Monica Pitts 0:00
Hello again and welcome back to marketing with purpose I'm your hostess with the most is Monica Pitts. Today I have a couple special guests in my recording studio, if you could call my office of recording studio. Hi, hi, I have with me Ellis and Abilene, my daughters who are eight and 12. And they are going to help us understand what happens when you don't refresh that dinosaur of a website. Now, I I am definitely going to tell you guys what has happened to me in the past when I've let my website go for too long without refreshing it. But I kind of wanted to get an honest take from a couple young web users about how they feel about websites. Okay, so I'm going to start at the top with my curiosity driven questions here friends. Abilene, how do you feel when you go to a website and it's not pretty? Like it looks ugly? How do you feel?
Speaker 2 1:01
I'm sad, because I like pretty things.
Monica Pitts 1:05
Ella's How do you feel when you go to a website that looks old and outdated? Like? Oh, heaven. All right. Sorry, friends. Sorry for those sound effects. All right. How do you feel when you go to a website and it takes a really long time to load?
Speaker 2 1:26
I hate it because I just want to get on with it. For goodness sake.
Monica Pitts 1:31
How about you? Well, it's how do you feel? I feel like
Unknown Speaker 1:40
wow, wow. Wow.
Monica Pitts 1:42
Okay. How do you feel when you go to a website and it's broken?
Speaker 2 1:47
I want to call my mom and tell her to fix it. Oh, thanks
Monica Pitts 1:51
for the lead. Abby. What about you? ls when you go to a website, and you're excited about what's going on, and it's broken? How do you feel when she
Speaker 2 1:59
likes? You people need a fix. Now, like in a game,
Monica Pitts 2:04
like when Minecraft keeps kicking you out and running really slow? How do you feel like punching Abilene in the face? Oh my gosh, we can't punch our sister in the face. Okay, friends. So there you have it. From the mouths of toddlers?
Speaker 2 2:24
No, I'm in the I'm in third grade and LS is in sixth. We're not Todd LEUSD. And I made
Monica Pitts 2:37
12. Okay, from the mouths of babes. The only thing they know about building websites is well, that their mom does it. So they know what happens when you don't refresh that dinosaur of a website. And part of what happens is what you just heard them say, right part of it is your audience's experience with your website. The thing that people don't realize is that your audience's experience with your website actually impacts other things too. So let's take a look at it from a technical perspective and dig in, let's get to business.
If you're a natural born marketer, You're one lucky son of a gun. If you're like most people, marketing, especially online marketing is about as appealing as standing in a police lineup. The may create team of creatives has transformed websites and digital marketing from craptastic to fantastic since 2005, our podcast marketing with purpose make sense of marketing, so you can make purposeful decisions instead of carrying on with the same old crap you've been doing. And now your host, Monica Pitts, founder of may create with another episode on how to make your marketing not suck. I picked the girls up from school today. And then I came back to the office because I had like one more thing that I needed to get done before I felt like I could leave because we've been working really hard over here it may create because we're getting ready for our first session of the better than DIY website program. And we're really pumped about it. We already have a few people that signed up more inviting people into this done with you program where we're going to help them customize the design of their site and show them how to use it and teach him how to put all their content in so that way they can get a really cost effective website. That's awesome. That loads fast, that's new, that's new, and that doesn't make people angry. It will be so great. I'm excited to roll through and get this first session under our belt so that way we can get better and better with it every single time that we do it this year. So if you're facing a DIY website build just know that you don't have to do it alone. You can totally do it with us and you can go over to May create.com That's ma YEC r e a t.com forward slash to DIY website, so yeah, I'm here with my kids at the office working late and they sat down, they did their homework, they got to borrow all the cool pens from the cool designers that work it may create. And then they were like, We don't want to go home because we love to play at the office. So now here I am recording a podcast. Well, after dark while my kids are playing office, and completely trashing Kara's desk, Kara, I am so sorry, by the way, if you're listening, I'm sorry, but my kids are entertained. And that's pretty stinking awesome. And as we just heard, they are also full of opinions. I wonder who they got that from? Okay. So I already alluded to some of the things that can happen if you let your website go for too long. And I just want to dig into a couple things that happen on a technical level and also on a user level. So that way you can understand when you let your website go for too long the choice that you're making, and how it might potentially impact your business. So the first thing that happens when you let your website go for too long, is things break. And you heard how the girls feel about that they do not like it when things are broken. I mean, really no one does. So things that break often are links, links break a lot, because people switch their websites around, they build new websites, or they take stuff down off their site. The good news is for links, there's broken link checkers, and you can install plugins on your website that will monitor this for you and and even security programs will monitor this for you. So keeping your links in tip top shape is actually not the hardest task to do. What stinks is when your functionality breaks, and things don't work the right way on your website anymore. So maybe somebody's going to submit an email form, because they want to do business with you. But instead of sending them to a success page, it just spins forever. And they don't think that they submitted it. And so they submit it again, and then again, and then again. And you know what they are, they're frustrated, this is not the first experience that you want them to have with your company. And even then what if the email form just straight up didn't go through period, so then you didn't get the lead at all. That's not good either. Now, the third thing that can break on an old website is the way that it looks. Because browsers are continually pushing the envelope on how we need to code to be able to get things to load faster, lighter, and work better for our users. And if it's built the old way, then it's probably not going to look right the new way. And so information can be out of context, it can look terrible on a mobile phone. And the bummer of it is is that we don't look at our websites every day. So we don't know it's broken until one of the users tells us and that stinks. Okay. So if you just keep your website updated and modern, and you rebuild it every, say, four to five years, then you don't run into this type of breakage issue. Now the second thing other than things breaking is that you can't actually extend your site any further. Because it's no longer up to date, you can't add new features, because the new features, they just aren't compatible with the old code in your website. So then you start looking like you're not as cool anymore, which is a bummer. Even if you wanted to add that shopping cart to your site. Or even if you wanted to add a payment system where people could go in and check their invoice and pay online and save a bunch of time. You couldn't because you wouldn't be able to integrate it with your site. And here's the deal friends, though, even if you could integrate it with your site, if your site doesn't look trustworthy, people are not going to want to pay online through it. They're just not going to. I have literally run ad campaigns for companies that are like, no, no, no, we just have to get more traffic to our site. And I'm like, no, no, no, your website is old. And it loads very slowly. And it doesn't work right. And it doesn't function correctly. And people are not going to buy things on it. And you know what they do? They spend 1000s of dollars on ads and people do not buy things on the site because they don't trust it. Okay, it's a trust thing. It's not just a new feature thing. It's not just a how it looks thing. It's a trust thing. Okay, so the third thing that happens and I see this all the time on old sites and hack, I see it just in myself. We start loading like a turtle. All right, like I don't run as fast as I used to run. I mean, part of it's because I don't want to run that fast anymore. But also because you know, walking seems pretty okay sometimes and your website is feeling the same way. Okay. Here's what happens when your website starts loading like a turtle. It starts dropping in rankings. Yeah. Because Google cares how fast it loads. It looks at it. It's like it's slow. So my, it must not be very good. I'm just not going to show it as much to people. And then people leave because they're impatient. And then you lose business. My kids they're super impatient. They They will leave your site, I might leave your site, I'm a little more patient, because you know, I get it, it happens. But because people are abandoning your site before it fully loads, and because people aren't behaving on your website, the way that they should, the way that a good user interacts with a website that's interesting. Google sees that. I know, it's Google again. So that leads me to number four, it will drop in rankings, because the user behavior shows Google that your website is less relevant. Yeah, I have seen this happen on my own site, it is depressing, I hate it. The other thing that will happen is it will stop showing your content because Google feels like it's too old. And that's why bloggers are always going out and updating their blog posts and refreshing them, because after a certain point, Google will stop showing the content because it feels like it's too old. And if people are leaving your site before it's loading, or if they're not staying there for very long, if they're having a bad user experience now, because your website isn't interacting with them the way it's supposed to, then that sends a signal to Google, that basically you're throwing a really lame party that no one wants to go to. Which leads me to my final point, you will lose business. Welcome the gloom and doom Monica. But yes, when I let my website go for too long, and I have in the past, I mean, I run a web design company, but they get wiped out people to feed, you know, people at home people in the office. And so we're going on our own website sometimes doesn't seem super profitable when people want to eat. So we work on other people's websites instead. And our website will start dropping in the rankings. It absolutely does. And then people don't hang out on it. And then they don't submit that contact form to take that first appointment and learn what a cool company we are and why we do such great websites, they don't even reach out. And the leads drop will go from having multiple good leads a month to just it slowly dwindles. And that's the crappy thing is because it's such a slow, slippery drop off, you don't notice it until one day you're in the shower going, why don't we have enough business and what happened to those web leads, and then you start thinking about it. And you're like, man, it's been a really long time, since we really did anything on that website. And bingo, you let it go for too long. And that dinosaur of a website is killing you. because less people can find you. And those that do find you can't get your site to work and it takes forever to load. And then things are broken. And you don't offer the same features as your competition. So you're not making your best first impression, and you lose business.
So there you have friends, that is what happens when you don't refresh that dinosaur of a website. And here's the deal. I'm not calling you out. I have done that to my own website. But sometimes we have to hear what happens when we don't take that nasty next step that we don't want to take, taking on a website project. It costs money, it costs time and people will put it off, they'll just put it off until they're in so much pain that they absolutely can't do anything else. And by then it's it's too late. Because even after you launch your new site, it's not going to be an immediate uptick. It takes time and you don't want to lose the momentum that you already built up with Google, we want to like, hold on to it, like it's breakable, little baby egg. That's pretty covered in glitter. That's special. Because it's not easy to get. It really isn't. That's why search engine optimization experts get paid the big bucks. Now, if you don't know if it's time for you to go rebuild that site yet, if you think well, maybe we have some time left, I would encourage you to go out and use some different reporting tools that are free online and just see how your website stacks up. Some of my favorites are GT metrics. I call that my boyfriend GT metrics is my boyfriend because he is so cool. He will tell you all kinds of cool things about your website, like how it loads and what slowing it down and what you need to do. He'll give you suggestions. He's so smart. That's why he's my boyfriend. You would also use PageSpeed Insights. That one sometimes I just feel like I'm I need a Google dictionary to get through it, but it will give you information. And also I like uptrends as well. They have a free mobile report that will break stuff down really well tell you how your website is performing on a mobile phone, which is really, really important. It doesn't matter who you are, you are getting mobile traffic. And we need to please those mobile visitors and Google because Google looks at your website mobile first. It cares more what your mobile traffic does than anything. So make sure that you are giving mobile visitors an amazing experience. Okay, friends, well, you know if your website's at dinosaurian you need a new one, and you've got to maybe have to build it yourself. You could hang out with me for that DIY website program, there might be a spot or two left, I don't know. Just give me a shout, go on over to me create.com That's ma y e
[email protected]. Forward slash DIY website. And we're even doing free intake conversations. That way, we can make sure that you're gonna get the website that you really need to grow your company. Out of this program, you'll get expert design paired with page by page instructions to get your site put together. And you won't even have to learn how to code. So it might be right for you. Or maybe not. Either way, go check it out. You'll never know unless you look. I think it's time to go home. I mean, I gotta get dinner started. And it's already after six. So I'm gonna go round up those kids and pick up here his desk. And yeah, so thank you so much for hanging out with me. And until next time, you know what to do? Go forth and mark it with purpose. Thanks again for listening to marketing with purpose. Head over to Mayecreate.com MAYECReate.com Yeah, you heard me right, mayecreate.com. For podcast notes and more resources to grow your business. Don't let your marketing suck. Get your pride on market with purpose.
Speaker 2 16:25
I think we did pretty good. I don't think we did good. I think we did. Awesome. Thanks sick. He's awesome. Put Columbia
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