Maven Marketing with Brandon Welch

Don’t Get Burned: 11 Things To Know Before Rebuilding Your Website

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Host: Brandon Welch
Co-Host: Caleb Agee
Executive Producer: Carter Breaux
Audio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera Guy

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Brandon Welch:

Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I'm your host, brandon Welch, and I'm here with Caleb taking a sabbatical AG.

Caleb Agee:

Oh. You know he doesn't tell me these things before we start the episode. So I'm always like how do I respond to what he just called me? Where?

Brandon Welch:

are we going? Where are we going? Where are you going? Yeah, what are you doing? Or you're not even allowed to say, are you?

Caleb Agee:

Sabbatical. Why Are you not supposed to be able to find me? Yeah, is that the goal?

Brandon Welch:

I don't know. We haven't written the full rules yet, probably because we haven't done one, but it is a commitment of ours here that if you've been at frankenmaven for 10 years, you get to leave for a month. You get to go on your own sabbatical your own journey, go find yourself, go walk about.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, go walk about yes, that's what I'm gonna do walk about the ozark mountains and uh. So, if you see, me hitchhiking. Pick me up, yeah, give me a little ride yeah, he's got one up. Yes, you'll know because he won't be here for four weeks, unless we get way ahead of schedule. Maybe, we might it could happen.

Brandon Welch:

Crazier things have happened. Yeah, hey, this is the place where we help you eliminate waste and advertising, grow your business and achieve the big dream and boy sabbatical, big dreams that's pretty cool. If you're not doing that in your company. You maybe should. I think we heard We'll let you know how it goes.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, we'll let you know. In a talk last week we heard that only I think it's 17% of companies have a sabbatical program of any kind.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah.

Caleb Agee:

But the benefits of it are tremendous. Yes, not even just for the person who leaves, but also for the organization, because of the succession planning and the extra coverage you have to build in while you're gone and then when you come back. Yes, that's not what we're talking about today.

Brandon Welch:

It's not but. I did want to highlight it, instead of just saying you're going on one, you should do it too, yes, for yourself or your team members, but today we are going to we're going to focus on this eliminate waste, because there are so many of you doing awesome, wonderful things, and the front-facing part of any business arguably even more front-facing than your own building or your people is the salesman that happens in your sleep and that is your website.

Brandon Welch:

That's right and we don't have to tell you that a good website is a good thing to do. But we have encountered so many people over the years and, frankly, we're right, smack dab in the middle of some right now who have gone through the agonizing process of rebuilding a website. And it is agonizing and it is expensive and to do it well, it just takes a lot of work. I mean well over 100 hours in most cases for our team. So we're working on somebody's website for potentially two or three months. But there are some cautionary tales we've gathered over the years and we're like, hey, what if we could save our people from going through these things. And it doesn't mean that everybody building a website is trying to take advantage of you or mislead you, but there are a lot of talented people who are talented at one part of it. And there's just some things we've learned after managing, building, owning, inheriting hundreds of websites.

Brandon Welch:

I mean I'd say we're in the 300 to 400 website territory easy at any given time, like in our possession, and so you wearing all the hats that you wear in your business. It's not your job to be an expert web developer. That's why you would hire one. However, we're going to teach you how to hire one and ask the right questions. That will save you so many hours and frustrations later, so that you're you're all prepared.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, I'm especially passionate about this one because, uh, a lot of people don't know, but I'm a nerd and, uh, I came here as a web developer.

Brandon Welch:

We couldn't tell by looking at you yeah, as if yeah, uh.

Caleb Agee:

I'm not wearing my glasses today.

Brandon Welch:

It's true.

Caleb Agee:

Somebody else is.

Brandon Welch:

That's true.

Caleb Agee:

I'm just saying, Um, but yeah, we want to make sure you're prepared if you do decide to rebuild your website or get somebody involved in helping you update it or whatever that looks like Today. We have 11 things to know before rebuilding your website, and we're going to get right into it.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, number one, I can't believe this still happens. But it should go without saying ask who owns this website once it's built. The olden days, this happened a lot. People would build you something and they would hold the keys to the castle. Yeah, it was so rampant. At one point One of our pieces of copy we said about ourselves is we. One of our core values is that we would never let your website be held hostage by nerds. People are more smarter than they used to be, so less people get away with that. But you do need to ask who owns the server. Like is this the? Is this your own instance of an Amazon server or a virtual server that you have the credentials, or is it built and hosted on somebody else's server? Yeah, and who owns this? Yeah, go ahead. The other side, the other side of that is.

Caleb Agee:

There are these, you know, managed platforms like Squarespace or Duda or Webflow. There are tons of these. Wix, godaddy has their own. There are bunches of them. What I'd make sure you know is your agency can build that under their account, and some of those have a way where it's under their account like as an umbrella, and then you have a client server that's yours.

Brandon Welch:

Or you have access to it. Right, you have access to it, but you don't technically own it, yeah, and then sometimes you don't own it.

Caleb Agee:

So if you said, hey, you're fired, I want my website, let's go. It's a whole deal to pick it up and move it. Yes, it's not just a transfer of ownership. So you want to make? Sure that if you're going to let them hold it, because that may be more convenient or helpful or whatever that is. That's fine, as long as it's easy for you to get a hold of it and that you know it's yours in the end.

Brandon Welch:

And if they die, get hit by a bus or whatever that scenario is like, how do you get a hold of it?

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, that's a big deal. Along with that is your domain and then obviously access to edit it. So I would mostly recommend that you have your domain in your own account. So your domain is your URL. So frankandmavencom is our domain name. We own that in a GoDaddy account. It may be Network Solutions, it may be whatever what you want to make sure is when you bought the domain.

Caleb Agee:

That you buy it and you own it, Not that your agency owns it, because it's again harder to transfer. It takes about seven days to transfer from one place to the other. That's kind of rough.

Brandon Welch:

Nobody ever gets around to it until it's too late and somebody like really needs access to it. Yeah, over the years we've done it out of convenience for folks. And then, you know, at the worst possible time they're like I need my domain and we're like, okay, we'll do it, but it's going to take three days. We would never hold it hostage. I want to say that clearly. But yeah, buy it in your own account and then give them access to it. Super big clarity. Your domain is sort of like owning your address. It just tells the internet where to point to find your website. So if it's frankenmavencom, just because we had control of our domain doesn't necessarily mean we have control of our website and all the code and the pictures and the development of that.

Brandon Welch:

So you want to make sure you really have access to both Yep.

Caleb Agee:

Number two Ask is it being built for speed and SEO or just to look cool?

Brandon Welch:

Nothing wrong with a cool looking website. You ought to have one.

Caleb Agee:

Is it built to? You know, convert? Is it functional and pretty? Is it so? You need to know that you're bridging the gap between multiple things here, because that is what a website has to do. It has to rank well, which sometimes you're you're you're trending toward appeasing robots, it seems like, and the copy can start to sound a little robotic or whatever. It needs to look beautiful for the people who look at it.

Caleb Agee:

But then, it also needs to be functional. It needs to sell, it needs to convert. It needs to be more than a brochure that you have on your website.

Brandon Welch:

So we've encountered a lot of beautiful websites that were getting 2% 3% conversion rates and ranking horribly on Google. I've seen one recently that was a really good example of that, and it's just because it was probably more of a graphic designer that built it and made something beautiful instead of making it technically sound. So ideally that's probably two different skill sets on the team. Some people can pull off both, but or maybe if you're using a template, you can kind of get some of the cool factor. Yeah, you know, built in, I guess, but just make sure you're asking that question, yeah.

Caleb Agee:

And sniff out whether or not they bend toward one direction or the other. Yeah, that's what you want to feel.

Brandon Welch:

Along those lines of the pretty game. This is number three. Know that design does not equal strategy.

Caleb Agee:

Love this one.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah. So just because it again, because it looks cool, doesn't mean that it's marketing friendly, it doesn't mean that it's actually promoting your product. And what I would say is you, being the product owner or the service owner or the business owner, are going to fill in gaps that no other human being that's a potential customer are going to be able to fill in, meaning you're going to look at it and go, oh yeah, it's perfect because you know everything about your product. But there's often some really obvious stuff missing out of website copy that could be around your sales process, that could be around values. That could be around like what's the dang outcome? Like sell the result.

Brandon Welch:

We talk about that in the Maven Marketer, know what you're really selling, and so almost always, uh, I can think of one guy who's like equally good at writing copy and strategy as he is at designing. Um, he's actually probably still a better writer than he is a designer, but he makes cool stuff and you just just know that, just because you like the way it looks, you need to put it through third party eyes and say what am I selling here? Yeah, uncover the gaps.

Caleb Agee:

Yep. So just be careful. The mock-up might be gorgeous and it might be a billion times looking better looking than what you have today, but you need to make sure that also what it says and where it leads the customers, that it speaks to their needs, pains, hopes and fears, and you walk through their psychology, you walk through what they're thinking and your brand phrases and you're working all of that in because you're investing in tomorrow marketing.

Caleb Agee:

There needs to be a resounding reminder of that as well. So all of those things that developer you just kind of hire, if they're not your agency right now, they're just going to kind of go in their own direction and you could have some disparity between all of that.

Brandon Welch:

A great framework to get that messaging stuff out is the messaging framework in Frank and Maven. It's who you're talking to. What are their needs, pains, hopes, fears. How does your product satisfy that and what's the most reasonable next step for action? Like that flow would be really good because it takes people from emotional to logic to emotional to logic. Then you get him to act on that and that's that you want to just do basic, basic psychology of buying. That's what we do.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

We use logic to justify our emotions, so you want to do that in your website, number four.

Caleb Agee:

Number four is ask will this site be easy to update after we launch it, or am I going to have to hire you every single time to make the tiniest change in the world?

Brandon Welch:

There are some knuckleheads out there that build websites on this business model that you're always going to need them, and so they hold you hostage and they build stuff in such a nerdy way. That's not intuitive, and in this day and age there used to be a. There used to be sort of a technical knowledge ante that you just had to have to do anything with the website.

Caleb Agee:

It's kind of gone. It's not true anymore. Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Right now, most of you listening should be able to log on and edit your own website if you want to. Now, you might still choose to hire somebody or employ somebody.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, your time may be more valuable than learning that, right, but that's fine.

Brandon Welch:

But when you fire somebody and you got to get them off the website this weekend because they're a liability, you shouldn't be waiting around on some nerd to get around to you to be able to do that. Yeah, you should be able to do that.

Caleb Agee:

I also believe you know, by the way, we manage websites and we have. You know we have them, but it's not in the client's best interest for them to have to call us and then to get into our workflow, which may be maybe today, but likely it's, you know, friday that they're going to get this update done, but they need it done now.

Caleb Agee:

And so if they have the keys and they have the ability to do it now, let's go. And uh, that saves everybody, you know. Three emails and four clarifying questions. It's so much more efficient for everybody. Yeah, um, and the developer that that holds you hostage in that situation. Even if they're making 300 bucks an hour, it's still not worth the time.

Brandon Welch:

So Exactly, uh, with that um. Number five is ask what happens after the launch of this website. Who trains us, um, to be able to do all these edits and to know where everything is and to make sure you have ownership and to make sure you can write stuff on the site, and all of that? You need some basic training, especially if it's a new platform that you're not used to, and so we have, like a handover process here that basically says here's your new car and here are the keys, and here's how you set the radio and all that stuff, except for it's not a car, it's a website, caleb.

Caleb Agee:

It's a website. That's right.

Brandon Welch:

See what I did there. I like it, yeah. So just ask that. I think it's pretty straightforward, but who's going to train us? How long is that going to take and what's?

Caleb Agee:

your estimate for how long before we can be making our own edits to this thing? Yep Is, custom code equals custom problems. I love this one because, um, in, as we just mentioned, all of these sites should have some sort of page builder or some sort of easy to use builder of some sort. And, um, if they are, if they're using a, a builder like uh, like WordPress has several, or Squarespace, but then they custom code every single piece of it, you are going to have to know where all that code lies and know how to read it and change it.

Caleb Agee:

Just to do the smallest things on your website, I have at times seen websites done where it was literally done in a drag and drop builder, but and they used some of the elements from the drag and drop builder, but they applied custom code to every single piece of it. So to change it, you had to go to five places and change code everywhere, and that's not good for the you. It's not good for the you know, for the ease of use and updating it. So, um, unless you have something really complex, they should err on the side of using that page builder. They should use that drag and drop thing so that later, when you need to change a picture. It's two clicks and you got it, and that's really really dangerous if you're looking at somebody who just custom codes every single thing.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, love it. Yeah, love it. Yeah, there's probably something already built unless you're really really weird that you can use. Yeah, I will add that it's. Yes, it's a little bit capitalistic to have to pay somebody a subscription to use something that's already built, such as, like, for your shipping or for your lead curation or your CRM or whatever. But because they have the money being supported, they can afford to constantly update it.

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

You may, you probably don't want to bear that burden of constantly paying to update your custom solution.

Brandon Welch:

That's right, that's right, all right, number seven hey, can I see three recent websites you've built, and can I talk to those clients about their process? Man, this would clear a lot of missteps out of the way. There's this allure when you're talking to a nerd. When they're talking about things you don't know how to talk about, that, you just assume that they're an expert. That does not mean that they're good at customer service. That does not mean that they're good at time management. That does not mean that they're good at customer service. That does not mean that they're good at time management. That does not mean that they're good at design. That does not mean that they're qualified to make you happy.

Brandon Welch:

Probably only past clients can give you an honest assessment and I would say this I probably wouldn't have said this early in my career but if they don't have those, expect to hire them at a discount, because it's a bigger risk to you.

Brandon Welch:

If they're building their portfolio, to hire them at a discount because it's a bigger risk to you If they're building their portfolio. Just be like hey, I like you and I want to trust you, but I don't think I can pay you the same as I would pay somebody who's done this a hundred times because you don't have that under your belt, that's right. So you might call some of their recent clients and say did they finish on time? Did they stay on budget? Were they easy to work with? Are you enjoying your new site? How are your search engine rankings? Did your conversion rate improve? How's the lead flow of your business right now? Like, just figure out, did they have the stuff or they didn't?

Caleb Agee:

Yes, number eight. Number eight Ask what's the timeline and what happens if you miss it. Everyone knows when you call a contractor, you automatically expect to add what 25 to 50% on the timeline they give you.

Brandon Welch:

I call it the 20% rule.

Caleb Agee:

And, unfortunately, web developers have a very similar um you know reality or about them, and so what we want to make sure is that they've stated out loud what they expect, like what kind of timeline they expect us to do. That tells you whether or not they have a process that they follow or if they're kind of meandering into getting websites done.

Brandon Welch:

Let me let the nerds off the hook for a second Cause. A lot of times you're the reason it didn't get done on time.

Caleb Agee:

Client, you are the you are the reason.

Brandon Welch:

You are the client yeah, not the web developer, not Caleb. Yeah, you are the reason. Yeah, a lot of times it's you. You didn't get back to them, you were on vacation, you didn't quite know how to articulate something, you couldn't have time on your schedule to tell them what changes you wanted, and so we always make that disclaimer that if you give us this feedback by this date, We'll be on track.

Brandon Welch:

We'll be on track. If you don't, you know whatever. You missed it, plus add a few days because it takes us to get back in our workflow that way. So, and then I would say what happens if you miss it. I would just make sure that they have a protocol. Okay, at 60 days, no matter what, we will have a check-in and we will give you the list of what's left to do. We'll have a punch list. I think that would be the most reasonable thing. I don't know that it's wise to like say, oh, we're going to give you a discount or whatever. Now I would not pay until I wouldn't pay the final payment. Until it's done, we usually break ours up into two or three payments, so final payment is when it's live and the world can visit it. Yeah, but yeah, just make sure you've got checkpoints in. That would be probably the healthiest thing.

Brandon Welch:

Number nine know your developer is not your brand voice. So we talked about messaging and marketing, but this is also website copy. Even if you think, oh, this guy will just look at the rest of my website and he'll know what to do. He doesn't highly technical expert that can code and think in terms of development language. I'm not saying they can't coexist, but I don't see it very often, and so you don't just need good design, you don't just need good strategy, you also need really good copy and messaging, and so that might be a third force within those people working on your team. Any established web developer is going to know that about themselves, and they're going to have somebody that is specifically on staff for a copy, and I would maybe ask who's going to be writing this?

Caleb Agee:

Yeah.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, make sense.

Caleb Agee:

Yep, I agree. Number 10, ask how will this website generate more leads or revenue?

Brandon Welch:

It's probably the first thing you should ask, yeah Is, should we even do this? Is this solving a real business objective or do we just kind of sort of feel like we'd like to see a new website?

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, um, that that is obviously at the end of the day. Um, it's that business objective. If they, if they lean on design, if they lean on technical prowess, if they lean on um some platform or tool or whatever that is, but they don't talk about the business reality of you getting more leads and sales and therefore revenue, or maybe sales online, because it's e-com or whatever, and therefore revenue, then your business scoreboard is not going up and you're investing tens of thousands of dollars into something that will not pay off.

Brandon Welch:

Amen to that. So, there you go. They should have an answer for that. They should, and if they don't, if you're not confident in that, it's probably not the right person.

Caleb Agee:

It's probably no go.

Brandon Welch:

Last question, number 11. What happens when something breaks and it's going to break folks? Let me just let the nerds off the hook again. If something breaks, that doesn't mean you've got a bad website.

Brandon Welch:

If something breaks, that doesn't mean that you didn't get your money's worth. If something breaks, that means that the internet is doing. What the internet will always do is that it will advance. New browsers come out, new iPhones come out, new security protocols come out, new things come out with servers and the way IP services are handled internet providers and so it's going to break. It's just what happens, and how do we plan for that?

Caleb Agee:

Yeah, so I always make the comparison to your car. Right. If you don't watch or take care of or maintain your car, nate the camera guy is the most particular car owner.

Brandon Welch:

I have ever seen. He's the Gen Z shade tree mechanic.

Caleb Agee:

He checks his oil every time he puts gas in it, just like he's supposed to Just like we're all supposed to he pulls out that dipstick. Nobody else I know ever is checking the oil.

Brandon Welch:

Let me just tell you he drives a fancy reliable car. It's not because it's a clunker, it's not because it needs to, it's because he takes pride. He takes great pride.

Caleb Agee:

Is it a year old? Yet A year and a half old. It's a brand new car basically. And he's checking the oil every single time, and it's a car that will go abuse his make of car.

Caleb Agee:

He's a toyota man yeah and you could probably still get 150 000 you pour you pour concrete in the gas tank it probably still go another 100 miles on. Yeah, so, um, but if he doesn't, he will take good care of it. If you don't take care of your website, or if your developer or whoever's maintaining your website, doesn't take care of it, um, you don't get those oil changes if you don't change the tires. It's gonna.

Caleb Agee:

There are foreign objects that will cause your tires to pop. There are things that on the inside of your car that will cause it to malfunction, and that's the same thing is true on your website. There are things inside your website that will the little ghosts and the bugs that'll happen. Um, that looks like plugins and themes. Um, something we were talking about before is, uh, like, with WordPress, you have to you pay license fees for plugins and themes. Um, I would recommend you pay for those client like, not the developer, cause what the developer is going to do is they're going to pay for it that first year and then, if you're not actively paying them in the future, when the annual subscription comes up, they'll probably let it lapse, and then your plugins are getting out of time and therefore vulnerable.

Caleb Agee:

And you've got security issues or you've got update issues and the site might crash. So it's not hard to get something that will protect it from robots or attackers. It's not hard to get something that will back it up every single morning or night. And when it blows up, first thing you can do usually is like well, let's revert it to yesterday's copy and then figure out what happened so we can stop it from happening tomorrow.

Brandon Welch:

And put a maintenance budget in your mind, or just your marketing budget. You might spend big money to build a site this year, spend another couple grand next year doing updates. I'm not talking about just regular content, I'm just saying have it either a good maintenance plan with your developer, or just say, hey, we know every year we're going to have a little project that's just going to be updating, refreshing and that's good for marketing too. Just like you wouldn't leave your storefront the same forever, you would merchandise and move things around. You need to do that too, yeah. So hey, let's do a quick recap. One make sure you own your website, or you know who owns it.

Caleb Agee:

Don't settle for just a design-only website. Make sure it's going to sell.

Brandon Welch:

Yep Definitely understand that you need a skilled messaging and strategy person. That's number three.

Caleb Agee:

Number four make sure you can edit it.

Brandon Welch:

Yep Number five make sure you get the training to edit it, to be able to edit it.

Caleb Agee:

Number six make sure your developer is not going to custom code the whole freaking thing.

Brandon Welch:

Or anything if possible. Yeah, Number seven is talk to real past clients and get referrals and a real good idea if you're working with because you're going to be working closely together.

Caleb Agee:

Number eight lock in. Get clear on a timeline.

Brandon Welch:

Number nine do not let somebody else influence your brand just because they're building your new website. They're not your brand voice you are.

Caleb Agee:

Number 10, make sure it grows you in leads or revenue. Has some sort of business objective that happens. And number 11, make sure it grows you in leads or revenue. Has some sort of business objective that happens.

Brandon Welch:

And number 11, know who to call or what to do when something breaks. Hey, we care so much about you guys. We are trying to grow as many small businesses around America as we can. That's why we're here every Monday. We don't get paid for this. We are declining the advertising opportunities coming our way, because that's not what this is about.

Brandon Welch:

the advertising opportunities coming our way, because that's not what this is about. This is about real American entrepreneurs and growing these little companies into big dreams and making a huge impact on your community and for your people, and then for your family and your life. And we just get super, super wigged out, excited about that for you. That's why we'll be here every Monday. Almost two years in the making, we're going to be celebrating big soon.

Caleb Agee:

We're coming up coming up on the big one oh big one hundred episodes, a hundred Um and uh.

Brandon Welch:

Yeah, we'll be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing questions, because we believe marketers who can't teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.