[00:01] Good morning, and welcome to another session of Business Tips at Ten. So, today I'm with Rhonda Chapman, say good morning, Rhonda.

[00:08] Hi everyone.

[00:10] So today we thought we would talk about, and from the title, why is your website not converting visitors to clients. So Rhonda and I were just talking before this, and one of the things that I say to clients when they are coming onboard as a new client, and especially if there's budget is tight. Like, let's get your website done, let's do the stuff with Google, 'cause that's going to make a difference to your business. You are going to focus on the things that are going to give you a quick return on investment. And then you can re-invest into your website and get it to a higher standard. So one of the things I say, and I was wondering what Rhonda's reaction would be, is I say, "Look, the welcome or the intro message on the home page is going to take up one to two inches." So whatever you've got to start with, is the way to go, and Rhonda will sharing some recent jobs that she's done where that's been the case.

[01:03] Like we would say, the homepage is sort of the doorway of your business website. So it's kind of really important to get people to understand right away when you let them do you homepage, what is it that your business does, what you have to offer them. You don't always have to say how much it's going to cost. But, if you make it clear that people can qualify or disqualify themselves so they know, yes I can afford your services or yes, you are the ones that I want to do business with. So that they can then follow through ... if that involves clicking through, calling you right away. But, give them that sense that they can decide right there and then whether you are the right people to do business with. Because we don't want to waste anybody's time, and you want to qualify people before they make contact with you. It's very important.

[02:01] Yeah, and basically it's like 5 to 8 seconds, or whatever the numbers are, to ... am I in the right place? And then what is the next step? But getting back to the copy to, 'cause you were saying that there has been a couple sites that have gone live without copy being finalised.

[02:18] Yeah, right.

[02:19] But that's okay. We've got a catch right here, you know, 70% is good to go. Don't try to get it perfect, because having the website live is more important than having it perfect. Because you can tweak and that's some of the contracts you've done lately, is that right?

[02:34] Yes, so you get people that will come to you and panic. And they say my website is live, or is about to go live and the web developers are asking for copy. And that was the last thing they had on their mind. They thought everything was fine or yeah, we're getting our products on our website, listing everything, or the pricing and all that. But where's the wording? Where's the about page? What do you want on your contact us, rather than just put a form on that. So people are coming to me in panic, wanting to find out what they are going to put on their website. Some come with what they've written, and all I do is tweak and remove the typos and things like that. Or make it sound better.

[03:18] In other cases, those who have a bigger budget, they will come and say I've got nothing, can you write from scratch? So that takes longer, so people need to keep that mind. For someone to write your entire website, it could take days or weeks or even months if you don't even have a ... the structure for it. So, that is one of the things that I say, as soon as you're planning a new website, you need to plan what you're going say on it. And therefore, whether you start writing before you go to a developer, or during the build, it's not a big difference. But sometimes the copywriter also can guide the design for the website.

[03:59] Yeah, absolutely. And I know it's been on occasion where I've actually got work from you ... had the work referred. Because the website was so poorly structured, it didn't matter what copy you provided.

[04:12] Yes.

[04:13] It just wasn't going to work.

[04:14] Yeah.

[04:15] Which is commendable to you, 'cause that shows a high level of integrity with your work. I went to a local business, I'm not sure if I should mention them.

[04:24] Don't.

[04:24] No, don't? No, no, they are a great business, they got really good results on their website. And the copywriting is awesome. Anyway, maybe not.

[04:35] For example, in some cases, because I'm very honest. Yes, I am in business to make money, but I will always be honest with people.

[04:43] Yep.

[04:43] If they come to me and I find that ... 'cause I always audit the copy but also look at whether the website is well structured enough for Google to accept everything that you put on it. So if I find that it's broken, or it's not going to help with SEO, I will tell the business owner, you need to go and fix it. Before I can ... because whatever I put on it, if it's not going to get picked up by Google or anybody, then what's the point?

[05:10] Yep, absolutely. And what prompted this topic today? We planned to do this Facebook live, today. We should let you know what we're going to talk about about, but Rhonda did a Facebook post today. So, if you are not connected to Rhonda on Facebook, do connect with Rhonda. And you had a meme and ... which a stolen a copy.

[05:37] I think it's a Bob wondering. And he goes like, "Crap my web developer wants the copy, and the web site is ready to go. But now it's going to be delayed because Bob doesn't have copy for this website. And don't be like Bob."

[05:51] Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting because we've got two websites we are working on now. One we are currently working on, one we've actually gone live with. And the record holder for the longest website to go live was 3 years and one month.

[06:04] Whoa.

[06:04] I'm seriously, true story. Unbelievable. And she's absolutely gorgeous, but she's a perfectionist and that's why we've adopted this 70% is good to go. And there's another website that we've actually updated. The website's live and we've done an update. We've created a new homepage here. Now the only reason the business owner hasn't gone live with it, is because there's three new pages. And all she needs is those pages is one or two paragraphs. Ultimately it should be the minimum 300 words, preferably five to six hundred words to get a best result test otherwise. But one or two paragraphs is better than nothing. You know, content coming soon, which is ridiculous. The thing is that, for business owners, you know what to put in anyway, because you have the conversations every day. If it's a page about a particular service you're offering, then you have that conversation, everyday. So, don't try to be perfect, don't try to get it right, just write what you talk. And then you can go live.

[07:08] It's after the fact that then you go to Rhonda and get it reviewed, and it's going to be more cost effective because you've written down your core messages. Especially when you speak from the heart, and if you write what you talk, well that's going to be far more effective than putting your writers hat on, as I say to people, and trying to write. It just doesn't work. Just write it as you speak it, and write from the heart. Then you are going to be in a position to go live with that website and get that new content out there, and review it later. I'm always doing it, add updates to my website. And if it's not perfect, you know what, I really don't care. Because I'd rather be further down the journey ... your website's a journey, it's dynamic, it never ends. I'm constantly playing and evolving it. And some people say to me, that's because you're a web developer, you can do that. We'll no-

[07:58] No you're not a writer, you're a developer.

[08:01] Yeah, so the point is that I've got new content and stuff to share, and if I don't have it perfect, well better to have it live, then not.

[08:09] Yes.

[08:10] Yeah. And so that was the point that Rhonda was making is, plan ahead. If you got a new subject and new page, just capture the information, just get it live.

[08:18] Get it done.

[08:20] And you can get it reviewed and copy written later.

[08:24] Building funnels that you can replicate, and ramp up, and improve on. And just on that. To drive more traffic is ... you know, that's the holy grail. You know, because having a website, and this is what we see. So many people just have online brochures. And again, that's okay to start with. But then you got to look at who's coming to your website, what journey do you want to take them on, and what is going to cause them to get in contact with you? And that's when lead generation client qualification process is coming to play.

[09:01] Rhonda, just on another subject, your branding change. Have you settled on a final name?

[09:07] Yes, Marketing Communicator.

[09:07] Right. Marketing Communicator.

[09:10] Yeah, 'cause that's sort of explains everything that I do, has to do with how you communicate when you do your marketing.

[09:17] Yep.

[09:18] Working on new logo and all that, but I will finish that after.

[09:22] Yeah, right.

[09:23] Probably in September, I got a lot of planning to do. And also, what I'm going to say in my website to reflect that, that's important. And then, like I was saying with the traffic issue, creating extra content. So if you want to create videos, if you want to create blog posts, if you're going to do Facebook Ads. So all of that also come into play when you want to bring traffic to your website. It's not just Google that's going to bring you traffic, because a lot of people just leave on Facebook your item ... customers could be on Facebook. So if you try and reach people through that. There's a question from Rob-

[10:03] Yeah, yeah, Rob. So a call to action, Rob. Good question. It's the pinnacle. 'Cause one of things that we've notice, I mean, we've been doing this 11 years. Back in 07, 08, and onwards, the free report, the evil [inaudible 00:10:20] was the pinnacle. The five things is to do this, Or the seven secrets of whatever. The only thing is, it's been done to death, and a lot of the times, it's actually been done quite poorly. Because of the world of online learning, everybody's learning and they go and mimic. Everybody's being an expert, and oh my God, that does my head in. Marketing experts crawling out of the woodwork, anyway. We're at the round on the wallpaper. So the point being there, that you've got to make it a really compelling call to action. You know, and we are testing at the moment on my own website, you have a look at my site. I'm going to have a look and just check, see what the three call to action buttons are. And I'm testing, I'm evolving all of the time. Its not aesthetic thing, it's dynamic. Try something, 'cause you know, it might work. And if it doesn't, try something else. 'Cause you're trying to connect this now, I think, more than ever. It's relational. And I like it too, if you're networking. You're not going to get the gig until people know they can trust you. Real one-on-one situations.

[11:26] Certainly, yeah.

[11:28] And online is no different. You got to try and replicate that. But in an online model. So, on my website I've got, I need help, tell us about your project, and I've got a little new chat bot plug-in I'm playing with. I'm always playing with toys. Request a call back. And they have pop up forums that people fill in. All of the forums look the same, they're actually different forums because I want to track, are people clicking on I need help, and request a call back. Which one are they clicking on? And it tell us your project is a higher level, it's a qualification where I'm actually asking quite a few questions. And that helps elevate the quality of the client.

[12:08] Sure.

[12:08] Because you get tie kickers and get really serious people. So if I were to summarize that, it's just a matter of you trying to hook in, Rob, to who your clients are, what journey do you want to take them on, what's going to help better qualify them as client for you-

[12:25] Absolutely.

[12:25] 'Cause you don't want to be wasting time either, and test it, and measure it. You got to measure it.

[12:31] Measure it's important, yeah.

[12:32] So many people are just so random. And look at time, as a business owner, I think. 'Cause you sort of got to ... you know, a way of production hats and you take that off and you mark your hats and you know your sales hat. And it's hard to change. And before this, today? I was reflecting on the Facebook lives that I've done. Is it working for me? It's a good idea but is it actually working? Well, yes it is. We engaged with a client last week, who had some pretty serious problems on a client, and we landed quite a good gig from that. And the win is, obviously I've got new business, which is exciting, but I'm also actually able to make a difference to somebody. You know, they've invested quite a bit in a website, that's just not converting. So it's a win-win situation. Yes, I got more business, but hey, the client's a winner because we are going to get their results. So hopefully that helps, Rob.

[13:26] A thing there is that nobody wants to be sold to. But everybody wants to buy. We're no different so you have to look at it from us. If it's an obvious sell, you know, that's not going to work. It's not going to convert. You just got to really engage and actually try to solve people's problems. And be consistent in your follow up. And to be honest, it's my area that I'm actually quite weaken, because our system does everything. I have follow up email sequences, which are very personable. Curiosity of Rhonda helping me with those, thank you Rhonda. And they really do engage and connect. But it also helps me to cover my weakness to follow up. Hopefully that point makes a difference, too. Hi Glen, how are you doing?

[14:12] Hi Glen.

[14:13] I know you from ages ago.

[14:15] Yeah, I know. There's supposed experts everywhere, isn't there? You probably don't want to publish the website in this forum. But you got to have a look at the ads, what they are. I'm running some ads at the moment, you know, obviously we got a team member who handles all of that for us. And, I've thrown about a thousand dollars at it. But I also try a different forum where I actually engaged a booking agency to help book qualified clients, for me to go out, go review their website, whatever. And I did the numbers. And I was initially converting one and three styles presentations. Over a normal period of time, I was converting one and five. And it was costing X amount of dollars.

[14:59] So I took that X amount of dollars and I thought okay, let's try a different medium, Facebook Ads. Now I'm getting the views on the explainer video. And then I'm also getting the views on the second stage. But I haven't converted. So it's a matter of continually tweaking, where's it breaking down, you know? You really just got to look at, is it getting views, is it getting likes, I don't even know what Facebook Campaign was. 'Cause a lot of them are simply a branding awareness thing, and that's okay. But if somewhere in the process that's not a call to action, or a follow up email, or a follow up phone call, or a personal message, it is a gap. So maybe consider that, I'm a bit forward.

[15:42] I found it sometimes it just has to do with changing the image, for example. I've tested for events, if I'm selling to both men and woman. What have I do, if I change image in, for example, making the person in the image look straight into the lens of the camera, I get more likes and more clicks through. Or if I'm talking to women, I put the woman who's smiling, and looking at the camera, I get more clicks. If I'm saying something that is more attracting to men, I put images of men, because people want to see themselves in ads. So try and change, or even put a cat and see how it goes with the cat.

[16:27] Not the cat.

[16:30] But yeah, there's different ways you can test yours ads, and the content that you're putting on Facebook. Because not everyone wants to be sold to. Maybe it's just amount of telling a story and sharing some histories, so people say, "Yeah, that looks like something I need, therefore I'm going to these guys and ask them for a quote for it."

[16:51] And just to give cat thing a lot of context for those that don't know.

[16:55] Don't out a cat. But you can try.

[16:59] But cats are the highest watched videos on YouTube. That's the stats?

[17:06] Well that's what some people say.

[17:06] Yeah, yeah. Cats [crosstalk 00:17:08] so they work. And just on that, 'cause you just reminded me as part of our Ad Facebook Campaign, we were running the same ad with three different images. And one in particular image was a guy, similar to this scenario, a young academic looking dude, pretty hunky, sitting at a laptop. And that particular image ... better conversions, more click through. So it works. So you're right, yeah. Absolutely. Play with the ads. Okay, do we got any other questions?

[17:37] Rob's asking about links for chat box.

[17:41] So a chat box type pop up? If you haven't looked at my website, that's sending more traffic to my website, so just think about that for a moment. So with this, I'm getting more traffic to my website, and you'll likely stay on the website longer. Hang on, I just earned brownie points from Google. And please try to visit more than one page, 'cause you visit more than one page, our brownie points with Google, which is SEO. And it's a new type with SEO, you know, the more traffic you get, great. But, you really want people to visit more pages. So you got to look at the way you have people attracting on your website.

[18:19] We're just about to launch a new website, as I'm digressing. On a local security phone where it has a pop-up contact desk, quote forum, right? 'Cause the bottom line that's actually call to action. People want a quote, you're going to make it easy for them, right? The current website is actually atrocious. Now, that's a great little pop-up, quick ads. So you're getting that interaction, wonderful, like filling the quote form and that gets sent off, and that's the end of it. Guess what happened, I've just come to the website, to the homepage, I clicked on the quote form, I filled in the quote form, all done, and they gone. Well that just registered a bounce, with Google. Because I have not visited any other page. Let's speak to merit points, the higher the bounce rate, it just doesn't reflect well on your website. So like to win the game of Google, you have to have a hundred points. But not every one thing equals one point. It's really simple.

[19:10] So what we are doing with this quote form, is so we are then taking it to a success page. So guess what happened there? It's not registered as a bounce. So I'm giving away advanced secrets here of what we do. So, be mindful of that, I know I don't digress. Chat pop up box, so yes, look we're playing around with chat pop ups. There's a few that are run by AdWords company, that do advanced tracking and they're really sophisticated, they're really great. But they actually add about four seconds to the load time of the website which is really bad. Because that's another ranking element that Google apply. How do we have quick does the website load? So you just have to be mindful of that.

[19:53] We were testing one a couple weeks ago on my website, last week I think it was. And I was actually having about two seconds. So a load time of about four anyway, then add another two seconds, I wasn't really happy with that. So we're actually testing one that Facebook puts out. Its a [inaudible 00:20:09] chat bot. I haven't really had a long enough time to assess it as such. Its working, but yeah. Its probably something we should look at down the track is having a look at different ways that chat boxes are built into the website. And then there are also chat boxes that are external, when you put a bit of code in.

[20:29] Yeah.

[20:29] So yeah, I know that doesn't answer your question definitively, but certain words considering. But the other point you can be aware of, we had a request from a particular client this week about a chat box and then I said, "Are you going to be available?" And the answer was no, well yeah, why no? Then why put a chat box in, if you're not going to be able to manage it, don't play with it. Hopefully that helps.

[20:52] Can build four order. And in that order, I think there is 47 points, it's really, very sexy. You know, from the audit, there is going to actually be a lot of things you can actually do yourself. Some of these elements are not hard to fix and we assess everything from design, and to security, and graphics ... you have a call to action. All the things to do with Google. So one of the catchphrases we got is, play the game with Google. And Google will play the game with you. And some of it's not hard, it's not rocket science.

[21:23] You know, quite often we've reviewed a website, we've engaged a client to the SEO. And we've checked the website, and on a mobile phone, and I want to contact them, and I can't. There's no floating call now button. It's like, are you ridiculous? I have to scroll down there? Like why would you do that? Even though it's not SEO related, it's outcomes related. SEO is about outcomes. It's not just about ranking well, it's about getting more calls, getting more inquiries. That's the outcome you want to achieve so we sort of had that holistic approach.

[21:59] And I've been talking forever, so I'll give you your turn now. But actually, just on copyrighting, that's one of the things that Rhonda does exceptionally well. There's a really high level of focus on SEO. I'll take a rest. You can say something now.

[22:11] So SEO, it's more ... not to put too much of the keywords into your copy, because a lot of people expect that if I'm going to write for them, they expect me to put a lot of keywords. But yeah, Google nowadays, they look more at whether you're more relevant, and that the copy's actually keeping people on your website. And what people want is something that is more natural and that speaks to them. So that when they're there, they get all the information they need and they know why they should buy from you.

[22:46] Yep, yep. Absolutely. Okay, I think we'll call it a wrap today. So if anybody wants an assessment on their website, send me a private message or add the website link in the comments or whatever it is you want to do. And I'll do an assessment and like I said, there's going to be some elements that you may well be able to do yourself. If I can help you to get better results, and make more money. You'll likely to come back to us and say, "Hey, Pete, you do the stuff that I can't do." And I love helping people to do the stuff that they can do. And Rhonda does exactly the same, you know? You heard before how Rhonda shared with her integrity about, "Hey I can't actually help you until you get your website done. Then I can help you get better results with the copy writing." I hope this helps, and we hope it makes a difference in your business. Have a great day and go and work smarter.

[23:36] Thank you so much.

[23:37] Have a good day.