Hello, welcome. This is the 90 Day Website Mastery podcast, the perfect companion to our 90 Day Website Mastery program. It's episode 32. We're excited to bring you even more valuable insights and practical advice to help you enhance your website's performance, join us as we explore strategies to make your website work harder for you, reigniting your pride into your online presence. I'm here with my co-host Pascal. Fin, Tony, you okay, Pascal?
Very well, Thank you very much. Now, this is a short form, fast paced bit of content trying to make 2 things really, bringing clarity when it comes to running a website and enjoying it. A bit more important to making sure that in the process, you feel proud of your website again. Yeah, that is the most important thing. We've done many, many training courses and the key thing we always hear is that pang when someone says, what's your
website address? And it's sort of like that pang in your stomach that you don't feel proud. And we want you to feel proud of your website. That's what this is all about. In each episode, we have 4 segments. We have the you ask, we answer. We have the website stories. We have a website engine room where we give an app or a piece of software or a piece of kit that me or Pascal have seen that's gonna help you as a website manager make your
life easier. And of course, we always finish with the website call to action because every piece of content should have a website call to action. And we'll come onto that right at the end. So Without further ado, let's start with you ask, we answer our first segment. This is fascinating and I'm very surprised we've not had that question before when you think about it and how long now we'd be running the podcast from
the website mastery. Now this is a bit of a combination because you have the question at an event, I had the same questions more or less during a master class. So here it goes. What does it mean for my website to be mobile form friendly? Surely this is done automatically nowadays or am I supposed to do something else to make it happen? And I have some sympathy because I will explain later on why I believe the term mobile-friendly or mobile-phone-friendly is perhaps not particularly obvious to
all. What does it mean? And I think particularly when you go online, Johnny, and look for information, and you can all Google, find the Google guidelines for mobile phone friendly, it feels like it's just very superficial, it's kind of things that everybody knows, but is there something else people should be thinking about when it comes to mobile phone users? What say you, Johnny Ross?
Yeah, well the difficult thing and you know, part of that question is, you know, that that person saying surely this is done automatically nowadays. And you would think that, wouldn't you? You would assume that. In fact, there's so many assumptions that are made when you're buying a website from an agency or a web developer. There's so many assumptions that are made from it's going to work on mobile to it's going to rank at the top of Google. Of course, that's not the case
and we're not in a regulated market. You need to make sure that your website brief is very thorough and you need to make sure that you're challenging whoever you're buying a website from, or perhaps if you're building it yourself, you need to challenge the tool that you're using. So unfortunately, a lot of websites aren't automatically ready for mobile. And really what we should be talking about here is mobile first. So when we're designing a website, we should have
mobile first in mind. The problem with that, and I deal with this on a daily basis, we build WordPress websites all the time. And 1 of the issues that I always find is that We're all in a desktop environment when we're having conversations in terms of business to business conversation. When we're brainstorming on what the website is going to be like, when we're looking at other websites, when we're showing some designs, when we're on Teams, on Zoom, on
Google Meet, we're all on a desktop. But in reality, in most industries and sectors, over 50% of people are using mobile. So the biggest thing is getting your head around that you need to make sure you're always talking about websites on mobile. So that's about using an emulator on your computer to be always looking at mobile versions of websites.
But yeah, going back to the crux of this question, it's not automatic and you absolutely need to consider it As first, what is this website going to look like on mobile? Nevermind desktop. That's what I think. And I think for me, the idea being, whether you work with a designer or you're doing it yourself, you have to get into the habit of the schematics on both the vertical screens and the laptop screen. Because you're right, most of our blogging is done on the laptop. I would
imagine that's more convenient. That takes me back even into my passion by video and filmmaking. Most video editing is done on a large screen because we want to see stuff. And the amount of conversation I've had with other video editors say, people won't be able to see that on mobile phone, the caption is too small, or you need to move in closer to the products or to the scene because on the mobile phone screen, it's not gonna
be as obvious. And the other challenge that I've got then, so you could do all that. You could sketch it, you could use different online platforms, many of them mentioned on the show, and get an impression what it's gonna be like on mobile. But the advice out there, and if you Google it, you'll know, is very much centered on the technology, the tech, you know, the behind the scenes stuff. And I think that a much better and more helpful expression should be that the website is
mobile phone user friendly. Because I think all too often the visitor is somehow implicit, but I actually wanna make it explicit. Because then you move into decision, for example, photography. So photography on a laptop screen, you can see a lot more details than you would on the small screen. So again, can you move in a bit closer? Text, you've got to break it down more. You have to create more line breaks. You have to create more sub headers and many conversations we've
had before. So for me, the question should be, what does it mean for my website to be mobile phone user-friendly and once you move into for the platform that the people you have used that expression before, literally logic and just good customer care comes into play and then you're going to start to rethink the navigation, the structure, the content itself. And for example, when my customers do take part in the blogging masterclass, they work on a laptop and it
looks very neat. As soon as you look on a mobile phone, you're faced with a massive column of words without any breaks and not even visual kind of stimuli. So it makes sure we think everything completely, but it has to be friendly to the user, not the mobile phone that makes any sense. Will Barron Yeah, absolutely. And so I think
it's about creating lots of space. It's about making it really easy for fingers and thumbs to be able to get to a call to action, to be able to see the call to action and to really, like I was saying a minute ago that Some of the clients I work with, I'm working on behalf of them, employing another agency to come in and still to this day, other agencies are showing them on desktop first and you know, it looks great and yes, let's go with that. And then they look at it on
mobile and it's like bloody awful. And it's, And there's just not been any thought on, as Pascal's just said, the usability side of things. So yeah, I think lots of creating space, creating buttons that are big enough, creating sticky content so that perhaps when you are scrolling and there's lots of text, there's still call to actions available. And I'm thinking about how you can break that content up in a much shorter fashion because you're on a mobile device. So, yeah, come on.
And for me, just finally, because I know time is against us, it is, This is a short form, fast paced bit of content out there. The 1 thing that is helpful when you go mobile first in your deliberation is to remember, I know it sounds silly, that this is about touching the screen and interacting with the screen as opposed to using your mouse to click on the number of items on the webpage that's
organised from left to right. So I think for me as well, we're having a conversation about the touchscreen, you're opening up possibilities in terms of the user interaction experience, which I think you would not think of immediately if you start with a laptop version of visiting your website. Yeah, and that makes you think about forms and making them easy to fill out on a mobile phone because you're not using the traditional keyboard, the traditional
size of the space of the form. So yeah, those are really good things to think about. Listen, if you're watching or listening right now, thank you so much for joining us. We really enjoy doing this short form content and keep asking us questions, keep sending us anything you think about in terms of on social media, so please do. But for now, we're going to move to our next segment, which is website stories.
In this segment of the show, John and I review and react to an article, an infographic, a podcast, anything that can make life easier and help us reflect what it means to be a website manager in today's economy. I've chosen an article, Johnny, for today, which I think has a foot both in the past and the future. This was written by Ben Davis, who is the
Insights Editor at eConsultancy.com. So Ben Davis is almost like the kind of investigator looking at the impact on the progress, maybe digital, but also user experience. And e-consultancy is my go-to destination for trends, insights reports, but also a great educational platform. And the article written by Ben is kind of interesting because whilst it is addressing, I suppose, the kind of deliberations that online retailers may have now, I think it's valid for all
sectors and all audiences. So the title is as follows, what exactly is AI-Avid Commerce search and what does it mean for retailers? And I would really encourage people to seek out the article. We've got the hyperlink in the show notes because it does a very, very good job to reflect on our experience as people of the search function, both in terms of websites, could be small independent retailers, larger brands, like Amazon and Walmart,
but also the search engines. And I think you and I can reflect on the last 30 years to agree that by and large search is not always particularly effective, is not always successful, and what we've had to do all of this is almost learn the kind of idiosyncrasies and some of the quirks of the search function to try and make it work for us. And some of us could actually be very, very proud of our search skills and we can second guess actually how bad it is to essentially get
a better result. But everything's changed now because of the advance of AI, but particularly the large language models where you move into a situation where you no longer have to second guess what 3, 4 to 5 words you have to put in. You can have a full-on conversation with a chatbot, sometimes called agent, and make your search feel more like you're being assisted by a personal assistant of sorts. And that is creating a new way of thinking on Google, but other platforms.
And we may come across a term that then is indicating called conversational commerce or conversational search. And this is essentially a reflection at this moment in time about the impact on all of us and all our websites. We will see the rollout of those kind of advanced way of searching on larger brand websites because they could afford to make all the
mistakes and improve upon it. But 1 thing that I've noticed over the years, Johnny, and only if you agree, is that the behavior that people essentially first get a go at on platform like Amazon, Google and more, then becomes a norm and is unexpected on other platforms such as your website. So, listen, Ben does an amazing job to reflect back and look
forward. But I sense that in his article, he's suggesting that, by and large, we're still, the effort is a bit timid, a bit limited, we should be a lot more ambitious about what those AI solutions can provide for us. But ultimately, what he's saying is that we're gonna be in a position to assist the shopper and indeed to be the decision maker in more advanced and sophisticated way. And that would feel more like having conversation with
an individual than ever before. And is that not actually the ultimate aim of a website to be a mirror of what it's gonna feel like in the near future to deal with the very people behind the business? So for that reason, I chose the article. People can read it for themselves. And a couple of things to mention before I get your reaction is this idea of, let's not forget that 1 of the things that AI can offer beyond the current search function,
it was called multi models. Also using voice, using images, as we can drag and drop. Something that has been tested by Google called Shop with Google AI, where literally you can generate some images of what you're looking for, and then Google's gonna go away and search it for you and create other matches. So I think it's going to get very, very interesting, but we as website managers need to keep an eye on the near future and start to plan for those adjustments.
Yeah, I think for me the key message here is we need to step out of our comfort zones and start trying these things. Because as small businesses, you've got the ability to be able to adapt very quickly, to be able to test and try. My advice would be to start embracing a lot of the things that are out there. And especially what we're talking about today, which is that AI chatbot in terms of commerce, in terms of giving that
experience. I think you said it really well, Pascal, giving that experience in terms of if you walked into a business premises, if you walked into a retail premises and you had that first initial conversation, that's what we're trying to create as a website. That's how you should be thinking that your website is trying to achieve. So how would you know if you were talking in that first moment,
one-to-one, how would you talk? And that's going back to real basics of using the word you and your within the content and really making it very clear that you're talking to the individual and thinking about just, you know, not trying to think mass market and you're talking to everyone in the world, but you're
talking to this just 1 individual. So how you can power that is making sure that you structure your data correctly, that you're collating data, collecting data so that when someone's on your website, you understand who they are, have they been to you before, what data touch points do you already have? And can you use that information to understand their behavior, any information that you have to then make sure that that conversation is a continuation of the relationship that you
already have. It might be right at the start, but it might be someone that is already a customer. So it's really trying to join a lot of those dots. And there's a lot of tools out there that are doing this. And I'm seeing companies that are testing this. Some are doing really well, some aren't doing really well. Some are not doing very well. Xero has just introduced Jax, which is an AI assistant within their accounting tool. And oh my
God, it is bloody awful. They've rolled it out as a beta and they agree that they've got it wrong and they're quickly trying to fix things. But there's an example of a large company testing it. And I think that it's the SMEs that need to be doing the testing and winning quickly so that you can start converting customers into, well, shoppers into customers, should I say. I think for me, this article is also a
bit of a warning about 2 things. Pay attention to customer behavior that they may acquire on larger platform than yourselves, but also this idea of all of us as decision makers in our businesses, particularly with digital. We've learned to essentially put up a limitation. So we've almost stopped ourselves being ambitious because it wasn't possible or it wasn't particularly good or it was
embarrassing and so on and so forth. And I think that the biggest challenge for me with AI and large language models is a mind-set shift of actually reconnecting with your imaginations and your ambition thinking, well, now actually it may be possible. And therefore can we dust off maybe the project from 2 years ago and see what we can do to create that amazing website experience.
Absolutely. This is about embracing it, about thinking about it, considering it and realizing that there is a future that we need to embrace to really engage that, especially to engage that newer audience as well. Let's move on to the website, Engine Room. Now in each episode of the Website Mastery podcast, Joni and I choose 1 app, 1 solution, maybe a piece of kit that can make life easier as a content creator and website manager. What is your selection Joni Ross?
So we're always talking about target audience. We're talking about personas, creating that persona to really understand who your audience is and to really get onto their level to make sure that you're talking to their language, to make sure that you're thinking about their pain points. Founderpal.ai, as always, we have all of these links in the show notes, but this is FounderPal.ai. If you go to the User Persona Generator, you'll find it on the homepage or just Google FounderPal.ai and then User
Persona Generator. Literally describe your business and your target audience and get a detailed marketing persona within about 10 seconds and it's 100% free. It's a bit crazy. It's using AI behind the scenes with a huge amount of data to bring in everything that it already knows about particular products, particular services, but also about particular target audiences. So it delivers tons of pain points and the language that you need to be considering and using. And then you can adapt it as
it goes, but it's really clever. So as a starting point, if you're trying to understand your target audience, foundapal.ai, the user persona generator is my tip for the website engine room. That's excellent. And you know, you know, I've run many, many website master classes and workshops and the persona bit, people hate doing it, don't they? I get it. I have a lot of sympathy. It's not easy just to even capture the different target groups you have in mind and then to come up with
personas. So I'm talking myself into probably using them for future masterclasses just to accelerate the draft, at least getting a draft version of your personas and avatars. So I've been reflecting a lot on people staying on your website longer, just a bit longer, but not because you find kind of a tricky, tricksy way to make it happen, but also because it gives the impression when they visit your website that you care about the content and their visit.
And there are spots on your website such as the contactors page, the FAQ section, it's on the landing page that you've been crafting, but can marry it with some animations. Now animations, I'm talking about 2D, 3D animation, very, very simple. It's almost like more iconography that explains what this page is about, explain maybe the steps you have to go through to complete particular actions and more. So instead of a static image,
you have some animation. And wait and look, because there is a platform called Jitter, and they have a series of templates. They can be used as a talking point with maybe an agency or maybe with your video editor, but they also offer free accounts where you can download those animations. That could be, for example, you want someone to complete a form and you can have an animation to show how simple it is to complete the
form. You can have an animation to talk about the upgrade of a recent product. There's so many things, honestly, this templates library is so, so extensive. You're bound to find something that you'll need. So add animation to create, again, a bit of stickiness into your site, but also to show to your visitors that you care particularly about their experience and the level of clarity you want to convey on those particular web pages.
So I'd not heard of that at all. I've just been Googling and it looks really cool. And what a great way to just add something different to your content in your website. 2 great tools from the website engine room. Let's move on to the website call to action. I believe we've reached the final segment of the website Mastery Podcast. This is about the 1 change or 1 adjustment that Jonny and I would like to recommend that you should be making to your website
right now. It's simple, it's practical, and it makes a huge, huge difference. Jonny, what is your recommendation? Testing. So A-B testing specifically to optimize your website. So creating different versions of different pages, whether that be a landing page that you're using in a meta campaign or a Google paid campaign, or whether it just be the homepage for organic users. There's lots and lots of tools out there. Some of them, depending on the website traffic you've got, depends on whether
it's worth spending money or not. But anything from sort of optimisedly to hot jar to unbounce, and others include things like ABTasty and Convert and Chameleon. There's lots of different tools. It's worth just having a Google and looking at the AB testing optimisation tools that are out there. But it's a way to really refine the user experience, the design, the conversion strategies, trying to understand, you know, just as simple as should that button be on the left or the right,
should it be in green or pink? You know, perhaps trying, just changing a word on a button, the difference that that can make in terms of conversion. And if you sort of go back to the good old days of accountants telling you, or even in maths lessons, change a little bit here, a little bit here, a little bit here, 0.1% here, 0.1% here, and all of a sudden, 30% increase on profit. Well, that's the same
thing in conversion optimization. If you can make a little tweak in 10 different places and just increase those percentages, even a small amount, the overall impact is huge. So don't forget about testing and about doing some A-B testing on website landing pages especially. That will be my call to action for this episode. Thank you. And you know, very much like the reaction to the persona creation, this is the 1 that always gets people twitching thinking, well, it sounds hard
or what will I know? Will I even understand the results of the A-B testing and happily things are removed on them to the platform you can use. But also if this is something that is new to you, you're still uncertain. I would recommend that you literally go on an AI platform like ChatGP, GM&I, and the others, and just do a bit of studying. Just ask some simple questions. This is my sector. This is the audience. I'm thinking about A-B testing for optimization. What do you
think? And have that conversation that exchange with the assistant is going to clarify things for you and you can discover it's not as difficult as it sounds. And sometimes, you know, I would agree that the language of our industry in general is not particularly helpful. For sure. Absolutely. Yeah, What's yours this week? Yeah, thank you very much. We're just about to complete yet another quarter of the year. Time just flies. And therefore, logically, we should be thinking all of
us in the next quarter. With that in mind, my culture actions for you want to review their best performing web pages for this time last year, as in the next quarter that's coming, what happened in the previous year. And what you'll see through audience behavior, there will be some pages and some behavior that is very
seasonal. And it could have been linked to a sales push in particular, or it would just be logically because of the time of year, this makes sense for people to be interested in this type of content. So you're going to end up with a list of your best performing pages. I want you to then put together a bit of an action plan in terms of on-page optimization. And this is, and again, we don't always have time to talk to each other. This is just happy coincidence that this is where the
A-B testing could come into play. You know, you can have the existing pages and then the new 1, what is the added. But on-page optimizations, I mean, I've covered extensively on the show, so everyone just go through some previous episodes and find our recommendations. You could be tweaking, you know, your headlines, you could be tweaking the
photography. And I think also for me, joining this side of if you're likely to have returning visitors because of the time of year, there's nothing more off-putting for a visitor kind of go, Oh, it's the same as last year. They've not even changed the photography. They've not changed the case studies. They've not
changed the culture action. It's the same thing because it gives the impression, perhaps wrongly, that you just don't take care of the website and that extension, people make the very wrong and harsh conclusion that you don't have a particularly good approach to customer care either. So that's my culture action. We are kind of about to wrap up a quarter yet again, and we've got a new 1 coming up. Let's make this website content ready early.
I like it. I like it. Another great episode, we focused on website, mobile friendly websites. I think that the message here is stop looking at your website on desktop. Start looking at your website on mobile and Start looking at your competitor's website on mobile. And if you're buying or building a new website, look at mobile first. Stop looking at desktop designs, look at mobile designs, and think about making space and call to actions. We've talked
about AI powered commerce search. It's here, and it's only going to get bigger and bigger and customers, clients, potential clients are going to be using far less words to try and find your services and products. How are you going to ensure that you capture them and that you convert those people. And 1 of the ways to do that is to start embracing it yourself to really understand how it all works. We've had some great call to actions, great tips on the engine room. Enjoyed yourself, Pascal?
Always, And I keep saying it, but it is true. When you and I started the show, we went, well, it may reach a point where we've covered everything there is to say about running a website, feeling proud of your website, looking after your customers and making this web plan an extension of your kind of approach to customer service and beyond. And here we are, we keep finding new ways, but also you, our audience, keep sending us
questions and suggestions. So I don't know about you, but we're gonna keep going. And please keep sending us those questions. And thank you if you're on the replay watching this as a catch up. We really appreciate it. We absolutely appreciate it. And so much so if you enjoyed it, if you found it helpful, leave a review on Apple podcasts. That's a wrap for episode 32 of the Ninth State Website Mastery podcast, your audio companion to the 90 Day Website Mastery
program. Listen, there's tons of more information and lots of tools and resources that we have put together. All of the content from all of our episodes turns into a tool or a resource on 90daymarketingmastery.com. You can also book a discovery call with either myself or Pascal. It's goodbye for now. We'll leave you with a fun video and audio montage to enjoy whilst you review your notes and action steps. And we will look forward to seeing you again soon. Take
care, enjoy the rest of your day. I'm out! I'm out! I'm out! I'm out! I'm out!