Build Trust with Your Website: Six Essential Focus Areas with Vin Gaeta

What's up, hub heroes? I'm super excited to bring you today an important and timely conversation around what might be your most crucial business tool. Think about it, think about it. Hey, it's your website. However, when done wrong or not thinking of your website correctly, it could also be your worst hurdle, dare I even say maybe an enemy. But I have to ask a question. Is your website building trust or is it simply a sexy version of buyer repellent? Well, today we're going to go ahead and dig into this conversation and ensure that you're in the right spot or headed in the right direction. Today we're talking about six areas to focus on to build trust from your website with Vin Galletta. Now, Vin, how the heck are you doing today?

Doing great, George. Excited to be here, man.

I am excited that you're here as well because if it was just me talking about this, it would be a very short episode. Now, ladies and gentlemen, so that you know, because you need to know. Vin has been successfully implementing creative sales and marketing strategies, building long lasting relationships and guiding the process for successful website builds since the early days of impact. As head of web strategy, he helps companies create easy to manage website and train them on. Train them on. Listen to that part of it. Specific areas to focus on that drive real revenue growth from your website. In his free time, you can find him spending time outdoors with his wife and two daughters collecting comic books. Let's go brother. And playing video games. Did we mention he's a huge geek? Which by the way, I am as well. All right, Vin, I have a couple of questions that I'd like to get your take on before we actually really dive into the kind of the, the website website portion of this to kind of get us started. And really we want a level set in your mind. How important is building trust where we're at now in a digital world and why?

That's a solid question, George. Listen, at the end of the day, for you to give someone your hard earned dollars, you got to feel trust, right? If we're not building trust in the stuff that we're doing, we're not going to be successful. We're going to have Biorepellent and no one wants sexy. Biorepellent, that's not fun for anyone.

I agree. Nobody wants Biorepellent if it's sexy or non sexy. So here's the thing, let's dive into that a little bit more because historically we've battled against things like brochure websites and bad user experience. Listen, you've been in the game for a long time. Vin, how do you think most businesses are thinking about their websites that are just fundamentally like. You're like, yo, that's just wrong.

It always comes down to one thing, and it's the biggest pitfall. We talk about ourselves, y'.

All.

No one cares about your organization. They really don't. They care about what you're going to do for them, the pain that you're going to help them solve the problems you can help them go get after, and how you can actually get them to their version of success. No one cares about the business until they're ready to care about the business. A lot of websites, are we focused? We got to turn that around and make it. You focused. You as the buyer. It's all about that buyer.

I love it being all about the buyer. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you're buckled in because we're ready to talk about six ways to build trust from your website. Vin. Let's start with team buy in and alignment. When you hear those words, which, by the way, that sounds like it's an internal conversation to an external tool, your website, but when you hear team buy in, in alignment, where do those words take your brain? Where does your mind go?

It brings me to a lot of situations where internal alignment derails the success of a website. And that's one of the biggest things that can happen in an organization, right? You don't have anyone thinking that your site should be your best salesperson. And for those listening, that might send chills up your spine. But who's gonna see your site first, right? Your prospects. That's the first impression. And if we're not aligned on what that needs to look like, on how we should be using our site to actually get after that conversation with our users, you're not gonna get whatever version of site success should be for you, and that's that alignment. What is success for our website? Do we want just a sexy brochure? Probably not. Maybe you do. But what does success mean? How many leads do we need? What does this need to look like? And are we committed to actually making our site do that? Are we committed to testing and analyzing and getting after that? So it's a living, breathing environment. That's the alignment conversation we need internally. George, That's. That's the biggest piece I love so.

Much of where this conversation is going about data and analysis and alignment and, dare I say, leads that equal meetings, that equal deals, that equal revenue. You know, that money you can put in your pocket. But let's Back up a little bit. Getting ahead of myself. Hub heroes, your website is where you talk about your business, your products, your services and most likely you talk about your team. And hopefully, hopefully kind of leaning into what Vin said. Hopefully you're educating your customers and making it a little bit or potential customers even making it a little bit about them. So how does content Vin, how does content and messaging fit into this trust building website conversation that we're having today?

It's key, right? It's what we all talk about, how do we rank in Google, what are we going to serve that's going to get us up there from an organic standpoint and that's helpful content. Like we just said, it resonates with the user. It's focused on their journey and putting our content in their shoes. Look at Star wars, right? No one wants to be a little green alien, but we need to be Yoda to Luke Skywalker. We got to show our users how to get the force out of whatever we're doing and make sure that it's easy from A to Z on the website. So if the messaging and the content George isn't focused on them. My age old test is do a search on your site. If you see more we's and us versus you and your, y' all gotta look at your content and messaging and have a real conversation around. Should we change this for the betterment of our user journey?

I love that. To the fact that it's down to the micro words that you're using. And it's funny, Vin, because I have done that where I'm talking to a client and I'm like, listen, listen. Hit control F and search for we and us and I and you. And it's funny because their eyeballs kind of like, oh my God, like I didn't realize. Yes, you got to realize. I do want to go off the beaten path though around this content and messaging because I feel like there might be people watching this out in the Hub heroes universe that are like, I'm not a writer, I'm not a content creator. So when you think about developing this stuff, are there a couple things that you've seen that they should pay attention to maybe potentially people that they could connect with or are there even maybe. I know I'm throwing a lot at you mindsets that you're like, knock it off. Like actually just wax poetic on that for a little bit.

So there's two frameworks that we hold near and dear here at Impact and we use them for everything that we're doing. Right. They ask, you answer. It's an inbound marketing content framework that aligns marketing and sales. That's table stakes. Right. The right content that's helpful. Google's going to reward it. So that's the key piece there. And then from a messaging standpoint, looking at a framework called Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller. If y' all are not familiar with that. So they ask youk Answer by Marcus Sheridan Building a Story Brand by Don Miller those two, it's the one, two punch to getting user focused content messaging and great experience points on your website. If we lean into those, we have seen ridiculously great results from what resonates with users. And that's, that's table stakes in, in this day and age.

Love it so much. And Hub Heroes, if you didn't know, now you know two directions that you can head for that content and messaging and make it better for your organization. All right Vin, let's get nerdy for a few minutes. I love, love, love me personally, user experience. I mean it's something that I love to nerd out on. And I also love starting conversations. Now that might sound weird because what I mean when I say conversations, I actually mean conversions. Like I love the website forms, I love the website chats, I love all the website things that people can actually start to engage and I can take it from there as a human. But when you think about user experience and starting these conversations, AKA conversions, can you wax poetic on the topics of UX and conversions? But, but not through the typical lens, through the lens of building trust with those people who are coming to your website.

Yeah, it's all about having the right touch points at the right place in their journey. Right. So if we're going to build trust, we have to make sure that we're guiding them through their journey and giving them the information to make that consider buying decision. If we're going to be the ones that help them make a better choice, they're going to trust us. We're going to be rewarded with their hard earned money. Right? So as you go through your website, do things like test with behavioral data tools like Hotjar or Lucky Orange Crazy Egg, whatever your flavor of choice is, use that to see what users actually engage with. Where they're clicking, where they're not clicking, and if they're scrolling far enough down your site to actually look at stuff that you think matters, again, you think matters, not that what that matters to them. So that is where we can look at key pieces in the user journey. Do we have a call to action where users are stopping on the page. If not improve the journey and give them a next touch point. And if they're not clicking on what you want, what might they want? What's that next step resource, that transitional offer that maybe I'm not ready to talk to you, George, and give you my money and have a sales conversation, but I sure as heck might want to download that guide that'll give me the next piece of what my buyer's journey might be. So maybe I do want to talk to you after that.

So. Good. I do want to though, go off the beaten path for another second here because we're talking about UX and you said the word and my brain was like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You said touch points. Are there certain pages or sections of pages that people should be paying attention to along this kind of UX conversion journey that we're paying attention that do help build trust? What say you about pages or sections of pages that people should be thinking about?

There's a couple core pages that we've seen be insanely successful to building trust on your buyer's journey. And the layouts of those pages make a heck of a lot of the difference. What I'll say is testing those layouts is the most important thing because different layouts will give different results for different user bases. The most important touch points. We need to have a learning center. And it should be in your main navigation, y'. All. It's gotta be filterable. It's gotta have all your educational pieces A to Z, your buyer's journey. It's not a blog. It's literally videos, white papers, downloads. It can have blog articles, it should have blog articles. But what it shouldn't have, George, is Jimmy got a promotion to head of Veep. No one cares, y'. All. And it will live on your blog, but it shouldn't live in your learning center. So that can be your one stop shop. And once you have that kind of mindset around the learning center and putting all your resources for your buyer's journey in there, you will see traffic to that immediately start spiking. It's going to be a big optimization center for what you can do in your user journey. The other two key pieces, pricing page, we have to have a touch point where we're talking about it. You as a user, if you're listening, you might saying, I don't know if we can do that on our site. But as a consumer, it's the first thing you go to on a website. So if we're not talking about it. We might be hiding something. You're not gonna build trust that way. So that's where we need to actually talk about it. And that's a bigger conversation that goes into the first thing, which is buy in and alignment internally on building trust through our website and making it that best salesperson. The last piece, most important piece, that conversion point, that conversation starter, that bottom of the funnel offer, talk to sales, request, a quote, whatever it is, strengthening that touch point. So it's not just a Contact Us page. I see so many sites that just have a Contact Us. It's got a Google Maps, it's got a fax number for people that still use faxes. That's not your conversion point. We have to set expectations. Because if I don't have the right expectations and I fill out your talk to Sales, I'm probably going to get really upset if I walk into a situation that I'm not prepared for. So that's why video on that page, Paramount have a video that talks about exactly what you're going to do on that first call, how long it's going to be, and how long it's going to take for me to get in touch with you. So I know exactly what it looks like.

Some great information. Great information. Three pages. Finn, I do have to actually pick a bone with you though. I just generated 13 leads with my fax machine. I'm just kidding, ladies and gentlemen. I didn't generate any leads using George. Yeah, I'm telling you, that did not happen, ladies and gentlemen. No, I do not have a fax. So, Vin, let's keep moving forward. All joking aside, as a marketer and a business owner, one thing I know that is true is that if you can't measure, it doesn't make sense. So how important is the conversation around data and analytics of your website? And how do they fall in line when thinking about your site's ability to build trust or not? Like, how does that whole piece come into a conversation?

If we're not tracking the success of what we're doing, we don't know if we're actually being successful. And for me, oftentimes folks have wildly successful pieces of content, but they might not actually be looking at the data to get the most out of it. So if we're not seeing what peaks and valleys we have with the content we're creating, if we don't have a person that's looking at this on a frequent basis, we're not going to be able to effectively get after the areas of our site and our content journey that can really build the most trust. Right. So looking at the numbers, having someone that is passionate about looking at the numbers, it's not everyone's jazz, I get it. But making sure that we're looking at it behavioral data, like we said earlier for conversion tracking and funnel tracking. But digging into HubSpot or your tool of choice, it's going to be HubSpot, let's go with HubSpot. But also juxtaposed with GA4 and making sure that we know what the ecosystem of our data looks like. You should have both so you have a second opinion. We always want a second opinion on what the data looks like, being able to translate that internally. So not only are we feeding in the previous things that we talked about, our leadership's bought in because they see the roi, they see what our content's generating. It's feeding sales into what they should be using because we have the data and analytics of what users care about from the questions we're answering in our content. So that's paramount. It's paramount for buy in, it's paramount for getting conversions and conversations started and making sure we have the right ux. It all feeds in to building trust through that best salesperson, the website.

And there he said it again. If it didn't make you twitch the first time, hopefully it's not making you twitch now because we've come a little bit along the journey here. Now, Vin, I do want to go off the beaten path, I think a third time. Now you mentioned it's not everybody's jazz. Who is that person? What is that kind of title? Like the person that is looking at the data, kind of telling the content story, kind of disseminating what they see to the teams so that teams can take action. Like talk to me about that human for a hot second.

It depends on the team and it's interesting. So typically we work with a team that has a content manager, someone that is operating the content engine. They've got the calendar, they're cranking out three articles a week, all focused on answering questions sales folks are getting asked in the sales process. Sometimes those teams also have a HubSpot admin that's deep into the data. Those two are usually that dynamic duo that is one, two, punching everything on the site. So making sure the blog and learning center are fully up to speed, looking internally on what data things need to be reported and how content is actually closing deals in our funnel, tying all those reports together. So some folks, it's one person that's able to do it all. Some teams have two. It really is what works best for y'.

All.

Most important thing is having someone that's actually looking at it, because if you're not, those are way big missed opportunities that y' all should not be missing.

I love this so much. Because, Vin, once again, you've given people two things to think about. One, if you're watching this hub hero and you don't have a content manager, and if you don't have a HubSpot super admin, well, there's two things that you might think about adding to your organization in the future or finding that unicorn that actually can be both. And I do really mean it's a unicorn because it is different sides of the brain that would have to merge together to do both jobs. By the way, if you're watching this and you're that unicorn, good job. Good job. So, Vin, I have to hit what might be the easy question, although it could be where we spend a good amount of time because it quickly can turn into the most complex. Even though it's an easy question, complex conversation and I mean, it's the most talked about topic in many circles when it comes to website, and that's SEO and vin, here's what I've learned. There's SEO like we're doing it wrong and all the things we gotta fix and all the things we gotta pay attention when we create content. And then you think of SEO and all of a sudden you hear topics and pillars and clusters and internal linking and external. Holy crap. So vin, when it comes to trust building and websites and SEO, just give me your take on this topic. Again, in alignment with today's Sidekick strategy theme.

SEO can be so complicated and so convoluted and we can make it really complex, right? It boils down to being helpful. Yes, there's technical things that we can do. Yes, there's on page things that we can do. But if we're being helpful, if we're making our page titles, our meta descriptions, some of the technical things, right? The on page stuff helpful. The content is drawing them in and telling the right story. If the content we're creating is helpful, we're naturally going to be hitting all the checkboxes for good SEO. And it is just about being helpful, building our eeat, our expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness in Google's eyes, right? It's sending those signals out through the right stuff on our pages. So we're talking about the problems naturally. We're not keyword stuffing. If you're still keyword stuffing. Please stop keyword stuffing. That's not a thing anymore. You're going to talk naturally about it, and that will immediately reward you in Google's eyes, in the search results or Bing, whatever your flavor of choice, let's be honest, it's Google at that point. The more that you're talking to your users and guiding them through their points, the more that you're linking to the next resource. You're not only helping their user journey, but you're helping the robots. You're helping the spiders that are actually going to reward you with more SEO juice get to the next step as well. And the more that we're building that out, I keep saying more because it's more. It's more. It's more. It's ongoing, gang. It's a continuous process. If we want the best SEO results, if we want the best rankings, it's not set it and forget it. That hasn't been the case in quite some time. And if we have that Ron faux peel set it and forget it mindset, we're not going to build the most trust out of our website gang. So we have to be active in everything we're doing so that we get the biggest bang for our SEO buck.

So good. And it's interesting because obviously when we're saying SEO, we mean search engine optimization. But in that first part when you're talking, then my, my brain actually went to like, oh man, it's actually searcher expectation optimization. Like, are we creating what they're expecting once they get there, what they need, what they want to get past that hurdle or to that aspirational point that they're trying to get to. So good. Love that. And you made what could have been a very lengthy and complex conversation kind of simple for humans to actually understand. Good job. Yeah, there you go. So, Vin, one of the things we cannot not talk about, which by the way, I wanted to say it that way and when I ran it through Grammarly, it didn't want me to say it that way. And I said Grammarly, I don't care at this point. So what are the things we can't not talk about before we get folks back to their days is this idea that a mutual friend of ours has been talking about for years, and that is that we as humans love to self select when we're in the buyer's journey, we really might not want to talk to somebody. We want to be able to do just the thing we want. So what are your thoughts been on self selection? And or self selection tools as part of your website and trust building strategy.

It's one of the easiest ways to get users to absorb more content and get deeper into your funnel quickly, touchlessly, without interacting with a human, which for me as a consumer, the less humans I need to interact with until I'm ready to interact with someone, the better. It depends on companies and what your business needs and y' all have likely already interacted with a self service tool in the wild. Home Depot has one for estimating your project, right? You go to a company like a TruGreen, they have it for what your guard work might need to look like or as simple as self selecting your flight for your next business trip, right? That is all self selection at the big level. At the small level, it could be a pricing calculator for your SaaS product or what the roofing project might cost for someone or question tool that brings you down deeper into the funnel and results with 15 articles that they may need about cost, about what the process would look like, comparisons all the way so that they can self select their journey without ever having to talk to someone or going to a sales rep and being like, what do I need to know about your product? I want to get it myself as your consumer. The easier you make that for me, the more trust you're going to be building because you're not hiding anything. It's not gated behind the sales call, it's not gated behind someone trying to actually sell me. I don't want that experience as a consumer. Maybe your consumers do and if that's the case, go try it that way. Let's see where we're going. But most consumers want to do it on their terms and that self service tools, self selection tools are how we can give them that ability to get more information, get pricing, get insights without ever needing to take their hands off their own wheel.

All right, so then we're going to go off the beaten path one more time because I am super intrigued in the dive into your brain around this question. And it's more of like the statement that you would give somebody, but the question is what would you say to somebody that says, well what we sell is not self selectable, like we're special, like we've got this process, like where does your brain go with if that's the mindset they're in today versus maybe where they have to be or should be well now, but for sure in the next six months, you know, year, two years, with the way that us as humans are starting to buy stuff.

Online, you're going to hit a ceiling real quick. From my opinion and what I have seen, right? If we're not willing to see how we could potentially give that experience and everyone has their own special sauce, right? But we got to talk about the special sauce. We got to show a little bit of that sauce so that people want the sauce. And if we're not willing to give them that and go that extra mile for the users user brains might immediately leap to, well, what are they not willing to go the extra mile in their service or their product or their software? What gaps are they going to have there if they're not going to fill in those gaps for my educational journey, you might say that's a stretch. But if two big opportunities leave because of that, that's a big miss Gang. Look at how you can, right? Every, every industry has pricing and every, every industry, when I talk to someone about building a self service tool, says, but our pricing is so complex. Yeah, but there's ways that you can educate someone on the levers that make your truck range from 30 grand to 130 grand. Because you put on solid gold rims, right? You could do that and your price goes through the roof. Tell the user that so that if they want solid gold rims and their price range goes from 30 grand to 130 grand, that's a great stretch. But hey, that's what works. We recently just built a custom pricing calculator for a tool company and they give ranges at the end and education on what selections you made through the way because their pricing is super complex. Depending on what you need in your yard or your area. Challenge your team to think outside that box because your users will thank you for it and you'll get better quality leads and faster sales because of it.

I like this idea of challenging your team to think about it. And Vin, how did you know that I bought new rims for my truck? I'm just kidding. I don't have a truck. I would never buy solid gold rims. That would just be. Well, I'm not that cool. Let's be honest. We started out as. I'm a geek. I probably really don't care about what rims are on my vehicle then. This has been an amazing interview, amazing episode of Sidekick Strategies. You have to give me though this kind of piece that I like to ask at the end. If we boil all of this down because we've talked about six major things. What's the one thing that you hope people take away from today's episode. If nothing else, if your website isn't.

Serving your users, if it isn't building trust with your buyers or your potential buyers, you are likely leaving a heck of a lot of revenue and opportunities on the table. When are we going to change that for your company? That's the big thing. Building trust on your website is going to lead to more revenue and more opportunities for your business. It's table stakes.

Love it. And ladies and gentlemen, if you have a website and you're like, we've never thought about it through this trust lens, that's another action item you can take from this episode. Then if people have questions for you, maybe they want to buy you a steak dinner because now they're going to transform their website into this trust building machine. Where do you want to point them?

Yeah, y' all can send an email to coachimpactplus.com myself or one of the coaches from our team will be happy to have that conversation. Improving your website strategy and building more trust through your website, making it your best salesperson can look like for y'. All.

Very cool. Ladies and gentlemen, Hub Heroes. If you're listening to the audio on your favorite podcast app, remember you can go over to community.hubheroes.com to actually watch this. Or you can even head over to our YouTube channel and see if it's there. Not all episodes are, but this one just might be. Until next time, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human and we'll see you on the next episode of the Sidekick Strategies.