All right, welcome everyone, welcome prosper leader members to another wonderful office
hours.
This has been some just added value to let you connect, bless you with the people that
I work with that bring incredible talents into my life and allow you to glean and benefit
from that as well.
So this is your opportunity to listen to just glean information, but it's also your opportunity
to meet with them and ask them questions.
And so today I'm here with I like to call her master web designer, brilliant web designer,
my web designer, Cindy Jacks.
And so her motto is no useless websites.
So I love that no useless websites.
So I'm going to open by letting Cindy share a couple thoughts on that.
And then I'm going to open to your questions.
And I think we'll have a great time.
These are short, they're just like 30 minutes, but they're powerful and give you a jumpstart.
So welcome, Cindy.
And tell us, okay, tell us about what makes a website useless and what makes it useful.
Talk about that.
Okay, Brenda, thank you so much for having me.
I'm just delighted to be here and to share what has been a painful journey of learning
the hard way about what works and what doesn't work.
So it's actually ban useless websites, ban useless websites.
And my financial advisor says I'm the destroyer of useless websites, which I find funny and
yet really, really true.
My background is as a WordPress developer, that just seems to be something that captured
my attention.
And for whatever reason, I just decided to teach myself like HTML code and CSS and then
started learning WordPress.
And then just got consumed by staring six, seven, eight hours a day at code, because
I don't know why.
I just love it.
I just like a puzzle.
But I built these Maserati masterpieces, WordPress, just like everything was right.
Code, elegant code and powerful functionality.
And I mean, they're, they're just gorgeous, powerful, awesome WordPress websites.
And they sat there like Maserati, going nowhere, doing nothing, no wheels parked in the garage.
And so I spent a lot of money and a lot of time learning from some of the best marketing
and sales experts about what, what really is involved in selling a website.
What does it require?
Because it's obviously not just how well it's built.
That makes a website useful, makes it powerful, makes it awesome.
And so that's why I'm on this mission is actually to undo what I did before and really just
share my passion.
Because the assumption is, if you have something online, you have a website, then you're done.
And really, most of them become just an online brochure.
They don't can, they don't, I'll tell you what a useful website does.
And then you can, by comparison, know what isn't.
But or actually, I'll just tell you what, if you want to have a useless website, this
is what you need to do.
You need to make it about you.
So when they land on it, all you talk about is how awesome you are, because my, I call
them web, like internet narcissists, right?
So it doesn't matter how altruistic a person is, when they are searching on the website,
on the, on the internet, they only care about what they're looking for.
They don't care about you.
They don't care about anything except the questions or the need that are prompting them
and the interests to show up there.
They may be learning how to go serve a charity with all their heart and soul, but while they're
on there, they care about them.
Can you answer their questions?
And so if you, people get mistaken by that, they think, they think, I need to prove to
you that I'm awesome, and therefore you'll trust me.
But if they don't, yeah, they don't know that.
If you haven't shown that you understand their pains, their fears, their desires.
hires, their needs.
If you haven't proven that, I don't care that you went
to Harvard and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Absolutely.
And it's the old W-I-F-M, the station
that everyone's tuned into, right?
What's in it for me?
And everybody is asking the same questions
from a marketing standpoint, right?
They're asking, will this help me?
Can this person help me with my specific problem,
with my desire?
Can they help me?
Will it work?
Will what they're offering work for me?
Because it may work for other people,
but will it work for me?
And that's the underlying question.
Wait a minute.
Do I know, like, and trust this person?
There is need to be the rapport built in there.
So do I like what I'm seeing?
But the biggest question is, can they
help me get from what I like to call pain island to pleasure
island, right?
Can they get me from my pain or problem?
Will what they're offering get me from my pain or problem
or my desire to my desired outcome?
So I love that you're mindful of both the marketing
and the technology of that, because so many web designers
just look at making it pretty.
They've got an eye for color.
And even picking the right color is a science.
But they're looking at more just aesthetics,
but you're looking way beyond having it be a beautiful site.
I learned a website is not a work of art.
It is a tool to get people to do what you want them to do,
so that you can bring them into your orbit and serve them.
That's all it is.
It's a tool.
So summarize real quick.
What are some of the key points that need to be?
And then I want to open it up for questions.
But give me some key points of how
would you know if a website is useful or useless?
OK.
It is useless if it is about you,
if it speaks to too many people, because you can't answer.
Oh, trying to just reach everybody.
Yes, absolutely.
If it is floating in never never land,
because people forget that Google search engines are
computers.
They think in zeros and ones.
That's it.
They don't know what you're really asking them when you say,
oh, how do I help my son who's on drugs?
They have no compassion.
They have nothing.
They have no meaning.
So you need to go on the back end of each page, each image,
each everything to optimize it.
You hear SEO everywhere, but people don't understand it.
So your website can't float in the middle of nowhere.
Obviously, if it breaks and it doesn't work right,
if it's slow, if it takes longer than three seconds to load,
that makes it useless.
Why is it that I can't think?
Because, you know, it's like being on the camera
as much as you love.
You're a geek and camera's not your thing,
but you're doing a great job.
Yeah.
So more will come to you and maybe we'll come back to it.
I know that there was so many things
that you had to fix on my website.
So often, someone nice offers to set up
or you find something cheap to set up your site
and they're not considering the back end
or the longevity of it.
And I know you have.
I've told that story before, how you
had to untangle my website, which was, I know,
the biggest challenge dating back.
So OK, we'll come back to more.
So it needs to both be beautiful, functional,
and you're bringing in the marketing aspect
as well so that it needs to capture.
It needs to capture the information of the person who
shows up.
Otherwise, it's pointless.
It's useless.
So it has to have a call to action.
After you've established, this is who I can serve you.
This is how I can serve you.
Well, now I got to get you to give me your information.
So something on the website that prompts them,
an ethical bribe, something that they will want enough
because you already know who they are,
what the problems are, to create something.
And then once you get their email and first name,
apparently first and last decreases scientifically
the number of people who will actually sign up.
But at least first name and email and then trigger.
It has to trigger an email sequence or other activity
that allows you to keep in touch with people
because they rarely buy on day one.
I think it needs like five or six or seven contacts
before they even can trust you.
Keep going.
18 to 12, keep going.
If you want to learn about that, of course,
I teach that in the sales conversations
and the follow-up.
The fortune is in the follow-up.
So yeah, email is.
super important from a marketing standpoint.
And the way I, you know, as I'm doing business coaching,
the way I like to see is,
I like to see a headline that is a big promise
that is directly related to a result.
Not airy-fairy, not I can take you to the next level,
which means absolutely nothing or let me up-level you
or all the things that people say,
but specifically solves a specific problem.
And then I like the subheading to be even clear
who it's for, you know, I'm making up something,
this is not a good one, but you know,
eradicate menopause symptoms for women struggling
with sleep and mood balance or whatever.
But in looking at it, it's like, oh, okay,
this is for about menopause, this is for women,
this is gonna help with sleep, I'm interested.
Like you gotta catch them with the benefit right away.
And from that, what I like, as far as what you're saying,
as far as capture the information,
I like taking it straight from that.
So like five foods that make menopause symptoms worse,
or, you know, 10 exercises that relieve menopause stress,
like it goes straight from what you're promising
and you start giving them the value right then and there.
And so they're motivated to, you know, put in their email
and it's all connected, it's all relevant.
Like what I see people do is like a vague headline
and then they, it's something totally unrelated,
like, you know, why yoga helps you enjoy life
or something like that.
Something that's not even related
because they have to have that info.
That's one of the other seven is it needs to make them feel.
So I actually suggest, you know, you're gonna capture them
either identifying their pain, right, or a promise.
Either way, the point is to stop them in their tracks.
Like this person actually knows how I'm feeling.
And then the next one, so those two would be a tag team.
So promise or pain, and then right below it is,
so if you do your promise, like you're saying,
right below it would be, here's your pain,
here's your pain, here's your pain.
This is what I do for it, and then down.
So you're just encouraging them to keep scrolling.
That's the goal, is to get them to scroll.
To stay right as long as possible, yeah?
Yeah, and they will.
If you know who you're talking about, they will too.
Yeah. They will.
Yeah. Because you can use
very specific language and images
that appeal right to them.
There's something, because you know
that I do business breakthrough intensives,
and so I'm getting them ready,
especially to send them to you
to do a great job with the website.
One of the things people don't think about,
first they have to identify their niche,
but the second thing they don't often notice
is sometimes there's two niches at the same time
that they're serving, and they cannot speak
to both of them at the same time.
So let me give you an example.
I had a young gal that was a health coach
and wanted to do health coaching corporately
in corporations.
And so she's approaching the corporation.
Within the corporation were traveling sales people.
So the traveling sales people
would be who she would work with.
So you'd need a buy-in
that they would really want to service,
but the one paying her is the corporation.
I had her make two separate niches.
There was Joe traveling sales, and there was Corpy.
And you have to always keep clear in your head
who you're talking to.
And so in that case, Cindy,
would they kind of have like two tabs?
I think we've done this a few of our clients
where, you know, are you a church?
Are you a, you know, a setbook or whatever.
Yep.
And it takes them to two separate.
That is one of my biggest challenges
is getting people to narrow their niche.
Yeah.
Because they want to help.
Everybody.
Right?
Yeah.
I want to help women versus I want to help
pregnant 14-year-olds who live in Detroit
with abusive husbands who, you know,
then you can really help.
You can give resources.
You can give locations and tools
and versus I help people overcome their challenges.
Yeah, exactly.
I get when people always tell me, oh yeah,
I know my niche and okay, what's your niche?
Women over 50.
I'm like, oh, that's wonderful.
That's half the world.
We're going to really get somewhere with that.
Right?
Yeah.
That's not a niche.
That's half the population.
Are they married, divorced, children, not children?
Happy, not happy, right?
Yeah.
Are they working in C-suite?
Are they homeschooling?
Are they in network marketing, working from home?
Are they, like you said, a pregnant teenager?
I mean, it's like, whoa.
So, all right.
I want to open up and.
if enough time.
And so I know we have a question
from one of our listeners, Renee.
Renee, could you share your question for Cindy?
Well, now after hearing Cindy, I have a lot of questions.
Good, I love it.
I really appreciate everything that you were talking about.
And my question is,
in today's world where we're just inundated
with information from every source, right?
How do we get really concise and consistent in our,
I think you talked about just narrowing the niche
as part of that, right, in getting concise.
But, you know, the whole SEO issue is, you know,
voodoo to me, like,
and so you take someone like me,
they really just doesn't even have that background.
And how would you advise us to get more intelligent
and allow, you know, help our website
to become more functional and use more?
I get an okay amount of hits on my website
and the average person stays about a minute point,
about a minute and a half.
But what's interesting to me is I don't get inquiries
through my website.
So as you were talking, I was looking and making some notes
as to why that may be the case.
But long-winded question, but help me, Cindy.
That's really.
A couple of things.
One, at the beginning, you said
you helped them cradle to grave.
So your languaging needs to hit the pain point
of someone in particular, right?
So you would need really to, and you spoke of that.
I don't remember exactly what it was,
but you already have narrowed it to an underserved sector.
But there's sort of the problem with the problem,
what I consider a problem is so many of these things
people can't fix on their own
because they're so technical, right?
And so what we do is let me draw the line
about what can happen for you that you can do on your end.
And then what needs to be done by someone who's a developer
who can go into the backend of WordPress.
First of all, you have to be built on wordpress.org,
not wordpress.com in order to just optimize
all of the functionality and possibility.
And you just got to trust me on that.
But so the on-page SEO is gonna,
the first thing we do is do keyword research.
So someone who serves teenagers
who are pregnant in Detroit,
those keywords are very specific.
So that when I go, my husband, my boyfriend is beating me
and I don't know what to do with my kid, right?
That's what I type in.
Well, enough of those keywords are that,
that Google does to answer that question and you come up.
So if your keywords are not specific,
there are 2 million active websites right now,
2 million, and then something like 100 million,
there's an incredible amount
that's just sitting there unused.
So the computer is so smart,
it's literally going through 2 million like that
all across the world.
But it doesn't know that you're the answer
to what that person's asking for unless you hold it.
And there's several ways you tell it.
You go on, it's called metadata.
Metadata is the way that you communicate
with search engines.
You can add metadata for every single page,
every single blog post you write, images, you add alt tags.
And then also if you name them well,
then they may show up in Google searches
and then they click on it and go to you.
So there's, and then there's technical SEO,
which is to make sure there's no broken links,
that it loads fast, it's performance optimization.
All of these things that make someone land on your site
and know where to go.
If there's two niches,
I need to know immediately where I am going, right?
So here it is, click that way, click this way.
And if we don't know what keywords you have
because it's too broad,
then you're gonna show up under medical
or I mean, talk about a field
where in order to find a voice,
it would be really, really important
to narrow, narrow, narrow, narrow,
and then find out where those people exist and serve them.
Because that's the other thing,
you need to offer free value on your website
to get them to stay.
So we offer, I used to think just write a blog.
Right? I used to do the useless websites. I own it. I own it. Now, don't even bother to write a word
unless it's got keywords, unless it's like optimized for SEO content. That is the only
way it's ever going to show up when Google does its search. There are probably an extraordinary
number of wonderful blog articles out there that no one is ever going to read because unless
the person has directed it to them. If you've already created your following, but the idea is
to get organic traffic. The idea is to get people you've never met. And so an SEO optimized blog
content helps to do that. Every time you send one out in the world, it's one more chance that you
will be found if it's done properly. So bringing people into your orbit, into your website
configuration with a keyword optimized blog is a really great way to do it.
Once they're on the page, you need to have the page set up. You submit a site map to Google.
There's so much technical stuff. You really honestly need a developer to do it because if
you're poking around in there, you can do so much damage. Thank you, Brenda.
The company was born from Brenda's website because I just thought if you do it right from the start,
there's no problem. And I never want to fix another broken WordPress website in my whole life.
So I don't inherit other people's websites. I will help make them a little bit better,
but I build mine right from the bottom exactly. So I know exactly how they work.
Those are the big ones. And then you need to be triggering on the other side. And again,
what are you going to write in an email if you don't know exactly who you're talking to?
The mom who's a teenage 14-year-old on drugs versus the mom who's a 28-year-old person is on
drugs. Do they have schizophrenia? Do they have, right? Who? Because the words you use
are going to and the value you provide needs to serve someone specific.
Cindy, I always liked, and I haven't done blog posts for a while because I've got so many other
things that I do. But when I did, I really liked Yoast SEO as a tool because that takes a novice.
It's Y-O-S-T, right? Y-O-A-S-T. Y-O-A-S-T.
Y-O-A-S-T. Yeah. Having that as a plugin was wonderful too. As I wrote a blog,
it would guide me on all of these things and it would remind me to put the alt text into the
photos and it would remind me all the aspects. And it's really improved since I've done it.
So that's one way for a novice. And then of course, Cindy experienced her team,
takes it to a whole new levels with sitemaps and all of that kind of technical stuff.
But it is a good start. It is. It is as long as you are doing it.
And there are free ways to do the keyword research, but you need to know what those
keywords are to put them into the plugin, right? Yeah. And it really makes sure that
before you even write, you're putting the keyword and then it's guiding you how many
times you mentioned the keyword. And it gives you a nice, for me, visual green light, yellow
light, red light, if you haven't done something. So that was always helpful from a novice standpoint
to help someone to do that. Okay. I know that we're backing up and I try to keep the time.
Renee, is there anything else really pressing you want to ask to make sure? Well, we got
Cindy on the line and then I know you guys can connect afterwards as well.
Cindy's website. So I always have two computers going. But are you doing web-based app design
in your company? I have never done it myself, but the team, one of the teams that I work with
builds apps, but you're stepping out of my, I love knowing exactly what's happening.
And I wouldn't know exactly what's happening. I wouldn't build an app myself, but we could give
it to them and have them review it or get advice or something. They've built a couple of different
apps. Okay. I've just come to the point where it's like, you can't know everything. So partner
with experts and know where your line is. And so apps are on the other side of my line, but I do
know people who work on them. And I, I candidly, I've, I was heavily involved with the WordPress
website and, and the plugins were just bogging it down. I think,
I think I had a similar mess that Brenda had, right? Too many plugins. Yeah.
And then it was a slug, right?
It was just slugs trying to move through.
It was just literally awful.
So I still have that site, but it's not active where people can see it.
And I honestly, you know, just hired a gal to just put up a simple little website for me.
She did it on Wix.
It's like, you know, it's kind of an exhausted business card really in some ways, right?
Yeah. And then got involved in this app development.
So so the fact is, at some point I have to bring the app development back into my website, right?
You're spending that much money investing in an app and that much time and effort.
You should have a powerhouse of a WordPress site.
I mean, powerhouse to make it, to automate, to bring people in, to do all the stuff that a
website can, should, will, can't, you know, do.
And I'm releasing the app in 22 cities.
So so it does, as you were talking about it, it's got to be I know exactly who my avatar
client is, but it has to speak their language in their community.
Right. And that's where it starts getting complicated.
So, you know, Wix website is not going to satisfy that.
Well, it's perfect for what it does.
It's perfect for what it does.
It just is that what you need.
And most people growing their business, it's not what they need, but they don't even know
what it is that they need.
Right.
Definitely communicate.
I'm happy to tell you my app is not about or my website is not about me at all.
As soon as you said that, I looked it up.
I'm like, how much of me is in my website?
I'm happy to say there's a teeny little about.
And after you've got them, they do want to know your story.
Yeah, they don't want to.
They do want to.
When? When?
Yeah. OK, Cindy, how can someone reach you if they and you do some some reviews of
current sites, right?
You give them feedback on your site.
Tell what you know what the how they could their next step if they wanted to work with
you or learn more about what you do.
I think the best thing to do would just be to email me at Cindy at TNK solutions dot
com. Very soon, like this week, my website will be back up.
And I just did the domain ban useless websites dot com because I thought that would be
pretty easy to remember.
So just go ahead and email me at Cindy at TNK solutions dot com.
And I do an audit.
I can do a free audit that just does some down and dirty looking at what's the back
end of your site doing, what are some obvious.
And then we can go a deeper audit where we really dig in and see what's going on.
So feel free to contact me for that.
Cindy at TNK solutions dot com.
Yeah. Yeah. All right.
You can see it behind her there.
She's in her beautiful office.
All right. Blessings.
Thank you for joining us.
And those of you that are watching it afterwards on the Prosper Leader membership,
thanks for being a member and being there.
And we'll see you next time.
Cindy, thank you so much for being here and sharing the information.
Appreciate it. Thank you for having me.
Blessings. Goodbye.
Bye.