More Clients Less Hustle

14-Day Challenge: How I Turned My Website Into a Lead Magnet with Lorraine Ball (Day 12)

• Caroline Balinska + Lorraine Ball • Season 1 • Episode 18

Share episode

🚨 Hey small business owners! Is your website just sitting idle? Join website pro Lorraine Ball as we reveal how to turn it into a lead-generating machine! Click the link for this must-attend masterclass. 👇

Lorraine's covering crystal-clear navigation, super valuable content, and irresistible calls-to-action that'll have visitors whipping out their wallets! Plus, practical examples like helpful guides and easy appointment booking to boost leads.

In today's tech world, we're tackling chatbots too - how to leverage them properly for complex products/services without damaging your brand. Lorraine's dishing critical insights on well-coded chatbots that'll make your offering a breeze.

She's also warning against poorly designed ones that could harm you. But no worries, she's got 3 tips: fresh site audit, content answering the right Qs, and clear next steps for visitors.

Don't miss this lead-generating, website-transforming gold mine! Get ready to turn your digital space into a client-attracting, revenue-boosting powerhouse.

Bio
After spending too many years in Corporate America, Lorraine said goodbye to the bureaucracy, glass ceilings and bad coffee to follow her passion to help small business owners succeed

Today, this successful entrepreneur, author, and professional speaker, enjoys sharing what she knows about marketing in presentations to groups around the county, in college classrooms and in her weekly podcast More than a Few Words.
She brings creative ideas, practical tips, and decades of real-world experience to every conversation.

In her spare time, she loves to travel, and take photos. 

Get In Touch with Lorraine
https://morethanafewwords.com

Eliminate 80% of work tasks & 10x your sales for a life you love!
https://t.ly/QzmRz

https://www.instagram.com/moreclientslesshustle
https://moreclientslesshustle.com/

Speaker 1:

Welcome to More Clients, Less Hustle, the podcast where we break barriers, defy labels and empower busy entrepreneurs like you to soar to new heights. Get ready to shatter the glass ceiling as we dive deep with experts and transformative coaching calls, unveiling secrets to success and unlocking your true potential. Join us on this journey of growth, empowerment and limitless possibilities. Let's pave the way for more clients, less hustle. I'm your host, Caroline Balinska. Welcome back to the 14 Day Challenge. We have Lorraine Ball with us today and we're going to be talking all about websites. This is like all of these episodes in this challenge. This is very important because I am very much a believer in if you have a website that is doing a good job, it is like having an extra salesperson in your business. So, while you're a small business, it can be really helpful to have a well set up website. So, Lorraine, I want to talk to you about websites. I know you've got a lot to share with us today, so how are you? Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2:

I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for the invitation. I love talking about a good website.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic, that's great. So the first things that we want to talk about. I've got a couple of things on my list because I really want to keep this short and sharp and we want to keep on topic. So what are the key pieces of comprehensive website strategy tips that you can share with us that we need to know?

Speaker 2:

So the first thing you have to recognize is it is your website, but it is not about you. The website is there as a resource for your customers. So as long as you keep that in the forefront, you're going to put together a much better website. How do you do that? First thing is it ain't about you on the homepage. You want the homepage to let a visitor know they've come to the right place. You can solve their problem. You can answer their question. You have a range of things that they need, but what about me? When do I get to talk about me? You get to talk about you on the about page if they are interested. So, number one who is your customer? Who are you really talking? To? Get very clear about that. What questions do they have? Answer those questions. Lead people by giving them breadcrumbs and pieces of information. So that's number one you've got to remember who your customer is and put together a website that serves them.

Speaker 1:

I love that and I think that's something that a lot of people keep on forgetting is that people get really stuck. I used to do a lot of website building and people get really stuck on. How's that first image? How does it portray? You know it's all about. What does it look like? People get too stuck on. I've had some clients literally spend $20,000 on a website that just looks amazing and has just got no value add to it no value add at all.

Speaker 2:

You have to let people know what you want them to do, and in order to tell them, you've got to know what is the appropriate next step, and your website should be filled with the right next steps. I'll give you an example. I worked with a flooring company. They wanted people to make appointments, and so on the homepage, right at the top of the page, we'll bring samples to you. Make an appointment. That was great. But what if people aren't ready to make an appointment? What do they want to know?

Speaker 2:

And as you move down the page and you move through the website, they had information on hardwood flooring. Maybe you're buying hardwood floors and maybe you searched for that. Instead of saying, make an appointment to see our floors, they said download our hardwood flooring guide, because a lot of people don't know about the product. So offer them something that demonstrates your expertise, demonstrates your willingness to engage with them and gives you an opportunity to collect their email address. Because that's the second thing your website has to do. It needs to provide information and it needs to generate leads. In many businesses, you don't go from hi to buy from me. You got to have those stair steps, and every page on your website needs to have something that keeps the visitor engaged.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that. I find that when I look through people's websites sometimes and I say to them there might be a particular question, I might say to them oh, I look through people's websites sometimes and I say to them, you know, there might be a particular question. I might say to them oh, I know that people are asking X question about you, know your business. And people say to me oh yeah, I've got a FAQs page. I'm like great, where is it? I can't find it. Oh yeah, it's like if you go to this page and then you go to that page, then you go there, then you'll find a little link on the bottom where it says FAQs and I just think, oh my God, so do you think things like FAQ pages are important?

Speaker 2:

I think that FAQ pages are important as a place where you collect the links to all of the other content, but the truth is that if you're looking at your website traffic, 50% of the traffic that comes to your website does not start at your homepage. You need to think about your homepage like the direction sign in a shopping mall. You go to a shopping mall I don't know about where you are now, but in the US you can come in any one of a dozen different doors and you can stumble around the mall and then you find that sign and it says ladies, shoes here, bathroom there, food court. This way, your homepage is that sign. But people are going to find answers to individual questions. Because they searched Google, because you shared it on social media, they're going to come for that first question and then look around.

Speaker 2:

The FAQ page is great, collect all that information, but and this is one of my huge pet peeves is people know what the questions are and they don't answer them, and I was going to save this through the end, but it's a natural right here. Make a list of the questions you think are the most common questions and then go to the search function on your website not the Google, but the little search thing on your website and type in that question and see what comes up. If it's not a good answer or if it doesn't answer at all, guess what you're going to be doing? You're going to be writing a blog post, an article, a page answering that specific question.

Speaker 1:

That brings us back to another point. Is the search bar Having the?

Speaker 2:

search bar in the first place. Okay, this is not 2003. People understand how the internet works and today, when we want something, we go to Google, we do a voice search. We search, we do not navigate. You may build your website thinking, well, they're going to go here, and then they'll go here and then they'll drop down here.

Speaker 2:

That isn't how people look for things anymore. They come to your website, they look briefly at your navigation. If they can't find it, the next thing they are going to do is go to your search function and it better work, and the way that you improve search functionality, how you make your website more searchable. Every time you create a blog post, a page, a picture, you have the opportunity to write a little bit of a description, a little meta description that tells the internet and your internal search engine what the page is about. Don't be clever, don't be cute. This is a place to be obvious. Yeah, don't be clever, don't be cute. This is a place to be obvious. Yeah, when I did my very first website, I was being clever. This was 2002. And instead of saying training, I had educate, and instead of design, I had create, and I had all these words that kind of rhymed. It was adorable. Nobody knew what the heck I did.

Speaker 1:

That's so true, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Didn't take me long to go. Oh, maybe I should change that. I'll save creative and cute for later.

Speaker 1:

No, it's so true I see that as well all the time is that people, they get too stuck on trying to be cool, trying to be cute, trying to be different and unique, but you lose people like that. Yeah, what's? You probably know the stats. What's the stats on how long someone stays on a website before they leave?

Speaker 2:

Seconds, seconds and you know if you, if you're wondering your own page. Take a look at your bounce rate. Take a look at how quickly people come and go and then look at your own behavior. It amazes me that people think that somehow their website is going to be so fascinating that someone's going to sit through 12 sliders rotating images. No, they're going to move past it, they're going to scroll right by.

Speaker 2:

So I think images are important, but I think they are wallpaper. They add an attractive finish. They are not the piece of art in the center of the room. Where possible, I think original photography goes a long way, even if it's not quite as perfect as that lovely stock image. But the reason, whenever possible, to use original is when you buy a stock image and most business owners go to iStock or one of these libraries, you don't have unique rights to that picture and you don't know where else that image has been used, and it may not necessarily be in a business that you would want to be associated with. One of my favorite was a little photograph on a flyer that a church did for their Valentine's Day dance, and the exact same image was used by the strip club up the street.

Speaker 1:

No way.

Speaker 2:

You don't. You don't own the image. So even if it's not perfect, you can do some things in Photoshop to clean it up, a little bit of text over it, but it's genuine, it's authentic and it's yours.

Speaker 1:

I love that, and the floor example is a good example of that. I would rather see a before and after of like a the guy who's not a photographer. I'd rather see a before and after of like a the guy who's not a photographer. Take a photo of a before and after, because then I know that that's the job I will get from that floor company and I can see it's not a great photo. So I know that that guy took the photo because his job is actually flooring, not photography. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2:

Yes, and I do. I worked in the home services industry for a long time and the genuine images, the somewhat shaky cam video of an interview with a homeowner or the service tech on hi, this is Bobby and I'm going to be coming into your house and installing your air conditioning and I love dogs, so you don't even have to put your dog away has so much more power than a perfectly polished, edited image people. People want genuine, they want to see who you are. They want to know the real people behind the brands.

Speaker 1:

So in that case, do you think video is a good way to communicate on your website?

Speaker 2:

I have mixed feelings about video on websites. The big challenge is that you've got to work with your hosting company because if you uh use video directly from the media library of your website without getting too geeky, it can slow the whole website down. And, yes, video is important and I think people respond well. But then you have choices. You can pull from youtube or you can pull from vimeo, but then you've got the little YouTube logos. I don't like the YouTube for that reason?

Speaker 1:

because then you can send people off, then they watch the next video. Yeah, at the end.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I do like Vimeo. If you really want to have video on your website, the Vimeo player is a higher quality player and you can have more control over what people see. Next, the advantage to having the video on YouTube is it is searchable and YouTube is a Google product. But so I have. I have a love hate relationship with video and I think you really have to ask yourself when somebody comes I would not put a long video on your homepage, Ain't nobody going to watch it? You haven't earned the right to ask me to give you that much time.

Speaker 2:

I think, in case studies in the product portfolio, if you have a product that is a little more technical that you kind of have to explain, If you've attracted someone and gotten them to move through your system, I think there is an appropriate place to put video On the employee page quick little videos. In that instance, I might use just a YouTube links and embed from there. It won't slow your website down and it's fun. But I think you really have to think through. I love this video. Is anybody going to watch it and is it worth giving it this prime, prime location?

Speaker 1:

And I do like the fact that you are right that YouTube videos are searchable, so that can make a really big difference to being found on Google, just on that basis alone.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, you know people don't realize. But the when. When I want to know something, I go to Google. Yes, there are other search engines. I go to Google, so does everybody else. When I want to know how to do something, I go to YouTube. And YouTube is the second most common search engine. It's ahead of Bing, it's ahead of Yahoo, it's ahead of Dogpile or any of the others. So if you're going to put a video on YouTube, if you're going to put photographs on your website, same rules, great title, great description, because the search engines are going to look at that and decide whether or not they want to send people back to you.

Speaker 1:

Fantastic. And what about chatbots on websites? Do you have some information you can give us on that?

Speaker 2:

I think that my attitude towards chatbots has changed dramatically over the years.

Speaker 2:

I resisted for a long time, but I have found that a well-written code supporting a chatbot if you have a product or a service that is a little bit complex, and if you want to answer some basic questions and screen people through the process, I think that chatbots can be very, very helpful.

Speaker 2:

The challenge that I think for many business owners is that they have to find the right chatbot software, and you have to remember that as good as the chatbot is is a direct reflection of how well you thought through the process. On the front end, the chatbot can only answer questions that you've provided some guidance to, so you need to know what are the questions people ask, what resources do I want them to furnish and at what point do I say in this whole process it looks like you need to talk to a human being, because I worked with a chat bot on an airline website and I was absolutely blown away how far I got into the process and rebooked my ticket without ever interacting with a human being. That only worked because that chatbot was really well structured, but I think it can be very powerful.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I totally agree. So I we have a chatbot in our system as well that we recommend because of that reason, because of the AI behind it. And at the start of this year I was working for a food company that does food delivery and they were their chatbot was terrible. So when I was working with this company, one of the first things I said to them was your chatbot is so terrible, you need to fix it. And that was like pulling teeth trying to work with them on that, because they just the owner didn't try it himself to understand what he wasn't able to do. So people trying to use it were just frustrated. People were just because it wasn't giving any information, and the worst ones that are the ones that you have that are only manned by humans for X amount of hours a day and then no one's ever there. So it was just a waste of time. So, yeah, I think if you're not doing it properly, don't do it at all.

Speaker 2:

And I think there are some things that you can do halfway and nobody will notice. And then there are other things that I think there are some things that you can do halfway and nobody will notice. And then there are other things that I think you can really damage your brand because no chat bot. I might look elsewhere on the website for information a bad chat bot. I'm just going to leave and go somewhere else, I really. But a good chatbot is fabulous. It can really help put people in buckets and create opportunities for you to talk to people that really need to talk to you and answer questions for everybody else.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love it Fantastic. I want to ask you one to three tips that you would give people. We want everyone to take action after this. What would be a couple of things that people could do immediately to make a difference to their business?

Speaker 2:

I think the very best thing you can do is audit your own website, and the easiest way to do that is grab a friend who's never really been on your website, sit them down in a chair, stand behind them with your hands behind your back and ask them to find things on your website and watch the experience. That will give you a tremendous amount of insight into does it work, can people find things? Where are they getting frustrated? And that's going to give you, number one, a great laundry list of things to work on. The second thing that I really want people to focus on is making sure that you answer the questions, and I touched on it earlier, but I want you to go to Google and I want you to type in the question you think people are asking and then Google will come up with this wonderful list of and people also asked, and you'll see all of these other questions and when you click on one, it opens up more, and opens up more. And copy all of those questions onto a spreadsheet and then go back to your website and search for the answers. Those are the things people are looking for. Those are the things that are going to drive people to you. Are you answering them in blog posts, in web content, anywhere on your website. And then the third thing is I want you and this is something that's kind of going away a little bit, but most people still remember the late night television commercials, you know two in the morning. You're sort of one eye watching the TV and somebody will come on selling knives and right about the point that you think, okay, I'm going to sleep, the host, in a really loud voice, will go and wait, there's more. And it wakes you up and then you're sucked in for another 20 minutes.

Speaker 2:

I want you to add a wait. There's more to every page on your website. If somebody gets to the bottom of the page, you need to tell them what to do next. They're not automatically going to go to the top, they're not going to click next. You need to, and you need to think about what's the appropriate next step. Where do I go next? Okay, you just read a page on websites. You downloaded our guide, see our flooring samples, watch a video on how to install floors yourself, make an appointment. Whatever it is, that is the appropriate next step. Do not let people leave your website. Do not make it easy. Do not encourage them to walk away, make them think there's something they're going to miss if they don't stay awake for the wait. There's more.

Speaker 1:

So I've been doing this challenge and for me, I already have learned so much and I sit here in shame thinking I am not doing this on my own website, so I really need to. I like this. Wait, there's more situation. I think that that is absolutely so powerful, just the way you. I visualized it. As you said it. They scroll to the bottom, but where are they going? Like suddenly you're telling them to go where. Then they're scrolling up half the time. They just leave.

Speaker 1:

They read that page went. Oh, I already looked at the menu. I didn't see any other links that I wanted. Got to the bottom of this page, that's it, it's over, and they leave. So it's so true, scroll down and then have a. There's this. This is the next part. So I love it. So I've been. I love doing this challenge. Actually, I'm definitely doing another one of these because I'm learning so much that everyone listening and watching I'm sure you're learning as well, lorraine. What I want to know is what can you do to help people and how can they get in touch with you?

Speaker 2:

So I love working with businesses that have started their marketing journey and are not happy where they are. I love being able to go in and audit what they've done and help businesses create actions around individual sections of their marketing or their entire marketing plan. The best way to start is with a one-hour working session to go through fundamentals of your marketing. You can find a office hours form on my website, morethanafewwordscom. While you're there, you can listen to a few podcasts or check out our toolbox.

Speaker 1:

Lovely, that's fantastic. I'll put notes in the show notes. I'll put your link to your website so everyone can get in touch with you. Lorraine, you are fantastic and this has been the 14 day challenge, so today's been very specific, but I would love to get you back at another time to have you on to talk in more detail, because you're fantastic and I know that you've got a lot more to share. I know that we're keeping this as short as possible, but you'll definitely have to come back and share more information with us at a later stage.

Speaker 2:

I would love to do that. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

Thanks, lorraine, and thanks everyone for watching. This is day 12. So keep watching. We've got two more days to go and see you on the next episode. Bye, thank you for joining me on this episode. For more tips and resources, visit moreclientslesshustlecom and leave a review or comment, so I can continue to help you on your journey to more clients with less hustle. Till next time.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Caroline Balinska

Host