The #1 Website Mistake Small Businesses Make

I'm gonna go live for the next 15 days to cover my book here. It's backwards. It's Your Amazing Itty Bitty Visibility Book: 15 Chapters to Marketing Made Easy. We're gonna do one chapter a day. I'm going to read it and explain my thoughts behind everything that I have in that chapter. So we're gonna start with, ta-da, chapter 1. I know you could have guessed that, right? So here we go. And yeah, I'm just gonna read it cuz You know what? That's what I do. It says chapter 1, your website is your hub. And I mean that literally. Most business owners don't think of their website as the central hub for their business. The challenge is considering that your website as a tool to bring you more business. Your website must be integrated with your client relationship management or CRM software. So that would be, for me, it's GoHighLevel. It could be Constant Contact. It could be Keep, Infusionsoft. HubSpot, there's literally hundreds of them out there, and that's where you build your contact list. So if your website isn't integrated with your CRM and you're doing like opt-ins to build your list, it's like, well, wait a minute, where's that list going? And you're creating more work for yourself by having to manually copy and paste new people into the list. So just bypass that, have it all one thing. Your social media profiles should all be connected to your website. I cannot tell you how many times I have gone into somebody's social media profile and there is no connection to their website. It's like, wait a minute, what are you doing? If you are using social media and there's no way for somebody to jump from, say, your Facebook account to your website, you're missing a huge source of leads, which for me is the only reason Well, two reasons I use social media: leads and to build relationships and connections with people. So if you're missing out on the leads part, your business is suffering. Your Google Business Profile, or the map, must be integrated to your website. So on your contact page, it's just simple as embedding your map. And you're thinking, oh, I don't have a Google Business Profile. That's a big mistake. Huge mistake. That's in one of the further chapters. We'll get into that later. Another one of my 15 days, but you definitely need to have a Google Business Profile. And your website should allow people to schedule appointments, especially if you're a coach or you do online appointments for anything in your business. Why make it difficult? Have it right there. The schedule button goes right on your website. And if you're not doing that, again, you're making your life harder and Why do that? You know, why have hard life when you can have an easy life? Gone are the days when a website functioned as a glorified business card. That was like the '90s, early 2000s. Today's website is often the first impression people have of your business, and let it be a sales machine working for you 24/7 when you are not working. That kind of goes back to somebody able to schedule an appointment. Have a chatbot on there so that they're able to easily find information and/or connect. Your website must reflect your business branding. As a website designer, I can't tell you how many times I have taken on a new client and they have a website with one color or two or three, and then their social media profiles don't have the same color schemes, their different places that I find them online, they're all different. Some of them don't even match their business card. It's like, wait a minute. If you give somebody a physical business card, which we oftentimes don't do anymore. If you have a digital business card, same thing. If somebody looks at your digital or physical business card and they type in your URL and they get to a place that looks nothing like what's in their hand. They're gonna think they're in the wrong place. It's that simple. And with all of the scams and stuff going on online and all of the trickery out there, it's actually a very big thing with building trust. Your website, use it to tell your clients about your products and services. We pretty much all have that down. I hope that one's pretty self-explanatory. Okay, your website needs to be a sales machine. It's not just a pretty thing sitting there like it used to. Clients need to be able to purchase your products or services right from your website. Most people that don't have an e-commerce website, so service-based industry people, do not have the ability to purchase from their website. Sometimes that makes sense. If you're a plumber and you're going out and doing a plumbing job, and that job is unique to that individual house, then it makes sense not to be— have them be able to buy a plumbing package. However, can they take the invoice that you send them and pay online? That's the big thing. People want to pay online. So either your invoicing system, be it QuickBooks or whatever you use, has the ability to pay online, or you're connected with a merchant account that you can send them a link. Even if it's PayPal, you can do an invoice through PayPal and they can pay online. That's good. If there's no way to pay online, you are losing business. I guarantee it. Let's see, adding packages to your website will give unexpected gifts. Customers will decide which package they want before contacting you. This happens to me all the time. I have 3 website packages on my website. People can read them, see exactly what's there, and before they ever call me, They are saying, I want this package, or I think I fit into this package. Would you agree? So it's almost like pre-selling, which I think is super, super cool. I no longer have to figure out what somebody wants. They can read, they know what they want, and they place themselves usually into the right package every single time. And here's another one that I really enjoyed once I put packages on my site. Others who want something for free or more extensive services than what you offer will disqualify themselves. So I used to get calls from government agencies that wanted, you know, $20,000 websites. I'm a solopreneur. I don't do $20,000 websites. I do more basic, simple business types, solopreneurs, small businesses, that sort of thing. So I didn't want big corporations or government agencies calling me, and I also don't want tire kickers who don't want to pay anything to know what my minimum package is. That way they don't call me either. So yes, my calls went down dramatically. However, the calls that I were still receiving were actual bona fide real potential clients. And it wasn't wasting my time anymore. I, I felt like this big weight was lifted off my shoulders cuz I had more time to actually get work done instead of wasting it on the phone. Adding payment buttons to your website will be a revolutionary business improvement. If you do not have pay buttons on your website now, you will be so glad that you do. Uh, once you get them added on there, your customers can pay immediately with credit cards. And no more waiting for the check in the mail. When I started my business almost 20 years ago, hardly anybody paid me with a credit card. In fact, I really didn't have a way to take credit cards at that time. And I would get, you know, like a check for half and then they would send me the other half when I finished the website. Sometimes, sometimes I waited for months. It was a cash flow nightmare. Now people buy their package either all upfront or in 3 payments, and it's all through my website and it's all handled automatically through the merchant processor. So huge, again, time saver, big worry, cash flow problems are mostly gone. Like I don't have those issues anymore. And that's it for chapter 1. So the biggest thing is your website is your hub. It is the essence of your business. It is what everything else you do online connects to the site. If you wanna get a copy of this for yourself, you can buy it from Amazon. I will go ahead and put the link in the comments below wherever you're watching this. If you wanna get that and have it in your hand and read it yourself. Otherwise, over the next 15 days, we will be going through it chapter by chapter and I'll explain everything in there. So I will talk to you guys later.