267. How to Conduct a Website Audit for Your Coworking Space with Taylor Mason

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267. How to Conduct a Website Audit for Your Coworking Space with Taylor Mason

00:00:02 Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where every week I keep you updated on the latest trends and how-tos in Coworking. I owned and operated coworking spaces for eight years, and then served as the executive director of the global workspace association for five years. And today I work with hundreds of operators and community managers every month, allowing me to bring you thought-provoking operator,

00:00:29 case studies and inspirational interviews with industry thought leaders to help you confidently stay on top of what's important and what you can apply to your own role in the Coworking industry. Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. Thank you for joining me. So we're doing a series this month. Ish. This month I snuck in an extra episode in my series, so it's not going to flow exactly month to month,

00:00:58 but that's okay. So the series is all about your online presence for your Coworking business. And this week, we're talking about how to conduct a website audit for your coworking space with Taylor Mason, Taylor was on episode 203, talking about content marketing for coworking spaces. So don't miss that episode. If you haven't listened to it, or if you need a refresher,

00:01:23 he's a marketing expert for the Coworking industry. And on this episode, he shares his framework for auditing coworking space websites, to identify ways to improve them. And if you're like me, you cringe. When you think about your website, cause it always needs to be updated. I've been talking about how mine is due for a big update for a long time.

00:01:42 It takes a lot of discipline to carve out the time to do that project. So I think it's great to work with folks like Taylor and Taylor. It's just such a great story. We talk more about his Coworking story on episode two or three, but kind of how he got into Coworking as a niche. If you're not on his newsletter, I highly recommend it.

00:02:00 I'm on it. I always read it. It's always thought-provoking. You can go to his website@talemaker.ca it's a Canadian website and get on there. I'm sure he has a direct link to his newsletter cause he talks about that in his newsletter. But I don't know what that link is right off the bat. He also offered a free audit discussion with anybody.

00:02:21 Who's a podcast listener. We're going to prioritize our academy members. If you're an academy member and you want a website audit message me, email or slack, and we'll make sure that you are first in line, but it is talemaker.ca forward slash audit. If you want to get on his calendar to do that before we dive into Taylor, we have a couple of announcements.

00:02:46 So we've also started, we're busy with content. We've started a second podcast, which is called flex uncensored. Somebody emailed me recently and said, Hey, what is that called? You know? And I was like, clearly I'm not talking about that. Often enough since, since somebody was asking, so flex uncensored, you can find that anywhere you listen to your podcasts.

00:03:08 And we started a series I originally started at for our academy members. And then I said, this content is so good. I'm going to extend it publicly. It's called how I did this. So we pulled together operators to share how they've done something in your business that I know that a lot of you are also working on. So our academy members get the recordings so they can watch them.

00:03:29 Anytime the public is just the live version, but we are about to do one on building your virtual office, digital mail business. We did one on buying a building and we did one on choosing a CRM. So if you're an academy member, you have all those recordings. And our next session is September 15th at 10 o'clock Pacific time. And it is on co-warehousing.

00:03:55 So hot topic. It's a kind of a, you know, a sister business model to Coworking. And we have some folks who are running that model and they're going to share how they run the model, how they did this. So if you want to register for that, you can go to Everything Coworking dot com forward slash how I did this.

00:04:14 I want to make sure I give a shout-out to our community managers that were certified this month. We have a bunch of them. Jace from common Good Waltham. We have to get him on the podcast because Jason is running a coffee shop and a co-working space. Ashley Raftery from Hone Coworks in Albany, New York, Sarah Campbell. I think we already gave her a shout-out,

00:04:40 but Sarah second shout out in Crawfordsville, and Nina Molina. I'm pretty sure we've given her a shout out too. So I'll stop on that list from spoke Coworking in Tucson. So shout out to those folks and we are going to open our management agreement course shortly. So if you are thinking about doing, we use the term broadly management agreement. There are so many folks that are doing creative deal structures of all kinds.

00:05:09 So we're opening that course in September. You can get all the details you can join any time. We have folks who join here and there, we just run a cohort like once a quarter. So our next one is coming up in September. You can get all the details. You can join whatever you want, but know that we have the cohort that runs live Q and A's that you can learn from each other and get access to our subject matter expert,

00:05:32 Michael Abrams, Everything Coworking dot com forward slash management agreements. We'll put all those links in the show notes. Okay. Now onto my conversation with Taylor Mason, I have a repeat guest today. Taylor, I feel like you were just on the podcast and I did a quick search and you were episode 2 0 6, which was sometime last year. I was sure you were joining two.

00:05:57 I was like, wow. Literally I do that all the time. I feel like you were just on, so I'm glad we're doing this. Cause it feels like good spacing. Cause you will be in the two sixties. So It's been a lot of time actually. And maybe it's because I saw you recently and you've done some things for our academy groups.

00:06:16 So that's probably why, but thank you for coming back on. Thank you for having me back time flies when things are a little bit crazy, I guess, right? No, totally. So yeah. I mean maybe a quick update since then, but if anybody missed episode 2 0 6, Taylor talked through why content marketing is important for coworking space owners and Taylor is the founder of tail maker and Tilly do a lot of things for co-working space owners.

00:06:44 I'll let you kind of talk through what you're up to these days. And today we're going to talk about Coworking website audits. And this always makes me what I look through your deck. I was like, oh, I cringe because I know my own website needs, needs updates. Websites are like a, like a living organism. They, they always need need updates.

00:07:06 It's always harder to do it for yourself as well. Like looking introspectively at your own website is always a lot harder than looking at other people's. I look at mine every two to three months and I'm like, Ooh, I need to really Polish this up. It's good for a minute. And then you've got to go back and revisit it. So yeah.

00:07:20 Yup. It takes, I mean, right. It takes a really big commitment. I think it's a lot of work to put together a website. And so the idea that you have to revisit it all the time feels like kind of overwhelming, but you really have to look at it as a, a journey and an ongoing commitment. Yeah. Well,

00:07:36 and I also, you know, with websites, I've always said that when you're, especially when you're too close to when you're doing your own and you're connected to it, you have all this information that is important to you and trying to distill down. I don't like having 500 pieces to a 50 piece puzzle and trying to figure out what you need and what you don't.

00:07:50 And it's always hard to take that information, distill it to its finest points and make it digestible effective when you're too close to it. I'm guilty of this myself And we know all the things. And so it's hard to put ourselves in the shoes of someone who doesn't know our story. Yeah, absolutely. That's where you, yeah. For like, for me,

00:08:09 it's a really thorough onboarding process before you anything. I have like 40 questions I bug people with to learn every single detail. Then we have a call there's a lot involved. I got to get to know you well, so, Okay. So give us the update about what kind of projects you're working on these days for co-working space operators. Yeah. So these days doing just a lot of content strategy for a lot of awesome clients throughout Canada and the U S which has been a lot of fun,

00:08:36 everything from website audits and rewrites to both some strategies from blogs to email marketing and how those can contribute to social media and all that good stuff. And I've been bringing on some, some great writers to help me out with creating some of that content. So it's been a lot of fun and actually working on them, automation, email automation, sequencing, and stuff for,

00:08:58 for coworking spaces, they're welcome sequences and stuff like that. So it's always a work in progress, but it's been a fun and exciting and, and busy, I guess, six, eight months or whatever, since we last spoke. Oh, awesome. Okay. So today we're going to dive into, well, first I have to mention I was just in Canada last week And Yeah,

00:09:18 it was, it was really fantastic. I don't know. I don't know. We'd been to, I think our, you know, our last like kind of big, probably family trip before COVID was to the Tetons and Yellowstone. So I was kinda like, I don't know, we just like overdoing the national park thing, but so we went to Banff and Jasper and I just,

00:09:40 I mean, the scenery in the it's like astounding, The Canadian Rockies are credible. I drove back through, I lived in Toronto and I drove back to Vancouver two years ago and driving through that entire stretch from Calgary to Vancouver, it's just, you've never seen anything like it, you're looking up the entire way, like where's the sky start and where the mountain then Totally it is.

00:10:01 It's really, really just striking. So, and we had debated, do we want to go all the way up to Jasper, but we're so glad we did. It was really beautiful. We stayed for a couple of nights at the Fairmont, which has like own like lake it's kind of a David Yeah. Lake Louise, right. It's or no,

00:10:19 not lake Louise. That Fairmont looks very nice. We did go to lake Louise and do the hike, but the Fairmont and Jasper is more like, it reminded me of like a camp in new England sort of except right. The mountains in the background. So it was a bit of a dated property, but it was really, the surroundings were like amazing.

00:10:39 Just gorgeous. So It's pretty incredible up there. Yeah. We loved it. Okay. So enough on Canada, so, okay. Let's talk about websites. I'm curious before we start just like a really fundamental question. Do you get into advising people on what platform to use for their website or do they usually kind of come with a preexisting thing and you sort of work with what they have?

00:11:02 I work with what they have. Cause usually, you know, if I'm doing a website writing for people, they're coming in with a developer, who's going to build their wireframe and, and do all the design and all that kind of stuff. So they pretty much decide on what that is. But I find like 90% of the time it's WordPress,

00:11:16 because I think it's something like 90% of websites On WordPress. And then there's, there's like web-flow, which some people use, but I encountered that much less commonly, I think I only have one client with, with web flow, but yeah, I know. I just, whatever they're bringing to me, I, I, I just, yeah,

00:11:32 You work with, well, just, you know, when I think through websites, I think one of the challenging things is like we said, like it's a total work in progress and if you do your own site first, I really kind of encourage people to either outsource the whole thing and go really big on someone, you know, on resources. Like,

00:11:52 you know what you're doing, but if people do their own sort of first rev, I think keep it super simple. Wix. I like Wix. It has a Coworking template because I feel like when you first start again, unless you really invest in some people do this, like the branding and the messaging and you really do it upfront, you will almost inevitably want to change everything when you open,

00:12:16 right. When you realize like what people are looking for and the language they're using and what what's working or not working. So I feel like that first website could almost be a throw away again, unless you're going like all in. So don't overdo sort of the infrastructure of that first one, I think It's just like a starting point. It's a jumping-off point.

00:12:38 And then you start to realize, and you know, you'll look at other spaces or competitors or whatever it might be and realize what other people are doing. And just even the small like functionality and the small formatting things make such a huge difference in the way that your, your website functions and the way that it converts. I'm actually, I would tell people to just invest upfront on your website,

00:12:58 get a developer, get someone to write it. And I'm only saying this now because I'm doing this with my own website. And I've finally hired somebody who is looking at the website from, you know, the consumer journey. What do we want them to do? What's the goal of the website and how do we get them ultimately to that point? And when I first did my first iteration,

00:13:13 I just dumped a bunch of stuff on the page and was like, great, you know, 5, 6, 7 years ago or whatever it was. So yeah, I would invest heavily upfront and have a producer. But I think if you do all the work on like your ideal customer is, and like all the messaging work, everything at once. And I have seen,

00:13:32 I'm thinking of one group that's been on the podcast, they're in Stockholm and they did a lot of branding and messaging work upfront. And you can tell, but if you didn't that's okay, because now you can maybe even better answer those questions. Like you mentioned, like the 40-question questionnaire that you send to your clients. It's like, when you're just getting started,

00:13:51 sometimes you know it, and sometimes you need to open to like really know it, but, And sometimes you need a refresh anyways. Right? I think that even with a lot of the clients that I work with them, like once a year, let's dive back into this and make sure that we're still on track and make sure that everything's lining up and yup.

00:14:06 And so it never hurts to just stay on top of it. Hey, we'll be right back. I just want to share a couple of opportunities from our show sponsors as a co-working space owner, you are always looking to provide more resources and programming for your members, right? How about access to financial education and even investment opportunities? Well, noumena is the number one community for freelancers and founders looking to grow their businesses.

00:14:43 So noumena and coworking spaces go together like, you know, butter and jelly. We found that over 75% of our community already work in or are seeking out a coworking space. We'd like to help our members connect with you and find your space anywhere in the world. So join our coworking space directory to be featured in our community and give your members access to a whole library of entrepreneurial resources and financial education programming all at no cost to you,

00:15:17 by the way, visit noumena.pro forward slash Coworking to fill out an interest form that's N O U M E N a.pro/ Coworking. We will include that link in the show notes for anybody who's walking around and doesn't have time to write it down. You can find it in the show notes for this episode at Everything Coworking dot com, noumena financing. The future of work.

00:15:49 The amount of opportunity in the Coworking industry is absolutely mind blowing. It's projected to grow by $13 billion in the next five years, just staggering numbers. Now you've probably seen success magazine it's hugely popular and focuses on professional development, personal development and business coaching. Well, they're branching out with their own franchised Coworking business called success space. It's actually a brilliant franchise model with the three revenue streams recurring and on-demand revenue from Coworking memberships,

00:16:28 a full service cafe and success certified business coaching for small business owners to executives to learn more about this exciting new Coworking business opportunity. Check it out at success. Co-work dot space. That's success, co-work dot space. We will link that up in the show notes as well. So, okay. Walk us through sort of your philosophy on, you know,

00:16:55 why a great website is important and you know, some of the common mistakes that you see on Coworking websites. Yeah, absolutely. And people kind of asked me, you know, like, what are the credentials that you have for this? But in addition to having written quite a few Coworking websites, like more than I can count on two hands at this point,

00:17:14 I've also researched a ton. I've looked at like a hundred websites. So I've gotten a really good gauge on what I think works and what doesn't. But the biggest reason why a website is important is that it's kind of your spaces, virtual handshake, right? It's in the first place. People look for information for anything. These days is the internet.

00:17:30 So if you're not optimized on the internet, you're going to lose people right away. But there's also, it reflects your brand, right? It's like if someone, you can have an incredible space, but if your website blacklists or may reflect poorly on your space and you might actually lose people and have them, you know, take off before they've even given it a chance.

00:17:46 But yeah, making sure it's like nice and tidy and conveys the messages you want is important. The couple of big misconceptions that people have is people want to sell on their websites right away, like sell, sell, sell, but like 90 plus percent of consumers come to your website to do something other than to make a purchase, they want to learn.

00:18:01 They're, you know, they're looking for information, they're looking for hours, they're comparing prices and all that kind of stuff, but you want them to make sure that you're educating first because something I'll touch on in a bit, but also your website is a great way to get people educated about, about your space. People do 70% of their buying process before you ever hear from them,

00:18:17 which means that by the time someone actually contacts you or books, a tour, they've already formulated their opinion of your space and whether it's right for them based on what they see on your website. And it's, that'll help you differentiate yourself from the competition. So you need to have that there. So people can self-qualify self screen and accept your face for themselves before they spend the time to get in touch with you.

00:18:37 And yeah, so some of the more common things I see, as I said, people trying to sell over educating, it's just the wrong approach. It puts people off, making people work too hard. I read a book recently that talks about how your brain is actually hardwired to conserve calories and the harder that you have to think, the more calories you're burning and the more automatically your brain just goes,

00:18:57 I'm not doing this. So if your website makes people work too hard to get to the, the good stuff that actually goes against their biological instincts, and they will just skip over it completely. Was it a StoryBrand? It was StoryBrand. I always quote that. And I'm like, what book was that? And then I walk away and I'm like,

00:19:12 oh right. It was Donald Miller. And I love that. And I use it all the time. I had a couple of startups, school cohorts. We were like obsessed with story brand. One of our members went through his workshop and workshop, like when he used to do in-person ones, I don't even know if they do those anymore, if they're all virtual,

00:19:28 but workshop the website. But that calorie burning it's so true. People are lazy. Like how many times do you have open right now? Well, you just restarted your computer. So you're fresh. I automatically start open again. I have like 14, I'm surprised the computer even runs. Totally. I know my daughter is always walking by and be like,

00:19:47 mom, you need to post your dad's Chaos. Totally. Which, but that's how our brains work. So the whole calorie thing is so critical. Yeah. I also have weird things too. Like when I'm working on a specific project, I can only have tabs open pertaining to that. So I'll pull stuff into new tabs. I don't know if your brain works like that as well,

00:20:06 but I'm like, I need to segment this Well, which is better because then you don't get so distracted, but I think that's why the burning of calories, it's like, we're just so wired right now to like, you know, squirrel, what's the, the distracting thing that comes up. So your website needs to kind of do the work really quickly Inundated with information,

00:20:26 right? Because it's a barrage between social media websites, whatever it might be. It's like a non-stop barrage. So how, if something's too clunky and makes you work too hard, you're not going to bother to decipher whether it's something that you're actually interested in. You just going to discard it and throw it to the side. Yeah. Okay. So people,

00:20:42 people having to work too hard. What else? Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, as were saying before, getting dialed in with who your, who your target member is and who they actually really are, you know, not every space is right for every person. You're not going to be a corporate satellite office, your space, and be appealing to creative solo professionals.

00:21:00 So a lot of the time websites just don't articulate clearly enough who the space is for. And also who it's not for. Like, as I said, it's kind of a self screening process. Your website can let people know whether or not the space is going to work for them or not so that they don't waste their time reaching out or wasting your time booking the tour.

00:21:16 If it's not the right place for them. And articulating the spaces, benefits in a, in a youth focused way is something that I always get, you know, like they talk a lot about the features, the amenities, except for the services, but it's not tied to an outcome for people. And I think, you know, I say this all the time,

00:21:32 it sounds harsh, but people don't really care what you do. They care what you can do for them. And so everything that you put on your website needs to be geared towards that, like, okay, this service is great, but how am I going to benefit from this? How are you going to solve the problem that I have? And it comes back to understanding your target member,

00:21:47 what are their problems? What are their challenges? What are they coming to you for? There's a product versus a commodity. And your commodity is your, your space, the four walls, the desk, and Yeah, the printer, the fast Wi-Fi the local coffee. Yeah, exactly. And your product is how your space makes people feel. So those things have to connect.

00:22:02 You have to, your commodity has to make people feel away. And the way that you communicate that product is what really makes a difference to people, which is important. And also, you know, when it comes to sale websites, they're really scattered. You got to think about your customer journey. Like what questions are they asking and what information do they need in what order when they land on your website and then structuring everything.

00:22:21 So the ends to a defined call of action, which is sometimes lacking. So those are some of the more common things that I see. I think it's really challenging because, you know, especially when an operator first opens, it's like, you just spent all this time on the space and sort of, you want to tell everybody like all the great things that are,

00:22:40 you know, in the space and that are available. But I think that approach of, you know, the amenities that you don't have at home is kind of dated at this point, because that's just like table stakes, you know, of course you have fast wifi. I mean, it might be important if that really is a selling point, like you're in a rural area and you're the one guy with great way,

00:22:58 you know, wifi, but right. All the people who, you know, are mostly at home, you know, the benefits of like, why would you leave your house? Yeah. Was Pretty wrong telling, yeah, These are important, but it's almost like you don't want to make those clunks of paragraphs. Right? Like, do you want to get to a point where you have maybe like a quick bullet that explains what you're,

00:23:18 you know, high-tech amenities like ultra secure internet or whatever it might be, but have those be just a quick bullet as a feature that should be on the website, but it just shouldn't be the don't admit it, but don't like, don't let them in. Awfulize your entire, your entire page. Yeah. Okay. So when you're looking at websites,

00:23:35 kind of, what are the kind of categories of things you're looking for or your checklist? Yeah. I have kind of like a tent while at a high level of 10 point checklist that I would advise people on. But the first thing is asking yourself whether your site passes the five second tests. So when somebody lands on your website, you have, I think it's like 5.2,

00:23:53 four seconds to let them know whether or not, not even let them know to convince them whether your site is right for them. And not really boils down to the hero section of your website. So if you don't know what the hero section is, that's that first tagline and the first paragraph that people see, and those are so, so important. It's like when I'm looking at someone's website or when I'm auditing it,

00:24:10 or when I'm writing it from scratch, this section alone probably takes like 20% of the time, 25% of the time that I allocate to that website, because it's so vital, you have probably a tagline and three lines, a short paragraph to tell someone exactly what you offer exactly who it's for exactly how it benefits them and exactly why it should, they should continue scrolling through your site to learn more.

00:24:33 And it's really, really hard to do when it comes down to knowing exactly who they are using really specific verbiage. So not being like, not being ambiguous about what you offer. So for example, if you're offering, you know, hot desks then and dedicated desks for creative professionals in a certain city, that's what you should be saying. Not saying,

00:24:51 you know, flexible Coworking options for professionals. And it also the understanding, the verbiage that your members used. Right. I had the, I wrote an email a while ago that talks about how many dialects there are in the continental us alone. And I don't quote me for quoting me, but I think it's like seven. That's not even different, you know,

00:25:08 accent. That's like totally different words that people use. So in a professional capacity, the same thing applies, right? Somebody who's a corporate lawyer is not going to speak the same way as somebody who's a graphic designer and understanding that and factoring that into your, your writing of your website is important as well. I can't remember what episode it was, but I did an episode on why you should outsource your copywriting for your website.

00:25:32 And I think it, you know, you can really tell the whole, like, top-line the hero messaging when it's been done really well. Even if you're not the audience, right. You can just see like super tight, very clear when you compare websites, who've gone through that process versus not. It's like, and that's part of the raid. The five second thing is part of the calorie burning.

00:25:55 It's like, you can only hope someone's going to scroll on your website, right? Like that percentage of people is tiny. That funnel on your website, like kit is really wide at the top. And anybody who takes that next step right. Is like it's narrows really quickly. So, Yeah, absolutely. And it's kind of like the people focus a lot on SEO,

00:26:16 which is super important because SEO gets people to your website, but you've also got to have like human serving human focused copy that keeps them there. So it's, it's a fine balance of you got to get people there, but then once they're there, you have to keep them there and keep them engaged. And that's where that really, you know, that tight copy that,

00:26:33 that well, well, articulated value proposition really comes into play and becomes so crucial. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before continue with our discussion. If you're working on opening a co-working space, I want to invite you to join me for my free masterclass three behind the scenes secrets to opening a coworking space. If you're working on opening a co-working space,

00:26:57 I want to share the three decisions that I've seen successful operators make when they're creating their Coworking business. The masterclass is totally free. It's about an hour and includes some Q and a. If you'd like to join me, you can register at Everything Coworking dot com forward slash masterclass. If you already have a coworking space, I want to make sure you know,

00:27:19 about Community Manager, University, Community Manager, University is a training and development platform for community managers. And it can be for owner operators. It has content training resources, templates from day one to general manager. The platform includes many courses that cover the major buckets of the Community Manager role from community management, operations, sales, and marketing, finance, and leadership.

00:27:46 The content is laid out in a graduated learning path. So the Community Manager can identify what content is most relevant to them, depending on their experience and kind of jump in from there. We provide a live brand new training every single month for the Community Manager group. We also host a live Q and a call every single month so that the community managers can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers build their own peer network.

00:28:18 We also have a private slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to Everything, Coworking dot com forward slash Community Manager. I also think when operators first open, they are hesitant to get, unless they're opening a niche space, they're hesitant to use really like precise language that may be precise is a good right.

00:28:39 Sort of meeting a specific customer. Like they don't really know yet because of their best member. Like when they walk in, who signs up, you know, and, and talk to those people. It's hard to do, I think until you've like touched and felt them, you know, in a sense. Yeah, totally. And I guess like in that instance,

00:28:56 you could maybe focus more on your brand itself. Right. I think for me, even if you don't know exactly who your ideal member is, I feel like every space kind of has an understanding of, yeah, this is our brand. This is what it feels like to be here. So if you can focus on articulating that first, like before I decided to hyper-focus on Coworking,

00:29:13 you know, I started my business six or seven years ago or whatever it was. And it was kind of like, I don't know what I want to do. And it took me awhile to focus that, but it really, once you have an understanding of like, okay, this is where I'm going, and this is the right audience for the space or the business.

00:29:26 It helps, it makes it a lot easier to speak directly to people and bring them in. So it is definitely a process. So. Totally. Yeah. Okay. What else are you looking for on a website? Yeah. Well, another big one is whether your site sells. I, as I said before, sales are educated. 92% of people are not coming to your website for the first time to buy something.

00:29:45 So if all you're doing is doing this hard, sell, you're just going to put people off. It's gotta be telling them, as I said before, what it's for or who is for what it is, how it benefits them. Couple of stats I have that I like to rattle off. 45% of people are searching for a product or service first.

00:30:00 So they're comparing you 26% are looking directly for prices or variables between brands. So that's where that articulation of what makes you unique comes in at 11% are just looking for details like hours and location and contact info. So obviously that's a big Google my business opportunity, but that's a conversation for another time. Yeah. It's like when people have the, are compelled to sell,

00:30:21 like make a hard sell directly on their website right off the bat, it might feel intuitively. Right. But it's actually probably going to backfire on you with new visitors. Yeah. Cause they're really just, just qualifying, but I'm sure we'll get to this soon. We have to have a call to action so that people are clear what they're supposed to do.

00:30:38 Yeah, exactly. I think that's like number 10 on my checklist, but it's the last consideration that be willing to make. But before you get to that point, it's looking at also things like whether your site prioritizes features or feelings. So again, like talking about that versus that commodity, it's not necessarily about what you offer it's about how, what you offer makes people feel and how it benefits them.

00:30:59 Right. Like one of the examples I use is, you know, you're open around the clock. Okay. So 24 7 access. So why does that benefit people? Let's say you're a night owl. Let's say you wake up in the middle of night with a brilliant idea that, you know, you're going to get your computer to get it done. You're able to go in there and do that,

00:31:14 right? Like that's the benefit, that's the success that you're giving to people or like the close proximity to their home. It's great to be in close proximity to your home, but why do people want to be in close proximity to their home so they can have a better work-life balance. They don't spend so much time commuting. They get more time with their family.

00:31:28 You know, these are examples. But my point is that you should never talk about a product or service without tying it to an outcome or a benefit for you for your audience. That's how you connect with people. Yeah. But I think when we write it ourselves, there's a risk that we don't kind of connect that dot. We think everybody's connecting those dots on their own,

00:31:45 but we have to do that for them. So then yeah. I think like, it's, it's easy with your business, you know, I know for me it is that I, I, your gut is like, okay, well, people already know that they need this and they know why it's right for them because I know why it's good for them,

00:31:59 but it's the missing piece. There's the articulation, which helps them connect that doll when they might not have otherwise done. So Yeah. Yup. Like that, like you get me, that's totally what I want. Like that language that says like, oh, this is a place for me. Or at least a place I needed to her. Yeah,

00:32:18 absolutely. And actually it's good that you said that because one of the next things I always look at is, and this is like a very fine distinction, but it's important. Ask yourself whether your website is you focused or is it focused on you? Right. And there's a big difference there because if the website is focused on you, if just talking about the face to face space and what we offer,

00:32:36 whereas it should be focused on you, the audience, even down to the, you know, using the word you proactively and frequently so that when somebody reads it, they're like you me. Yeah. So it's such a fine thing, but it's a, it lacks in so many places, is that using the word you to speak to the people, you know,

00:32:53 it's a place for you to grow your business and we understand your need. So it's such a fine little thing that you can do, but that's an important, I think that that's a big Donald Miller concept. I mean, I'm sure these concepts kind of not one person owns them, but that was one of my biggest takeaways from his work. And every time I look at a website,

00:33:12 I think that might be the thing for me that tends to stand out because we're, we're so like tempted to talk about ourselves and tell our story, but no one cares. I mean, it's like so brutal, but right. Like we only care about, well, what is, what is it? What's in it for us? Do you solve our problem?

00:33:32 You know? And that you language versus like our story. And here's why we created this space. Yeah. I think it's like somehow like ingrained that that's what you do on a website, but it's actually not. Yeah. Well, there is a place for your story, right? Like I've always said, I've always believed that like your story is it's somewhere that people can forge an emotional connection,

00:33:53 especially if you're like a single location operator or you're like, you've got a couple locations, but you're an active presence in those spaces. It helps to have that connection with you as a person. So there is a place for it. It's just, again, I wouldn't make it the focal point. You can always have a little blurb about you on your homepage and then drive to an about page where,

00:34:11 where people can, can look for more information. And actually that's a perfect segue into consideration as well as trying to squeeze everything onto one page, like a homepage that takes you 10 scrolls to get to the bottom of you should really just be treating your homepage as a collection of previews of other, you know, where they can find more information if they want.

00:34:34 So like a little bit about what you offer and who it's for and a drive to learn about your services and a little bit about your space and the drive to your about page, but only like a small header and a paragraph, and then move on. It's super digestible. Yeah, absolutely. It's kind of like if you try to fit 10 paragraphs and 10 different sections on a homepage and then your call to action is at the bottom,

00:34:56 probably nobody's ever Going to get there. You're not going to reach your call to action. So you want to kind of keep it, yeah. Keep it high level and, you know, articulate your value propositions and then give people an opportunity to go elsewhere, to learn more if they want, don't try to go it all to them at once and yeah,

00:35:12 again, but that, it comes back to that idea of does your site make people work too hard? Are you making them burn too many calories? So when you're looking at your homepage, when you're looking at any page on your website consider, you know, how is it laid out? Is it a big clunky paragraph? It should really just be a quick header,

00:35:28 a quick paragraph, a quick button, and then moving on to something else. Everything should be hyper-focused one thought. And moving on, I always think of, there's some famous quote about I'm going to butcher it, but like, this is really long. Cause it was too much work to make it short or it took too long to, you know,

00:35:45 make it short, like kind of this irony that it's actually really hard to keep things tight and yeah. Easier to write kind of longer, longer paragraphs that the, our TLDR too long, too long didn't read. Yeah, exactly what causes trying to edit everything back and try to make it all fit into a few sentences. It's yeah. It's not easy,

00:36:06 but a big part of that too is like people like to, a lot of the time, people love to use like fluffy verbiage or jargon and things like that. And, and if you really want to get things more to site, that's one place to start is just get rid of the flop. If you read it, read a sentence over and over and then figure out which words don't need to be there.

00:36:22 And sometimes you can make three words into one word. So it's yeah. And getting rid of like complicated $5 words that people don't really understand and going for the simplest possible terms is a good way to make sure that people aren't working too hard when they're Going through too many calories again. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And also, I, I know we just talked about the story thing,

00:36:42 but the touch on it again. Yeah. People do kind of connect with your, with your space and your brand and your values and all that kind of stuff. Like I know, you know, if you're a space that's really focused on sustainability or if you're, you know, elevated design or whatever it might be. It's interesting to connect with the people who would be your members and who are interested in other things about why you do it.

00:37:03 But again, you know, it's a professional experience and a personal one, so it's good to have there, but keep it consolidated and then build on it elsewhere where people can go if they want to learn more, don't, don't force them to learn more if they're not interested. Yeah, totally. Right. Your comment about the homepage. But I totally agree.

00:37:20 I always have love if there's a story or the team, you know, photos of the team, I think it can really personalize and sometimes that's what people are looking for. Right. They want the boutique brand that has a personal story to it. So if that's part of your brand story, then, then that's an important piece. Yeah, totally.

00:37:39 And a lot of the time people are looking for human connections. So offering at least a little preview that, you know, they can connect with you on a human level, through the website can be a benefit, but just not, not the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. And the next one I have, again, coming back to that SEO thing,

00:37:53 does your site cater to humans or to algorithms? And that's a fine balance. It's a very fine balance because keywords are super important and you need to have them placed in specific parts of your website and headers and all that kind of stuff. But a lot of the time, you know, people focus way too much on the SEO-focused copy and they forget that it's not,

00:38:11 you know, Google's not reading this page and Google's not buying, signing up for a membership and Google's not booking a meeting room. It's people who are, who are doing those things. So you still have to make sure that the way that you write copy and the way you write your website includes your keywords abides by the SEO best practices. But it doesn't do it at the expense of,

00:38:28 at the expense of the reader experience. Ultimately keywords will help your website rank and they'll help people find it, but it's not going to be what converts necessarily. It's gotta be the, the way you articulate the important things, but do the selling for you. So if we put you in Rubin in a room, what would happen? Would there be like a boxing match or it's such a fine balance,

00:38:48 right? No. Well, you know what, like I, yeah, but I think that also people who, you know, Ruben and I have worked together a bit and I think we both understand how these two things work together. Right? It's like, you can't, they can't happen. They're not mutually exclusive. You need to have one and need to have the other,

00:39:02 just not one at the expense of the other. So I think if you put Ruben and I in a room, we probably come up with some pretty awesome website. Well, and I think, you know, that's what I'm kind of thinking about through this conversation is, you know, I'm a fan of getting professional help with these things because there's a lot to get,

00:39:20 right. Even just this like SEO writing for humans balance, it's like, well, most of us don't know how to write for SEO. Like we don't have that skill so that we're not going to win on that, nor are we copywriters, nor could we ever like, you know, put them together and get it right. And you know, I talk about the sales funnel a lot.

00:39:40 Like it's a numbers game, you know, you really, to some extent, right. It depends on what kind of markets you're in and how much competition you have, but you really have to optimize all of this. And it's, it's a lot of you use the puzzle piece analogy, a lot of, you know, puzzle pieces that need to go together.

00:39:56 Yeah, totally well. And also like I would humbly admit that not all content writers or copywriters have a full grasp of SEO strategy because it's the same, like, you know, that people can do social media, social content, people can do top line SEO stuff, but if you really want to get those results, those are a world unto themselves.

00:40:14 Right? Like social media is an entire world, your entire full-time specialty that people have. And yeah, that's where guys like Ruben are really like, they're still valuable and be able to get people to your website in a way that, you know, if you hired me, I can incorporate it and I will. And I understand how it all works and I can find some keywords.

00:40:31 But if you really want that strategy, like got to have someone who does that, someone who does content, someone who does all these different facets of all these different things really well for it all to kind of fit together. Yeah. Wait, so who do they call first? You were Ruben. Depends what they're looking for. I think it really does.

00:40:47 Like I think because you know, everything with SEO is mostly over the long-term play. I mean, Google ads, like what we've been does, you'll get like a very quick spike over time. And I think when people come to me, it's more that they want to start doing the brand building element as well, because both, you know, both are important,

00:41:03 then that's kind of where Google ads and SEO and content marketing all kind of fit together, the full picture of, you know, brand building and kind of the intangibles of that. Plus getting people to the website, plus the ads for the fast bikes. So it really depends on where, what people are looking for. Yep. Well, and to your point,

00:41:21 I mean, you mentioned sort of from an 80 20 perspective, you put a lot of emphasis on that homepage Euro section, like SEO is not necessarily going to play a role there, maybe SEO more in the blog posts. I mean, certainly you have to have keywords that are in your core content, but, and landing pages, right. That are for specific campaigns,

00:41:42 which is something I know rumen works on too. So Yeah, absolutely. And the blog content really does bring people to the website, especially when, you know, when it's SEO backed content, it really, and there's this quantifiable, you know, you can see where people are coming from. So yeah, definitely it all has to work together. Yeah.

00:42:00 So another thing, just thinking about that, you know, going back to the hero section and, and the way things flow, but thinking about how your website flows. I think that a lot of the times you see sports based websites where it's just kind of a jumble of information and no particular order. And if you kind of, kind of back up from that and think like,

00:42:17 okay, what do you want people to take away from this? What, what's the question that they came to the website with? How do I answer that? And then how do I educate them further? So I kind of always look at it like first and foremost, you want to address their challenges. You want to acknowledge that they have a challenge.

00:42:31 You want to discuss how you solve the challenges and the outcomes of your space offers, explain your value, propositions, new differentiator. So if they're shopping your space and the one down the street, you can let them know that here's why this is a better one for you or why it's also not maybe the right one for you address their objections because I feel like somebody always have always has an objection.

00:42:52 So if you can find a way to use that copy to overcome those or blog posts, depending on how you want to approach it. But if you can address those objections and then validate why you're the right choice and then drive them to that final 10 point on the checklist of having a great call to action, that's kind of like considering the user journey and how to get them from education to conversion.

00:43:14 Yeah. And so what's the call to action that, is it book a tour that you usually recommend or do you have a, another one? So I have a couple and it really depends, right? Because let's say for instance, somebody finds you via a Google ad that because they're looking for you and they get to your website and they probably already know what they want,

00:43:31 and they're going to book a tour or maybe somebody comes across to you through Google ads and isn't ready to purchase, or they stumble across a blog post and they want to learn more. It's also great to have something like a subscribe to our newsletter or sign up for our blog or whatever it might be so that you can then use those tools to nurture those leads and educate them over time.

00:43:50 And if you're doing it right by them with value on behalf of your space, so that by the time they are actually ready to sign up and get a membership at a coworking space, you're gonna be the first person. They are the first space that they think of. So I don't like limiting people to just book a tour or just contact us or give them something else.

00:44:09 That's less of a commitment that you can use to keep in touch with them on an ongoing base. No, I love that. I feel like that kind of circles back to one of your initial points about selling, because it's right. It's too. And I think, again, that's why you need, you have to have a really simple website, but it's sort of complicated to simplify because you know,

00:44:29 right. You have to sort of know, which is showing up to your point, the Google ad, like, okay. Yeah. I just want to book a tour. I'm looking at spaces and making a decision. Does this make my to wear lists versus I don't understand Coworking. What happens here? Who works here? Is this something I want to do?

00:44:44 I'm not deciding right now. Yeah. So the newsletter becomes super important and I'm doing a, an online presence sort of series this month. And so we talked about newsletters last week and yeah. I mean, it can feel like a slow game kind of like SEO, right. The pipeline, but It is a slow game, but brand-building is a slow game.

00:45:06 If it doesn't, you don't feel trust overnight. Right? Like it's the whole brand building thing is about to bang what you're all about and sharing that experience with, you know, what someone in the field, when they come to your coworking space and why should they trust you as the place where they're going to have as a home to their business? Like you don't just make a friend and be like,

00:45:21 okay, we trust each other day one, it takes time to build that relationship. And that's kind of what this all is to me is building a relationship with those people over time and then continuing to grow that relationship even once you've got them in the doors. Yeah, totally. So when you generally do website audits, is this traumatizing to people or how do you help them work through their,

00:45:45 You know, I think I find that when people reach out for an audit it's because they are already aware that there's opportunities for improvement that they can make. So I don't think anybody takes it overly personally. I mean, maybe so if they've written it themselves less, so if they've had somebody else do it, but I think we just both go into it,

00:46:01 understanding that this is very objective and the ultimate goal is to make sure that you end up with something that's the functions better than what you currently have, and it's going to deliver better results than what you already have. It's not just tearing you down we're to go with the bills, your backup as well. Yeah, totally awesome. So you mentioned that you have an offer for our audience about related to the website audit.

00:46:22 Tell us about that. Yeah, absolutely. I just feel like it's such an important, your website is such an important component of your business. And it's really important to me that everybody feels like they have that ability to capture their audience as soon as they land on the page. So I would love to offer anybody who's interested, a free homepage audit.

00:46:38 If they want to head to tail maker.ca/audit, they can drop their email address in there and book a consultation. I'd be happy to go through their website with them, spend some time giving them some yes and some pointers and some best practices. And hopefully it gives them some ideas for how they can tune it up. Yeah. I love that because I think it's a challenging undertaking to do on our own,

00:46:58 even if we're aware that that, that we need to optimize. So just having someone kind of lay out what are the things that are not working and kind of what can be done on that. So that's awesome. We'll put that in the show notes so that it's easy to find and yeah. Thanks for taking the time to share this, to share your,

00:47:17 you know, your checklist and that perspective. I think, yeah. The website just does a lot of heavy lifting for our business. So anything we can do to kind of focus on that and have some help thinking through, you know, what, what needs to get done. And I'll also stick a link to our previous episode in the show notes so that folks can go back and listen to content marketing.

00:47:37 I think it all, it's all the, the package of marketing that we need to be, what we'll be working on. And it's always a journey. So, so thanks for doing this. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on. It's been so long. I know. Yup. Well, I suspect we'll do another one. So stay tuned for that.

00:47:55 Thanks Taylor. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you like, what you heard, tell a friend, hit that subscribe button and leave us a rating and review. It makes a huge difference in helping others. Like you find us. If you'd like to learn more about our education and coaching programs, head over to Everything. Coworking dot com.

00:48:20 We'll see you next week.

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