Your Site and its importance
In the mist of Covid-19 (Corona Virus), we at JDS WebDesign are hoping everyone is safe, washing your hands frequently, sneezing and coughing in your elbow, and practicing social distancing. Over the next several weeks, we are planning on blogging about how to make your website more business friendly. We will have some tutorials on our favorite plugins and features, which will make your site more efficient.
While at WordCamp US 2019 in St. Louis a few years ago, I was engaged in a conversation about how much time do we spend on our own sites and its importance. It I place 20 hours a year, then I am happy. About a hour and half was my response, it was similar to most of us having the conversation, accept one designer. He spends one to three (1-3) hours a day on his site. Most of us either began complaining about the lack of time or maybe he is not as busy as us. He told us that he had a sales funnel with 12 clients in it. Six (6) of the clients had already sent him their down payment. He only works on two (2) projects a month, and his minimal is $4,000. What? How?
He would explain that the majority of his clients are not referrals, but are clients looking for his services. He creates websites for plastic surgeons. Most of the group, left saying he is able to get that because his clients have money. I stayed, because all niche client’s have money. The few of us, who stayed wonder what? and how?
What
What are you doing for 1 – 3 hours on your site? Blogging is very important. Not just blogging about anything. He is blogging about what his specific client is looking for? Thirty minutes a week is spend on research what are the most popular blog post for plastic surgeon websites. He makes sure that he writes a blog on that topic. He spends about twenty minutes sending out request for testimonials of his service and works. He states he receives about 4 – 5 testimonials a month, and he uploads the new ones and deletes the old ones. All his testimonials are within a couple of months.
Since he is creating two websites a month. He uploads the new sites within 1 week after launch. He makes sure to include a case study and prior site (if it is a re-design). The case study is not finish. He will continue to place information in the case study about the results of the site and how he was able to accomplish these results. Reason is simple, if some one is going to hire you, then they want to know how you was able to solve a pain point and the results.
How
How do you find the time? He would explain that most of the time is the idle time that web designers spend looking for clients. That time that is used to search job boards, social media post, and reaching out to low paying projects for referrals. If he is not working on a project, then he is looking at his analytics and checking how his call to actions buttons works. Is he getting a lot of hits? Did he see another call to action, and doing some A/B Testing. A/B Testing, which is also know as split testing or bucket testing, is a method of comparing two versions of a web page against each other to determine which one performs better.
Instead of chase few dollar projects, he has a system that allows future prospective clients to see his work, see his case studies and they are able to make an educational guess. Spending a few hours a day on his website, has eliminated the $500 projects and allow him to stay business and get the clients that he wants.
Conclusion
Funny thing about when you hear a great ideal, which is rooted in change. Many will not or do not want to change. I spoke to a couple of my freelancer friends. We discuss this and I was greeted with how you going to squeeze out an hour or two each day to work on your site. That’s a crazy ideal. It reminded me of a Steve Harvey’ quote…”If you want to kill a big dream, then tell it to small minded people”.
As I was hearing all the moaning and groaning, I began to strategist how and when to put in more work on my website. Upload a some projects, begin working on case studies, get my podcast site back up. Work on improving my call to actions and begin checking my google analytics.
Image by Joao Silas.
JDS WebDesign is a Web Design and Brand Marketing Agency located in Marietta, Georgia. We create AWESOME on line presence for Start-ups and Influential People/Organizations. To learn more about us or how we can help you and your organization, you can contact us or schedule a meeting.
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