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Web Basics (with Guest Joe Fletcher)

Lesson 6 from: Building Your Brand

Porter Gale

Web Basics (with Guest Joe Fletcher)

Lesson 6 from: Building Your Brand

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Lesson Info

6. Web Basics (with Guest Joe Fletcher)

Lesson Info

Web Basics (with Guest Joe Fletcher)

and I am so lucky to have Joe Fletcher with us as our special guest. And Joe is not only a good friend, but he does my website, so it was very nice to have him here. In fact, he was busy working on my website last night at around 11. PM So I'm so glad you made it on time. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Well, welcome. I want to talk first a little bit about some of the resource is and one of the things that I want to mention that in the book, I actually had all of the experts help me on the resource is and Joe, uh, actually, these are just a couple of them that we put in the front. But in the book, there are about ah 100. Resource is Joe gave me the most exhaustive list of resource is that I've ever had. So thank you for that. It must have taken hours to put that together. No problem, Actually. Try to keep it brief. So, uh, it was great. So in the book, it's everything from where to get domain names, open source web sites, email marketing s seo analysis and monitoring WordPress themes, payment and ...

credit card processing, subscription billing, online forms Pretty much anything that you would need to run. A website project collaboration, tools, accounting and invoicing tools. All in the book. Too many to list. But I did put a couple of them here. Go, Daddy. Google APS, WordPress hub. Spot mail. Chimp male chickens. What? What I use? Ah, Google analytics and freelancer dot com. Tons and tons of resource is. And again, we wanted to give you these because having these tools at your fingertips and not starting from scratch can really save money and save time, especially in the web space. So, um, thank you for that huge, huge list. All right, so you're the founder of Merchant Guru. Before we start, could you just tell me a little bit about the companies that you're working with and some of your clients? Sure. So, basically, um, a lot of my clients are small and medium sized businesses who are just getting started and looking to build a brand. Um, some of them are established. Companies were looking to rebuild their brand. And so, you know, I really try to take a look at what are their objectives in terms of getting their name out there. What are they trying to sell and what is the most appropriate solution for them in terms of building a website and maintaining it going forward? So some of the companies have worked with, including Virgin Mobile Gobstopper, Zang Zing, Porter Gale. Um uh, e commerce eyes like VW in snow, sweet riot, the cells chocolate and a few others. Yeah, great. Well, one thing they think is probably very evident is that because you're a small business owner yourself, you also understand the needs of a small business and what it's like to juggle things, keep things organized. Scalability. So that's one thing that I've enjoyed is that you can really relate to me too. You've helped me prioritize with my website. And what should we do first? What should we do? Second? So thank you for that. What we're going to talk about today, we're gonna go through a lot of topics. We're going to start talking about website trends for some of the things that are happening in design and trends. Then we'll go through and we'll talk about if you should do it yourself or if you should hire someone how to look at kind of priorities and objectives and some website functionality. After Joe, we're gonna have a guest where we're gonna be talking about email. So we're also gonna be kind of leading into that. And how to use your website is a way to capture data, so we'll just start and take it away. All right? So you gave me a couple of myths that you think that there are some miss out there that people say, Let's talk about this. So I mean, people's understanding of what it takes to build a website is across the board from Hey, I can get something up quick. I see people do it all the time. And, you know, I could hire my nephew. He knows the web. He's on Twitter all the time. He can build my website, Uh um, to you know, to other companies who really do understand that it's really kind of ah project as you're building your business and there's a lot of parts to it, and you need to hire someone who I can understand. The different parts is reliable in terms of, you know, building the different aspects and So if I know that most startups, the most companies want to build a website, you know, in a lean fashion. So got that. But at the same time, you don't want to skimp and you don't want to go too fast and think that it's too easy to build a website. It's something that you do need to think out, and you need to hire someone reliable that can that can really handle those things and has the experience. So So you know when you're getting started, don't think that there is really a quick way to do it. I know there's a lot of people out there say, Hey, I can hire someone from the Philippines or India and get it done for 12 bucks an hour and it will be great also have a lot of money, but the problem is, there is that you know you're gonna have You're not gonna have the service, and your it's gonna have. You're gonna have a hard time maintaining that site down the road, and you're probably not gonna get the quality that you really want to hang your hat on at the end of the day. Well, it's such a forward facing aspect of your brand. So you want to make sure that you do it well. And I mean, one thing that I've learned over the years is simple can be better. And, like, don't over complicate things. And so if people don't have the money, maybe it's even better just to put up a landing page. You know, under construction or coming soon or something simple, rather than have things that are breaking or inefficient. Would you agree with that? Well, I would definitely think you can put up a landing page. Um, but then you're also gonna need to find someone to do that as well. Um, and then you you want avoid getting comfortable just having that landing page up there for too long, If that's all it is, really. But But I would say that you if you're gonna start off on the web, you're eventually going to need to have a plan for building your website outside. Well, let's talk about that. All right. So, trends. This is something that you and I have been talking about what is going on with Web design because it changes all the time in the past. People used to just take the kind of above the fold kind of the monitor size. But now we've got multiple devices people are starting to design so that things translate more to mobile. Tell me about some of the trends that you're seeing. Absolutely so one thing that a lot of times when prospects come to me, you know, and I want a website and they start, they start describing what they want to see. What they're describing is the Web design that they've seen over the last five years. And so, yeah, that would have been new over the last five years or last few years. But you you want something that's going to be new and and on the cutting edge. And so a lot of ways you may want to get rid of your pre existing um, ideas of what Web sites look like. Where things are going today are exactly right that it used to be that you could build a website. Everyone screen was about this big, you know, for lack of a better analogy. But now people have huge screens are like this big or their tiny like they're this big or this big and the devices air coming out, you know, every month that there's new sizes and things like that. So what do you dio? You can't just design, you know, one size fits all anymore. So what is The trend now is something called responsive Design, which is you build a website that's fluid that will adjust to whatever screen size you're looking at, so you don't need to know what devices if it's on an IPad or an android or a huge 27 inch IMac monitor. Do you build it that it's flexible and adjust so that if you're looking at an I Mac, you're going to see a nice, huge screen? It's really gonna capture. You know, somebody who's using an I Mac, and it's It's a very large screen. You can get the benefit of all all that content. But if you're on the road and you're, um, you're on your IPhone, you need something that's going to be that's gonna just to that. So if you're looking to build a website today, definitely think about getting in something that's called a mobile, responsive design. So related to that is is another thing that we're talking about where we used to look at what's above the fold and they use. There is this myth that everything had to be above the full. All the key things had to be above the full. But they actually did a study, and they found that Web users knew how to use the scroll button that they actually know how to scroll. They know how to scroll, and they do scroll. So the key thing to think about the full these days is really is you want to make sure that you build the right initial impression above the fall and above the fold is where when you load up a Web page, what's the first really the first section that you see you need to build. You need to have a good impression there, and you probably want to have your call, the action and some of the very, very key points there. But beyond that, I don't think you need to worry too much about what's about the folding, what's not, because what you want to do is you have to think about the fact that you have ah, what pages are infinite, but they can be infinite, and you can scroll all the way down. So how, as you're scrolling down the website, how are you building the story? How are you presenting? You know, little bite size pieces of information that are very easy to recognize and understand. And as you're scrolling down, you're learning more and more about you know what? Your you know, what the company's about or whatever you want to get across. And so that's a new trend which is basically long content if you if if you have ah, little if you have some content, you're like others. I have so much content and I want to get it all on there. Ah, but I don't want to put it on this page. One thing you do is you can put it into a slider or something like that. So if a user is more interested in that module, that module that slides through our fades in and fades out. And so if a user is interested, they can drill in at that point. And what's nice about this is that these two things go well together because, as your you know, if you're reading on a mobile device, you know you're kind of scrolling down on your mobile device and think about that. That's a vertical flow. So think about as you're building your story and telling your story to your audience. How does that's kind of, you know, flow through down through your page? Great. All right, I love these Are great tips, especially for a magazine development. Yeah, My question is, since I have a digital magazine and what I'm finding as I have the blawg that were, you know, constantly keeping going to, you know, get people interested in the magazine putting it on the front page, It just it doesn't it doesn't look right when I put it on there. So we have the link right at the top that says go to this page. Will people think when I say Digital magazine that I'm talking about a block because blog's like to call themselves magazines? And so they think when they're going to our page, that they're actually going Teoh the magazine, and they're not okay, So they're going to Are you Are you wondering how to get your blawg across on your digital magazine? What storefront s? So this is an opportunity potentially one design option is to do this vertical flow, whereas where you come onto your website, you're obviously getting all the pictures of fashion pictures and things like that, you know, right above the fold. And then, as they're coming down through what you we've in a block post in the you know or something, something along those lines. Or you could even have a section where it's not just one block post, but you could have a slider where you have one block post and then that slides away and they have another one. So that's and that's visually interactive. So as somebody's coming through, they're going to see your block posts, especially cause they're moving. And, as you know, some scrolling down your Web page, they're going to come across it, so that's an opportunity. That's just one design possibility. Okay, so you're also saying bigger is better. Larger fonts. Is that because we've got an aging population larger on? So what's going on? That's not because of it, but that that helps, especially with an aging population. You know, they think about any time to go to a Web page you see in the Let me put my glasses on first, you know why skimp on the front side? You know, Let's let's let's bump it up. And it's so much easier to read. And it also doesn't other thing is that because now that you're fonts are getting bigger, you have less space for all that content and makes you become more so. Think about your content and so you know you're So now you're also forcing yourself to say, How can I get this across in a very short bite size piece information thing about Twitter? Twitter's 140 characters in a lot of times ice. Okay, if I'm going to describe something on my Web page, how gonna do that in 140 characters? Yeah, especially because people don't have a lot of time to just really dig into your website. They want the bite size information headlines about what you're about. That's been a great theme. Edit at it at it, keep things concise and clear and simple. Um, some other things you're saying rich typography, more kind of animation, things like that. So you're gonna see a lot more of this in websites that you're going to Is that in the past, there was something Winona's Web safe bonds. So you you only we're really seeing Ariel and times, and Roman and Georgia like you really only saw a few funds. Now there's some technologies out there that really becoming standard, called Google fonts or Adobe Type kit, where there are just so many really great looking funds. So you're gonna start seeing some, Really? Not only is the content going to be looking a little bit better, but there's gonna be you're gonna see a lot large a lot larger headlines with really fancy fonts and things like that. You see that coming down the road? Html five, CSS three and J Query These air just technology buzzwords to you, Maybe. But ah, that's really where the Web is going and what what you should take away from that is that there's a new way of really presenting kind of rich websites with a lot of interactivity that's faster to load in. Your browser used to see a lot of the stuff with flash websites, but flashes pretty much on its way out. And that's really being replaced with a technology called J Query, which is really providing a lot of animation and and allowing websites to be interactive. When you come onto a Web page, you're gonna start to see, um, or kind of like gliding, fading in kind of kind of feel where, um, it's just kind of smooth experience. And that's what J. Curry help you with. It kind of reminds me that, you know, because of IPads, and we're getting used to swiping in capacitive touchscreens that everything is kind of flowing in that way where he helps with that. So, for example, you know as your like swiping your getting used to get to doing that, you can do that also on. So if you have a slider, Ajay Query powers that, and it can also power the fact when you bring it up on your mobile phone, you can do You can just expect to do that. So it's it's compatible both desktops and mobile phones. All right, Okay, so when you started working with me, obviously you started asked me what my goals were, what my budget was in my budget with small, and I think a lot of you can probably relate to that. We try to do things as inexpensively as possible. And then also, you know, how am I gonna do it now? For me? I was realistic. And I recognize that as a mom and all these things going on that I did not want to go in and start doing my own blogged posts and loading things. And so we talked about that. How are we gonna maintain things, how we're gonna update things? But is this something that people overlook like the maintenance and kind of time needed? Absolutely A lot of people, when they think about a website, really thinking I need a website that they think the first up I need a website. But they're nothing, and beyond that, once they build it. So who is going to update it both from a content standpoint and a technology up updates standpoint. So once you build it, who's going to do the block post? You know who's gonna do that? Twitter and the tweets and the Facebook post on all these kinds of things. And then also what happens when there's a new technology that comes out just a year or two ago? Countries wasn't around. Now for certain sites, you've gotta have Pinterest on your website. So who's gonna add that onto your sights? You got to think about that, and who knows what the pictures of tomorrow is gonna be. So, um so as you're building your website, you want to think about okay, what's my budget today? To build what I know I need now. And I need to set some money aside because some someone, if I'm not gonna do the block post myself or I'm not gonna add the new products as they come in, um and so on, so forth and who's gonna do it right? And most of the technologies and the websites that I build, I try to set it up so that the end user Ken, do that. We're going to get there with me. I'm gonna learn how to do it so soon. I'm going to do that. But, you know, everybody thinks they're gonna dio most people. Really? It's still a little bit of a challenge for them. And so this is something where they want to outsource and have somebody else do the block posting those kinds of things for them. Great. So step one, really figuring out the main purpose and I love kind of like prioritizing. And so you've talked to me about, you know, Is it really about marketing? Is it e commerce, customer service, community building that you really need to prioritize and understand what you're trying to accomplish? And then I also I've been telling everyone email, email, email. I may be over email, but that's just my personal belief. But for me, that is, ah, relationship building and keeping things connected and strong. So tell me about these four buckets. So, basically, you know, this is really overall you're probably gonna be in one or two of these buckets. You might be in all four, but most companies, especially starting out startups, are building their brand there. Either they either need a marketing site or they need to order the e commerce site. They're going to sell something. Maybe both. If you're gonna be doing a marketing, scientists say you are a plumber and you wanna build your plumbing business. So there you're basically you're not selling, you know, toilets online. You're just gonna be selling your services. So what you want to do is capture leads and build your awareness. So that's kind of a marketing site. Those sites are going to be a little bit more simple toe build because the technology needed toe. You know, you're not selling things online and so on so forth. If you're an e commerce site, you're gonna sell something online. There's a key question there you want to ask. Are you gonna be selling one or two products? You know, maybe 10 where you're selling 100 510,000 products. That choice really will dictate, like some of the technologies that you're going to use some of that designed to and your designs. If you're selling one product, then you want to design your site about that one product. If you're selling 20 products when you're like How do I really get across these 20 products focused on the key ones I really want to push, but then make it easy to get to all the other ones that I'm selling that aren't going to be on the front page and that kind of thing, right? These are some things that I think, Jeff, I know you've been talking about having a storefront are going to be critical for you to figure out your E commerce strategy. So determining the budget. What are we talking about? We're talking about 3000. 5000? 10,000? Like, can you give us some numbers or slide on that? Do we have it in there? Yeah, but so thereby. Um, so really a key choice. Um, so many opportunities are options for you in terms of building a website. You can do it yourself, and or you can hire somebody. Um, but actually, so and whether you're gonna do it yourself, there are some hosted solutions that are really great these days. It used to be I was totally against any kind of hostess solution because, ah, the technology wasn't good. The options weren't you'd be boxed in so and so forth. But there are a few new, uh, solutions out there that I am starting to really say. This is I'm pushing some of my clients in this direction because they're so easy to use. They bring in so many features, they update the security and the technology on a regular basis. An example of one of those. Okay, so square space is just great. Uh, I, uh my sister has a website, and she wasn't where press that I built five years ago and that she needed new website and I said, Do squarespace and I it it was like within half an hour, like God got her signed up, got her web pages on their different images. So on so forth, it was so easy. It was a click. And, you know, clicking. You know, I could do it. Uh, no. You're pushing. I think you could, um And then they're Shopify Ah. Which is sort of like the e commerce version of squarespace. Although I step back with squarespace in the last month or two introduced E commerce option now for $30 a month. So I used to recommend if you just need a regular website marketing and so on, so forth. Maybe a blogger. Goa squarespace. If you need an online store ago a Shopify, because Shopify is again, it's it's hosted. It's easy to use. It got great looking templates. Both these services dio um squarespace. I believe all there Web Web designs are already mobile optimized. So all that stuff I was talking about is already built into already. So it's you get so much from these from these guys that this is really a top recommendation, and Shopify is kind of a leading e commerce hosted solution that there's an ecosystem out there. So let's say you sign up with Shopify. You want to sell your 20 products? Um, and you need, say, a male chimp integration. Well, there's a male chimp integration for that. There's a plug in or an app for that that you can, you know, it's kind of an add on so you don't you're not gonna get really tied into just Shopify eyes limited set of features. Just, I think everyone knows that mail chimp is email. But just to clarify, that's what mail chimp is. Yeah, Mill Trip is a newsletter marketing software, which is definitely recommend. That's another easy to use solution free up to 500 500 or more. Now I can't remember subscribers. It's 2000. You see $500. 2000. It's free, Um, and then, like the first tier is like $15 a month. So once you ready to, you know, bump up, it's just $15 a month. It's easy to use, and they handle all the issues with, um, with kind of limiting getting caught in spam and how to get signed. How to sign up subscription forms and things like that and mail chimp because it's one of the leading services out there integrates with all these other services. Unit. One thing I just have to say about male chimp because I do use them. Recently I finished an email campaign and I got a new email from them saying, Congratulations, you get our free T shirt and they sent me this great like chimp T shirt. So that's just another, like branding and relationship things. So, yes, my daughter is sleeping in a male chimps. But you know, those little things make a difference with service. Okay, so, um, other related expenses. I think that, you know, there are all those things that you don't think about, and that's for the small business owner, the ones that could be headaches if you're not planning ahead. This is the stuff that people don't think about too much in anything about credit card processing. But you know, there's so much that goes into building a website, and these think about all these things that you're gonna have to budget for if you really want Teoh have a fully functioning, well designed website. Now, if you're gonna build your own website with an open source software like we're press or magenta for e commerce sites, uh, you're gonna have to do a lot of the integration with these kinds of things yourself. You're going to get SSL certificates yourself instead of the credit card processing all these things with those hosted solutions like Squarespace and Shopify, they build in all those things. So really, the benefit of going with the hostess solution is sort of that, you know, you're gonna get a lot of these features built in. It's kind of easy, but then you are somewhat limited by whatever features squarespace and shop of by are going to be able to provide you and your customization options are gonna be somewhat limited. Whereas we build it yourself with WordPress of a gentle or some kind of open source software, there is no limitation. You can customize, you know, to the sky's the limit as long as you have the budget. But also then you're going to need to integrate your own credit card processing. Ah, so maybe use something like authorized dot net or Braintree or striper we pay, you're going to offer. You need to integrate that in, and then there's a monthly fee for that. There may be a monthly fee, and then there's per transaction costs and things like that, then same thing with us. A self certificates you need to, usually by those on an annual basis. That could be anywhere between 105 $100 to, say, hosting anywhere between $5 if you're really on cheap hosting. But let's say, um, or $20 if you know, for a smaller website up to 102 $100 a month, easily for hosting. So so these are some of the things that you need to think about and start to budget for even before you start to build your site and talk to your Web developer about how you may get those things settle and I see you've given us resource is at your site. So at merchant group dot com, backslash resource is you've got a lot of resource is for us to look at for free. Yeah, and what I've tried to do here is really, uh, pick the top. Let's say two or three options for each one of these different categories, and I'll try to keep this updated because that list looks very different than it did a year ago. Because technology keeps changing, new options come up in, new recommendations come out. So Okay, so we've talked a little bit. Who's gonna build it yourself? A freelancer and agency. You also talking about some crowdsourcing options? You want to just tell us a little bit about that? I've heard about great success with 99 designs for crowd sourcing, website pages and all sorts of things. Yeah, so you know, if you're going to build your website, these are some of your options that you're gonna be looking at. Um, some of these new marketplaces are coming up. You can go online and really just say, here's what I need Ah, set your budget and then just get bids back on it. And then you can evaluate the different babes. You can read the reviews and so you can really start to say Okay, this is how you can find people to do your website, Um, 99 designs a little bit is like you said, you do a set price, and then you just let it out there and different designers will come up with, you know, different designs for you, and then you get to look at all of them and then choose which one you want. Then when you're done, there's an option toe. Actually, have somebody code that design into a fully functioning where press website or just a regular website for you. Now, these are great options. But take it with a grain of salt because if you're gonna be going this route, you're gonna be the project manager. You're going to be managing those people. You're gonna be the one having to say yea or nay and then putting all the different pieces together. And in theory, this isn't This is an easy way to go. But even myself, when I do some of these options having a technical background and having the experience of knowing what I need and what not there still challenges when you run into maybe a freelancer who doesn't perform or, uh, maybe the design looked great, but the code behind it wasn't really strong, and you don't know that until you get it. So there are some pitfalls involved. And so this is if you're doing a website on a budget. These are, you know, those are some of those options I highly recommend. Just know that you're gonna have to manage it yourself and know that you might need to hire someone to help you out. When things for, you know, who we're gonna need When that happens, we're gonna need my Ayalon Online tech guys come to the rescue that we're gonna need Dire. Okay, So who will manage? I think we've covered this a little bit. Um, design options starting from scratch or extending an existing brand image. I love this because what we've been talking about before you got here was brand identity kind of mood boards style guides. When clients come to you, I would imagine that you gonna prefer them to say these air the look and feel. This is what I want to communicate. Are they coming to you with a creative brief or how do we make sure that the website actually represents the kind of the essence of the company? Well, that's a great question. And there's and and I get all kinds I get where people ask me to do all of that. I get where people say, Here's why wear frame already with all the different, you know, things I want to have in it. So it's across the board with what I get. Um, what I think is key here is so if you if you already have, like some graphics or wire frames or things like that, then you need to find a Web designer or a Web developer who's gonna work with that and kind of bring that to life and you'll want to take a look and see. Look at their portfolio, look at their past work and see how they've done that with other other companies. Another option, if you if you're again on a budget. Another great way to start off is to not have any preconceived options, and this might go against everything you say branding wise. But there are a lot of great templates out there today, and even, and so there's and I've got a list of them on my site. But if you could go through, um, score space Shopify some of these WordPress themes and things like that, and even if if anything, do that to get some inspiration for the kind of website in the feature, that feeling and things like that. And then let's say you find one that says Yes, that's exactly what I want or that's very close to what I want. Well, you may be able to buy that template or that theme and have that installed and with very little work, get up and running with that design. So instead of starting from scratch, which, if you have the budget and things like they say, you know, start from scratch, I want a wire frame. I want the graphics I want, um, you know, the whole the whole nine yards, a whole branding consultation. Then you can do that. But if you want to do something on a budget, look a template first. See if it looks good. If you have a logo already, see it doesn't match with my logo. Do I just need to change the colors and things like that? And it's It's one way you could get up and running. Uh, there's some great templates out there, really, right ones out there try to avoid. There's a lot of free ones out there. Tried toe. Avoid the temptation to find a free one Just because I think the premium ones that cost money are like 100 box of max. So you know it's something like you don't don't go towards free just because it's Henry. Go first on this premium because it's probably higher quality. You get some support behind it as well. Okay, good. So content features all sorts of things. What I love here the most, so is keep it simple at the bottom. Um, anything that you want to highlight here on lead, gen or videos. What do you think we should really be focusing on? So this really is dictated by what you're with? The goal of your website is because, um, so you can have a website that has all of these things. And let's say you've envisioned all these things on your website, and that might be great if you do it well, you know, you know that's awesome. But your especially if you're just getting started, you really want to say what is the goal of my website? If it's to capture the email, then maybe try to avoid, um, too much social media because people may get distracted with social media or videos or something, something like that. So if you if you just want to capture their email and its purest form could have a Web, Pages says, Give me your email and nothing else. Obviously, you need more than that. So you're saying what you So you step back and say, What do I need to do to convince them to give you my email and not much more? Because otherwise you're gonna distract them on something else. And so really, you know, keep it simple, because when you're getting started, I hear a lot of things. I want video. I want a community. I wanna blogging. I want all these kinds of things and that might might be great. But just remember, not only does that cost money, it also takes time, But somebody has to maintain all that stuff. And if you build a say, ah community section on your website Well, that's great. But what if nobody comes? Well, okay, now you have spent time building that community, so just really keep it as simple as possible, right? And good. Um, search engine 101 I love kind of this whole idea about search engine optimization. There is a question, though, from Jeffs. I'm gonna let you jump in. Probably got about 100 questions. But I'll just say this that, you know, my company's been around for 3.5 years and I'm 100% embarrassed to say that, um, we don't have a fully functional website yet. I mean, you were basically living on Facebook. We've got a splash page that links to that, and part of it is just sort of this paralysis by analysis. And look at this and then a whack A mole pops up and you hit that one, and this pops up and it's like, you don't you don't move it and do anything. Fortunately, it seems like there is some things like responsive design that you talked about that kind of now putting people like us and motions saying, Okay, there's the time is now to leap. One of the questions that I have specifically is that we've got two masters that were serving. We have a B two B. I have a fashion T shirt company. And so right now we've got ah, be to be played, what we're doing fashion T shirts for cool brands that get it in the world. And then we're about to launch or we want to launch. Um Ah. A, um B two c play. Which would be, um, with multiple categories of where somebody is gonna go by their own fashion T shirts. Um, ID like because one there's cross polity between the two. I would like to try to have those two things beyond one site, but is that a good idea versus um, or is that you go to a splash page and then there's 22 links or two, you know, to ah, branches, right? So I think you should consolidate those two from a maintenance standpoint, especially with e commerce, there's there's so many things that you would need to maintain to do any kind of like, dual side or something like that. So, you know, one of the open source software is that I specialize in is called Magenta, and one of the great things about that is that it has the ability to have multiple stores with one website, one back back in admin and and it also you can have a B two B section where for example, your BTB clients could log in and as soon as they log in, the prices that they see are all the what the wholesale prices and then you. When consumers go to their site, they see that you know, the retail price. Um and so that's so definitely one thing I would say is just have one website and one, you know, one unified back end, and then have that all that product information can go out to different stores based on your segment. In terms of the design on how to do that, it's a bit tricky. I would my my feeling would be that you lead with the consumer side because even business to business companies, they know that you're a consumer brand. They just know that like you don't have to tell them that and so lead with the consumer side, especially because, um, that really kind of builds up their brand and everything that which only even real forces it with your B two B clients. So lead with that and then you know where you put it may be. A lot of my clients will have it at in the footer, um, wholesaler law again or something like that. And then they go off and and then as a log in everything they're seeing ah, you know, is the wholesale prices. But But they get they can either have the same exact website experience. Or you can have a customized experience to them if you really need the only present different things to them. But the great thing is that it's all one code base, and you can say all right as I'm building a new feature, a new product or something like that. Okay, I wanted to go out to both or I just wanted to go to the consumer side. I just want to go. I have a special product just for, uh, just for my wholesalers. Great. You know, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring you through the rest of the content, and then we're going to questions at the end because there's a couple of great slides and want to get to. So the search engine optimization. We will talk about this later on this afternoon to but really, really important because Google rankings, when people are looking for you, you want you to your website to be up on the Google search. Just give us a top blind. Yeah, I'm just going to be a top line because anything beyond what I can say here, you're gonna need to hire a search engine marketing expert because there's so much in it. If you really want to get phone and Google, you're probably gonna have to hire an expert. But here are some of the things that you need to know if you especially if you're doing it yourself. We're just from a basic level. Is that first of all, don't feel like there's something you can do that's gonna get you to the top. There's no fooling Google. There's no like, Well, if I phrase my keepers a certain way, you know that's gonna do it. Just just forget about it when you need to think about MAWR is that that content is king? Do you have good content? Do you have a site that you would want to go to on the topic that you're going to be searching for? So think about the great content, Um, and that concludes images and videos and things like that. But to get found in Google on the regular Google Search page. You also want to have text content. So if you have a video, also think about. Can you describe what's in the video? Use the key words about the video and things like that. Um And then so as you're writing your content, just think you know for each page. Think about it as OK. Here's a page. If somebody would have come to my page from Google searching for a certain thing, what would that be? And have so pick one key phrase and then focus on that? You write about that key phrase, make sure that that key phrase is on in the content, maybe about two or three times. Don't overdo it. Don't stuff it, um, and then make sure that you put you that key bird in the U Earl. So if your keyword phrases keyword Richie, where l make that the Earl of your Web page also make it the title of your Web page, Um, then on other pages on your site link to that page on your site with that keyword phrase. So now you can start to see that you're reinforcing that key word over and over again. that it's in the URL it's in. The title is in the content and other pages on your site. Link there. And if you can obviously get other people to Blawg, tweet or link back to that page, ideally with that keyword phrase. But even if you're just looking back to that page, Google takes that as a vote, as that page is important because people are linking there. So that's in a nutshell. What you can do as someone producing your own content, right? So for reference, I think about Michelle with your yoga Seattle Yoga Resource site. Those phrases Seattle Yoga resource Important to have peppered throughout the site so that you're gonna come up the list. And let's say, for example, that you have a page is all about mats. Um, don't make the earl slash mats make it yoga mats or or something along those lines, because what you know, people are going to Google and typing and mats, and they're never gonna find your. But let's say you have a very special Matt U um Natural yoga mat natural yoga mat. That'd be great, you earl, Um, and if you do it, a Web page with some of these techniques, there's a good chance that you might be the only person optimizing for the phrase natural yoga mats. So a new business idea for your natural yoga mats. Okay, so a couple other things and some of this might get a little bit complex, But so let's hear the top line for the not the super users. So I'm going to get into this because what you what you should dio is take this list to your Web master or your Web developer and say, I know I'm gonna build a great looking website behind the scenes. I want you to make sure that it does these things for most of the only thing that most people are going to really notice our fast page loads, Um and that is pretty much it. So you know you need your website toe load fast because Google does prefer websites that low fat. So that's one thing that you can visually see behind that. There's all these are things. Make sure that your one master tackles these points. Okay, um, social media, we are going to do a whole module on social media, but I did think it was important just to talk about how it integrates with your website, because again, using Michelle is an example. You're gonna be putting up a lot of content, and we want to make sure those articles and blog's are retweeted and that we're getting as much exposure as possible. So give us a little bit of information on what you have here for the options. Yeah, exactly. So a lot of prospects will say, Well, I need Twitter on my website. Well, what does that mean? Because there's so many ways of doing that. You could embed your tweets, which is a great way to get content on your site. That's always refreshing. You can do a tweet this so that it's easy. Ah, Teoh, basically share your Web page. You also want to have them follow you so you can have a icon that will take you to your Twitter page. Or even better yet, Twitter has followed badges that you can click and follow just by clicking that button, Um, and so what? But you don't want to overdo it, of course, because there's so many options you want to say, OK, I for sure you want to think about how and every webpage that you have is it Share a bowl. And so how do you want to do that? You want to put the Facebook like, um, on their tweet? This if you have pictures, especially for the magazines, any site with a lot of pictures. You wanna have Pinterest on there because that's a great way And products. This is a huge social commerce trend right now that if you're if you have product images, get those on the Pinterest in that drives traffic backed your website big time, so just think about how you want to add. It's not just about putting a Twitter badge on your on your page. There's so many different ways that you need to think about embedding social media, and I want to talk about the Facebook connect one just for a second and one example of that. There is a company which a lot of you are probably familiar with. Airbnb, where originally they had to do the Facebook connect because they felt like it was a faster way for people to sign up for the service and so you didn't have to type in your name it would just use all of your data. But now what they've actually done if they've integrated that information into their booking process. So what they do is they rent rooms out of people's private homes, but they've taken the social graph. So let's say I was renting a room and you were trying to rent it from me or my renter. If you are for both signing in through Facebook connect, then at a certain point you might be able to see the shared social graph between Joe and myself. So if I know that Joe wants to rent my room and we have 20 common connections, that's gonna make me more comfortable. So again, this is just another sign of where technology's going that people social graphs, air starting to be incorporated into the e commerce platform. So the same thing where at some point Dan or or Jeff with your business is it may be that somebody will log into your site and they'll be like, Oh, well, Dan has already given services to 11 people that I know, and they're seeing that not just by the likes on Facebook. They're seeing it because they've logged in and you're sharing your social graph So futuristic thinking, but really important to see where trends are going. Absolutely. Okay, What's your call to action? I love this because again, it's just like a clear, simple thing. And, you know, for me on my website, you know, because I'm all about the email right now. We did redesign mine to get an email, and we had a specific offer that people could get a free e book and kind of a brochure. But tell me a little bit more about what call to actions could be. Yeah. So, um so it when you So when you go to a web page, what do you do when you have your customers go to your web page? What you really want to dio Do you want them to buy the product? Do you want them to subscribe? You want them to get their email? Um, and basically, it's something called a call to action. You have to ask people to do what you want them to do. You can't just assume that I've got a great website. They'll figure it out that they need to buy the product or something like that. you really wanna have potentially a headline that says by now or subscribe for and then provide incentives for, like, a free P if you got to be, you gotta you gotta be direct yet and it has to be big fonts. It has to be clear that you can't be too gimmicky, but make sure that when you goto that your website that you know that you have a clear goal for what you want your visitors to do on that webpage. Well, it looks like you've given us some ideas here, too. If you could go through those. Exactly. And there's another way of calling cola action, which would be most wanted. Action, because there are You may have one. You may have Ah, primary. And then you may have a secondary action. So if they don't buy your product, maybe the secondary action is to at least sign up or something along those lines. Um, and you know, it's These are some of the things you basically have one page to convince somebody to do what you want them to do, or they're gonna leave. So what do you need to put on that page and sent him something free. Ah, trial subscription. Sign up for the newsletter. If it's in terms of an e commerce site and you want somebody to buy, make that check outflow as easy and intuitive as possible. You know it's a few clicks is possible. Ask for his little information as possible. Those kinds of things, um, testimony, testimonials. So in terms of the selling process, you always need to be thinking about what is your prospects? Um, you know, you know, what are some of the objections? What what may they be? Well, one thing would be credibility. So how do you overcome credibility show testimonials? Um, that's a That's a key thing to have on any webpage and fresh design, I would say in terms of design. You know, I think if you have an outdated design, there's a good chance people may leave because they're like, Well, this is old and outdated. So I I'm gonna assume that it's not up to date. It's not something I want to show, you know, share my information with, so make sure your design is fresh and that just really helps reinforce. Hey, this is new. It's happening and I'm going to be a part of it. You know one thing that it is a trend, and I think that we talked about it a little bit with might, too. But there's a lot more of the sharing economy and giving free content and free advice, and three resource is, and I think that in the past we use to kind of harbor and protect all of these things, but that now bringing people in and offering them, um, you know, use my image for your greeting cards as my gift or, you know, whatever it may be actually can help them be sticky and create a community. And so I just think we're seeing a lot more of that. We're seeing more e books being shared over social media. And so even Dan, I was thinking about your site last night that, you know, based on what brand personality wanna have. I know that some of your videos were showing people how to make greeting cards or videos. You know, something free could be like you've made greeting cards for somebody if you want to be fun and friendly or any Bell e book on tech tips. If you want to be more of that kind of credible resource. So based on where you want to go, kind of dictates. What are some of the things that you want to offer? So that lead in? I did want to not to put you on the spot, Dan, But I did look at your site last night cause I'm so excited about the growth of all of your businesses. And so this is dance site, which just went live. I just want to say congratulations. I was really impressed with it. Yeah, Yeah. You went live yesterday. Very exciting. Um, and so I know that you had told me that you are going through for a target that potentially is a little bit older. You know, the first thing that I was impressed by was, you know, I was a little bit worried that you were gonna be positioning. Just is like Dan. And when I went on your site and this is just the top part of it, you actually felt like a more credible, trusted resource. And you felt bigger to me already. And the my felt more like my resource like it was for Yeah, well, that's that's what I That's what I took away. So I wanted to just give Joe an opportunity to say a couple of, you know, positive comments about the site. And I hope you don't mind. We're putting on the spot, go out of Joe and anything you want to tell us about the site first. What you're trying to accomplish. Yeah, um, I guess if I could give any advice, this this was sort of created from scratch by me using a CMS on open source CMS system. Because I'm quite the tech geek. I decided to take on this momentous beast myself. It had a lot more down below Teoh. Others. Yeah, there's a lot more to it. You can go to my only in tech idea, but, um like, like Joe had mentioned with the credit card processing and the Google S CEO and all of the little pieces I'm having to research and how to figure out how to tie that into my website. So when you mentioned squarespace, I can't say enough great things about squarespace. Um, I think that it's a great company for doing sort of that plug and play. You drag a gallery and you do all these little little easy things and just it works and it's responsive and they take care of the whole back it back in for you. So it's a really, really great company to do that. But mine, I guess the thing I was going for with simplicity, he know my users are not very tech savvy. That's what I'm sort of going for. So just three links at the top. You've got a little slider there that shows my newest videos as they come in, and I have it set for showing the top 12 newest videos within a two week time frame. So it shows you the new stuff so people can see that right away. I've got a little blurb there at the bottom with a rotating testimonial, and I have a few clients that have used my services in the past, and it's a perfect way. I quickly shoot them an email and said, Hey, can you say a few nice words about me? I'd love to use it on the website and they send me a few sentences, and I get to use that on my website, and it just short sort of shows that there's some credibility behind what I'm doing. And then it's not just a website sort of thrown up there, so sort of going for simple, clean and yeah, it's sort of the background on it. Yeah, great. So sometimes feedback is hard to hear. So, you know, don't take anything personally were just toss in some ideas. I think it looks great. Any comments that was actually hard pressed to find too many issues, But I did. Okay, first of all, I took a look at the code behind it, and I have to say Kudos. If this is your first website and it's a droop, a website, I'm really impressed because it's some of the cleanest code I've ever seen, especially for a CMS, and what that means to the lay person is basically that it's going to be it's gonna load faster. It's gonna be easy to maintain and things like that, and Google is gonna like that. So kudos you. I can't believe you did that with triple your first shot. That's that's great. Um, you also did the two tour, um, the testimonials. I think that's great. One possibility. Consider a picture of Lin if you can. Really? Yeah. I had that in there and I decided to take it out. But that's a good point to add a little bit more personality to those folks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because people really respond to other people. It's just a visual thing that we're program toe to think about. Overall, I think the structure, uh, structure is great, very well structured, and you've got three key things up there. So that's that's really simplifying things. I like all this using a video. That's all these. Those are all the great things. Some things that I would do. I would even make it simpler than what you have. I don't have a lot of great things to say, but, um, first off, where's your call to action other than see browser video library? But do you really want to get them just browsing the video library, or do you want to get them to sign up? And I was so I would recommend doing something along the lines of a nice bun there that says something. Sign up for free because you can sign for free and there are still three videos and I do know you have a monthly monthly subscription or Allah cart thing. I would also recommend coming up with a Freemium model where there's you sign up for free, and every month you get a free video. People just know that there's gonna be a free video every month, and what's great about that is that first, all you get them to sign because you know there's some value there. Secondly, you're always, you know, getting back. You have a reason to get back in touch with them and they're coming back to the site and then seeing other videos that they can then purchase either Ala cart or or subscribe to the $19 per month. Um, you know, I just want to add to that, too, because I've seen a lot of sites recently where it is. Give us your email and you get access to the videos and it's so important. So I was thinking the same thing that we just want to get the email and make sure we capture the information and what else? So we were talking about more responsive design, and that's leading edge, so it's not there yet, But the good news is is that you got bite size pieces of information that will flow well once you get a mobile design set up. So, for example, of the video like, if you let's just picture, for example, an IPad or an IPhone. If you're reading it on that, maybe the headline comes up first, then the video. Then these little pieces of information will flow so that you have a good opportunity there that you it's so well structured now that it will translate well to a mobile mobile design. And I would remove the tackle digital projects with confidence. You don't need four headlines. Um, keep it simple. Three. And that's a generic headline. That doesn't mean much to me as a consumer. Uh, what else? There's so much more things that I really work would like to know with your brand, kind of what, where your personality is gonna come through and how you want that to be conveyed. And I haven't watched all the videos, but that's one thing. I think you have a likable and accessible quality. Um, and I just haven't seen that yet, but I haven't really dove into the content, so yeah, I think you'll get him. You'll get more of a sense of it when you start watching more the videos because I'm in every single video, and if you play the video on the front page, it's me. There in the front, I explain what my sites all about. I feel as though I'm very succinct and I do it in about a minute, so it's very fast. But one thing that I'm doing that a lot of other websites out there don't dio is that I do it professionally, so the audio is very great. The video is very high quality, and at the beginning of each video you see me explaining what you're gonna be learning in this video, which ties me again into the video and makes it very personal, because I feel like a lot of other sites are very robotic when it comes to that sort of a thing. So you do, Jeff, I just I just wanted to compliment you on your choice of color. It's such a funny thing to see that color, but it's such a it's surprising and it's it's warm and it's inviting, and you've got to remember people coming to your site because they're freaked out there, sweating their questions and so on. That leads to sort of the one constructive comment, which is the first thing you've got there sounds more like a mission statement that belongs on business, pretty few online videos and as opposed to something that almost like Soma did, which is get to the issue. The problem. And then what's the solution? It's almost like, Don't sweat your problems. We've got this, We've got your solution And then the only other coming I'd say is on your testimonials. At least Lynn was saying, I've been working with Dan for five years. You know, if you you could reach out to her and say, Would you mind if I just changed and the my online Tech guy? And you just change it that way? Because all of a sudden then, much like Porter and it was saying is you wanna look look bigger and calling up on what you're saying about the headline in terms of making it more of a call to action? Or how is this about, You know, the headlines should be solving an issue that somebody has coming their site. My computer's broken What I do, you know, solve your computer problems today or whatever, but now he may be right, or you might be right. But a great way to find out is to test it, to do a be split testing. And so you don't have to know the answer you can. You can come up with a bunch of hypotheses about what headline will convert the best and put it up there and have two different versions. And there's a great software that makes it really, really easy to do called Optimize Aly that it's just a little piece of code that you put in your pay, switches it up random. Which is it on, And it tracks. Okay, how many sign ups do we have on this version? That versus this version? Then, as you go through and if once performing better than the other one, get rid of the underperforming one. Come up with a new one that you think and beat your current one, and it's almost like a competition to see what Headline works the best. And then once that starts the level out, you choose one that move on to something like, Well, what's your what's your Maybe. Is it sign up for free, or is it joined today? Which one of those buttons are going to get people to click more often? So it's a great way toe to not have to think about it all in advance like what's the best headline ever? But just threw out some tests there and see what we're a good point. It's like your own Gamification, right? You set your own little so that you can get into it. So this is great information. I really, really appreciate it. So let's see if there's any questions from the Internet. There are always questions. Joe, this is great. Everyone is really excited. Thanks for have you here. So let's go with Dr Bubble, who says in the new world of responsive design and vertical flow, are there more useful metrics than page duration to help shape your design and content? What? That actually, let's expand that. What are the most useful metrics for people to be looking at for the success of their website? Well, that's good, and that's really what we're talking about in terms of optimization. So, um, are you getting results from your Web page? What is the result that you're looking for. So if you go, if you set up Google analytics, you're gonna get a lot of information about traffic coming to your site. How long are they on their? Um, if you do it right, you can even see a flow If they're going from one page to another page so you can look, are they going through are going through the flow that you want them to, And if not, where's the bottleneck? You can say this page Here they go here and there and they drop off. Maybe. Was my pricing page Well, a lot of people drop off from the pressing page. I see it and they just want to know the price and they're gone. So those are some things you do. But the optimization testing is really a great one. If if that's how you I think you know, results matter. And if you're trying to get people to sign up, what's your conversion rate is at 1% 2% 5% 10% that kind of thing. And so that's what you want. Oh, that's what you want to look at. So it sounds like you have to have figured out what you want to get people to do on your website before you can figure out what they're doing. It absolutely and you got and you have to have the discipline to remember like you're building this website and there's all these glossy features out there and sliders and video and all these things. Um, you have to you have to resist the temptation to put all that stuff on there. Say, Well, what's the result I want? I want them to sign up for my email and just and focus the things on on that. And then and maybe there's a different page where that you want them to watch more videos or whatever it may be. And so do that in a different section. So simplicity and clarity again. A lot of focus. Exactly. Great. We have some great questions coming in, and this one at first I thought, Well, this is kind of basic, but I actually think we can explore this further from Brandy G. We talked about S CEO and what should be included in terms of your content. That content is king. But the specific question is, does Mawr content on a page Help with CEO Seo, Or is it just like we don't have a ton of content here? So and that may be actually, another criticism of this site is that you can get more content on there. There is a There is like a sweet spot about how much content you want to have on a on a on a website or on what page. And I would say ballpark it around three or four paragraphs that can range. And in those three or four paragraphs, you wanna have your keyword for that page mentioned two or three times it very naturally flowing, Um, and and that kind of thing. So about two or three periods. So and yes, more content is better if you only have one paragraph or just a little bit of text. Well, Google doesn't really know what to do with that. So sorry they're not gonna index you for for that, um and so yes, a little bit. Thank you. And miss Years J says the trend these days is toward responsive Web design. But I'm also seeing that people using mobile devices have a very limited attention span like a few seconds. Do you think that you need to have a separate design for mobile devices? So, um, you need to have a mobile design or mobile responsive design so that so the design and the layout so somewhat changes when you're on a mobile device. So that's really like, Yes. The answer is you have 11 website that then responds to whether you're on IPhone or IPad. And yes, it will rearrange things. What you want to do is you want to deliver the same content, whether you're on an IPhone, IPad or an I Mac. But how do you present it? So you can, for example, on a desktop you're gonna have a navigation bar like open here. But when you But when you're on IPhone, you don't have the space for all that at the top. So what's happening now with one of the common elements, is that that will collapse into a little menu icon that as you're on an IPhone and you want to see the rest of the navigation items, you would click that little menu icon and then the menu would expand. And so that's what we have kind of hiding the information on an IPhone until you need it. But you don't want to just not deliver it because one of the one of the studies and research that's, um, what's going on right now is that people are finding that, um, yeah, maybe your attention span is less on an IPhone, but you But there are people who instead of if some someone says, Ah, someone tells you good website that you want to go to Well, maybe you're not gonna go to your computer and look it up. But you want that same information on your IPhone, so don't hide it. So you can't assume what people want to have on which device assume they want it all. But you have to then trying to tailor it in a way that's easy to get to on different devices. What I think we're also seeing, you know, growth of APS. And so that app trend is going to still continue. And so there's just more and more use of the smartphone. And if you're on it, you're gonna be using more websites in the mobile at space also, absolutely. I forget the exact numbers, but I think it's something like by the year 2015. So it about two years away, Mawr Internet traffic will take place on mobile devices than on computers. So the shift is really there. A lot of my clients are seeing that least 33% of their traffic is from mobile devices and and growing. Um, it was probably more like five or 10% like a year or two ago. So you need to you now. It used to be a nice to have, um, thinking about how something will look on your mobile phone. Now it's You have to have it because you don't know where your customers are going to be looking at your website, right, Dan, on just what I was gonna ask about mobile APS I find as a user that it's much more enjoyable to go to a website that has an app and be able to use that it feels much faster and more responsive. Do you have any sort of pros and cons of making a website responsive and only having a Web view, or maybe for a sight like mine? Users could eventually download my free app and then they have the whole library there that could download him off line and they can have a whole bunch of features that may be a squished version of a website is not gonna have. Right. So yours is a little bit of a unique case because I can't imagine where If, let's say I signed up for the $19 a month program, uh, I would like to have easy access on an app to watch the videos in my spare time, something like that. But for something like a blawg or even an e commerce site, Um, you know, consumers are going to be coming back, aren't gonna be looking for an app to make purchases like every day or something like that. So the way I would look at is, if you can envision that your customer is going to be doing multiple transactions on a regular basis than a mobile app is going to be something you might want to consider. But if they're casual visitor or something like that, stick with the website and make that mobile responsive. And if anything like you were saying that customers are now becoming there now expecting more apt like features, even on the website itself. Sometimes you don't even know you on the app for the website. So I would focus in that area for regular websites. You also from a budget standpoint again, you have one thing to worry about. You don't have a website and mobile app because they're two separate things, right? Right. Ah, Question from snappy gourmet. Any tips for website security and how to prevent people hacking into your site? Oh my God, that's tough. Stop the answer. And here's what I say. My answer there would be if you go to square space and Shopify, It's one of the benefits there is that they really they take care of most of the security for you. Some things that you need to think about it. If you're gonna use a square spaces that have strong passwords do not use password as your password. I've seen that done. Really use a strong password so that you don't get so you don't get Haft. Um so if you go with one of those, I would sleep easier at night. In terms of security standpoint, if you're gonna build your own website with wordpress or Magenta, any e commerce store, um, security requirements start to go way up. And my main advice, they're gonna need a web developer who knows some of the standards and the techniques and practices To build your website in a secure way, you need to make sure that your website is updated. So if you're using wordpress or Magenta, you gotta update to the latest version. Otherwise, you may have a vulnerability. Ah, there are scanning services out there. So, for example, Trustwave is our McAfee. Some of these solutions out there is a little bit of code that you put on your website that will then on a regular basis scan to make sure you don't have any vulnerabilities. And if so, they'll email you. Um and so that's about all I can say on that topic and 30 seconds. Well, yes. Great, Great. That was outstanding. 30 seconds or less. Okay, maybe one final question from Yasmine, whose question is and yes, mean is a photographer. What are your thoughts on a separate site and blawg versus one of the blog's sites? And that feels like a blogger or Tumblr or something like that, right? You're just having a blawg site versus having a blawg and I generally recommend having everything consolidated and just have, and that is the challenge, like Jeff was bringing office. How do you put it all together? But just have one site that's a one website I can tell you That's enough toe handle and maintain, um, and so it really depends on your content. If your if it's something that's fresh content that you really want people to read on a regular basis, really put that, you know, up front and center and then have some of the more static stuff behind. But if your if your goal is more about capturing emails or se capturing emails, and you wanna have that up front center and have the blawg as just one link and maybe integrated in some blood if you're an e commerce site, your products have to be up front, center very well. Visually displayed, attractive and easy to buy those kinds of things. I'm not sure if the question was then about maybe using other services like Tumbler that are dedicated blog's services. And what I would say there is, if you have that, there's only so many things you can do. But if you have the time and money to do a tumbler, Facebook page, Twitter, Pinterest page, Google Plus and so on, so forth. Then do those. But you gotta prioritize. Start with one. Get that right, Move onto the next one and so on. So forth and tumbler is a, uh, it's an emerging solution out there. Oh, are what? Not? That's actually competing in terms of Facebook and Twitter with page views, so I'm not sure what the appeal is, but people love tumbler, so it's It's an easy way to share content. So if you have a blawg think hate list, sign up for a tumbler, and can I automatically push my stuff out? Tumbler. That's another channel to get people coming into your site.

Class Materials

bonus material

Building a Brand eBook.pdf
Porter Day 1 Slides.pdf
Porter Day 2 Slides.pdf
Day 3 Slides.pdf

bonus material

Building a Brand eBook - Section 1.pdf
Partnership Scorecard.pdf
The Funnel Test.key
The Funnel Test.pdf
1 Page Business Plan.pdf
1 Page Marketing Plan.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

a Creativelive Student
 

Thank You so much Porter Gale I have learned so much you made me view everything in a more professional way seeing how the big boys do it made me realize the steps that need to be taken for success. You are a very smart thank you again for sharing your knowledge I have the title of your book stuck in my head I think is powerful.

a Creativelive Student
 

This is an excellent course which delivers so much key information to developing your brand. Highly recommended!

Student Work

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