Online! EP2, Costly Mistakes to avoid when building your website

So um but you so you got into it

pretty much at the like beginning of the

internet so you’ve been doing that for a

long time right yeah

uh how far has web development

come because oh man you have no idea

yeah

something that used to take me maybe

five days to do i can do now in five

minutes instead

everything the speed cause you see like

at the time um

that old slow internet dial up with the

modems that make noise

and you’d wait for three four minutes

before any page becomes available even

though those pages only had text and

images there was nothing

yeah today we’re watching netflix and

you’re sitting home and you’re watching

like a full movie on your couch

and you don’t think behind like how is

this made available like you know

what the servers that are actually

streaming this how strong they are

how secure they must be the bandwidth

that you have in your house and the

bandwidth that they have and netflix

like these things interest me i know

they’re boring for most people but like

i always want to know like how do you

make this possible how do you have an

app anybody like how do you have an app

you click on the phone and you can

transact

right away and it’s like what yeah

that’s insane

especially in the amount of time just

the boom in the last 20 years

yeah is insane and it’s every couple

years it just keeps on getting more and

more crazy

um what would be like the biggest

mistake you see people making with their

business websites

the biggest mistake would be not to have

a goal for the website like

a lot of people think a website

is something that looks good which is of

course you don’t want your website to be

ugly

but it has to have a job like you

if you invest ten dollars on your

website it has to do something

and if you invest ten thousand dollars

it has to do something so either way

first before if you most people you know

if you’re starting out for example you

have an idea and you want to build a

website

before building the website get a piece

of paper

write down what the goal of the website

what you wanted to do

for you first so many people would say

oh

sales we want more leads from the

website

great now think about what

should it do to the website visitor

so for the visitor to give you their

phone number

and email or name and email what are

they gonna get

right so you have to have one of these

uh we like

in the industry we call them call to

actions which is a button that’s

clickable or something

but you need to have a lead magnet so

something on the website

that entices the user or the visitor

like they’re getting a piece of

information

that they will not find elsewhere

something unique they’re downloading a

report

or or you know they’re some people say

yeah subscribe to my newsletter but if i

don’t know you i’m not gonna like if i’m

coming to this website for the first

time

yeah i’m not gonna subscribe to your

newsletter i like i don’t know

if you’re gonna spam me or if you’re

gonna send me an email every day or or

not like i have no idea

but if there’s a report or something of

value a downloadable

of some sort that i could not find

elsewhere

and that is of interest to me yeah i’m

gonna give you my name and my email to

get that report that’s fine so that’s

the

magnet and many people think

we just put the website there and it let

it do its job like

if you build it there will come that

doesn’t work anymore

you you have to actually build it with

purpose

the the second thing which is something

that very recently google started to pay

attention

uh about is the loading speed

so forever people didn’t care about how

long their website

took to load the home page specifically

and now google will penalize you if it

takes more than 2.5 seconds

so in google’s seo algorithm they also

check

how long it takes to load and now people

started to realize that

websites are taking like i don’t know

nine seconds

more eight five whatever but not 2.5 or

less

and and that’s a problem and the biggest

problem with that

is because you’re only looking at the

aesthetics of it and the look and feel

you could bog down the website with

huge images that take forever to load

yeah and i’m not saying don’t use them

by all means

your website should look great but these

images they need to be proficiently

treated before they go on

so like resized compressed in a way that

they actually

load faster and these are like the two

main

issues that if you do today you’re gonna

have a better

result on your website uh with like

website developers now like back in the

day you really need to know html like

you needed to know it like you said or

javascript

now people can sign up yeah no we’re

lazy we don’t do that anymore yeah which

one’s your favorite

tell me what one is your favorite to use

or i love wordpress generally speaking i

learned it in 2009 and i just found my

way through

bits and pieces in wordpress and at the

time

i would probably not build everything

on wordpress i would still code some you

know

some of the stuff and wordpress wasn’t

as strong back then as it is right now

but right now pretty much like i really

have to look at code anymore

like if you know html and cascading

style sheets or css

your job is so much easier anyway you

know when you look at

code and and fix things because there

are still

some things that are way easier like

you know if you can go and change one

word in the code

in a second or do 10 clicks in wordpress

to reach the area where you make the

change

you know visually without coding yeah so

yeah if you have this knowledge

it helps but if you don’t it doesn’t

matter you can still be a web designer

yeah well like we were talking about

earlier off camera was uh

like just business owners and ceos and

people doing their own

websites and uh why do you think they’re

doing that like

why i’d love to know so what uh

i i i was intrigued uh because i

i’m a member like all of us on some

business groups on facebook

and one of the biggest business groups

that i’m a member of

i always see people complaining about

web designers

so it does look like web designers have

a bad reputation

i have no idea why so i asked a simple

question

i didn’t like i didn’t want to go and

say like why are you guys complaining

about web designers

but i said okay this question is for

business owners

who did their own website could you

please let me know

why did you end up doing it yourself and

i was surprised 90

of the answers cited bad experience

so now i kind of know that somehow

within the business world web designers

have a reputation

and i’m on a mission to try and change

that

but i want to first understand where

does it come from like where does the

reputation what would

push a business owner to completely

not use a professional any professional

like doesn’t have to be me

you anybody like why why would you

go solo and try to do something

that is not your core you know like

you’re your plumber you’re a coach

you’re a

an accountant why are you going to spend

hours learning web design

just to do your own website instead of

focusing on your business and your

customers

yeah yeah it’s a difficult middle ground

i think even more so now especially with

covid going on like

people don’t have that extra extra

dollar to give out for stuff so people

are taking on those jobs but sometimes

your mentality could be worth more than

that money you give out to do it because

if you don’t know what you’re doing it

can be extremely stressful

when something needs to you need to get

it done yeah and you have a time

time limit when you use a expert

obviously they can

get it done within your time um but

like uh do you what would you say like

um

when it comes to like have you seen

a lot some people that are like ceos and

people turn themselves almost into web

designers and like be good at it

and yeah on some of those business

groups i’ve seen some coaches for

example who used to be

business coaches or like they’re not

necessarily

techies right but the experience that

they learned

during their journey building their own

website made them

switch to become web designers

themselves instead of

you know business coaches yeah so they

become either you know uh

web designers and web coaches

or still keep the business coaching part

but advise

their coaches more about you know how to

be more successful online and things

like that and

it’s a great thing if you’re up for it

like i’m not i’m not

trying to discourage people from

learning more

in fact like my stance is use a

professional when

when the professional is needed so there

are some

plumbing stuff like web plumbing stuff

underlying that too technical that is

really hard to do if you’re doing it for

the first time

and there’s the easy stuff such such as

writing your own blog

posts and finding you know the images

and trimming them and

putting everything on the page and

making it look good with the interface

that you’re given with wordpress or the

other tools

that’s so easy it doesn’t you don’t have

to be technical but the functionality

like

linking things together and getting

those

plugins to actually play nicely

and when somebody goes and fills the

form on your website you get an email

and

you know all these behind-the-scenes

stuff you don’t need to worry about it

yourself like that’s

it’s going to take you hours and you

know

if you’re not going to be doing this

as part of your business that’s going to

make you money there’s no point of

spending 30 40 hours

yeah doing it on your own yeah i think

gen

gen generally um it’s kind of almost

like a stereotype

with web designers and i don’t even

think it’s web designers alone i think

the average human being when it comes to

if they’re not techy

the techie people always come off like

they know everything

so so it’s it’s when you it’s it’s

almost like who you’re dealing with like

if with you

you’re a very personal guy you’re

likable so when i know people would love

to work with you you’d be

fun to work with you would listen to

their what they need for help

when you when the average person the

techie people they deal with is geek

squad

and geek squad comes to your house and

treats you like you’re an idiot

because it’s a problem they fix 50 times

a day yeah and you have no idea how to

fix it

i think that’s where the problem is is

this is just it’s an um

it’s a personality trait that it’s not

every one of them

or at all of course yeah we’re not

generalizing but yeah

i mean we’re not all introverts yeah not

all techies are introverts and

those those who are you know

sometimes they come across much nicer

than

you would expect if they’re given the

chance yeah uh but there are many people

who focus on the problem not on the

person

yeah like if you one of the courses i

used to teach before one

in my back in my technology teaching

days was

uh we used to teach help desk

professionals support

it support professionals to be more

personable

so that course was mostly soft skills

there was no technical

there were some terms in it but we don’t

teach them how to solve the problem

we teach them how to approach problem

solving so

you know focus on the person not the

problem like actually

hear what the person is telling you try

to rephrase it repeat it back to them

make sure that you got what they’re

saying

uh match you know kind of their

level of knowledge so so you’re not

trying to be like up there and

looking down at whatever the problem is

yeah

and then explain it as much as possible

now not everybody likes to have full

details

um i’m um i don’t know i can talk

forever about

something that i’m passionate about like

technology or soccer

but sometimes i find myself giving an

awful lot of details to a customer who’s

not interested

like just make it work don’t tell me how

you did it just

make it work but sometimes i feel it’s

my duty

to because you know they own the website

they

own the business it’s my duty to make

sure that

they have the information and not only

that but

if i’m hit by a bus tomorrow at least

they know what i’ve done on the website

so they can go and get someone to help

yeah instead of just like oh my web guy

disappeared on me

yeah and now i’m left high and dry and i

don’t know what to do

yeah and i feel like they there’s a lot

of them that

um like business owners that might hire

uh

the website developers and just expect

them to do the work with no information

given

yeah and then as soon as as soon as it’s

done they’re like that’s not what i

wanted and it’s just like they’re

i i like as a i’m editing a lot lately

and i can run

into that too where yeah if a person

it’s almost like

i while i’m editing yeah sometimes

you’ll get annoyed if there’s too much

input because you want to get creative

in your own way

but if there’s zero input they don’t

it’s like yeah just be creative that’s

more stressful

just many people think when they

outsource the website building part

yeah that the designer would

like make up the content for them like

find the images and

write the text and whatever but like you

are the

as a business owner you’re the best

person to pitch

you’re the best person to speak about

what you do you’re the best person who

knows what makes you unique

yeah why you started this business at

the first place right

the web designer no matter how good they

are they wouldn’t know that

yeah right so think of it as a picture

in a frame

if i’m building the frame for you that

you’re gonna put on the wall and put the

picture on it

in it right the picture itself comes

from you

my job is to find the best place for

that frame to be

and the best looking frame

you know in your room and set up or

whatever

but the photo or the picture that goes

in it it’s all up to you

yeah yeah that makes a lot of sense uh

and i feel

that it’s a lot of one or the other

where the person has too many

too many eggs in the basket they’re

going too heavily within or they’re just

stand off and expect everything to be

done with no yeah no no i

i don’t want like uh 40 pages of content

for a website that’s five pages

and i have to rummage through and find

out which piece of content goes where

yeah and i don’t want no content either

so i usually what i do is i

i would create like a shared folder

between me and the client

and inside the folder there are many

folders or subfolders

per page so one folder will be called

home page one

folder will be called contact us one

folder will be called

our services photo gallery

and then in there all what i want is the

images that you want on that page

if you have them if you don’t happy to

go around and find suitable images

there are so many like uh sites where

you can

buy images yeah i don’t normally like to

use stock images because we want to

keep the site unique but there are so

many

scenarios where you need them you know

you need stock images

so if you don’t have them that’s fine we

can find something

but usually if you have a few even if

you’re not sure where they go on the

page

just put them in that folder image is

not the issue

text is content is we can get

a copywriter but again the copywriter

would cost you

per word and they don’t know your

business the same way you do

yeah so even if you don’t know what to

write a tip for

every business owner record it on your

phone just talk

yeah pretend you’re talking to us

pretend you’re talking to somebody

pretend you’re pitching

uh in a networking event or to someone

you just met

in the supermarket yeah and who asks you

you know what do you do

and you’re telling them put this and

then put this

mp3 audio file in the folder and we’ll

figure it out

yeah they can they can make it work with

the words that might sound a little bit

more professional or whatever it is

yeah we can then get an editor to make

it you know more professional whatever

it is like

there are different services that can be

provided but the base has to be there

yeah yeah that’s very true