Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today, we're talking about making it easy for your website designer with Aaron Ocampo. But first, here's a note from our sponsor.
Melanie
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Esther
Okay. Welcome, Aaron. How are you today?
Aaron
Hey, guys. I'm well, thank you. What about you?
Melanie
It's nice to have you here, Aaron. We only drag you back in once every couple of years or so, but it's nice to have you back. So this has come up because over the last, especially the last couple of weeks, I've been having people approach me about setting up a brand new website And they feel a little overwhelmed with the expectations that they're being given by a website developer at times. Or they're just purely afraid of all the work involved and what they're expected to do. So I was just wondering if you would help us out, Aaron, and help people, first of all, consider what they need to do before approaching a website design designer or developer, and what tools or things that they need to put in place in order to instruct a website developer. Can you help us with that today?
Aaron
Yeah, definitely. I would say that there are two different types of website builds, the one that is a rebuilding what it's already there and the one that is starting from scratch. Obviously, both approaches are different in terms of what you, as a web designer, need and all the different things that need to be set up for the website. I will go first with the rebuild which is the easier one, let's say easier one. Not always, but at least you have some starting point. In that case, it's just a matter of asking the client, Okay, did you want this website as it is just with a new design, or you have something new to add to the website? It could be probably a new functionality or it could be a new part of the website sections or pages or whatever. If that's the case where they only need to add things to it, obviously, like I was saying, you already have a starting point with the website they already built. And that's why I'm saying it's easier because you already have something. Depending on what you need as a client for the new website, for the redesign, obviously the needs are going to change. But generally it's like, oh, I need to add a blog, for example, someone that doesn't have a blog, or I need to add a page that talks about another service. So that's just those things. In those cases, it's just a matter of... The most important part of this is copy. Sometimes people don't realise that copy is very important. Sometimes they just give you oh, I'm going to offer a new service, which is eggs or whatever. But they don't give you what the service is or what the service achieves or things like that, which for us as web designers is very important. It's very, very important to know, not just the general of it, but anything that you can give us for us to Because at the end of the day, we are trying to transmit a message for that service or for that section of your website without any detail. It's very hard. So copy, I would say, is one of the main-.
Melanie
So copy is the wording, isn't it? Copy is the wording that goes on the website.
Aaron
Yes, exactly. The wording that goes in the website. Obviously, if you have imagery as well, Because sometimes in a redesign, you want to go for a specific type of design with probably real photos or illustrations or emojis or whatever your design is, you have to give us an idea of what you want in that regard. Obviously, if the website was built before, it's supposed to have analytics, it's supposed to have a little bit of SEO. It's supposed to have things like well-built foundations of what you have. If you don't have that, it's a starting from scratch because it's going to take us a lot of work to do all of those things in a website that doesn't have those things. That's moving towards the other option, which is building it from scratch. Building it from scratch is the same. Copy is the first thing. Imagery is another thing. But then there's other things around the website that we will need, like links, for example, to your social media, access to your domain. If you have already a hosting platform, access to that platform. Because we're encountering that... In my experience, I've encountered that people don't give you those things. For us, they're very basic things. So We go back and forth with the basics of accesses and things like that.
Melanie
What I'm hearing is, is there an onboarding form that you can send out to people saying, Right, we need access to this? Could you consider sorting out copy or wording for the website? Do you send this out in advance so that it prepares people for the work they need to put in themselves towards the website. I haven't heard you actually mention the sitemap yet. In my head, maybe it's just a complete beginner at this, but I always thought the site map had to come first.
Aaron
Well, I have a discovery call whenever we're building a project like this, I have a discovery call with the client. That discovery call will give us the overview of a project. In that part of the project, the starting project, we see those things like, Okay, like I was saying, if this is starting build from scratch, we will go through all of these. Okay, what are the pages that you need? What are the links or the connections between those pages that you And normally, things or websites are not as different between them because all of them have a home, all of them normally have a service page, all of them have a blog, or all of them have a contact page and things like that. But like I was saying, probably your project has a specific thing or a specific way of doing things and all of those possibilities. So we go through all of them at the beginning of the project. We have a discovery call where we find all of those things. And yes, we send a form, a document where we ask, Okay, what's your name? What's your logo? What's your colours? All of those things. And there are the accesses for the different platforms and all of those things. So yes, there's an email that we send to the client, so they can answer all of those questions. But even, even with that form, sometimes the clients are like, okay, so this is what I have. Sometimes they forget those important things. Accesses are very important for us to work with, a new website, a new build.
Melanie
You know my story completely, Aaron, of course, because we've been working together for a number of years now. But would you... Obviously, you getting the business is important because it's good for your business. And it also helps people get a better SEO and better reach because you've got a professional website. But if somebody did set up their own Wix or SquareSpace website or one of the freebies, it's not the end of the world, is it? You can move those over to a more professional platform and you can code those. Even if they don't come to you with a completely brand new suggestion, can you convert those websites and make it into a more professional template? Is that possible?
Aaron
Yeah, definitely. Like you're mentioning, we work with a platform that allows us to create anything that we want in terms of the size of the website and things like that. But yeah, for people that they're managing their own website, they're having their Wix websites or SquareSpace or those do it yourself platforms, it's important to understand that sometimes those platforms are not, in my opinion, probably someone can say a different thing, but in my opinion, sometimes they don't give tools for to grow your website.
Melanie
Agreed, it's a start, isn't it?
Aaron
It's a start. It's a start because like you were saying, No. If you look for them, those platforms are called the what you see is what you get platform. It's everything that you drag into the canvas is what you're going to get. Whereas sometimes, for example, let's say you have an e-commerce where you need to fulfil orders and you need to automate emails and you need to follow with these kinds and things like that. Nowadays, there are platforms that allow you to do that. Spotify. Sorry, Spotify, no. Shopify does that as well. But to get to know the tool in a way that you're able to control all of those things, you will have to invest time in it. That's the only thing, no?
Melanie
Talking of time, actually, now, I know it very much depends because just like in marketing, it always depends. But in an ideal world where you weren't absolutely swamped and they were always responding to every single email you ever sent, could you say that maybe a beginner website, obviously not moving over a large, huge website, but a beginner website, how long could that take, potentially? Are we talking weeks or months?
Aaron
Well, I have to say that it's very hard to answer that question because every project is different. Even though that project can be basic because it's only five pages and it's startup or whatever, sometimes it's hard to put a number on the work that it's on the days of the work. But I would say that if, let's say, we want to build a very basic one, probably those one-pager where you have everything in five, six sections on your website, and that's it, and you have everything, that could take a few days.
Melanie
Well, as long as they've submitted the form with everything you've asked, yeah?
Aaron
Exactly. As long as they submit everything, it's probably a job of five or six days. But it's not a rule. It's not something that we always follow.
Melanie
No, it's just to get an It's a ballpark, Aaron, just so that people have an understanding that even if you provide everything, it still takes a few days. It's not something you can just turn around in an afternoon.
Aaron
No. Unless you go with that template or something like that, if there's something already built and you just have to move things around, it's easy, but it's not like It's very hard. You as a marketer, you know that every project is different and you have to measure what the impact is going to be, what the tools you have, what the information that you're going to manage and all of those things. So, yeah, it's hard to put a number.
Melanie
I also wanted to ask about the Google Analytics that goes on the back-end. Again, I'm not at all sure about this. Is this a piece of code you get from Google, or is it a page? What is it, Aaron, and how does it go onto the back of the website?
Aaron
Well, Google Analytics is It's just a piece of code, a script that goes into your website. Normally, you will put it... Nowadays, all of the platforms are... If you're not using a platform, your developer will know where to put it. But all of the platforms nowadays have a section for that. It's like a wee text box where you put the tag with the idea of the Google Analytics, and that goes into your website. But yet, What it is, is pretty much a piece of code, a piece of script that connects all of the events in your website and sends that to to Google. It's very, very easy to get these days. It's Google has built an onboarding platform really, really easy to use. It's just put the name, what your website is for, and those things, and it will give you an ID, and they will give you instructions even for you to add it to the website. Sometimes I've seen that they have a pre-made template or pre-made tutorials for different platforms like WordPress-.
Melanie
It could be added to any type of website.
Aaron
Yeah.
Melanie
So even Wix and SquareSpace?
Aaron
Oh, yeah, definitely.
Melanie
Oh, cool.
Aaron
They already have a connection or a yeah, connection in between the platform. I think they even have, I don't remember the new version, but I've seen an option in Wix that you click, Connect to Analytics and it will take you automatically to your Google account. It will help you to do that.
Melanie
Cool. What about Google Business Profile? What if you're adding maps or service areas or directions or something like that to a website? Do you set that up or is that the responsibility of the business owner?
Aaron
Google business is a thing and then maps is another thing. But Google business, it's like an entity in Google about your business and the information of it. You can do that. Some developers, some agencies will do that for you. That'll depend on the scope of the project and the discovery call and all that that we agree at the beginning of the project. But like you were saying, you could do it as a client or your developer can do it for you or the agency, Probably you're working, for example, with us. It's like a whole thing or a whole project. We don't only do the website, we do the SEO, we do the Google business and social media. So we connect all of those things together and we do it for you. But if you have only the developer, probably the developer doesn't do that. So you can do it yourself. But then you talked about maps. Maps is a tricky part of a website because these days Google has made it really hard, I would say, for you to get a mapping in your website. Well, there's a hack there that we can use, but probably we'll share that in a post or something on it. But for maps, you have to sign up for an API in Google Maps. An API is, and I'm not going to get into very technical stuff because I know your audience is not for what I mean. But an API is like a connection in between two platforms in this case. You have to sign up for that connection with Google. And to connect that to your website is a bit tricky. They give you the tools, they give you the tutorials, and give you the instructions and all, but it's a bit hard because it's cold at the end of the day. Then you have to add an element, let's say, or a box, if you put it simpler, a box in your website that contains that map. That map is going to talk to Google through that connection. That part is hard. It's not something that you can go and drag and drop. Probably with Wix and some of those what you see is what you get platforms can do it. I don't know because I don't use them, but neither I was saying that this drag and drop, they probably offer that option for you. But yeah, some things like that are things to consider whenever you're building the website as well. Not answering your first question as what we need as web designers or web developers for building the website. Those things are very important because even though it looks like it's something very simple, it's something like, oh, it's just adding a map where my location is. It's not as simple. All of those things whenever you're going through the scope of the project, you have to add those things. I want to have a map, I want to have a chat. Nowadays, there's chats everywhere. In every website, they have a chat for you to get answers to whatever. So I want to have that. I want to have a search functionality. I want to have a filter functionality whenever people is looking for my blogs or for my products or all of those things, even that they are assigned basic or assigned easy, are very important to disclose them at the beginning of the project because that could skyrocket the budget because the amount of work that they take sometimes. But yeah.
Melanie
Okay. You've done exactly what we asked you to do, Aaron. We wanted to have a much better understanding of what to approach a website developer or designer with. I think because you've outlined, because everybody gets in the head, it's just the basic five pages, but it really isn't. It goes well beyond home about product and services, an updatable page and contact. It goes way beyond that. We haven't even talked about cookie policies or terms of conditions or privacy yet. There's all sorts of things that you need to add in the background to a website. Is it standard practice for these onboarding forms to go out prior or discovery calls? Is it a normal practice for web developers like yourself to do?
Aaron
I would say it should be.
Melanie
Yeah, if it isn't, it should be.
Aaron
It should be because like I said, we're going to base everything. If I could put in a phrase or in a word what we need as web developers or web designers is detail. As much detail as you can give us for your website, it'll be better because that will help us to understand and give a quote for it and follow the path to get to that goal that you have for your website. So as much detail as you can give us is the better.
Melanie
Perfect. Well, I've barely let Esther speak at all, have I?
Esther
Well, there is a reason for that. I can hear this conversation all day, every day, because Aaron and I work in the same office. I can ask him these questions anytime I want.
Melanie
He gave the game away.
Esther
No, I just wanted to. Well, I had to say why I was being silent. But we do want to thank Aaron for coming on and helping us and our audience to understand this a bit better. And how can people get in touch with you?
Aaron
So, well, I'm obviously online. My website, my agency website is IPAgroup.co That's where you can find me. But I'm in LinkedIn, I'm in Facebook. Probably I'm not as active as probably my team always tells me to be. But, you know That's where you can find me for whatever need you have.
Melanie
Awesome. Well, thanks again, Aaron. Thank you for letting me borrow your husband for a little while there, Esther. I bring all of his knowledge to our listeners. I hope you found that useful. It has been something that's been cropping up more frequently over the last couple of weeks, especially in my office. I'm sure if people are asking me these questions, other people are thinking them as well. We hope you found it useful, and we'll be back next week for another podcast. Bye for now.
Esther
Bye-bye.
