Website Tips - What To Include On Your Website

Hello everybody and welcome to Business Divas Facebook group. And, uh, I'm Dotty with Premium Websites and Ask Dotty, and we have a super special guest here today. Katrina, would you like to introduce yourself?

Hey everyone, we're gonna talk all about websites today because Dotty is an amazing web builder, as you know, and I also focus on websites in my business coaching company. So I help people make more money doing what they love. And oftentimes that means you have to look at what your web presence looks like, what you look like in general online, because that's a first impression oftentimes for someone to decide if they wanna work with you or not. So I help people really find the holes and opportunities to be more efficient, more profitable, more visible, and make it easier for people to want what you've got. In my business coaching, and I also have a publishing company and all kinds of stuff to help you with books. And yes, those are all my books behind me. So I do a lot of stuff. Happy to be here.

You do, and you are an absolute treasure for someone like me because a lot of times my customers don't really understand branding and all of that stuff. And so that's like something that needs to happen first.

Yeah.

Before we dive into creating the website. But you know, one of the things that I find really missing on a lot of websites are, are really two things that are so basic, it's amazing. One is a phone number.

Hmm. Yeah.

A lot of people tell me, oh, I don't want my phone number online. Well, I'm here to tell you personally, I don't buy from any company that I can't call if I wanted to. How do you feel about that, Katrina?

Yes, I agree. Stop it. Stop thinking that you shouldn't put your personal information on your website because we don't trust you if you don't have it there. We don't trust to buy from you or even give you our email address for a free thing if we don't— if we think you're some fly-by-night company, right? And we can't get a hold of you. So you've got to be serious in your business. You've gotta have, you, you frankly, if you have, if you're gonna sell stuff on your website too, you must have a physical address on your website. It can be a PO box, but you have to have an address, full address, city, state. I wanna know where you are in the world, okay? As a consumer, as a visitor to your site, I wanna know your email address and I wanna know your phone number and I wanna know how I can contact you, not just a contact form on your contact page. Another thing while you're talking about that is the about page. A lot of times I go to someone's about page and there's no picture of them. I wanna know you're a human and not some scammer out there with like, oh, our company does this, that, and the other thing. I don't care. Who are you? I wanna see your picture. I want even, I mean, yes, it could be fake, but I wanna see your stuff. What do you think about that?

Yeah. And you know what? I, I have a lot of service-based industries as clients, and I am really surprised when they don't wanna put pictures on their site. And it's, it's strange because these are people that are doing services at somebody's house. And for me, if I had ordered, say, a plumber to come over to my house, I would personally look on their website and see who I expect to show up at my door.

Yeah.

And if that doesn't match, yes, I'm going to be very nervous about letting that person into my house.

Good point. Especially as a woman. I mean, you hear about stories all the time. People come into the door. That's a good point. And then I would mention too that another thing I hardly ever see people have on their site is a call to— a clear call to action.

Yes. That was my second thing I was going to mention.

And one that makes people want it. Because think about this, design your website for the people who have no idea who you are. You have to design it for people who have no idea who you are, have never heard of you, have no idea what you do. And because a lot of times I'll go to a website and the big huge image on top and I see some navigation, but it doesn't say, it doesn't indicate at all really what you do, who you are, and why I should care before scrolling. Right. And then the first thing you want me to do is do a call with you. It's like, I'm not going to do a call with you because I don't even know who you are yet. Let me get a taste of you with like a free video or a webinar, come to call with you or download something with your expertise in it. I mean, yes, we want people in calls, okay? And you could put that later on the page or in some other places, but it can't be your main freebie anymore because people don't trust enough to do that first. What do you think?

The free schedule a 15-minute consultation, that's what you're talking about, right?

Well, first of all, the 15-minute consultation is is not good anyways, because how many of you can sell thousands of dollars to a client in 15 minutes? I can't. I don't do that. I build rapport in 15 minutes and then I find out what they need and then I ask them if they want to know how I can help them. And the process takes about an hour. So don't fool yourself with a 15-minute consultation unless you're selling something for under a couple hundred dollars. Yeah, then you might be able to sell them in 15 minutes. But why would you offer a 15-minute consultation?

Like, I've always wondered that too. It seems to be like the norm to do, but like you, if someone calls me, it's at least a half an hour conversation.

At least. Yeah. And that's if you know them and have already seen them somewhere and don't have to really get to know each other because people are not gonna slap down hundreds or thousands of dollars typically with someone they just meet. Yes, it can happen. It can, but is it rare?

Yeah. It's not the norm.

It's not the norm. Yeah. Hey, we don't want to scare you here from doing business. You can get business without a website. I know you can get business without a website. You can go to a networking event in person or virtually and share what you do. And someone could go, oh, I need that. Let's have a call. And then you could sell them and you could take money and you could have a client. Let's face it, that can happen. It's not going to happen consistently though for you without a web presence. Because too many people are skeptical without seeing what you do, right?

Not only that, but when I used to be very, very active in like local chamber events and just different local networking groups, even though, uh, people would meet me at these groups, they would still go online and look at what I have on my website. Yeah. To make sure that I'm a valid business. So it's super important because people are checking you out. They are, whether you want to or not, everywhere.

They're checking out your social media. They're stalking you. I've had people tell me, oh, I've been watching you for a couple years. I'm like, well, why don't you say something and say hi?

You know, like I've had that too where, you know, a client, one of the last, no, I won't say last, but one of the most recent clients that I built a website for said that she found me because she's been watching my Instagram account for, for years. I did a talk maybe 5 years ago at a local event here that she attended. She followed me on Instagram and I didn't even know she was there, you know, and, you know, 5 years later, it takes that, takes time. Plus they have to be ready. She's now a client.

Yeah. And another thing. So what, what should you do on your website? Right. Well, let's see. Um, you wanna get, have them get to know you. Please add a video to your website. Please add multiple videos to your website. I tell my clients on every single page, almost you need a video because you need to talk about what's on this page. So on the about page, you might say, hey, it's Katrina. This is my philosophy around business coaching and what I do with my clients. Right? On your, one of your pro— maybe you're selling a membership program. Hey, in this membership, you're going to find access to blankety-blank and you're going to meet so-and-so and you're going to have opportunities to blankety-blank and tell a video what they're going to expect. Not just a webpage with sales information, but have them feel connected to you. It makes more sense, especially on sales pages or free gift pages and things like that.

So the very first, like, introduction video I did was over 10 years ago, and it was a fly-by-night kind of thing, fly by the seat of your pants. It was not planned. I wasn't even dressed appropriately, but I put it up anyway. And the strangest thing, the day after I put it up, someone called me and said they watched the video. I'm like, wow, that was fast. And, and their comment was that they felt like I was approachable because of how unplanned this video was. Yeah. And, and they felt comfortable to call me because of that video.

Yes.

And I mean, I've replaced it with a, a better one in my opinion now, but that one stayed on my website for at least 5 years.

I know I've literally had some of the same videos on my website for years. I probably, I'm guessing like 10 for some of them because I look back at them and frankly, I don't change my hairstyle. So it doesn't matter, right? I look the same. If I change my hairstyle along the way, then I probably would record them.

But that's a really, you know, anyways, but another place that I use video that I think has been very effective is in my FAQ sections.

Yeah, that's good.

I will write it out, but I'll also put, you know, talk it out on the video. And one thing that video does for your presence online is you can actually have a separate video sitemap, put that, you know, send that to Google, and then your videos will come up independently of your website.

Yeah.

So when they click through, they're embedded on your site. So now they're on your site watching that video.

See, that's a hack, right? You have your little thing up there. It's an SEO hack to get more traffic to your website. So when I say put a video, it's to get to know the person who's watching it so they'll want to take action with you. When you say put video on your website, it's for that, but also for the SEO steps. So there's two, there's two schools of thought here. You're the techie that thinks of all those things, which is why they need a really good web designer who understands the marketing strategy, the design strategy, but also the SEO traffic strategy, because that is going to get you more organic visitors, right? So it is.

Yep. It will get you found in the search engines for more keywords than you ever thought that you could come up with when you first started your website adventure.

So another thing I recommend on websites is a minimum of 3 online forms. So you're going to have one for your main free gift, whatever that download is, or video or whatever. You're going to have a page where it says, download your free blankety-blank and you're going to get XYZ and this is what you're going to learn and blah blah blah, just enter your name and email. You're going to have a form that takes the name and email, right? So that's one.

And that form needs to come from your CRM.

Yes. So like, hold on a second, hold one second on that thought. We'll come to that. And so then the contact page, sometimes you just put your phone number and your email address in there. Don't do that because then we can just click and open an email. And that's not an efficient way to get emails because you want people on your— in your email database, right? So put a form there also, but it's a different form and puts people on the contact form list. Free gift form list, contact form list. And then the third one is the free call list. So yes, of course you want a free call, but you want a form where you ask for more information for the free call. You don't just want name and email. I suggest full contact information, phone number, mailing address, everything. If someone wants to talk to me, they need to give me a little bit more, frankly, and ask some questions on that so you can get pre-qualified them more before you actually get on a phone call with them. So those 3 forms minimum, and then multiple free gifts if you have it. And then yes, they all have to lead back to that database management system, whatever you're gonna use that's gonna send those emails and sort those people so that they're on an, an email database list, because that's gold.

And a comment on what you were saying about having more than just your name and email on there. Those fields, if you actually ask questions, and a spam bot fills it out, it's gonna be really obvious to you and you know you can ignore it.

Right.

But if a real person fills it out, again, it's gonna be obvious to you and you're gonna know that this is a valid potential client so that you can, you know, go ahead and schedule and figure out what you're gonna talk about with them. Yeah. Good.

That's a good tip. Let's see what else on. So another thing, sometimes people have different things that they offer on their website, meaning I have this one-on-one program. I have this group program and I have this membership, right? So you have 3 services. Sometimes they'll just put 3 different pages on top. What I might suggest, especially to reduce the navigation, cuz I'm somebody who has 200 and something pages on my website. Okay. So you wanna keep the main navigation pretty simple, but you can have dropdowns. And, but the problem with that is that sometimes you'll put like services in the main navigation. And then 3 dropdowns for those 3 different sales pages. But then they won't create a real main services page. You have to have a main services page that gives like a little blurb of each one and then links into the inside sales pages for those particular 3 services. In my opinion, it makes it easier for the visitor. Cuz we don't know which service we want yet. You have to take us to a main services page with a video that explains who, which one is for and why we should click to learn more. That's opinion, but that would really make sense for a lot of people, I think.

And there's a little bit more to that story. Again, this is like a techie SEO thing.

Good.

Is that if you have that top navigation and it doesn't click, yeah, it messes up your breadcrumbs, which most people don't care about.

I don't even know what a breadcrumb is.

A breadcrumb, if you notice some websites at the top when you're on an interior page. Yeah. It'll say like home, it'll have an indicator and it might have a category and it might have, you know, another page and then where you are. So it's like the path of how you got to where you are.

Oh.

And if you don't have a legitimate page for that dropdown menu, then it messes up that path, which, you know, you say, oh, who cares? But this is one of those search engine optimization things that's super simple to fix. Yeah. You just gotta create the page. And on that page, it, like you said, it should have a video and it should link to all your services, just an image and a link or buttons or however you wanna display it.

A link open up in a new window, please. Because what, and it drives me crazy when all the links just replace the page you're on. Because what if someone— you get to a page where you have to buy something and people are like, no, I'm not interested, and they click out. Boom, your website's gone off their browser. If you open up—

and that's another use of breadcrumbs.

Okay.

You can just click back one section in that breadcrumb and you get back to where you were.

Good.

See, one of those techie things.

I know. Well, and sometimes it's a little too much tech for some people who are just trying to survive and get a client. So there's some things we need to know and some things we don't need to know. That's why we need someone who's really experienced that manages our website, right? And you have to do— I mean, if you have a website, you need to look at the back end of it at least once a month, you guys, like minimum, to make sure things are being updated. And especially if you're on WordPress, there's plugins that, that, you know, need updates. There's the whole theme needs updates sometimes. And I've seen many people's websites when I log into the back and it's like a nightmare back there. It's all red, right? And that's what happens when you're not updating is there's like red, red, red, red, red down the page. And I'm like, oh dear, you need to update.

And if it's been a year or more, you have a really high chance of breaking something when you do update.

Well, yes. And so you wanna take a backup, right? Immediately.

Yeah.

And then go, and then go update it. So you wanna take regular backups, not necessarily manually if you don't have to. So there's a lot of those kind of things that I see. Hurt an entrepreneur in their business because something will go awry and they don't know how to fix it, or they try to fix it and boom, the website's gone. So like, just—

so my clients are like protected from that because I include all of that stuff when they get hosting from me. And a lot of it is actually done at the server level and they never have to worry about doing any of that stuff.

Good. Yeah, because some people just go to GoDaddy hosting. Please don't do that. Oh gosh, Bluehost is not bad, but if you have someone like Dotty who does the server updates and the hosting, then you're more protected, right? But if you want to go on your own, just make sure you have a really reputable hosting company and you maintain your own back to your site, or hire a techie to come in and do that for you because It has to get done. So let's talk about the, the platforms though. I know we love building on WordPress. I love WordPress and you like WordPress.

I do.

I know. And there's so many entrepreneurs out there that, that try to start with Wix or Weebly or GoDaddy websites, or there's websites in Constant Contact and there's websites in MailerLite and there's web— then there's the, the landing page software like ClickFunnels and Um, gosh, Keep and all these other ones that, um, just in my opinion don't make a cohesive website that is as functional as possible. And so we want more function, more flexibility with layout and where to put stuff, and ease to update and maintain. So I don't know, what are your thoughts on platforms and stuff?

Well, the reason that I went with WordPress in the very beginning is because I would have some clients come to me mainly from the GoDaddy Build It Tonight platform, Wix or Weebly, those 3. And they would say, Dotty, I'm just not being found on the search engines. Can you help me? And I would take those websites and literally copy them into WordPress, like not change anything with text or any of that. And they would instantly rank higher than they were before.

Yeah.

So that's why I use WordPress. Mm-hmm. But I do wanna say another huge reason, and this is something I come across quite frequently with new clients, is that on WordPress and your own hosting account, you own it.

Mm-hmm.

You're not at the whim of some company who is going out of business, who is changing, who, whatever, you're locked out, can't get ahold of somebody, whatever it is, you have control of your own website, which is your business. So there should never be somebody else that is in between you and your website.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I just love the— I haven't been very tech. I mean, I'm kind of techy. I'm kind of techy now. I understand the backend. When I know how to do something, I can do it. Right. When it comes to like my phone, forget it. I don't want to get a new phone ever because I always, I don't want to have to learn something new. Right. So I have a lot of clients who are not techie and they're like, ah, back in the website. Ah, right. And you can totally hire it out. You don't have to, but it is nice to know if, how to change a link or how to upload a photo or how to change some text on a page in case you change something. Right. Or how to clone one of your sales pages or your free gift pages. To create a new page and then just go change it really quick with the new information. And to be able to do that is powerful.

It really is.

And especially if you could do it quick. If it takes you 4 hours to clone a page or do something, please don't do it yourself. Okay. Or because it's not efficient and it's not profitable for you and your business. But when you can catch how to do it, it can save you some money. Okay. Now I still have techie people. I still hire techie people. I still pay them on a monthly basis because there's too much to do that I can't quite, I can't possibly I can't possibly do it all, but every once in a while I do. I'm changing some pages today as we're talking here, not right this second, but I'm changing some pages today because I'm running a conference and I'm updating some things and I'm remembering, oh yeah, I gotta do this. I gotta add that. And so I can do that, right? When you're on WordPress, especially with the Divi theme, I'm not a fan of Elementor at all. And I don't know if you— nope, me neither. Oh my God. It's so hard. So if you're building a new site, I was talking to somebody yesterday. If you're building a new site, don't use Elementor. Use Divi, trust me. Like you will be much happier with that theme. And it has many, many designs and page templates you can use, but I personally like Avada way better than Divi. Okay.

Easier.

Well, I only know of the two at the moment because I just try to stay, keep it simple. Right. But as long as it's an easy drag and drop and I can do it live on the page, like that's, I think, simple. But I was talking to another web designer the other day and he's like, well, I code the pages and I do this. And it's really easy to change. I'm like, no, no, no. Like for non-techie people, that is not an easy thing to change.

And those people end up finding people like me because they can't make changes.

Right.

And I usually end up putting them into a different theme that's not hardcoded. Yeah. So that they can make changes in the future. Yes. Because I believe you need to be able to manage your own website if you want to.

If you want to. And in some instances, like you're running a call and you realize the link doesn't work. Ah, right. And you need to go change the link. Really quick, you got to know how to do some of those things because your assistant isn't just waiting for you to tell you to change the link as much as we would love that to happen.

Yeah, I'm not waiting here by my email for every single client to email me their little change so I can do it like that. Right.

So share a little bit about how they can connect with you if they haven't already, Dotty, and then I'll share some stuff too.

Sure. So one of the things that I absolutely enjoy doing is educating business owners on things they can do online for themselves. And I do that through my Ask Dotty website, which is a membership website. There's courses, there's classes, but if you go there, there's a super cool free gift. It's a PDF and it talks about 4 simple hacks that you can do to your website or outside of your website that's going to drive traffic. So if you go to askdotty.com/gift, you will see that form to fill out and you can get that PDF. What about you? What would you like to offer?

Well, I've been in business for 20 years. I have a lot of free stuff, you guys, so you can check out whatever you like. I mean, if you want to jumpstart your business with revenues and clients, there's a Jumpstart Biz Kit there on my free trainings page. So the jumpstartyourbiznow.com/freetrainings. There also happens to be an audio there where I talk about the 17 must-haves of your website. No, but you need to go to Dotty to get it done, right? But you could listen to that. I have a speaker training, an author training, all kinds of stuff for you wherever you are in your business. Or just reach out and let's have a call because now you know me a little bit, right? And what I'm like.

So likewise, well, everybody, it's, uh, been about a half an hour, so have a Fantastic day. If you have any questions, go ahead and put them into the comment area on the, the Business Divas group, and we will reach out to you and make sure that your question is answered. Other than that, have an awesome day.

Bye, guys.