4 Pillars of a Profitable Web Presence

 

How is your web presence?  Are you confident that it will bring in the appropriate traffic for you… and then convert?  Make sure to listen to today’s podcast with Jeremy Sutton as he is an expert at making websites work” for you.  You’ll also learn the 4 pillars of a profitable web presence.

 

Josh Fonger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Work The System podcast where we help entrepreneurs make more and work less. And I’m your host Josh Fonger. And today I have a special guest Jeremy Sutton. Jeremy is the founder of Web Ship Solutions. They help small to medium sized enterprises build and manage systems to leverage everything the Web has to offer. Their mission is to help each of their clients transform their web presence, from real chore to a genuine asset. All right well Jeremy I’m excited about today. I got a lot of questions about my own personal Web site though. Let’s before we get started. Tell us the backstory. How did you get it into a building Web sites?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:00:37] Well sure. Cheers Josh. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. Really. And yeah. Well I kind of have an eclectic backstory really but the short draft is I’ve actually spent about six years living abroad. I put in a couple years in South America four years throughout Asia and I was in living in Thailand with, my wife is from Japan. We met in Mexico. So we moved to Thailand for three years. Of course while we were there at the time I was studying real hard for how to get a master’s in psychology and working full time at a little private school. And while not so small actually in that when I finish that master’s program I realized I wanted to launch my first endeavor online and I wanted to use my background and meditation and psychology and yoga and help other folks with the sort of peak performance on the mental game. And so you know in Thailand there’s not a whole lot of English speakers so in terms of building my client tell there was no way to network in person to build my business. So one hundred percent had to come through the Web. And that’s sort of how I got started really. My first foray into the web was really like the skin of the Apple just figuring out how all these tools work on the suit on the various surface level trying to figure out how do people find you and work their way in. And then over time I started to work and I’ve started to realize that people that want the kind of help I was offering also tend to be entrepreneurs and also needed more help with the web. So I over the years I worked in consulting for a while and I also took a coding bootcamp to sort of peek my head behind the curtains and long story short. Now I know I have some of those skills to do the coding and whatnot but what I really do is I network that people in or really great at the design development, great all the different aspects of it. And I helped pull those projects to make sure we are using the Web holistically in a effective way.

Josh Fonger: [00:02:29] So with your background in psychology have you found that that’s helpful in actually making Web sites sell or work for your clients as opposed to just writing a copy?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:02:39] One hundred percent because the web is really an experiment in we’re like the world of psychology. Technology come together you need. And it’s funny because those worlds don’t often makes you know a lot of the real hard core web developers don’t love the psychology stuff. And then you get kind of the marketers who think technology is just like a puzzle they don’t want to solve but you need both in order to have a profitable effective web presence that’s really going to support your business.

Josh Fonger: [00:03:06] So if you have all the right tools but the wrong words on it then it doesn’t matter if you write words with the wrong tools then doesn’t work either. Well that’s interesting so let’s let’s dive in a little bit. So let’s say you are working with a client and they have a Web site. The Web site’s 8 years old needs a brush up. What what are you looking for in terms of helping a client? Let’s just say it’s a it’s a dental office. I should say that.

Jeremy Sutton: [00:03:31] Sure yeah. So you know dental office OK. So overall the first thing I want to do is I want to check out your analytics and figure out what is actually going on. So I got a peek behind the hood. You may or may not be surprised how few people really have their analytics hooked up correctly or at all actually. So you know first off first things first I’ll just want to browse the web search for their search for their company online making sure they got their Google my business profile to make sure that Yelp profiles are all owned because really the web is not it’s about your website for sure but it’s really it’s about your whole web presence which is how your Web site connects to all the other platforms around the web because you know as the term Web implies the Internet is just a network of links. And so the larger the more links that you have around the web that connect to your site also improve your presence your find ability and then we can start to dive into the actual details of one’s site. The first question that you really want to ask before you can make any adjustments of course you want to see the analytics where the people coming from how long do they stay. Do they care about any of the pages and if they do care about a page which one does that might indicate who’s finding your site. And also I want to know how often are they actually reaching out. So is it a call conversion that we’re looking for is it an email sign up conversion we’re looking for. And how often is not being effective. And then one more thing on that note is you can’t really make changes to a Web site that are going. Help you improve your conversions and traffic without really understanding who it is that you serve. Because the web you know your business depends on you knowing who you serve and then you know all I want to do is help you find more of the people who you are like that’s a slam dunk client. I could I can hook them up all day long every day because that’s the way that good business works and it’s also how you’re going to sells life gonna be way easier.

Josh Fonger: [00:05:24] So on the typical side you see going back to this example the older Web site is it is it so far gone and they really just need to scrap it and start fresh with a design that works or is it better to work within the design or is it just a depend?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:05:41] That really depends. There’s a couple of things. Let’s say that your site. You know what. Now an eight years eight years old well responsive Web sites you know Web sites that respond to different screen sizes they existed eight years ago but it wasn’t so emphasized like it is now. So the first question would be is your site actually responsive to mobile devices. If the answer is No. And it’s because it’s just built in like a HTML old style, HTML CSS really cut and dry simple Web site. That’s not using like say WordPress or some sort of framework that’s made to adjust. Then you’re definitely better off just starting over because it’s gonna be a whole hassle to try to bring that into the 2019 and additionally you probably have a bunch of other tools that you’re not leveraging if that’s also not happening. If you have the responsiveness thing in place and you’re using a more modern framework then it’s going to depend on a number of things. If you’re getting traffic and getting conversions I would way prefer just to leave your system in place and try to improve it incrementally as we go to see if we can open up those that funnel if there’s pretty much no traction. We need to figure out if it’s because the business just isn’t really like viable in a certain sense or are you not serving clients or are people not realizing how you serve them and they’re coming to your site they’re just not realizing it. So it is a dynamic process. I don’t want to just jump to hey just scrap everything and let’s build from scratch because there are challenges that come with that too. Cutting expenses and a delicate process. But yeah can help.

Josh Fonger: [00:07:15] So before we get online to you or talk to me about this new message you’re getting out to the four pillars of a profitable Web presence. Let it kind of dive into those pillars and figure out what what our audience can learn about how to make money with their Web?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:07:30] Absolutely will. Thank you. That’s a it’s the fun of a fun process that I’ve sort of been uncovering myself. I didn’t really come up with this except that as I was trying to exploit explain to others like how we can serve them it kind of dawned on me one day that all the Web breaks down into four parts and it comes simply it’s a simple way to remember it is you know you need to be BFFF. What that comes down to is up the back end which is all your server side development. The front end which is your core Web site including your messaging your branding and your website build. Then with that it’s your funnel, your funnel includes all the tools like your landing pages and your forums and email automation all the things that make shopping carts maybe even e-learning courses. Anything that you plug into your Web site that now gives it traction to convert clients. And then once you have that whole system built the fourth one is float and by flow we’re talking about traffic and conversions. How do we get more people to your site and how do we help them sign up at higher rates. And inside that you have everything from SCO, paper click, social media, content marketing, PR, podcasting just any way that helps drive more traffic and then testing that traffic to make sure the conversions goes up.

Josh Fonger: [00:08:47] Ok. Wow. So that’s a that’s a lot to cover. And so when you when you are working on the new clients pretty it’s pretty comprehensive problem solving and I’m assuming most clients should not even bother trying to do it on their own because there’s just too much to learn. So do you start from the back end and work your way or you just say hey let’s just get some more flow and work on SEO first?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:09:10] Well yeah that’s a great question. At your one you’re 100 percent right. I mean if there’s one message that I could send to everyone it would just be learn to delegate the things that people like better than you. So I give my company like I don’t hire anyone who’s not better than me it’s something that’s that’s like that’s the bar that you got you get a design way better than me. You got to develop better than me. But what we do with those four parts is we basically use each lens to look at the whole system and then we figure out if it’s worth where the lowest hanging fruit are based on that whole system. Because most people are having trouble somewhere. People don’t like to think about the back end server stuff and that becomes really an issue just when somebody hacks you or something fails catastrophically and you’re like oh I wish I would’ve put in like an extra just 10 hours of work back here to make sure that didn’t happen. But all the fun stuff is sort of on the front end the business tools and getting more conversions and that tends to be the most highly leveraged bull pieces of the puzzle too.

Josh Fonger: [00:10:10] Ok. So how do you do a diagnostic and diagnostic test to identify where the low hanging fruit is?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:10:15] Sure. Well if others you know number one what’s their traffic again? We’re gonna come back to you like who’s actually showing up to the web you know. And we’re gonna look at all the different social channels around a lot of the times there’s really big issues. I would say one of the most opportune leverage points for websites tends to be the calls to action because a lot of people realize they need a call to action. So they’re like oh OK here’s a pop up sign up for our newsletter and I can’t reveal where I got this I listen to a lot of audiobooks but when I remember one time someone said you know nobody in the history of the web you know woke up at 5:00 in the morning head popping off the pillow and thought to myself Oh man I need some newsletter updates from some company that I’ve never heard of even one that I even one that I care about I really like I have a lot of companies that I really enjoy but I don’t want I don’t care about their newsletters so. So we need to stop offering so many newsletters because it sort of a self it’s sort of a self-centered approach to messaging on the web. So one of the things I kind of come back to is flipping the script for messaging because most that one of the biggest mistakes is that you know we’re all self we’re all people we all see the world from our own perspective it’s natural but when we get to the Web site we say like Hi I’m Jeremy. I make web sites my Web sites are clean My websites are beautiful, my web sites can help your business. Would you like a Web site? And it’s like Thanks Jeremy for all the cool things you do. But I don’t feel compelled.

Josh Fonger: [00:11:39] Right. So lets use a live example I and I don’t know if you have access or not but.

Jeremy Sutton: [00:11:45] Sure.

Josh Fonger: [00:11:46] Work the system because that’s my company and our Web site is due for a refresher and I’m sure there’s lots of obvious things that we’re doing wrong. Don’t make me cry right now. But you know just taking a look. What are some things that you think are, or if we are doing things good, let me know that too. We do need to do an update to the site. There are a lot of things going on. Sam and I been working, working on our business for over eight years now and so just a lot of history a lot of stuff we’ve built over the years and we’ve tried some things is you know so I guess I’ve seen the numbers being pretty hard to tell what to do.

Jeremy Sutton: [00:12:23] It can’t be about where I’m going to take it. I’ll go ahead and take a look with some of the tools that I got going on here. You know I have of course you know taking a peek at your website I can’t help but peek at Web sites that I have tools to help like look behind the scenes and stuff. And you know it’s not really surprising to me that overall actually if I go through and comb through the four parts of the four pillars you’re actually you’ve actually nabbed a lot of the lowest hanging fruit and you’re doing a pretty good job. For example things I look for right away is your SSL you know you’re using a HTTPS that’s a little secure lock in the corner.

Josh Fonger: [00:12:54] OK.

Jeremy Sutton: [00:12:54] You’d be surprised how many people don’t do that. That’s real big because Google tracks. Google is all about a secure web and so SSL is help you with your rankings is one of the most important things. It’s just good for your for your visitors because if they give their information. What that means is that they’re imposed encrypted when they send it to and from your Web site. And so if someone kind of snatches one of those packets in the middle of the web and they look they look at it it won’t just be in plain text so you won’t be passing off their email. So that’s why it’s actually required if you collect payments on a Web site. You have to have an SSL. So that’s a key piece of the backend infrastructure. This is where the back end helps the profitability of a Web site.

Josh Fonger: [00:13:32] Oh OK.

Jeremy Sutton: [00:13:33] So you have that going. You also have a number a couple analytics tools plugged in. I can see I got it. I got an analytic I love this tool called WAP ELIZA It’s for web app analyzer that a Chrome extension if anybody is interested so I can tell you know for example using a Tag Manager from Google Analytics and you’re using Yost as SEO. So it’s a wordpress build. And that means it’s gonna be all responsive. So you know these are all these are all excellent cornerstones to get started.

Josh Fonger: [00:14:03] Well good. Well I this is all this is all a different language to me. Obviously been someone else doing all this stuff but I’m good. I’m glad I’m glad it’s not, I glad it’s secure. And I’m glad that so far we’re not doing anything that’s illegal. So that’s a good sign. I think that for those listening to most of us here are not Web site builders I think the key thing is if you’re not somebody who is expert whether you or someone else look through it could just be some really obvious things you did wrong and it can be really hurting your your business which I think is a which is the whole point with it with the Web site is making it to, not just be a brochure. So you are….

Jeremy Sutton: [00:14:39] Right.

Josh Fonger: [00:14:39] You mentioned on your Web site one of things you do is kind of add in tools or systems to make them convert better. Are there certain things that are kind of the most common things people should be thinking about?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:14:49] Yeah yeah absolutely. Yeah, so you and I can also kind of highlight some things that you’re doing well in that same way because you know number one you have a great called action right from the top. So you get the book for free. You can download the book that number one is. I’m assuming that’s connected to some sort of email marketing system so that you know landing pages email marketing and are highly valuable resource that’s related to the services that you provide. You know that’s the place to start. So if you have if you don’t have any of those. Start by making the highly valuable resource that will help people know that they’re in the right place. In other words you want to start with the offer.

Josh Fonger: [00:15:29] Ok. So you’re thinking into Web sites that don’t have some kind of magnet to grab to catch their attention and actually get their e-mail addresses is kind of a missing opportunity?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:15:39] One hundred percent because you know the Web is a is a huge spectrum. There’s a lot of less than honorable characters out there. You don’t know who. No one knows when they first come across you. Which one who you might be. And so it’s your responsibility to go you know three quarters of the way to build that bridge of trust before anyone. You expect anyone else to sort step out over the edge and free giveaway that proves that you know you’re talking about gives value is 100 percent the way to start.

Josh Fonger: [00:16:07] So where do you see the future of course. So I did have a Web sites and the connections between social media and a lot social media players out there. You know because people,entrepreneurs want to capitalize on opportunities they’re coming up. What do you see the next 10 years going. I mean if you were to put your money would you invest more on sales pages more on funnels more on your social media connecting them what what should a standard business you really focus in on?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:16:39] Yep that’s a great question. And. one thing is that content is going to be it’s going to be a key driver for the foreseeable future. You know people say content is king is a common phrase you’ll hear on the Web. And the reason that content is king is because it increases the footprint of your web presence. You know your Web site is not a static thing every time you build another another post you’re building onto this whole hub. And each one of those pieces of information is a hooking spot where other Web sites might link back into it. And in terms of content the way the the way the web is moving one hundred percent is towards video. You really got you really got everyone’s needs to understand the role that video can play in their business because of the type of connection people want to do business face to face. But we live all over the world and most people work from offices that they don’t meet face to face usually. So I actually use video a lot in my email marketing. There’s a service called Bomb Bomb. It is like 400-500 bucks a year. And it’s really great for sending video emails and also lets you track how far people are if they’re opening the videos how far they got go in the videos and actually lets you add calls to action in the videos to say so you could use it for marketing for sales or for just content creation. So I would say videos are definitely a big thing to go and content in general. Just getting your expertise out of your mind and into a digital format that’s reproducible that’s key.

Josh Fonger: [00:18:05] That’s key. Ok. And so in volume is a big part of it too. So not just once a month but trying to get it out excessively?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:18:13] Well there’s two there’s actually two sides of that coin actually. There’s two sides of the coin. So volume is important because again we’re trying to build that footprint. So especially like social media consistency is really nice for social media to be honest I’m not I don’t do the social media game all that great. But, part of that is because my only take on you know small handfuls of clients at a time so I’m not really looking for volume but I’m looking for sort of quality. And in a similarly though there’s a great a great resource for a SEO Brian Dean thinks his name from back lingo is the name of his website. You know in the world of SEO if you’re trying to rank for SEO related terms that’s some pretty fierce competition because so are all of your SEO professional competitors. And so Brian Dean has some really great information. And he says he has proven with his site he has hundreds and hundreds of thousands of visitors per month and he only has like a couple of dozen posts on his on his Web site but every single one of his posts are like ground breaking information that any one of them could revolutionize your business. So in terms of traffic so you know really what you want in terms of long term traffic are quality back links and people don’t really even if you bought a bunch of content it doesn’t mean people are going to share it to their networks. But if you create one excellent piece of content that’s can’t help but be shared then sometimes you might get hundreds of thousands of back links so that one piece of content and that can drive your traffic through the roof.

Josh Fonger: [00:19:39] So what’s the secret to doing that?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:19:42] Yeah. That’s the million dollar question there. Well there are a number of actual tech a bunch of techniques to help make that happen. Number one is you know be an expert in what you’re serving. And then and then use the experience that you have with your clients that are the things that you use to serve your clients most consistently. And then just create really incredible content that helps clearly communicate how to use it what it is. And and then start to share it share it to all, the all people you can find out through your social networks find other bloggers and podcasters or you know for example just like what’s happening right here. I have four pillars of a profitable web presence. I’d love for your audience to know more about it. And now here we are having a conversation about this and hopefully will it’ll be shared with many more people. So things like this where you it’s called you know in the business my business mentors and coaches call it a brand deleveraging which essentially comes down to find other folks who serve similar audiences to yours and figure out how you can work together. And and usually everybody wins.

Josh Fonger: [00:20:45] So with the, so with the entrepreneurs starting out. lets just say a business coach right there they’re just starting out there and their new business coach and they’re thinking wow I’m overwhelmed. Maybe they have a you know they’ve we’ve worked for 20-30 years they have experienced but now they’re going to start coaching where should they start because they’re going to post a Facebook video or YouTube video they’re gonna get you know two views. So what. How do they. How do they break in?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:21:14] Yeah. The first thing that so I’m actually one of the service that I offer for a lot of folks is sort of a I call it a content extraction process where I kind of just come at you like an ignorant and antagonistic person. And I’m just like what do you do? Who the hell cares? Because the point is I want you to get fired up. I want you to be like What do you mean who cares. This is incredible service is so valuable you have to be blind not to see it and here’s why it works. And then I just start taking notes and you know you can turn like five or six questions into you know eight or nine pages of bullet point notes and now all of a sudden you’re starting to get your expertise out of your head and into a digestible form. So start crushing content on each of those pieces. I recommend a writing habit you know when I was doing my own blog for example I would write literally two thousand words a day. I mean I would do like five to seven hundred words of a warm up where I would just do a stream of consciousness and then I would make myself you know I wouldn’t I couldn’t leave the computer till I hit at least two thousand words and. Once you start doing that start putting out the content sharing the content and then start to see what really what hits you because there’s no there’s no silver bullet here you’ve got to figure out what resonates with the people you’re trying to reach and then make more of that.

Josh Fonger: [00:22:30] Oh very cool. Well this is, when ever I talk to an expert in web development or online marketing and always makes me glad that I have a team people who know what they are doing to put me in the right place because it continues to get more more professionalized right and more things you can do is more synergy based on it. And if you’re spinning your wheels the wrong direction you can really burn up a lot of energy and that’s that’s no good at all. So where, just because of time I want to get these last two questions out. Know what’s one question that I forgot to ask that I should have asked you. You kind of want the audience and this is a small business owners, to really know about?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:23:08] I would just say you know maybe a question might be like you know who who should be delegating tasks? And the simple answer is everyone you know if you if you’re trying to stay in business for the long run you definitely should be delegating task to folks who can do stuff better and faster than you. And let me I promise you it took me longer than anybody to learn that lesson. Longer than anyone it took me to learn that lesson and as soon as I did it it seems I learned that it was immediately immediately you know changed me from my chair my desk. It opened up my profitability and it made the quality of everything that we do just ten times better. So whatever you know whatever it is you need help with find out and ask questions from people who can help you because you know a 10 minute conversation might save you six months of things that you wouldn’t have even realized that you know you wouldn’t have maybe realized that what you should be doing for six months with someone who knows you like oh you should definite make a landing page and make a resource and here’s someone to put here someone who can design that PDF for you once you get the content down.

Josh Fonger: [00:24:10] Yeah that’s great advice. I’m always amazed when there’s something that I’m really struggling with. And then I look online like awesome I could do that for ten bucks and I’m like why why do I even start trying.

Jeremy Sutton: [00:24:18] Right.

Josh Fonger: [00:24:20] I got a great example that was a brilliant wealth advisor and I got a firm and I say let’s do you should do a newsletter. And I had on his To Do list for for weeks and I’m like how’s the newsletter coming in. And he spends hours and hours and hours. And I said anyone could writes newsletter. And he found someone to write the newsletter for him super quick really inexpensive and it turns out great. And he’s like why was I trying to write this newsletter. Should of found someone to do it for him.

Jeremy Sutton: [00:24:48] For sure it’s a classic solo, soloprenewer superhero syndrome. You’ve got to get, you got to get over it. They got the where we all suffer from it because we’re all really good at stuff. If you start a business you’re probably good at something and you’re probably not just skilled at just that one thing and you just gotta learn to get over it and hand it off to someone else.

Josh Fonger: [00:25:06] Yeah definitely. Well I mean this is this is fine. Where can people find out more about you and more about your business?

Jeremy Sutton: [00:25:13] Absolutely well if anyone’s interested in the four pillars of a profitable Web presence then they can start by texting in text the word webship that’s W E B S H I P like a spaceship for the web type text web ship TO 5 5 6 7 8 and we’ll send a text that will let you get that right sent to you.

Josh Fonger: [00:25:35] Perfect. Well very good. Hi everybody I hopefully enjoy the podcast with Jeremy Sutton and I make sure to stay tuned next week where I’ll be sharing with you and other podcasts from business expert like Jeremy or previous clients and we’ll be talking about a tool technique resource something that’s gonna help you make more and work less. And before I sign off today I want to let you know that we are giving away a free copy of Sam’s book. It’s right back there. Watch the video. I Work The System. I’m going to try to get him to sign it. And when we send that I one this next week based on comments we receive. So wherever you’re listening or watching this podcast leave a comment. Let us know he’s off to comment to send it to info and work the system dot com and say hey left a comment and that will be drawing one name out of a hat once a week and mailing that physical book out to you free of charge. All right everybody. I will sign off now and I’ll see you next week.

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