Episode 108: Creating A Better User Experience: 5 Things That Should Be Happening On Your Website for Your Small Business
Do you have a website? How long has it been since you sat down and checked whether your website needs updating or not? In this coaching episode with Fiona, she shares the 3 things your potential customers need to take away from your website and the 5 things that should be present there when people visit to create a better user experience.
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The three things to take away from your website
Five things that should be happening on your website
Calls to action
Menu
Personality and humanity in your marketing
Make sure that the purchase is as simple as possible.
Evaluation
Recap
Conclusion
Resources Mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript:
So really, think about where in my website and by adding my personality or the personality of the team or the personality of the brand, and where am I humanising this? Because, again, remember, very little is original these days. And what actually is the biggest point of difference is the person behind the brand and their story. Because, you know, there's only one of us, really. And without sounding cheesy, that really is going to be the differentiator as we move forward.
Hello and welcome to Episode 108 of the My Daily Business podcast. I'm really excited today because despite recording this in lockdown, I have used some of that lockdown time to rearrange my office. I bought a new desk, an L-shaped desk, which I kind of never really loved those, but it's actually really practical. And now I have so much more space, but I've actually set my microphone up in a different spot. So hopefully this all still sounds the same. And yeah, if you ask someone who's looking to start a podcast, definitely check out my How To Start A Podcast course, because I go through things like my microphone set up, which actually goes against pretty much all the stuff that you read online. I don't have a soundproof area. I'm actually really close to windows and other stuff, which, you know, I know apparently the sound bounces off, but I have some sort of tricks and tips that create quality sound without having to spend ages, soundproofing, everything. So, yeah, just a little kind of side note.
If you're in lockdown like me and you're kind of looking for ways to get through it and potentially maybe you live alone or you have some free time, then definitely check out my How To Start A Podcast Course you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast. But anyway, it is episode 108. It's a coaching episode. And yeah, in addition to figuring out my office and rearranging it, like I said, buying a new desk and I put it together all by myself. Thank you very much. Rearrange stuff, have way more space. Just got a new chair from Facebook marketplace. Got to love that. But I'm also taking this time to work on our website because this has been in the pipeline for ages to redo the website.
But I am yet really going through the exact same tools and tips that I give my clients and that I work with bigger companies when I consult them. So I thought today in the coaching session I'd run through some of those. So whether you are looking to redo your website right now, whether you have a website that you love, but you just want to double check that these things are implemented and part of it, today's episode is going to give you a lot to think about. And of course, if you're listening to this and you can't take notes because maybe you're running or going for a walk or something else driving, I know I listen to a lot of podcasts while I'm driving. If you are doing that and you want to come back to this later, then you can find the show notes, which is a full transcript, which will go through every point I'm talking about in text format. You can find that at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/108 as this is episode 108. All right. Enough with the intro. Let's get into it.
All right, so I have worked in the online space for, gosh, a long time, I remember back in the very early 2000s, I was at an ad agency in London and we were predominantly a print ad agency. So we did posters, letters, direct mail, stuff like that. I was the to the director, the executive assistant and a secretary kind of. And I remember him tasking me with kind of searching up display ads and sort of figuring out what they were, could we start selling them. It was just such a bizarre thing. And I remember just even the way websites looked back then was so gross. That was just sort of BlueLinx. And, yeah, it was really, really bad. But we all thought it was so fantastic. But I have been in this space for a long, long time and I've worked on hundreds, if not thousands of website redesigns of works with different UX agencies, user experience. Of course, I've worked in big e-commerce sites as well, like Amazon, Audible, Country Road Group, lots of different places. And what I've learnt from those is that you really need to be aware of your objectives before you start the website. Often we get so excited about what it's going to look like and we get really obsessed with the form over the function. And even when I've worked with big agencies, quite often it's taken an outsider like me to come in and be like, Oh, but, you know, why are we leading people there? That's a complete dead end or where would someone go if they're looking for this?
And so I think even if you've got an amazing website, it's really worthwhile to sit down, take some time out, get some outside perspective as well in terms of how your website functions, but importantly, to sit down and think about what are the top three objectives, goals, impressions, whatever it is that I want people who are coming to the website to take away from being there. So it could be I want them know these three actions that I want them to take. It could be I want them to leave with the impression of X, Y, Z. So what you want to do is figure out what are the three goals or tasks or actions or impressions that you want people to take away from your website. And then once you've got those, you then want to assess how well your website allows people to do that, encourages them and guides them.
So, for instance, when I work with clients, sometimes we'll talk about things like, well, I want the website to show my authority. So say, for instance, you might be an interior designer or you might be in the service space, you might be a photographer or maybe you work in the diversity and inclusion space and so on. Maybe you're an academic or a psychologist or something else. And you might say a really important part of my website. What I want people to walk away with after they've visited it is the sense of my authority, of my credibility. So that could be one for others and a lot of e-commerce stores. This will be number one, sales. I want people to buy something for Service-based. It might be I want them to buy or I want them to book in a coal or I want them to go through to the contact form.
So really think about what it is and get them down to three. I know I talk about this a lot. I talk about three business objectives for the year. The reason that I talk about three again for your website is that, you know, I don't have too many different things going on, otherwise it's just really confusing. There is an amazing book that I've referenced quite a few times in my work, which is Don't Make Me Think. And it's the user experience Bible. It's by a guy called Steve Krug and we will list that in the show notes as well. But really, it's all about don't make me think when I come to a website. Lead me. Guide me to where you want me to go.
So the first thing, I guess, when we're talking about website is what I've just gone through to figure out what are the three things you want people to take away or do or action from your website. Just three. Then, like I said before, you're going to assess whether your website meets those three things. And what I mean by meets is that those three, whether it's I want to show my credibility or I want to make a sale or whatever, the third one is that they are repeated throughout your website that basically, in the words of Steve Krug, “You're not getting people to think you're guiding them to do or take action or have the impression of one of those three things.” So, for instance, in my own website, the current website and of course, we're changing that and excuse my voice, I've got a little bit of a cold. It's not covered, but I have a little bit of a cold at the moment.
And so. Yeah, and my own website, the current website, which you can check out mydaily businesscoach.com. One of the things that we're trying to guide people to do is to sign up to our weekly email, which comes out every Sunday. If you're not on it, get on it. There's a lot of great information. And so we have the subscribe button at the top. We have multiple ways to join the email list on the home page, I think it's repeated twice or three times. Then you come to a blog, it's repeated on the podcast pages. It's repeated and it's basically everywhere throughout the website. We are trying to encourage you to sign up. We have a lot of freebies as well. And you can find that at mydailybusinesscoach.com/freestuff. But that is one of the big things, big goals of the website.
Another one of the big goals is sales. So you buy something from us. So you have the shop in the navigation. We have a banner that leads always to whatever the big thing is that we're promoting right now. It's group coaching. So, again, if you're listening to this in real time and you're interested in working with me, but you're looking for an affordable way to do that, then you want to support other people as well. Check out the group coaching program. You can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com/groupcoaching, but you can also do it via our big banner. So the big banner at the top is always guiding people to whatever the big thing is that we're promoting underneath that we've got multiple options. And again, all of those are guiding you to sale. It's consulting work workshops and coaching. And again, we're going to be changing that up a bit. But that is really, you know, everywhere that you're going is providing a sale opportunity. And then we also have showing authority, and that is through testimonials. It's through things like logo firms showing, you know, 18, 19 years and counting, working in marketing. It's showing it testimonials from people that we really, really appreciate having been a client with. And yeah, so those things are just repeated. I'm not taking up valuable website space with stuff that is not guiding people to one of those three activities or goals that I have. So look at your own website and think about if I got a lot of fluff, have I got stuff there just for the sake of it? Have I got things that are distracting people, even things like, you know, Instagram linking at the bottom? We just have a graphic at the bottom that shows, you know, some tiles and people can click and opens in a new tab, but it's not clicking them straight to Instagram. And then they're on the Instagram tunnel and they never come back to my daily business coach dot com. So there's lots of things to think about there. But really consider what are the three things just three we're trying to get people to do and then how does our website do that? And of course, you could then go into analytics and be making sure that you're tracking those things. But that's for another episode. So that's kind of the first point. Just think about those three activities, those goals, and look at your website and even take those.
If especially if you're a solo pioneer, a freelancer, take those goals to a friend or somebody you trust or even a client that you trust and sort of say, do you think my website allows those things to happen easily or even without showing them? What do you think my website's goals are and really get a sense? Because maybe you're completely missing one of them. You just you're putting things in the wrong order, or maybe it's just not obvious to people. And again, keep going back to that Steve Krag idea of don't make me think, which is his UX Bible. It's an amazing book. So it's the first kind of part of this coaching session, really. Think about the three goals.
The next thing I want to kind of run through are five really simple things that you should make sure are happening on your website.
So the first and it might sound really obvious, but I can't tell you how many websites I look at that do not have this in place, but it's called actions, as we know. So a call to action is really a button or a link or a form or something. By now, purchase add to cart, it is a button or an action that is allowing somebody to take an action. So and I said action twice there, but it's called to action is really kind of oh my gosh, you've led me down this path. I've now been on this beautiful page. For instance, if you are a photographer, I'm looking at your portfolio. I've gone into portraits. They're so beautiful. I'm considering. Oh, gosh, yes. I'd love to get some portraits for my fiftieth birthday or maybe for a friend or for my business or whatever it is. And I've come through and I think they're great. And there I am. I'm at a dead end. There's no call to action. And I see that a lot, especially with interior design where it's beautiful folios and I've clicked through, I can see them. There's a gallery and there's nothing there's nothing it might have. You know, this was a house in this part of Victoria. This was a house in this island in Hawaii. But there's nothing else. There's nothing. You were putting the onus on the person to go back to the navigation and figure out where the contact form is instead of putting it at the point at which they're most you have the highest intention to actually contact you because they've looking at your work. So that's the first - call to actions and even things like blogs, like we have the email sign up in every book and it's pretty clunky. It the. Look, so great, and this is part of the issues that we're going through because we use convert kit, which is not really, you know, enmeshed with Squarespace. So, you know, that's the side side note, but it doesn't look that great, but at least they're there. So that's a first thing. Look at the calls to action and make sure that you're not leading people into a path where they end up at a dead end. It's like if, you know, you had this beautiful store and you had sales assistants, but yet people could go into this other part of the store which had incredible product and they couldn't buy because they don't figure out they don't know how to get back to finding someone that will help them buy sets. The first thing, the call to actions, make sure that they have it and really, really test this, even just click through. Okay, so if I go here now, I go to this page now I go to this page. Now I go to this page. Do I end up at a dead end or am I ended up with an action that I can take?
So the second thing is your menu. So your navigation, your top nav side, nav, whatever you want to call it, that's really the menu that you have, the list of options that people can click. Now, I'm not going to go through whether you should have them as text or you should have just a little handbag icon or you should have in all these crazy little cool buttons. But in the menu, whichever way you have it, you want to make sure that there's not an overwhelming number of things, an overwhelming number of options. So I often reference a study which happened. Arkush let me think about it. It was back in the year 2000. So I know some people listening to this might not have been portaloo, but the psychologist Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lippa from Columbia and Stanford University basically published a study about jambs. And so what they did is they just went to a local food market, unlike a regular normal shopping day, and they tested. So they tested. You know, if people came to that market and they came to like a display table and there were twenty four different types of jams, would they buy more then on another day when they came and there was only six different types of jams, you know, different flavour jams. And what they found was that when you give people less choice, they're less overwhelmed and they're actually going to take action. So what they found was that the big display table, the one with twenty four different kind of jam flavours, generated more interest. You know, people were like, oh, interesting. But they were far, far less likely to actually purchase some jam versus, you know, the people who only had like six flavours to choose from. And I think it was ten times less likely. So when it comes to your navigation, I see people get really excited and they're like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to have this and this and this and this and this and this. And suddenly the entire width of the website has got a menu item, menu item, menu item, menu item. And again, you're confusing people because you're leading them to all these different things that potentially are dead ends because the CTA is that right, which goes back to the first point. But also, you're not guiding them. I remember that idea. Don't make me think so. It's sort of like, oh, do I go here or do I go there or where would I find this? So you might look at your navigation and think about could I do a sub nav? So like an accordion menu or you've got this and then people click on it and there's like five different things to choose from or four to choose from. So say, for instance, instead of having a team about us, our philosophies, ethos, whatever it is, sustainability you might just have about us. When I click on that, I get a list of our team contact. You know, all of those things actually contact might be up on the navigation. It really depends on what your business is. But what I find is just yet, too often we give people way too much choice. They don't know where to go or we give them choices that really should be a subnets or a fuda even. I mean, putting that in like our prime real estate, our top nav menu. And so we're allowing people to then, you know, flick off and go to our Instagram or allowing people to, you know, go to this blog article that is really old and has nothing to do with a new collection. So you want to, again, go back to what it is that you're trying to achieve those three goals and then think about your menu and really think about some of those items drop to the footer. Could some of those items be peppered within the site without being a top navigation? Could some of them just be unlinked? So unlinked means that you have the website, but it's only linked from certain pages or from certain ads or other things that you do.
So really think about your menu. And again, just going back to what I want people to do? So on our menu, we just have shop again, sales podcast, building authority and getting you to sign up to an email and shop. Actually, because we promote products in their free stuff. Getting you to sign up to an email, my book. So incredible. And authority and subscribe. So and then, you know, we have different icons for getting in touch, but we really are guiding people to take action. And one of those three things that we are trying to promote and our goals for the website sets the second point. Really think about your menu and just what you need and what the person needs. And of course, with them. And you should be experimenting as well. So if you are in the e-commerce space experiment, if you have sale on the right corner, does it do better than if it's on the left? If you have different gendered items, swap them around, see what happens. If you have something else you're really trying to promote, you know, can you highlight it? Can you make it a different colour text? Can you put a button behind it? Things like that, which will help in the choice. And again, think about that jam study. Too much choice. People don't do anything. They flip around for ages. And you might say that you're dwell time goes up as in the amount of time that people spend on your site. But you may say that your conversion actually goes down and what you want most of the time is sales as well as, you know, people looking around and enjoying what you're putting out there.
So the third part, and this is another one that I think I don't know what it is, we just are afraid to put ourselves out there. I think really look at your website and think, does it show personality and humanity? And I know that for some times people will think, well, for service based businesses, this is much easier. Say, for instance, a business coach, you're going to have photos of yourself and maybe photos of your work and clients and workshops and speaking gigs. Yes, it might be easier than say if you're an e-commerce brand, but if you're an e-commerce brand, you might use testimonials, social proof, user generated content. You might use a particular hashtag. And then images from that hashtag are on product detail pages, making it more human.
And actually, when I've worked at ecommerce sites and places, we've tested that and we've seen a much greater conversion rate on the product detail page is where there is a human, as in everyday kind of people wearing the product. This is a model that's polished and perfect looking. So it really think about where in my website and my adding my personality or the personality of the team or the personality of the brand. And where am I humanising this? Because again, remember, very little is original these days. And what actually is the biggest point of difference is the person behind the brand and their story, because there's only one of us really. And without sounding cheesy, that really is going to be the differentiator as we move forward. And we've already seen that from covid and people really looking at who's behind the brand, what are the ethics, where they get things made and really being much more interested in that than they were good 10, 15 years ago. So in my own business, again, so on our about pay, I mean, we have photos of myself throughout and we're getting new ones because they're so old. But we do have things like in the about section I talk about, you know, that I was raised by really amazing parents, very, very lucky, but that who really promoted kindness in education. And that's absolutely true. I was raised with parents who thought, if you can get a good education, you are set and you can share that knowledge with other people, which then allows them to have access and opportunity.
And also, if you can be kind, because you never, ever know what someone's going through that was drummed into us from a very early age. My parents were wonderful. They had faced a lot of racism for being Irish, especially my father back in the day, and they just treated people exactly as they would hope to be treated themselves. There was total equality, total respect, regardless of who they were talking to. So those things are put on to my website. And that comes across, I think, in the way that, you know, I provide education and hopefully kind well, study it. But that is an example of preparing humanity into a website. It could be videos. If you are doing these great videos for Instagram, for your products or services, why not put them onto the product detail pages on their website? So that's the third one really thinking about the humanising of your website and how does that come through?
The fourth one, big, big one, I talk about this quite a bit with the buyer cycle, you have awareness, people are aware of the brand, then they come into research, then they come into evaluation, then they come into purchase and then post purchase and advocacy. So the fourth one or point that you should think about when you're looking at your website is am I making purchase? Simple, simple, simple, simple, simple things like is the add to cart button above the fold. So that means people don't need to scroll to add the item into their cart. And again, you would think that this is like, oh of course everyone does that. They don't. And it would be really it's really interesting. Once you start looking at ecommerce sites, how many have a whole lot of information before the add to cart, but how many have the price hidden? How many have the specs? So, you know, for instance, earrings, they don't show them on a model. So it's very hard to gauge how big or small they are. I know I love my big earrings and I learnt from experience that I will not buy earrings if they are just flat laid because I cannot tell how big they are, even if sometimes they'll have the specs. And again, if you, you know, maybe like, well, I can't afford to have a model. It doesn't have to be a model. It could be a friend. It could be yourself. Just get a tripod with your iPhone or any phone. Anyway, I digress. If you can't have that, like, image on a human, consider having something else next to it so that people can gauge the size but also have the specs have this is how big it is. This is how heavy it is because it's another one, especially with costume jewelry. It can be really heavy. And so those are the kinds of things that are going to help people make a purchase decision and then hit, you know, add to cart and buy it in service-based businesses. You might have a contact form, but really try and qualify people in the contact form. So, you know, there's no point someone putting in a contact form if then you're going to go back and forth and do email tennis and realise they actually can't afford you at all, they're like way out of the ballpark. So, for instance, you are someone who does kitchen renovations and say your minimum starting point is thirty thousand dollars. It has to be they have to have a $30,000 budget for you to touch it. You might have people who are like, well, I've got a $5,000 budget. And so your contact form doesn't have any qualifying questions, such as what is your budget with a drop down from thirty thousand, from X, from Y, it doesn't have things like when is your deadline, where are you based? Why have you chosen me? How did you find out about me? Any of those? So what you end up happening is they contact you thinking, oh my gosh, I'm really excited. They could do my kitchen. You can't have them back. You go back and forth, back and forth. You realise they don't have any money. You've both wasted your time because that was not on purchase page was not a qualifier so that you're not getting tire kickers. And they're also aware of who you work with before you actually get your physical time and effort involved. So that is the fourth part - The purchase.
Then, the fifth and final part is something I talked about recently. I think it was episode 105, so literally just a couple of episodes ago. And that is the evaluation. So really be thinking about the buyer cycle again. And if people have been made aware of your business, they have done the research. So they've gone from the awareness stage to the research stage. The next is the evaluation. And you want to make sure that on your website you are giving people enough information to be able to make and a valued, you know, invalid's, valuable, informed decision. So this could be looking at, you know, media that you've been in. It could be looking at clients that you've worked with, testimonials. It could be looking at your supply chain and really putting in on the product detail pages.
Our supply chain is really ethical and we know our manufacturers. And here's more about that and a link to a blog page or something else. But that opens in a new tab, of course. But yeah, you really want to be thinking about if someone was choosing between me and my competitor, what, on the website without having to talk to anyone in customer service, without having to go to a social media.
What is telling them on the website that you are the right choice? So what is preventing them from moving from a valuation to purchase and how might you fix that up? So again, like I said, it could be different marketing materials. It could be testing out new things, experimenting. And like I said, again, I did do a whole episode just on the evaluation stage with lots of tips and tactics around that. So check out one five episode one two five if you're interested in that. But yeah, that is the fifth and final point.
I mean, there's so many other things you could do when looking at your website, but these five, coupled with this thing that I talked about the start. Really sitting down and thinking about what are the three goals or impressions or actions we want people to take, those combined will give you so much good stuff to get working on a website that actually performs in the way that you want it to.
So just to recap those five things, again:
1. Calls to action, make sure you're not leading people down into a dead end zone.
2. A menu that just shows what they need.
3. There’s personality and humanity in your marketing on the website.
4. Make sure that the purchase is as simple as possible.
5. Think about if someone is at the point of evaluation and they are choosing between you and another product or service business, what are you giving them that allows them to go, yes, this is the right company for me
So I hope that has helped. As I said before, the entire transcript of this will be available over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/108
And if you are listening to this in real time, make sure if you are interested in working with me and you'll want to be part of group coaching that you've got your application in. You can find out all the information over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/groupcoaching. One word will leave a link to that in the show notes as well. All right. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
