Four Essential Elements of a High-Converting Website [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 58]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy.

Mary Brown
0:00:00
So in all of our work with an incredible number of websites, we have found that there are four things that are essential to a high converting website.

Mary Brown
0:00:10
And those four things are.

Alex Winter
0:00:21
Join us for Impact Live 2024 in Hartford, Connecticut, this October 14th through the 16th. Over three days, business owners, CEOs, and marketing and sales leaders will learn proven strategies to drive business growth. Attend expert-led sessions on marketing, sales, leadership, and AI, and get a chance to network with industry pros just like yourself. Discover how companies like yours are dominating their markets. Secure your spot at impactplus.com backslash impact-5. And for all of our endless customers listeners, we have an exclusive discount code that'll save you 100 bucks. So when you're on the checkout page,

Alex Winter
0:00:59
just enter the code ECPOD100 in all caps for $100 off. We'll see you there at impact live 2024 up in Hartford, October 14th through the 16th. Welcome back to endless customers, the show that teaches you how to win trust and earn more business in this age of AI. I'm Alex Winter, your host, and today we are joined by Mary Brown, who is a lead web strategist here at Impact.

Alex Winter
0:01:22
Mary, welcome back.

Mary Brown
0:01:23
Hey, Alex. Always happy to be here.

Alex Winter
0:01:25
Happy to have you here. It's good to see you.

Mary Brown
0:01:27
It's been a while. It's been a minute. It's been a while, but I'm so happy you invited me back.

Alex Winter
0:01:31
Yes. Well, we're talking about website stuff today, which is a very important topic for a lot of business owners, a lot of businesses out there. It seems like a fundamental thing that everyone knows they need, but they don't always do it right, or they might not know some of the things that they need to know, or whatever the case may be. So we have you on the show to help enlighten these people, to help bring some knowledge, because you're

Alex Winter
0:01:52
an expert in this, and you've been doing this for quite some time now.

Mary Brown
0:01:54
Yeah, we don't need to get into how long, because we don't need to date me exactly. But in all of the work that I've done and with my phenomenal colleagues here at Impact, I don't know, we should get a number of how many websites we've done because I bet it would be astounding. But we have found that there are four main elements to a website that make it the right website, that make it your best salesperson.

Mary Brown
0:02:19
And I'm so excited to talk about that with you today.

Alex Winter
0:02:20
Yeah, I am too. I have here in the notes the four essential elements. And I was curious before the show what these are, because I feel like I think I know what these are, but I'm not a web expert, I'm more of a video and creative expert overall. So let's get right into the four essential

Alex Winter
0:02:34
pieces that we need.

Mary Brown
0:02:35
Let's do it. So the first one, Alex, to you and I, this one might seem obvious, because we know the ask and the answer, and this is a tenant of the ask and the answer. But pricing is the first one that we want to talk about on a website.

Mary Brown
0:02:49
We know you've got to have pricing on a website.

Alex Winter
0:02:52
We know this. Yeah. We talk about this all the time. Yeah. It's almost like common sense to us, but I feel like for people that might be watching

Alex Winter
0:02:58
and listening, they may not feel that way. Or we've heard a lot too that companies don't want to share price because they don't want to give away their competitive advantage or they want their sales folks to be able to talk to people and leave it open-ended and we know that that's not very they ask you answer, is it?

Mary Brown
0:03:11
Yes, because sharing your pricing is about transparency, and transparency builds trust, and trust is, of course, the proponent of business, right? That is the currency of business. But one of the things that I hear all the time when it comes to pricing is, we can't share pricing because it's too variable, right? Ours is very unique, it's very special.

Mary Brown
0:03:32
We have to, you know, it depends on this and it depends on that. And the thing about that is, you should tell everyone that, right? You can still talk about pricing without a price. You can say, here are all the factors that make our pricing go up and down. Here are some ranges that we can give you. Because by saying that, by simply saying our pricing is variable, and

Mary Brown
0:03:55
here's why it is variable, and here's what you can expect, you are being transparent. Because the alternative that we see sometimes is that people just have nothing. And that freaks people out, right? Because they think you've got something to hide because that's the number one thing people are really, really looking about. That's what it comes down to, right?

Mary Brown
0:04:11
And you're having to make a purchase.

Alex Winter
0:04:12
It feels a little fishy. It's like you have to talk to somebody in order to get the pricing. Or the other thought that I tend to have is like, if the price isn't on here, it means it's really expensive and I probably can't afford it.

Mary Brown
0:04:21
Yes. And how frustrating is it when it says, you know, call for a quote or something.

Mary Brown
0:04:25
Like, oh, I'm here.

Alex Winter
0:04:27
Tell me. Pick up the computer and Hulk slam it. Yeah, I hate that.

Mary Brown
0:04:31
Because whether you're buying a couch or a pizza, you need to know how much it costs. So yeah, throw it out there. I know another people, another objection that we hear a lot is that, like you said, people don't want to scare their potential customers off. Sure. They'll say, we need to get our sales team in here because our sales team is amazing

Mary Brown
0:04:52
and they can do all this convincing and explain. If your price could potentially scare people off, that's good. Believe it or not, scaring the wrong people off is a good thing.

Alex Winter
0:05:03
Right?

Mary Brown
0:05:04
We talk about qualification all the time. And you know, if your price might be 20,000 out of someone's range, tell them that. Because you don't want to deal with those people either, right? If they can't afford you, don't waste your salespeople's time. So put that right on your website so that people who shouldn't have any business talking to your sales team

Mary Brown
0:05:26
can disqualify themselves and save everyone time.

Alex Winter
0:05:29
Yeah, no, that makes so much sense. And I think, too, it's a respect thing. If you're building trust and you're trying to be transparent, you should also be respectful of not just your time, but other people's time. So it's better to disqualify and know up front where you stand versus trying to

Alex Winter
0:05:43
have your sales team talk to a potential lead that's never going to convert and waste all this time and money and effort to eventually get to the same place.

Mary Brown
0:05:49
Yeah, absolutely. So that is why pricing is number one.

Alex Winter
0:05:53
All right, so what other essential pieces do we need to talk about for conversions on your website?

Mary Brown
0:05:58
So number two is our learning center.

Alex Winter
0:06:00
Okay.

Mary Brown
0:06:01
So I want to be very clear about this. A learning center and a blog, not the same.

Alex Winter
0:06:05
No, they are not. And if you don't know that, everybody watching and listening, we did an episode on this recently talking about exactly that, that your blog and your website, I'm sorry, your blog and your learning center are not the same thing.

Mary Brown
0:06:16
Yes. And I want to be very clear that your website doesn't need a blog, right? Your blog is, it is a feed of posts that you are publishing. Everybody needs to have a blog. There's a difference with a blog and a learning center, though. And your learning center is a one-stop shop for all of the top resources that are going to help someone along in their buyer's journey,

Mary Brown
0:06:38
everything they could possibly want. That doesn't just include blog posts. That might include podcast episodes. That might include webinars. That might include white papers. It might include other kind of gated offers

Mary Brown
0:06:50
that are really, really critical to this buyer's journey. So by building this resource hub that is searchable, filterable, you're allowing people to have complete control over what they're looking for and when, and it's any type of resource imaginable. So that's why have a blog, need a blog, but also have this learning center that is that true main hub.

Alex Winter
0:07:14
I love that.

Alex Winter
0:07:15
Yeah, that's definitely a critical piece. And it's also fun. Like, you don't just have to write written articles, and written articles are great, but I'm a video expert. So for me, I love, I would, if the choice was to read an article or watch a video, I'm obviously going to watch the video because that's just, that's just how I like to learn and absorb information, right? So having these different pieces of content, whether it's video, written, whatever it is, an ebook, doesn't matter.

Alex Winter
0:07:38
It just helps people meet them where they are so that they can digest information the way that they want to and it just gives you a better chance to build trust and ultimately have a good conversation with a potential.

Mary Brown
0:07:49
I'm so glad you mentioned learning styles because that is a huge benefit of having this learning center is, so some blogs are searchable, filterable by topic, right? But a learning center, you can have multiple groups of filtering. So one of the ways people sometimes like to filter is by persona, right? So if I'm an IT person versus my HR director, who might both come to the website, we have different interests.

Mary Brown
0:08:15
We have different things that we care about. By filtering by persona, you can allow them to see stuff that's tailored to them. Same with learning style. If you have a filter group for content types of video, webinar, podcast, et cetera, then if I'm an IT person who loves video, I can filter for both, right?

Mary Brown
0:08:33
So it gives you that extra control over how I learn, how I like to learn, the way a blog simply can.

Alex Winter
0:08:40
Yeah, and I feel like for end users, too, the perception that it builds is like, these people are trying to meet me where I am, these people are clearly putting an effort into creating content, and I think it just adds to that persona of your business that like You're professional

Alex Winter
0:08:55
You're trying to you're trying to give people all the information that you possibly can to help build trust so that they can make the best

Mary Brown
0:09:00
Buying decision possible. Yeah, I have to say Alex that that won't make you special Pretty soon because everything is so on demand now that when it comes to creating that on-demand experience will just be the norm. So if you don't have it at a minimum, then you will be left behind.

Alex Winter
0:09:20
That's a great point. No, that's a great point, because I feel like a few years ago, five years ago, this was a differentiator, and I feel like now it's becoming more and more like, you have to do this,

Alex Winter
0:09:30
because if you don't, you're gonna get left behind. It's common ground now. Like everyone, it's like table stakes at this point.

Mary Brown
0:09:36
Yeah.

Mary Brown
0:09:37
So that's our number two.

Alex Winter
0:09:38
Okay, number two. What's number three?

Mary Brown
0:09:40
What else are we going to be thinking about? Our number three is our fit section. So every website should have a who's a good fit, who's a bad fit section. And I know some of you can't see Alex's face, so it was kind of a thoughtful, I can see where people might object to this. Again, we're talking about disqualification, right?

Mary Brown
0:10:00
So this is going to freak people out because we're actually going to say who's a good fit to work

Alex Winter
0:10:06
with us and who is not a good fit to work with us. And the reason why I made that face is because I've had this conversation at nauseam a lot a lot of times and it's just fascinating when you have this conversation how every time there's always a different reaction or a different opinion about what's right and wrong but ultimately we know and what we teach here at Impact, you need to be transparent with all this stuff. You have to be.

Alex Winter
0:10:29
Because your end users are going to find out one way or another, and if they find out not through you, it's going to weaken that trust. It's going to make them want to go somewhere else and click away, and ultimately not engage with your services, or with your website, or with whatever you have to offer.

Mary Brown
0:10:43
Yeah, you are exactly right. And the thing about qualification and allowing people to disqualify themselves too is that it's disruptive, right? Because not everyone is doing it, and we have to be disruptive right now.

Mary Brown
0:10:55
There's so much content out there, and there is so much noise. And everyone these days seems to have a good idea of what a smart home page story might be. But if you're not being disruptive in this way and saying, you might not be right for us, and that's OK, then

Mary Brown
0:11:14
again, you're not going to break through that noise of everyone else's homepage, standard homepage, and how things are looking. So you need to do that to break through. And then also, as you're saying, when you do, it's a gesture of goodwill, and you're going to build that trust. And you can even say, we understand that we're not a good fit for everyone.

Mary Brown
0:11:33
And here are some other things you can look at if you find you're not a fit. So we're not just saying, you know, you're not gonna be rude about it and be like, get out of here, we don't wanna talk to you. Don't recommend that, I never said that, don't do that. But you can point people in the right direction

Mary Brown
0:11:47
for something that might be better for them. It's so true, it is.

Alex Winter
0:11:50
And when you talk about the psychology of buying and selling for salespeople, the more that you apply pressure, the more it pushes people away. So the less interested you are like that if you're not pushing it and just going like hey We might not be a good fit for you, and that's totally okay But I still want to make sure that we're we're helping you find what you need to look for so if we can refer another

Alex Winter
0:12:11
Company or we can point you in the right direction that almost ends up changing the whole dynamic where people like well wait a second They're not they're not trying to hard sell me now I actually want to work with these people and it's really interesting how self-selection and all that plays into the psychology

Mary Brown
0:12:24
Around this specific thing yeah, I mean have it think about just the rest of your life. Haven't you ever had someone give you some hard honesty, but after they did, you were grateful for it?

Alex Winter
0:12:35
At first, you're pissed though. You're like, what the heck was that? Why would you say that? But then you reflect, and you get to digest it a little bit, the information, and then you're like, oh, wait a second.

Mary Brown
0:12:43
I'm so glad I found that out, so at least I could go in a better direction and not waste my time, right?

Alex Winter
0:12:49
Totally.

Mary Brown
0:12:50
Do that, do that with your words.

Alex Winter
0:12:51
It's not always easy, but it really does make the changes that are gonna exponentially help you grow as a professional but also help your business and just on multiple levels.

Mary Brown
0:13:01
100%.

Mary Brown
0:13:02
Yeah.

Alex Winter
0:13:03
All right, so what's the next one?

Mary Brown
0:13:04
Last but certainly not least.

Alex Winter
0:13:06
I feel like we need a drum roll.

Mary Brown
0:13:07
I know.

Mary Brown
0:13:08
The call to action.

Alex Winter
0:13:10
Yeah, CTAs.

Mary Brown
0:13:12
Okay, I have ranted on this podcast before about call to action and for those this is a plug for the YouTube channel as well because you'll get to see my insane gesturing and facial expressions that are just out of control and you should never put them on social media again, but It is truly amazing. You you have to have a call to action This is basically what I said last time one you need CTAs to you need to have clear and compelling CTAs. Period. End of story. You can't fight me on this. I dare you. Let's do a challenge. Try to fight me on this. Because you can't. But you must

Mary Brown
0:13:48
have them and they must be clear and straightforward. Right? There can't be a question as to what you're asking people to do. Can't be vague. If you want people to book a demo, say that. Some people say things like, talk to us. Sure, we can try it. I'm a data scientist, right? I'll let you test it. But saying talk to us versus, you know, talk to a sales expert, something that's more specific, is more clear, more compelling because you're setting that expectation of exactly what is going to happen. And when people know what's going to happen, they're more likely to do it, right?

Alex Winter
0:14:25
Definitely. Well, and sometimes if you leave it open-ended, like I know you're trying, sometimes the idea is to keep it like conversational, so like talk to us, let's keep it, let's not make it too formal or too scary, but then for the end user it's like talk to you how, is that an email, is that a phone call, is that a, how do I reach out to you, like so you do need to get specific with the direction to help point people the way you want

Mary Brown
0:14:48
them to go. Exactly, and it has to be actionable. That's the next thing. So I know A is in CTA. People should know. It's got to be actionable. But specifically, start with a verb. They need to start with a verb. I have seen calls to action that will be for 10 questions to ask your next accountant. Huh? Yeah. That's not the A is in CT. You got to do it. You got to tell people what to do. So it might be an awesome resource. It might be a phenomenal transitional call to action.

Mary Brown
0:15:16
But if you're not saying download the guide, if you're not telling people what to do, if it's not actionable, then you need to update that immediately.

Mary Brown
0:15:23
Right.

Alex Winter
0:15:23
And that could be a valuable piece of information for your users that they're not going to download because they don't know that they should because of whatever reason. So it's important to give them that direction. It totally is.

Mary Brown
0:15:33
Yes. And also to that end, the other part of calls to action is you need to offer different kinds of calls to action, right? So we talk about how our primary call to action, that direct call to action is the marriage proposal, right?

Mary Brown
0:15:47
It's serious. I'm talking to sales. But we also want to have a little cup of coffee too, right? I'm not ready to give you my time with sales yet, but I'm interested. Maybe I'll give you my email. So we want to have variable calls to action there.

Alex Winter
0:16:02
Yeah, but you've got to go on a few dates before you get married.

Mary Brown
0:16:05
I mean, some people rush right in. Some people will see that book now, and they're going to go for it.

Alex Winter
0:16:09
That's true.

Mary Brown
0:16:09
But a lot of people aren't, and it's good to get them into your marketing funnel so that you can nurture them. And some people like the longer play, like you're saying, and at least if you get them into your CRM, you can keep the conversation going and hopefully get them down the line.

Alex Winter
0:16:27
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Mary Brown
0:16:28
I do want to say that when it comes to calls to action, you're not going to get your strategy right on day one. You're just not. It's not going to be perfect. This is something you should be testing and iterating all the time. I do actually have people say, I tested the thing, I'm done, right?

Mary Brown
0:16:44
And no, you're not done. A website is never done. I know some people hear that and they're like, oh God. But test multiple times. Try one. You might do a test and it is negative.

Mary Brown
0:16:56
And you get a negative result. Keep trying. Find the thing that really is clear and compelling and gets people to meet with you.

Alex Winter
0:17:03
Yeah, no, and testing is huge. And I think people forget, you know, that you get the cringe when you say like, your website's a living, breathing thing, like it's never done. People instantly cringe,

Alex Winter
0:17:12
because they're like, oh my God, that means more money, and I'm always gonna be working on this thing. But you have to look at it like your business. A website is an extension of your business. So is your business just going to stay the same indefinitely? Probably not.

Alex Winter
0:17:24
You're going to have to adapt and change, and your website's going to have to do the same thing. So I feel like it's really shifting the mindset for business owners and people out there that your website has to grow and change with your business. And you need to test.

Alex Winter
0:17:35
You're not going to get it right the first time. And this plays into the overarching psychology as a business owner of like, you may think you know what your end user wants, but what you think it is and what it actually is may not line up. So you have to get into the weeds of it

Alex Winter
0:17:52
to see what the response is gonna be and learn from that response. Because ultimately, it's not what you want, it's what your end users want and need. That's what you're servicing, right?

Mary Brown
0:18:00
Yes, Alex, speak on it. You're saying everything.

Alex Winter
0:18:02
No, I love it, but this is important because we talk about – I feel like we talk about this ad nauseum with a lot of businesses. They're like I just spent $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 rebuilding and redoing my entire website, and I just want to be done with it. And that's not the right – that's technically not the right approach. No. Even though you spent a lot of money and you made that investment, if you think about it that way, you're never going to get that return on the investment you made.

Mary Brown
0:18:26
Yes, because, and yes, I'm saying this about my profession and what I do here, but there's a lot of educated guessing that's happening. It's very well educated guessing. Um, we, we can be smart, we can know a lot of great things, uh, but until we use data and until we're being data scientists about this and we're collecting what's actually happening and making optimizations based on that data, we're just kind of throwing

Mary Brown
0:18:53
spaghetti at the wall to see what works.

Alex Winter
0:18:55
See what's going to stick, yeah.

Mary Brown
0:18:56
And it's like that with your entire website. All the things that we have just talked about, so pricing, learning center, everything, you should test things within that. So this is going to be a whole other episode, but really, your learning center filters I was talking about, test those, change those. Your pricing strategy on your pricing page, test that, change that, all of this.

Mary Brown
0:19:15
We're giving you these four really fundamental pieces you need to have, but you also need to make sure that you are really understanding how these things are performing and you're iterating on them all the time.

Alex Winter
0:19:28
Absolutely. So for people listening and watching, where should these four different essential pieces live on their website?

Mary Brown
0:19:34
Yes. So your pricing should be in your navigation. There are instances and I know there's always someone listening like, well, I have 87 million different products. Yeah, okay. You can have pricing on your product pages sometimes as well. So that argument can be made, but generally-

Alex Winter
0:19:51
Generally speaking. Yeah, we'll keep it high level.

Mary Brown
0:19:53
Generally speaking. Yes. I've got the caveats in my head always, Alex.

Alex Winter
0:19:56
Well, and there's always exceptions. There are. And every business has different service lines and industries, so I get that but just

Mary Brown
0:20:03
generally speaking. Yes, we want to have pricing in our main navigation. We want to have our learning center in our main navigation as well. Okay. And that primary call to action should be in our main navigation. I know, crazy right? These things are all so important. I know. That we've got this stuff in our main nav and especially when our nav should be something that follows people. We call it a sticky nav, right?

Mary Brown
0:20:29
So that when they're scrolling down a page, they go up, it reappears. We want that to be available to everyone every time because these things are all critical pieces of the buyer's journey.

Alex Winter
0:20:38
Yeah, absolutely. And for the user experience, you need to have that.

Mary Brown
0:20:41
Yeah, don't make people work, right? When we create friction, we create frustration. And when we create frustration, people get the F out of there, right?

Alex Winter
0:20:51
Yeah, people peace out. I do. Yeah. If I get frustrated, I'm looking for something I can't find in on whatever link or website I clicked on, I'm out and I'm back to Google or whatever search platform to find the next... whichever one's going to give me what I need when I need it. Exactly.

Mary Brown
0:21:04
That's the bottom line. So that's why this stuff needs to be right up front, easy for people to find, easy to navigate so that they can get exactly what they want when they want it.

Alex Winter
0:21:12
Yeah. So you help a lot of companies implement this and you build a lot of websites, like you said earlier, we're going to have to get a tally on the amount. It's more than we can count, that's for sure. But do you have any examples or something you could share with us where people started to implement this or business started to implement these different essential pieces and it's really helped change or shift the way that they do business?

Mary Brown
0:21:32
Yeah, so I do know.

Alex Winter
0:21:34
I know, I'm putting you on the spot. This is the last question and then we're all done.

Mary Brown
0:21:39
I know.

Mary Brown
0:21:40
So I have had people who have gone, I think one of the most remarkable changes is usually with pricing. As soon as they add pricing, they immediately see that is the most clicked element on their website.

Alex Winter
0:21:55
How ironic is that?

Mary Brown
0:21:56
It's a finalist.

Mary Brown
0:21:57
And it will be across the board too. It doesn't matter your industry. It doesn't matter what the pricing is, if you've got an exact number, if you've got a range or anything. But like we're saying, it's the number one most asked question about what you're doing. I guarantee you, you add that to your website, it's going to be in your top three probably

Mary Brown
0:22:16
most clicked elements on your site.

Alex Winter
0:22:17
Wow.

Alex Winter
0:22:18
Well, we heard it here first, folks, so make sure you get pricing on your website. You definitely need it. Any closing thoughts for everyone out there as we wrap up this episode?

Mary Brown
0:22:28
Like we said, these are really important fundamental things that we have seen across all of the clients that we've done, across all kinds of different industries, B2B, B2C, whatever it is. But best practices are test practices. So do it, test it, get the data, come back and tell me if I was wrong because I love hearing about that with you.

Mary Brown
0:22:50
But I guarantee you, this stuff is going to help.

Mary Brown
0:22:53
It's going to help.

Alex Winter
0:22:54
It's definitely going to help. And Mary, again, you're an expert in this. So if people have questions, we'll put all your info in the show notes so that they can reach out to you and pick your brain. And also, make sure to drop comments.

Alex Winter
0:23:04
Or if you have questions, we're here. We want to talk about this stuff. We want to answer your most pointed questions. So let us know if you have any website stuff that we can discuss on the show. And with that, Mary, thank you for your time.

Alex Winter
0:23:15
Thanks for being here with us today. I really appreciate it.

Mary Brown
0:23:17
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Alex Winter
0:23:18
Awesome. Well, this is Endless Customers, and I'm your host, Alex Winter. Well, this is Endless Customers, and I'm your host, Alex Winter. We'll see you on the next episode.