Wayne Mullins - 3 Reasons Your Gorgeous Website May Not Actually Be Doing Anything To Grow Your Business

Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting exit plan with no spaces to 442-22. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Thank you for listening today. We really appreciate you being with us. Uh, my next guest is Wayne Mullins, and he's going to talk about 3 reasons that your gorgeous website may not actually be doing anything to grow your business. Wayne, how are you doing today? Thanks for joining us. I'm doing fabulous, thanks so much for having me. My pleasure, my pleasure. It's this interesting topic as well because so much is relying on, you know, websites these days, what's going on on the internet as opposed to face to face. Nobody walks by the store anymore. So let's talk about this. Tell us a little bit about a bit about you and your background and, and, and what you do for business owners. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, my background started um in, in this specific business building websites and helping people with their marketing. It actually started back when I had a separate business where I was going out actually hiring experts to build websites and help me with marketing and those types of things. And what I quickly learned and discovered was that um a lot of the people out there building. Websites, um, view them as a showcase piece. They love to build something that's beautiful, something that will get attention, maybe something that'll win awards. But what I discovered very painfully and very extensively is that they knew very little about how to build a website that is actually going to help drive leads and drive sales into a company. OK, so you know, everybody, everybody kind of, I think in the beginning was like, well, I'll put my website out because everybody has one, maybe they put something together they think is beautiful, and they don't realize that that that that doesn't always work, you know, you got to, you have to attract attention for your website to become more than just an online brochure, right? Is that that was kind of the beginning of everything and And then all the metrics of what, what attracts what puts you in the top listings and all that kind of stuff has changed and evolved over the years. So why, why don't most websites help entrepreneurs reach their goals? Let's talk about that first. Yeah, absolutely, Bill, you're, you're so right. The evolution of, you know, kind of the way we present ourselves online has radically changed and shifted over the years. But here is mistake number one and the thing that is most important for everyone to remember, and it's this that a website is nothing more than a marketing tool. So when we begin treating our website as something different than that, when we begin thinking of our website as a showcase piece or as anything more than a marketing tool, we begin to lose focus on why it even exists in the first place. So, you know, the mistake, first mistake we see people making is they lose sight of that fact. They lose sight of the fact that it is a tool in your toolkit, your marketing toolkit, and it needs to be designed and it needs to be. treated as exactly that. The, the next thing that we've kind of learned over the years, Bill, is that um when people think about a website, they assume that everyone who comes to a website. is the exact same. And so what we do is we end up treating people and talking to people and communicating with people in the exact same manner. And what we know to be true and what you know to be true, if you think about your website, is that as people move further into the process of um maybe just learning about you, to actually pulling out their wallet and handing you money for your products or services, is that they Experience or they go through your website in a little bit different ways. So for someone who lands on the homepage, for example, and then they leave, they may be just browsing. But if someone is reading, um, the about page, or if someone is on the contact page, that person is now slightly different, even though it may be the exact same person, that person is now slightly different than just the person visiting the homepage. And so when we approach our websites, we must approach visitors on each page as individuals, and we must make sure that the language, the text, Everything that we're communicating on each subsequent page brings people down the path to where they trust us enough to pull out their wallet or to input their information to schedule a consultation or whatever that next step is in our buying process. That's very interesting. That makes a lot of sense that The first, you know, the first page is, is to make a first impression and draw people further into it, but once they get into it, then like what you're saying that now you now you have someone who's slightly interested, but then they're maybe looking for more analytical information or more details and so those those subsequent inside pages should, should be. Crafted differently. It makes makes a lot of sense. It seems like today a lot of, a lot of people have gone away from, um, you know, 100 page websites to to one really long page on the about that that you you keep scrolling down and there keeps, you know, there's there's different information on it and um and less information per page. um can you address that? You know whether I'm I'm correct or not about about that because that's been my observation. Yeah, you are correct, Bill, and here's what we run into the problem we run into as business owners and marketers is that um we end up copying what we see our competitors doing believing that they made a wise decision or strategic decision in that effort. In other words, when we see a competitor take what used to be a massive website, let's just say a 100 page website, and they condense it down to a 10 page website. Or we see a competitor who had maybe a twenty-page website, and they have now instead taken it and converted it into a single page, that's a much longer page. We assume that there's logic and sound judgment behind that decision. And the reality is that in most cases, that is not truth. That is not the truth. And so we must be careful, we must guard against this kind of reactionary response of when our competitor gets a new website that's Beautiful and shiny, and it has all this cool movement or, you know, whatever it may be that we don't naturally assume that that is the thing that we should do. We shouldn't be outdone. They must have done some research. They must have, you know, made these changes for some strategic reason. Therefore, we should do the same. So, we would save ourselves a lot of expense and a lot of trouble if we wouldn't allow that emotion to rule our judgment when it comes to our websites. Makes sense. You know, I just think about the uh the problem with when someone is required to click to say another page, they could also just as easily click to get out of your website. So I thought maybe that was behind it. Maybe a scroll is better than a click. I don't know. There's there's a lot of different things going on. You would, you would know better, but what, what can people or should people do today to improve the results that they get from their website? What are some of the best tips you can give us there? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a number and the number is 353 or 353. So I'm gonna make some points about each of those. So the very first three is that we need to remember when we look at a website that design is made up of three Cs. There are three C's when it comes to designing a website. Um, the first one would be the composition. The next one would be the contrast, and then the final one would be the content. So contrast, composition. And content. Now, the order of those doesn't necessarily matter, but I can tell you this, when you go to most design companies, most designers, freelancers, your, you know, your nephew, whoever it may be, chances are they love design. So they're gonna lead this process of your new website. With contrast and composition. So the contrast simply meaning the color variations, the shades, the textures that end up on the page. The composition part is the structure of the page, the layout of the page. And the very last thing that they typically think about is the content. But here's what you and I know. We know that our content, our message, is what matters the most. So the design should support our message, not the other way around. And unfortunately, most designers start the opposite way. They believe that the content should fit into whatever they design. So, that's, that's the 1st 3 and our 353, the three C's of design is the first one. The 5 is what we call the critical 5. So when you approach your website, Each page on your website, website, you should ask yourself these 5 questions. Who's here? What do I want them to do? When do I want them to do it? How do I want them to do it? And why should they do it? Not why should they do it from our perspective, but why should they take that action from their perspective? We call those the critical 5. And here's what's so interesting, Bill, when we look at our website, we believe that those critical 5 change from page to page, as we already talked about earlier. When we approach our page, who's on our contact page, it's probably slightly different than who's just on the home page. So we must use those critical 5 to go through page after page. I'll just repeat them just briefly, who's here? What do we want them to do? When do we want them to do it? How do we want them to do it? And lastly, why should they do it from their perspective? So that's the 3, the 5, and then the last 3 is this. Now more than ever, you only have about 3 seconds for someone to make a snap judgment about whether they want to stay on your website or not. Those 3 seconds, those initial 3 seconds are crucial. That's why it's imperative that we understand our audience. We understand who it is that's gonna be visiting our website and what that 1st 3 2nd experience is gonna be like. Wow, that's great. That's a great. Uh, run through those uh major factors. You cover a lot of ground with a 353, and I appreciate that. Is there, you know, these days, have you, when you look at, let's say someone says, hey, Wayne, can you take a look at my website? How many, how many times when you look at someone's website, do you say, wow, that's, that's great, nothing needs to be done. Yeah, the, the answer is it happens more frequently than you think. And here's the reason it's not that we couldn't fix or change or tweak or adjust a website. The reason is the motives coming into the conversation. It's very, very common. The number one reason people reach out to us asking for a new website is because a competitor of theirs just got a new website. And so that is completely the wrong motive. That is completely the wrong reason to begin the process of building a new website. Now, if that's the spark that leads you into a more strategic decision about our website is a tool like we talked about a bit earlier, and this tool is not serving us well right now, how can we make this tool more effective and efficient for what it is that we do? At that point, we can have a meaningful and engaging conversation about redesigning, rebuilding a website from the ground up. Um, so we want to work with people who understand. That it's a tool, and who understand that, you know, it does no good for, for us to say, send 10,000 visitors to your website tomorrow. If those 10,000 visitors aren't interested in what it is that you sell or what it is that you do, right? We would rather work with people who understand that if we can put your message, we can put this tool for you in front of the right people, the people who are interested in learning more about what it is that you provide or what it is that you do. Um You know, that's the people we want to work with. They're not enamored by numbers for the sake of numbers. They're enamored by results. Will the cash register ring at the end of the day? Makes sense. And to start with that, uh, they would, they would start with their current metrics, right? Is it, what are my current results? Uh, is it anywhere close to what I think it could be? Are there, are there comparative metrics for every industry that you could point to and say, well, your current results aren't very good relative to what others in your industry are pointing to? Are there there's all kinds of data out there. Is there data out there to support, um, you know, you're, you're not doing well or you're doing pretty good compared to your peers. Yeah, there is all kinds of data you're correct, Bill, that you can that you can look at and see, but it gets very convoluted and very confusing very quickly, and the reason is people often are tracking the wrong metrics, right? They're tracking, for example, web traffic. That's. That's a great metric. Um, it's a, it's a great metric to track, but if you're not understanding what percentage of that web traffic is actually booking a consultation or what percentage of that web traffic is actually adding a product to the cart to begin the checkout process, you're, you're tracking the wrong metrics and so what we'd like to say is let's establish a benchmark and a baseline for where you are today based on your actual data. And then month over month, let's improve those metrics every single month. Let's work to, to improve those metrics, because it doesn't do us any good to look around at the world around us. If we're down here at ground zero, and our competitor that we, that we envy and want to be like is that, you know, the very top of the class, um, sure, we can work that direction and we can look at their metrics, but again, we have to start with where we are today and make improvements each and every single day. I'm looking at at uglymugmarketing.com, which is your website, and I should have said that at the beginning of the show. I sorry, I did an ugly mugmarketing.com and it's very interesting. It starts with just a statement when results matter and has a lot of interesting video content behind it. And then each time you scroll down it hits on one point, which is kind of what I was talking about earlier without having looked at your website, which is, you know, you don't want to overwhelm people today and that's kind of where we're headed in general marketing these days is you don't want to overwhelm people because I know a lot of people, you look at their website and they try to jam everything on one page and that just doesn't compel people as much as it used to, right? You're exactly right. As our, as our friend Donald Miller, the author of Story Brand says, if you confuse, you lose. So if people are confused when they land on any particular page of your website, you're gonna lose their attention very quickly and on to the next site they go. Yeah, it seems like that's that's the world we live in. Just do it has been working just fine for Nike for a lot of years, and they, you know, I think they were one of the first ones to really narrow it down to a very, you know, 8 letter or whatever it is kind of a marketing campaign that became very effective. What, what other tips would you give our listeners as as they think about looking at their website? What would you tell them, you know, a first step would be as far as deciding whether they're getting the results that they want and, you know, forget about what the competitor's doing. Uh, for instance, maybe if they haven't done anything in the last 3 or 4 years that they should probably be looking at a refresh. Is there anything like that you can tell our listeners? Yeah, absolutely. So generally speaking, you're about right. So 3 to 5 year window is typically when from a big perspective that the design styles have changed across the web. And so once your website reaches kind of that threshold, um, there's a chance that it's starting to feel a bit dated compared to the other sites that you that your audience may be looking at. Um, so that is one that is very important. The other two I would say is this, so it's important to know the traffic coming to your website, in other words, how many visitors are coming, but two other metrics that matter more than that if you these are if you don't sell directly on your website, would be the number of people who are actually calling you from your website. In other words, they're, they're using the phone number there, they're clicking on the phone number. On the top of your website on the contact page and the other would be the number of people who are um either entering a funnel, you know, sales or marketing funnel from your website or filling out some form of contact form. So again what we're looking at here, we want to track the leads coming in through our website and there's, you know, there's some simple ways that that can be set up these days. Wayne, very interesting content. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing some very valuable tips. The, the website is uglymugmarketing.com. Is that the best place for people to, uh, start, uh, thinking about, uh, working with you or or looking at, um, the type of work that you do? Yeah, that's the best place to build all of our contact information is there and links to all of our social channels is there as well. Really nice job with the 353, the three C's, the critical 5, and the 3 seconds. Really appreciate you keeping it simple for our listeners and providing such valuable information. And you know, I would hope that maybe you can come back, give us some more tips in the next quarter or so and keep us up to date on what we should be thinking about cause it's an always changing environment. Absolutely, Bill. I love the opportunity. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.