How to use Your Website Alongside Social Media with Wes McDowell

welcome to the josh hall web design show web design show helping you build better websites and create a web design business that gives you freedom and a lifestyle you love hey friends welcome into episode 137 super super excited about this one because i'm bringing on a repeat guest to the podcast this is somebody who is absolutely one of my favorite humans in the web design and digital marketing strategy world this is wes mcdowell if you don't know him he is a website strategist and he is i think one of the the top minds when it comes to how to use your website alongside all of these other digital marketing platforms and that's exactly what we talked about in this episode i thought it was a really great time to bring him back onto the podcast to talk about how you can use your website and then particularly for your clients how they can use their websites alongside all of these other digital properties that we all have whether it's youtube videos or instagram accounts or facebook i mean a lot of people have like click funnels and landing pages or course sites that are outside of regular websites and one of the questions a lot of my clients had was why do i need a website if i already have a facebook page or a landing page somewhere well in this episode you're going to hear a lot of thoughts as to why you a website is more important than ever and i think what's really exciting about this episode is you're going to hear and get a feel for kind of what to tell clients when they ask you that so i would listen to this episode with a a couple different lenses um well i meant to say listen with a different ear but you get me um i would listen to this from approach of what you're going to do with your site but also every single one of the points that wes and i dive into here are things that clients are going to ask you and that hopefully will empower you to kind of know what to tell them so i say all that to say i'm super excited to hear how this one helps you out and empowers you wes again is just one of my favorites she's such a wealth of knowledge he's such a fun guy to talk to i just feel like he's it just really has a great mind for strategy as well which is so important so can't wait to hear how much value you're going to get from this one now before we dive in i actually wanted to do a quick podcast review shout out it's been a while since i've done one of these but um ellencake8 recently left a review on the podcast and it was so great i just wanted to share it with you real quick she says best web design podcast josh's podcast continues to be my go-to for web design knowledge and inspiration whenever a new episode comes out i usually move it to the top of my podcast feed and listen to it as soon as i can i love that josh goes very in depth into topics that he talks about i feel like he's truly trying to help web designers as much as he can and that he cares about his listeners ellen thank you so much for that review it it really means the world to me to you know to hear that review and see it but also what you said at the end you know ellen mentioned um the care factor with this and i hope you listening to this feel that as well i i don't know how long you've listened to this podcast but if you go for a little while i i hope you uncover the fact that i am not a typical um entrepreneur who's out to get rich quick kind of thing that is not what this is about i am truly passionate about sharing my expertise and knowledge that i've learned in a decade of of building websites and starting and growing a web design business with you so that you can do the same and i know that's kind of the tagline but i truly mean it and it really it means the world to me to get a review like that and to hear that so if you are like ellen and you're loving the show please leave a review on apple particularly if you listen there it really does go a long way i read them people read them it helps out with me growing the show and i don't take ads for this show so i mean technically i don't make any money off the podcast aside from it you know passively going into my courses so it would really mean a lot please leave a review and ellen thank you for taking the time to do so you you made my week with that and last thing real quick before we dive in um no course i'm going to promote on this one i wanted to say i recently launched a brand new 10-step action plan for you depending on where you are in your web design journey you can go to josh hall dot co slash get started all one word josh hall dot co slash get started and from there you'll be able to choose which free 10-step action plan is right for you you'll either be able to go down the path towards learning how to build websites starting and growing your business or if you already have a web design business that you want to scale to six figures and beyond i created a 10-step action plan for you just go to josh hall dot co slash get started choose which one is right for you and i'm excited again to continue on to help you in your journey and now without further ado let's talk about how you can use you and your clients websites alongside social media and all other digital properties in this day and age with my man wes mcdowell [Music] wes welcome back on to the show man so good to have you back on thank you so much josh good to be here again yeah it's been a little while um shoot i'll have to look back at when your first episode was i think it was like in the 40s or 50s that you're you're on the first time uh so we're well into the hundreds now it's awesome to have you on again you are you are one of my favorite examples of well a lot of things on the online world you have a thriving youtube channel you have a lot of different stuff going on but you are really good at conversion based design and mixing social media with websites together so i'm really excited to talk about the importance of websites and what you're seeing with a lot of your uh students and a lot of your customers now before we get into that though man do you want to let everybody know maybe who hasn't heard your first episode um where you're based out of and i'm curious when somebody meets west mcdowell and they ask you what do you do what do you tell them because i imagine it's kind of hard to summarize what you do yeah that's one of those well first of all i'm in chicago right by wrigley field um but yeah that question is always a tough one it's like my mom will always try to tell her friends what i do and she's like it's something to do with the internet or you know something like that basically i tell people i help small business owners uh master their own websites so that they can use it as a tool to get them more business generally more clients being serviced businesses perfect very concise yeah my my wife and i were we're building a house right now and we're in the well we just recently had like the blueprint meeting and construction meeting with the job supervisor and i was a blue collar dude i was a cabinet maker so i can relate uh to those guys but it was funny because he asked me what i did and i was like all right how can i sum up what i do so that he's he's gonna understand i was like well i yeah i teach online courses to web designers and he kind of looked at me and then the other guy who uh is in the process with us who kind of knows me he's like he has an online business and he's like oh all right all right so yeah sometimes i guess it's your turn yeah it depends on the room you're in on how you explain it yeah i was always curious because you do a lot of things um and yeah websites are critical man but first off i just wanted to give you a quick shout out and congratulations on your youtube channel 6 million plus views which is awesome you're closing in on 150 150 000 subscribers uh man congrats that's awesome thank you so much it's surreal for sure to think of that many people have seen my stuff so i can't i still can't get over that that number and by the time this comes out this may have already happened but you shared with me before we went live if you're open to sharing now you're going to take a break on the podcasting side of things right and just focus on youtube i am yeah so i don't know when this is coming out but basically we've got enough episodes to get us to i believe around the end of the year but at that point i am retiring it i'm not saying it'll never come back but basically at a certain point you do have to take an inventory of what's working in your business and what's not and we talked a little bit before we went live here my numbers weren't bad they're just they're not anywhere near my youtube numbers and when i think about the time i spend wouldn't i rather put more time and effort toward the thing that's reaching i don't even like more than 10 times as many people yeah you know what i mean like it's it's extra work for a teeny tiny fraction it's the parader principle right do the 20 that's going to get the 80 percent the end of the day the podcast was just that was not the 20 so well it's a great business lesson right off the gate here man to to focus on what is working in your business and is going to yield the biggest return on investment so i'm excited for you man i mean your youtube like i mentioned is already crushing it right now so my gosh when you give all the attention that your podcast has got once you you know invest even more into youtube i can't imagine where it's going to go from there so that's really cool and the beauty about your podcast and i think everyone listening if you're getting into any sort of content marketing just because you pause something or take a hold on it it doesn't mean that like you're going to turn off your podcast all those episodes are still there so i'm sure you can continue to repurpose those and send people back to them or use those as you know content moving forward like there's so much benefit to having something there that can service for a very long time so so yeah that's exciting man yeah that's cool i know we talked about the differences between our audiences you know i'm i'm really helping web designers you are helping web designers but you kind of let me know that your your real your key actually perfect question to kick us off here what is your key uh avatar what's your what's your key customer avatar because i think you have a different perspective on websites and social media than maybe i do with web designers so yeah who's your perfect customer yeah great question so basically you cater to the web designers i cater to the small business owners who really can't afford to hire a web designer for themselves so i'm basically showing them all the little things they can do on their own website to increase those conversions and what to do to increase the traffic so people can find their website and then once they're there they can convert so yeah i'm really speaking to that end user the end business owner okay so this was going to be my first question but perfect segue to this question which is let's pretend i'm a business owner who's fairly savvy i've got some social media and maybe i have a website but i don't really pay it much attention or i haven't invested in it if i were to tell you wes if you were coaching me and i said why do i need a w why do i need a website why do i need to focus on that when i have a thriving instagram or a thriving facebook or or a different channel like why why should i focus on a website what would you tell them yeah well it's really the difference i think between having a marketing department and a sales department i think of social media as the marketing it's the driver to get people it's to get your word out it's to get people over to your sales team which is your website that's where you can really control the conversation in a linear way um because let's think of social media not only are you competing with everything else that's going on there right the cat photos the the food photos the reels all that kind of stuff but you're also competing if you're just looking at your account as doing the job of your website it's very scattered there's scattered information in a grid where people just kind of pick and choose a la carte what they want to see versus right they come to your website where you can very smartly lay out a case from top to bottom of all the right information that a person needs to know to be convinced can't really do that on social media can you i mean that is not as well yeah wow what a great analogy and what a great way to visualize that i've never heard that before wes but i completely agree that that really set off my idea light bulbs just going left and right because i'm first of all i'm going to rip that off that's awesome but i'll give credit where credit is due but it is great because it's so true social media often can engage and inform but at the end of the day is somebody going to read a facebook post and invest a thousand dollars in a program or a service for small businesses probably not they need to go somewhere and as you know as a facebook ads guy you know i know you have some resources on that i know that's not your you know main thing but it is something that you're well known for unfortunately or not um but a lot of people are gonna do ads and what does an ad need to do it needs to send somebody somewhere so it should go back to the website is that something that you you've really told a lot of business owners too to to help switch their mindset is that social media like the i guess in the analogy of like a tree it's they're kind of the branches that extend out but then at the end of the day your the trunk is what holds it all together which is the website is that you don't have to use that analogy but is that kind of what you try to help your clients and customers change their mindset to yeah for sure and like i like your analogy with the tree but like i think of it like the hub and spokes too is another way like the the outside of the tires like all the different traffic sources but the middle you're sending everyone to the middle you're sending everyone to your website where again you can control that conversation and yeah i mean social media is not a replacement for your website it just isn't and yeah you brought up a good point when you do paid traffic paid ads rather you need to send them somewhere i get this question a lot on youtube youtube comments people like especially on my facebook ads videos they'll say do i need a website for facebook ads yeah like you can't just send them i guess you could send them to your facebook page or your instagram page i've never tried that but that's not a good experience and that's certainly not set up for conversions meaning that ad is going to fail and you're going to lose money on that ad yeah yeah good call what are your thoughts about some of these like click funnel like i know a lot of people just want a landing page for ads or click funnels versus an actual website i think you probably already know how i feel about that but what's your take on that as somebody who is working with a lot of diy-ers and and business owners who you know maybe they maybe they don't necessarily need a full-blown website but of course i recommend they at least have a home uh but yeah what are your thoughts on like click funnels and some of these other landing page style builders and platforms versus an actual home website yeah well so first of all there's a big misconception about what a funnel actually is like a lot of people i'm sure this audience is all very aware but my audience is a little less savvy they're just more small business owners they hear the word funnel they see the the clickfunnels marketing of yours one funnel away a funnel is not a piece of software right that's the important thing that people need to understand a funnel is just that start to finish kind of map roadmap of getting people to into your world and then giving them all the information giving them everything they need in order to make a conversion so when we talk about something like clickfunnels i think of that as more or less a um like a stop gap measure kind of like a like a website with training wheels if you will that's good everything's kind of built out already for you so you don't have to think too much the problem with these things is first of all it's expensive software like i think click funnels is i haven't looked into it lately but i think it's very expensive um from what i heard last couple hundred bucks a month i think um and the other thing is these websites that click funnels will give you generally look very clickfunnelsy right they look like that sales page that just makes you look like a used car salesman with your business it doesn't make you it just doesn't look like you're going to like you're going to be in business five years from now at all and that's where the damage comes in and you can have all that stuff sorry you can have everything you can have on a a quote funnel like a clickfunnel on your own website and thanks to every all the tools we have access to now you know your audio people listening to this know how to make websites but even the ones who don't there's things like elementor now just as easy to make a website on your website as it is to make one on click funnels or on wix or something like that yeah especially when it comes to a sales page or a landing page yeah i'm a divi guy your elementor guy but a lot of my audience now are using elementor and some other builders as well that the principle remains the same though there's a there's a huge difference in something you own and something you build off of wordpress which is why i love wordpress it's open source i'm not worried that they're gonna shut down my site one day there's also when it comes to websites versus social media i'm not sure what you've seen on this but of course we've all seen accounts getting deleted or paused no matter what it is we're in a very polarizing time and the least little thing that is said or maybe misunderstood can really have a huge impact on businesses if they don't own their platform and they don't own their content so like if everyone has their whole business on youtube and instagram it's like good luck hopefully for whatever reason hopefully that you know something isn't going to happen whereas when you have a website you own it and i think this is such an important point i think for everyone listening to related clients too because i'm sure everyone listening is going to have clients ask the same thing why do i need a website if i've got a thriving youtube channel or maybe i do all my networking on linkedin but the question is where do you send them and i always experience this on facebook in particular and this was primarily i was thinking back to like maybe 2012 and 13 or maybe even at shortly after that where facebook really really ramped up from a business perspective in that era and i got tagged left and right on facebook for referrals which was cool but i don't want to get a personal message from somebody to my personal inbox about website stuff i don't want them to share my i mean they could share my business profile but i wanted them to share my website and that was the key because if someone gets sent to my facebook page again like you said wes it's not really the it's not the ideal sales funnel like it still is kind of that that middle man between going to my website whereas if somebody shares my website boom there is a clear call to action there's a funnel to make sure we get people going to the right place that's what i was after and i think that's the maybe one of the biggest um important aspects of websites in regards to sharing it on social media right yeah for sure i mean it's hard to get people to share what you want them to share though that's the thing i do find as long as people are sharing you in some way that is good it's positive it's actually good signals to google too because they know who's what google likes is to reward brands with a really robust online presence so if they see anyone sharing any of your online properties ultimately that does look good on you and it is an uphill losing battle to try to tell people exactly what you want them to share but i get you i'd rather people share my website too my my counter to that or my the next step i would always take is when when somebody would inevitably just tag my personal profile or even share my business profile i would always say first off thank you thanks for the share appreciate it i always thank the person sharing that's a biggie but then i would post you guessed it my website and i would say i would love to talk go here that way we can start the conversation and you'll find everything you need to know um which maybe that was actually even better strategy now that i think of it because now suddenly my facebook is getting shared and i'm able to share my website and people are clicking off to that and like you said google facebook all these platforms they know what the heck is going on so who knows maybe that was actually a better strategy than i thought of but yeah that was that was always the end goal get people to the website and i'm curious a lot of diy owners that you've seen wes are you finding that a lot of people are posting their videos and content on different platforms but just neglecting posting that as well on the website probably i mean here's the thing most people when they find me when they get to me are kind of new in the process and content creation isn't even really on their radar yet but it's very important to do and it's really important that that does live on your website because at the end of the day when you want to send people to that content you need to be sending them to your website so you can retarget them retargeting is a whole little less powerful now because of ios 14 but you can still do it particularly with people who are coming to your website on desktop do you really want to be able to harness as much of that traffic to your website as possible to reach back out for any of those people and serve them up facebook ads instagram ads that kind of thing really important to do that totally if you wouldn't mind man sharing some of your strategy with your youtube because i think this would be beneficial for anyone who does any sort of content marketing with all of your videos do you i imagine ultimately you want to get people to your website like we've talked about but do you have any sort of sequences to where one video might lead to another video then to another video then to your website and into a call to action or do all of your videos and posts lead to your website what is what is your strategy look like yeah so that's a great question anyone who's doing it anyone who's doing youtube listen up because this this is really important stuff i paid a lot of money to learn this from uh tim schmoyer video creators but basically what you don't want to do is lead people to your website in every video sounds counter-intuitive and i've heard other youtube experts say of course you want to lead people to your website you're not doing youtube for a hobby you're doing it for business and while i get that i would rather get more people watching me on youtube and the way you do that is keep people on youtube okay so you need to what the the best thing you can do is follow that like three-fourths rule so out of every four videos so i post four months so three of those videos will lead right into another video so at the end rather than saying first of all you want to eliminate that wrap up language that almost every youtuber does like the thing like alright guys hopefully that was helpful those were the five tips as soon as people hear that they know the video they know the video is over and they go to the next video so like the first 50 videos on my youtube channel you'll hear that yep yeah but i mean it's it's a common mistake because everybody does it and everyone models what they've seen but and it's it does feel jarring to just to not do that it's like answering the phone and not saying hello it's just it's a weird like but it's a block you have to get over so what i do is i teach what i teach in the video and then i say and and now i've got these these other five tips to teach you it's going to help you go even further here's the video to help you do that click there and we'll continue the conversation so it's just a seamless go to this next one and you tell them why so you have to think of the video that's the perfect like either pairing for this one or the you know a more advanced version or something like that just you'll give them the reason how it fits and then for the other one-fourth of the videos that's when i get to send them back to my website generally for a lead magnet usually my master class that kind of thing which leads into my paid program and are most people coming into that first video or do you find people going into like video number three out of four because i'm sure that would feel a little bit different for them if they see a video and then the next one is a call to action versus somebody getting into that first video type of funnel yeah so the good good point of clarification there what i'm not really talking about is i'm not making a predefined series of like five videos okay all i'm doing is i'm making a video and then i'm thinking to myself what other videos in my library would be a good okay good next one for this one so you're not doing like a month of four videos as a funnel then the next month of four videos as a funnel it's just piecing what ones would work well together yeah you could do that but then again you get run into the problem you just said we're now maybe they're coming in at a weird place yeah so they all need to be standalone but then you need to tell them the next thing that's important to know and why it's why it goes so well with this topic that kind of thing ah that's so good man i because i tried two different little like mini series of beginner videos on youtube and yeah they did okay like they really didn't do great and it was that thing where they were like part one two three four and five and i think if people got to part four maybe they would be encouraged to go to part one but i don't know maybe that would have thrown them off a little bit so it's reassuring to me and i think probably everyone listening if you're gonna do any sort of content or if you're gonna tell clients to do this to be able to piece those together and take what you have and kind of you know make something that is going to keep them on that it definitely makes a lot of sense because i think we all know now youtube wants watch time so the longer you can get them to watch the better do those principles apply for instagram linkedin facebook and other social media platforms as well do you know like if you can still kind of lead people to other posts to keep them on do you know if that's a viable strategy and if they're looking at that as well just like youtube is well i do know that every social platform's goal is to keep people on the platform in terms of funneling them like to the next thing i don't know that there's a way of doing that in the same way of youtube because youtube is not social media really yeah youtube you can do like an end screen and put like a video there at the end right and you can like you'd be much more intentional about that yeah so in terms yeah i can't think of a like a good analog for instagram or anything for that but other than having them follow you and then just now they're seeing all your content and they're going to your profile and they're looking through all that so yeah yeah yeah that's a lot better no that's fine no that's great i was kind of curious i mean i didn't think there was a really way to destruction i like youtube but yeah an important principle to remember that you just hit on wes is these platforms want people on there as long as they're willing to be on there so anytime you can keep somebody on there is huge which it's kind of interesting because instagram still caps most videos at a minute i'm still a little surprised they're doing that unless it's more of just about the scrolling nature of instagram but um yeah i don't know it seems interesting to me that they wouldn't i mean i guess you could do longer videos i'm just now getting into instagram actually you were one of the ones who inspired me because i saw your stuff and i was like all right i'll freaking do it i'll finally get on instagram and utilize it i just haven't but i'm actually really enjoying it it's a much nicer place to hang out than um facebook primarily and uh yeah i've been on twitter i have no interest in that linkedin i just feel like i need to wear a suit to show up there so i'm not really interested in that as much right now but i i know the power of linkedin i'm not sure if you're utilizing that but um but yeah i do yeah what i was doing is a lot of repurposing of content like i would take my youtube video we would make a companion podcast out of a lot of them so if it lent itself to an audio format we'd make a podcast about it um i would re put post that on you uh instagram in a few ways facebook and linkedin almost all that's going to be going away now not only am i getting rid of the podcast we're getting rid of a lot of that extra effort for all those other platforms that we're just not really seeing the value in so not to say there's no value in doing it i'm just saying for me and my business we're going where the eyeballs really are and just doubling down on that yeah that's going to be huge man yeah i'm super excited for you i can't wait to see what that shapes up we'll have to do a uh we'll do it next time you come on we'll have to do like a a look at your youtube uh you know once you give it full effort and full attention to see what happens with that yeah i was wondering your numbers are good if not i may be too embarrassed to come well that's all right case studies good or bad are always are always good and interesting so you were on an episode 59 was your first episode which was fall of 2020 i'm curious since then because it's been almost a year since that came out um i think by the time this comes out it may be right around a year have you seen any differences for websites now compared to the height of the you know the cova and the pandemic stuff like have you seen business owners understand the importance and take websites more seriously have you seen people kind of forget about websites since as we all know most you know most people are very fickle and forget what was going on a few months ago what have you seen in the landscape of web websites now that were you know fairly past the initial way of the covet stuff okay so what i'm seeing i don't know if this really answers your question but basically during the height of the pandemic everything was people were very interested all of a sudden in getting their house in order right making sure their website was great because they had time to do it right so like my online course sales went way up my youtube views went way up because people had time to devote to this when they normally were busy doing other things now i am seeing a significant drop off in almost everything because hey i think it's because people are out of house finally and they're just making up for lost time b it's like hot girl summer right now and everyone's out for that reason too so i think summertime is just kind of a dip for what we do i don't know if you experience the same thing but i think people are busy they're on vacations more they're just they're not it's like being a scene like the last week of senior year they're just kind of checked out yeah but i don't know if it's super covet related or if it's just like a natural summer thing i think after the pandemic last year i think that's lent itself just from what i've seen in my experience that more people are out i think you're totally right on that and everyone is traveling like at least stateside i know i've got a lot of students in canada it's a little bit different there but um my family and i like we went on vacation and i have never seen so much traffic going down to the beach like good god it was it was like everyone was out so i do think a lot of people who didn't travel last year and stayed put are like extra interested to travel and get out and maybe people are doing more vacations and more trips and there's more going on i think that's definitely a part of it but that all corresponds with what we do as web designers and what our clients are going through because i think you're right wes i think we are in kind of the at the time of recording this we're kind of at the tail end of summer um which is wild but i do feel like that's definitely contributed to what's going on online i think business owners are just hanging out with families and doing trips but all that to say i always see an influx i did as a web designer and i do with my brand now in the early fall it seems like that's when people get more serious into learning and launching stuff and they get more serious about their businesses traveling's done primarily so i would imagine you'll probably see an influx and i think i will too my numbers across the board have been down a little bit not only with sales but views and everything uh through the summer so sounds very similar actually i'm quite reassured to know that that happened to you as well i i hate that that happened to both of us but it does seem to be the case and even some of my students have had slower periods through may june and july here in 2021 and in august so yeah i think i think it's going to rebound i think it's all a byproduct of what happened last year with the pandemic so all that to say if we can put a cap on this point i would not be surprised if website numbers are down but it is i think it's um seasonal and i think it's definitely kind of cyclical with based off of what we just went through so yeah i was curious to to see what you know you had seen like that um as far as getting numbers alone getting numbers up and being prepared for this next wave and in the fall of 2021 um what are your summer some recommendations for for this this wave because i do and the reality is sometimes numbers are down just because people aren't working as hard or maybe they're traveling like my numbers were down in june because i was on vacation and i didn't work the week before or after so of course my numbers are going to be down to be ready for the numbers to come up and for things to change what do you recommend people focus on uh with their website is it to create really good content is it to revamp service pages and your offer is it gets more get more serious about some type of funnel what are some strategies that you recommend yeah i would say all of those things so basically what you want to make sure your website's doing for you because trust me i used to be a designer i still do design but i used to think of myself more as a designer versus how i think of myself now so there's a really common trap a lot of designers get into with their own websites where they feel it has to be a portfolio website that's only part of it like clients yes they're interested in seeing the work you've done they're also interested in seeing results i'm interested in seeing if you're a real person or not i can't tell you how many websites i go to for like web designers who they've got some really nice work showcased but there's no human element to it like it feels like am i hiring someone in my town am i hiring someone like on the other side of the world like there's no way of knowing so you really want to make it personable and you want to convey the benefits that you bring to your clients which is i think i'm sorry to say but this day and age i think that has to bring some element of copy into it like sales copywriting this is good for two reasons because we all know the the pain of the client who never delivers this stuff so if you can bring that in-house and you can handle that for them you keep the whole project on track and you can do it in a way that's actually going to move sales for them so if you can talk about that kind of thing that we don't just provide pretty websites and oh and the other thing is too you shouldn't talk so much about the technology every web designer loves to talk they used to love to use the word wordpress everywhere they use love to say like all these technological words that's not the important stuff right the important stuff is the results you bring so talk less about wordpress talk more about uh revenue and roi great points wow such great points west for every web designer to to think about and to articulate on their site i've i've seen the same thing well in every one of those points but particularly with the the the personality to a website i agree i still see a lot of web designers who i often say who the heck is running the show here like who are you i just i see this brand name but that doesn't mean anything to me i'd love to see who's behind the brand i don't even care where it is but if you are attracting and appealing to local clients that's a great upsell right there or a plus because a lot of people want to work local if they like and trust somebody so that's a biggie i agree copywriting is more important than ever and it is a solution to getting content which is the main struggle every web designer has if if you can provide that as a service that's great i know i think you saw i just had jules dan one of our mutual colleagues who's you've been on his show who's a copywriter we had a really good talk about copywriting and really interesting i think to hear about the brochure portfolio mentality versus results and more strategic type of thinking because that is that is so important no matter if it's a service page i mean all of your copy on your website and then additionally the other thing i wanted to mention is yeah when it comes to talking about wordpress and divi or elementor and the tech stuff you should not mention that on your website unless you are trying to work with somebody who is an agency and they're looking for wordpress designers like yeah or wordpress or developers like there's no reason an average web designer working with businesses should probably even say those things like you could say those things maybe a layer back if somebody's interested in what tools you use if they want to edit a website but generally that can be done one-on-one and it shouldn't even be on the on the front of a website so i couldn't agree more man that's interesting to hear you say that because i that's a big one it can be a deterrent for clients too can it because if an automotive shop is looking for a web designer and they want to get better rankings on google and then they see this web designer who looks like a nice guy or now nice gal but there's wordpress divi css html they're like i don't need i don't even know what that means right yeah it's like i don't don't tell me how the sausage is made just make it for me basically and then when you talk about all those things you kind of make yourself into a commodity versus someone who's delivering results it's the hand hands versus the head principle you want to convey you want to sell yourself as the as the brains of the operation not the hands they're sitting there coding whatever the client asks for that's a good step beyond that yeah and i'm even thinking that from the if you put yourself in your client's shoes that they're going to be more interested in somebody saying i'm really good at wordpress and i can code like a magician with css or would they be more interested and i can help grow your business and you know get better conversions and better rankings on google something like that i imagine that's a little more appealing right like we really need to kind of shift our mindset to what is going to be of interest to the client to our customers yeah absolutely but then i you also have to think of this too because i do see a lot of digital agency websites that make those kind of claims you know we'll we help you grow your business but then they don't really say how we need we need some details we need to know like what are the what are the mechanisms in place that help you that are allow you to do this for your clients is it um the persuasive copywriting is it lead magnet development to build your email list of future customers we need a little bit more information rather than just that big bold kind of generic statement too that's a good that's a great point man it and i think you could back that up in a number of different ways you could explain how and this is where like you mentioned earlier case studies and results can be key because if you do have a couple projects that went really well and suddenly your old clients are and maybe they used to get like five submissions in their contact form and maybe now they're getting like 20 a month or something well that's awesome showcase that like put that into a little case study and showcase that i imagine that's the perfect type of thing to to back that statement up right some actual proof and some more information on that exactly and people always think that these have to be huge numbers they don't you mentioned five to 20 what if it's five to six and that do a case study the same way but say like we increase i'm terrible at math we increased their opt ins twenty percent which translated into this number of dollars per month the website was paid for within the first couple weeks yeah that kind of language is really helpful too that's true it's interesting one of my favorite examples of a web design agency doing this really well is actually the the agency who does the website for my business coach with super fast business the agency is called studio one design and i just went through their master class and it was really interesting because that whole master class was was about some basic principles but it was really mainly about case studies on their clients and how they helped increase their leads and increase their income and it was all based around good design that converts copy and then results based like case studies like they looked at now these folks are getting you know like triple the amount of email signups than they did previously we've created legions it's their sales have gone up so i think anytime we can we can do that that is key and i think this can be kind of daunting because when a web designer or anyone thinks about okay how am i going to like do a case study that sounds like a lot of work yeah it might be some work but it's so worthwhile and you can multi-purpose that just like you're multi-purposing your content right wes like i imagine you could take a case study put it on your homepage it could go into another page it could go on your social media like we could really get creative with one piece of content yeah this right for sure you can use it yeah you can use it on social you can use it in email you mentioned jules dan he's now working for me on he's interviewing four of my paid students in my paid program to get their stories and what we're going to be using though we can probably use them on the website too somewhere but where we're really going to use them is in the email campaign that goes out when people are in that seven day buying window of the program so there's a lot of ways you can use these and here's the thing you said a lot of work the hardest part is just kind of getting the story from them these do not have to be long no one wants to read this in like a long article they want to see like quick little think of like an infographic they want to see quick little charts how much this did like show the before and after two or i would say between two and four paragraphs is enough text yeah yeah agreed particularly when it comes to some because you're still scanning and skimming a case study i don't yeah because no one's as interested in that project except for you know you and your client like no one else has that level of interest so they just want to know the highlights they want to know okay what were the results and i think that's a really important point and a great way to grow and it really doesn't it doesn't need to be overly complicated i one of my toxic traits is i over complicate things to where i have to keep reminding myself just keep it simple start simple i can always tweak it and add on to it but keep it simple for now and just get it done and i think that that's probably the mindset anyone would need to have but uh man some great points here wes as far as what we can do with our websites as we lead into what is always typically a busier season i know as a web designer my busiest influxes of of jobs always came in around like february and march and then september and october those were generally when a lot of businesses really wanted to to move forward and from a from a fiscal standpoint most businesses want to get their marketing budgets out the door and spent by the end of the year because it reads sets for next year so um that's i think probably why a lot of people like i had clients if i had a project that started in november they'd want to pay in full i'm like well sweet that sounds awesome let's do it instead of like paying you know half of november and a half in february or january so uh yeah that's important but great tips man great tips on website stuff um wow we've already covered a lot i mean these were most of the questions i had about the landscape of where websites are now um what other i'm curious when it comes to you know we talked about the importance of leading everything to the website doing our content investing in really good copy results different mindset between what we do and tech speak versus the oriented kind of copy where do you see some of these other social media platforms go or what do you think is going to be most prevalent maybe even as we wrap up 2021 and as we go into 22 which is wild to say but where do you see do you see like tick-tock exploding do you think instagram's gonna continue to be on the rise is linkedin making a comeback with a web design like what do you what do you foresee in the landscape of of social media that we might want to consider yeah so there's a few a few thoughts i think that instagram is really trying to be tick-tock they're really trying to push for that so that could either backfire on them or it could maybe push tick tock out because people i think um we've seen it happen with like snapchat that kind of thing so when they brought in stories it kind of replaced that functionality and at the end of the day like facebook and instagram were huge right and they could push out tick tock if it became the same thing so i think when we're talking about using social media for our businesses it's really important to go with the formats that are getting the eyeballs right now that is reals um it gets a little challenging when it comes to how do you make that style of content for more educational purposes i see it a lot sometimes i cringe at it um sometimes it's good but i really can't take these like pointing it you know points anymore like there's no reason dancing needs to accompany this stuff like it's not entertaining yeah like people dance on it because it's entertaining but then when you when you when marketers take it over and of course ruin everything and we just like feel the need to dance and just point at something it's the point doesn't come across any better and it just it feels it feels like it's um like dumbing it down and just kind of being like what's the word i'm trying to find like it like i guess i guess it can get a little lame when marketing takes over something that is uh not meant for business or not meant for yeah or anything like that so here's my point i i don't know where things are going this is sort of like what's the the big one to look out for what i do know is pick one or two that you have like a natural proclivity for the one the platforms you're already on the one where you think okay i could create that kind of content and then just really go deep into it because what i don't want you guys to do is what i did where we're doing everything kind of just taking stuff and repurposing out everywhere repurposing is one thing because it doesn't take a lot of effort but you need to pick one platform that's really gonna do it for you for the most part for me it's youtube technically not social media but whatever um it's content creation so just pick the one that's gonna be the easiest for you to to do and to stick with yeah that's that's great point that that's a perfect answer to that question i will say though man i mean your your social media did inspire me and it often reminds me to re-engage with your content like there's been times where like i'll see you know a little podcast drop or something like oh that actually sounds interesting to me i want to check that out so i think it is worthwhile sprinkling in as long as like you said it's the platform that you're most interested in you're comfortable with because we do run the risk as every everybody who's running a business wants to be on everything and everywhere but you just can't so i totally agree and i actually think i'm glad that we started with where you're at in your business with kind of taking a break with the podcast and really investing in youtube because that is a perfect case study and prime example of you analyzing your business looking at the numbers and looking at what is really making the biggest impact and the biggest difference and then going all in on that and i can't recommend that enough and it's it's kind of what i'm going through now too like we talked about i i really need to invest more on my youtube channel and i'm kind of putting all the resources in in preparation for that and i think every business owner and web designer should do the same look at what's working right now ultimately this conversation has led to the fact that everything should go to your website so that's home base that's basecamp that's where we know everything needs to go now the question is once that's optimized we've got good copy we've got results oriented you know funnels and copy in there we're not talking tech speak to clients we're we're really personal we've made it an engaging fun experience that builds trust and likability how do we get this out uh so i love that i think just that idea of you know focusing on what you want and where you want to go and how you come across on those platforms i know one reason i am enjoying instagram is i'm intentionally trying not to to do the pointy videos and stuff i had debated on it and then i was like you know what first of all i don't want to take the time to edit little videos like that or have my now i have a podcast editor i don't want to have him do that um what i'm doing is keeping it super simple like just just like for example um my talk with jules more recently um copywriting reminds me of the show madmen which is one of my favorite shows that me and my wife watch and i just held up a dvd of mad men it was like what do you think of with copywriting this is what i think of it was simple as that there were no problems yeah no subtitles just really simple here's my thoughts on it what do you think listen to the episode to let me just think it was a very quick post didn't take me too much time but i do find that that's resonating better than uh trying to get too corporaty in a fun environment yeah i and i i watched that post from start to finish and it was great um and i would prefer that to just you pointing at something and again yeah it's just it's just and sorry to anybody listening who does that i'm really not trying to be like be that guy but it just it just comes across as we're trying to shoehorn something into a format that it doesn't really belong yeah and i think it's all right sometimes it's good to be challenged on what you're doing marketing wise and i think some people listening are probably doing that and then yeah it's not we're not you know trying to offend anybody or or come down you but it is worthwhile looking at this and saying okay maybe even just trying something more organic or i feel like more of more often than not the more simple things are and the more real and uh even just a straight video just talking to it for less than a minute that can go a long way because it really is it's communication you're you're communicating with somebody on different platforms i know one thing i've always struggled with that i'm really trying to get over and i'm i'm generally always myself everywhere i am but i do tend to be a little different on youtube versus podcast versus instagram versus facebook and i'm really trying and i'm curious if you've experienced this wes i'm trying to just be who i am 100 on all these platforms and what i mean by that is i'm not like i i guess i'm not like a salesperson on youtube but i do often when it comes to social media i tend to try to talk a little faster and get the point across because i only have so much time whereas i'm just now i'm kind of just being myself and then i'll just you know make the point simpler do you find yourself struggling with coming across differently on different platforms at all i don't know about coming across differently but what you just said yes in terms of just the rate of speech and stuff because here's the thing with a podcast people are much more they're they're willing to consume a podcast with a little bit more space in it with a little bit more personality in it because they're not held captive by that podcast everyone listening right now what are you doing are you walking your dog are you washing your dishes your point is they're doing something else yeah while they're listening versus a youtube video or something on facebook you gotta grab them so i understand the impulse to wanna amp it up and be faster and be a little more animated because i think it does help um you don't wanna go too crazy with it and come across like uh i'm trying to think you know the guy in the late night infomercials right right mattress is on sale only 1999 act now it must be crazy yeah right right yeah that's i think that's what i meant is yeah i'm not terribly different but i do and i guess you're right maybe it is worthwhile being intentional about you know being quicker and concise and maybe a little more energetic but i definitely because the camera does take away about half of anyone's personality get anyone in front of the camera for the first time and you're you will look at yourself like you you don't realize how you come across sometimes so i do feel like when i do you i do i've gotten this i'm doing it right now talking with my hands a lot more because i'm trying to amp up the um the energy level because it does translate into the camera that's a good point it's also really important to think about these platforms if you are going to do any sort of content and marketing because you do have to abide by their rules and i think more importantly you just said it wes you have to think about what people are doing when they're on these platforms like if they're listening to a podcast you're right they're probably in a car mowing the lawn doing the dishes whatever we can talk for as long as we want as chill as we want and it's going to go over great this is personally why i love podcasting more than anything it suits my personality that likes to take my time on stuff and dive into topics deeper and and not have to rush interestingly enough sometimes i repurpose my podcast and youtube videos the same like i have a podcast go out and then i'd have the video version of it on youtube podcasts would go over great and people would love it and then youtube i get people saying this video is too long or oh my gosh to half an hour and at first i was a little like well freaking i don't fast forward or listen to it at different times but then i realized it does make sense because they probably hopped on on video they're gonna watch you probably want something fairly concise depending on what the what the topic is if you're going to do a big old video on how to build an element or website you can take an hour and you'll be fine but if it's you know quick five quick tips for facebook ads maybe it should be shorter um so thinking about where your customer is maybe it's the same customer but maybe their behavior is different right between different platforms because we interact with facebook differently than we do youtube and podcasts absolutely i listen to so many podcasts because i can do other stuff but i would probably never watch the video version of that podcast like on youtube either i when i'm sitting at youtube i'm going to watch other types of videos and i'll listen to the podcasts that are more long form when i'm out and about yeah that's just me no it makes sense it makes sense i get i i post these interviews on youtube i surprisingly i still have a lot of people that watch them on youtube and i think maybe that's because web designers are often building a website and they'll have this going on the youtube channel i did that when i was building sites i'd have the youtube version go on but now i do it with just you know podcast apps and stuff but either way great point think about who your customers are and what they're doing depending on what type of content you're pushing out and again to put a cap on this conversation bring it back to your website i i love that wes i think you've really given some awesome strategies on this one man um one final question for you but before we get to that where would you like my audience of i know it's a little bit different than your key demographic but if anyone wants to to check you out do you want them to go to your youtube channel uh your website where would you like them to go yeah youtube channel is great it's wes mcdowell but i think that the thing that would maybe be most helpful for people is you know how we talked about how you can really make your website say all the right things and be that salesperson for your business not only for you but for your clients if you want to deliver this kind of thing i do have the master class if you go to westmcdowell.com training that's going to basically within an hour give you everything you need in order to really strategize the kind of website that's not only going to look good but it's going to actually say all the right things it's going to take a lot of the hard work off your plate because i'm giving you permission in this basically this this blueprint framework to strip out a lot of unnecessary pages that do absolutely nothing for your business or for your clients businesses and concentrate on just kind of the core you know five or six pages that do the most good that's perfect yeah we'll have that linked in the show notes definitely recommend that my final question for you is more of a personal one about your youtube um are you going to do anything different now that you're giving it full attention are you going to do longer form videos what's your strategy going to look like now on youtube i'm just curious yeah so i'm definitely being much more intentional about the kinds of videos i'm doing so what i'm what i'm doing now is uh one a week basically come out every tuesday morning but i'm adding to that because i'm trying to because the thing about youtube is they kind of will decide for themselves what you're known for the most unfortunately we talked about this before my facebook ad videos tend to get the most traction so i know if i put a facebook ads video up there i'm to get a lot of views the bad thing is i don't sell anything to do with facebook ads that is not really what i provide so what i'm trying to do is be more known as the small business website person so i'm making more tutorials utilizing elementor uh starter templates just basically these start to finish tutorials they will get people who are searching for how to make a website the idea being not only will they watch that one but then they'll watch some of my more so the way i've looked at it i'll backtrack quickly i'm making three main types of videos how videos which is the tutorials what videos which are kind of like the five things you need to know or the five tips that these you know the what kind of videos like that and then the the why videos those are the deeper ones those are the more opinion pieces like are websites dead no they're not because this this and this you know so it's not teaching them a start to finish tutorial it's changing their way of thinking a bit so the more they get down in the funnel the more they're kind of hearing from me as a person and my opinions so i'm just being more intentional with all of that i love that well first of all i'm going to implement the heck out of that how what do i that's great and i think for everyone listening even if you just do occasional content for authority building and to give to your clients that mindset's awesome because some videos should be like how to do this if you're going to tell your clients how to do some certain things maybe it's how to set up my google google my business or something yeah what yeah what might be okay like what our programs might you be interested in what tools do we use that you know you can expect to use or whatever why it might be here's why you should invest in really good copy for your website and then we can help you or something like that that's a really interesting approach to to sales whether on a website or with content marketing so yeah yeah because i love that what happens on youtube is people will search you out based on how to do something but then if they watch more of your videos and they like you they're going to want to hear more from you it's like listening to you in your podcast josh it's they they want to hear who you are as a person a little bit too they want to hear some of your opinions so i want to provide all that all that gray area in the middle yeah well most people listen to this podcast for knowledge inspiration and they also want to know what word i'm going to create on the podcast because pretty much every episode i end up mixing words together and we've got like a whole dictionary of new words in the english language so one day somebody's gonna catalog all those and i can't wait so maybe that person is listening right now yeah josh isn't yeah yeah that's funny it's funny because i was just looking at my youtube channel my most popular video is a google analytics overview and it's at the time of this has 339 000 views it's my most popular video nice but i'm not that far into google analytics like i just know the basics and that's what i shared and i had no lead gen there was no and maybe now after talking with you maybe i'll go back and add an end screen to that video that's like hey if you're like this maybe you can you know go here maybe i'll do that yeah it's getting eyeballs so you want to get people to something else after that for sure that's a good point wow i'm super challenged so yeah i see i knew this was going to be awesome not only for my audience but i knew we were going to get into some personal coaching for me too so always enjoy talking with you wes thanks so much for your time man uh again i'm really pumped about you know how you're open about pivoting some of the things that you're doing and focusing on youtube i'm really excited to see how it goes i think it's going to be awesome i think it's going to be big time for you so i hope so josh thanks so much for having me again yeah thanks for coming again cheers man hey guys and gals just wanted to pop in with a couple things before you head out if you enjoyed this episode please consider leaving a review on itunes or wherever you listen to this podcast i would love to hear your feedback and it will also help other web designers find the show be sure to check out the show notes for this episode just go to joshhall.com click on podcasts and search this episode number and you'll find all the links descriptions and resources we talked about and if you haven't already make sure you subscribe and you'll be notified when the next episode is live thanks again for tuning in and i'll catch you guys on the next episode

Channel: Josh Hall

Views: 436

Keywords: Josh Hall, Josh Hall Web Design Show, Web Design, Web Design Business, Web Design Podcast, Josh Hall Podcast, Wes McDowell

Id: dH5yP18dLO4

Length: 61min 47sec (3707 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021