Ep 95: 5 min website updates that will make a difference

Hello, and welcome to episode number 95 of the website, coach podcast. It's approaching the summer holidays. And for me, and for some of my clients, that means we have less time to spend on our business. Children are off. Miss holidays. And even if you're not going away, there's pressure to do stuff. And hopefully this summer, we might actually get some sun and some warmth. I say this as it's raining. Uh, outside as I'm recording it. But we don't get enough of that in the UK. And so I liked to be outside and doing things in the summer where I care. Time, you do have to spend on your business, tends to be used for client work and working on your business often gets ignored until September. I have found that a lot of the time in the summer holidays tends to come in short bites, snatches. The temptation is to UCS to scroll social media. But there are other things you could do. Things which ultimately give you a greater return. And that's what this episode is about. What can you do with those five minutes snatches of time? None of these ideas should take you long because in about five minutes, Okay. So what are they. Well, the first one is to change your homepage header image. This is the most important image on your website. It needs to be the best representation of your business that you have. Businesses often struggle to decide, which is the image, which best represents their business. You're not alone. If you're struggling to work out, which is the best one. And the temptation is to use a slider to show several. And I'm sorry, but that's a cop-out. I'm not a fan of sliders. I spoke about this two weeks ago in episode number 93, which is seven things that don't belong on your website in 2023, needless to say a slider is one of those. And there were a few reasons why, but the main one is that nobody sits and waits for them to go round. And therefore they might not see your best image. You need to choose one image for here? Yes. Just one. You can be decisive. Make it your best. So find the image that best represents your business and the outcome you get for your clients. So if you're a massage therapist, for example, you might show somebody getting a massage, somebody looking very relaxed. If you're a karate teacher, let's say, then you might show yourself doing karate or some of your clients in action. And updating the header image. Shouldn't take you more than a minute. Which gives you four minutes to decide, which is the best one. Don't overthink it. Number two. Is to book a branding photographer. So talking of images. If you haven't had a branding shoot in the past year or so, I recommend that you get some new images taken. Branding photos at one of the best investments you can make in your business. They up level all your marketing. Including your website. Seriously, they make a big difference. But your images do need to be relatively recent. You don't want that one that's been taken at your cousin's wedding 10 years ago. When you were two stone lighter and looked amazing. This is not a dating site. And sadly. We all age. But you want to look like you. On a good day. Of course. So I get new photos cake in each year. Hello. I don't update all of the images on my website. Each time I get some new ones. There were some like my fingers typing on a keyboard, which timeless. My fingers don't age, the same way as the rest of my body. But the ones showing your face that you use on your home page. I think should be recent. And booking a photo shoot with a branding photographer really is a five minute job. If you're looking for a photographer and you're in seven Oaks or temperature Wells. I recommend my client Jade. Tinkler. Jade was a guest back on episode 58 of the podcast, talking all about branding photos. And if you're in or around Darren, then I recognize, recommend another client of mine, Mary Barela and both Mary and Jane have taken photos of me before. And I love the images. In fact, you'll find both of them on the website. Number three is to do a list of blog posts. If you've listened to this podcast before. Then you may have heard me talking about blogging. I'm a big fan. And it's also rare occasion. Where I practice what I preach because I've got over 70 blog posts on my own website, beyond the kitchen table.co.uk. In fact, you find out you checked them out. So there's a link to that in the show notes to this episode. Blocking is great for SEO. That's search engine optimization, otherwise known is getting found by a Google. But blocks also show your authority. And they give you a lot of material to repurpose for social media. Now I know. Writing blogs does take time. Something that is in short supply in the summer holidays. Uh, low-fee do you get a spare arrow to and writing a blog post is a good way to spend it. But we're not talking about what you can do. If you have a spare hour or two in this episode. We're talking about what you can do in five minutes. Five minutes is a great amount of time to quickly brainstorm some ideas for posts. So I'm not expecting you to write them in five minutes. That really would be impressive. Just to come up with some ideas. And when you have that hour or two, you can write one chasing from the list. So set a timer for five minutes. And see what you can, can come up with. Number four is to update your pricing. So, first of all, is the pricing on your website? Correct? It only takes a few minutes to check that the packages and pricing you list on your website are indeed the ones you offer. Uh, I'll put my hand up here because I have been guilty before of thinking I had updated my pricing on my website. Only to find a few months later that I was still displaying old pricing. It's easily done. And yes, I'm a rare website designer that has their pricing on their website. I believe in being completely upfront about what I charge. And I've talked about pricing on websites in previous episodes. But here, I'm just encouraging you to check that the pricing that is on your website is indeed the right pricing. And of course, if it's not then update it. That quick five minute job. Lo, it might take a bit longer than five minutes. You could also think about whether your pricing and packages are the right ones for where your business is at now. What are potential clients really interested in and what are they buying Buying Number five is my favorite, which is to ask for testimonials. Don't be shy. Testimonials make a big difference to whether somebody chooses to become a client or not. Because it's proof that what you say is true. And potential clients identify with the person who's written the testimonial. If they were in similar position to where that potential client is now. Because we all want to work with people who get results for people like us. Now I know. Lots of people, myself included do not like asking for testimonials. I get it. But they all wanted the best things you can have to help your business. So ask, put your big girl pants on. You can do this. It only takes a couple of minutes to message a client you've worked with. Yeah. Ask them for a testimonial. And ask them to add it to your Google reviews too, because that will help you to rank on Google. Please do not be embarrassed to ask. Most clients do not think about leaving a review for anybody unless they're asked to. And usually they're ready to help. Happy to help support you. And this is an easy and free way for them to do that. It's a really busy then they just won't get round to it. There's still no harm in asking. And I would encourage you if you do have more than five minutes. Then why not leave reviews on Google for businesses that you love and have supported you? I do this from time to time. And as a small business owner, there's not much that is better than seeing a great review on Google. Okay. Maybe I need to get out more. But, you know what I mean? Number six is to resize images. I've talked before about slow loading websites. And actually, if you go all the way back to episode eight, I did a whole episode on how to speed up your website. The two biggest causes of slow running websites are the size of the images. And the website hosting that you're using. There is absolutely no excuse for having large image files on your website. You do not need to pay for any fence tools like Photoshop to resize images. So I use resize images dot. Online and tiny png.com to resize both client images and my own. These are both free tools. Now in five minutes, you're not going to be able to get through your whole website. But you should be able to check and resize the images on your homepage. And there are two ways to reduce the size of the image files. One is to reduce the physical size of the image and the other is to compress the file. I'm not going to go through these, those in this episode and say, go back to episode number eight. If you want to know how to do that, or in teachers Google it. Number seven is to check that links work. One of my biggest bugbears as a website user is what links. It don't go where this pasty. Or which go to a page, which is no longer available. And, you know, this happens to a lot of the big names that you'll click on sub site. And the page is no longer available because website pages change. So if you've got five minutes, just go through your website and check all the links. This is a really good exercise to do on your phone while you're stuck in acute PE in the soft play cafe. I must admit I'm not upset. My children have outgrown those places. Number eight is to add links. To your most, sorry, add links from your most popular blog posts. So a really good way to spend five minutes is to go to your most popular blog posts. They're the ones that get the most views. You do check your analytics to know which one that is. Don't you. And then add new links to other places on your website. So this could be links on that page to your services. Or it could be two and other blog posts or more than one blog post. And the aim of this is to do what you can to keep people who visit that page on your website longer. And what you can do to convert them into clients. Because what you don't want them to do is to just read a single post and then leave. So this is one task, which is on my list to do over the summer. I've got a couple of blog posts that generate a lot of traffic to my website. But often visitors just read that blog post and then leave. And I want to encourage them to stay and I want to encourage them to become clients to. Number nine is to check contact information is correct. Nice and easy one. This just have a quick check that your email phone. And any other contact information on your website is correct. And while you read it, if you've got any forms, just checks it, they're going through correctly to. You don't have to put your phone number on your website if you don't want to. I do not have my phone number on my website because when I'm deep in designing client websites, the last thing I want is my phone to ring. So you can book a call on my website, but you can't actually, my phone number is not there for people to call me when they want to. You also don't have to put your physical address on your website unless you're selling something. So it's up to you, what you include. I would recommend an email address though, not just a contact form. Contact forms are a bit funny and the note was delivered and some people just prefer to email a known email address. I know it. Okay. Number 10. We're nearly there. Is to add or check meta descriptions on all pages seeking to rank on Google. So, if you want a page of your website to rank on Google, we don't necessarily want all our pages to rank. So legal pages, contact page. Um, maybe a thank you page. You don't want those to rank on Google, but there are many pages that you might want to rank on Google. So for those that you do want to rank on Google, it's a good idea to have a meta-description. So a meta-description is the few words that show up when your page comes up in search. If you don't tell Google what to say. By adding a meta-description, then Google will decide itself. Usually it takes the first few lines from the page and that might not be the most compelling reason for somebody to click. Yeah. Meta-description is about 150 characters. So you don't have many words to persuade somebody to click on your article rather than somebody else's that comes up in the search. Now the way that you add a meta-description depends upon what your website is built on. If you're on WordPress, then if you can't see it, then if you add, um, Yost as a plugin, then that has a box, which is on every single page, which allows you to add meta description. And at the very least, do you make sure that your homepage has a meta description? I will just find a word on that is even if you do add a meta-description, it's not certain that Google will actually take that meta description and display it. It has been known to put something completely different. And unfortunately we don't have control, but at least if you're telling it what you wanted as a meta-description, you are a lot who have a much higher chance of having that on the page than if you don't. Number 11 second. Last one is to test how your website looks on a mobile. And this is another one to do when you're waiting NICU somewhere. Have a look at every page on your website and just check that they display correctly. I've seen so many where they don't. Including again, some big names who have teams of people to help. And the reality is visitors don't stay on websites, which don't display properly. And extra bonus point hair. If you're with a friend and they have a different phone. Ask, if you could check your website on their phone. Because website's displayed differently on different size screens. So I actually have a, an iPhone. It's quite a small screen and that's why often websites don't display properly on mine. I can usually pretty certain if it's displaying correctly on mine, then it's likely to display correctly on all mobile apps. But if you've got a larger phone, then it's not always that case. Now I would say that it's not going to take you five minutes to check this. But if you find anything, it might be even more than five minutes to fix it. And the final one is to book a website review with me. I put a link in the show notes. So this is super easy to do. Or you can go straight to beyond the kitchen table.co.uk/website, hyphen consultancy. This is a service I offer where I spend 50 minutes with you. Uh, overseen and we'd go through your website or the key pages and I'll help you improve it. It's an advisory service. I don't make the changes. That's up to you. But sometimes you just need another pair of eyes and professional eyes to see what would make your website better. And then say you can then go away and make the changes yourself, or ask the person who built your website to make some. And if you use the code podcast, all capital letters. You'll get 20% off the cost of this until the end of September. So I've just run through a long list of things you can do on your website in no more than five minutes each. And I'm going to remind you what they are. So the first one was to change your homepage, header image. The second. A branding photographer. The third is to come up. With the list of blog posts that you can write. The fourth is to update your pricing. And check that you've got the correct pricing and packages on your website. The fifth is to ask for testimonials. The sixth is to resize images, at least on your home page. Number seven is to check the links work. Eight is cute. Add links to your most popular blog posts. Number nine is to check contact information is correct. 10th is to add or check meta descriptions on all the pages that you're seeking to rank on Google. Number 11 to test how your website looks on a mobile. And the final one, number 12 is to book a website review with me. Now, please don't feel that you have to try and do all of them. I suggest you choose three. And then when you've got five minutes, this summit resist the temptation to scroll social media and do one of them. And do you let me know which ones you plan to do? Just email me at say hello. At, beyond the kitchen table.co.uk. Or you can message me on Instagram. I'm at, beyond the KT on there. That's it for this week. I haven't interviewed for you again next week. So you've got that to look forward to. And have a great week and I will see you next week