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i'll let you on a little secret here it doesn't take three to six months to build or to redesign a website [Music] welcome to the we r slam show where you'll learn marketing agency insights best practices and ideas to help your business grow my name is tyler kelly i'm the co-founder and chief strategist here at slam agency now this show is for marketing professionals people that are strategizing putting together plans to market their companies it's for small business owners who might not necessarily have somebody in charge of marketing yet so you're the one that's going out and doing everything on the sales and marketing side and that's okay and today's show is an important one and it's important because you might be at that point in your business or with your brand that you're like okay it's time for us to go ahead and and redo our website to get a new website you know to launch this new project we need a website and what i want to reveal today is the five questions that you absolutely have to know the answers to before you hire a web designer before you hire a branding firm that does web design or development these are the things that you want to go into the conversation knowing so that you make the absolute best decision for your business and these things are important they're important because your website is the lifeblood of your business i mean people go to your website to verify your credibility to to confirm that you are who you say you are they go there to see if you're a trustworthy business and are you a business that you they can count on i mean these are the things that people are looking for you know as a matter of fact 70 of the purchase decision is already made up before this person the prospect your potential customer ever picks up the phone and calls you before they ever step foot in your store i mean the decision is already made 70 can you believe that it's true it's true because what's happening is people are going online first they're making up their minds online they're doing their research their homework online they're discovering you online by the time they come into your store pick up the phone and schedule an appointment their minds already made up and so this changes the way that that you have to interact with people in this digital world in this post-covered world this this is how business is is being done and you need to be aware of that so when it comes to this question there are certain things that you really need to know before you sign on the dotted line before you make that decision and these are the things that i'm going to share with you in this show today so let's jump right in the first thing i want you to do the first secret if you will anytime you're speaking with a web developer a web designer a web agency somebody that is getting ready to give you a contract or a price or bid on doing your website the first thing i want you to do and really this is something that you should do before you even pick up the phone and call them or if they're a friend before you commit to the meeting before you commit to the option of potentially working with them go to their website go to their website and take a look at their website and ask yourself how does this website make me feel is this a good website and you be the judge of that because you're the one that's going to be putting your money forward in this type of relationship so ask yourself is what i see here representative of the type of work that i need done that's the first question it's super important it's the first question that you should be asking yourself click on the buttons click on the links see if there's typos in the copy see if there are things that aren't lining up go to your phone and see what it looks like on your phone and see you know does it respond well on a mobile device these are the things that you should be doing first and foremost before number one before you set a meeting with somebody and number two definitely before you sign on the bottom line okay you need to understand that they've put in the work to make their website shine if their website doesn't shine if it's not updated if there are misspellings or typos or incorrect grammar then these are the or they're just not mobile responses i mean the list goes on and on and on of what makes a good website if it's slow if it takes time to load if you search for the business's name and they don't pop up in google search these are the types of things that might make you think well if their brand name isn't popping up in google search then perhaps there's a problem with the way they've optimized their website and maybe there would be a problem with the way they'd optimize yours and so what you're doing is you is you you are becoming a detective and you're kind of clicking through and you're looking and you're doing a thorough review you're not just going to go to their homepage pick up the phone and call them you're going to do a thorough review you're going to click on every button you're going to look and see how does this website make me feel is it speaking to me as a potential customer does it relate to me and obviously does everything work are there any broken links does the form work is there a phone number that i can call or is it just like contact form only is there an email all of these types of things that make a good business website are the things that you should be looking for first and foremost when you begin to call on web designers so that's number one number two and this is assuming that you've already begun discussions and now you're talking about price number two is what are you paying for this is a question that i want you to get used to asking what am i paying for what are the things that are going to be included in this contract you know a lot of times when we think about redesigning a website rebuilding a website what we think about are just those things that we can see on the surface what the website looks like the colors the fonts if it's not mobile responsive right now maybe it's mobile responsive hopefully after the redesign but these are just surface things right there's so much more that goes into a good website this includes the way that the story is is is laid out on the page it includes the way that it's optimized these are things that you can't necessarily see it's how fast does the website load is it discoverable in search engines like google is it optimized for that these are the types of things that a good website has and they're not always things that you see on the surface it's not always the design it's not always the look and feel it might be taking you know big chunks of content and making them more scannable scannable content is super important on a website because people don't read text they scan text so these are all the types of things that make a good website and so these are the things that you need to know and the questions that you need to ask what am i paying for what are you paying for are you paying for you know seo optimization are you paying for you know content rewriting restructuring are you paying for you know reorganization of the nuts and bolts of the website mobile friendliness mobile responsiveness are you paying for these things or are you just paying for you know a refresh are you just paying for something that is you know new colors new fonts new typography and that's it i mean what are you paying for and the reason why this is important is because you get what you pay for i mean i know this is obvious but it bears repeating for instance website builders website builders and when i say website builder i'm really referring to like the squarespaces the wixes the weebly's of the world website builders are framed and positioned as something that is super easy right but what i know as an agency owner is that these might be easy to get something up and running but they're not necessarily the types of places that we want to invest in the long term meaning if i'm building a a simple site for a campaign or a project and i want that to get out there fast and i don't want you know a whole lot of customization when it comes to the layout or you know the design i just want something that is simple is proven effective is responsive and i can just put the information in and you know get that out there and this campaign you know it's not going to be a forever thing it's this website is going to have a start date and at some point the campaign is going to end it's going to have an end date a square space of weebly of wix perfect for this okay what i don't want to use these sites for is a situation where okay this is my forever site this is my site where you know i'm going to blog i'm going to build a list and i and the reason why i don't want to use these sites for that is because i know you might not know this but i know this as an agency owner that at some point you're going to want something that has more power than these sites are able to provide if your business is growing and you're evolving as a business and you're going to want something more powerful than a squarespace or a weebly and when that time comes it's going to be very difficult if not nearly impossible to switch from the squarespace to you know a real website it's at least at this point with the technology that there that there is and the way that you know importing and exporting from a squarespace spot site to like a wordpress or a hubspot site the way that works it's very difficult and the money that you saved from going through to like a square space or a weebly in the beginning the money that you saved then you're definitely going to pay later you're going to pay later because it's going to take a lot of time a lot of effort and if you hire somebody it's going to take a lot more money to get that site from that platform to a more sustainable platform and so i always say you know do wordpress first you know sometimes when you're just starting out the cost of a squarespace seems super appealing but the thing is wordpress the cost isn't that much more and so i would all we always direct our clients to wordpress wordpress first and you know potentially hubspot website after that but wordpress first stay away from the squarespaces that we believe the wixes unless for whatever reason you've already built a store on one of those sites and you're already bringing in income and and the system and the machine works if you're not in that position or like i said if you're if if it's just like a a temporary site that you just want to launch a campaign launch a project get it out there quickly knowing that at some point that site's going to go away if it's not one of those two use cases then then by all and you're looking at something like for your business like a website that's gonna represent you and it's gonna be around for a while you definitely wanna go with like a wordpress or a hubspot website these are things that you might not be thinking about right now and that's okay but trust me you're going to save a lot of time a lot of money a lot of energy later on if you just go straight to wordpress and just you know scratch the idea of doing a square space or a weebly or something like that okay number three question that you need to absolutely know the answer to when you're getting ready to hire web design firm or a web developer or something like that number three do they understand sales and marketing does this web development company understand sales and marketing the reason why is because your website is where the sales and the marketing happens this is where people go to learn about you it's where they go to confirm that you are who you say you are and more than just like this pretty website that kind of just sits there like a brochure a website has to function a website has to generate leads it has to capture email addresses it has to help your potential buyers your prospects go from one stage in the buyer's cycle to the next it has to kind of nurture them and bring them along and as part of that there's there's some things you got to think about like how does email marketing integrate how does the crm integrate you know how does our advertising our pay-per-click how do these things kind of fit in and work throughout the site and then how is our messaging our story how is that laid out in a way that is compelling in a way that captivates motivates and inspires people to action like how is this happening if your developer doesn't understand sales and marketing then what i would suggest is that you have somebody on the team that does meaning a marketing director either in-house or you know a consultant that you hire or that you're working kind of like a general contractor in that okay i you know i've got this developer somebody that is good at coding and then i've got to have a designer somebody that's good at like making the visual come to life and be impactful that i have a copywriter somebody that can put the words on the page in a way that are going to drive demand and then i have you know an an seo person somebody that can optimize the content the copywriters put together somebody that can optimize that content make sure that it's search engine friendly and you know then i have an analytics person somebody that can you know install the analytics make sure that everything's going the way that it needs to go and possibly even a crm person somebody that can make sure that when people land on the site that their information is being collected and then it's being you know put into the crm and those people are through you know sales intelligence like hubspot sales are you know being nurtured and are being nurtured in a way that will not only drive demand but drive sales in the future and so these are all the things that you have to think about and all the things that a good marketing team will think about and if you're just going to go out and hire a developer then by all means make sure you get all these other roles on the team as well or look for a company or a firm that provides each of the roles that i just mentioned as part of that team that's going to be building out that website okay the number four question that you absolutely need to know and this is a big one what is the timeline you should absolutely know how long it's going to take to complete your project okay i'll let you in a little secret a lot of times at least pre-covered the contracts that were put out there by web development firms or web agencies or branding firms would say three to six months on a website and i'll let you know a little secret here it doesn't take three to six months to build or to redesign a website it never has maybe i guess maybe in the late 90s early 2000s it probably took three to six months when we were doing html from scratch pre wordpress but here's the thing it does not take three to six months to build a website what may take three to six months is to get you into the rotation and so what i want you to understand when you think about timeline is how much time are they actually spending on the website itself and how much time is spent with you just standing in line waiting for your turn with the web development team okay because like i said it doesn't take three to six months generally it takes four to eight weeks and i'm being generous because i mean that's working time for somebody to build your website from the ground up and if it's a redesign if you're just coming into doing a refresh then it could potentially take four to six weeks okay and so this is the amount of time that people would actually be working on your site any other time in in that three to six months or in that quote that you have that's over eight weeks is most likely spent with meetings with some back and forth and honestly with just making just getting you in line you're just in line you're waiting for your turn and so what's the timeline ask the question and figure out you know where when are we going to start and what can i see you know web development project happens online and so there's always something that you can see every step of the way i've i've never been a fan slam has never been a fan of the big reveal meaning that you know we're not going to start a project work it through to completion and then show it to the client we like to work with the client step by step and what this means is that you if you were our client would be involved every step of the way at every point in that development process in that copywriting process in that design process you're gonna see progress okay it's not gonna be like okay four weeks later boom here's your website you're gonna see the progression you're gonna see the evolution you're gonna see somebody working on your site and this is important when it comes to timeline because you know that people are working on your site the last thing i want you to be aware of i want you to know is does the agency does the firm just the developer that you are going to select do they offer a turnkey solution this is an important question because websites are more than what you see i mean there's domain names so somebody has to if this is your first website somebody has to purchase the domain i would suggest that somebody be you never let your agency purchase the domain for you make sure that you purchase it for yourself the reason why is it's very difficult to transfer domains and you never want to get in a situation where you don't own your intellectual property the other thing that's important is hosting do they provide hosting is this something that you can count on you know computer websites are hosted or websites sit on computers that are connected to the internet okay those computers are called host and so somebody has to pay for hosting i mean this isn't free is that included as part of your web development design package that you're going to be signing on the dotted line for or is that something that is going to you know once your website goes live is going to be additional a lot of times at least here at slam what we do is we provide the first six months of hosting for free and then after that we'll bill you for hosting some people aren't comfortable with with uh you know giving the hosting to their agency so what they do is they go out and buy their own hosting and that's completely okay too what else might be included well you know you might not have a website without photography and so you know photography of your people of your location of your your you know projects that's important perhaps video is something that you want on your website are these things included are there are there additional costs to these things and is the person that you're hiring capable of doing all of these things or are there going to be additional expenses later on down the line because they have to hire people to do these things copywriting seo all of the above i mentioned the rules earlier are these things included are they extra is it all happening in-house under one roof or are you gonna be at the end of the day working with a lot of people these are the types of questions that you need to be asking so my five absolute must know number one is you just gotta go look at the firm's site is it something that shows that they're actually good at what they do or you know have they been dropping the ball when it comes to their website number two what are you paying for what's included what's additional what are you gonna have to bring in later on number three does the firm does the person that you're hiring understand sales and marketing which in my opinion is something that needs to be understood first before the site comes along because if you build the site then you try to add sales and marketing to it later you might have to rebuild the site number four what is the timeline and number five do they offer a turnkey solution these are the questions that i believe you should be asking you know over the years we here at slam have had an opportunity to build a lot of sites redesign a lot of sites and work with other agencies and other contractors who are building and redesigning sites we've seen the good we've seen the bad we've had our own struggles and we've done some really amazing things that have helped our clients get to that next level so if you're getting ready to start a web design project and you're not quite sure where to start or if you think you might need to make some improvements to your website but you're not quite sure and you just want an honest answer and honest like does this need work or where can this be improved reach out to us we'd be more than happy to take a look at your website and give you our honest feedback on next steps and where you need to go and where you really should be for your specific situation you can find us at slamagency.com of course if you're there just click on the free consultation button and if you're listening to us on a podcast network and you've enjoyed this episode do me a favor subscribe rate and review those things are super important five stars if you believe this was a five star episode and if you're watching this on social media leave me a comment in the comments section i love reading those and responding to those and i appreciate it when you take the time to leave a comment so thank you for tuning in i will see you next week thanks for watching if you like what you saw subscribe and hit that bell you'll be the first to be notified when new content goes live after that you can watch more videos from slam agency we've picked something we think you'll love