Welcome to our newest course offering: “Starting and Running a Successful Website Agency Without Code”!

Are you interested in starting your own website agency but feel intimidated by the thought of needing to know how to code? Fear not, because this course is here to help.

View the course Outline HERE

In this comprehensive program, you’ll learn everything you need to know to start and run a successful website agency – no coding skills required. We’ll start by introducing you to WordPress, the world’s most popular content management system. You’ll learn how to use WordPress to create professional-looking websites, using a suite of plugins to add advanced features like eCommerce, membership sites, and forms. We’ll also cover advanced design tips to help you create consistent and beautiful designs that stand out from the competition.

But we don’t just stop at the technical aspects of building websites. We’ll also delve into the business side of running a website agency, covering topics like contracts, briefs, and how to find clients. We’ll provide you with all the tools and resources you need to succeed, including websites and other online resources that can help you grow your business.

By the end of this course, you’ll have the knowledge and skills you need to create professional-looking websites, a solid foundation for starting and running a successful website agency, and most importantly, all the knowledge required to attract clients and start earning money from building websites.

Some of the specific topics we’ll cover in this course include:

• Developing a strong foundation of knowledge about WordPress and its resources, recommended plugins, and hosting options
• Using Beaver Builder to design and develop websites, including essential skills, intermediate skills and strategies, and responsive editing
• Advanced topics like creating an online store with WooCommerce, setting up a membership area, and customising your website’s design with Beaver Themer
• Key steps for launching your website, including registering a domain, understanding DNS, using SSL certificates, and setting up Cloudflare
• The business side of running a web design agency, including developing a website questionnaire, running road mapping sessions, creating website briefs, finding new clients, setting your rates, and engaging overseas staff

We’re confident that by the end of this course, you’ll have the skills and knowledge you need to start and run your own successful website agency. So don’t wait – sign up now and take the first step towards achieving your goals.

I spend a lot of time in google analytics and am talking to new business owners daily. And a lot of them have a similar problem – a heap of traffic, but low (or no) ability to generate leads from website.

There are thousands of articles on solving the Traffic Problem.
There are also thousands of articles working on the Conversion Problem.

But I think this is the only article I know of that generate leads from website and outlines some additional tactics for a high converting landing page including 3rd party tools, automations and some cool extras to solve the conversion problem once and for all.

This stack of conversion ideas is not ideal for all industries. I think you will get great success however if you apply these ideas to any of the following industries.

• Marketers
• Lawyers
• Advertising Professionals
• Architects
• Accountants
• Advisers
• Consultants
• Coaches
  …Basically, any organisation or profession that offers customised, knowledge-based services to clients.

The Traffic Problem

The traffic problem focuses on the start of the customer journey. If you have low visitor numbers you have a traffic problem.

But don’t worry… it is easy to solve the traffic problem…

It’s no secret that we live in an age when you can buy traffic to your site. As of 2020, the internet was considered the most important medium for advertisers, accounting for 51 percent of total media ad spend in 2020.

Sure… SEO is important and you can do things to generate leads from website organically… but what most professional service business owners are looking for is a ‘tap’ they can turn on to get new clients. I recommend putting a strategy into place that can drive organic traffic over time, but if you can buy traffic and then easily convert them – then you have the rare and coveted client tap to generate leads from website

The Conversion Problem

Now, if you’ve got traffic hitting your site… congratulations! Now we just need to convert them. I’m assuming you are sending them to a landing page where hopefully they are seeing an enticing offer, heaps of social proof and an obvious next step to generate leads from website.

If so, are you getting conversions? Is your lead funnel filling up?

If not, and you have a low number of visitors going into your sales funnel, then you have a conversion problem.

Fixing the Traffic and Conversion Problems

Both problems can be tricky:

I regularly talk to business owners who say they have tried buying traffic and generate leads from website and they’ve found it a waste of time. As of 2021, 62% of small businesses feel like their paid Ads are not working.

There’s quite a few reasons you might feel your paid ads were a waste of time.. but most often it’s one of these reasons:

• Your ads are not targeted properly and are not getting in front of the right people
• Your messaging or offer is not attractive enough to the right people.
• Your landing page is not converting into a visitor into a lead.

If you are getting the right people to a landing page and you need help with boosting your conversion rate… then this article is for you!

Don’t be ashamed if your landing page isn’t working… you might be surprised to learn across industries the averagelanding page conversion rateis only 2.35%. That’s the average!! If you are lucky enough to be average you’ll need to send 50 leads over to your page to get a bite. Depending on the cost per click you might already have blown your margins.

The top 10% of landing pages are converting at 11.45% or higher! Which is where you want to get to. (…even higher in my opinion)

So I would like to share with you 10 remarkable ideas to generate leads from website that are outside of the box! These are things we tweak for each of our professional builds we do and how we successfully build a lead ‘tap’ for our clients.

If you have questions about any of these feel free to leave a comment below!

1. Niched Landing Pages

Focusing on a small part of a broader market has it’s benefits. It increases conversions, generate leads from website, and opens the door to affiliate marketing programs, sponsored posts, etc.

However, most professional service business I know are not keen to go down this road and are scared of choosing an unprofitable niche.

There is nothing stopping you from creating Niched Landing pages though!!

This means you can target a niche with your ads and send them to a landing page that is speaking their language, using relatable imagery and solving their problems directly!

With websites we build we often set these up as a template so the clients can quickly create a new landing page without breaking the design.

Here’s an example of two niched landing pages.

You can view the landing pages here:

• This landing page targeted at Yoga Studios
• This landing page targeted at Performers

Notice that the language, imagery and problems they solve are different – but the layout is the same. Setting it up this way means you can easily create as many niched landing pages as you need to.

There’s lots of websites implementing this strategy. One company that is doing this really well is a scheduling software called Setmore. They have chosen to create niched pages for different Industries just like us, but more often I see niched pages towards locations.

If you do nothing else, do this! Ensure the landing page that your potential clients are going to are talking directly to them and solving their problems.

2. ‘Smart’ Lead Magnets

Forget what you think you know about lead magnets. Because here’s where I think most business websites miss the point.

They assume if they put a subscribe to our mailing list they’ll get a flood of new leads… which is rarely the case. Mind you, products, influencers or performers with a following and regular exposure are an exception to this rule… but if you’re an accountant… forget it.

I urge you to think bigger than a 3 page ebook giveaway. It needs to offer huge value and wow your landing page visitors.

You need to do something to get your visitors email, or phone, generate leads from website or better yet get them to book in a meeting! It needs to be clever. It needs to give your visitors something they want. It often gives them more information to help build trust that your business is able to help them.

Our lead magnet is a form that calculates the price of a website built by us. You can see our lead magnet here. This works for us because almost all businesses who need a website are asking the question – how much?

If you are brainstorming ideas for a successful lead magnet for your business, here’s a few ideas.

• Free Trials
• Free Consultations
• Checklists
• Resource Lists
• Calculators (like ours)
• Videos
• eBooks (or real book for that matter!)
• Case Studies
• Tickets to an Event
• Online Course or part thereof
• Access to ‘member online’ resources

The success of any of the other really depends on how much your visitors want it so make sure you tick the following boxes!

• It’s usually better if the customer can get it right away
• It should solve a problem or answer a burning question
• It should validate your authority in an area or speak to your USP
• It should have a high value or perceived high value

3. A clever followup that gets noticed!

It’s important you stand out from the crowd.

I recently gave away my email address to a website in return to see their pricing. What I received back was a beautifully designed Pricing PDF from the company – but here’s what caught my attention. The PDF had a cover page with my Name on it! It said “Dave, Here’s a little about us…”

Here’s how they generate leads from website. (I know because I do it for clients all the time)

1. The form captures my name and email address.
2. An image is created for the cover page using my Name from Step 1.
3. The PDF cover page is merged with their latest pricing document PDF.
4. The combined file was saved as ‘Pricing-Plans-for-Dave” and stored temporarily on a server.
5. The email was composed and sent to me with the attached file.

Clever right!! They certainly stood out.

I was also very impressed when the founder of a huge Australian Marketing Firm I followed sent me a photo of himself holding a piece of paper which read ‘Hi Dave’. You can bet your bottom dollar I read every word in that email!

I have since taken his idea and built further upon it also with more automations. Here’s the image I send:

Today, it is easier than ever to allow 3rd party tools to talk to each other and automate things to really make an impression on your target audience. The goal is to get noticed and encourage a next interaction with you.

It is possible to automate the generation of documents, PDFs, Audio and Video files, Web pages, poems, and more. Just set and forget!

…you just need to think outside the box.

4. Integrations with the tools you use most.

Following on from point 3, the information from your new lead should be captured in the tools you use most. After all your hard work getting the leads, you need to ensure you don’t lost your generate leads from website.

In the old days it was costly and time consuming to get your systems talking to each other.

Now however, there are services you can subscribe to which can integrate the web applications you use. Such services include Zapier, Zigiwave, LeadsBridge and Automate to name a few.

Here’s a few things you might want to automate when a lead comes in:

• Add the lead to your phone contacts. That way if they call their name shows up on your phone and you can greet them warmly.
• You can add them to a CRM and create a new lead on your sales board.
• You can add them to a mailing list.
• You can trigger a sequence of followup emails
• You can set a reminder in your calendar to follow up in x days time.
• Announce the lead on Slack or Messenger
• You can automatically add all the data collected into a spreadsheet so you can make data-driven tweaks later on

…and the list goes on.

If you are wondering ‘can my tool be integrated?’… perhaps you can look here. To date, Zapier alone allows for over 3,000 integrations!

5. Make it easy to book a meeting

As a general rule of thumb, on every webpage, of every website I build I have two Call to Actions.

The First CTA is for users who are still investigating your services, are not yet convinced and need more nurturing. These CTAs change on every page and generally send visitors all around your website so a lead can eventually get to the information they are looking for.

The Primary CTA is for those users ready to take action! This is the most important CTA and it needs to be super easy! For most professional services the ideal situation is a lead will just book time with them.

I love it when someone interested in building a killer website just books a time with me – and it goes straight into our calendars! It means I can spend less time getting distracted with spontaneous phone calls and instead plan my time effectively.

It should be said, that getting a lead to book time with you is one of the hardest things to get them to do! But, if you’re landing pages are clean, full of great content and your service is genuine then your calendar will fill up.

Pro Tip: If you are creating great content for your target market make sure you have an a ‘book a call’ button that is always visible!

(shameless plug)

Also, for those giving away free consultations, then be sure you give away heaps of value in the first meeting and then you’ll see their referrals booking meetings the same way.

If you want to generate leads from website meetings without the back and forward of trying to find a time on email, then here’s a few scheduling tools to look at:

• Calendly
• Acuity Scheduling
• 10to8

Different tools suit different businesses, but personally, I use Calendly and love it. (I’m not affiliated with them btw). With all my meetings I can set email and SMS reminders for me AND my meeting attendees which has saved a few meetings int he past when people forgot they booked a meeting.

Also, with these tools you can take payments for meetings if you wish and even have meetings rotate between different members of your staff. Perfect if you grow.

They are all easy to embed onto a website and make you look much more professional and of course approachable.

6. Artificially Intelligent ChatBot

We’ve all used chatbots, but now you can setup chatbots with huge libraries of pre-programmed language.

If done correctly, your chatbot could be one of your best selling tools.

Here’s a snippet of conversion to show you how smart they can now be and how they can help you generate leads from website.

The pre-programmed comment library is a beautiful touch to any chatbot and really adds another dimension to your brand.

If you want to have a simple chatbot without all the ‘chat’ there are some very simple solutions and ways to get this happening quickly.

There’s some really remarkable chatbots out there that have accompanying phone apps so you can receive chats wherever you are. They can scale for a team. You can set times when you want them to be inactive, and you can hide them on the site when you are not around.

Despite statistics proving that they generate leads from website and increase conversions, site owners are often wary to put them onto their sites.

The objection is normally due to them thinking they need to be sitting in front of the computer 24/7 waiting for the ‘chatbot to ring’ – but that is just not the case. iF done effectively they can reliable generate leads from website.

7. SMTP integration for email deliverability

If you get an email address from your lead magnet, then you better not waste it!

Email clients (particularly gmail) are very good and filtering incoming emails. This is why I don’t recommend you use an autoresponder or mailing list sequence on this first email.

Most people who set up an email to be triggered from mailchimp or other popular mail clients usually see their email get filtered off into the Updates, Social or Promotions folder. This means that most of the time the lead doesn’t get your first email! … doesn’t that suck!

However, for the deliverability of the coveted first email, did you know you can set up an SMTP integration with your email program? An SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) integration allows you to send emails through your email service.

So for example, if you use GMAIL, that first email will be sent by your gmail account and the lead will receive the email in their inbox – it’ll even have your signature on it. If the lead replies it’ll return straight back to you.

8. Consistency in Design and a clear UX

Good design in your website is an extremely important factor and you should not take it lightly.

Judgements on a company’s credibility are 75% based on the company’s website design.
/Source: Web Credibility Research from Stanford/

A study found that, first impressions are 94% design-related.
/Source: The Effect of Aesthetics on Web Credibility, Farah Alsudani & Matthew Casey/

38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout is unattractive
/Source: Adobe/

But let’s get clear about what ‘good’ design is… right? Because it is subjective after all…

There are lot’s of factors that go into good website design but from a purely measurably surface level, it is at least these things:

• Typography is limited to 2 fonts (max 3) and the headings, subheading and body font is always the same. That means, not just the type of font, but the size, the letter spacing, the line height and the weight.
• Your prominent colours are always exactly the same values.
• If you choose round edges in your design, ensure the border radius is always the same!
• If you use drop shadows, ensure they are always the same colour, distance, blur and spread.
• Be careful about mixing photos with illustrations, with videos… there’s a time and place.
• Ensure the padding and margins around elements is consistent and the design has room to breathe while guiding the eye towards key elements

..and the list goes on.

Get a clean professional design and you can expect to generate leads from website and increase your conversions with no increase in traffic.

9. Analytics and heat mapping

At a very minimum your website should be integrated with Google Analytics.

This is a free tool that allows you to measure a whole stack of website analytics. Here’s just 10 (out of hundreds of things) you can measure:

1. Audience Location
2. Audience Engagement
3. Mobile Traffic Behavior
4. Traffic Sources
5. Social Media Traffic
6. Site Content Trends
7. Page Bounce Rates
8. Site Search Behavior
9. Events
10. Funnel Visualisation

The trick is to sit back and not tweak your site for a period of time until you have enough data to make an informed decision. Used correctly (over years) you’ll be able to make some changes which will dramatically increase conversions.

With the recent release of GA5 (Google Analytics 5) it’s even easier to see the right data and be excited about tweaking your pages.

As your landing Pages are often longer form pages with a lot of information I also like to use a heat mapping tool. Heat maps show you where people clicked, moved or scrolled on your page. You can use Heat maps to figure out how to make the pages convert higher, or even compare different versions of pages. You can even record videos of visitor interactions!

If you want to generate leads from website then installing analytics and a heat mapping tool is free, fast and a total no-brainer.

In Conclusion…

I wrote this article for you because I felt everyone was talking about the standard stuff.. Speed, SEO, Have an enticing offer, etc. No one was giving outside of the box suggestions, which is SO required in 2021!

I hope this has given you some inspiration and if you have anything to add, I beg you comment below. I am a big believer in sharing information and collective knowledge. I’m excited to hear your thoughts and even more excited to hear about the results after implementing anything outlined here!

If you have a project you would like to discuss with me I am always keen to share my knowledge. Feel free to book a meeting.

For most brands out there, getting an amazing and engaging website design is their utmost priority. Little did they know that having a fast website loading time can help them attract their target audience more than maintaining a good looking website appearance.

Now, the question is ‘Do you want to improve the loading time of your website?’.

If yes, in 5 easy and surprising ways, you can improve your website loading time and ensure that you keep your target audience surfing and reading your website’s pages. And eventually, turn them into buying customers.
Before that, let us first know the importance of having a fast loading time.

Importance of Fast Loading Time

The advantage of this digital world is that it moves so fast. From the new clothing styles to the latest news, or the latest iPhone launch— everyone races up to be the first to see it. It’s no wonder that most users expect this same type of speed when they’re looking through your website. 

With that said, it’s no doubt that users have no patience for websites having poor loading speeds or inadequate performance. So you need to make sure that you make their browsing time worthwhile. 

Today, let’s get into details on how you can optimize your website to improve its loading time.

How to Improve Website Loading Speed

Most fast performing websites loads in 2 seconds or less. That first crucial seconds in your websites is the time that you gain a potential audience, or you lose one. 

Here are a few things you should optimize on your website.

Reduce HTTP requests

HTTP is short for hypertext transfer protocol. HTTP transfers data from one point of a network to another.

If you have a lot of elements on the page like scripts, images, and stylesheets, there will be an HTTP request for each one. These requests can take almost half of your webpage’s load time. The more you have, the more it slows down the speed. 

So what you needed to do is to reduce these requests and eliminate any unnecessary files. Here are what you can do to reduce your HTTP requests:

• Combine CSS/JS files rather than forcing your browser to retrieve multiple CSS or Javascript files to load.
• Use queries to load things that are only needed.
• Lessen the number of images you use.

Enable Caching

When a user browses your web pages, the elements they visit hare stored on a hard drive called cache. When the same user finds its way back again, the browser will then load the page using the stored data in your cache. 

Enabling caching is a good option because enabling cache minimizes the HTTP requests sent to your site. It can also be useful to those sites who are using visual elements to improve their website. 

More importantly, this maintains the same user to enjoy a fast loading speed every time they visit your site.

Compress Images & Optimize Files

We understand how much you want your users to enjoy alluring images on your website. However, are you optimizing these images the right way?

Images currently take up 60% of the average bytes loaded per page. That is why you need t to be sure that your images are no larger than they need to be. They must also follow the right file format. You can also remove any photos of assets you believe you don’t need.

Above all, you can keep these tips in mind too:

• Keep all your images below 150KB, nothing above 1920px in width, at an average/medium/72dpi quality level.
• PNG should is used for images that you need a transparent background behind, such as a circular image of a person or Facebook’s ‘F’ logo.
• JPG is best for photographs or anything where fine detail is less important.

Implement Asynchronous Loading

There are two ways of loading CSS and Javascript files: 

• Synchronously where loading takes one at a time, and
• Asynchronously where loading takes scripts at the same time. 

Synchronous is excellent, however, it might slow down your loading time if one file has an issue or if it takes a long time for it to load successfully. We want to stress on the latter part. 

Asynchronously loading strategy will help you speed your website pages, and this is because the standard loading process would interrupt the HTML parsing while scripts are executing, thus results in increasing your page’s load time.

Select the Best Website Builder

When it comes to website builder, people tend to choose the less pricey ones not knowing that they give out the most unpromising results. You need to understand that this may be a simple tip, but this can affect your online presence as a whole.

Choosing your website builder must be long-term. They must help benefit you and your business in the long run. A website builder that will compliment your business growth and will help you become one of the successful website’s online.

At Stacked Site, we optimise every aspect from hosting hardware, server configuration, caching services, and site setup syndicated through Cloudflare CDN, making sure that your website can cope with the heavy competition online. 

Final Thoughts on Improving Your Webpage Loading Time

Improving your website’s loading time has become one of the crucial aspects of running an online presence. You don’t just need a creative and engaging look but as well as a fast loading speed that will get your target audience stay on the loop.

Are you ready to improve your website’s loading time? Talk to one of our EXPERTs and get more useful advice for free!

Let’s admit it. Way before Google or any other search engine or social media platform utilised real customer reviews and ratings as a part of a business’s marketing strategy, we’ve long been using this for restaurant and movie bookings – and today in the world of web design and development, the concept is exactly the same. The truth of the matter is that people love to read reviews before selecting one particular service provider for themselves.

Say we’re on the hunt for the best pet care centre in town. Then this list of pet care centres in Brisbane comes up…

It’s almost automatic that a searcher would click on the most “trusted” and “reliable” place where a pet owner would feel at ease, knowing that their beloved pets are in good hands.

Looking at the given example, the first one on the list would be the most appealing. Not only does it show how many customers have tried their services. It also shows a high rating of 4.9 stars out of 5. And just below that is a short description of what they do best.

With the latest developments in Stacked Site’s features and functionalities – we want you to take advantage of the Business Reviews Module introduced in the ultimate addons for Beaver Builder.

What does this module do?

• It fetches reviews from Google and Yelp and allows you to embed this information on your website.
• It enables a rating schema type that keeps search engines informed about it and therefore boosts the chances of displaying ratings in the rich snippet as seen in the example above.

What are the benefits of using this module?

• It provides more content for search engines to scan and it increases the chances of product or services page to rank for long-tail keywords.
• This module gives you an additional piece of content to differentiate your branches set in different locations or even from another business providing similar services.
• It gives the page an opportunity to rank for words that users often use apart from the marketing phrases you use on your website.
• It allows for real customer reviews to empower your brand through user-generated content that is more trusted than manufacturer descriptions.

Now that you’re ready to get this module up and running, let us go over the steps and see how easy it is to set it on your Stacked Site website.

How to Add Google and Yelp Business Reviews to Your Stacked Site

1. Configure the Google API and Yelp API key form the UABB settings.
2. For Google reviews – get the Google Place ID and for Yelp reviews – get the Yelp Business ID. Add it to the module.
3. Enable the schema support and choose a schema style 

That’s it! You’re good to go! 

This easy setup also allows the Business Reviews Module to align with your design and colour theme. Here are a few points that show how this module help…

Display content with sliders

Many of us like moving content on a website. The Business Reviews Module allows displaying reviews in a carousel. It also has an option for grid layout with a column number setting.

Filter out negative reviews

During the starting phase of your business, you might get some negative or low-rated reviews, which is totally fine because negative reviews can contribute to a positive impression. But in case you don’t want to show them choose Minimum Rating and skip them from displaying.

Display starred rating to shine in different colours

The widget provides total control on the star rating style. Set a nice colour and size to make them more attractive.

Display Reviewer Information to make the review look more genuine.

Along with a review text, display reviewer name, and profile photo. So that users can know that the review is real. 

How to get Business Reviews Module for Beaver Builder

All you have to do is update Ultimate Addons for Beaver Builder to the latest version and enjoy using this module.

In this rapidly evolving digital world, many small business owners and marketers have managed to establish their brands’ online presence through various social media platforms and websites like blogs, online portals, and eCommerce online shops. But with the constant updates in their social content guidelines and the algorithms set by the widely-used social platforms and search engine giants – is there any room left at all for your growth without spending too much on paid ads? As a business owner or a marketing professional, you may have already thought about this a lot.

Does your business need an official website or does your brand’s social media presence seem like it’s enough? Now, that’s actually a great question that people ask us more often than you’d imagine – “official website vs social media profile“, what does your business really need?

For businesses, social media has made it easy to communicate their brand’s message to the right people at the right time. With an effective strategy, they could even get their brand to stick out to their audience well enough for them to be interested. There are many other benefits to be had from using social media – if done the right way.

Creating a branded page on social media is quick and easy. The best part of it is that it’s all for free. All you need after setting up your page is an effective strategy to get noticed by the people and get them to interact with you online. Now, why would you want to build a website that will require you to spend money on a domain name, hosting, web designers fees, SEO, updates and maintenance, when you could just set-up a social media profile for your business?

The Benefits of Social Media for Small Businesses

Faster and Easier Communication

Something businesses have strived to achieve for a long time – real-time interaction. Customers can contact a customer service representative faster and easier. Businesses can also receive reviews, respond to product or service enquiries, and attend to customers’ grievances in real-time. Depending on the industry and the issue, challenges may still arise, but the line of communication that once was challenging to establish is no longer nearly as difficult to do so.

Branding

The impression a brand gives off and the reputation it may have established can be greatly enhanced and showcased through your branded page and the posts you make. Social media allows businesses to publish content that matters to their target audience. This helps a lot in training their customers to keep their brand at the top of their mind whenever those important buying decisions need to happen.

As a social media marketer, I create content that aims to show off a brand culture and brand personality in order to stand out among the rest for the traits that make our brand different. I use it to tell our brand’s story and let others understand what we do. I use it to personify our brand and socialise with our audience not just as a branded page but as a real human being. That is the real power of social media, and I think it’s the biggest impact social media has on most brands.

Networking, Partnerships and Community Growth

Establishing quality relationships is now a lot easier with the streamlined communication we get from social media, and building relationships with key influencers ears a lot of value for your brand.

User-Generated Content

User-generated content is the best form of free advertising you could use on your prefered social platforms. The larger the audience, the more potential the content has to really impact a brand and its messaging.

Most brands will have people post their content with specific hashtags. So, the brand isn’t just receiving the content; the content is actually being posted throughout social networks.

Reach Potential Customers

Maintaining a brand’s respected reputation comes with an opportunity to impress potential customers through your content and more importantly, through how you handle even the most unrelated customer interactions.

People often turn to social media and online review sites to get a good idea of what they can expect from you. Just like marketers, consumers are using social media as a tool to help them make better purchases and decisions in general.

On average, people take into account 10 reviews of a local business before making a purchasing decision. This gives potential customers the chance to see that businesses truly care about their customers even after they’ve made the sale.

Competitor Monitoring

Social media channels allow us to keep our finger on the pulse of not just other marketing tactics and practices, but also with the tactics used by direct competitors. The truth is we can learn a lot from our competition.

Your competitors aim to do the same things as you – establish and protect their own brand’s reputation and ultimately sell their products and services. Monitoring the competitors’ activities and creating ways for your business to do better while keeping the audience entertained and informed play a major role in reaching your business goals.

Things You Need To Know Before Building Your Official Website

Owning an official website built for your business is very different from the points made above, especially when it comes to cost. When done professionally, a website is going to cost more than setting up free social media pages, but the differences don’t end there. Here are some things you’ll need to do and understand before building a website for your business:

Purchase Your Domain and Website Hosting Service

In a nutshell, your domain is your “address”, while your website hosting service provides the server space or the “land” where your website will live.

To get your website started, you have to purchase your domain name and pay for website hosting. Both of these have recurring costs that could vary depending on the duration that you select for your registration contract. The average cost for a domain will typically be anywhere from AU$ 14.00 to 17.00 if you’re going for a brand-new domain.

Some extensions like .biz, .xyz, or .info, along with hundreds of others will end up being incredibly cheap because internet users aren’t quite used to those extensions and they don’t pack the same kind of punch. Some extensions will lead to even higher registration fees, like .co, .ai, .io and others.

Website Builder, Development and Technical Experts

In reality, most small business owners cannot double as web designers. If you have the budget, you will most likely end up hiring a web designer to design, build, and occasionally update your website for you. But for the younger and smaller businesses, the costs are just too high to shoulder. The good news is that there is now a more cost-effective option to get your website up and running while still maintaining that much needed professional appeal.

Stacked Site is said to be the hybrid of a web builder and WordPress. It provides the ease of a builder and the flexibility and scalability of a WordPress site. Subscriptions are offered on monthly and yearly plans at AU$29 and AU$290 respectively – which is good for those who are on a tight budget.

You can expect that you’ll be provided with various online resources backed by streamlined support to ensure that you will be able to use their platform accordingly. The platform has an online community where Stacked Site Experts and Mentors can be contacted for support.

A collection of video tutorial to help new users to get started is available on their YouTube channel.

The team has also created a dedicated online course and an updated Knowledge Base to help you learn all the available features and functions of their web builder.

With all the available premium plugins and features and your new skills as a newbie website designer, you’ll never have to worry about hiring an expert for your website’s future updates.

Why Your Business Needs a Website

Gain Full Control of Your Online Presence

As a business owner, it’s important to get full control of your online presence, and the only way to do that is by setting up your shop in your very own space.

If you set up your business solely on one or more social platforms, your growth is ultimately at the mercy of those platforms. They can make changes any time and all that you can do is go with the new flow, even if it impacts your business. If that platform gets acquired and changed or shut down, you may no longer be able to reach your customers and you may even lose money in the process.

Some might say “Facebook will never shut down”, or “Instagram will always be around“. Who knows, right? Remember what happened to the social networking giants Friendster and Multiply? Both companies suspended their services due to the evolving landscape in the challenging industry and lack of engagement by the online community.

Just a little while ago when many branded pages were recently hurt due to an update that Facebook implemented that flipped its newsfeed algorithm, decreasing the organic reach of branded pages.

The same thing could happen on another social platform at any time. YouTube could start charging us to store videos on their servers. Twitter could decide to become a premium platform where businesses have to pay for every tweet. In either of these circumstances, if you don’t pay then you no longer get to reach your customers.

Your Website is the Hub of Your Online Presence – Your Social Media Page is a Marketing Tool

If you have your own website, it serves as the most accessible hub for your business. In this case, you have full control of your situation.

This is how you should treat social media – as a marketing platform to drive traffic back to your website. Use that traffic to grow your email and customer lists so you can communicate with them any time on your own terms.

At the end of the day, it’s much smarter to invest in something you own than to build on land that doesn’t belong to you. Some day the rules are going to change and it could have a major impact on your business if you aren’t in control. This is why we highly recommend that you invest in a website now and then use social media to drive traffic to your website and grow your business online the right way.

Recently we proudly re-designed and launched Black Jacket Suiting – blackjacketsuiting.com.au

Black Jacket Suiting is a Multi-Award Winning Men’s Suits Shop down in Bulimba. I’ve been there many times now, but I remember the first time. Man, it was classy, prestigious, and somehow welcoming all in one. They had an incredible site…. But, they also had this.

It was built in Squarespace, and like most sites, they look great at the time but this one aged quickly.

Ryan (the founder) has an incredible vision and mission for his business and his website was not able to get him there. When he first approached us here were some of the important things their company was looking for:

• A new clean and unique style guide that portrays Trust, Sophistication, Confidence, Luxury and Friendliness.
• Consistent styling across all pages
• A full-featured blog
• eCommerce capabilities with credit card integrations
• Highly customized product and order pages – where users can book an appointment directly from the product page
• Users need to be able to create an account and save their measurements in the website’s database so every time they order a suit, they won’t have to remeasure.
• Galleries with Instagram integrations
• Unique Measurement forms so users can easily get their own measurements and submit them.
• 6 specific landing pages for each product offering.
• Full booking integration with some appointments being pay in advance

In addition to these requirements, we were working with an SEO firm who had already spent years optimising their website for traffic. This firm had been doing a creative job and traffic was hitting their site! The problem was the site wasn’t converting. One of our challenges was to build a website that would not only convert well, but we needed to avoid any negative impact on existing search engine rankings.

This was a wonderful project to be involved in and everyone involved was ecstatic with the results.  Here are some images from the project. If you want to see the new site you can visit it here: blackjacketsuiting.com.au

Whether you’re looking to discover who your readers are, trying to keep on top of your clients’ posting schedules or just looking for a little grammar assistance, there’s a WordPress plugin that can help.

Let’s look at the top 5 plugins that every copywriter should be aware of to:

• leave the technical stuff to the techies while improving SEO,
• understand your website traffic audience,
• never miss a content deadline,
• let a real-time digital tutor point out embarrassing grammar faux pas, and
• protect your work.

Whatever you need, WordPress offers versatile plugins that will help propel your content to Page 1.

Yoast — Get On-site SEO Done Right

When it comes to improving readability and SEO score, Yoast does the dirty work for you. The plugin is updated every two weeks to stay current with the latest Google algorithm.

It evaluates keywords, links, images, ease of reading, voice and much more. Since it displays the words or phrases you use most frequently, you can be confident that your keywords are on target. You can even request suggestions for links to other pages.

Yoast compensates for less-than-savvy tech skills to get content in top shape for search engines.

Google Analytics for WP — See How Your Site Is Performing

Google Analytics takes the mystery out of who visits your website, how they get there, what they like and don’t like, and how long they engage. You’ll be privy to the geographical location of your readers. You’ll know which browsers and resolutions they’re using. This plugin will put all that great information directly into the WordPress dashboard for the site administrators to stay on top of the their sites’ statistics.

Google Analytics breaks down traffic by referral sources such as Yahoo and Bing. It even tracks individual page views and bounce rates. That means you can customise content for the most loyal followers.

It’s all good information that will help you make better decisions as you write.

This is a great tool for running A/B split tests on various pieces of content. When you compare the results, you’ll see how the differences affect user behavior.

UpdraftPlus — Back Up Your Hard Work

Is your profound, extensive body of work protected?

Hackers destroy data. Hosting services lose it. Web hosts also reserve the right to terminate accounts and delete it. These may be unlikely scenarios, but they’re terrifying nonetheless.

The only way to protect your hard work is to regularly back up your site. UpdraftPlus is your best friend.

You can schedule automatic backups or do them on command. You can store backups in the cloud or download them to your computer. The basic version even includes a restoration feature, and it’s free.

[bctt tweet=”Here is a shortlist of 5 must use plugins for copywriters building in WordPress.” username=”stackedsite”]

If you have a little more to spend, consider springing for UpdraftPlus Premium. You’ll get database search-and-replace, encrypted backups, multisite support and more.

Editorial Calendar — Never Miss a Scheduled Post

Manage drafts. See at a glance when posts will publish. Use the drag-and-drop function to edit or rearrange the schedule. This plugin is especially useful for keeping short- and long-term deadlines in the forefront of your mind.

Use it in combination with Google Analytics or other tools to see which slots were most successful for certain posts. Rein in random content to make it timelier and more intentional with Editorial Calendar.

Grammarly — Integrate It With WP for Real-time Help

This is not technically a WP plugin, but the Chrome extension integrates seamlessly with the WP editor.

While you compose content, Grammarly keeps a discreet running total of the issues it detects in your writing. Click on the number in the bottom right corner to see spelling errors, suggested corrections, grammar examples and other feedback. The plugin also flags plagiarism.

You can expect a love-hate relationship with Grammarly, but your writing will improve.

Adding these five plugins to your clients’ websites (and your own) can make a copywriter’s life much, much easier. Whilst it won’t do the writing for you, it will definitely help make a difference to your clients’ conversion rates which is what copywriting is all about.

Nowadays, a smart website design is almost a prerequisite if you want to build a lasting brand. It’s where your audience learns about your story and your offerings, and the goal is to keep them engaged for as long as possible.

That being said, the home to your brand should be more than an eye-candy. It has to be simple enough that they can explore without any hassle, and rich enough to ask for more. It’s a delicate balance. Anyone can create a website, but it takes careful planning come up with a good one.

Below are some of the key principles you should keep in mind when planning web design.

Purpose

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. – John Maeda

Why did you put up your website in the first place? What purpose does it fulfill for your target audience? How much do you know about them? Purpose comes down to individual pages, too: Each page should offer a certain type of information like entertainment, engagement, or transaction with your business. Creating a sales page? Keep the focus on your offering, and reinforce it as you go along. Creating an About page? Tell ’em about your company and the wonderful people behind it. You don’t need to put up a circus in a single page.

Navigation

People ignore designs that ignore people. – Frank Chimero

Dead ends are the end of engagement in your website. And as you already know, the goal is to keep them engaged until they’re ready to take the next step. Navigation is the framework containing all the touches happening within your website. It should feature a logical hierarchy; clear CTAs and clickable buttons; and the right information within 3 clicks. It’s a lot to keep track of, but creating a sitemap and constantly testing links and buttons will keep you on top of your game.

Mobile-friendly

The role of a designer is that of a good, thoughtful host anticipating the needs of his guests. – Charles Eames

As a consumer of information yourself, you know there are plenty of moments when you’d rather browse in your smartphone than get up and turn on your laptop to search something. Whether it be smartphone or tablet, people prefer the convenience of browsing on smaller screens now, especially when they’re on the go. In fact, there are varying stats everywhere but the most credible I can find is over 60% and climbing. So if your website is stuck on desktop view, you could be losing these viewers to your competition’s mobile-friendly layout. To fix this, you can either rebuild your site with multiple widths, or come up with a dedicated mobile site they can easily navigate on.

Communication

Get rid of anything that is not essential to making a point. – Christoph Niemann

Clear, well-organised information make a reader and SEO-friendly website. With tons of distractions on the internet, your viewers tend to want information quickly. They (We!) skim a lot, so placing meaningful headings, subheadings, and bullet points are more preferable than long, windy sentences.

I promised I’d tell you the tools I use, well – here they are.

First, I need to preface this email by saying 2 things.

1. We’re going to get geeky. There will probably be terminology and ideas that make little sense. If digital automation interests you, then lets chat about it. I do not charge for a chat, I’d love to learn about your business and often a small and simple tweak gets huge results… so you really have nothing to lose by chatting. SCHEDULE A TIME TO CHAT BELOW!
2. I also need to say not all businesses are created equal. Different businesses will most probably use different tools. Some tool sets work better with gSuite, while others are better suited for Office365. Some are more Mac oriented, while others are Windows. A creative studio with a team will probably centre their tool stack around a project management tool, whereas a consultant would be more interested in the CRM.

Anyway…you get the deal. Here’s we go!

My company, Stackd Design has changed it’s focus and structure over the years, from just me, to a team of 10 and now back to a smaller team with specialist consultants for specialty areas. Before I pay wages, my ENTIRE operational cost for software and subscriptions for the ENTIRE team is only $237 /month. This is a completely scaleable solution. Whether I am approached by 1 or 10 new clients in a week, that $237 price tag stays the same month to month. That means my business systems only costs $2,844 to run each year – and through digital automation I can earn much more than that.

It use to be that a business would need a big budget to run the business with any sort of digital automation. The truth these days, is there are so many alternatives to the big enterprise solutions that you don’t need to spend thousands of dollars each month to get something effective. You just need to know someone (like me) who can integrate great tools, directly with your website, to get results.

Here’s a break down of what I use.

Emails and Documents – GSUITE
CRM Choice – STREAK
Email Marketing – DRIP
Automated Outreach – REPLY UP
Project Management – TRELLO
Scheduling – RESOURCE GURU
Communication – SLACK
Integration – ZAPIER
Appointment Scheduling – CALENDLY
Book Keeping – XERO

This tool stack works great for me because 95% of my communication is through email. I’ve been using Gmail for the longest time with a whole set of extra extensions to super power it – so Streak CRM was appealing to me and my team, as it integrates directly with Gmail.

I have built multiple sales and nurture funnels directly in Streak. These are called ‘Pipelines’. As an email comes in – it goes into a pipeline. As it moves through the various stages of a pipeline it has tags automatically added and removed so I can segment my audience later on. When a contact record in my CRM changes it also syncs with the same contact record in DRIP. This allows automated workflows to run (just like the one you are on now). The workflows can send emails, split test, notify me, collect analytics, etc. Whenever work is low, one strategy for new clients revolves around my subscription to Reply up for Automated Outreach. This sends a series of emails to highly qualified prospects, but cuts the sequence if they reply. Once they reply they are automatically added to my CRM.

With all of this automation, my website is at the heart. My leads and clients are constantly heading back to either my landing pages, or forms which drive extra automation. Now that I have a great system setup and in place, it is automated and easy. This is what I really love to do and it is the thing that sets me apart from most other ‘web people’ out there.

I would be genuinely interested to know how much of this stuff you think is important, and if you have automated it already. Feel free to comment below and let me know.

If you are in contact with somebody who needs to get more leads from their website – then there’s a stack of ways to get in contact with me:

dave@stackddesign.com
0408705939

Schedule a call.

( I Love Automation! )

Thank you for taking the time to read this email. I really do appreciate it. Please feel free to reach out if you have a questions, need advice, or want to chat.

Talk soon.
Dave

Did you know I play music? Jazz Piano and Singing specifically and I’m actually pretty good at it (if I do say so). It’s not just me saying that, I’ve won awards and everything. This is actually how I became a Website and Digital Automation guy.

I’ve had a thousand gigs and travelled the world with music. Some gigs have been big – some very small. In fact I remember one night years ago, I played a massive main stage festival gig to 10,000 people – a screaming sea of heads loving every moment of it… then I drove from that gig straight to an 80th birthday where they asked me to play in a different room (away from guests) on an out of tune piano. I learnt humility quickly – that’s for sure!

Anyway… I had an idea to start a music lesson website almost 20 years ago. The website alone cost me my life savings – $20,000. If I wanted to update it I had to pay an extra $100 for every change. But that didn’t matter… because the website got hacked anyway – only 6 months in.  I was devastated. Turns out the developer had saved a file in the root directory called ‘passwords.txt’ and it was visible to the world. I lost absolutely everything and needed to start again. My second website cost a lot less. Only $5,000. It lasted only 1 year before it got hacked.

I was out of money so I did something that many people only learn out of necessity, something daring, something radical… I learnt to code. I quickly learnt that to have a successful website I would also need to learn photoshop, illustrator and some design skills. Then I needed to figure out some marketing, and lead generation, systems, software, don’t forget sales, oh yeah – accounting, etc, etc.  Any small business owner will understand they need to wear a lot of hats.  I have had a lot of opportunities to learn lessons over the past 20 years, some huge wins, and some crushing defeats. All making me stronger and helping me understand how all the pieces fit together.

My approach to business and life is a real no BS approach. I talk openly and truthfully about everything and am able to find solutions that are a win/win for everybody. I don’t like ‘breaking the bank’ and usually find ways with new clients to stage the work so that we can get quick wins… start getting some return on the investment, then it makes sense to proceed to the next piece of work.

I find creating websites that are both visually appealing and technically powerful is much like a music concert. For over 15 years I have been designing digital and web solutions and have been a professional jazz and concert musician for even longer. Having a deep understanding of every instrument and element and how they inter-relate is the key for both a high functioning website and a performance that engages and inspires.

If you are in contact with somebody who needs to get more leads from their website – then there’s a stack of ways to get in contact with me:

dave@stackedsite.com
+61 408 705 939

Book a time to talk with this tool I use.

I love automation!

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I really do appreciate it. Please feel free to reach out if you have a questions, in need of advice, or simply want to chat. You can also leave a comment below!

Talk soon.
Dave