all this stuff and refined all the images and like, do all the things I’m already ready, or wherever I’m going, you know,
yeah, I think it’s not a complicated thing, the only the first thing that you do is you get to hosting. So that’s the, you know, the basic thing, get a hosting. Good one, most hosting companies have a control panel or what we call a cPanel. That will enable you to install WordPress with one click of a button. So even if you’ve never never installed WordPress in your life, before, you can just click the button it will install it for you. But a word of warning, you just have a blank slate, like you have a WordPress template that comes with WordPress, which looks okay, but it’s kind of a blank page. And then from there, if you want to DIY, there’s tons of tutorials online, some of them are mine as well. And if you but if you don’t want to go DIY, you could contact you know your favorite person who’s a techie, or who’s a designer, and you know, or contact Andrea are our marketing designs.com. And get some guidance, like, you know, again, I’m not trying to say, Hey, you know, we’ll do it for you still want to do it on your own, that’s fine, perfectly fine. But least get some advice, like book a session with someone to discuss your plans to find out so that you don’t hit the brick wall again, like you know, if you were using something else, and then felt like compelled to move because the options and the features that you want to add to your business are not available, you don’t want to reach that point one more time.
Yeah, and I think that’s a really good point. Because even if you’re not spending a bunch of money you could be spending a lot of time and time is money. So remember that. And if you aren’t a web person or a technical person, it’s kind of like would you go to the dentist for a plastic surgery or something, you know, you go to the people who know what they’re doing. And but I understand that sometimes there’s limits and funds and that sort of thing. But like you said, there’s so many tutorials for WordPress, or Squarespace or Wix or GoDaddy for all of them, and, and if you don’t have money, then you will have to spend in time. So
either way, there’s, there’s always a trade off, like I I got my ear pulled before with one of my coaches long time ago, and I started. And at the time, my business was a side hustle. So I still had my full time job, which was a good job. And on the side, I was trying to start a business and I ended up spending 65 hours to build a website. And I’m a techie like, you can imagine, like 65 hours, you know, and then by the end, the website looked okay. But my coach said, Okay, let’s just assume your hourly rate is low, let’s just assume your hourly rate is whatever, like, 40 $40, right? Can you calculate how much you spent on this? It was like 2400, right? He said, you could have gotten somebody to do it for you for the 2400 or four, you know, $2,000 and then use this time to do something else that is more productive for you as a business owner. And I was thinking like, Man, this guy’s right.
Yeah, totally, it’s true.
Now imagine if your hourly rate is $100, how much like it would have been $6,000 spent just for a basic website. It’s like, why you could have hired somebody to do it for two or three, and it will work better. Because they it’s their bread and butter is there, like you know, whatever they do day to day,
and then you make your changes to it or, or
Yeah, this brings me to something that I saw on your website that it’s either hidden or not there anymore. And I was interested and I wanted to ask you what had something called website in a week, right? no longer there. So
yes, that it was only available for about a week and then I ran it again during the crowdfunding phase of the entrepreneur, oral deck. And so what that was it was a basic four page website on Squarespace. It was home about contact and could have been like a blog setup or a services page like you could kind of choose so basically I picked a template but you had to provide all the copy all the photos, anything that was going to go on I would set it all up for you. So you would hand me your suitcase full of stuff. And then I would unpack it on all the pages and you’d be ready to go in a week. That’s what that was. So what you’re paying for is just a quick, timely getting you up and running website. But it’s a great way to start for, you know, a simple four page website for I think, at the time it was 1500, or something around there. I can’t remember now, because it was a little bit ago, but might have been 2000. And as long as you have all your stuff together, you hand it off, I put it up for you and you’re ready to go in a week, like what business especially during I think I ran this special right when COVID really took off. And people were either having to get online, or they needed a new way to make money, which usually happens online, especially you know, during Yeah, that’s me. And so I was trying to give people a little lift and little help, like getting there just getting started. So
that’s good. And yeah, like, I think you had limited it to a certain number. And you had all the tickers. And that’s why it’s no longer available. Right? Yeah.
Well, it’s a great deal. And I you normally you wouldn’t build a site for 1500 dollars. Yeah, but
I’m not in a week either.
Right. But normally, I would spend time on this strategic user experience, and we could possibly spend time on your branding, logo, it but if you already have all of that, or have a sort of standard package, you hand that to me, and I would get it all up for you. And so that was nice.
This was for people who were ready with their content, did you find that some of the takers were not ready. Um, when it came to the actual implementation were there did they all have the suitcase full of content?
Pretty much they had it, they some of them, most of them needed a little bit of coaching and I’m not gonna just, you know, leave them and say yes, your side, there’s no info, of course, I would help them and I have, you know, worksheets and stuff like that, that they could just fill out sort of like a mad libs for your website, if you if they needed that help. But I also have copywriting services, if they wanted to go the extra step, they could add that on, which was not included in the 15. But it was a really good deal to get your whole site written by a story brand certified writer. So there was that option, too. So I’m always trying to find ways to help people. Again, I want them to be able to do something with it. I don’t want them to despise something and it sits there and they never Yeah. So yeah, that people always need a little bit of help. And that’s fine. You know, I mean, I’m not gonna write the copy for you. But you know,
guys, yeah. Because I find that like, some of our audience would definitely be our colleagues and web designers will. And I find that this is a very common issue with all web designers that the clients sometimes don’t have the content ready. That’s what
sells the whole project, right? Sure. You can attest to that, even though
on the website or weekly, but they’re not providing the stuff quickly. And anyway, it’s kind of hard to deal with. And I was thinking, if you’re promising them to have it in a week, they need to understand that if the content isn’t ready, it’s not gonna be a week.
Right. And that was one of the stipulations that it was a week from the time that you provided all the assets.
Yeah. When does the clock start ticking
and assets.
The importance it’s very interesting, because I had this idea that I haven’t run with yet. A template based WordPress websites kind of like make WordPress behave like Squarespace for people who, like the simplicity of Squarespace, and we’re afraid from WordPress and thinking that it’s a little bit more complicated, why not provide them the same user experience, but with all the you know, unlimited capabilities, so that as your business grows, you don’t have to move again. And I was thinking like, but if you say, a week or two, or whatever it is, like, you know, it has to be like, I was kind of thinking, do I book myself for a week just to work on one website? Because that was another idea. But you know, of course, you have to price it right. But at the end of the day like this can be done. You could have exclusive access to your designer for that specific week.
But you need to be ready. Yeah, not just you but the client, what
exactly you meet you as the client have to be around and it’s Maybe like, go through some of these videos. First, they explain how this should work. And then when you’re ready, come sign up and pay. Like, don’t don’t sign up and pay and then go try to get your content and it’s not gonna work this way.
Like, yeah, I think. I mean, if there’s a process I take them through on Squarespace now. And it could be the same exact process with just some additional things. Because of the additional capabilities that you could do for WordPress. I say, let’s, that’s something we should just team up and do. I think we could totally make this happen.
Let’s do this. Yeah,
I mean, all right. Yeah, that sounds great. Because that’s what people mean, I it’s intimidating. It’s not just the visual of the site. But content is really intimidating for some people, unless you’re a writer content, for me, really intimidating. So I think like I said, is I call it like the Mad Libs. But really, it’s just a fill in the blank. What What is it you sell? What’s the name of your company? What
is that? Like? It’s all it’s, it could be boarding like, does the Do you do this in the intake? Like before you start working with a client? Or do you do it as the onboarding like, once they sign up, they have to fill in this the
onboarding, the onboarding? Yeah. Because the, the formula is also a part of my service, because it takes knowledge and training and everything to know what you know, correct. So you wouldn’t tell somebody how to do all this stuff before they said, okay, onward with you. It’s not because you’re hiding it. But that’s part of the service, the service is this template, the service is you follow the directions, it’s like buying a course. But you’re buying a course. And at the end, all the answers you’ve given are going to show up looking really great on this amazing website, that’s gonna get tons of traffic, and you’re gonna make lots of sales. So
I like that. It’s kind of like, um, you got to remember that a website is not a techie project. Like it’s not, it’s not like you, you come from the corporate world. And you probably experienced that. There are many companies who are saying that their website is something to give to the IT department. And even though I was the IT department, they know, this is a marketing. This is marketing pros know, IT project.
Well think about some of the sites that were around like in the 90s that that was the it. Yeah. So it worked. But it didn’t look good. You know, and not because the IT people don’t know what they’re doing or whatever. It’s, they are thinking about it differently. So what about the person though, that is a customer has no idea about it, no idea about? Let’s say they have no idea about your product, and they come there, and they hit someplace with you know, they have to scroll forever through all this tax, they’re not going to read it. If there’s no hierarchy. If there’s no like, go, there’s no direction, there’s no user experience. So now the the what we’re focusing on is user experience. So the speed, how is it how easy it is to find the website? How easy is it to find what you’re looking for?
Yeah, yeah.
Do you they know what problem I need solves? Can they solve it? Can I trust them? I mean, there’s all these things that we know now are the important things. It’s not that there’s some wheel over here doing all this cool stuff. That’s great. But if you look at your phone and the wheels all like,
yeah, yeah, you’ve lost them. Slash websites. And yeah, he died.
Simple is better.
No, it’s good. It actually pays to do a little bit of research on my was, yeah, my last episode of the podcast, I was with Josh Hall. And we were discussing something funny, we were discussing why the web designers have some kind of a reputation. Like, are we by default, unfriendly or like, and then we realized that two things, some people are a little bit of an introvert, which is, understandably, if you’re an eye in the technical or technology business, you know, you could be a little bit of an introvert, and maybe you’re not sharing a lot of information. But most of it was that the business owners themselves didn’t know how to choose the right web designer to work with or how to, yeah, you know, the person they want to work with, because it’s mostly personality rather than technical ability like I
am and I think they don’t know the questions to ask if there’s another thing that user should research is, is about the person you’re going to work with and not necessarily their history, blah, blah, blah, but like what comes with the service, don’t try to a contract where you have to pay For two years, or, you know, are they the only ones that can make changes are? You know, there’s a lot of questions to ask. So I think actually, in B school, there was like this really great list of all the questions you could ask. And I know that if you look on Google questions to ask your website, designer or host, or whatever it is, that would really help people with that. But it’s, but if you don’t know, you don’t know. And then people are surprised they get angry, then the website person is the bad guy. But sometimes website people are bad people. But sometimes clients are bad people.
Sometimes some people are bad people, they don’t have to be designers or whatever.
I think when people are caught off guard, then you know, they get angry.
Yeah. And sometimes it’s kind of the, like me, as a designer, for example, when working with a client, I would like to know first, in the first maybe, on the onboarding, when we do our onboarding together, what how does the client likes to work, and I kind of work in the way they want to work like, so I don’t forget to use my. But there are some things that are like, for example, when it comes to infrastructure and back end, and like DNS entries, and why would why would you want your email hosted on Google suite, Microsoft and not on your website and things like that. Some people don’t want the details. They just want it to work. Right? for them with the details that feel disconnected. Some others, they want to know why you’re telling them move to move their emails elsewhere. They’re quite happy having the email where the website is hosted. And I’ve always done it this one. Yeah. So why are you coming now and saying, so for those guys, you want to explain, you know, what is spam? How does do spam filters work? And because like, in a nutshell, spam filters work using the IP address, which is the address the the, for people who don’t know what an IP address is, at your website, your domain name, or your website has a numeric address, because machines computers use numbers that didn’t they don’t use words like us. So your server where your website lives, has a specific IP address. But if you’re on a shared hosting, which is 90%, of the hosting that we all have, is shared. So there are other clients on that server, not related to your your business. Now, if any one of these clients sends a spam email somewhere, that IP address ends up blacklisted, which means your emails are going to end up in somebody else’s spam folder, because your IP address is blacklisted, thrown off through no fault of your own. You’re not even aware that this is happening, but it’s happening.
Yeah. So there’s something nobody, most people don’t think about it. I don’t want to say nobody. But yeah, like a business owner that just is trying to figure out their website is not going to be thinking about
that I get calls from people wanted me to fix it for them. And I said, I can’t fix it. Your IP is in a spam list until it’s removed from the spam that I can’t remove it from the spam list. It has to be your host because they own the IP. Right. And that will do it. But it will take two to three weeks to get everything cleaned up and back up and running. And after this happens, there’s no guarantee it won’t happen again, because all it takes is one of your neighbors and that server to send a spammy message somewhere. So to be on the safe side, host your email on a specific email hosting network like Google, like Gmail, right? or Microsoft 365. It cost a little bit of money, but it’s not expect it’s not that expensive is like $5 a month per email box. There’s also Zoho, there’s one called Zoho email is a little bit cheaper than Microsoft and Google if you know, if you just one user. And it’s just one email box, you could probably buy a Zoho email, I think I can’t remember the exact number so don’t quote me on it. But it might have been $30 for the whole year or something like that for a five gigabyte mailbox, which is mean
basically we could spend like a week talking about all aspects of the internet and how it can affect your website you know, because even what email email list provider you’re using MailChimp comm Yeah.
Active you end up in spam too. And like who thinks about that if you aren’t that person, you know, so? Yeah, I think we’re gonna have to do this sort of thing like weekly or something.
The Andrea Namur weekly show
otherwise, five hours later, we’re still going right?
Look, you have our our marketing and designs, marketing designs, right. We can have a show.
There you go. There you go. Ama
It’s not just Yeah. Alright, so what’s your advice? Andrea, before we wrap it up? For somebody who’s growing, like whose business is growing right now, they already have a website that builds maybe a couple of years ago. Now they want to venture into e commerce or they want to do something bigger or do something like you want to do with the entrepreneur, Oracle, have a feature that is not offered by wherever they are. So what should they do?
Okay, so I mean, it’s kind of a, you could have a lot of answers to this question, but based on, you know, just trying to answer it for as many people as possible. If if you have someone, if you have a tech person, if you have someone that can help you with WordPress, this is for the person that doesn’t really know, you know, they’ve been using Squarespace because it’s good for them. They’ve got like some boundaries, they’ve got the bumpers up in the bowling alley, you know, that sort of thing. That they need to first figure out what it is that they need, why is it that they think that it wherever they are, it’s not working for them, if they are starting to write blogs, and it’s getting kind of unorganized. And, you know, you want to add like, for instance, I want to do this card picker. And I want to avoid specific code that every time I add because
it will tie you to a coder for forever.
And for me, WordPress is fine. I know how to use WordPress to certain extent, I’m not a programmer, I am a designer. But I do know my way around. So that was also one of the reasons why I didn’t keep WordPress as a front product. Because I needed someone like you that could do the monthly maintenance, they could check on all the back end stuff. So for me, now moving to WordPress for entrepreneur, Oracle, I can now have this capability of the card flipper and a bunch of other capabilities I didn’t have before WooCommerce there’s they have tons of other plugins for commerce there. But to be honest, I was also looking at Shopify, and Shopify is great too for selling products. But my whole purpose
ended up with another Squarespace with a different name.
It was the card flipper. So in this case, for me specifically WordPress will be the way that I move that in. For someone else who’s selling services. You know, maybe you’re a copywriter, or you’re selling you have one book. And that’s all you plan on having then Squarespace makes sense at that I
suggest either
upgrading to 7.1 and using their new templates. And maybe you need to look at your branding, maybe it’s more about the actual branding and design than the highlight that part
because it’s it’s a holistic approach. It’s like you got to look at the full picture. So even as a business owner, even though you want to be in full control, it’s always a good idea to speak with somebody. And I think most professionals have like a free 30 minute bookable call, where you can have some advice before you embark. You don’t have to necessarily use the same person when you decide. You know, like, that’s the water. See, and this is another thing so that we don’t end up with why web designers are aloof, or,
yeah, I think there’s a responsibility on both the web designer and the customer to do their homework, you know, if you need to be up front, as a web designer, this is what I offer, this is what I don’t. And as a client, you need to tell them your expectations.
I like the fact that, you know, you have the marketing background. So you know, the full picture, you are also offering content writing, which you know, it’s great. And I know that many of the business owners, things that have content, it me For example, like my, my personal websites, they all need like an overhauling and what comes to content because I go verbose. I just like put everything out there. And it’s not right. And I shouldn’t be doing it. But you know, we all have sometimes
gotta start somewhere. Right? And, and usually, if you’re a web designer, even a graphic designer or tech person, you’re more busy working on other people’s stuff.
Exactly. Their own stuff,
like the harder place like Oh, now I have to talk about me, I’d rather be behind the scenes or be doing the work for other people. So
yeah, exactly. And I mean, to be all honest, like I got one of my colleagues was a great SEO expert. She will she will audit my website and then tell me where to go from there. So we could team up like, this is the thing this is this is the beauty of you know, of the internet. This is not to go and watch cat videos, but you know, we still do that. Yeah, I still do. Yeah. But it’s to bring us together to you know, to We’ll we’ll have more power. When we work together, you’ll have better things happen to ourselves as well as the community in general. And then that’s what it’s all about, like, I can’t claim to be, you know, the expert on everything. And
and I said at the beginning, there is no way that any of us can be experts at everything. Number one, the internet changes every single day. Social media changes all the time. What do they put at the top? What do you see? What do you don’t see that changes all the time? Everything changes. So you can look at it as a positive or negative? Oh, no, I can’t know everything. I don’t know everything, or things are changing all the time. There’s no way I can know everything. I’m not expected to know everything. That’s why you know, people who you could partner with, and there you go, everybody could be their expert of the piece, and then you get an even better product and
Perfect. Thank you, Andrea. And that’s a good segue for a weekly No,
yeah, there you go.
I don’t want people to misunderstand what a means but yeah, right. Okay, triple A. Okay. You know, when your car breaks down is triple A, let’s change it. Let’s get another eight to work with us. I appreciate you being here today. Andre, thank you very much.
Thank you for having me. It was great.
Take care.
