Ep.40 Website Strategy with Shannon Shaffer

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Have you ever wondered if your website is doing its job? Or maybe even what your website’s job is? 

The main thing to remember is that your target market needs to know that you’re speaking directly to them and can support them through their problem – and to accomplish this, you need a website strategy.

Today we have an incredible guest who is also an advisor within The Leveraged Practice Workshop, Website Strategist Shannon Shaffer of Purple Finch Studios. She helps us think about our websites a little bit differently and talks about how to get a strategy in place before designing your website, so you can speak to the right audience.

Here’s what we talked about:

  • What the purpose is of your site (and the pages within it!)
  • The call-to-actions on your site (your site visitors only do what you tell them to do!)
  • How to figure out who your ideal client is (you can always start with who you don’t want to work with!)
  • The questions to answer before you even start to build your website (Shannon breaks down her framework: The Who, What, Why, Where and How!)
  • A simple exercise you can do to check the health of your website (and if your message is clear for your ideal clients!)

Most of the time your clients only know what their problem is and that they want to feel better. Being strategic about your website will help communicate that you have the solution to their problem.

About Shannon

Shannon Shaffer is the founder of Purple Finch Studios. In an online world driven by, and enamored with, “because we can” design and strategies, Shannon’s superpower is making sure that the websites and online marketing solutions that she and her team develop have a purpose and are easy for users to follow, use and engage. Shannon focuses on going deeper than just pretty designs and creates a customer journey that results in conversions.    She is as at home on an agency team, tying together digital marketing, social media and website experience, as she is in a client-direct setting, helping clients achieve extraordinary results. With 13 years in the online marketing space, Shannon thrives helping small businesses create online marketing and websites that convert, attracting millions of website visitors in the process.

You can find her online here: purplefinchstudios.com or on Instagram: @shannontshaffer

If you enjoyed this podcast, you may enjoy these 3 other podcast episodes about content strategy:

Prefer reading? Here’s the transcript below


Stephanie: Have you ever wondered if your website is doing its job or maybe even what the job is of your website? Today I have an incredible trusted resource here on the podcast with me and an advisor to The Leveraged Practice. Here at The Leveraged Practice, we believe it’s important to give our members access to the best trainings and workshops as they continuously go out in the world and launch and relaunch their workshops and programs and whatever they have created with us.

Shannon is one of our advisors who teaches workshops for other TLP members. Now, she’s here to help us all think about our websites a little bit differently. Shannon is also a dear friend of mine. Thank you for being here Shannon.

Shannon: Thank you for having me.

Stephanie: So Shannon is, Shannon Shaffer of Purple Finch Studios. Why don’t you just start by telling us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Shannon: I’m Shannon and I am a what I like to call not a developer, not a designer, but somewhere in the middle. A strategist. I help individuals and companies figure out who their target market is and how speak to them on their website. I’ve been doing this for about five years after successfully building and selling my own online business from 2006 until 2014. I take what I learned in all those years and having over 100 million website visitors a year to my website and help people implement that in their own businesses.

Stephanie: Yeah, it’s so incredible to hear your story and I think one of the things that bothers me… we’re going to start the podcast with things that bother me, Shannon. I could talk about things that bother us for four hours. I’m going to try not to do that for the whole podcast but, when we are looking for someone to work with, when we’re looking for someone to give us advice, because damn…running a business, building a practice, growing something is really tricky, we don’t have all the skills. We lean on other people to ask for advice.

One of the things that bothers me is that there are so many people out there giving out advice. There is no lack of advice on the internet these days. What I love about Shannon from the first day I met her is that she’s built a company that she’s learned not just with firsthand experience, which is such a big part of it, but as you’ll hear from Shannon, she knows what she’s talking about.

With that experience, and also Shannon is continuously building up experience, learning, connecting with other people in the industry, reading, researching, bringing all of this into really what we like to call best practices in the health industry – we like best practices for anything – so the best practices for website strategy.

I’d love for you to walk away from this podcast understanding that not everyone that gives you advice on your website knows what they’re talking about. I’m just feel so grateful that I even met Shannon several years ago and that she’s here with us today to give us a very unique perspective from someone who has built and sold an incredible business and continuously does this every day. She’s sees what’s working and what’s not working and continues to help people in that way. I’m just grateful that you’re here and for sharing your story.

My First Website for My Health Practice

 

Stephanie: We decided that we wanted to start this podcast with a little bit of my story in that when I met you Shannon, which was over two years ago. I had been running my practice since 2011. When it comes to my website, I first whipped up my website on a drag and drop builder, which I think many people do. You just want to get something out on the internet.

It took me a couple of months in 2011 to put up some pictures. I picked a template. I whipped up some things in there and I started to get some business in, which was great. I think within about 12 to 18 months, and maybe even quicker than that, I was like, “Oh my gosh, I need a real website because I’m just making this up as I go.” That’s when I hired someone to help me a little bit and build out a WordPress website.

But I’ll tell you, I was still DIYing a lot of stuff. We had a builder right in there. I was guessing at what my pages should look like and guessing at what content I should have on there and guessing what images I should use. Shannon and I talk about this, you probably see this a lot Shannon. Looking at other websites that I think maybe are pretty or maybe I like that person or think that maybe they have a good business. I don’t really know if their business is working and I was saying, “Let’s do this header. Let’s put this opt in right here like this other guy is doing.”

So when I met Shannon, I was years into that. Still running my own website and had a little developer do a few hours here and there when I needed things. We had some very interesting conversations in the beginning.

Shannon: We did. To pinpoint the time, I actually looked at your first website in February of 2017, just about two and a half years ago. There was a big nice picture of Stephanie in the header with some text and then just a bunch of stuff there that, I was like, “Yeah, this looks good.”

Stephanie: This is being so polite. Well I guess, I met you in February. Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, typically we meet somebody, we go check out their business online and that’s where we create a perception of what that person’s business is like. Whether we see it and we see something that looks beautiful, we’re like, “This person’s doing really well with their website,” and we see something that may not look as beautiful, you say, “This person’s probably not doing as great.” And none of that is true.

That’s a big misconception. You said something that a lot of times we go and we look at other people’s websites and see what’s working for them, then we automatically think that it’s going work for us. That is a huge no, no. If you want Marie Forleo’s or Amy Porterfield’s website, I’m going to tell you it’s not going to work for you. Why? Because you’re not them.

That is one of the biggest challenges that I come across, is that people see something that looks pretty and that’s what they emulate. While that may work for your bedroom decor or your clothing, it doesn’t necessarily work for your website. Because each of you has a unique purpose on your website, a unique target market, and you have to speak to that particular market.

When I met Stephanie, we went through that journey and it was like, “Steph, what are you trying to accomplish? Because I’m not quite sure.”

If your target market’s not quite sure, then you’re not going to sell what you need to be selling on your website. I think that is one of the key things that you mentioned there, is that when you start out, you just do what you see and you try to emulate and that may work for you for a very small period of time. If you want to scale and grow, it’s probably not going to.

Stephanie: Yeah. I think like we all suffer in 2019 of what looks pretty. What looks aesthetically pleasing. And we think maybe with Instagram and all the visual social apps and just everything, we just think we need the perfect everything. But it’s all visual and not that visual isn’t super important, it’s incredibly important, but we’re not thinking about it from the right perspective.

That’s why I said, “Shannon, please come here and tell us how to look about it, look at it.” Because it often just comes from our head and it’s guesses and we’re thinking about what we want to have on there.

Who is Your Website For?

 

Stephanie: Sometimes my clients, they ask me about pictures and colours and I’m like, “Ohh Man.” I think Shannon has taught me this, that it’s not really about the colours that I like or the colours that you like. The experience is really for the other people. When I first started, I didn’t get that.

One of the questions that I challenge my clients within The Leveraged Practice when we’re building an online program for their practice and we start at the very beginning, we do a little bit of market research. To do that is, who is this program for? When we look at your business, when we look at your program, which is my expertise, we are building out a program with a name and content and modules and even delivery that speaks to that person.

If you’re delivering a program to young moms with diabetes, that’s going to be a different type of program than perhaps someone who is single and lives on their own, who’s 70 suffering from diabetes. Just as an example, people are different and they use programs differently online. They need to be educated differently.

If we pass this over to Shannon, which is in her expertise, to think about our website and get deep into “The Who.” This is such a challenge for so many people. I know that you don’t want to say no to anyone. I know this is very challenging for many of us, but getting to The Who of, Who is coming to your website, Who you want to work with, Who you want to say “Yes” to work with you, and buy your services, buy your programs. Would you say that, that’s the most important thing when we start to build out a website strategy?

Shannon: I do think knowing who you are talking to and how you present the information is important. Let’s just use your example of if you’re selling to a 70 year old or 65 year old versus a 25 year old who has diabetes. There are inherent things we have to think about when we’re working with a 70 year old versus a 25 year old. What font choice are you’re going to make for a 70 year old? It’s not going to be the same font choice as you’re going to make for a 25 year old.

Just because visually, they probably need a larger font. All those things come into play and I really like to talk about whenever I’m working with somebody, I really like to talk about the five Ws. The Who, The What, The Why, The Where, and then of course we have The How, that’s not really a W, but that’s what I’d like to talk about.

Sitting down and really thinking about that before you work with a designer or a developer, that part of the process impacts your end products so much. I know a lot of people will go to a designer and say, “Hey, I need a website. Make it pretty, put some texts, place holder text and then I’ll write the content.”

While for some clients I will do that, if you have what I call a brochure site, which means you need an online presence for social proof, somebody can go and look that you are who you say you are. That’s okay, if you are just trying to have that there but if you’re to sell a program or products online, your user journey has to be much more specific. I always say before you go to a designer, you need to know who you’re talking to. That’s the first and foremost, along with the why and what and where, and everything before you even go.

Stephanie, using your own personal experience since we’ve done a few websites together. From your experience, doing stephanieclairmont.com, to doing TheLeveragedPractice.com, they were two worlds apart.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Shannon: This time I refused to do anything until Stephanie had her user journey created. When we did this site, there were a couple things that were different. It happened faster, there were less revisions and the end product really spoke to who she was marketing to.

I am by no means saying that when you do this process first that your website’s going to be perfect, because your website’s living, breathing, growing. It should change, you should test. But when we did this process for The Leveraged Practice, I think the end product happened so much more smoothly.

I don’t know if you guys have ever worked with a web developer or a designer and you find yourself sending 97,000 emails with corrections. Chances are, if you are going back and forth that much, I’ve heard this a lot, when your designer just didn’t get what you were looking for, chances are if your designer can’t understand who you’re talking to, your client’s not going to understand who you’re talking to.

Stephanie: That’s so good. I would say like just this year, probably 2019, maybe I started to last year, but just this year we went this way. Work on the copy, work on the content, work on understanding the experience and then put something together. Because when I met Shannon, I already had stephanieclairmont.com. I already had these pages and I had this look and I had this thing I was working with. We did redo that website at one point, but I think I’ve fully personally grasped this idea and went through the process from start to finish with Shannon this year.

I’ll tell you, it’s significantly different. In your head it might feel harder, like you don’t want to do it, because you want to see the template. You want to see these three images and then this call-out button and then this thing over here. Then you think, “I’ll fill in the blanks.” People sell fill in the blanks like crazy because they know it feels easier to you. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to work for you, a fill in the blank system. I think for years, I’ve been like, “Give me a fill in the blank, tell me what to do.” And in this way we did it differently and I’ll tell you it was a little more challenging.

But once I got past that roadblock in my head and actually sat down and created the copy and wrote the stories and wrote what I wanted on there, it wasn’t that hard. It’s kind of like in your head. You just want someone to give you a fill in the blank. It’s okay, you can do it yourself, you have the power within you.

Doing it that way and then seeing it come to life was just an incredible process. I think we’ve done so well with that website and I’ve gotten so much feedback on that website on how great it is and the experience of it and how it looks and all the good stuff. But I probably wouldn’t have picked those colours or some of that stuff five years ago when I was just picking what I liked. I really built that website for my people.

Shannon: One thing that I like to talk to my clients about when they struggle to understand why a template doesn’t necessarily work for them, I like to use this analogy. If you’re going to McDonald’s and you say, “We’re going to turn this McDonald’s into a high end steakhouse. All we’re gonna do is change the food that’s served.” That’s not going to work. You’re not at a high end steakhouse. You’re still in a McDonald’s, it feels and looks like a McDonald’s. It’s not going to appeal to a person who’s going to spend $150 on a meal.

You can’t take a McDonald’s and make it a Ruth Chris or More Ins or whatever your favorite steakhouse is. You can’t just do that. You would have to do major renovation. That’s why you won’t find a major steakhouse going into an old McDonald’s, because the footprint is not there.

That’s why I tried to discourage people from jumping into a template and thinking that they can just fill it in. Some people may have to do that to get started, but when you put that up, it gives you an opportunity to take a step back and look at it and say, “Okay, this isn’t what works for my clients.”

I would highly suggest that you start with, Who, What, Why, Where, and How. I want to talk a little bit about going through that process of what that looks like, and how you can take that process, implement it on your website, and then have other people tell you.

There’s a simple exercise that you can use, whether you have an existing website or you’re going to build a website that you can use to see if your website is what you think is being put out into the world and being translated properly.

Let’s just do this little exercise. We are going to walk through and I’m going to ask Stephanie some questions about her website for her pretend company that we’re going to do.

Stephanie: A pretend company?

Shannon: She didn’t know we’re going to do this. What’s your next company going to be? Think about that. We’ve already done this for her company. Her target market for her one company, she has a name. She’s Lisa. She’s a mom to two kids, she’s a school teacher. We know who she is. What does Lisa like? We know what colours she likes. She likes blue. She likes pictures of kids because she likes to cook with her kids.

Walk through and really talk about who the person is that’s coming to your site. Really dig into that. Don’t just say, “Oh, it’s somebody who has diabetes.”

Stephanie: This is what I often say and tell me if I’m off here or if you would add anything to it. Lisa is a real person. Lisa is one of my favorite clients that I’ve had in the past who I loved working with. We got great results. I enjoyed working with her. Sometimes when people struggle with this, I say, “Is there anyone you worked with that was your favourite?” If you could just work with more people like that, then you would be happy.

Is there something we can use or do you have any other advice for when people struggle with that one person that they’re serving? Because I think that’s this whole idea of one person or niching, it freaks people out. Do you have any advice for that?

Shannon: Yeah, I think that sometimes if you can’t bring it down to one person, because sometimes we have a hard time visualizing, I think the idea of going to a person that you have previously worked with works. I think another way that you could do it is that you could take the opposite route, write down all the things that you don’t want in the client. Think of your worst client ever and, “I’m never working with Michelle again. No, Michelle.” Then write down all the reasons why you don’t want to work with Michelle.

Then the opposite of that will be help you figure out your ideal client. Like if you’re thinking, “Look, I didn’t want to work with anybody who isn’t going to show for my appointments because they don’t prioritize this.” Or, “I don’t want to work with somebody who expects results in, you know, one week and doesn’t want to do the work.” You could put all these things down and then it’s the opposite.

If you’re limiting the people you don’t want to work with, and sometimes that’s the route that we have to go, if you struggle to get a name, it’s not necessary. But I really challenge you to know who it is. Because when you know who you’re working with, that helps your designer help you with branding. It helps them to ask you the right questions.

If you just say, “My target audience is diabetes,” and you go to a designer and say, “Okay, make me a website for people with diabetes.” What do people with diabetes look like? They look like everybody. We can just put anybody on the website,and it doesn’t work that way. When somebody comes to your website, they need to feel like, “Hey, that’s me. Yes, I relate.”

You’re not going to put some guy who’s pumping iron at the gym, but he can have diabetes. We really need to narrow in on who your person is and help your designer. You really should do your branding. If you haven’t had a designer do your branding upfront, that is the way to go.

Really, you should have your Who, already done before you get to your website design. I mean that if you’re working with Stephanie and her program, you will have that nailed down already. I think more than anything that you will be coming to the table with complete branding of your ideal client.

Stephanie: Yeah, and I know that it can feel challenging and it feels like there’s a lot of pieces. It’s nice to have this framework of saying, “Well, here’s where we need to start and here’s what we need to get clear on. And here’s maybe where we invest the first bit of time or the first bit of money,” and getting super clear on that.

The big reason to do this, not just because it actually works and it’s a strategy that will connect with your clients, but also in a world where there is no lack of information on health and every website just looks the same with the same colours and the same stock images and everything, it makes so much more sense for your business to stand out in that way. So that after your potential client has visited eight websites, they come to yours and they’re like, “This is where I belong. This is for me.”

Shannon: Right. And just keep in mind, you get about an average of 50 to 60 seconds with your website visitor for them to take action. That’s really important to keep in mind. But honestly it can be 15 seconds. That’s an average. That’s taking the highest to the lowest and making an average of.

On your home page, when they come there, they have to relate to The Who immediately. That’s the most important that they have to be like, “I belong here.”

What Do Your Clients Need?

 

Shannon: The What part of it, the questions you want to ask yourself surrounding what do they need? And what are you giving them? That needs to be clear. Why are they there? What is the reason that they came there? “I have diabetes and I’m looking for relief.” I’m not a dietitian, never played one on TV.

Stephanie: But she’s worked with a lot of dietitians.

Shannon: I’ve worked with a ton of dietitians. Do they want to get off insulin? Are they pre-diabetic and they’re trying to find a diet to help them not go on insulin? All these things. What do they need? And what are you offering?

You think of that opening statement in your hero image or your slider or whatever you put at the top of your website. It doesn’t matter if you have beautiful pictures in your slider, if it says nothing. There’s nothing for them to relate to. You’ve got the picture down. Now, what do they want and what are you getting them?

That should be clear and present on your website. When I come there, I want to relate with The Who, the look and feel and The What that’s there. ‘Need diabetes relief? Get off insulin.’ Whatever that is, whatever your message is, it should be front and center. That’s surrounding your What and you can go a lot deeper with your clients. That’s the high level part of The What of your website.

Stephanie, I think when we were working on The Leveraged Practice that was like, “Why are they there? Why are they coming there? What’s the reason that they’re there?” That leads me to The Why.

The Why isn’t why they’re there, because that goes into The What. Why you? Why Stephanie Clairmont? Why not this person? Why not the other person? Here is why you have to tell them why they need you. You’ve told them The What. That can outlined in the form of asking them questions or listing symptoms.

Now it’s going to be Why. Why should I choose you over somebody else? Then we go into The Where. The Where is a little bit tricky, because online programs are different than if you have a brick and mortar. I can just come to your location. The Where from the online program is going to be more of where are they in their mindset and where can you meet them. That’s a little bit abstract. When I’m saying it, you’re probably like, “Huh?”

That’s something that you really need to dig into, and I would suggest working with somebody like Stephanie or a strategist. This is not a design thing and I want to clarify that this this is a copywriting strategy. Let me give you an example of where they are. They’ve tried tons of things. They’re emotionally exhausted. That’s where they are.

Let’s just say you’re doing a brochure type site. Your Where is more, where can you come to? Where we provide our services. I want to be clear that we are specifically talking about your online program right now. We are not talking about a product or the where the person is. Because realistically you’re never going to have a chance to talk with them and hear their story.

The reason that I use this Where in this context is because if they would come into your office, they can tell you their story. In this Where you have to find where they are and tell them, give them where they are. Up above you gave them the reasons, why they visit, what The What is, why, and then where they are.

Then how, how do they fix it? How do they work with you? So there’s multiple components of The How part. You need to tell them how they can fix their issues, how they can work with you. As we’re asking these questions, there’s so many layers to them, but if you can start with some of these high levels of The Who, What, Why, Where, and How, I think it would get you set in the right direction.

I just want to clarify that again. If you are listening and you are working on an online program, we treat online program websites a lot different than we treat physical products or stores. Because in essence, your homepage can also act as your sales page.

Stephanie: What if you have a practice? Which many people will. If you’re a health practitioner or a clinician, you have a practice and you see people one to one. I don’t say the majority, but a lot of people are going to still offer some one to one services.

Again, I don’t know if they’re remote, so they’re either online or they have a clinic in-person. But what have you offer more than just an online program or you have some other kinds of services? How would that change how we look at this experience?

Shannon: Okay, good question. In that case, you are not asking for somebody to join your program. I handle those type of websites a little bit differently. This is where it gets tricky because what’s the purpose of your website? When you have a practice, what’s the call to action? You want to get them on the phone and book an appointment? You don’t need to do all the hard work on the home page.

I think it’s interesting if you’re offering both to a client. I think you can pull back on all of those and going really deep into the where they are, and instead you can say your call to action is going to be, “Hey, let’s talk about where you are. Let’s meet in person.” This is hard because we’re doing such a general example.

Stephanie: To just speak to that for a minute. This goes a little deeper into your business strategy as well. What I would talk to my clients about in this situation before we go to Shannon, before we get to the website is “Okay, what do we want people to do? Do we want them to take the online program prior to one to one work with you? Is that something that we want everyone to take this class? They get a little bit of information and then maybe only 25% of people actually need to do one to one work with you.”

So the online program in your practice can fit in a lot of different places. A lot of people are like, “I’m going to create an online program,” but you actually have to think about where the program fits into your business as a whole and to your practice as a whole.

That will help us go into the website and create the strategy around that. As an example, you may want to have your program first and then people do one to one with you. Or you may have an option where some people do a program and some people do one to one. Some of my clients will actually build a membership program or a course or a program after the fact, where they do the one to one and then it goes behind.

Some people may integrate the online education program along with one to one. There’s all these different ways that you can bring in an online program and knowing how your online program fits into your clinic, into your practice, into your business as a whole first and understanding that strategy, then we go to the website. I just think a lot of people do a website and they’re like, “Let’s do a website.” But they haven’t thought through the whole thing.

Getting Clear on Your Call to Action

 

Shannon: Those are all really good points Stephanie, that you just made. I think the biggest key is when you’re looking at your website and you’re building this Who, What, Why, Where, How, what is your call to action? And what are you trying to accomplish on the website? And all those should be built around it. There’s not one straight answer of how this works because it depends on what your strategy is.

While we were talking there, I’m realizing like, “Hey, this could be very different. And the person listening to this might not be exactly the person that I’m talking about today, but this is a good example of why your strategy needs to be flushed out before you begin starting working on your website.”

Once you have all that flushed out, this is all your pre-work. We haven’t gotten to, “Okay, now I need to lay it out on the website.” That’s the pre-work that you need to do. Once you have all that pre-work done, you can take that and cover everything that you had on that list like, how did they get in touch with me? How did they get started? What are the things that they need to hear? Why they should buy for me? Then you incorporate those big call to actions that correlate with that information that you’ve put together.

I think the biggest takeaway for anybody who’s listening right now is that you have to really spend the time up front to make your website work and then you can take that to a designer or developer and they can implement it. Designer and developers don’t know your business like you know your business. And honestly, you could spend an hour or two doing this piece of it, and totally change the course of your website development.

Stephanie: Yeah. And can I ask a question here? I love how we ended up in this area of what actions do we want people to take. We’ve learned this framework and yes, the framework that Shannon’s talking about with The Who, What, Where, How, that can apply differently to you if you are just running a program or if you’re doing one to one and a program. If you have multiple offers, it has to be worked out for your exact business.

But I love how we ended up in this call to action and with the whole point of this Shannon, it’s what do we want people to do? When get to our website, we’re trying to connect with them, we’re trying to get them to feel comfortable, we’re like, “This is for you, you’re in the right place.” But then what do we want them to do?

I am not a website strategist or run a company like Shannon, but damn, have I seen a lot of messy home pages or even not just the homepage, just when you land on a page, what do you call it where you only see that certain section of the homepage, what fills up your screen? Is there a term for that?

Shannon: Above the fold.

Stephanie: Above the fold. When you get to a website and whatever you see is what you see, is above the fold. Gosh, have I seen a lot of messy above the folds with so many call to actions and different things and buttons and the opt in and the join the program.

Can we provide any advice for people as they think through what their call to action is when they’re planning their website or their home page or their nav or whatever, however you want to speak to that? Because I feel like that’s challenging for people. They think they need to have an opt in. They think they need to have this and all these things.

Shannon: Okay. Two things. These are my two big things that I like every person to know. When somebody comes to the website, they only do what you tell them to do. If we tell them 36 times to opt in, even if they’re ready to buy, they’re going to opt in. Always remember they only do what you tell them to do. You got to make it very clear what it is they should do.

When you go to a website and it has 20 different buttons, they don’t know where to go next. You’re telling them visually and with the amount of buttons it gets their eyes to go certain spots. You’re telling them, “Hey, click here.” Have you ever seen the website that had like a big button circled bright red with arrows?

Stephanie: Yeah, and it looks super spammy, but it actually works.

Shannon: It actually works because that’s all we do, is we tell people what we want them to do. Make sure you’re telling them the right action that you want them to take. If you want them to contact you via a contact form, then make sure you’re linking to it.

If you don’t want them to fill out your contact form, don’t put a call to action button for that on the site with, “Still have questions? Contact us.” And then complain that you get contact form responses and not the other actions opt ins that you want. Don’t just put stuff on your website because you see it on every other website. Remember, go back to answering those questions. Everything that you do on your website should answer some of those questions.

My second thing is that if you give them too many options, they will take none. I’m a big analogy person. We’re gonna talk restaurants again. You ever go into a diner and you open the menu and there’s literally 150 choices?

Two things happen. One, you’re overwhelmed and you don’t know what to choose. And second, you’re like, “Can any of these things be really that good if they make 150 items? They can not really be that great.” You get overwhelmed and you’re like, “Okay, I’ll just have fries because I know that I’ll eat fries.”

Versus when you go into an high end steakhouse, you have a one page menu with maybe four options and a couple sides? You can choose because you have a fish, a steak, whatever, chicken and you can choose. Think of your website as a menu. Do you want to be the 150 item menu or do you want to be the 20 item menu where everybody’s going to know that you do these things and they do it really well?

Stephanie: I’m getting serious flash backs because Shannon and I have been friends for a while now and we’ve worked together on a lot of websites. Sometimes I get flashbacks of when I’ve been slapped. No, she doesn’t physically slap me because she lives in a different country. However, I just have flashbacks right now Shannon, because you know, I’m like, “Shannon, let’s do this.” And she’s “Okay, let’s wait a second. Is that what you want people to do? What do you want people to do?”

Shannon asks a lot of really good questions and I feel like everyone you ever work with moving forward should ask really good questions because it helps you and it’s so challenging, it hurts your brain a little bit. But I am having flashbacks of wanting to do opt ins. Everyone on the internet is telling me that I need a free guide or an opt in or all these things.

If you’re someone out there who’s a little overwhelmed with email marketing, or a little overwhelmed with creating all these opt ins and stuff, just take a step back and take a deep breath and know that your journey, like we’ve been saying for your client, isn’t the same as everybody else’s.

I just love this idea and this concept as a take home point of what do you want people to do. If you ask them to do too much, they’re not going to do anything. Shannon and I, we’ve literally had this conversation 14 times when you’re like, “Remember that conversation we had two weeks ago? We’re doing too many things on one page.”

I appreciate us not ending but being in this section right now. The other thing I wanted to say Shannon was about what you’re explaining to us in regards to the journey of someone and the information they need and then the call to action. We spoke to the home page a little bit with The Who, What, Where.

What Your Other Website Pages Are For

 

Stephanie: A conversation that you and I had recently about TheLeveragedPractice.com website about what each page is for. The purpose of your website as a whole, but I love the idea of that you were teaching me recently about the purpose of each page. When someone goes to this page, why are they here? What are they doing? Are we applying that? Who, What, Where, Why, How to all of our pages?

Or is it just this idea that you and I were talking about where it’s maybe the call to action is different on different pages because of that content … Can you speak to that a little bit? Because that blew my mind when we had that conversation.

Shannon: Yes. I don’t think that applies to every page because remember, we have 60 seconds. We want them to take action on our homepage so we have to answer all the pertinent questions so that they take that action. I don’t think every page has the same purpose in the fact that we want to get all that information on there.

I want to clarify something because I don’t want you to think that your website has to be a mile long, your homepage. You could have a very short homepage and answer all those questions. And answer them in a aesthetically pleasing way.

If you don’t want to have a wall scroll website, you don’t have to. I’m not talking about that those are the sections that you need on your homepage. They are actually just questions that you need to ask yourself when you’re crafting and make sure the answers are on there.

But to get to the secondary pages, I think a lot of us put up the about page and we think our bio has to go there. Then we put up this services page and then we make a long list of all the things that we do. We get caught into this thing of what do we do with our individual pages?

I’m actually working with a practitioner right now who is a pain management specialist. One of the things that she had was all of her products that she uses in her practice on a Wednesday. I’m like, “Why are these here? Are you selling me?” And she’s like, “No.” People were going literally to some of the product pages where she really needed to be talking about the pain, the conditions that she treats like neck pain, back pain. Instead of what she uses to treat them.

Nine times out of 10, your client doesn’t know what they need. They only know why they need it. They only know what their problem is and why they need it. They want to feel better. They don’t know that this particular medication or this particular product is going to solve their problem. A better way to do that for example, would be to have a back pain page, and then on the back pain page, list back braces.

Because they’re gonna identify with back pain, they’re not going to identify with back braces. It’s really important that you think about these secondary pages in a way like, what is your client coming to you with and how are you providing an answer to a question that they have? I don’t think that we should just Willy Nilly, put pages up just because we saw that somebody else has it.

Think about those secondary pages. I do want to say that there are no right or wrong number of pages to a website unless it’s one. One page websites if you’re trying to actually make sales. it’s a no.

Stephanie: This has been really, really helpful. Shannon and I often talk about this for an hour and then we book another call for another hour and it’s just so interesting. With me being a coach, a consultant to people who are creating online programs and building practices, it has been so interesting to be able to support them and learn some of these mistakes or some of these things that they need help with.

I know in working with Shannon, she’s worked with a lot of my clients and has exposure now to so many of these things that we’re working on. I think it’s been so useful to have this conversation together and I hope that you’ve really enjoyed this episode.

How to Determine The Health Of Your Website

 

Stephanie: Shannon, are there a couple of takeaways we can give people as they move away from this podcast episode and say, “Okay, what do I do with what I have?” What can we give them if they have something already up on the internet? Where do they start now? What should they go in and ask themselves or reflect on?

Shannon: Okay. Remember when we started, I said, I’m going to give you a little exercise that you can use with anybody that you know to help you determine the health of your website, if your message is translating. All you have to do is simply this. Send an email, or jot this down and give it to a friend. Do not give it to family members who know your business.

Give it to somebody who doesn’t know your business and ask them these questions. What do I do? Who do I serve? How do they work with me? What kind of things do I offer them? And what am I trying to accomplish on my website? Ask some people that just don’t really know your business those questions and you’ll be surprised with the answers.

Stephanie: That’s so good. I’m so excited. Are you all excited to do this? Go out there and do it. I think you should do it today. Okay. Maybe you have a busy day, you should definitely do it tomorrow if you don’t do it today. And that will just help you, as Shannon said, check the health of your website and have a starting place of maybe what you’re doing well, what’s coming across to people and maybe what needs to be worked on.

You can find Shannon at purplefinchstudios.com. She has worked on several of my websites and I love the new website that you have for Purple Finch studios because it has a lot of examples. Not for you to hack, but for you to look at and be inspired by and say, “Okay, I don’t need a giant homepage.” Maybe it sounded like that for a second there that we needed all the information. You can check out Shannon and her team, the work that they do there.

You can find me at TheLeveragedPractice.com which is an beautiful website. It is pretty, but it’s also very functional and strategic as well. If I can be of any service as you plan out your online program, as you are strategic about where that fits into your practice, you know I’m right here. Shannon, thank you so much for being here and sharing some of your wisdom with us today.

Shannon: Thanks for having me Stephanie.

Stephanie: You’re welcome. All right. I hope you enjoyed this episode. You can find me on Instagram @TheLeveragedPractice, and you can find me on my website. I’d love to know if this was helpful, what you’re going to do with this episode and if there’s anything else that you want to hear about strategy, website, any of this kind of stuff, I would just love to know, and that’s what this podcast is for, helping you to do that. I’ll meet you back here next time.

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