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Episode 160: Quick Website Fixes to Uplevel Your Website
886 Plays2 years ago
So earlier this summer, we started offering Designers Touch Sessions.
If you've ever seen a woman walk over to her husband and adjust his tie a little bit so it sits a little bit straighter or watched the maid of honor fluff a bride’s dress just before she walks down the aisle so it lays perfectly while she walks, that's what these sessions are designed to do.
Basically, these are 90 minute sessions where our team jumps into a website and gets it to the next level.
As our team was working on these site cleanups, we noticed a few common design "mistakes" on many of the sites. We use mistakes in quotes because while these elements aren't necessarily awful, they could inadvertently make it more difficult for visitors to buy/book/decide to work with you.
So just what are these mistakes and how can you fix them?
In June, we released a few spots and they sold out QUICKLY. We'll likely open up a few more spots again soon. Learn more about DT Sessions + grab a waitlist spot: https://daveyandkrista.com/designers-touch/
Episode blog + show notes: https://daveyandkrista.com/website-fixes-uplevel-website/
Recommended
Transcript
Effective Font Choices for Websites
00:00:05
Speaker
You want to make sure that headlines aren't in like a script font or like a yellow font or a peach font that are really hard to read. And same with body copy. You want to make sure that it's not too small, it's not too light, that the font is easy for the eye to go through. So a lot of times that's going to be like the sans serif or a cleaner serif. You wouldn't want to use a specialty font, mostly designed for body copy.
00:00:27
Speaker
no like long sentences of scripts. You want to avoid big centered blocks of text because the eye has trouble reading centered. Centered is good for like no more than three lines of text. So all of these things work together and can make your site a lot easier for people to actually read the text.
Introduction by Davy Jones
00:00:47
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:56
Speaker
This episode covers five practical tips for up-leveling your website. The inspiration for this episode comes from one of my new favorite things that Krista and the team are now offering, designer touch sessions. Krista and I chat more about exactly what that is in the episode, but you'll hear about the five most common mistakes that Krista has been seeing during those sessions and exactly what she recommends to fix them.
Designer Touch Sessions Overview
00:01:20
Speaker
If you're interested in learning more about designer touch sessions or the Palm Tree Club, head on over to the show notes to access links for both. Be sure to check out the show notes at DavianChrista.com for the resources that we mentioned during the episode, and we want to hear from you as always. Let us know what kind of content you'd like to see in the Brainset Book Podcast as we move forward. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram at DavianChrista.
Impact of Designer Touch Sessions
00:01:48
Speaker
I'm excited about this episode. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, just in part because I've been excited to see the transformations that have happened from the website cleanup sessions that you have been doing. Which if you've seen us share about them, which we haven't done a lot of sharing, we shared it to our email list and we shared it once on Instagram. We're calling them designers touch. Yeah. Explain to us like a little bit exactly what that is.
00:02:13
Speaker
That is where we go in and for like 90 minutes or so we just touch up your website. So we noticed that when we were looking at sites to feature there were a lot of sites that maybe just needed a little bit of typographic tweaks or if an image was adjusted a little bit or maybe a few like brand colors were popped in in a few more spots. Their website might
00:02:35
Speaker
be a little more impactful and hopefully convert better. So we just go in and we go through the site in that time and it makes a big difference for a lot of people.
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, so basically you were going through websites of people who use our designs, and it was so interesting because you're like, a lot of these look so good, but if they just had like a little bit of help, you know, they'd be so much better.
Enhancing Website with Brand and Local Elements
00:03:00
Speaker
And I guess what's fascinating to me is how just that those few things really do make such a big difference on a website.
00:03:08
Speaker
Like it's not the massive stuff that you might think of like putting in a new design element or a new section or something like that. It's like just sort of tweaking what's already there. Right. There were a lot of, we've done like maybe 15 now, there were a fair amount that they look good, but maybe they never brought in their brand color or they had some extra local elements that would be fun to incorporate. And so adding that little bit of personality goes a long way.
Highlighting Website Changes with Videos
00:03:34
Speaker
Yeah. And it really is cool. I mean, so if you haven't checked it out, we'll make sure we link to it in the show notes or we'll maybe embed it in the show notes. Basically you have these videos where you show in a condensed five minute clip, right? The 90 minutes of work that you do. Yeah. And you can see everything that happens 20 times. Yeah. So you're not actually watching 90 minutes work, but it is pretty cool just to watch. You know, it's kind of mesmerizing to watch.
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, you can see like some of our thought process or especially like me playing with things. We don't always record the videos of us working. We only do it sometimes cause it's a little more work. Like you have to make sure that no one's going to message you or anything pops up. But it is interesting to see how much it's done in that time and like the impact that it makes. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, at the end of these sessions, you give people tips. You can only get to so much work in 90 minutes. So you give people tips on
00:04:25
Speaker
finishing up improvements, other things that we suggest.
Palm Tree Club Overview
00:04:29
Speaker
Yeah, which I think is probably super helpful. And the feedback has been phenomenal. I mean, it's one of those things where it's like, it's really, really interesting to me. And one of the things that it spurred us on to do is think about how we can take that experience and replicate in other aspects of our business. So one of our other products is the Palm Tree Club. And so the Palm Tree Club is our membership site. Basically, it's managed hosting, right?
00:04:51
Speaker
You get one of our designs. You get one of our designs, we manage your hosting, so we hopefully take care of a lot of the technical stuff that holds people up. But it's only for WordPress Elementor. Yeah, it's only for WordPress Elementor. And to a certain extent, you don't need that for show it, right? Because that's the whole point of going with something like show it is they take some of that technical complexity out of it, right?
00:05:11
Speaker
So this is kind of the way that we try to do that for WordPress and Elementor sites. People get one of our WordPress or Elementor sites, although they technically don't have to use one of our sites in the Palm Tree Club. Most people do, but there are a few that don't. And there's all sorts of other benefits to the Palm Tree Club to check out. But what we've recently started doing is experimenting, doing some initial setup for people. I don't even think you've looked at those, have you? I have. Oh, you have? No, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's the impact. I would say that's way more than even a designer's touch.
00:05:38
Speaker
It's just crazy to me. And I just think like, if I came to you all, right? Like I'd be, I don't know if I'd be your ideal client, but I would definitely be like, if I didn't, if I wasn't married to you, right? And I'm trying to get a website up and running. And I think I'm the kind of person unlike you that can get bogged down and like,
00:05:55
Speaker
there's so many different things I can do. When it comes to website design or whatever, it's like, where do I even start? And so this I think really simplifies it for people because they get into their website for the first time and all of a sudden their brand colors are there, their fonts are loaded. We replace a lot of the images with their own images. There's like a top level navigation that's already there that people might end up tweaking to better fit their business. But at least it's like probably 90% of the way there.
00:06:20
Speaker
Oh yeah, it feels like it's so far. Yeah, it's been really exciting to see these. We've only done two beta tests. So these are not available yet. If you're interested, let us know. That's how we get better in figuring out through beta tests and things like that. What really makes an impact for people?
Common Website Mistakes and Solutions
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah. But in looking at all these websites and doing all these cleanups, we've noticed we're going to call it five things that you should stop doing on your website now.
00:06:47
Speaker
If you hear sort of some stuffiness over here, I'm just getting over a cold, so I apologize for that as we go forward. Anyways, like Christo's saying, we're talking about these five things. A lot of this is what we've gleaned from these designer touch sessions. So if you're thinking like right now, really the designer's touch sessions, except in maybe a few limited circumstances, we only do them for people who have one of our designs. That's not always the case if you want to see if you're eligible for one.
00:07:12
Speaker
you can reach out and ask and we'll take a look and we have reasons for that and we're not trying to be snobby about it or anything like that. We've noticed that we can do a lot more impact on our own designs than if we are doing it on somebody else's designs. We tested on somebody else's design, but we really only get through a homepage a lot of times, whereas we can get through more pages if we're working with one of our sites, probably because of the way that they're built too.
00:07:34
Speaker
Yeah, because of the way they're built. There's all sorts of reasons for that. But point being is if you're thinking to yourself, I really want to try something like this on my website. I really want to make sure that my website is cleaned up in this way. These are the things that Krista has gleaned from those sessions. So I'm excited to dig into those with you.
00:07:48
Speaker
All right, the biggest thing, the time we spend the most on is fonts. A lot of times, especially if people load their own fonts, we've noticed that the text can be really hard to read. It's really important to make sure that headlines are using a big impactful font, that headlines aren't too long.
00:08:06
Speaker
You want to make sure that headlines aren't in like a script font or like a yellow font or a peach font that are really hard to read. And same with body copy. You want to make sure that it's not too small, it's not too light, that the font is easy for the eye to go through. So a lot of times that's going to be like a sans serif or a cleaner serif. You wouldn't want to use a specialty font most of the time for a body copy.
00:08:28
Speaker
no long sentences of scripts. You want to avoid big centered blocks of text because the eye has trouble reading centered. Centered is good for no more than three lines of text. So all of these things work together and can make your site a lot easier for people to actually read the text. Yeah, it sounds so simple when you say it. You're like, yeah, our first tip is fonts.
Client-Focused Website Content
00:08:50
Speaker
But there's so much there about the size of the font and the types of fonts and things like that. Maybe you already said it. How many fonts should somebody even be using?
00:08:58
Speaker
A good rule of thumb is one serif. So a serif font is a font that has like a little feet. So that's like Georgia or Ibi Garamond or Times New Roman. I never used Times New Roman, but it's a good example that most people are familiar with. And then one sans serif. So Montserrat, Kestrel,
00:09:16
Speaker
I mean, I've seen all of these fonts like I'm just writing in Google Docs or whatever, but like I know none of them engravers Gothic is a favorite of mine other that that's only available in all caps and then like one specialty font which would be like a script or maybe a headline that is
00:09:32
Speaker
Just a little more unique. I like Audrey is a good example. It's a font that is technically a sans serif, but it kind of looks like a serif without the feet. It's trendy right now. You wouldn't want to use that for body copy. You'd want to use it for sparse headlines because it just wouldn't be easy for people to read in long blocks. Yeah. So you're basically saying people really should be using two fonts on their website?
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that's a problem. Of course, three is fine if you have spares use of the last one. Sure. So two, maybe three. All right. So second tip, making your website all about you. That's not a tip. Like you shouldn't make your website about you. Don't do this. Yeah. Just to clarify, do not make your website all about you. That's the tip.
00:10:18
Speaker
Businesses win when you speak to the problems and the pain points of your client and not when you share how many cups of coffee you drink, like your story. It's not that those aren't interesting and that you can't add them into your site, but people are selfish. I don't know. People are thinking about themselves and their needs and they're coming onto your website to try to solve a pain point.
00:10:39
Speaker
maybe they're a couple who is getting married and their pain point is that they need images of their wedding. And so you want to think about their problems, their thoughts, where they are, and you want to tailor your language and everything to speak to them. So are they feeling overwhelmed? Are they excited? Are they anxious about making sure that everything is captured? And the more that you can solve their problems, the more likely they are going to be to work with you.
00:11:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think the more that you can speak to their problems, right? And even in speaking about the problems, you want to speak about them in a redemptive way. You don't want to just be negative, right? Or a fear monger, you know, whatnot. So you want to make sure that you demonstrate that you can provide the solution, you know, whatever that looks like.
00:11:25
Speaker
Another thing about that, I think another point of clarification too is that we're not saying personal stories or personal aspects of yourself can't build your brand. They very much do build your brand. Actually, it's funny because we had a conversation last night where Krista was encouraging me to share more and not maybe compartmentalize my life so much. It's not that we don't think those things can build your brand, but you want to constantly be asking yourself, does this build my brand?
00:11:52
Speaker
Just for Dana's, does this help someone see me better at what I do? Does this help somebody imagine me doing what it is that I say I can do? Yeah, I think that's such a good just lens or filter to run those things through. I was able somehow to kind of successfully make
00:12:12
Speaker
the fact that we went and got a McFlurry after every wedding and part of our luxury brand. No, I feel like more pizza. It was more pizza, but for sure. Like on Instagram, we'd always share that. We stopped at McDonald's after a wedding for fries and a McFlurry, right? But, you know, something else, like I also like kind of lounging around in sweatpants, you know, on a lazy side.
00:12:30
Speaker
I don't know, there's just different things that I just don't share about, right? Because it's not going to build my brand. So not trying to hide those things necessarily. Anyways, just going back to that little piece of advice that we've learned from just from Jordana. And I think that Donald Miller's Building a Story Brand book is a great, if you want to go into this a lot more and really examine your brand,
00:12:49
Speaker
He talks a lot about how you are not the hero of the story, you're the guide and your client is the hero. And so you wanna think about that when you're writing all of your text for them, think about how to guide them to the outcome that they want. Yeah, the next mistake that we see people make
Building Trust with Testimonials
00:13:09
Speaker
No social proof. I bet that most of us, especially if it's like a new product, when we go to Amazon, the first thing that we do besides look at maybe the price in the picture is go down to the testimonials and see what other people are saying about this product. Like, is it legit? Is it going to do what it says it's going to do? Is it going to break the first time I buy it? You know, if it's a piece of clothing, how does it actually look on a person? Because that photo up there could be heavily photoshopped.
00:13:33
Speaker
And so the same is true for what we offer. So you wanna make sure that you're including testimonials, social proof, maybe examples of your product in action or your service in action throughout your website. So homepage, about page, each services page. Don't let them all just live on a testimonials page. I mean, you can do that, but I don't think it's gonna get a ton of traffic. It's better to just sprinkle them everywhere so that people are going through and they can't miss how much people love working with you.
00:14:02
Speaker
To your point about Amazon, even if I don't read the reviews, I filter by four star reviews and above. So social proof is just such an important aspect of somebody trusting you. But beyond that too, social proof is also an opportunity for somebody to put into their own words how they use a product.
00:14:17
Speaker
So this isn't gonna apply to everybody, but there are definitely, especially if you're a product-based business, you probably have different use cases for how your product can be used. And there's probably people out there, depending on your product, that use your product in a way that maybe you didn't even design it for. Like, oh, it's crazy how people are using that. Just as one example, we're looking for a brand for the farm business. And I'm talking about not brand design brand, I'm talking about an actual brand.
00:14:44
Speaker
Like you would brand a cattle, not because we want to brand a cow. Yeah, we're not, just for the record, for anybody out there, we're not branding the animals, we're only branding the team. Just kidding, we're not doing that either, not pulling a Yellowstone. But we'd love to be able to brand our boxes, right? And so they make brands for all different stuff. Like for instance, you can buy a brand that can brand the top of a hamburger bun.
00:15:09
Speaker
Fancy. Yeah, so like if you're, you know, doing Burger Day or whatever, we can brand our burgers, right? Wow. Which is kind of cool. It was like $300. I don't really think it's worth. Yeah, maybe not worth that. Yeah. Point being is I was trying to look through the reviews because it didn't say it on the website. The brands they make for wood because they also work on cardboard. Cardboard. If you do that real quick, you know. So those are the kinds of things, right, that reviews might give me insight into that maybe the company hadn't even thought about, right? Right.
00:15:37
Speaker
So just an example there, just more of a reason to include social proof on your website. That social proof can come in a lot of different ways, lots of times curated as in, because we're working on a lot of service providers, but certainly if you are selling a product, you need to have it.
00:15:50
Speaker
Another tip for that, don't just add huge long paragraphs. It's great that people gave you a lot of text about that, but most other people are not going to read through three paragraphs of a testimonial. So just take one or two of the best things that they say and make that big and easy for people to skim because people look for quick fixes on a website. They're not going to spend a lot of time reading through everything that was said about you. Yeah, 100%. And we talked about that, I think, a lot in many different episodes.
SEO and Service Clarity
00:16:20
Speaker
So the next tip, actually naming your service pages, right? Yeah, don't name your services page services. Sure. Yes.
00:16:32
Speaker
I mean, this is especially true for SEO. This is true to make sure that people know exactly what you do. Google can read through your page names and outline the structure. And so if you just list services, it doesn't know what you offer. Whereas if you listed it as weddings or senior photography, Google is going to pick up on that and hopefully outline it in their little like, what's their little media site links. And that tells Google what your content is about. It also tells people what you offer.
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah, and I think this is something that's a little nuanced or might seem like a small impact item. These are the kinds of things that add up. They're simple enough to do, right? We don't want to play like fill in the blank. Like try to figure out what I do. Yeah, exactly. We don't want to play that game with our prospective clients or customers. So one of those things that you can just add that much more clarity, as you've probably heard so many people say, clarity wins.
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah, another good example, like if you're a beauty provider who does hair and makeup, and they can be booked separately, one page might be hair styling, and then that page is all about the process, what they need, frequently asked questions, pricing, availability, maybe put your stylist on there, and maybe even another page, it's a makeup application, and all the same things, but maybe if you still did them together, it could be hair and makeup styling.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And each services page should probably have its own page. You want to make sure that each of your services has its own page because it is better for search engine optimization. So you might on your homepage kind of have icons with all your services. Actually, we were just talking to a physical therapist recently, potentially doing a website for her and her clinic. And there's a lot of different services that a physical therapist offers, right?
00:18:11
Speaker
SEO when somebody types in like dry needling in Annapolis, Maryland, right to have a better chance of showing up if you have a page dedicated towards dry needling, right? You're capturing a little bit of search visibility for that search term instead of it just being like kind of a sentence on your home page or a sentence on a broad services page, you know, so something to consider as you redesign a website design your own website, whatever that is.
Ensuring Clear Navigation
00:18:36
Speaker
All right, fifth tip, leaving visitors with nowhere to go when they reach the end of the page. So pages tend to be longer now and that's because people are used to scrolling from social media. It's better for a site structure not to have a zillion little pages.
00:18:52
Speaker
But when they get to the bottom, you want to give them somewhere else to go. So maybe when they get to the bottom of the homepage, they have a link to sign up for your lead magnet, or they have a list of the different services pages that you offer so that you can go to those pages. Maybe when they get to this event and at the be about page, there's a link to explore your offerings. When they get to the end of each services page, there's a link to contact you or a contact form. So you want to give them somewhere to go when they are done with the end of the page.
00:19:22
Speaker
Yeah, and I think the common theme that runs through each of these tips slash mistakes or things to avoid is I think clarity and simplicity, right? I think if we keep things clear, and oftentimes that means simplifying, we're going to have a better chance of engaging a prospective client. It's like if someone came to your house for the first time, you're gonna kind of show them around, right? You're not gonna kind of leave them hanging with, okay, where'd I go next?
00:19:50
Speaker
I mean, what's the first question that somebody asks you if you were to walk into a physical store? You know, hey, can I help you find anything today? That's top of mind, right? When somebody walks into a physical space, like a physical store, and it doesn't matter what store it is. It could be Walmart, it could be J. Crew, you know, whatever. They're going to say, hey, what can I help you find today? And they're going to get you there as quick as possible.
00:20:10
Speaker
I mean, thinking about that line too, it should be really clear as soon as somebody comes onto your website what you do and who you do it for. So if you are a photographer in the Atlanta area, the first big heading on your website should be Atlanta wedding photographer or something along those lines. People need to know where you are, especially if you're like a local kind of service-based business. Even if you want to travel, most likely you're not gonna travel for every single thing that you do. It should be obvious where you are and what you do.
00:20:40
Speaker
Yes. Well, I think that's a good place to wrap up. And if you're really digging into website design right now, there are quite a few episodes that we've recorded recently, I think kind of on website design in general. You know, if you just search on our blog, we talk about one of the posts I think we should update to like top DIY design mistakes to avoid. You know, for people who are out there customizing websites, just things we see that, you know, as website designers, we try to avoid. Right.
00:21:06
Speaker
So thanks for tuning in. As always, if you found this episode helpful, if you could go on iTunes, leave us a review. It's just one of the ways too that we know we should keep creating content like this. And it also helps other people find this podcast. It just helps to get more visibility. You know how it works. So that's something you can do. Also, if you want to send us feedback, you send us an email. That's a simple way to get us feedback. Another great way to get us feedback is to send us a DM on Instagram, not at Dave and Krista. Thanks for joining us, guys.
00:21:36
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.