Episode 002: 5 Rock Solid Reasons Why YOU Are Your Own Best Website Geek
Taking Back Joy Podcast • Episode #002:
5 Rock Solid Reasons Why YOU Are Your Own Best Website Geek
Is your current website a clunky, outdated headache that feels impossible to work with? (And you feel like it's costing your more than it's making.) Or do you feel like you're missing a lot of opportunities by having no website at all?
So many small business owners I've worked with have either had the awful cocktail of a website that is expensive + confusing + underwhelming + outdated, or simply no website at all because they've heard enough horror stories already. But I'm here to tell you that I've successfully put so many SBOs in the driver's seat of their own websites, and they've gone from technophobes to website wizards!
But best of all? They don't need me to make things happen.
In this episode, I'm going further than just the benefit of having a website. I'm talking about having a website that you have access to & control of. And most importantly, how that is actually a lot easier than you think.
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Show Notes: Links & resources mentioned in this episode
Episode Transcript
Download: Episode Synopsis (PDF) | Episode Content (PDF)
Synopsis
Meredith Paige 00:01
Are you running a small business in a regional or rural area? And you starting to wonder when this marketing thing is supposed to get fun?
Meredith Paige 00:00
What if I told you my small business bud, that I wanted you to take control of your website? Does that make you feel a little bit butt clenchy? Do you get the sweats? Do you groan? Do you look at me and go, "Meredith, you have no idea how much stuff I've got on right now, I can't be running my own website."
Meredith Paige 00:16
What if I told you that you could? My biggest philosophy when it comes to small business websites is that you should have access to and more importantly, control of your website, if you're running a small business, particularly in a regional and rural area. Because for most of the small businesses that I've dealt with, you simply don't have the budget to have your very own website designer in house. But you also can't afford to miss the massive opportunities that come from having a website you have access to when it comes to pivoting, to keep your business running, when things need to change quickly. Communicating updates and new products and services to your customers. Adding content to your website to reduce the admin load, which is basically short for reducing the number of questions you have to answer over and over again. And actually doing a bit more to bring leads into your business while you're off having dinner with your family, looking after yourself or actually working in your business.
Meredith Paige 01:11
Knowing that as a small business owner, you're wearing a lot of hats right now, I'm here to tell you that running your own website is actually gonna make your life easier, not harder. In this episode, I want to share with you why it is 100% possible for you to have access to and control of your website, as well as my five big fat reasons why having access to your website can have a massive benefit on your business.
Meredith Paige 01:34
You ready? Get all unclenched and let's get started.
Episode Content
Meredith Paige 00:00
If you're a small business owner, wearing all the hats, doing all the things and trying to get all the things up and running, what happens to your body when I say the word website? Is it a flinch? Is it a groan? Is it a "Please don't ask me that next question!".
Meredith Paige 00:19
Yeah, I've worked with a lot of small business owners over the years, and the word website has given a lot of them what I like to call the heebie jeebies. A lot of them don't have one because it seems like a massive, expensive exercise that's going to take months, cost a fortune, mean a lot of too'ing and fro'ing about jargon they don't understand. Or they might have already been through that process and are less than enchanted with the end result. It might be in a platform that they have no idea how to use, they have no idea how to update, they have to pay exorbitant fees to get phone numbers changed or a staff member added. The web designer might have gone MIA, and this is no shade other web designers. Sometimes I'm the MIA web designer, which is something I'll bring up later, in so far as what I've done to combat that. But because a lot of web designers are small teams, solopreneurs freelancers, we get overwhelmed, we get busy, sometimes we can't get back to you as quickly as a website needs updating or something needs changing.
Meredith Paige 01:23
Regardless of the work good intentions with a website designer you might be dealing with, suffice to say, you may end up with a website that is out of date, you can't use, just looking at the back end of it gives you a brain aneurysm. And so subsequently, it becomes more of a problem and less of an asset to your business. So if the word website makes you think of like headache, expenses, back and forth, months of work, what if instead, I told you that a website could mean clear communication with your customers, it could mean reduced admin load, it could also mean more effective marketing? And it could even mean marketing on autopilot. That's what websites mean to me. And that's what my websites mean to my customers.
Meredith Paige 02:10
If that all sounds like a much better version of the website scenario than what you're imagining, I want to kind of walk you through how all that happens. My big philosophy, when it comes to small business owners and websites is this: is super duper, highly important that you have access to and control of your website. You need to be able to access it, log into it, make changes and updates as and when necessary with ease (or with least with relative ease, it shouldn't require a degree to change a phone number) and you need to have control of it. It should be something that you own that you can do with as you please. And that you're not held ransom to any other service provider who is who ultimately has more say more control over what happens when you do. That is my big, big philosophy. And that's pretty much what I've built my entire business around is, as a small business owner, you should have access to and control of your website, it is your home base for customer communication, and it should belong to you on 100%. And it all should also be a living breathing component of your small business marketing. Now, before you sit there and go, "Well, that's all right for you. You're a web designer, you know how it works. This is kind of your thing, I have zero idea how websites work!"
Meredith Paige 03:29
I want to start with the fact that you can actually run your own website as a small business owner. That's right. I'm not just telling you to go out and get a design degree or website building degree or learn how to code. I'm telling you that I'm telling you that right now, as you are as a small business owner in whatever industry you're operating in, you have the capacity to run your own website. Because I've given so many of my small business clients the capacity to run their own websites, it's what I do, you might have done a bit of googling and your attempt to get this sorted yourself and come across things like Wix and Squarespace and whatnot. My weapon of choice, hands down, is Squarespace. It's a fantastic tool for me as a web designer and for you as a small business owner. And it's actually almost been built with the intention of being set up by designers and then handed over to the clients that end up using them. It's really facilitate that transition well, because it makes my life easier as the designer and the marketer, and it makes your life easy as the end-user.
Meredith Paige 04:29
These website building tools have really come about in response to small business owners needing to make small changes without needing to pay an exorbitant hourly rate when you know it's a five minute job. You have staff changes and if you've got your team promoted on your website, then it's super important to have that up-to-date. You might change your products and services. You might want to add products and services and at the time of this recording we are in the beautiful roller coaster that is COVID lockdowns here in New South Wales. You need to better communicate to your customers how they can continue to trade with you, or how they can pay online or book online. Or you might have added in an e-commerce facet to your business. Or you might have done a complete one-eighty and gone full e-commerce.
Meredith Paige 05:13
There are so many software developers out there who have built website design tools like Squarespace, because they understand that this is what the current market of business owners require. They need these tools to be simple, to be straightforward, and to be user friendly. And so they are. And what's so fantastic is that these tools do really align with my philosophy of you having access to and control of your website. So it's really kind of cool how my philosophy around this after working with small business owners for so many years, has coincided with the software making it possible.
Meredith Paige 05:48
Many years ago, my cousin who runs her own hairdressing salon in Western Sydney, shared with me this really amazing nugget of wisdom that has stuck with me ever since I was probably about 15, when we had the conversation. She said to me that you if you're going to run a business, the ideal scenario is that you set it up so if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, the business wouldn't notice. That's a really graphic, worst-case scenario but you can kind of see her point. And I'm so glad I had that conversation before I built a business, because it meant that as I became a small business owner, I became my own boss, I had the idea in the back of my head that that was the end goal, it was to, as much as possible, make your business independent of you. So that if you did get sick or heaven forbid, want to take a holiday, your business could still tick along without you, even for a short period of time.
Meredith Paige 06:39
My philosophy as a service provider of websites to small business owners is that that website should run whether I get hit by a bus, go on holiday or decide to have some time off; your website shouldn't be dependent on me in order to function, which in turn means your business isn't dependent on me in order to function. You have a website that works well. You have a sound knowledge of how to use it and how to update it, you have everything you need to keep ticking along and keep your business running. You are not held ransom to me as your website designer. Coming from a customer service background, which has had such a massive impact on how I do business, ever since then, website design for me, first and foremost, is a service. And it's in my client's best interest that they are autonomous of me. And if they come back to work with me, it should be because they want to work with me not because they have to work with me because I've held them to ransom over their website. So that's the way I like to approach websites and it's been really fantastic that as I've developed that philosophy in my business, the software developers of the world have come to the table and produced fantastic tools like Squarespace that allow me to do just that: Give small business owners the opportunity to have access to a control of their websites, regardless of whatever I'm doing that day.
Meredith Paige 07:58
Now that you can appreciate that it is in fact possible for you to run your own show, when it comes to small business website, why not outline my five key reasons why you should. Now that your capacity and your ability is not a barrier, I want to give you five really rock solid reasons why you should have access to and control of your website. So as we spoke about just before, it's the minor changes that are either urgent and/or regular, that you now need need to be able to do without resisting getting that done because your website is a headache. If you have a website right now, that is a pain in the butt to update, imagine, or put yourself back in the position where every time you need to make an update to that website, it goes straight to the bottom of the to do list because guess what, that website is just not fun. It is not a five minute job, you've got to go in there and constantly re educate yourself as to what all the buttons do. And so what should be a five minute sentence change becomes two hours of googling, trying to figure stuff out. So when you have a website that works for you, and it's user friendly, these minor changes are just that, minor changes. It's a case of 'Oh, we have a new email address, I'll just pop that on the website', or 'we've acquired a new staff member. We'll introduce them to our customers by adding their profile to the website'. And getting some really sick SEO benefits off the back of it because we're going to fill their bio with lots of juicy keywords. But that's a story for another day.
Meredith Paige 09:25
Minor changes that are urgent or regular means it's 100% essential you can get to your website. Not just in the context of the COVID shitstorm, but in general, ease of access to your website allows you to pivot when your industry changes, when your business needs to grow and expand. It allows you to pivot to things like online ordering, adding on an e-commerce facet to your business. You can do online bookings, you can announce click and collect. If there's certain things your customers need to do (mainly thinking about COVID restrictions) if there's certain things you need to your customers need to do. should expect when doing business with you next, that's a really good place to put it all. Your website really should be your one source of truth for your business and everything else social media, emails, print marketing should all springboard off it. So if you can keep that up to date customers know that they go to solution for finding out what's going on in your business is to head over to your website.
Meredith Paige 10:20
Third reason, is it can actually make your marketing more effective and it can allow you to expand the kind of marketing that you do, because you're not restricted by lack of infrastructure. What do I mean by this? You could kick off a podcast, it's what I've just done now! You could start a blog, you could have a video series, you could have galleries; you can have all these really cool features added to your website, and in turn added to your business that are not in-actionable because you don't have anywhere to put them (ie you can't stick them on your website). If jumping into your website is a breeze, you're only limited by your imagination as to how you market your business because everything can live on that platform.
Meredith Paige 10:59
Fourth reason is it can actually lighten the admin burden. This is especially critical for smaller businesses where you might only have a small team, it might be you and your partner, it could just be you. But realistically, the size of your team doesn't mean the size of the administrative workload is any less. So your website can actually do a fair amount of heavy lifting when it comes to pre-fault, pre qualifying customers before they purchase from you with things like contact forms. So you'll notice a lot of websites have like a 'Contact Us' form, we're just asked for like your name, email address, phone number and a brief message. When you have access to your website, you can actually customize those to add a few more pre-qualifying questions in like, 'what's your budget?', 'Where are you located?'; anything that might be critical in getting back to them with a more accurate quote, or moving them further down the pipeline without having to back and forth in emails and phone calls and things like that. You can use your website as a way to essentially filter out the tire kickers, and equip those that are more likely to do business with you with enough knowledge to move further down the pipeline toward your next real sale.
Meredith Paige 12:06
Another really good feature to add to your website that does this is a 'Frequently Asked Questions' section. This can just be a blog, or a text based page that's turned into an FAQ. And if you find yourself repeating yourself and answering the same questions, there's no reason why you can't just jump into your website, add that as a q&a. And then that knowledge lives there for potential customers as well. It may save you and your team, again, answering the same questions in the DM's, over the phone or in person.
Meredith Paige 12:34
You can also host resources, libraries, tools and templates or any kind of download that you feel might help your potential customers. And it's also a great way to grab email addresses off them as well for future marketing. This is actually a concept called lead magnets, which I'll cover in a separate episode, because they are a fantastic way to grow your email database of potential customers, while also offering some really great value for free that isn't going to send you broke because it could just be a checklist or a cheat sheet. Or it could be a workbook or a guide or a little instructional manual; something that's going to give them a quick win that isn't taking away anything from your business. But it still shows that you're an expert in your field, you know what you're doing, and you're willing to help.
Meredith Paige 13:15
So these are something else that can live on your website that can move people closer to doing business with you. It can help you build a database of potential customers to keep marketing to. And it can answer some of the repeatable questions that you might get that can save precious time for you and your team and allocating to the work that can't be automated, that can't be repeated.
Meredith Paige 13:34
And finally, closely related to lead magnets is the idea of sales funnels and automated marketing pipelines. Now this is one of the biggest reasons why I love giving people access to their own websites is because it opens you up to the opportunity of automated marketing, which means you can switch off while your marketing is still very much on. So let me give you an example. You might have a voucher sitting on your website. So say for example, you're a restaurant where it's a coffee and cake, it could be a free dessert with main meal purchase. Just a really good or well priced offer that's going to give people a really good reason to come into your premises and give your business a go. So you can have that sitting on your website. And then you might post about it on your social media platforms. And then you might boost that post to people beyond those that just already follow you, you might boost it to the people within your geographic area. And then you might run it for a week. So for that entire week, you could be for a very low spend, you could be pushing an ad to potential customers on Facebook and Instagram, letting them know that if they head over to your website, there's a voucher there for free dessert with main meal purchase. All they've got to do is enter their name and their email address and you automatically send them a copy straight to their inbox that they can come in and use up until a set date.
Meredith Paige 14:54
Now before you get scared that all that seems way too complicated to set up, it isn't and I will cover that In a different episode, but suffice to say it is very doable to have a post out there and Instagram, directing people back to your website where they can get a really high value offer delivered to their inbox. And all they've got to do is give you their name and email address. So in the course of the process, you might have actually given someone a reason to do business with you, whilst also capturing their name and their email address for future marketing opportunities and you might have even turned them into a regular. That whole process can be up and running on your website, while you're having dinner with your family, or coaching the soccer team. Or maybe just having an uninterrupted shower, for crying out loud! Like, if you've got access to your website, you can put these systems in place that push people towards your business and then just run on autopilot until you switch them off.
Meredith Paige 15:45
I can't wait to cover that in a separate episode because it's so powerful for people to start thinking about their websites as essentially an online salesperson and less like a billboard where unless you drove past it, you ain't seeing it. So you might now be in the headspace where you convinced that you really do need access to and control of your website. Or you either don't have one but now you realize you do really need one as there's a lot of money and opportunities being left on the table if you don't. Or you might now realize it's time to bite the bullet and tear down that crappy one, you spent way too much money that does zero things for your business since it gives you a big fat headache every time you log into it.
Meredith Paige 16:22
If you, and pardon the irony, head over to my website, you should check out the DIY website options there because I have a really fantastic coaching program that I've developed for small business owners just like you over the course of a couple of months you and I'll catch up once a week in a group coaching session via zoom. And we're going to build your website together, you have the opportunity to get my template where I've set up all the key features that most small businesses need, where you can keep what you need, delete what you want, and then tweak it to suit your business. I'll teach you everything you need to know getting that website up and running when it comes to writing the text, selecting images, tweaking the design, and making sure it really works for your business. And each week, you'll also be given a series of training videos that allow you to walk yourself through the process, as well as catch up with me regularly throughout the course for tailored feedback and advice.
Meredith Paige 17:15
I also have a number of payment options available too, because I realized that a lot of people are in business right now with very different budgets. So I want to make sure I'm giving every businesses, small and very small, the opportunity to have this tool within their business because I feel like it can have such a profound impact on your business. I want to make sure that no small business owner misses out on the massive benefits that can come from having your own website.
Meredith Paige 17:41
So there are, like I said, a few different options available depending on your budget. And also, head to my website to check out the DIY website options and see which one works best for you. I'm really passionate about this program that I've developed. I feel like it answers so many questions and meet so many needs that I've seen over and over again over the years as small business owners realizing that their website is too important to have sitting outside their business, but not knowing where to start to bring it into their business.
Meredith Paige 18:08
If you have any question about the program, please feel free to shoot me an email at hello@meredithpaige.me . I can't wait to see you in the program! But otherwise, thank you so much for letting me into your ears for the 20-odd minutes that I have been. And I can't wait to see you, figuratively speaking, next week!