Your Website Is Costing You Leads (Not Your Marketing) | Craig Burgess

Many business owners think they need better marketing.

More ads.

More SEO.
More social media.

But often that is not the real issue.

In this episode of The Website Growth Show, Rana Shahbaz speaks with Craig Burgess about why most businesses do not have a marketing problem. They have a website problem.

Craig shares what he has learned after 20 years helping companies fix broken websites and turn them into tools that generate real leads and sales.

We discuss why beautiful websites often fail, why clear messaging matters more than design, and how small technical issues like slow load times can destroy conversions.

Craig also shares a real case study where a business spending thousands on Google Ads went from zero leads to 30 to 60 leads per month after improving website speed, landing pages, and clarity 

If you are investing in marketing but not seeing results, this episode could save you time and money.

What you will learn in this episode:

• Why most businesses have a website problem, not a marketing problem
• Why design alone does not create conversions
• How clear messaging increases leads
• Why website speed matters for Google Ads and conversions
• How landing pages outperform homepages for paid traffic

• Why one clear call to action works best
• Why professional copywriting matters more than DIY content

• How authentic photos build trust better than stock images
• How to turn your website into a sales tool 

Takeaways

Enjoying the process of helping businesses grow through effective websites.
The misconception that website design is the most important factor.
A website must clearly communicate what a business does.
Investing in professional content is crucial for success.
The website serves as the core of marketing and sales funnels.
Clear next steps are essential for conversions.
Specific landing pages improve ad performance.
Website speed directly impacts lead generation.
Content should be tailored for both humans and search engines.
Testing and adapting strategies is key to finding what works. Many businesses have website problems, not marketing problems.
A website should reflect the marketing efforts accurately.
Clarity in content is essential for effective communication.
Websites serve as legitimacy indicators for potential customers.
Understanding your offer is crucial for website success.
Clear pricing and service descriptions enhance user experience.
Simplicity in website design leads to better performance.
AI can assist in content creation but requires context.
Authentic images are more effective than stock photos.
Regularly assess website performance using tools like PageSpeed Insights.

Subscribe to The Website Growth Show for weekly insights on:

Website growth strategy
Website conversion optimisation
SEO and paid traffic strategy
How to turn your website into your number one business growth tool

Transcript

Rana (00:00)
Most businesses spend money and time on designing and developing a website. What is the common reason people don't get the results they hope? Common reason? I want to start by saying the thing that usually isn't and it's usually not the design of the website. So I think that's one of the biggest common misconceptions that people have that the design of the website is the most important thing. Your website is a sales tool, ultimately. It's your automatic salesman that's on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So the words that are on there are selling to somebody.

and they're convincing people, at least if they're written right, or if there's a video on there, if it's done right, everything that you put on there, every single word, is trying to convince people to take that one clear next step. What are the steps you would suggest now to people who are listening, if they want to make their website their number one business growth tool? I still think the most important thing is not the platform that you choose to build it on. Because people will come into the website and then never fill in our contact form. So we have to ask why is that? What's happening? Well, one of the first things

that was a major issue with it that the website was taking 10 seconds to load. So that's 10, 1, 0 seconds to load, which is a really long time. people who are struggling to get results, the websites are broken for them, not working, not helping them grow their business. What is the one action step you can suggest them to take?

Rana (01:27)
Most businesses think their website looks fine, but fine does not generate leads. My guest today believes most companies don't have a marketing problem, they have a website problem. Craig Burgess has spent over 20 years helping businesses fix broken websites, improve performance, and turn their website into a real sales tool. In this conversation, we talk about why websites fail, why clarity beats clever design, and what actually makes a website work for your business and help you grow your business.

Rana (01:55)
Craig, welcome to the website growth show.

Craig Burgess (01:57)
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Rana (01:59)
I'm excited to learn how businesses can make their website their number one business growth tool. Before we get into these techie and how to stuff, can we start with what's keeping you going helping businesses fix broken websites and make money from their websites for the last 20 years?

Craig Burgess (02:16)
God. The simplest way to answer is I enjoy doing it. So I've been building websites for my sins since I was about 13, 14 years old or something like that. The technology has come on quite a way since then. I enjoy doing it. The other side, I enjoyed helping people. this is obviously the reason for your podcast, right? There is so much advice out there that is nonsense.

⁓ or complicated or too technical and all that kind of thing. And I just enjoy helping people actually finally get a website that works for them because the amount of stories that I hear out there that people have had multiple websites and it just doesn't work for them. So I just want to help people really.

Rana (02:58)
Yeah, fantastic. And it's so much enjoy and satisfaction working with that client and seeing the business grow when you work with them and help them to create a website. Fantastic. And what is your favorite part in this website building process?

Craig Burgess (03:13)
The end? it live? ⁓ It's a tough one that I enjoy. I enjoy the very beginning of it. So when the sky is the limit, anything is possible. Having those conversations and seeing where it's going to go. And what I really enjoy is once it's live, not because it's out of my hair, but I enjoy that process because that's when the site really starts to grow. Because that's the thing that most people get wrong, right? They think the website's live. That's it. I'm going to wash my hands.

Rana (03:15)
You

Craig Burgess (03:41)
I'm done. Now the money's going to roll in, right? But that's when the real work really starts. So I enjoy that work as well. Actually building a site up from usually zero or something that wasn't very good before that and actually helping a client actually turn it into a sales tool, which is what it's all about.

Rana (03:57)
Excellent. And this is exactly what I would like to unpack, if we can, on this conversation. Most businesses spend money and time on designing and developing a website. And once they publish, they hope to get traffic and leads. But it sounds simple, and they have a right wish. But in reality, there is a lot more that goes into in between these two ends, building and making your site work for your business.

What is the common reason people don't get the results they hoped?

Craig Burgess (04:25)
Common reason. I want to start by saying the thing that it usually isn't and it's usually not the design of the website. So I think that's one of the biggest common misconceptions that people have that the design of the website is the most important thing. Now it is important. Obviously we want a nicely designed website but it certainly isn't the most important thing. So I think one of the things that a lot of clients that come to me get wrong is

kind of an intense focus on making sure it looks good over everything else. And then I think the reason really why what I've seen in the past a lot of sites fail from is we're probably going to get into a lot of these reasons, but the number one one I see a lot of the time is such a simple one. In fact, I made a YouTube video about it the other day is that the site doesn't actually tell people what they do. So you go to the website.

And you are asking one simple question. What do they do? And is this for me? And the website doesn't say that. And you can have the best design in the world, the nicest website in the world, the flashiest website, the most expensive website. But if you land on the site and you have no idea who that website is for, because it doesn't say it in plain language, you've lost straight away.

I see a lot of clients get that wrong and it's often because they're not investing in copy, they're not investing in doing good content and particularly written content, but it can be visual too. That's one of the biggest mistakes I see for sure.

Rana (05:47)
Yeah, so that's right. think speaking with your target audience from a problem and solution perspective is the most important. Design, development, content, everything helps to connect these two doors to make the website work for you and help you grow your business. When ⁓ businesses come to you to work with you, how do you decide the scope of the project or the success of the project?

Craig Burgess (06:11)
Well, I'll usually have a conversation with them first. the way I tend to do it is that we'll have a conversation for 30 minutes, usually runs a little bit longer, but I really want to understand what it is they're looking to achieve really. oftentimes they don't actually know what it is that they want to achieve and that's okay, but that's not their job. The hiring professionals that know about these things, that's fine. But that's kind of where it all starts. I want to have a conversation with them.

see what they want, see how their website's done in the past and what they consider success to be. And success can be lots of things for lots of different people. The one thing I really push most clients to think about though is how their website can make them money, ultimately. Now that might not be the fact that we put the website online and then they get dollars or pounds into their bank account. That's rarely the case unless it's an e-commerce website, obviously.

But if it's just a, even if it's just a brochure website, just a website that tells people information about their website, I want to make it as clear as possible for a customer to either book a meeting or download a guide or follow a clear next step, because that's really important to actually turn the website again, as we said, into a sales tool. So I'll push clients and it's often coming from my end rather than the client's end.

I'll push the client to think about that kind of thing. What can we offer somebody to either get them to get in touch or make a sale or begin that sales process? Because the other thing that a lot of people forget as well, especially if they're not in marketing, is that the website is the beginning of the sales funnel for most people. A lot of the time it's the core of your marketing really. And if you are doing social, say you're huge on TikTok or you're huge on YouTube or whatever platform you choose,

And then you're driving people to the website, but the website is pants at the end of it. isn't clear what you offer. You lose the potential sales. So I encourage clients to think about it like that. The website is going to be the car of all my marketing, even if they haven't realized it yet.

Rana (08:04)
Yeah, I agree. ⁓ Design and development comes next. The strategy comes first. So it's all your success, whether website will help you grow your business, generally depends on your website strategy. So the first main lens to look at website strategy is how this website can make any business money. What are the other important parts of the strategy when you discuss with the customers?

Craig Burgess (08:27)
there's lots of things to think about. I try and keep it as simple as possible. I think most websites come down to very simple, basic fundamentals, regardless of how complex the website is. I try not to talk in jargon, try not to overwhelm people with things because you've got to remember a lot of people that are purchasing a website, they've never gone through this complicated process before.

So I try to help them to think about that first. And there's lots of things in terms of we're talking strategy. There's lots of simple things that people need to think about, particularly content. So first of all, content, as I mentioned before, the, if possible, I would always give that job to a professional, not the business to write the content because that is a, that's an area of savings that a lot of businesses think that they can make, but it actually proves incorrect in the long run.

So they'll write their own content basically, which isn't right. Or they'll get chat GPT to write it, which is also not right at all. We might talk about AI in a little while. But one of the things I try to think about, and I've said this quite a lot in my videos lately, is clear, not clever. So we need to consider who is this for, what are we saying, and what are we offering these people? And if we don't consider all of those things, the website...

will fail from the very beginning because people will get lost somewhere in that process of looking at their information. When somebody comes to a website, they aren't reading your website. They're scanning it basically. So we need to make sure that people are clear what it is you do, what it is you offer, is it right for them? And then a very clear, again, clear, not clever, a very clear single next step to follow. And that's a mistake that I see.

a lot of people make that there will be multiple things to do on a website. They'll cram it full of all sorts of either lead magnets. If they don't know what a lead magnet is, there'll just be lots of different things to purchase or you can contact the office in five different ways and you can look at our WhatsApp or you can email us or you can contact us on Skype or all these things. There's lots of different things for people to do, but people don't look at websites like that. They want a clear next step.

Rana (10:35)
I could not agree more. And in the age of AI, it's very easy to produce a long list of content, but it's difficult to produce brief, scannable content which people, which can connect with your target audience. And you rightly mentioned a couple of important steps. First of all, businesses think they can create their own content. You touched on a bit on this one, but why it's so important to have

professional to write content because content is not just content. It affects SEO. It has conversion elements as well. So would you like to share a bit more on that?

Craig Burgess (11:11)
Yeah, I mean, you're totally right. Content, I think that's the biggest mistake a lot of people make with this kind of stuff. They think content is content. That's kind of putting it on a base level, right? So content is just words or it's just images. That's all that matters. As long as I've got some photos, as long as I've got some words, I'm good to go. But actually the content specifically.

Remember that your website is a sales tool. Ultimately, it's your automatic salesman that's on 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. So the words that are on there are selling to somebody and they're convincing people, at least if they're written right, or if there's a video on there, if it's done right, everything that you put on there, every single word is trying to convince people to take that one clear next step. So if we just smash out some words with chat GPT,

It's obvious really everybody knows what chat GPT content looks like AI generated content Those are the flavors of the damn thing out there unfortunately But it makes content very generic and it makes the website very generic as well And that's kind of the thing I often see and you were talking about SEO too That's without even talking about the importance of good content for search engines as well I often think that if you make good content for humans

It's often good enough for search engines these days because search engine optimization isn't the way it used to be 10, 15 years ago.

all it's looking for is relevant content, right? It wants to provide the best possible service to its person who goes into Google and says, I'm looking for, example, like a local search, I'm looking for a plumber who works 24 hours a day, I need them now. We might be searching something around that.

Google is looking to connect that person with the most relevant and best search results so they'll come back and trust Google again. So what people often used to think about is that the way to do that is to write as much content as possible or to keyword stuff and all these kind of tactics that don't work anymore. What it really is about now is providing good content, useful content, relevant content, trusting content.

content that positions you as an expert and it's really difficult I think for somebody with no professional experience to do that and it isn't the case of yeah I've written 3,000 or 3 million emails I can write sentences everybody can write but it's writing for websites that is a very specific skill I think that I think a lot of people forget about

Rana (13:39)
Yeah. So the lesson here is if you are looking to make your website your number one business growth tool, content is the way to connect with your audience and getting professionals to getting professional help on that aspect is very important. So do you have any recent case study or where you worked with the business who who we audit to the website, you identified a few things and you saw the

the results in the website. Can we get into any of the case studies?

Craig Burgess (14:10)
Yeah, we can talk about some specific ones. There's lots of different things that people come across. What were the cross section that we often get involved in, like it says on our website is when somebody is running ads. that is usually Google ads. can be meta ads or something else. But when somebody is running ads, Google ads specifically, there's usually quite a cost to that. So Google ads are expensive and they can rack up quite quickly.

And if, as I mentioned at the beginning, if you're running traffic to a website, so you're paying for traffic to come to our website, usually through Google ads and the website isn't right. You were literally pissing the money up the wall. So wasting the money basically. Um, we worked with a company recently, they were in that situation. So they were spending three, uh, 3000, 5,000 a month on Google ads. Um, and they were getting zero leads from it.

Rana (14:46)
Exactly.

Craig Burgess (14:59)
So they obviously understood, and this is the thing that a lot of Google ads people say, which is correct to a point. They understood that they needed to spend for a while before they started to see results and all this kind of thing, but they weren't seeing the results after some time, three, four, five months. They didn't want to stop spending money on Google ads because that is a correct attitude. You know, we need to drive traffic to a website because a website doesn't just magically get traffic. That's the next thing that people need to think about.

how do we get people to the website? But the issue that they were having were people were coming to the website and then never filling out a contact form. So we had to ask, why is that? What's happening? Well, one of the first things that was a major issue with it that the website was taking 10 seconds to load. So that's 10, one zero seconds to load, which is a really long time. The issue with that came with the Google ads is that they were

making the Google ads worse basically because no one were completing leads. The no data was getting sent back to Google ads. So we had to fix the website in terms of performance. First of all, we needed to make the website fast, quicker, better. So that was one side of it. What ended up falling out of that is that the website had not been built correctly. So we had to rebuild the website, put it on some better hosting. we put it on our, we've got.

kind of specialist hosting that we've kind of created ourselves. We run it through DigitalOcean, so we use DigitalOcean as a provider. But we've kind of built our own WordPress specific hosting on that platform. So we moved it over to that and then rebuilt the website on WordPress again, because I think WordPress is a damn good platform. And then after that, once we tickled the design a little bit as well, the design wasn't really that bad in this particular case, but we'd made some changes.

And the site went to 30 to 60 leads per month and it's continued to do that. It's continued to do that for the last six months, 12 months now. And purely the main issue, the main thing to take from this is that the website was slow. The website was slow and badly built. And those are two things that anybody looking to get a website can't really work out. That is, that's often an issue for some people.

Rana (16:46)
Well.

Craig Burgess (17:04)
So the website looked OK, again, as I said, but it wasn't built correctly. It was too slow. It wasn't working properly. So it was a real tough one for them to work out. But now all that's been sorted, it's been ticking away for 6, 12 months, bringing in them 30, 60 leads, good quality leads every single month. And they're still continuing to spend with Google Ads. And it's working just fine for them.

Rana (17:27)
This is a fantastic Google Ads case study. And when you can turn a Google Ads into a money-making machine, for example, if you're spending $100 and getting $150 or $200, that's the ideal goal most people who want to spend on money would like to achieve. Because at that stage, the only thing you need to do is keep adding more money, say some money machines. So that's remarkable case study. To make this more interesting,

Can we share a niche as well, which niche was that? Is it a service business, e-commerce business?

Craig Burgess (17:58)
Yeah, so they work in the laundry industry. they sell commercial washing machines, basically. So huge washing machines. So pretty damn niche, to be honest. As far as I'm aware, there is a couple of players in that industry too, also running ads. So even though you wouldn't think that there is, it's actually quite a big industry for running ads. So they had quite a lot of competition. So the website needed to be better. And that was the blind spot that they had.

Rana (18:09)
Hmm.

Craig Burgess (18:26)
Luckily, they didn't just decide to turn the ads off because that's what a lot of people do. They blame it on the ads rather than the website. And then they stopped running Google ads. And you're right, exactly what you said, that once they had confidence in the website, they just kept cranking up the ads because they can just, they know that if they invest, let's say 3,000 pounds, they know they're going to return 20,000 pounds out of the other end. And it's free money, basically. It's a free investment every month.

Rana (18:50)
Exactly.

Craig Burgess (18:52)
that they can be confident in and they can then assume, right, well, we're spending 3,000, maybe we can spend 5,000, and then we're going to get 30,000 out of the other end of it. So when you can get to that, it's a real strong position for a business.

Rana (19:07)
I appreciate the client as well on this one because spending three, four thousand pounds a month without a lease for five, six months is quite a long time. they waited for that because usually this is other way around. On SEO, people say it takes three to six months to see some results. But on ads, when you're spending money, you only start to spend more money in my... I'm not an add specialist, so don't have much experience. But whatever I know, think the test...

a slow, some amount, few hundred or a few thousand pounds. And they see some return and then they keep testing. And when they start to get the desired results, at that time they add more money. But generally, Google Ads is for the quick test, get the start, get what, if these paid ads are working for you. But hats off to this client that's sticking for the five, six months and fixing a website and.

make this work for them.

Craig Burgess (20:01)
Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think one of the things that they noticed is one of the things that a lot of clients don't tend to really appreciate that until they had the level of traffic, they couldn't make an assumption of whether there was a problem with the website. So the website, when it wasn't getting much traffic, was fine. Looked OK. To the outside observer, it would have looked fine. But then as soon as you stress test it,

put it under pressure, actually send a lot of traffic to it, actually find out at scale whether people are actually willing to purchase from it or in their case, submit a lead form basically for another meeting. You don't actually know whether the website's right. And a lot of people think that we'll finish a website with some people and then they'll come back to and say, right, well, what's next?

Well, now we have to solve the traffic problem. Now you've got a good stable foundation. Now we have to decide how are we going to get people, how are we going to get eyeballs on the product that you have, which is the website. And that's the bit that a lot of people forget. they'll be getting 300 visitors a month and they'll be making sweeping decisions on the website. it's like, you haven't got enough traffic. You haven't got enough traffic and enough data, enough information.

to be saying whether this works right now. luckily with those, they understood that and they thought, right, we're going to put lots of traffic through it and see if our assumptions are correct. And then it went from there.

Rana (21:22)
Fantastic. And you also mentioned the conversion. First is traffic, then having a right website, slow website, hurts, conversion badly, which you just mentioned. Anything else you noticed on this case study, which was working for them to generate leads? You pointed out having one clear next step is very important for conversion as well. So what was your experience on this case study?

Craig Burgess (21:46)
So with their clear next step, had specific landing pages for each ad. So let's say they were running an advert for washing machines in a particular sector. So washing machines for care homes, just as an example. They were running a specific ad for that. And then the ad was running specifically to a landing page that was very difficult to navigate away from. You could do, but it was hard.

And then on that page, there was one clear next step, which was, I'm trying to remember the wording that was on the getter quote. think the wording was. And then they filled the form out from that page, basically. So the form popped up, asked them a bunch of questions, then that went into their CRM. And then as someone from the sales team got in touch with them. the clear next step for them was book a quote because they knew that that's the kind of thing in that industry that

that's what people are looking for. But we were sending them to a very specific page that would match from the ad that they were coming from. So a care home would see the ad specifically targeted to them. They would come through to the website, which had a page specifically targeted to care homes. And then they knew they were in the right place. So it kind of answers those questions I was discussing before that when somebody lands on it, who are you? Well, we can see who you are straight away. What is it that you do? It was immediately obvious what they did.

And then the clear next step was get a quote, basically fill out a bit of information. We'll get a quote back to you and it works very well for them. So previous to that, when they were running ads, they were running ads, the homepage of the website, which I do see work sometimes, but it's always better if the ad is reflected in the website. so what I mean, if you are offering a specific offer,

through an ad or through whatever you're doing through a marketing campaign or whatever. Let's say you've made flyers and you're offering some campaign through that. The website should be, when the link is there on whatever it is, it should be going through to a very specific page that clearly talks about the thing that they've just come from. So it matches basically. People tend to get lost if they land on a homepage and it's talking about everything in the business when they've just come from an ad that's talking about something specific.

The other thing to kind of take from it as well was the pages were very simple. So it kind of comes back to the design thing again. We're specifically with a landing page, specifically with when we're trying to convince somebody very quickly, the first thing we're thinking about is not

design, so not world class design. Obviously it looked nice, but we're not bothered about animations or we're not bothered about fancy things loading in and all these kinds of things. That's not good design. Good design in this case is clear access to information and a clear next step. And I think that's where some people get it wrong as well, because obviously when we start throwing in fancy things too, it slows the page down. Then we find ourselves back in the initial situation again, where the page is taking too long to load and it has

you know, the whole circle effect on it again.

Rana (24:38)
I agree. starting with this one CTA, the CTA text could be depending on the industry and the offer you are making. But from my perspective, think personally what I experience, having a one CTA, whatever it is, is very important. That really helps with the conversion. And also sending this paid traffic, which is generally very expensive, to home page for a general page.

can dramatically reduce the conversion as well in most cases. again, it's a trial, test, and trial cases and whatever works for you. Generally, landing pages are best for Google Ads.

Craig Burgess (25:15)
Yeah, yeah, that's a good thing to say as well that you need to try this. So we're saying, I'm talking in generalities, although I'm talking about specific project, what I'm saying here may not work for you because these things change for everybody.

Rana (25:29)
Exactly. So we discussed that having a money-making website or making website your number one business growth tool, a strategy, what you are trying to achieve, the clearer the strategy, the better. Generally, the content will be better. Development will be easier. And also, think promotion will be helpful as well, because you know what your goal is, who you are targeting. So you can find the right channel to promote your website as well.

Is that something you offer as well, promotion as well, for the website?

Craig Burgess (26:01)
In terms of ads and things like that, not really. Yeah, we do a bit of SEO and things like that as part of monthly work that we do on websites because we kind of have two arms to our business. We have the design and development of websites and we do apps and things as well. And then the other side of the business is what happens after the website has gone live. So we support and maintain websites and a portion of that will include SEO, on-page SEO generally, providing advice, that kind of thing.

Rana (26:03)
as I see you.

Craig Burgess (26:28)
so we have those two sides. So I tend to spend a bit of time doing SEO website updates and all those kinds of things too. Cause we also have other people that come to us sometimes with websites that we haven't built that we then take over and try and improve. So we have two sides to the business. ⁓ we don't do ads, but I work closely with another partner who does. So it's a big part of what we do, even if we don't do ads specifically.

We work with lot of partners who are running ads and we make sure that the website is doing exactly what it needs to do.

Rana (27:00)
Excellent. I was looking at your LinkedIn profile and there was one thing I noticed. You mentioned there most businesses don't have a marketing problem, they have a website problem. So how do you elaborate on this point?

Craig Burgess (27:14)
What do I mean? It's a frustrating one this because I have a couple of close colleagues who work in other places as well, marketing people and things like that. And they often come to me for website advice and they always know that the answer is when they start working for a business doing marketing, the website is going to be the main problem. What I mean by that is that, as I said at the beginning, people often think

because they're not selling on their website, because it's not an e-commerce website, because they're, let's say, a service business or something like that, the website is not that important, because they may have done fine for the last 10 years, five years, whatever it is, with a rubbish website. But things are changing quite quickly, as they have been for a long time. And it's harder than ever to get attention and then convert that attention into something that's actually a sale or a lead. And

Everything you are going to do, be it making a flyer, be it sending an email, making a YouTube video, posting on LinkedIn, regardless of what you do as a marketing activity, and by the way, you should be doing something. That marketing activity will eventually go back to your website because somebody will, even if not explicitly, even if you're not saying, out my website in a video or a post that you've made, people will end up on your website because they'll want to check you out.

And if when they land on your website, what they're seeing on that website doesn't match the other marketing that you've been doing, then you have a problem. Because there's a mismatch, basically. There's a mismatch between your marketing versus the actual website that we end up on. Imagine, for example, if Coca-Cola were running a campaign where you had to go to web page, you got a free bottle of Coke or something like that, and there was a big QR code on every bottle.

and you hit the QR code and you went to the website and it didn't work, then the whole marketing campaign may as well not have been done. And a lot of people, for a lot of people, a website tends to be an afterthought rather than the first thought. And I understand because it's a scary prospect and sometimes expensive. before you run any marketing, regardless of what it is, even posting on social media, you have to change the attitude of being embarrassed of your website versus

the website says exactly what I need it to say. Do you know what I mean?

Rana (29:24)
I think so. Yeah, clarity. is what on the again, are keep coming back to the content. I think the problem and solution part of the of the thing. So

Another example, marketing example, I'm coming from how much content you need. So because everybody is in a hurry.

Attention is the new currency for many, many years now. And you have to be very quick to make your case. For example, if you want to know how to tie a tie, so maybe one minute YouTube video will be the best content. But if you are looking to how to decide a website strategy, maybe you need a 5,000 words guide with images with the

YouTube videos to explain that matter to someone. I think it comes down to maybe I made it more complicated, whatever you're trying to do, whatever you're trying to convince the content, creating content with creativity is the key because tools are there to create content, but you have to find a problem and you have to find a creative solution to that, which connects with your audience.

Craig Burgess (30:26)
I think

Rana (30:27)
So the main question, I think, that if we are speaking with our audience is someone who is not getting results from your website or looking to build a website to grow their business. What would be the steps you would suggest now? Because it used to be easy. You have something to sell. You normally go to WordPress or

Shopify, create a simple website, and start selling those services or products. But it's getting complicated. So what are the steps you would suggest now to people who are listening if they want to make their website their number one business growth tool?

Craig Burgess (31:02)
I still think the most important thing is not the platform that you choose to build it on. Because I think whilst it's certainly getting more complicated, we're also blessed with the fact that we have, I'm going to mention Wix, but I don't recommend you use Wix. I hate Wix. But you've got things like Wix, you've got things like Squarespace, WordPress, like you mentioned, there's a bunch of platforms out there where you can make a website very quickly. But the difficulty is what are you going to put on that?

website. So that's the thing that most people get wrong when we're, especially when we're looking to turn our website into a sales tool, the number one sales tool, what's really important is that we need to consider our offer. What are we actually saying to people? What are we actually selling to people?

and how to say the things that are on there. So you can't go far wrong at least in the basic point of fully understanding what you are selling. So it has to be clear, crystal clear, what are you selling?

If you can, and most businesses can, but they still don't, put the price of the product that you're on there. And if you can't put the price of the product or the service that you're selling, put from prices on there and make it easy for people to purchase. So I think if we're looking at clear steps for this, number one is you have to understand what it is you are selling and doing. And that has to be communicated in simple, clear language with no jargon. So if I am a plumber,

and I am based in Yorkshire. I am a plumber that works 24 seven in Yorkshire. We don't even have to talk about benefits or anything like that at this point. We just need to clearly state what it is that we do. We've got to get that right first. And then from there we can talk about what is it specifically that we offer. So services or products or whatever it is, they have to be listed on our website clearly, or at least it must be obvious from

whatever we've already written, what our services are. And then finally, we have to understand how can I purchase that and how much does it cost? Put the prices on there, from prices, how it's done, process, whatever you can do to make it as clear as possible. I think if most people were willing to follow those three steps, clearly and simply, they would build a website that's far more successful than the vast majority of others.

I just want to add one clarifying point to that as well. If you look at our website right now, GeniusDivision.com, there isn't much on it. And there could be lots on it, but it isn't necessary. All the website is used for right now is to steer people from the content that I make into the website to potentially book a call. That's all I care about right now. Your website can be the same. It doesn't need to have company history. It doesn't need to have how many awards you've won.

All it needs is the things that you need right now. And that might even be the services. So we do website design and development. We do other services, but I don't want to promote them. So they're not on the website purposefully to keep it as simple as possible. I want to sell websites. That's it.

Rana (33:54)
Yeah, these are the great, great steps. And do you see these commonalities? You have built many websites, the websites who are doing great and who are not doing as great. These are the common features of the websites who are working.

Craig Burgess (34:08)
Definitely common features definitely one clear call to action because how can you really drive? Traffic to a website be ads or content or whatever you choose and ask people to do something if it isn't clear what they have to do when they land on the website Remembering that like you said before people aren't going to read everything that's on there We have to make it as clear as possible for them. So that clear call to action is always the thing that I see

When I look at any of the sites that we work with that running Google ads, it's always a very clear product that they're selling. Product or service, not always a specific product. But it's a very clear action of what needs to happen next, because they know that's how that they drive business. Another example, we're working with the solicitors at the minute. They have a very clear call to action on their book, a free 30 minute consultation. That's it. So.

Everybody knows that solicitors are expensive, lawyers are expensive, but it's a nice thing to see on there. I'm not sure what I need. Can I talk to somebody? Can I do it for free? It says it all there. It even says the amount of time that it will last. So it's very easy for somebody to get in touch and then we've captured a lead and then hopefully it'll turn to a sale. If that was, so I'm thinking of another example of another solicitor site I've seen whilst we're doing research for this one.

The other site I saw was full of complex legal jargon. The home page didn't even say that they were a solicitor. It actually said that they were an international organization working globally, blah, blah, blah, something like this. The contact page just said, contact us. The services page listed hundreds of services. It's not for the user to work that out. If they have to work it out,

Rana (35:46)
You like me.

Craig Burgess (35:47)
they're just going to hit back and go to Google again and click on the next solicitor down. That's the difference in that kind of clear and lean website versus bloated and complicated website. It's a big mistake a lot of people make.

Rana (36:01)
I agree. And it's easier to put everything on the website. It's difficult to put the right, just the right thing on the website. That's the, that's the challenge. That's why you need professionals, you know, like, like, like yourself. And also I want to mention regarding these platforms. We've been working with WordPress for the last 15 years and our, you know, number one, we grew up with WordPress as an agency. And the number one thing we did because of his open source and we, as a business owner owns everything. So that was the main.

decision making process and to specialize in just WordPress. And we had a good run since then. I think that's why we recommend, in most cases, WordPress. But now Shopify is the other good tool. But again, depending on the business. But most service businesses, people, WordPress is great. while implementing these action steps that you mentioned to build a website that worked for you and for

for you and your business. What is the right way of using AI?

Craig Burgess (37:00)
What is the right way of using AI?

Rana (37:02)
because everybody can use it but I think to get what you need

Craig Burgess (37:05)
Yeah. Yeah. I use it in a lot of ways now. And in fact, our team uses it in a lot of ways as well. Things like Claude code as an example, we use it every day for all kinds of code questions. It's practically a place something like Stack Overflow, you know, developers used to Google answers to questions. They just ask AI now and AI will write a boilerplate, if not a damn good version of it sometimes.

It's incredibly useful there and it's not being talked about enough. I don't think the other side of it though is when it comes to writing content or creating content. Now you have to be a bit more careful here. The best way I found to use AI by the way, I'm no expert on this because this is emerging right now, but this is how I use it at least is you need a strong starter piece of content. if, if you wanted

AI to help you write a blog post, keyword help there, you need the blog post to begin with. So you need to have at least written a strong blog post or at least the outline of a blog post with clear bullet points and a full structure of it. Then what you can ask something like AI to help you with is I have a blog post here. This is what it's about. I've got a script that I've already written. Can you help me improve this?

And then give it some other kind of things. So you can also pass it. And this is for this audience. As an example, imagine I am a business owner reading this, all these kinds of things. You need to be as specific as possible. So you might say, imagine you are a business owner reading this article about widgets, ⁓ blah, blah. I want this to be this kind of article. Here's what I've written so far. Can you help me improve it?

something to that effect. The way I'm using it with YouTube specifically right now, I use it to help me write a lot of YouTube scripts because writing a huge 12 minute, 15 minute YouTube script is just tedious. So the way that I work with YouTube with that is I'm using an excellent tool called, hang on, it's called Superly. So Super L Y and it uses

pretty much every mainstream AI tool. So for example, Claude and chat GPT and all that, it gives you access to Gemini and everybody. And it's a visual flow chart basically. So that's how you work with it and you give it data. So say for example, I did a YouTube video last week about AI. I fed in five or six YouTube videos that I liked about the topic.

So you plunk them on the art board or the flow chart. Then I wrote up all my notes about it, what I'd learned and all these kinds of things. And this is what I've learned. This is the kind of essence of what I want to say. This is my opinion on this. This is where I'm at right now. This is what I'm thinking. Plop that in as a document. Then I have a style guide basically that says, this is how I speak. This is who I am. This is where I'm from. This is my experience, all these kinds of things.

So what I'm doing here is giving AI lots of context. That's the key to what I'm getting at. Then what Superly allows you to do is feed all that context into one box. So a chat GBT box as an example. And then you can say, this is the video I'm doing. I'm doing a video about what was the video specifically about? AI is not ruining your website. So I'm doing a video about AI is not ruining your website.

Feed in all this context and write me a script for a 15 minute YouTube video and it'll give me a good boilerplate because what's good about that then is that it's written in my voice. It's taken all the context what I've learned and it's also taken the wording and the thoughts and feelings and the opinions that I have and then fed it all into that and then obviously the tedious bit comes after that. I only have a rough draft at that point. What I wouldn't recommend is then

If this was a website article, copy and pasting that onto a website, that's not what we're doing. But I have a very strong, rough draft there now that I can go away and edit. Basically as if I'd asked an assistant in my office to write me a script. I know it wouldn't be right, but now I've got a good starting point. So that's how I'm using it really. I think the important point to say and finish is just whatever you get out of chart GPT, don't just copy and paste it into a website. It has to still be unique.

Rana (41:14)
First of all, thank you very much for sharing your workflow, how you are getting most of AI. So I was smiling because we think AI is there to help us create content in seconds. But the amount of work you are mentioning, this is my challenge as well. Because this is why I started podcasts. Whenever I speak with team, I ask lots of questions. So when I start talking to AI, it gets very deep.

Craig Burgess (41:28)
Yeah.

Rana (41:40)
and to review all those things, then conclude what you want. It's lot of work. So AI is a great tool, but what goes in comes out of this. If you're just writing one line prompt, you will get the similar type of content. But if you're following the way you described, putting in YouTube transcripts, sharing your insights, writing a full blog post, it's a lot of work. But that's what needed to compete now and create a

a content which helps someone in a very competitive space now.

Craig Burgess (42:11)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And it saves me time, but probably not as much time as people think. But what it does do is it gives me, this is why I like superly. Once the chat has got the context of the script that I've been working on there, now it can do other things for me like write me 10 potential YouTube titles for this video as an example. Now we've got the script, write me a YouTube description.

Rana (42:16)
Hmm.

Craig Burgess (42:36)
What's the key things in this here? Take all these comments that on this popular video? What's the sentiment of this? What are people missing? What people enjoy in? That's where it's really powerful because whilst we're not particularly saving all that much time, it gives me a lot more access to things, a lot more context. And then after that, I can say, right, I need to record a two minute LinkedIn video. Now I want to do a short form video.

take out all of the stuff that's not relevant and just give me a script for a two minute video.

I would never be able to do that by myself.

Rana (43:07)
So to wrap up our conversation, the people who are struggling to get results, the websites are broken for them, not working, not helping them grow their business. What is the one action step you can suggest them to take?

Craig Burgess (43:19)
If you have doubts right now about your website and you're not quite sure what it is, I would always recommend to go over to PageSpeed Insights. So just Google PageSpeed Insights and it's going to run a test on your website, a technical test that Google used to help them rank your website in Google. They're going to give you a score out of 100 on desktop and mobile. And if your score is

let's say below 80 out of 100, there's probably issues that need to be fixed. Now you may not understand what those issues are because it's a technical report, but you can pass them on to somebody else. So that's the number one step I always ask people to take or at least I do it for them. Then we know where we're at, least technically standing from that. Then if you follow the steps that we previously spoke about, honestly look at your website homepage.

Does it actually say what you do? Usually it doesn't and that's what needs to be addressed first. Make the content as simple as possible. Say actually what you do and if you can, put the prices on your website and say what specific services you do. I think they're the first good first step.

Rana (44:26)
Excellent, Craig. Last question. On this topic, fixing broken websites and websites making money for businesses. Was there a question which I should have asked you, which I haven't?

Craig Burgess (44:36)
That's a good question.

Not that I can think of, but there's one thing that we haven't touched upon too much, which I think is also important, which is images and video on websites, particularly images. So I think a lot of people will rush to either Google search and download Google images. Don't do that. Or use stock photography. And I would argue against doing that too. I think it's more important than ever because of the rise of AI to make your website look authentic.

So one thing I would say on at least images is make sure they are images of you, make sure they are your team, make sure it's clear that they're not stock photography. So I would caution against using stock photography now.

Rana (45:17)
Yeah, I agree. And that's a brilliant point. have done, I think, so far 30 plus podcasts. AI is the, know, something comes up one reason or another, which is rightly so. But I think the common answer to combat AI is with personality, your own creativity. So these are the couple of tools we have on our arsenal to deal with AI challenges, I think. So Craig, thank you very much, you know, for your generous responses. And I hope this conversation will help.

as someone improve their website and grow their businesses, where people can find you and how you help businesses fix broken websites.

Craig Burgess (45:53)
place to go is GeniusDivision.com so you'll see a video of my ugly mug on that website if you go over there now and it'll ask you a couple of questions and it's a little bit of a funny video. The other place to look is LinkedIn that's where I spend most of my time just search Craig Burgess on there and more recently I'm spending more time on YouTube so I'm sharing one video a week on there about useful simple tips that I've just shared today fundamental tips to how to fix your website

that are usually things you can do within a couple of minutes. So go over there. That's it really.

Rana (46:24)
Excellent and we will put all these links into the show notes as well. Craig, thank you very much and that's it for this episode of the website growth show. If you enjoy, consider subscribing and keep growing. Thank you very much.

Craig Burgess (46:38)
Thank you.