The importance of creating a visual brand that is more than just a logo with Helen Bamborough from Mumfolk
What’s this episode about?
In the 3rd and final episode of the Branding mini series, Helen and I talk about visual branding. This isn’t an episode that is going to tell you how to create a great social media graphic or what fonts to use. This is much more about how we convey our brand to potential clients, from messaging and the language we use to the feel our brand invokes when people look at our social media and website.
If you’ve always ‘made do’ with a simple logo, brand colours and some social media templates, but it’s starting to feel a bit disconnected and like it doesn’t represent your business, or you spend hours on Canva trying to make things ‘work’ and want to develop a more cohesive brand look and voice - this episode is for you!
Episode key takeaways:
Why branding is more than a font, colours and a logo (and what is really needs to include)
When to invest in support with branding (and not to)
The issue with using Canva for your branding
How having a clear brand can decrease your mental load and increase your sales
The ways your brand can attract dream clients (and repel ‘less than ideal’ clients!)
KEY LINKS:
Domestika course: Click here
Instagram: @mum_folk
Website: Mumfolk.com
INTRODUCING… HELEN BAMBOROUGH
Helen is a Brand Strategist, Creative Director and Founder of Mumfolk Studio - a Branding Agency for mums with creative, fashion & lifestyle businesses looking to stand out and make an impact.
She’s designed for brands such as Whistles, The Bodyshop & Nobody’s Child before setting up her own studio in 2017 after having her first child.
She helps mums in business gain brand clarity, magnetise the right clients and customers and build brand momentum.
She’s also a Coach & Mentor for Brand Designers and featured Instructor & course collaborator for global teaching platform Domestika.
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Read the transcript:
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Hello, and welcome to growing pains. The marketing podcast for parent and baby brands who want to grow and get more consistent sales, but without the overwhelm of feeling like you have to be online 24 7, I'm Sophie, your host, and a Facebook and Instagram ad strategist who specializes in parent and baby brands as well as a mom of two.
Join me each week as I alongside some wonderful guests, she had practical tips and advice about how you can use and combine marketing strategies to get more impact for your effort.
sOPHIE: Hello and welcome today. I am thrilled to be here with Angela from AB web designs. Angela's a web designer and a developer who specializes in WordPress, our websites, not only does she design new websites for new businesses. She also helps those who already have a website that need development work prior to retraining as a profession.
Designer five years ago, she worked as a commercial buyer for leading high street retailers, meaning she's passionate about customer service and maximizing [00:01:00] websites to make as much money as they can, which is exactly the reason why I invited her hair to speak to us today because I think so many of us have websites.
They're not doing exactly what we want them to do, and we need someone who's kind of got a bit of an eye for that making, making money and getting those customers through. So Angela, welcome to the podcast.
Angela: Yeah.
sOPHIE: Thank you so much for coming on. So I've done the official intro, but let's talk a little bit about, more about you before we get into all the nitty gritty. So what's your like work family life setup?
Angela: So I I'm a busy mom, just like, I think most of your listeners and And I do my work around like family and between school drop-offs and school pickups. We live in Kent. I have one son and we have a cat as well.
sOPHIE: flame. And how old your son?
Angela: He said, so he feels very grown up, [00:02:00] but not quite
sOPHIE: No. Quiet. Yeah, we would not like middle stage where it's like, not quite like the baby ages, but like not quite there, like fully fledged teenager yet.
Angela: That sorority doesn't want to hold my hand anymore. He still likes it. You still likes a cuddle now, and then
sOPHIE: Oh, bless brilliant. Well, so that we can really get to know what the your views on the important stuff. I've got a bit of a quick fire round as well. I know everyone's really scared about this, but it's honestly fine. Okay, so tea or coffee.
Angela: definitely.
sOPHIE: Oh, me too. I'm a big, big tea fan here. Well I might know the answer to this already, but dogs or cats.
Angela: Definitely.
sOPHIE: Bagels or crumpets.
Angela: Ooh. I think I'd have to go for Chrome page.
sOPHIE: I know we love a crumble. I actually think this would be my hardest question to answer, because I love them both beach or pool. Oh, nice. Yeah. See, I have an issue with sand, so
Angela: Oh,
sOPHIE: yeah.
Angela: I love her. I love the [00:03:00] smell of the sound.
sOPHIE: Yeah. Oh, I do love, I do love the site. I'm actually going away this weekend down to Lyme Regis and oh, I can't wait just to be by the sea. Like, there's that noise of the seas. Oh, so soothing. Isn't it?
Angela: Yes.
sOPHIE: Winter or summer.
Angela: Selma on hate band call.
sOPHIE: Oh yeah. The snow today is probably not ideal for you and color or.
Angela: Ooh, kind of on that one.
sOPHIE: No one's actually tasted monochrome yet. So yeah, it was still awaiting early morning or late night.
Angela: I think having a child, whatever anybody was before will make them an early morning person.
sOPHIE: I agree, even now like a lion, like it's like, oh my gosh, I had a line. I didn't have to get up until eight. O'clock. Like my former self would be horrified. That that was brilliant. Well, thank you so much. So today we are going to be talking all about websites and [00:04:00] conversion rates and how we really have. Increase the amount of conversions you've got on your website.
We're going to be talking about service-based business and econ. So we've got something for everyone. And yeah, so I guess we should really kick off with like conversion rate optimization, CRO it's one of those things it's kind of banded around a little bit. It's a little bit jargony. It might be helpful.
Angela, if you just give us a bit of an overview about what, so we all have kind of a common understanding about what we're talking about today.
Angela: So conversion rate optimization is just in simple terms, making your website better and making it perform the very, very best that it can. It's making sure that all the visitors that are coming to your website. Doing exactly what you want them to do. Optimization is a, is a word that's used a lot with websites.
And when we could talk about SEO optimization, that's a whole different subject. But it's basically making your website better and faster.
sOPHIE: Brilliant. Okay. And in terms of choosing what? So I think most of my audience [00:05:00] will already have a website. So they've probably already chosen which platform they've kind of gone for. Is there one that's better than another for, for conversion rate optimization or they do, they kind of all differ.
Angela: They do differ.
but there was some that better than others say. So there's three main websites, really different platforms. You've got WordPress, if you which can cover everything that can cover e-commerce and that can cover surface space. Thank God Shopify, which covers e-commerce only, potentize a really, really good and really great conversions.
If you had a very hard. And if you had a website with an e-commerce website with a lot of traffic, then you'd be looking at something like McNeil, which is, which is an amazing platform, but very expensive. The platforms that don't tend to do very well are platforms such as because they're just not optimized that they always a bit clunky and they never quite work the way [00:06:00] that they should.
And they're not as good. And see as WordPress Shopify Squarespace is okay, but it can be very minimalistic looking. And therefore it can be quite difficult sometimes to convert on Squarespace. I'll have say some fairly good squares by sites, but they tend to be built by professional designers.
sOPHIE: Yeah, and I guess that's really a key thing. Isn't it? You know, there are experts in this area. So today we're kind of talking to the people who. I've either done it themselves. And and that's, you know, when you're starting out and you've got to kind of do a bit of everything and Shopify do provide a nice, some really good templates.
And so does WordPress and they've got some great plugins as well. Or even Squarespace. I mean, my website Squarespace and it is incredibly easy to get started. But you know, you're not an expert. It can be hard to know what to do for the best or most. And you just end up kind of going on a design, like what looks nice.
Or maybe you've had it set up by someone who, again is more of an aesthetic designer, I guess, rather than a conversion[00:07:00] specialists, because really when you're in a business, like we are, you know, every single customer counts, don't they, and you really need to making sure your website is working so hard for you.
So, yeah, that's kind of who we're talking to you today. If you've had your website done by a conversion rate, optimize like specialist, these will probably all kind of sound very familiar and not be as relevant, but still worth listening though. And double-checking, which I think brings us on to our first, we've got seven tips for you today, and that should bring us on nicely to your first tip, Angela.
Angela: Yes, it does. Thanks. Check it, check your, and go through it. So many people build their website and then ignore it. So you need to go through it as if you were a customer click on your navigation links, click on all your buttons and all your links. Make sure that everything's connecting correctly. Three definitely single words.
Amazing. The amount of heat that you might spot a typo a few months later. Chicken on a mobile, get your mobile phone out and look at it because if you've built your website yourself, [00:08:00] you've probably built it on, on your, on your laptop. And not on your mobile phone is pretty difficult to build a website and a mobile phone to be fair.
But lots of DIY websites. I see don't look great on a mobile and it's because the. The user hasn't thought they haven't thought to getting their mobile phone out and just check it. If you have any comments, best nurses check through the whole buyer journey, go through checkout cart and the checkout experience as well as see what your customers have really see and say, don't just check it yourself, get your partner.
We'll get your family to check it out to.
sOPHIE: Yeah, I was going to say that actually, sometimes you can come a little bit blind to it. Can't you where you've just like read something so many times you just see what you think is there rather than what's really that I know that's
Angela: Yeah. A good tip that somebody told me.
once is when you reading through your text to read it backwards. So you actually concentrate on the word [00:09:00] rather than on the sentence. So cause your eyes, like you say, they can trick you and you can see you think you're reading something. That's not actually there.
sOPHIE: Yeah, well, that's a great tip. Okay, brilliant. So we've checked our website. We've gone on, we've gone through it all. We've checked everything. What are we doing that?
Angela: And so well then hopefully you can identify whether there's some things that you weren't aware of, or if you know, your, your headings might be too big on a mobile phone. And just look all for your you might have texts falling off the sides, then you can go and correct that. Some big tick number to dust off your Google analytics. Google analytics scares a lot of people, but there are heaps and heaps of tutorials and help online to to help you through it. But you know, it can look really confused. But there were only a couple of really key metrics that you should be looking at on Google analytics.
You want to be looking at all your pages and see if [00:10:00] there's a high bounce rate or an exit right now, just to clarify what that difference is on that. So an exit rate is if somebody is been browsing through your website or different pages, and then they leave your website, and that is an exit rates on that page, let's say they've on your about page and they leave.
That's an exit rate on that one that leaves your website at some point. A bounce rate is somebody that's come on to that page and left it without going anywhere else on your websites. And the bounce rate in particular is one that you really, really want to look at. And so if you can see really high bounce rates on certain pages, it just means that people are leaving your site way too quickly.
So you need to think about ways that you can keep them on your. Nope. So an example that they said, blog posts, blog posts are really great at driving traffic to your website. But they tend to suffer from high bounce rates because people look at them and then leap straight to say, try and add on some more [00:11:00] buttons or some links to. Blog posts that you've got on your website or even sales pages, et cetera, to just try to keep them on your website a bit longer, the Femi leadership to have a newsletter sign up. So at least you getting people's details through that. There's lots. I mean, there's, there's a massive amount of metrics you can look at on good ground analytics, but those are the ones for website conversion that you should be looking at the most.
You can look at how people are facing. Do you call us as people are looking at. So you can see if you've got particularly high bounce rate on mobile versus versus laptop, for example. And then that would indicate that you've got a problem on a mobile e-commerce businesses should be looking a lot more things on Google analysts.
They should be really using Google analytics. They should be looking at how long, how long would they use this, a spending on their website? And. Delving into Bosket conversions as well to see where people aren't leaking out of the conversion process.
sOPHIE: Yeah, that's actually one of the biggest things I see with Facebook [00:12:00] ads. We often our website won't have had a huge amount of organic traffic necessarily. So we'll start running Facebook ads to the website and we see this kind of add to basket effect where everyone gets stuck there. And you'd kind of knew you're not getting the conversions, but you're getting this like pile up of ad to kind of add to carts.
And it can really highlight no, we're gonna go through this a bit more later, but it can really highlight that there's a bit of an issue that I can't, if people
Angela: Yes, definitely. Definitely.
sOPHIE: Brilliant. Okay. So that's tip number one and two. What is number three?
Angela: Number three, it's about making your website faster. Site users won't stay on your website if it's slow. So you need to make your website as fast as possible. So my biggest tip here is to run your website pages through a a check-in piece of software. And you can either use GT metrics or Pingdom.
Both of these are free. I would be for a certain amount of pages per day, but they are, they are still free and they will give you [00:13:00] a traffic light system and highlight if there are any issues. And it gives you a good place to start looking. So some of it, some of their suggestions may go over your user's head.
Some of them are more for developers, but it will highlight some changes. That you'll use, this can make it themselves. Which leads me straight on to tip number four. Cause one thing that it will highlight and one of the biggest things I see on websites where people have done them themselves are images.
It's like stop loading, enormous images. I just take forever to load. And if you think that over 50% of users accessing what size are mobile users and maybe they won't 4g, maybe they're even on 3g in some parts of mobile Kentico, it's certainly on 3g, snail. And you think how long that takes, download people, just get bored and leave.
sOPHIE: Yeah.
Angela: So in fact, e-commerce businesses will be even more than 50% will be mobile users. [00:14:00] So if you think about the wide desktop, so the top tends to be about 1920 pixels wide and even. And HD desktop, which B, which will be about 2,500 pixels wide. So if you've got a full blown header image, it doesn't need to be more than 1920 pixels wide. And if you've got a smaller image, it doesn't need to be really more than 600 to 800 pixels wide. Majority of people are looking at it on a mobile. They don't want to be loading an image. That's two and a half thousand pixels wide, really? So don't not like any bigger than that. And if you can, you want to compress your images and make them smaller and, and you can use some tools online tools, and ideally you want to do it before you upload websites.
You can use some tools such as tiny P and J some websites. You can upload them all there, and it will strip out all the data [00:15:00] that hides behind and photos, and it will compress them for the website and you can't tell the difference and they cannot tell the difference between a compressed. Image and and an original image.
I'd always say don't upload PNGs upload JPEGs, JPEGs, take up less space than
If they've got transparent backgrounds such as your logo.
sOPHIE: Ah, okay. That's a really good tip. So when you're, if you're doing anything on Canva, I guess, and then downloading it, cause you always have an option that you to choose what you download as I never know which one's best. So JPEG would be better
Angela: Can I pigs better, I guess. Yes, there are files. So they're better for websites. you can also, I mean, if you've got access to Photoshop, brilliant use Photoshop to compress your images. But as I said, you can use tiny PNG online. At the very least you should type of plugin. So I can say WordPress has some [00:16:00] great image, optimization, plugins, such as short pixel or smash, and they will sit there and they will compress every single image for you.
sOPHIE: Oh, fantastic. What I should say as well as all of these websites, Lynx answers, giving out, we'll pop them in the show notes so that you can just click on them and go over to them. So we'll make sure there's a list of them for you in terms of when you're saying about like the pixel size. I'm trying to think for, like, for me doing it, I guess the normal way that I would look at how big and images would be in my files.
And it would normally have like kilobytes or megabytes. How does that kind of relate
Angela: Well, 19, so 1920 pixels wide. So if you look in your file, it will tell you the size of the As well, I'll tell you how many pixels?
it is. I've been canvas actually great for bringing in because you can set up custom dimensions in there. So you can set up a custom dimension for your header and then import the photo into that.
And then it will be in the [00:17:00] document.
sOPHIE: Okay. So the dimensions that are more important than the size of the file, like the
Angela: Well it's well, the cell is the megabytes.
is very important. You shouldn't be loading anything that's more than half a megabyte. And for small images, they should certainly be a lot less than that. So a head to image should be less than a half a megabyte, but if you get them into Canva, that will at least do part of the job before.
sOPHIE: Oh, brilliant. Okay. Fantastic. Well, that's really helpful. I mean, it's all these, like, it does sound quite technical, doesn't it? And I guess that's where. Either you need to sit down and really get your head around this. Like, what we're kind of saying is this stuff is important. And actually for it's as much as it's as important, and you know, there's no point doing all your marketing and getting someone to your website and then them not converting because your website is not scratch.
Either either you need to get ahead head around this sort of stuff and kind of work out how you can kind of make it work, or you need to kind of work with someone like you, [00:18:00] I guess, who can support you in kind of pointing out what needs to be done and either doing it for you or kind of giving you like a really clear guidance on like, these are the steps you need to take.
Is that kind of how you work with businesses
Angela: Yes, definitely. Yeah. definitely.
sOPHIE: Brilliant. Okay, fabulous. So we've done four. So check your website, make sure that it reads well and it looks okay on mobile. Go onto your Google analytics, have a real route around, have a look at your bounce rates, exit rates, dwell times on your page, like average baskets, that sort of thing.
Check your speed. That's I mean, that's a super simple one. People can do. Isn't it like just go into these free websites, check your speed. And am I right in thinking as well? Like this. It is like an SEO piece as well. In terms of ranking a website, Google doesn't
Angela: definitely.
sOPHIE: do they.
Angela: That's exactly right. Google does not like a slow, website and will mock you down. You'll find yourself snipping down the rankings. If you've got slow websites.
sOPHIE: Yeah. So, I mean, there's like some big incentives there, like users [00:19:00] and Google don't like it. So you just really need to kind of sort that out. And one of the big things we find is images are the ones that can make it slow. Okay. So we've got three more tips left. Let's go for a bit of a service specific.
Angela: Yes. One for service based businesses. I think about your page layout. So think about, don't have a confusing page. Now. Lots of people that built their own website. Service-based businesses. They have too much text on them. What you find is that users don't actually read your texts so we could tell your, tell you this.
But they look at the images first. I'll look at the images and they'll skim read that. And a lot of people, a lot of service-based businesses will have a really long sales page or a London page. they'll just skim day. Look at the images. Think this is for me. This is not for me. If it's for them, then might then take more time to read it.
But a big mistake though is see that a lot of people make is they'll say, oh, you can find out more about this hair with a [00:20:00] button. Oh, you can find out more about this here with another button, with a different, with different buttons, going to different places. we pay should have a purpose and you should have one call to action on that page.
Now you can have more, you can have that call traction more than once. So you might want to, for example, book a call. So you can have Booker call featured in a number of places, but you're not asking somebody to book a call, email, or go off and see something else or go from B to about page or have a blog page.
This page has one purpose and that is to book.
sOPHIE: Brilliant. Yeah. And I think it's, it's so easy. Isn't it to think like, oh, I just want to like cover all my bases and make sure that like, you know, or some people might want to book a call or some people might want to read a blog first. And actually, I mean, we were talking about this before we. Started recording that it's really about taking a step back, isn't it.
And thinking about that user journey and how you want people to kind of navigate through your website and how, like the steps you want them to take from kind of [00:21:00] landing where they land to taking the action you want them to take.
Angela: Yep. That's exactly right. So you need to think about what you want your users to do and what your user's going to be happy today. And that there's no, there's no. There's no reason to send people off in different directions when you really, what you want them to do is book a call with you.
sOPHIE: Yeah, absolutely. And one thing we were talking about as well is the home page and how that's like this a slightly different rule of thumb, because obviously it's more of like a directory, isn't it? You had a really good analogy for that.
Angela: Yes. Say your homepage is, is a signpost to the best of your site. So think about it. If you go into department store and you say, you know, you've got ladies fashion on the first floor and you've got men's fashion on normally in the lower ground floor in the basement.
sOPHIE: Yeah,
Yeah.
Angela: the tiny corner home where someone else in your homepage should be like facts.
It should be short sections that would direct [00:22:00] people to where you want them to go. And where you think that they're going to walk to go to as well. And one of the key things is to not repeat yourself. So something I see a lot is people have a massive paragraph on their home page about themselves or about me or.
Wonderful. And I do this with a link to their about page. That's fine. You should link to your about page, but then you go into the about page and the text is exactly the same as we've just seen on the home page. And the use automatically switches off cause they're bored. They think, oh right there with it in themselves.
So they'll switch off. So it's, you know, you should just have a small intro on your home page with, with a more in depth information on your about page.
sOPHIE: Ah, brilliant. And then one question that comes up quite a lot is especially cause a lot of my listeners will be on Instagram and that'll be their like main kind of social media. Should you have Instagram, you know, your Instagram feed or links through to your Instagram on your homepage or on your website even.
Angela: Yeah.
So it depends [00:23:00] on the prime goal of your users. So if they really, really want to grow that Instagram businesses, I would say yes, but in general, you really want to keep people on your website. You don't want to be sending them off to other platforms because what they're going to do on Instagram, they're going to follow you.
Switch their phone off. That's it. You want them to stay on your website? You want them to be buyer for you, and that's the same if your service based on e-commerce base. So, you know, the Instagram feeds can look really nice. It's it's generally advise against them. They also shut down your website as well. Having to go away and fetch the information back from Instagram of, of these of your latest feed and also adding more images on, and the Instagram images don't tend to be very well compressed either. So it can, it can slow down your website as well. So my general feeling is no, my general advice, sorry is no, but there are situations where you, where if you really, really want to grow your [00:24:00] Instagram following, then yesterday.
sOPHIE: Brilliant. I think that's really helpful for people because sometimes you just do things. You've no idea the impact. Do you? It's just a case of like, oh, well, it'll look good and I'll get me more followers, but actually you're right. You've got to really think about like why people are on your website and what you want them to do.
Angela: Yes, definitely.
sOPHIE: Okay. So tip number six.
Angela: Let's talk about color. And this is, this is primarily on people that have done their own website and something that I see a lot is that they get carried away with colors. They get really excited, they're in the creative mindset, and I just want to put so much color on as possible. And sometimes they might have had a branding dump from a designer.
They feel that they've got to use every single color that, that Brendan designers given them. And it's more on a website use, use less colors generally. And then another thing that I see a lot is I'll see a website and I'll go to the Instagram account and they, [00:25:00] you can't even tell, but at the same company so it's make sure your colors on your website, on brands and that are suitable for your target market.
So. So if your, if your primary marketing at times there's some another color tip I've got is be careful about using reading grades. So not a lot of people. They're like 8% of men are color blind in this country.
sOPHIE: Oh, no, I didn't realize I
Angela: Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a massive proportion. And so I see quite a lot people using, but in green scare, you know, you might have a red call to action on the green background, color blind men.
Can't pick that up.
sOPHIE: So interesting.
Angela: yeah, I'd be really careful with using red and green together on your websites. And. should have one button for your call to action, as well as some, one butter. So one color for your call to action, and this should be different from all the other color. So let's say your website color scheme is predominantly below.
Try not to use a blue as a call to [00:26:00] action. Try to use something that jars a little bit. So people will notice it and think, oh my gosh, now I've got click on this button and say something like an orange, for example, and do not use that color anywhere else because it just confuses the.
sOPHIE: I such a good tip. I definitely haven't thought that through on my website. So I'm going to go away and have a look at that myself. No, that's really helpful. Okay. Oh God.
Angela: sorry, I've got one more final tip
sOPHIE: gosh. Amazing. Go for it.
Angela: This color, color tips. There's lots on here. And just be careful about using dark text on a dark background or even worth light texts. And it's white text on a light background. I see a lot of people use that. They'll have like a Powell beige background or background, and it.
has white texts on it.
So difficult to read.
sOPHIE: Yeah, absolutely. That's I think sometimes as well, you can a bit like this whole laptop thing, you know, when it's on a laptop and you've got really like HD monitor and it's fine. And then you check it on your mobile and you're like, oh yeah, no, I [00:27:00] can't read that at all. So definitely it's going back to that checking piece again.
Isn't it. Fantastic. Right. And our last tip for today is specifically for our e-comm listeners. And this is all about the checkout process and how we can get more of those people actually checking out and purchasing.
Angela: Yes. So e-commerce businesses by nature have a very high dropout rates at courts and check out. So you need to be doing the most, you can to try and stop those. One of the biggest issues that for drop out one of the biggest things that causes dropout at call it level is delivery charges. You need to be really transparent about your delivery charges before you even get to carts level.
If you can do free. Amazing. Fantastic. If you can't just be really transparent, have it on every single product page, what your thing of recharge actually is. And also what you're doing if we need times are so ideally you want to say that it's [00:28:00] three to five business working days. If that's what it is and significant challenges are full-time 95.
That's it that's an example. Because people will get all the way through, they check out and then mail. I said, pay five, cancel if we charge with banking and they will, they will drop out of the process. And you lost, you lost the customer as well. They'll never come back. be transparent on your product pages about your delivery charges and delivery policies, which also needs to be on to make sure that your policies are really clear on all the returns and that they're accessible for people to see ease and they should be in your footer and is mop top that so that people can see them.
Think about all the frequently asked questions that you get, that you get emails and include those. yes, some people are reluctant to put their returns policy on there because they think it might put people off, but if people are going to be put off anyway, so you might as well put the people off that you're going to be putting off [00:29:00] and the people.
And then it gives people who were a little bit questioning. It gives them that reassurance, that. they know what your returns policy.
sOPHIE: Yeah.
Angela: Also on your product page and on your cart page, you should have upsells and nuts to try and get your higher basket value. You want people to be buying more products.
They think about those, make sure they're appropriate as well. So so I deal with WordPress websites. I work with woo commerce. Commerce is quite bad at the upsells. They tend to be quite random unless you specifically tell them. We're comments what those upsells should be. So, you know, it's a funkiness opportunity to make sure you're making the most of your upsells.
And then a final quick tip. I mean, e-commerce optimization. I could talk for hours, quite frankly, Sophie, but this isn't.
sOPHIE: Very quick overview. Yeah.
Angela: It's your checkout. Try and make it distraction free if possible, by distraction free. I mean, [00:30:00] get rid of your head. You don't, you know, they've gone through the cart stage. They've got to your checkout.
You just want to get them money at that stage. So get rid of your head. Let's get rid of your navigation. You don't want people to be stop clicking on different things too, because, oh, what's that shiny thing over there. And get rid of your full term as well. So only having your foot on your face.
Altering returns and delivery information as well. And no newsletter. Pop-ups nothing like that. On your checkout page, you need to make it as simple as possible. And then the other one final tip on e-commerce for optimization is you'd be amazed at the amount of people that haven't enabled this. If you think that the majority of your customers are coming to you on a mobile phone, you see sure that you could do mobile phone, you use apple pay and Google pay that you've got those enabled on your website.
So then people that it's so easy for people to check out, they don't even have to put their name and address in because apple pay and Google pay, take [00:31:00] care of that.
sOPHIE: Yeah such a good tip because especially for parents, I think. If you're like, you know, making a purchase at 3:00 AM and you definitely do not want to be having to go downstairs to get your card, or, you know, it's, I mean, I have dropped out of so many to help processes because I have to go and get my card and I'm feeding the baby or I'm in a bed or whatever.
And I'm like, oh no, that's it. So that's just it. So yeah, I think that's a really, really good tip. And I think overall as well, like the upsells piece is really important for Facebook ads because you know, the more, the higher, your average cart value or average order value, the. More room. You've got to spend money on ads and the more you can kind of more space, you've got to kind of get those ads working, you know, the lower, the average cart value, the harder it is to hit those margins, because you've just got to get those ads cheaper and cheaper and cheaper to make sure you're actually getting, you know, a return on your investment.
So, no that's really helpful. And actually, I think we'll probably just head straight into, so after our [00:32:00] guest gives us our lovely tips I always link it back to Facebook ads and really. You know, the website is crucial. Like I can't impress it enough and you know, quite a lot of time, I have a form where people can speak to me.
Fill it, fill out before they speak to me. And I ask people about their website and often they write. They don't know the stats and they don't know the numbers and that's, and I always say to them, if you're not kind of on top of your website and on top of your stats, then you're not ready for ads yet, because ads is all about stats.
And it's all about knowing like what your margins are, how much you can afford to spend on ads. You really need to be knowing this stuff. And if you cannot get your head around it, and it's just not your zone of genius, like that's totally fine. We can't as been as business. Be on top of everything all the time, but I would really encourage you to think about it as something you should get support with and something that should be happening within your business, even if it's not you doing it yourself.
In terms of the actual ads, obviously if you're paying for people to go to your website, you need to know that it's as optimized as possible. Actually, sometimes ads can be really helpful in [00:33:00] highlighting where there's issues in your website. You might think it's absolutely fine. And then you kind of put some bit of a pressure test on it and send some traffic Iver and realize that there's an issue without to call or there's an issue with some of your products that are just, you know, got really high bounce rates.
So it can really be helpful as well. Facebook ads to kind of highlight it's worth knowing that Facebook will scan your website to check the quality. And check the, the content and kind of overall feel is congruent to your ad. So you can't have an ad for something that isn't relevant to your website.
Facebook will check that cause they're sneaky like that. And something we haven't really touched on today, but we will touch on in a separate episode is the, you know, the tech side of ads, three important with websites. Like you need to have your pixel on. You need to have conversion API ideally set up and you need to have all your events set up.
And that is something that Shopify and WordPress do really, really well. There's a plugin. I think it's called pixel my site. That's really good for WordPress and Shopify have an incredible integration. It's very, very easy. But yeah, it's, there's all those things you need to think about [00:34:00] when you're thinking about.
And your website. So yeah, I hope that was incredibly helpful. We've covered loads of strategies today, about how to use E how to use your website to really drive those conversions for your business. Obviously we know how easy it is to take in information and then kind of do nothing with it. So the end of the episode, I always ask my guests.
What's the one thing you would do recommend doing today to help people get stopped?
Angela: So a website shouldn't stand still. So I think a lot of people build their website that yep. Done and dusted website they'll move on with doing other things. It needs to constantly evolve as your business does. So you need to make sure that the one thing you should do today is schedule some time to review your.
And update it regularly as well, time to update it and check your stats as well. They'll tell you whether your website is performing or not.
sOPHIE: Fantastic. Lovely. Thank you so much for joining us today. So if you've enjoyed listening to Angeles tips and kind of want a little bit more advice and support, [00:35:00] she has a fabulous freebie five reasons why your website isn't performing I'm 13 fixes website designers. Don't normally tell you. You can also go onto our website and book a free discovery call with her.
I'll put both of those links in there. It's for you. And one of Angela's passions we were talking about this before was, is actually helping people who already have websites kind of decode the websites and really get them working for you. So I would really encourage you to kind of get in contact with her.
If you want to kind of work out why your website isn't working. So thank you so much, Angela, for joining us
Angela: Oh, thank you Sophie, for having me, I love geeking out about websites and optimizing them. So thank you very much.
I have massive thank you for listening today and to the whole season. So this is the last episode in season one, episode 22. I've had such incredible feedback and I really appreciate it when you take the time to message me and. Mentioned it, when I go on calls with you and leave reviews. Honestly, it absolutely makes my day. So [00:36:00] really hope that this first season of episodes have been useful. I will be back. I'm already. Booking in interviews with new experts and guests. I will be back towards the middle to the end of September. In the meantime, if you want to stay up to date with everything that's happening. I'll be sending out weekly emails over the summer with a quick top tip for you to come implement really easily and quickly. And of course, you'll be the first to hear when the podcast is live. Again, make sure you join my email list. I will link to that in the show notes below. And again, thank you so much. And I will see you in season two.
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