How to Transform Your Website into a Winning Business Tool | Expert Review

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm going to be doing one of my Fiverr gigs, is where I review a website and give some advice for the website owner. So this one came in for mymodernweb.com that we're going to check out, and it says, please review of someone who is looking for a website designer. So let's check out the site and see what kind of feedback we can give. So I'm pretending that I am an entrepreneur looking for a new website and I happened upon this site here. So my first thought is it looks professional, which is great. Uh, if I'm hiring a website designer, I obviously want them to have a professional website so I can rest assured that I'm gonna have a professional website as well. Uh, I love this Hire Us here. It's a clear call to action. I'm assuming that's gonna be on every page. The call us today is great too, a 1-800 number, great to have on there. It shows that it's a real development shop. A lot of times there's tons of these companies that set up, they're online only, there's no way to actually, you know, make a phone call and get a hold of somebody. So this shows a little bit more credibility and just adds a little bit more trust factor that I know I'm on a real website. The logo is okay. You know, for somebody who's in web design, I'd probably expect something a little less, you know, stock photography. So you might want to improve on that a little bit, but overall it looks pretty professional. It scrolls through these 5 things, which is great. The first one is "We create websites to get results" with the "Hire us today" call to action. This is great, and I'm assuming these are your clients. It'd be great to see some testimonials. So, you know, maybe Classic Polo had some amazing results by using you instead of another website design company, and you can have, you know, a picture of their CEO and saying, you know, we love the My Modern Web guys, they did an awesome job, or something like that. Or if they can have some kind of numbers in there, you know, our sales grew 50% after using them. Testimonials again go a long way to be able to add credibility to the business. So this is great, it's good to show that the portfolio, and that's gonna be something that clients will definitely look for, is, you know, have you done something that looks nice and that's related to my industry. But then again, if you can have some kind of testimonials on here, it'd be— it'd add a lot more credibility to your business. So next, mobile apps is great. A lot of companies considering getting into mobile, so it's good to show that here. We are worldwide. So this might be a little confusing. So you're showing a map of the US. Maybe if I zoom out, I'll see more. So, no, okay. So you're mostly in the US, that's great, and it looks like you're centered kind of around Missouri, which is awesome. I don't know if this hurts you— uh, helps you, sorry. I think it might actually damage you to say that you're worldwide and then you have, you know, most of your clients just centered around Missouri. I'd probably take that off. I don't think people care too much about it, and it doesn't really add a lot of value to people who are visiting, and it may hurt you to say you're worldwide and you only have a handful of clients kind of all centered around Missouri. So I might want to take that one off. The next thing I'd look for as an entrepreneur is, okay, it looks like a nice design. Now they can kind of do what I'm hoping they can do. I want to learn a little bit more about you. So I'd be looking for an About My Modern Web. I don't see that anywhere. I don't see an About up top. So let's scroll. Maybe there's something here. So who is My Modern Web? Okay, great. Full-service website design, internet marketing firm. So click Learn More. And that's going to take me to the services page. So that's great to show your services. One thing I notice here is I'm on the services page at the top, but it says features here. You know, you probably want to call that services. Again, features doesn't really make sense from a customer point of view coming to a page that says features. If you say services, but I wanted to learn more about you, not necessarily your features. So I said learn more about your business, maybe there's something else. Who is My Modern Web? So again, you know, full-service website design and internet marketing firm. Learn more, where does that take me? Back to the homepage. Okay, so you have the same text on two different pages that just bounce between each other. I'd probably, you know, fix that and also create a page that talks about who you are. Like who's the founder, how long you've been in business, have a picture of who you guys are, even if it's a small shop, one person, show your face, you know, nice smiling picture. I want to see who the people are behind the business because again, there's a lot of these fraud shops that are set up and I'm concerned about giving my money to somebody, especially someone who's not local or can't meet face-to-face. So I'd like to see a picture of them somewhere. So definitely include that somewhere on there. Let's go back to that services page and see what other feedback we can kind of give on it. I'm expecting you do, I mean, these main things: website design, search engine, social media. That's kind of what everybody's gonna be pitching. But let's load up each one and see what, what you're talking about in each one of these. Again, this is kind of standard package that I would expect from any kind of website development shop. So short description, okay. Let's see what's on the next one. SEO, very short description. It's good you got us in the Google Places. Social media, another very short description. I don't think you're gonna win clients on this. You got to be able to show how you're different. And if I'm an entrepreneur and I'm looking at your design services versus other companies, I'm not, I'm not being wowed. So I definitely add more content on here. I'd show some case studies of clients you've worked with, have testimonials. Have pictures of the people who have left those testimonials with some results and spice up the content a little bit to make your company stand out. Because if you go to 100 other website development companies and check out their websites, they're going to have more than this. So I'd say you're a little bit behind the ball on that. The design looks great, but the content here is not winning me over as an entrepreneur. One thing I might be interested in, so if I'm looking at social media, I would check out your social media accounts. What you're doing here. Twitter, Facebook, Google+. Let's load up each one and see what's happening. You want to make sure you're actually doing it yourself. So this is great, you know, we've got some tweets, we've got some followers. Not necessarily great to have this discrepancy in the number of followers versus following, but you know, you're posting on a regular basis, which is good. So, you know, clients can come and see that these guys are actually doing what they say they can provide for us, so it's good. If I click on here, Facebook, so you've got a page, great, you got some likes, you got some photos. Let's see what this one is all about. Happy birthday to our CEO, Jason. Oh, this is great. So this is Jason from My Modern Web. I'd put this on a webpage, you know, friendly guy, big smile. As an entrepreneur, I'd want to learn more about the business, so I'd like to see this picture somewhere on your website and talk about Jason and if there's a team, how you started the business, you know, what your vision is, some of the clients you've worked with. People like buying from people, right? They don't want to buy from a faceless corporation, and especially one that they've never heard of before. So it's an opportunity to stand out and tell your story, and it's great that you have, you know, friendly-looking guy, big smile. I'd definitely include this on the page, maybe without the "Happy Birthday, Jason," but otherwise I'd definitely include that. It looks good though. Facebook is being active. Google+, same kind of stuff. So they have some, you know, some followers there. It's good. They're posting on a regular basis, which is good. So it's good. I mean, that's something that I'd want to see. Are you doing social media yourself? And if you're not doing a good job yourself, you know, why would I want to hire you? And that's again another big challenge that a lot of entrepreneurs will face when they're looking for a website design company. They promise things but they're not doing it themselves, so there's not a lot of credibility or trust there. So that's good, and it's great that you have the pictures of the CEOs already on there. You can move over. Let's see what else we've got here. We looked at services. Let's check out the blog. So again, another challenge here is a lot of companies say they have a blog and then they don't keep it updated. So let's check it out. So we got a post today, we've got a post last week, we got a post— okay, so 3 posts in December, not bad, you know, you're keeping it up, which is good. Let's click on the post and see what we're talking about here. Nice professional design, uh, it's broken up nicely with, you know, big category headlines here, so it's easy to read. It's great, call to action is good, you know, comments Could be a little more engaging, you know, a little bit on Facebook, Twitter, no comments, you know, as an entrepreneur, if you are going to be helping me socialize my content, I'd like to see that you could do it yourself. So I'm not expecting massive engagement, but it'd be good to see at least some comments and a little bit more sharing so I have a little more confidence that you could do it for me if I wanted to do that. But otherwise, it looks nice, you know, it's It's a great step just to even have your blog updated because a lot of companies don't. Moving on, clients. See what the clients is all about. Again, we see this map. I'd take it out. I don't know how much value this adds. And to see that again, you're mostly only here in Missouri. I would probably eliminate this map, especially with it, you know, so high up top. It's great to see some of the lists of the websites that you've worked with. You might want to try to find a way to categorize it. So, you know, you've got Sam Seller. I'm assuming that's some kind of restaurant. Looks like this is a real estate agent. You might want to break it into different categories so that if I'm a real estate agent, I can quickly find the websites that you've done for people in my industry, and I don't have to scroll through a whole bunch of different sites. You know, you've got a church here. If you're looking at churches as a target market for you, they may come to this site and just see, you know, restaurants and real estate agents and say, "Ah, this isn't for me." Meanwhile, you do have a section for, you know, a church client that may hopefully convince them to want to sign up with you, at least learn a little bit more. So I definitely try to find a way to separate them. If I click through on here, let's see what we get. So this is Sam Seller, and it's great again that this comes up. On every page. I love that. Very short description, not super helpful. It's great that there's a link to the site if I want. It's not great that your Facebook stuff is getting cut off, right? Again, from a design point of view, if I'm hiring a website designer, I want, I want their website to look good. So you're probably not gonna get a lot of comments and likes anyway on these pages, so I'd probably take it off. And it doesn't look good to come to these pages and see that nobody's liked it or commented. Commented on it, so I'd probably remove that. I would love to see what was Sam's problem and why did he come to you and what were the results that he got and maybe a picture, his face, with a quick testimonial. That would make me want to potentially hire you. You know, if I had a bar or grill and I had similar problems to Sam and he told his story and he says things like, "It's great working with Jason and the team," and some of the specific results that he got, then I'd be much more inclined to want to hire you compared to just seeing something like this. So I'd spend a little bit more time beefing up, beefing up the portfolio because that's something that people are gonna spend a lot of time looking at. So you've got 3 pictures here. Great. If I click on it, what happens? I see the same picture and then the same picture again and the same picture. Okay. Slideshow, great. I mean, you may not need to have that. You have the pictures here anyway, not a huge deal. So I definitely spend a lot more time though on the, on the individual client's page. We want to tell their story, have a picture, have a testimonial, try to show some kind of results that they got by using you. And then if we click on the main clients page here to break that down into categories so I can quickly find something that's related to my business and see if it's going to be a fit for what I do or not. The last page here is contact, so I'm assuming the hire us goes to the same page. Actually goes to a different page, hire. Let's see what's the difference. Okay, so hire, just a contact form. That's good. You may want to make this the 800 number, you know, you don't necessarily have people have to pay to call you, and it's a little bit of a discrepancy here, so I just put that 800 number in there as well. Let's go back to the contact page. Last page here. So it's great, you kind of see where you are. Email Jason, so even here, put a little picture of Jason. Like, you know, even if it's just a one-man show with Jason doing everything, put your picture there. It'd be great to see your smiling face and, you know, helps me connect to you just a little bit better, makes me more likely to want to sign up with you. You've got here about the email newsletter to receive updates. I don't know how many people are actually doing this, probably not a lot. You want to show something here to show them the value they're going to get from the newsletter, so give them some kind of free bonus or offer or white paper, or show them an example of what the newsletter is going to be, just so that they're more likely to sign up, because that's a lead for you to be able to follow up on. And then let's look down at the bottom here, see what else we got. Feedback. Now this is great. I love Modern Web. I recommend them to anyone. This should be much more prominent, and I'd love to see who said that and, you know, what project they were a part of. Ideally a picture too. This is awesome that you have this. This should not be buried. You want to make this front and center because this is going to help again show that you're not just some fly-by-night operation. It's real business. You have real clients really happy with you. 'Cause a lot of people do not like their website designer and had terrible experiences with them. So to show that you're a professional organization with great customers adds a lot of credibility. So this definitely should not be buried at the bottom. We already talked about the newsletters. It's great you have the social media links again down here. Twitter and Facebook, we'll load it up. And again, we look at our Twitter page, it's the same thing there. And Facebook, Facebook is going to the Facebook Facebook page, which is interesting. So your link is broken here. Yeah, if you look at the bottom left-hand corner, you'll see it goes to facebook.com/facebook, which is not going to be great from a web, uh, you know, designer point of view here. I probably wouldn't want to hire somebody who has internal links that are broken or incorrect on their own page. So Something you definitely want to fix up. How about this one? This one too is a little off. Facebook.com/facebook. So definitely fix those up. So those are my initial thoughts. Overall, very professional, but I think you could do a lot more to show that you're an established company. You have a lot to work with here. You're in the danger of being thrown in with all the other web development guys who haven't really done anything and they just throw up a website and hope they're going to get some business. And so as an entrepreneur looking for a designer, that's the challenge, is trying to figure out who is actually a good company that I want to work with versus everybody else who might scam me out of my money. So hopefully that helps. Uh, for those of you watching, if you liked the video, please give it a thumbs up below. I love seeing those thumbs ups come in. And also, if you have a thought about this website or one of your own, uh, you could definitely leave a comment underneath this video. I always read them and try to answer as many as I can. And if you have a review that you want to get done for your website, there's also the Fiverr gig that I'll list the link below the video. So thank you, and we'll see you on the next episode.