Episode Transcription

Josh 0:16
Hey, Hey, everybody, welcome into the podcast. This is Episode 87. And in this one, I’m gonna give you guys some tips for how to make sure your websites are converting better, and you’re getting higher conversions. I’m gonna give you 12 tips for higher converting websites, these tips you can use on your websites, as web designers to help you know get more leads from your website. But I also really want to encourage you to think about this for your clients. And I’ve got a challenge for you before we dive in here, too. So think about these tips in relation to, again, your website, but then how you can utilize each one of these in your website builds, because these tips are going to make you more valuable. And here’s a little little side note, if you’re building websites that are actually converting at a higher rate, you will be worth more and your clients will love you for the long haul, because everyone likes a beautiful site. But everyone loves a site that’s actually taking people from website users to customers. And that’s the goal higher converting websites, this is something that I’m really, I’ve been really intentional about. And that’s something I’ve really been challenging a lot on my web design students in my members with particularly now in this new year. I mean, higher converting, websites are important at any time of the year. But I’ve just have a really, I recognize the need for this because there’s a lot of designers that can do things nice and pretty. But if you can do things nice and pretty, and have really good conversion tactics on your websites, you’re going to be gold. So these are the 12 tips that are going to help you out now a couple notes I wanted to make before we dive in, because we’re just gonna get right into this one, I don’t have any announcements for you. No featured podcast review, we’re just gonna dive right in. Just a couple of things I wanted to mention on the outset, these are 12 tips. But these obviously aren’t the only ways that are good converting metrics for websites. So these are just 12 of many. There’s some obvious ones that are you know, all of your website should be nicely designed, they should have a good design with best practices and best principles for for web design itself. Some other aspects you might want to know that should be included in any good website that’s going to convert is loading, you want to make sure your website doesn’t load super slow. So just remember, as we go through this list that, you know, there’s a lot more practical best practices that should be in place along with these call these higher converting tactics, these are just kind of like icing on the cake. So just remember that this doesn’t replace a good website design, with good structure and loading and things like that.

Josh 2:47
And here’s my challenge for you, before we dive in, use these 12 tips as a guide, or create like a checklist or cheat sheet for your clients. Because if you show them that you are super intentional and serious about helping their business grow, by getting more conversions to the website, I’m telling you, it’s gonna make a world of a difference for you, you’re gonna make clients for life and you’re gonna look like a freaking rock star, if you give them a cheat sheet or give them a list that you walk them through. And you can actually that’s another note I wanted to wanted to mention. You could take this list here and make this into a questionnaire like a conversion based website questionnaire that you can have your clients go through. And each one of these, they could give you their input. And then you can help them really firm it up. And then boom, there’s your There’s your map, there’s your your plan and action plan for of conversion based website. So that’s my challenge for you create a cheat sheet or something out of this, and then use it and then let me know how it works.

1) Be Clear About Your Site

Josh 3:46
All right, number one, let’s get right into it. Your messaging, this is the same, this is a big thing for you as a web designer, but also huge for your clients as well that you can help them with. And side note, if you’re going to be helping your clients with content messaging, you should be charging for that because you’re getting into some content related stuff. But your messaging your message right when somebody gets on your website should be able to be explained to a 10 year old and they should be under be able to understand what you do. This is the big rule of thumb that I’ve come to find out is just 100% true with every industry. Because here’s the problem. Particularly for us as web designers, we know a lot about web design. And it can be very easy for us to overcomplicate our messaging, like if your website starts talking about HTML and CSS and you know, terms that are too fancy or too complicated or you start getting into SEO terms that no one’s going to understand. Clients are not going to understand that you need to be very clear about what you do. Right in the beginning of the website. This is why for years my website said I build awesome websites right now my agency sites as we build amazing websites. It’s very clear we build websites and then that is the start of conversation, then we expand on that. Now there are times where you can have a little bit more complicated messaging, trying to think about a good example one of my clients years ago was, they manufactured paint racks for industrial markets, which sounds like that’s confusing in itself. But most of their website, visitors were people in the industry. So they, they knew the lingo, it was very hard for me to understand what the heck they did, I didn’t know what they did until like two years into that project, I swear, never really quite got it until the end. But they had a little more leeway because they were talking with advanced people in their industry. And you can do that. But still, more often than not, for most all industries, you should have your message be able to be explained by a 10 year old, and they should know what you do. And this is a big problem with a lot of like, I’ve noticed digital marketing agencies, often throughout terms like elevate your brand, or, you know, grow your marketing. I don’t know all these like weird vague terms. And if you told that to a 10 year old, and you said if I told you, you know, elevate your brand and and bring your social proof or bring your brand to a whole new level, they wouldn’t quite know what the heck you’re talking about, what if I told a 10 year old, me and my agency, we build websites, and we make sure those websites turn, you know, website users into customers, so they actually buy stuff from the website, the 10 year old be like, oh, that that makes sense. So clarify your message, act like you’re explaining it to a 10 year old, it’s a nice little rule of thumb and a little little test and trick you can implement and use that messaging on the website. And again, you can work with your clients to help them out. Particularly This is hugely important on the homepage, right away. And again, there are some times where you can get a little more into the weeds with your messaging. But typically, those are on the homepage, typically, that is for service pages or like about pages if some for as a web designer, if somebody is going to go to your about page and they want to know what tools you use, then you can talk about WordPress and Divi and some of the chops, you know, with HTML and CSS and PHP, but don’t load your front page up with that stuff. So a message that is super clear and can be explained to a 10 year old. That’s number one.

2) Call To Action

Josh 7:13
Number two, a clear call to action. Very, you know, duh kind of thing, very elementary, but it’s worth repeating here. And it’s worth kind of thinking about often because, again, we have a tendency as a business owner and entrepreneur to kind of muddy up our messaging. And the same thing can happen with call to actions, we can be very vague as far as what we want customers to do. And I’m telling you, for you and your clients. If you have a very clear call to action to tell people what to do on the website, you will see higher conversions, you need to tell website users what to do. This is often a big one for clients to understand to just let them know when somebody goes to their website. They’re kind of I know a couple of my colleagues have referenced it as like sheep, website, users like sheep, they need to be herded, they need to be told what to do and where to go. And one of the best things you can do in regards to that is to have a strong call to action. So make sure now, a call to action itself could be it could be a button on a homepage, like in the hero section. As far as you know, what, what you should do next, the next step. And there’s multiple ways where you could put a call to action, I’ve got another little sub set to a call to action later on. But primarily I’m talking about like the main button that you should click on when you get to the website. Now I would also recommend that you replicate that call to action in the menu, ideally with a button. So if it’s a call to action for you know, moving forward or getting a quote or, or getting a consultation, or you know, sign up here have that replicated. So somebody sees the call to action, then when they scroll down, it’s still in the menu that follows them. That’s a really good trick. And it’s typical in most designs, but it works, but have a very clear call to action. Beware of putting too many call to actions, lumping them up together because if you say contact us and get a quote and request a free consultation, I would have no idea what to click on. So ideally have one call to action. And if you do have two different call to actions ideally make funnels out of them. So this is common with realtors, they’ll have call to actions for buyers and different call to actions for sellers. So generally what I recommend for like a realty site is to have a little funnel on the page, they would go to each either one I’m a buyer, or I’m a seller and then that has the information and then a call to action specific to them. That’s a little more rare, though, in most cases, we all need to have one call to action. Additionally, in regards to call to action, particularly for us as web designers, and as we working on client sites, make sure you use language that isn’t too passive, like contact us is kind of a weak call to action because does that mean like get a quote or move forward? Or does that mean ask questions? that’s those are different call to actions. So, passive call actions also are like, learn more, or get more information, stuff like that tell people what to do, tell them sign up now, request a quote, get a consultation, book a call, whatever it is that you want somebody to do on your website, telling them to do that. And that will help your conversions big time. So that’s number two, clear call to action. And again, we’ll revisit some call to action stuff at the end here.

3) Simplify The Menu

Josh 10:25
Number three, have a very organized menu. So this is obviously huge for a number of different reasons. There’s also a lot of SEO implications. But the trick here is that you want your menu to reflect your main pages of your website. Now, this is easy for a smaller website, because if you just have five to 10 pages, more than likely, it’s something like home about us services with a few different services, testimonials in contact or something like that. So you know, obviously, it’s pretty clear, it’s easy to put that many together. Where this is tricky is when you have a lot of different pages and a lot of different categories or places somebody could go on the website, I’ll give you a couple examples, that manufacturing company I mentioned earlier, they had, I think we had like 18 or 20 different like paths that somebody could go on the website. So it was a it was a really big tricky situation for me to figure out how the heck to put a menu together around those paths. So we really had to work on hierarchy and figuring out what was most important, where we were going to put the main pages and then have those subcategories under it. And that’s the mindset you want to have. Because you want to make sure people know where to go to be able to navigate to the site. One thing that I really want to make sure you you think about is that often people are not going to end up on your homepage first, a lot of times, they’ll come on a blog post or see a social media post or something. And that’s where they dive into the website. So your menu has to be that piece that’s going to get them to go somewhere else if they’re looking for more information. So an organized menu, a very intentional navigation structure is key. And as I mentioned, it’s huge for SEO too, because the Google is looking for menus that highlight the most important pages and a good navigation structure. I really had to take this to heart with my site. Because with my site I have, you know, tons I think I have over well over 300 posts and pages at this point with my tutorials and blogs and podcasts. So I had to really clarify, okay, what are the main areas of my site, my site, the main parts are my courses, my podcasts, my tutorials, which have a few different categories of tutorials, and then then I have my blog with different video categories and written blog posts. And then I have the other stuff that is you know, under that, so I had to get really clear about my navigation structure. And it’s been huge for conversion, because I’ve found that as soon as I really was intentional about that people are finding the most important stuff. And then it’s leading them to to what they want to get where they want to go. So an organized menu, very elementary idea. And it’s much more complicated with big sites. But make sure you prioritize that and work with your clients and just let them know, you can’t just stick 20 pages in a menu, we have to limit it to maybe six or seven and then be really intentional with the hierarchy.

4) Choose a Good Palette

Josh 13:20
Number four now let’s let’s talk about some design things here. Again, just want to reiterate that this, these are just things on top of good design and fast loading sites and the other best practices for higher converting sites. But a good color palette. Color Management is something I’m fascinated by and I’ve always enjoyed because there’s a lot of meaning behind colors. Those of you who have been through my website design course, you know, I have a whole section in there on color management, and why colors are the way they are. And there’s a reason why a lot of restaurants are red and yellow, I’ll just let you in on the secret. The color red makes your heart rate go up, which is also why a stop sign is red and it’s not green. Green means go red means stop. And there’s a reason for that. So a lot of restaurants use red and yellow because those colors will typically get the heart rate moving it makes somebody hungrier so a lot of interesting stuff with color but it didn’t mean it sidetrack us make sure you stick with a good color palette. And here’s here’s a couple of rule of thumbs for color when it comes to converting because a lot of sites will get into just using way too many colors or different hues and there’s no consistency. There’s no streamline look. And one thing I’ve learned is sites that convert really well often have very strict color guides and often stick with only a few colors, and it just adds to a whole cohesive experience. So I recommend that you have up to two main colors. And then you can have a couple secondary colors. So your main colors might be like a blue and a green but then your secondary colors might be like a gray for the text and maybe it Different like a lighter blue for like background. And you can add in some other colors in there. But make sure that you stick with those main colors and don’t get too wild with the hues and the saturations. And luckily, I’m talking to mostly designers. So you’re understanding what those terms are. If you’re not, that basically just means different variations of a color. But don’t stray away from the main colors and limit yourself with a good color palette. Now there are some there’s there’s some different examples where if you’re working with, like a really fun entertainment type of site where color is huge, and of course, you can go wild with colors, but you still want to ideally have a color palette to stick to, we just designed a site for a skate rink last year, and their colors were all over the place. But their main colors were yellow, purple, pink, and blue. And we still were very intentional about using those in the main call to action sections and stuff. So have a good color palette, stick to it and look into some color management theory because color is fascinating. And there’s a reason why colors are the way they are.

5) Limit Typography Types

Josh 16:00
Number five, good type autography. So again, you’re probably like, Well, duh, we’re web designers, of course, we’re going to focus on typography, but it bears repeating. Again, because typography is something where, particularly for those of you who are new to web design, or maybe you’re a DI wire, it can get out of control. And it can also be very time consuming if you fiddle around with all types of types and fonts. And if you start mixing around a bunch of different fonts in your website, it first of all can look awful. And you can really spend a lot of time messing around with this stuff where if you stick to a few fonts, at most, my rule of thumb and recommendation is that you have up to three fonts with very clear fonts and bolder fonts for headings. And then very clear, readable text for paragraph text. That is absolutely huge. And then you can have some wild fonts for secondary type of fonts, if you are headings or subtitles. But anytime you’re working with typography, make sure it’s readable, make sure you can actually read it without getting too wild with script and stuff like that. I certainly want to encourage you to have some fun with type Agra fee, but limit yourself practice constraints. And ideally have up to three fonts on a website, if you get more than three, that’s when things get a little too wild. So utilizing the color and the higher the hierarchy type of things we talked about with color and headings, along with good typography is going to be huge for you. So practice that good typography. This is crucial for clients to because if your clients are updating their website, they might get into the the font panel and then that’s as you probably know, that’s when things get really funky, where you know, you’ve turned out your website over and you just want your client to be posting a blog. And the next thing you know, they’ve got 10 different script fonts in there that are bright pink, and they just thought that was awesome. Does that match your site. So make sure you set those constraints in and make your client aware of that as well.

6) Add The Personalized Touch

Josh 17:52
Number six here, personalized touch. This is maybe I should have saved this to last because I think this is actually the most important thing to focus on for 2021. And that is to personalize your website. Now, there’s a number of different ways you can go about this. My biggest recommendation is images. And that means yes, having an actual photo of you on your website. And the same thing for your clients. This is absolutely key because what I found is, let’s take this in the web design world. So you’re a web designer solopreneur or a small team, a lot of people misrepresent themselves, a lot of people are one person mind screen. But their website says we are a digital agency, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whereas if it’s just you or just a few subcontractors just say that don’t come across like a massive agency. Because it’s not it’s not you don’t false advertise yourself, you can be 100% real and genuine with your business situation on your website. And that can actually help convert because a lot of clients don’t want to work with a big agency, sometimes they want a trusted web designer. So don’t be afraid to personalize your website. Images are huge. Even if you’re shy, even if you don’t like pictures of yourself. Let me just give you a challenge. First of all, get over yourself. If you’re going to be meeting with people, they’re going to see you so you might as well put yourself on your website. And you might as well help build that likeability and trust, which you will with pictures of yourself on your website. I know it’s easier said than done. I don’t mean to come across too harsh. For those of you who ain’t getting pictures of yourself, I’m telling you. This will help you big time with conversions because people want to get to know like and trust somebody before they purchase from them. And if you can get that out of the way on your website, that’ll be huge. And just by seeing you and seeing who they’re going to work with, it’s going to make a big difference. So images are huge. Particularly for like team photos and stuff. Don’t you know I’m not 100% against stock photos. But if you’re going to use any sort of stock photography, make sure for one it’s not like that cheesy corporate 90s looking photography, but also make sure you don’t use stock photos, where your team should be or what your office looks like going back to the you know, idea of false falsely representing yourself like I use stock photos often. If it’s like showing a workspace one of my students actually is doing this shout out to john, he has a little video back background and his hero section in its of like, it’s a stock type of video. But it’s have a desk with a notebook pad and stuff like that. So you know whether somebody knows that’s him or not as far as it’s his desk, so nobody would know like that’s a fine example of using some sort of stock photo or stock video, where you don’t want to use a stock images on your team page, which I’m amazed at how many people and how many businesses have used it. Have you stock photos for their team. It’s like that’s not your team. It’s a stock photo. Don’t do that don’t falsely, represent yourself. Keep it real. Use real images anywhere you can. It’s worth getting some professional shots and getting some shots of you in your office and stuff like that. If you can, it really goes a long way. And then verbiage just use real verbiage talk like you on your website. I promise it’ll go a long way. You can also implement this and areas outside of your website like your email signatures talk like you You don’t have to say Best regards. Who the hell says Best regards in real life and I’m talking to you, my Aussie friends, all of you Aussie’s down there you love best regards, but I know you don’t say that in real life. So take that out of your email signature talk like you would talk. And definitely apply that to your website as well. So personalized touch that will really help you and you want to make sure you relay this to your clients too, particularly for clients who are like blue collar workers and stuff. For example, like a home inspector, if I were to hire a home inspector and look at their website, I would want to see who the heck is going to come into my home. So tell your clients as well, just what I’m telling you. Don’t be afraid to get a real picture of yourself on the website, keep it personal, don’t false advertise yourself will go a long way.

7) Testimonials and Reviews

Josh 21:59
Number seven testimonials and social proof. This is just a reminder to be very intentional about collecting testimonials and reviews for your website and that your client should be doing this as well. And ideally, you would pair this up with shocker, real pictures and real stuff. So people are smart, we understand and we can tell if the review is fake or is stiff. Whereas we can tell also if a review is really genuine and those are the kind of reviews you want to get. And you want to feature those and a couple of the things I wanted to mention that are more practical. If you’re doing testimonials on your site and you have like a blurb. Ideally, always put a picture with that because a blank blurb of testimonial text just it doesn’t do that much. Ideally put a picture. And then if you can get a video testimonial video testimonials are the number one converter I use a tool called magnify for that. I also am getting video testimonial through loom. Now a lot of my students are just sending in video through loom. So you can have clients through that as well. But really be intentional this year about getting testimonials and featuring those as social proof to back up everything that you’re doing. Now, you can also get testimonials for certain aspects of your site. So if you have a certain service, you can get testimonials about that service. And then you can promote those on the service page and social media, sometimes on the homepage if you want. But ideally, you can really work on diversifying your testimonials. And I want to give you a couple quick tips on how to get better testimonials. I do plan on doing an episode soon on how to get testimonials. But let me just give you a quickie. Because this is something I’ve realized recently. If I asked somebody for a testimonial, often they’ll overthink it or it’ll take forever or they’ll be too nervous or shy or sometimes, you know, they’ll make it way too complicated. Whereas if I just ask somebody, hey, what do you think of this so far? I get the most amazing responses. And I’ve actually I’m experimenting with this right now with my web design club. I’ve just asked the members, what do you think so far about it? And they’ve given me like the most amazing testimonial snippet. And I just asked him, What you just said was amazing. Can I use this on the landing page in a lecture? Yeah. And it’s it comes across a real and genuine. Whereas sometimes I’ve found not only web design students, but with clients in the past. If I say can you give me a testimonial by next Friday, they may really ever think it and it may be super big or long. Or they just you know, it just comes across kind of stiff and and just like overly structured, you know, whereas if you get a real genuine testimonial, it really goes a long way. So you could do that. You can just subtly ask somebody how it’s going. You can ask your clients like what do you think of working with us so far? And if they email you back, an amazing little snippet just asked him oh my gosh, this is awesome. Can we use this on our website as a testimonial, they can even copy and paste that as a Google review. You can do the same thing with videos too. If you’re on a strategy call with client, and you just ask them, you know, what do you think of everything so far, and they’re on video and they give you this amazing review, you can actually record that with their permission to use on your website with their permission, that’s the big one. But you can do that as well. So I’ll go into that in an episode here soon, but testimonials and social proof, those are the big one.

8) Limit The “Exit” Signs

Josh 25:18
So, Alright guys, we’re on number eight. Now I’m gonna, I’m gonna fly through the last handful here. Because as always, I’m getting detailed on this stuff. But number eight, this is something I picked up from my good friend, Wes McDowell, who’s a web design entrepreneur. And I loved in the interview I had with him a while back, he said, you want to limit exit signs on your website. And what that means is your social media, a lot of people but their social media links or social media follow sections or like a feed on a website. And there’s a time and place for all that but you don’t want that to overcompensate for your website itself. Meaning if your main call to action is to get a quote, don’t make the the signs for liking us on Facebook and subscribing on YouTube and going on our Instagram more prevalent than get a quote, have those you know, you can have your links on your website, ideally in the footer, sometimes there’s a place to have him in the header. But you don’t want people to go off to your socials as much as you want them to come from social to your website. So you’re going to limit those exit signs. And if you are doing social media icons, a little trick of the trade is to blend them in with your website and use the same branding colors. So when you have your Facebook like icon and or view for Facebook, Instagram, tik tok or whatever, have those branded with your site that way they’re there, people can definitely go check that out. But you don’t want that to overshadow your main call to actions on your website. Because those are exit signs. And we want people to go to our sites, not necessarily all of our social media instead of our site. So again, time and place for social media, but on your website, they’re on your website, focus on your website.

9) Footer Call to Action

Josh 26:58
Alright, number nine. Now talking about call to actions, I’ve got these, this kind of like a three in one here. As far as branching off what we talked about earlier with a very clear call to action. Don’t neglect having a footer call to action section. This is key, a lot of people neglect having a call to action at the bottom of their website, particularly on their homepage. And you can have different call to actions, you can have a main call to action on a homepage versus more targeted call to actions for service pages. But don’t neglect having a nice footer call to action. And also, don’t neglect the design of that make that footer call to action. Amazing. Because think about the user experience when somebody is on your website, they might get to know you, they might get to like you and trust you. And they might understand what you do. And they might be interested. So when they get to the end, what happens in most cases is, and it’s understandable, I did this for years, until I realized I was making a big mistake. And that was I either wouldn’t have a footer call to action, or it would just be like a little button like contact us. Whereas if you create an entire section and give it a little animation and give it a little life, it’ll go such a long way. Because that’s where people are going to end. You want people to end off with a bang, and you want people to end with a big nice call to action. So create that footer call to action.

10) Issue a Challenge

Josh 28:18
And then number 10/11. This is kind of a two in one, the these next two points are kind of kind of a 10 a and 10 b but we’re gonna call it the next two points, is you want to give them a challenge, and you want to give them some urgency. So a challenge could look very different. There’s no right or wrong way to create a challenge to make somebody move forward. I wanted to give you a couple examples, because there’s also a lot of ways to design this. But usually it’s just a statement that is challenging that person to move forward. So they like your site, they get to the bottom they like whoa, cool footer section. What about this challenge? Why should I move forward? Why should I get this free consultation? or Why should I get a quote, giving him a challenge is the best way to really push them over the edge. And as I mentioned, there’s no right or wrong way to go about this. It depends on the industry. But I know for me like my first course my maintenance plan course, the big. The big challenge that everyone faced with that course, was recurring income and the feast and famine of web design. And when I started my website maintenance plan, that was my first taste of recurring income. And it was the first taste of ongoing recurring income for my business and my family. So my challenge was web designer, are you ready to start building recurring income for your business and your family? If so, then sign up here. That was a challenge that I saw really helped me convert because it really made them think like okay, there’s this chorus, but like, why should I join the course and there it is, it’s to build that recurring income. Another challenge for that could be like, is your website business constantly feast or famine? Let’s put it into it right now. Sign up. Those are just a couple different examples of variations of creating a challenge. Now for an average client type of site, like let’s say you’re working with a dentist, a challenge might be something like, are you ready for a smile you can be proud of? Or are you ready to enjoy your smile, you know, something like that, where, think about the problem that whatever the client is going through the customers is facing, and what’s the solution, the solution, that’s your challenge, take that solution and make that a challenge in your big footer call to action section, you can do that in your main call to action section above. But that’s typically not a great place, I found for a challenge like that, I found challenges to work really well and the footer type of call to action section. So so definitely think very intentionally about your challenge, and challenge somebody to move forward.

11) Create Urgency

Josh 30:45
Now, in addition to that, urgency, the question is, okay, I’m challenged, but why do I need to do it now? Why can I do it in three months from now. And that’s where adding a sense of urgency is absolutely huge. Now, again, there’s a number of different ways to go about this. This could be during a sale period, this could be a signup period. In the case of like, the the maintenance planning course, I mentioned my first course, trying to remember initially, what I said, I think one thing I talked about was, with maintenance plans, if you don’t have one, right now, you’re leaving money on the table, and you’re already missing out on so much recurring income. So that was an example of some urgency. It’s like, well, crap, I’ve got like money on the table right now. It’s not coming in. Yes, I want to do this now to get it going. So there’s a number of different ways to go about that you could do something like that to where if you know, your, your customers or clients are missing out, that could be a time sensitive push. But again, sale periods, you can also do something like, you know, if you get a quote, within the next seven days, here’s a, here’s a, here’s an offer, or here’s something special. The cool thing about doing this is if you do that, your of your website says the next seven days, well, most clients are not going to know you’ve actually had that up for three months, it just tells them to do something in the next seven days. So that’s another way to go. It’s a it’s getting into a little shady territory if you do something like that. But you definitely want to try to add some sensitive urgency as much as you can. And just think about like this, you know, I was, I was thinking about how like car dealerships are constantly running sales, there’s never a time where a car dealership is not running a sale. It’s it’s constant. And that’s because they know the power of urgency. And more importantly, they know what works. I hate to say that because I hate the car salesman thing. But it works. If you tell people this sale is ending this weekend, get here now, there’s going to be a much more push. And even though we all know, once Monday comes around, there’s going to be the next season sale. That’s just the way it goes. But it really does work. I’d say it but it works. So add some urgency, time sensitive push, you can do it with a sale, signup period, you know, free trial or an offer, or just a challenge, like I mentioned, or you know, if you know, the time is because somebody’s losing out right now that can be urgency as well. So another big one.

12) Give Something For Free

Josh 33:05
And then finally, let’s wrap this up. And I want to give you kind of an additional challenge to create something for free. And this is your classic funnel, lead gen whatever. Practically, this could be some sort of free resource like a guide, or an E book or a cheat sheet. Or if you want to be really productive, take this episode and make this a cheat sheet for your client offer a higher converting website cheat sheet you could say, Does your website have all these 12 things if not, then we can help you. There you go. There’s your free Legion, everybody, you’re welcome. Take this whatever a training video, anything that can build authority and trust, do so it is worth investing a little bit of time to do something, you don’t have to write a whole book. It doesn’t have to be something overly complicated. But add something and create something for free that your potential clients can download or access to get to know you and to get some free value. Because if you warm them up with something free, they’re going to be 10 times 100 times more likely to purchase from you. And I’ll just give you a little hint into my strategy for this year of 2021. I’m really working on this I don’t have that many free like webinars or guides yet. Obviously my podcast is free, all my tutorials are free. Most of my content is free, but I’m getting really intentional about that this year about creating like webinars that are intentional type of funnels, to where if they like this webinar, then that’ll lead them into something else. And I want to recommend that you do the same thing. And the beauty about that is just by giving somebody some free value. If somebody takes action on that and it benefits them. It’s going to create potentially a client for life and your watch. It’ll help your conversion skyrocket. So create something for free. And if you want to be wild, take this episode and use this as your little free cheat sheet. For a higher converting website so let’s recap those terms real quick.

Josh 35:03
Number one, a message that can be explained to a 10 year old. Number two, a very clear call to action ideally one call to action. Number three, an organized menu structure, good for SEO, good for SEO and the website user. Number four a good color palette where you give yourself some good constraints. Number five, same thing with constraints. Good typography. Don’t Don’t get too wild. Number six a personalized touched ideally with real pictures on your website. Seven intentional testimonials and social proof eight and we talked about some ways to get those we’ll expand on that soon on another episode eight limit those exit signs for social media, nine a really good footer call to action section. And then 1011 a challenge that makes them want to move forward and 11 makes them want to move forward now. And then finally, something free, build your authority, build that trust and help them convert. So I hope you guys liked this episode. More importantly, I really want you to apply this to your website and your clients website. And I did want to make sure you knew if you liked a lot of the conversion tips in this. Most all these are actually taken from my website design course. So if you’re interested in really making sure that your websites are converting to the best of their abilities, I’d love to invite you to check out my web design course. I’ll have the link below in the show notes. Because there’s a high emphasis on conversion based design tips just like whenever here except I show you practical examples. And I’d really love in all honesty to help you make sure you’re focused on conversion based stuff because I’m telling you beautiful site is nice, but if it doesn’t convert, clients not gonna like it very much. You want a site that converts so I’d love to help you with that. So when interested check out the show notes, Josh Hall.co/087 and there’ll be a link to that course below. Alright guys, enjoy this episode, and I’ll see you on the next one.