Summary:
In this milestone 300th episode of the Engage Video Marketing Podcast, we delve into the critical topic of website effectiveness. Our host, along with a special guest who has expertly designed the Engage Video Marketing website, will explore best practices for creating websites that not only catch the eye but also drive conversions. The discussion will highlight the common pitfalls in website design, such as blindly imitating competitors, and emphasise the importance of having a distinct brand identity and clear messaging that sets you apart in the market. Tune in to gain valuable insights on making your website a powerful tool for engaging customers and driving your business forward.
Chapters:
[00:01:02] Website conversion best practices.
[00:04:12] Pivoting to web design.
[00:08:03] Web design for video strategy.
[00:11:33] Psychological influence strategies.
[00:13:34] Spin selling framework.
[00:17:56] Conversion killing design trends.
[00:20:42] Video placement best practices.
[00:23:47] Thank you page videos.
[00:29:01] Video hosting platform recommendations.
[00:31:02] Design and business tools.
[00:34:11] Impact of a bad website.
[00:37:06] Choosing a web design company.
[00:40:00] Social media marketing challenges.
Links from the show:
If you found this episode of value I’d love for you to reach out and let me know on Instagram @engage_ben or email podcast@engagevideomarketing.com
Rate the Engage Video Marketing Podcast on iTunes
Transcript of the Interview: ** Note: the following transcript was generated by AI and therefore may contain some errors and omissions.
SPEAKER_00:
I see a lot of mistakes where people just copy their competitors, right? Their competitors’ websites. And it’s like, you don’t know how they’re performing. You can’t see all of their hidden landing pages and funnels and all that sort of stuff. So, and also you want to be memorable. So you want to zig where your competitors are zagging essentially, and you need your brand to have a uniqueness to it in a marketplace. And that comes down to obviously the look and feel, but the messaging as well to let people know what is your point of difference from your competitors. Make sure that’s in lights,
SPEAKER_01:
on your homepage. How effective is your website? You see, marketing is all about moving people to take some sort of action, to make a sale, to engage further with your business, to do something, right? And typically, that something that you want your customer to do is on your website. And if your website is not functioning properly, if your website is not a conversion driving machine, then chances are your website is failing. So in this episode, episode 300 of the Engage Video Marketing Podcast, we’re going to be focusing in deep into the effectiveness of your website. And my guest today designed the Engage Video Marketing website. Well, his company did anyway. And he’s an absolute wealth of knowledge when it comes to best practice for websites that convert. Let’s go. G’day my friends and welcome back to the Engage Video Marketing Podcast. This is episode 300. Yep, it’s been a long time coming but we’ve made it to 300 episodes of the podcast and I’ve got a great episode for you today. One that I wanted to just schedule in to be episode 300 because I also wanted to take this opportunity to share with you that Last year or throughout the course of last year, we actually created a brand new website for Engage Video Marketing and the Engage Video Marketing Podcast at engagevideomarketing.com. And if you haven’t yet checked that out, I want you to go and do that, okay? So pause this podcast right now, go and check out the new website and I’d love to hear what you think. Now, this brand new website for engagevideomarketing.com was actually designed by my guest today’s company, Greg Merillies from Studio One Design. And he was a referral from a number of other people within my network who have used his services as well. So he comes highly recommended. And he’s an absolute wealth of knowledge, as I said in the introduction to this episode, around the power of creating websites that actually are focused on converting, on making that sale and doing what you want your website to ultimately do. So if you haven’t met Greg before, Greg is the founder and director of StudioOneDesign.com, a world-leading website, design and branding agency, who are passionate about designing really, really, really good-looking websites that convert visitors into action takers. And that’s the critical thing there, my friends. So Greg is a fellow Aussie, he’s based here in Australia and he started Studio One back in 2000 and now has a distributed team around the world of over 27 people who have custom designed and transformed over 2000 websites and brands for many small businesses around the world. and a few high-profile online marketers and brands, including Sylvester Stallone, Hustle and Flowchart, and Frank Oz, who’s the voice of Yoda, which is pretty cool. So, if your website maybe is lacking a bit or needs a bit of work, then this episode is going to be really helpful for you. And Greg actually shares a resource that you can use right now to check out whether your website is actually up to scratch. So make sure you listen to the end to get the link there as well to that absolutely free resource. All right, that’s enough for me. Let’s jump in to episode 300. And let’s talk about designing websites that convert with Greg Merilies from Studio One Design. G’day, Greg. Welcome to the podcast. G’day, Ben. How are you? I’m doing great. Good to be joined by another Aussie. We often have people from all over the world on this podcast. But here we go, another. And for those that haven’t come across you or Studio One, your web design company, I’d love for you just to do a quick introduction to you and what led you to the world of web design.
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, well, actually, I’ve been in business for 24 years this year. And we initially started off as a t-shirt design business. And it was probably, I don’t know, a dozen years ago when the t-shirt industry went vertical. So, it meant all of the retailers were squeezing out the wholesalers and going direct to China to do their own manufacturing. Our clients were the wholesalers. So, they were dropping like flies. And so, therefore, I started listening to podcasts and just to figure out, okay, how can I figure out how to pivot and look for opportunities online. And I listened to a couple of marketing podcasts and one said that their logo sucked. So I saw it as an opportunity to design them a free logo and they loved it. And then it kind of just grew our business from there into designing their websites and they were both business coaches. I hired one of them as a business coach and they both started sending me, you know, their clients’ websites to redesign as well. Yeah, we just kind of grew our reputation from there into website design, which is about a web, sorry, about 12 years ago now.
SPEAKER_01:
So you’ve worked with, through your company over those years, a number of, I guess, relatively well-known names in the internet marketing or the marketing space. Can you drop any names of websites that you’ve worked on?
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, sure. I mean, look, we’ve designed for Sylvester Stallone, Frank Oz, who’s the voice of Yoda, Gary Goldstein, who’s the producer of Pretty Woman, Grit Boxing, which is like a New York fitness studio owned by, it’s got Tony Robbins and Pitbull as investors. And then James Framco, his business coach, Ezra Firestone, business coach for e-commerce. He also has like a $50 million e-commerce business. Jordan Harbinger, lots of podcasters, Chris Tucker, Yeah, and one really, really super authority in the YouTube space who does really good videos, Eric July. Yeah, he’s just crushing it. And he released one, we did a website for him where he released his first comic book and within like a week he sold like, his goal was $300,000 and he’d sold like $2.5 million worth of the first comic. But yeah, incredible. But yeah, he’s a really good video producer.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, incredible. So maybe our listeners have heard some of those names before, but regardless of that, that point that you touched on there at the end of, you know, the web design contributing to achieving a business goal, you know, how do you think the businesses should be looking at their website? Because it’s more than just a glossy brochure or a digital business card, right? It really should be something that contributes to a growth of a business. Is that how you feel about it?
SPEAKER_00:
It’s exactly how I feel about it. Yeah, because we’re very conversion focused with the way we design websites. And, you know, that’s because we, you know, we came from designing t shirts. And, you know, when you’re designing t shirts, and then we did packaging and consumer products, before we started designing websites, it’s all kind of self serve. So people have to understand, without you talking to somebody, why they should buy this product, right? So there needs to be benefits and things that they just need to like the design and like the product, and it needs to have great value. And so what we like to do with website is also try and get a result without being there. So it needs to be like a 24-7 marketing machine on autopilot, which means having a, you know, kick-ass looking design, that’s one thing, but then using things like video, which we can talk about later, of course, but to do the selling for you without actually being there, right? And so what we’re trying to think of when we’re designing a website is what is the intent of the visitor? And then there’s a whole bunch of strategies based on what that intent, whether they’re cold, warm, or hot visitors, basically. But yeah, we really want to know, when we’re working with a client, what results are they getting currently? Because that’s a starting point for us to figure out a strategy on how to improve those results, because that’s our end goal for them.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah. This is the Engage Video Marketing Podcast and the reason why I brought you on to talk about web design, not only because you recently redesigned or your team recently redesigned the Engage Video Marketing website, so I encourage people to go to engagevideomarketing.com and check that out. But also because the website typically in a video strategy is kind of the destination, right? So you’re using video to drive people towards taking an action that grows a business. And typically that action happens on a business’s website. And if that part of the strategy, if that part of the journey is not functioning very well or not optimized for the conversion, the action that you want to take, then that’s where it can potentially all fall down. And I know that where so many video producers get frustrated is they create a great piece of marketing content and then they’re leaving it up to the client to do the rest of the conversion or the sale. And you know, if you’re sending someone to a crappy website, it’s all going to fall apart, right?
SPEAKER_00:
It is indeed. Yeah. And that’s why there’s kind of like a few basic core principles that, you know, everybody sort of should have before you even think about the look and feel of the design, but really think about your audience. And I’ve heard, you know, a lot of marketers on your podcast talk about this as well. I can understand them on a deeper level to understand their situation, their challenges and pain points. And really, your website needs to be positioned as the authority in your space to prove that you can solve their problems essentially, right? But that’s one principle. And the other thing is brand positioning. Like I see a lot of mistakes where people just copy their competitors, right? Their competitors’ websites. And it’s like, you don’t know how they’re performing. You can’t see all of their hidden landing pages and funnels and all that sort of stuff. And also, you want to be memorable. So you want to zig where your competitors are zagging, essentially. And you need your brand to have a uniqueness to it in the marketplace. And that comes down to, obviously, the look and feel, but the messaging as well, to let people know, what is your point of difference from your competitors? Make sure that’s in lights, especially on your homepage. But yeah, and then realistically, you got to think about, you know, what is their intent, like I was mentioning before, and if they’re a cold visitor, and I know you love this lead with you want to lead with value, right? I know that’s part of your your slogan. And it’s it couldn’t be truer. Like if you think about, you know, when somebody is on your website, and they’re cold, they don’t really care about you at all. They just care about what’s in it for them, right? So if they’re cold, you want to lead with the value and offer some some form of lead lead magnet like PDF or a free this or that in return for an email address, then there’s a funnel, you know, that you can put on the back end of that. But yeah, it really if they’re a warmer lead, then you also want to have a strategy for them. And it might be to book a call, especially if you’re a, you know, service business, business owner, video business owner, etc. Think about offering value, like in the form of a free strategy call to just help them initially to figure out if you’re a good fit. And then there’s a whole sort of strategy around that. And It depends on if they’re a hot lead, for instance, if they’re an e-commerce website and they’re a really hot lead and they’ve heard of your brand, they’ve been following on social media for a while, you just want to make it really easy for them to purchase from you. You don’t want to put those type of people through a funnel, etc. There are different strategies and sometimes you need to have a strategy for all three on one website, which just adds to the complexity, but there’s a really cool way to do that based on the business. Yeah and then you also need to psychologically influence people to take action and so that’s where you know we use books like Robert Cellini’s influence and all the psychological drivers in that book and we put those things onto your website which we can dive deeper into it if you want. And then the last thing is conversion focused design so that’s really having all of the right visual hierarchy of all the elements on the page. You want to make sure the design enhances the copy and doesn’t ruin the flow of the copy. And you just want to make sure, you know, it appeals to your target audience and has a cohesive look and feel across the entire website.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, awesome. I’m really interested in your opinion on the difference between copy versus design or the interplay between those two in a successful website because I know that it’s not just about good looking design but it’s also about the words on that page as well. So, you know, which is more important or how do you kind of consider the interplay between those two?
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, look, I have no doubt the copywriting is actually more important than the design, right? Because the most important thing, though, is your offer, right? Because if people don’t find value in your offer, well, it doesn’t matter about the wording. It doesn’t matter about the design. If the offer sucks, they’re not going to buy anyway, right? But what the copywriting will do is really talk to their, if it’s done properly by a pro-level copywriter, it’s really going to let people know that you as the business owner that’s having, that’s on this website, has a clear pathway for that person to solve their problem. And with the copy, it’ll talk about their situation. If you think about a business owner that does video, you think about your prospect who doesn’t have any video skills or whatever and you might talk about the situation that they’re in the market for a new video person they have no idea where to start they’ve tried to do it themselves they’ve got terrible results and that’s where you kind of go into the the problem piece and you think about all the problems it creates if they do it themselves or if they choose the wrong video partner Um, and so it’s what, uh, it’s a framework called spin selling. So situation, problem, implication, need. And so it’s really an acronym spin, and it’s based on the book Spin Selling by Neil Rackham. But, um, so you let people know you understand their situation, you understand the problems they face because of the situation, implications if they don’t address the cause of the problem, and then need, and that’s your solution to let people know what is your unique solution to solving their problem essentially. So that’s the way a good copywriter will write copy on your page. And then what the design needs to do is enhance that copy, but not ruin the flow of the copy. And that also needs to appeal to the target market and really just put that messaging on steroids.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, and when you think about, you know, the copywriting frameworks and getting those words right to drive the action that you want, you know, is there some kind of must-have core principles as well as far as like, let’s just talk homepage initially, right? So front page for website, you know, are there some things that you need to have on that website in order to get the action that you want to lead to?
SPEAKER_00:
Absolutely. So a homepage is really a gateway to get to really to build trust in the brand, right? So above the fold, you want to have a benefit-driven headline. So let people know what they can expect as an outcome if they hire your business or if they buy what you have, right? Um, and, and so then that’s one part of it, just the benefit, but that’s not usually enough. You really need to have clarity to have a little sub headline or, you know, sentence or bullets to explain clearly how they, how you can deliver that benefit to them because a lot of. problems that we see on websites when people think they can write the copy themselves is that it has no clarity. They’re probably too close to their business. They use fancy taglines that have no clarity or they use tech jargon. And so really, instead, you want to clearly explain that benefit above the fold. Explain how you can help them and then back it up with some social proof. This is all above the fold, right? The social proof might be a testimonial. It might be um some impact metrics to talk about you know the amount of people you’ve helped the amount of any sort of metric that’s going to help boost your authority when people first see that when they land on the page and then you want to have a clear call to action button that gives them the next free step essentially whether it’s book a call or the lead magnet or whatever that case is essentially So that’s just above the fold. And then the rest of the page is for people that, okay, so you’ve hooked them in, they understand how they’ll benefit from your offer, they can see that you’re an authority in this space, then they’re probably more interested to either click on the top navigation or scroll down the page. And the rest of the page is really, like I say, a gateway. So it’s really thinking about the intent of the visitor. So you might have something that takes them on a path if they’re a cold visitor or a warm visitor or a hot visitor, right? And it could just be as simple as three junction boxes underneath just above, you know, the top section of the page. And then from there as well, you explain your offers. So you might have a blog or a podcast or a service or products or whatever the case is, you want to have a section for each of them in a logical order. as well as social proof on that page in the form of other testimonials, written or video or case studies, et cetera. And it’s really, you know, not a super long page, but just enough of, you know, all these relevant sections to help guide them to get to the next step that’s relevant to them based on their intent. But it all- And when it comes to- Yep.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, absolutely. That’s the important thing, right? It’s positioning and positioning you as the right solution, the trusted solution for their problem that they have. Yeah. I’m interested though, about some of the design based principles that, you know, some people think are important, but maybe are not from your opinion. So for example, like, You know, it used to be a real thing to have like an image slider above the fold and things like that. Big home screen, you know, full page kind of background videos and things like that, which make your website look pretty cool or little animations that pop up or interactive elements when you move your mouse over. How important is that stuff or is there certain things that you advise against as well these days?
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, definitely. I definitely advise against all of those things that you mentioned, right? And the main reason is, I mean, we follow a lot of conversion experts as well, like, especially cxl.com. And so there’s a lot of blogs on their website, and we’ve also been through their training. But anything that moves on your website that isn’t in control, like doesn’t put your visitor in control is actually a distraction and a proven conversion killer. So we see a lot of design trends, especially like we’re just putting a new blog post together at the moment for trends in 2024. for design and I swear like most of them suck and will hurt conversions and I really feel like and it is those things like you know interactivity micro you know effects and parallax effects where things scroll in as sorry things fly in as you’re scrolling down the page um things like dark mode like little look at a lot of like web3 type websites everything’s dark background with white text well biggest problem with that is it’s not going to pass any um you know ADA compliance for, you know, people with disabilities because it’s really hard to read white text on dark background or white text on a light background is even worse, just not enough contrast. So a lot of these trends at the moment and another few like, you know, there’s 3D animation, like if you have something 3D and spinning around and things like that, it’s very distracting. It’s going to take their eyes away from the copy. And then there’s experimental color where they’ll have a different color background on every section and all the calls actions, if any, are different colors as well. So you’re not training people to visually think about clicking on that one call to action, every page, every step of the funnel, essentially. So I don’t know, I find design trends at the moment are not getting any better. I just think designers are bored and they want to, you know, they’re creative. So they really just like to keep creating new things. But yeah, in my opinion, most of them are going to hurt conversions.
SPEAKER_01:
It’s interesting because I think that the businesses that I see are most guilty of this are the creative businesses, right? They are. I think many, many video producers, video production company websites are probably guilty of many of these things. I think, you know, definitely web design companies as well. You see so many of them, you know, practicing these, you know, conversion killer processes on their websites, right?
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:
Which is really interesting. That’s why I really, you know, resonate with the Studio One approach of conversion focused web design, right? Because that is ultimately what we want our website to do.
SPEAKER_00:
Well, that’s right. And look, don’t get me wrong, I love the look of some of these trends. They look great, you know, they really like grab your attention, but they’re really going to hurt your conversion. So we, yeah, that’s why we don’t do them.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah. Well, let’s talk about video on websites because you talked about the video background, looping video background thing as not being a good idea. But what are best practices when it comes to using video, placement of video, embedding video in websites so that it actually serves the purpose of the website and doesn’t detract from it?
SPEAKER_00:
Absolutely, yes. And look, I think video is one of the best ways to build trust in your brand and the people behind the brand. A lot of people just don’t even put video on their website and they just hide behind their website. But yeah, that’s not the best way in my opinion. So I see video as crucial, like it’s a crucial part of our business and it’s what we highly encourage all of our clients to use. And it might be a video on the homepage, a video on their about page, a video on their book a call page if that’s one of the funnel pages. Thank you page videos as well, super important. And then case study videos as well are really good for, you know, having other people say how awesome your solution is, right? But so to answer your question, yeah, video background is definitely a conversion killer. Now, I understand if you’re a video business, you may consider it. Be careful as well from an SEO perspective because they can really slow down a webpage load time and therefore Google will penalize you if your website takes too long to load. That’s another reason not to have a moving video that’s on autoplay when you land on the website. But what we can do instead, and we often do this above the fold, you might have a little video play icon. You can even have like the first frame of the video, but it’s not the actual video. It’s just an image. And then when the play icon is pressed, then it can either have the video just play on top of that, it’s just a little trick to speed up the website, or it can be in a pop-up, or sometimes we have the video first frame further down the page, because some people don’t click on that play icon, and so what we’re trying to do there is, if they click on the play icon, we’ll have the web page scroll down and play that video further down automatically, but if they miss that, at least they get the chance to see the full video on the screen further down the page, so it gives them two chances to watch the same video. But yeah, the structure of the homepage video is really, again, it’s kind of what we recommend is the spin selling structure where you’re letting like a two minute face to camera video, and you can have B roll footage over the top of it as well, depends on what your niche is. But if it’s the spin selling video where you face the camera saying, you know, I understand the situation you’re in, you explain the situation, the problems that they’re probably facing and the implications if they don’t address it, and then talk about your solution, which is all this stuff is written on the page as well, right? But put that in a video, it can really help build more trust in your brand, because they get to see the people behind the brand, essentially. Yeah, and then the about page video as well. To me, that’s more about your backstory and your big why. And, you know, once again, you can use a lot of B-roll video. In fact, I mean, we use professional video services to create those videos that I’ve just talked about. In fact, we’ve hidden the homepage video, but the about page video is there. But can I just talk about the thank you page videos? Because I think that’s one of the most… Yeah, please do. Okay, cool. So let’s say you’ve got a cold lead that’s opted in for a lead magnet, whether it’s a free PDF, free, whatever, right? On the thank you page of that, for a start, a lot of people don’t even have a thank you page after people opt in. And that’s a big mistake, they might just have a line of text that says, you know, thanks, but instead, it really is an opportunity to just keep building trust in your brand. So if you have a video on the thank you page, thanks them, you know, to thank them for opting in for the free thing and just talk a little bit about that, but then invite them to the next offer, whether that’s a free call or whatever the case is, talk a little bit about the benefits of that next free offer. And that can be quite powerful and a call to action on that page to go to that next free offer essentially. But that’s one video and then let’s say somebody does book a call with you, then obviously you want to take them to the calendar embed page where they can book the time and all that. But after that, have a thank you page video. And in this video, thank them for booking the call, let them know what’s going to happen next, et cetera. But then if you answer objections that your salespeople usually hear on those 15, 20, 30 minute calls, and answer those FAQs and objections that you hear on those calls in like a three to five minute video, that can be really powerful for A, making sure those people show up and B, converting those people on the calls, because you’ve answered a lot of the objections that are probably going on in the head
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I love that so much. And it’s, it’s, it aligns a lot with the strategies that we talk about and talk about on this podcast before it’s, it’s the idea of using video, not, not as strictly a creative tool, but using it as a, as a conversion tool. And it’s often so overlooked because it humanizes that sales conversation in, in ways that are essentially automated, but still feel ultimately very human, which I think is really powerful.
SPEAKER_00:
is it ever and yeah just to add to that like if you think the next video is the case study videos that we highly recommend and that is exactly what you’re talking about where you could either interview your client or you could just send them some questions and have them answer them in a video but you really just want to let people know like what was their situation before they came to you, and what their challenges were, and then how you actually help them, you know, whatever your solution is, and then what the results were. And if that’s in like a five minute, like, it’s kind of a case study, essentially, because it’s taken from the, you know, the start to the process to the result, showing your target market face to camera, what that does is your prospects will see themselves in that, you know, target market. And yeah, it’s a really good way for you know, converting more people. So we often have a lot of case study videos on our website and our clients’ websites. And yeah, then you essentially create that page with the video in bed and everything else written on the page. It’s set in the video as a template. So every time we get a new case study, you just keep using that new template with different target audiences, essentially.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, I love this and I hope everyone’s taking notes here because there’s two benefits to what Greg’s sharing here. Number one, for the video producer in our audience, right? These things that Greg’s talking about is your way of better serving your clients, of actually going to them and saying, you haven’t got these types of videos on your websites, we can make these for you and this is why it’s going to return on that investment for you, number one. And number two, for the business owner out there, you know, who’s trying to do it for themselves, these videos don’t need to be highly produced. You don’t need a video producer to do them. You can use a You can use an iPhone and things like that. So, you know, two ways. You can either use this as an upsell for your clients if you’re making video for your clients or you can just do these sorts of videos yourself and, you know, with limited investment and still be equally as effective. I think it’s really good.
SPEAKER_00:
Matt Walter Cool. Yeah, I love it. And there’s actually one other. page that we often encourage clients to have on their website, which is like a join our team or careers page. And once again, if you have a video on that page where you talk about the benefits of what they’ll get out of joining your team and also have some social proof of your existing team members amongst that video, that can be a super powerful video. But what we find is the more effort we put into the careers page for our clients, And it’ll be everything from a benefit-driven headline, why they should join the team at the start. You want to reiterate what your big why is and your mission, and then have some logos of clients you help. Talk about your core values as well, and then a list of benefits that they’ll get, and potentially even a career path. that you will help them grow in their career. And then obviously some social proof and then, you know, a call to action. But that when people like your prospects see the effort you put into your careers page, instead of just having like a list of positions open, you put all that effort into the into the careers page. More prospects want to work with you because they know that you’re putting in like a lot of effort to attract the best people to work with you as well.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, yeah, that’s so good. So I’m interested, Greg, what platform, what hosting platform do you tend to recommend for videos embedded on websites? Because there’s increasingly more and more options.
SPEAKER_00:
Anything but YouTube. We use Wistia. A lot of clients use Vimeo. And like I said, there’s a bunch out there, right? But for all of your marketing videos or your sales videos and marketing videos on your website, we recommend a non-YouTube platform. And the main reason is because if somebody is watching that video on your website and they see a little YouTube logo in the corner, they’ll just go and click on that and they’re gone. It’s a leakage point essentially, right? So we want to keep people on that page. Now the other benefit of using a proper marketing platform, video platform is because you get analytics. on that video you can see how far people are watching in the engagement and all that good stuff right so that can teach you a lot about is your boring video is your video boring or you know it doesn’t need to be shorter or you know things like that but if you do have a blog And you can embed, let’s say, this video on your podcast, right, on your podcast page. You can embed this video from YouTube because that’s going to help. That’s sort of, for your cold leads, that’s going to help your YouTube video count go up. So that’s the only place I would use a YouTube video which is on your content pages, blog, podcast, etc.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, yeah, I totally agree with that. And, you know, you talked before around the importance of page load speeds and things like that, and using the right hosting platform can have an impact on load speeds as well, right?
SPEAKER_00:
True. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, I think Wistia and Vimeo are pretty good these days. They put a lot of effort into making sure that their customers like us that use their platform don’t want to be negatively impacted by SEO. So they put a lot of effort into making sure it doesn’t slow down your page.
SPEAKER_01:
Excellent. Very cool. Well, let’s pivot back to talk about design because, you know, I think that again, increasingly as the tools become more available for businesses to, you know, grab a, you know, Squarespace website or Wix or these other platforms where you kind of, it’s kind of like website or business in a box, you know, you just pick one, choose it. And then you got a website. Away you go. It looks like everyone else’s, right? So, you know, what is the benefit of working with a designer or a conversion-based designer like you guys at Studio One versus, you know, just going to one of those platforms and picking a template off the shelf?
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, I mean, that’s a great question. Like, if you’re starting out in business, we highly recommend getting a template off the shelf or a Wix or a Squarespace or one of those, you know, there’s even AI tools out there that can create websites these days, right? And that’s fine if you’re starting out. But if you think about any, if you know, any industry leader in your niche, do you think they would have done that? Like, no, like 99% of the time, they’ve invested in a custom designed website, and, you know, custom videos and professional photography and professional copywriting, because they don’t want to risk not being seen as the industry leader. So it just depends on what level you’re at in business. Because obviously, you can pay, you know, 100 bucks for a template, you can pay $5,000 for like a brochure website, You can pay $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, $100,000 for proper custom website design with all these built-in funnels and all these things in it. But most of it you probably don’t need, but it just depends on your level. And I would suggest that if you are a professional business that wants to be seen as an industry leader, Because you’ve got to think about what your competitors are doing as well. There might be a lot of competitors in your niche. And if you’re not seen as high as them, like the perceived value, then, you know, A, they may not trust you as much as the higher level competitors. But B, if you do have a higher level website design and copy that does a lot of converting and, you know, persuading, then you can essentially charge more. That’s what we’ve found with our clients. So yeah, it’s like a huge benefit if you get it right.
SPEAKER_01:
well, you know, I’m guilty of the early days of my business, you know, thinking that… using WordPress, I can just buy a plugin, buy a website and do it myself. And the first couple of websites that I had at Innovate Media were DIY websites. I was thinking, look at me, coding websites. But I soon realized as well that, you know, even though I could do it and I could make something that looked okay, it wasn’t where I should have been focusing my time and attention. You know, like I should have been out, you know, doing what I do, making videos, selling video content. not tinkering with my website. But I think so many business owners feel that, you know, because they can do it and the tools make it easy to do, that’s, you know, that’s an easier option. But, you know, it’s really not.
SPEAKER_00:
That’s a good point, yeah. And you as a coach, yeah, it’s not the best use of your time, that’s for sure. But I guess the other thing I like to say is if you think about website, it’s like having like a bad website, it’s like having bad breath. And what I mean by that is nobody tells you that your breath stinks, right? They just kind of back away. right? And so if you think about your website, if you’ve got a bad website, they’re not going to tell you it sucks, they’re just going to leave and they’re gone forever, essentially, right? Unless you’re doing remarketing and other things. But the point is, you won’t know why they left. And then imagine if they did become a customer, and they love the service that you offer, but your website’s not represented as good as your services, so they don’t hire you. And then you’re missing out on that business, they might have referred you to others, you’re missing out on that business, and it just goes on forever.
SPEAKER_01:
I love that distinction there of the bad website, the impact of a bad website that you might not even be thinking about, right? So you might be thinking, I’m trying to increase my prices. I’m trying to, you know, grow the business, reach better, higher tier clients in my business, but I’m just hitting a brick wall. And maybe look at your website, you know, maybe think how are you being perceived by your market based on the design and functionality and copy on your website. And I think for many businesses, you know, and myself included in the past is, you know, that’s something that I’m not thinking about that’s having a real impact. So let me ask you, Greg, like what are some signs that you probably should look at redesigning your website? Maybe you sat on your website for a few years, you think it still looks pretty good, still does what I want it to. What should you be looking for to think that now’s the time to up the game?
SPEAKER_00:
I love that question and you know what we’ve done for your audience. We’ve got a lead magnet of our own which is a checklist. It’s like a quiz and it’s studio1design.com forward slash engage just for you and what we have on there is a quiz that asks 50 questions and it’s you either answer yes or no. Does your website have this this blah blah blah blah blah right. And so it’s 50 questions, but it’s across six vital areas of your website. And most people will probably get like a 15 to 20 out of 50. So that’s going to show you that you’ve got 30 to 35 opportunities of things to improve. And all these things are designed to boost your conversion. So, you know, a website is not just five principles. It’s like all the principles and then all these little tiny things that you can do to help boost the conversion. So yeah, if you want to go to studio1design.com forward slash engage, then that’s the best thing you can do your own audit of your own website to see if it’s holding up.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, excellent. Well, thank you for that. And we’ll add the links in the show notes for this episode as well. So stick around, I’ll shout that out. But go and check that out and get that checklist, guys. But I guess last question here, Greg, before I let you go, is if you are looking to redesign your website and you’re looking for a web designer, I think we’ve talked about the idea of finding a conversion-focused web design company is important, right? Not just someone who goes for the pretty stuff. But what would you say in addition to that that people should be looking for in a web designer or a web design company to help them refresh or renew their website?
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, exactly. So, first start, I would have a look at their website to see if that’s, you know, resonating with you as far as, you know, the messaging and does it talk to your pain points that you have with your website, right? That’s number one. Number two is have a look at their folio. Have a look if they’ve designed websites in your niche, for instance, you know, because that’s going to be a good indicator if they know how to design a similar type of service or product that you offer. And then have a look at the quality of their designs as well in the folio and just make sure you’re happy with that. And then have a look at their testimonials, their case studies, and really deep dive until you’ve got enough proof that you feel like they’re the right ones. But do that on multiple, you know, businesses that offer websites. And then have little calls with them, like a strategy call on, say, three. And then from there, because you probably won’t see their pricing, I mean, what we do is we send, if somebody reaches out, we send them a ballpark so they know what to expect and then we’ll fall within that ballpark range. But yeah, the point is you probably won’t see the price initially. If you do, it’s probably the lower end. But for, you know, a half decent company, you probably won’t see it on their website. So yeah, just do some due diligence basically to make sure they’re a right fit. But have that call with them as well because that’s going to see if you trust them as a person and, you know, the people behind the brand essentially.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah, and are you looking for someone that can do the design, the copy, the coding, all of that? Or what are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_00:
I mean, ideally, it’s up to you, right? I mean, we only offer design and coding. We don’t offer copy. And that’s because we partner with copywriters. Like with your website, you used our copywriting partner, right? That’s because they’re really good at copy, we’re really good at design and we’re not as good as copy as they are and they don’t design. So together, it’s perfect. It’s like, you know, you just offer video. You don’t offer websites and all these other things. It’s mainly video related. services, right? Because you’re the best in field at what you do and I feel like people should stick in their lane. Now, having said that, there are companies that out there that offer all sorts of marketing and they may be really good but more than likely, they’re going to be really good at one or two of the things and probably not, you know, excellent at everything. So, I don’t know, I would focus on somebody, yeah, that’s really good at one thing basically rather than jack of all trades.
SPEAKER_01:
Yeah. Yeah, I would agree. Jack of all trades, master of none is the rest of that saying, right? And, you know, I think so many, so many like digital companies, right? So social media marketing, marketing companies, they try and do everything. You know, they try and do social media, they try and do paid ads, they try and do web design, they try and do, you know, email marketing. They try and do it all, but that I really don’t think they can specialize in all of it. Some of them try and do video as well, but you know, we know that those listening and watching this show know that they’re not doing a good job at that either. So, you know, I think that’s why you go to someone like Studio One Web Design. First place to go, of course, is studioonedesign.com slash engage and download that checklist and see if your website even needs help. And if it does, then you know who to reach out to. So, Greg, where is the best place apart from downloading that checklist? Like, where can they connect with you? Is there a preferred social platform? Or where do you hang out?
SPEAKER_00:
Yeah, I hang out in email. So, greg at studio1design.com.
SPEAKER_01:
There you go, straight into Greg’s inbox. Hey Greg, thanks for joining me and thanks again to you and your team for really upping the game of the engagevideomarketing.com website last year. And of course, I’ll just recognize as well Jamie and the team at Savvy Copy who helped out with the copywriting as well. So like I said, the copy is critical to success of a website. So super glad that we connected with your preferred copywriter there as well. Greg, thanks for joining me and yeah, thanks for doing what you do.
SPEAKER_00:
Pleasure. Thank you, Ben. Really enjoyed it. Cheers.
SPEAKER_01:
I hope you enjoyed that episode and I hope it inspired you to take a deeper look at your website to see whether or not it ticks the right boxes to move people towards taking the right action for your business. Now, I know it wasn’t strictly video marketing related but website design is absolutely critical in creating marketing that is effective and ultimately that’s the goal whether we’re doing video marketing or otherwise. So from me, thanks again to Greg for joining me for episode 300 here of the Engage Video Marketing Podcast. And I’d love to hear from you what episodes you want to have coming up in the podcast in the future. So if you’re a regular listener to this show, I want to thank you and ask you to reach out to me and just let me know what kind of episodes you want to hear more of. Now, don’t forget to go to engagevideomarketing.com slash 300 for all the links that we talked about in this episode. That’s the show notes page. And importantly, if you want to check out the free resource that Greg talked about in that episode, go to studioonedesign.com slash engage. And if you do reach out to Greg and the team at Studio One Design, make sure to let them know that you heard us here on the podcast first. All right, my friends, take care. I’ll see you in the next episode of the Engage Video Marketing Podcast. Bye for now.
