Episode Transcript
Frank Hereda (00:02.394)
Okay, hello everybody. It's your favorite business coach, Frank Corita, and welcome to another episode of Focused Free Fit. Today we have a special, special guest, Philippa Games. And correct me if I said that wrong, but I think I said it correctly. Great, okay, good. And today you're in for a treat because what I, in my opinion, this isn't talked about enough, and when people do, they really don't go deep enough.
Philippa Gamse (00:18.54)
That was great. Yep.
Frank Hereda (00:31.29)
And so I am actually ready to get educated today on a topic that is really near and dear to everybody. because I feel like everybody thinks or knows they need one, but whether they do it right is the question and that's websites. So, Philippa, I'm excited to have you. Thank you for being on the podcast. And I would love to just start as I do with everybody, which is tell me about. I like to get to know you a little bit, let the audience get to know you a little bit. So tell us about your early years. Where are you from?
How did you get into that? We can kind of progress into how you got into this. But love to know about family, how you grew up and what kind of, you know, how– what made you the person you are today.
Philippa Gamse (01:10.7)
Well, actually, I'm a Brit. Don't know if you can hear that. So I grew up in London and actually came to the US in the 90s. Right, and it was right at the start of the internet. So I that kind of dates me obviously, but but one of the nice things about that is that I've been around.
Frank Hereda (01:13.914)
can we stop this podcast right now? Okay.
Philippa Gamse (01:38.028)
for a while, but what that means is I've seen a lot of comings and goings of the latest shiny object. And so it's actually quite useful because I've got some idea of what works and what doesn't work over time. And I find it very interesting that, I mean, I'm a marketing person, right? And the principles of marketing really haven't changed. It's just you do it differently. And I...
And you've got more tools to do it and you've got more data about what works and what doesn't work. But, but I find it quite interesting to sort of see what what fundamentals remain the same and what changes because we're still humans right. I think.
Frank Hereda (02:18.426)
Sure. So let me ask you a question because when you say that, you probably have specific principles in mind and I know I have no idea what principles you're thinking of. So when you say the principles haven't changed, what exactly are you meaning?
Philippa Gamse (02:32.972)
Well, I mean, you know, marketing is really about establishing relationships and communicating, right? Because nobody's going to buy stuff from somebody that they don't know, they don't like, they don't trust. That doesn't change, right? And also, you know, there's a very famous advertising quote that I think comes from the 60s, which is definitely before the internet, you know, I know that half my advertising works, I just don't know which half.
Frank Hereda (02:43.642)
for sure.
Frank Hereda (02:47.098)
Yeah, agreed.
Frank Hereda (03:01.306)
and
Philippa Gamse (03:02.348)
Right? And that in some ways still applies, right? I mean, you still have to sort of you, we're going to talk about analytics a bit. And yeah, so you get all these numbers and stuff. And then that can tell you a lot. And there's still all sorts of stuff it can't tell you. So
Frank Hereda (03:18.746)
I find that when you say that, what goes in my mind, what I think of is when I tell my clients to track and measure. And I think that's where we're going to go with analytics, I think. But tracking and measuring is everything because you don't know where to pour more money into and how to be more efficient with your advertising, your marketing, and be prepared for what comes back, what works, what doesn't, right? So.
Philippa Gamse (03:42.764)
Right, except that the tracking and measuring is really helpful because it tells you, it does tell you what's working, what's not working, but it doesn't always tell you why. Right. And so, and so the point is of that, so you can identify where there's some problems and maybe hopefully you can identify opportunities, which is definitely something I try to do for clients. But at the end of the day, you still really need to talk to your customers or your prospective customers and ask them.
Frank Hereda (03:44.378)
Frank Hereda (03:52.666)
okay. Good point.
Philippa Gamse (04:11.628)
know, why didn't you like that? What didn't appeal to you? Or what do you really enjoy about this? Or what are your values compared to my values? And, you know, the numbers can't tell you that.
Frank Hereda (04:23.098)
Sure. No, it makes total sense.
Philippa Gamse (04:25.452)
So relationships are still really important and I find that very reassuring, I guess.
Frank Hereda (04:31.162)
I think and I think a lot of other people will too because a lot of individuals fight technology because they love the old way of doing things or the old school way if you will and I and I think what you're saying is look the two are still tied together.
Philippa Gamse (04:45.708)
Right. And I actually quite like to talk about how to establish emotional connections on the web with your website. Because, because that still is important people buy from people that they know, like and trust, right. Or maybe they don't know you, but they at least need to know that they trust that you can do what you say you do.
Frank Hereda (04:52.506)
Love that.
Frank Hereda (05:05.818)
So, okay, let's, well first of all, let's go back to how you got into this. So, I hear where you grew up, how did you get into this field?
Philippa Gamse (05:17.964)
well, actually, when I first came to the United States, I was employed by a major national nonprofit that wanted me, so they had a chapter in every state and they wanted me and it was, it was in the early days of the internet, right? And they wanted me to help the chat. I was like an evangelist to help the chapters adopt this new technology and use it to work together.
better to provide the services that this nonprofit provided. And, you know, and it was early days and just like everything else, there were people who were absolutely like early adopters and tell me everything I need to know. And, you know, let's play, let's do this. And there were people like, over my dead body, right? You know, I want to send faxes, I'm still going to send faxes.
Frank Hereda (06:07.482)
Interesting.
We still have some of those floating around today, by the way.
Philippa Gamse (06:14.412)
Right. And, and so it was, I mean, and that was a very interesting job, because it wasn't just about educating people in how to use the internet, and also understanding the potential and understanding how as it grew, what was happening and what search engines were and all that sort of, and, you know, but but it was also like the evangelist bit as well. It was it was trying to inspire people to get excited about this new technology. And there were
as I say, some that were easier to do that with than others. So that was fun.
Frank Hereda (06:47.642)
That's really interesting. Okay. So, and then obviously it sounds like you just found a love for it. You just really were interested in it.
Philippa Gamse (06:55.116)
Right. And I'm also to be quite honest, a lousy employee. I really, I am, you know, I think you work with with entrepreneurs, right? I am absolutely much better at working for myself and working with clients than I am working in a corporation or a, you know, a structure.
Frank Hereda (06:59.834)
Yeah.
Frank Hereda (07:04.186)
Yep.
Frank Hereda (07:12.986)
Sure. Yeah. I find that with most entrepreneurs. so, okay. So let's get into websites because I know that's what everybody wants to talk about. would you agree? I feel like, and maybe myself included, I mean, people create a website.
There's different levels, right? Like I don't believe this is gonna happen like, I put up a website and I'm gonna get all this business. That's nothing I ever believed, but I knew I needed one. So if someone wanted to go check on me or check me out, it's credibility, right? It's also a place for them to sign up and get in contact with you, but it's mostly in my eyes, I always look at it as credibility. I know it can do so much more, I'm assuming, and that's what we'll talk about today, but what are the biggest mistakes you find people make?
with websites. Let's start maybe there, unless there's a different way you'd like to go about it.
Philippa Gamse (08:08.108)
no, I can, I can, I can talk to that. I actually, I think the biggest mistake that people make with their own website is they get really, really, I mean, they know their content. So they actually are way too close to it. And so really stupid things can happen. Like, I know, I had a client recently, who, well, this isn't in the coaching business, but you know, he had some excess stock that he wanted to sell off in his business.
Frank Hereda (08:10.554)
Okay.
Philippa Gamse (08:36.364)
and he he had a load of this and he wanted to get rid of this inventory in the next month or so. And, and he was upset that it was all on his website, and he was upset because it wasn't it wasn't working, it wasn't happening. And people weren't going to the page where he was selling the stock. And I said, Well, it's not on the home, but it's not in the content of the homepage. So I come to your website, and I can't immediately see that you've got you've got this big sale going on.
And he said, yeah, but it's, look, it's in the menu at the top. It's in the navigation at the top of the screen. And I said, yeah, but if people don't immediately go to that menu, they're not gonna see it. And as you scroll down a page, the menu at the top of the screen disappears, right? So he said, you know, it's obvious. And I'm saying, no, it's not obvious. It's obvious to you because you know, it's there. But if you really want to draw attention to this particular page,
you need to have it front and centre on the homepage, hey, big sale going on, right? And, you know, my, so there's a B2B example, but most of the time, the examples that I have can be applied to essentially any website. So it's the principle when you said what's the mistake, the mistake is assuming that a key piece of content on your website is absolutely obvious to everybody, because a lot of the time it isn't.
Frank Hereda (09:33.818)
Gotcha.
Frank Hereda (09:57.338)
Do you think that's because it's better to have a, I think this is where a lot of people fail because I see the same problem in other areas of business where that's what that I'm not to promote coaching, but like that's where a coach comes in. That's where a third party somebody comes in and you say, Hey, take a look at my website. Here's my goals. What do you think? And getting feedback. And so that's if they are too close to it, they don't know that it's a problem because nobody else can give them input. And would you agree with that or no?
Philippa Gamse (10:26.924)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's, again, why, well, analytics is great user testing, actually, again, I talked going back to actual people can also be great. Just get getting people not necessarily what you think of it, because everybody's just then going to give you a subjective opinion, but saying, so give me a task to do, find out, or find a piece of content, or if it's an e commerce site, you know, find it and buy an item.
Frank Hereda (10:28.314)
Okay. Yeah.
Frank Hereda (10:43.898)
Sure, sure.
Frank Hereda (10:56.154)
Gotcha.
Philippa Gamse (10:56.748)
and, and, and tell me or record, record them doing it so you can see like, what does that mean? Where on earth is that? look, that doesn't work or whatever, right. And that's all really interesting.
Frank Hereda (11:07.898)
Yeah.
I think it's fascinating. I love digging deep on stuff. So this is really exciting to me. Okay. So biggest mistake is making assumptions. That's probably with anything in life, but I agree. What is there anything else that you see that it's like, my gosh, I can't believe people are doing this with their websites nowadays. What are the other biggies? Any?
Philippa Gamse (11:14.284)
haha
Philippa Gamse (11:32.332)
well, I mean, one of the things I get concerned about is very long pages. So these days, I mean, and it's quite, especially with mobile phones and stuff, it's quite, I don't know, fashionable is a word, but you see a lot of pages or just pages with a lot of content and podcast pages are a really good example of this, because you get podcast pages where as you record the next episode, you know, you put it on the site and everything else moves down.
And so something that you recorded, I don't know, two months ago is now way, way down there, right? But it's probably almost certainly still got really good information in it. And nobody sees it because they don't scroll. And one of the things you can do with most analytics is, is, is to see how far down the page, any given page people actually scroll. And that can be really useful.
because then you can see, look, I've got this really important piece of content that's down towards the bottom of the page. Only, I don't know, 9 % of my people see it, right? So that means either I need to move the content higher up, or I need to do things to make sure that they scroll down or whatever it might be. But without that information about, do people see what they're supposed to see? You can't do anything, which is where analytics is helpful.
And then, you know, I mean, I worked with podcast owners and I then encouraged them to do other things to, to keep leveraging that content. I mean, that's another thing that I see a lot of, especially for those of us that are selling knowledge. You know, you have tons and tons of available knowledge and most of it, you're not leveraging anymore.
Frank Hereda (12:55.994)
Ahem.
Frank Hereda (13:14.526)
And what are you talking about like Transcribing it for a like a blog or is that what you mean that kind of thing or like multi -purposing it?
Philippa Gamse (13:21.544)
Well, no, I'm just talking about, for example, I mean, one of my clients is a podcast and she does a lot of podcasting, you know, and her page just went on and on. And I said, why don't we create some categories for the podcast? Just simple stuff like that, right? So that we can have different categories of her topic and then people can look up by categories, better indexing, maybe a clearer search engine.
Or a search, if you don't have a search engine, a search engine is really helpful, right. But just ways that people can come along and they can see the latest episode, but they can also say, okay, what else have you talked about? Or is there another episode on this particular aspect of your topic, right?
Frank Hereda (14:11.226)
So, okay. So that makes sense to me. So it sounds like really just understanding the analytics long pages. So when you say long pages, I have, my questions are a little detailed. I don't know if others, this would be their, their question, but like, so I get people that come to me and they're like, okay, if I do a website, should I do it through a company or should I go and have somebody build it? And then you find that like, for example, there's companies out there that'll just create like wicks.
They'll just, you can just do a templated website, right? Or you can go have somebody build it in WordPress or whatever, but then you got to have somebody host it and keep it up to date. And so I think that's what's in my brain is, is it always, cause I built like mine, we were talking about and I don't know if you, you didn't quite laugh at my website, so it shouldn't be too bad. But, but if, but if you, but if you look at them, it's like, okay, how big of a concern should that be? Is that a concern that like, I have to keep it updated and whoever's hosting it has to make sure it's good to go or.
Philippa Gamse (14:58.38)
No, no, I didn't. Off your website.
Frank Hereda (15:09.946)
Or should I have it with a place like a Wix where it's just like a templated and it looks great all the time? Because then I can't, you know, I'm just curious what your thoughts are.
Philippa Gamse (15:18.636)
Well, I mean, the host doesn't make sure it's up to date, you do, right? The host only makes sure their software is up to date and your site is backed up and stuff like that. Honestly, I mean, my website is a prime example of really bad, I mean, you know, I'm the, what do you call it, the cubless child.
Frank Hereda (15:21.434)
I guess that's true.
Frank Hereda (15:27.194)
Okay.
Philippa Gamse (15:38.124)
I mean, I think the most important thing that comes across is your personality, your knowledge and your expertise. And I did have some my website, my new websites in WordPress, I've, I've, and I did have help because to me, like, I'm a horrible designer. And I need somebody that knows what they're doing to do that piece for me. And usually these days with, there are tools that make it quite easy. Like if you write a new blog post, or you have a new podcast that you can just put that up and
I honestly don't think it matters. I mean, a lot of websites these days are in WordPress or Wix or whatever. I mean, the point is, does it get your point across? Now, obviously if your website is more, if your business is more, if your website is more mission critical to your business, so you're actually selling stuff, for example, directly, you want to make sure that that's working. I mean, these days, most of us have online calendars and you know, book, book,
meeting slot with me and stuff like that, you want to make sure that's working properly. And if you're the sort of person that doesn't find that easy to do, but it's important to you, then it seems to me to make business sense to pay somebody who knows what they're doing to get it done for you, so that you know it's working.
Frank Hereda (16:54.138)
Yeah, I would agree with that. Okay, so, and then, you know, talk to me a little bit about, so if that's not too big of a deal, another question I get a lot, or I hear from people who are maybe experts on websites, is they believe that you should build out pages on your website. So like, all search terms should be a separate page on your website maybe, and so.
It's just consuming con like you're just have different all the content on your site. Am I onto something there or no?
Philippa Gamse (17:28.172)
Well, the reason for that is because if you want to do well in search and you know, we were talking before we started recording about some different ways to get people to your site and, and the quality of traffic that you get, because I had said that in my experience, social media ads don't necessarily get you great traffic. What does get you great traffic? I mean, the two for me best quality traffic sources are A, your email newsletter if you have one, because that's where people have said that they want to hear from you.
And B, organic search engine traffic. So that's not the paid ads in like Google or Bing or whatever, but the ads that sorry, the search results that come up when somebody looks for something. Those people are proactively looking for something to meet their current need. And so their mindset is there. I think that's the problem with social media visitors is that most for the most part,
they weren't on that social media platform because they were looking for something they were there to hang out, see what their friends are doing, watch some videos, right. So they're not necessarily in the mindset of, I need this, whereas somebody doing a search is. So if you want to do well in search, the the problem with having long pages with a bazillion different topics on is that Google or whoever the search engine doesn't necessarily know what that page is really about.
So the point of having a lot of different pages is that each page is focused on a specific thing or a specific keyword or something else, you know, so that that page is the one that the search engine will identify as the one they should show visitors. So it's, it's, that's the strategy behind it. So you're likely to get more visibility is in other words.
Frank Hereda (19:06.298)
Gotcha.
Frank Hereda (19:14.266)
And I can't believe you said that you don't think social media is a big deal with a website. my gosh. Tell me more about that.
Philippa Gamse (19:21.26)
Well, and look, obviously, it depends on the nature of your business, right. And I, I mean, obviously, I tend to work more with B2B than B2C clients for the most part, although that's not I mean, it's not always true. So for me, I mean, LinkedIn is obviously a big exception, because that's a professional business network, but
Frank Hereda (19:30.81)
Sure, yeah.
Frank Hereda (19:38.074)
Yeah.
Philippa Gamse (19:50.284)
I've just seen too many examples where my clients or people that come to me and say, show me what's working and what's not working with my marketing. And they're pouring money into social media ads. And the analytics will show you what happens and you can break. So the analytics, for example, will give you a chart. I know people don't want to hear about charts and tables and things, but that shows the number of people that come to your website and how long they stay.
Frank Hereda (20:10.458)
I do.
Philippa Gamse (20:19.18)
for example, and whether or not they complete one of your, the outcomes that you want them to do, which might be a purchase, it might be a sign up or whatever, right? And you can break that down by the traffic source, where they came from. So right there in this table, and I can show you examples, you can clearly see the difference between people who come from an organic social media, sorry, a social media ad, like on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, and don't stay very long versus.
the people who come in, as I said, from email or search engines. Now, your mileage might vary. I mean, so, you know, for some businesses, social media, for example, I don't know, food, I mean, things where Instagram or Pinterest and pictures are important and people start their searches on Instagram or Pinterest because they're looking for, I mean, I had a friend who recently threw, she really wanted to have a proper English afternoon tea party. She's American, but I've inspired her, right?
Frank Hereda (21:02.17)
Yeah.
Frank Hereda (21:18.394)
You rubbed off on her, huh?
Philippa Gamse (21:19.596)
You're right. So she wanted to have a full on English afternoon tea with you know, all the teared servings and the sandwiches with the crust cut off and skull, what we call scones and all of that good stuff, right. And so where do you start? You start on Pinterest because you want to get visually interesting ideas for doing that. And then hopefully some of those Pinterest things that you see might, I mean, for example, take you to
I want to buy that cake stand. I'd love to have a cake stand like that. And there'll be links from Pinterest onto the website. So in that case, except that actually I'm contradicting myself to some extent, because that's not a paid ad. That's a that's an organic social link. But so what I'm saying is, you know, obviously, context is important. And so I'm not just writing off social media, but I am saying if you spend a lot of money on social media advertising,
really look at your analytics to make sure that that money is well spent.
Frank Hereda (22:19.354)
when you say analytics on social or that the social is working to get them to your site.
Philippa Gamse (22:24.012)
Well, the point is the social media analytics, if you're advertising, will tell you how many click -throughs you have, and that could be a huge number. So the social media platforms are gonna tell you that your ads are successful. The point is what happens next. Because if literally thousands of people or even hundreds of people come to your website and nobody buys anything and everybody stays for like 10 seconds or less, then that money hasn't got you anywhere. That's the point.
Frank Hereda (22:47.418)
So let's talk about this for a second because if someone goes to your social media, recently there's this new little site that I think is really important if you have one and that's a YouTube channel. And I'm curious to know your thoughts about how YouTube plays a role in this. And if I have something on social, do I want them going to my website, to YouTube?
go to my website, link to YouTube. Is that what you're recommending or what would you recommend?
Philippa Gamse (23:20.78)
Well, so now YouTube is kind of to me in some ways in the category of its own because well, a Google owns YouTube, right? And YouTube is actually the world's second largest search engine. So, you know, Google's the top, but the point is people pro, going back to what I said earlier about mindset, people proactively go to YouTube. I mean, I know I do because there are times when you want to see video of like how to videos, right? How do I do this?
Frank Hereda (23:27.898)
That's right.
Frank Hereda (23:33.146)
That's right.
Frank Hereda (23:48.506)
Yeah.
Philippa Gamse (23:50.316)
I don't want to read it. I want to see it right so that I can do it. Like literally, how do I change? I just bought a new wire wireless vacuum. It's absolutely wonderful. I bought a Dyson. It's amazing. Fantastic. But I mean, for some reason, I couldn't figure out how to empty the, you know, the little container. I mean, it was stupid, but I and it doesn't you know, these days, it doesn't come with a manual because they all know that what you're going to do is go to YouTube and say, show me how to do this.
Frank Hereda (24:03.194)
I love it. We have a Dyson. It's great.
Frank Hereda (24:17.978)
Yeah. See YouTube for manual.
Philippa Gamse (24:20.972)
Right. But that's my point is reading a description would I would have had to sit there and figure it out. Whereas watching the video. yeah, I you press that button. That's the bit I missed. Right. And so on YouTube, people are looking for help me solve my problems. And and so I Yes, absolutely. I would say that's potentially very effective. But again,
And you can have clicks on videos to take you to the to the website that allow you to shop, you know, you can have little clicks embedded on products as you as you show them and so on. But the point is to look at to keep looking at your data to see what's working. I have a client who is a very well known coach. And he has a very specific topic. Excuse me. He makes lots and lots and lots of videos.
And I keep trying to explain to him that, unfortunately, he doesn't start the video as well. He doesn't. When you do a video, if you're doing content, I think you really have to say, look, you want to watch this video, because I'm going to say this, this and this, and you're going to learn this, this is nice. And at the end, we're going to have a really cool offer. I mean, and it sounds cheesy, but if you do it well, it can work. Because if the beginning of the video is boring, and it doesn't immediately catch people, they'll leave.
And now you can get those analytics too, and you can get them on YouTube, right? So it will show you exactly how much of your video people watch and at what point they tend to drop. And that's fantastic information about how you're presenting your content. But if you don't look at that in -depth analytics, if you only look at the number of views, the number of views are like how many people press play. That doesn't really tell you very much at all.
Frank Hereda (26:15.034)
Good points. It's all true. It's all good. And I agree. This is really important. I feel like...
I'd be interested to hear what you have to say on this, but I find that just getting people to decide or agree to do it, like let's say it's YouTube or a website, just getting them to do it is one step, right? And that's like, most people won't do it. Then they finally do it and they think that that's all it is. And it's like, no, now the real work begins, right? Now that I did it, I have to see what's working and I have to follow the data and make adjustments and changes and adjust and change and adjust and change. And I think that's where people miss that huge step in the middle. And they just put one out there.
and then we don't do a lot with it. And then it's like not useful like it could be.
Philippa Gamse (26:59.82)
Right. And, and you know, it depends how you do your marketing, but I do know that even if you get a lot of referrals, there are a lot of people that will then check out your website just to see who you are and do some level of due diligence. And in the business world, actually, that really applies because I've definitely met companies where, you know, your, your bankers or your insurers, you apply for a new loan or a new policy. One of the things they'll do when they're checking you out is your website. And I,
I actually know stories of insurance policies that have been denied, declined because of things that the company said on the website about some of their, I mean, this is obviously a company in a bit of a risky business. I shouldn't, I can't say too much about it, but you know, you never know. You never know who's coming to your website.
Frank Hereda (27:46.137)
That is very true. So, okay.
How, I think we've covered the, should I hire a consultant or not? I think it makes sense to, if you're not gonna be able to keep up with it, then I think we agree that you should have someone who's professional who can manage it for you and help guide you, right? What would you say are, so we talked about biggest mistakes. What would you say are the top three items that people need to worry about or focus on when it comes to their website?
Philippa Gamse (28:19.98)
Well, the first is you've really got to know what you're trying to do with the website. So my favorite client question actually is, Philippa, tell me what I need to know to run my business better. It's just a great question. And it's actually noticed that it's not, Philippa, please, please produce 50 pages of analytics for me. Because they don't want that, right? It's tell me what I need to know.
Frank Hereda (28:28.058)
So intent.
Frank Hereda (28:34.49)
There you go.
Philippa Gamse (28:46.572)
And in order for me to do that, I've got to say, well, but what are you trying to do? Okay. So what do you want to happen as a result of people seeing your website? And it's important that you as the business owner understand that. And then you need to look at every page of your site or at least every area and really be clear about what are the calls to action that, you know, game, what do you want people to do? And because then the question can become, are they doing it?
and then you can get into, well, if they're not doing it, why not? Now, well, if you don't start with what you're trying to do, you can't get anywhere, because otherwise you're just sort of wandering around going, look, I have this number of visitors this week. Well, does that matter? I don't know. Right. Were they the right people? I don't know, because you need to know what you're trying to do. And obviously also, who am I trying to do it for?
Frank Hereda (29:17.37)
So be clear on the outcome.
Frank Hereda (29:26.554)
Exactly. Yep. Yeah.
Frank Hereda (29:38.362)
no, go ahead. I was cutting you off.
Philippa Gamse (29:40.448)
Sorry. So, yeah, so I was just gonna say that's the key thing. And then you want to know if you are spending money, whether the money that you're spending is well spent. So if you are advertising, you know, if you're spending money on that, if you're spending money on levels of content production, like videos or podcasts or whatever, you know, are you getting the results that you're looking for? And then there are always the hidden stuff.
So one of the things that I really enjoy having found out or answered the immediate questions are what else can we find, can we see here? And often there are hidden insights that you can find that will give you ideas for a whole new opportunities, products, services, target audiences. For example, if you have a site search, if you have a search engine on your site, I mean, if you have a lot of content, you should.
That can be an absolute goldmine of market research. So it tells you what people are looking for and what they expect to find at your site, which gives you ideas for, well, if we don't provide this, maybe we should. I can tell you a story here if you would like, but for example, right, I, so one of my earlier clients was an employment lawyer here in Silicon Valley where I live.
Frank Hereda (30:44.602)
Interesting.
Frank Hereda (30:55.066)
I love stories.
Philippa Gamse (31:06.828)
And her business was training. So she trained companies, large companies in creating a fair workplace. So she didn't do litigation. She did training. And so her customers were, you know, HR departments or whatever for all these large companies, large technology and other companies out here. And in order to prove her expertise and, you know, get people coming to her website and everything.
She had a huge amount of information about employment law and news and all of the rest. And in looking at what was going on with the people coming to the site and what they were looking for, we realized that there was a huge number of employees coming to the site. And they had questions like, am I being sexually harassed? I think I'm being sexually harassed. Do I have a case? Right. I think I've just been unfairly terminated. Do I have a case? That's not her business. She's not going to go out and bat for them individually.
Frank Hereda (32:03.93)
Yeah.
Philippa Gamse (32:04.268)
But there was enough of it that we said, hmm, maybe we should do something about this. And we ended up creating a series of ebooks. So, and the ebook was, you know, what to do if you think you're being harassed, because, and on the premise that 90 % of what people think of harassment often isn't legally. So before you go and see an expensive lawyer,
know, and obviously with a load of disclaimers on it, but you know, here's a checklist of things that you can think about to see if it's, you know, you might have something. And we did one of those, we did one for I'm being accused of harassment, what should I do? We did, like, the, as I said, the, I think I've been unfairly fired, I think I should be getting overtime and I'm not. And we also did some manuals for employers around the same kind of stuff.
And those obviously were priced a little higher. And then these ebooks, like for the employee ones are like, you know, impulsed by pricing, 15 bucks, 20 bucks, something like that, which is obviously cheaper than lawyers. And, and the thing was that they could sell all over the country. I mean, state law differs, but you know, I guess there was enough sort of that was general in it to be useful. And, and these things, you know, the wonderful thing about content, Mark, like,
for sale content like that is there's no fulfillment. Because once you've got an ebook is basically a PDF, you stick it on the website, and you have a little shopping cart that sells it. So somebody puts in their credit card, and they can immediately get the download. And you don't have to do anything. So literally, people used to go up to her and say, I heard you've not you're now making money while you sleep, right? How do you do that? But
Frank Hereda (33:27.738)
Mm -hmm.
Frank Hereda (33:38.17)
Mm -hmm.
Frank Hereda (33:49.69)
I love that. That's that is an amazing idea. The site search. I love that.
Philippa Gamse (33:55.436)
Well, and so this whole thing and these things ended up making several thousand dollars a month for her that literally she didn't have to do anything for. And the ideas, as I said, came because we went and really looked at what are people expecting from this website. And it's a completely different audience that isn't her core business. So, you know, and so that's why I'm saying without the analytics, you wouldn't have had those kinds of ideas. And I have, you know,
numbers of stories like that. So once you've answered the immediate questions, then you can sort of delve into, okay, what other possibilities could we maybe see?
Frank Hereda (34:34.714)
Love it. I love that answer about the site search. That sounds so idea. That's the kind of stuff you come across. You're like, my gosh, I would have never thought of that. Such a great idea, though. And now you can track what people have been searching for, like Google. You can do the Google Trends. What are people searching for, right? So smart. Talk to me a little bit about brand. We talked before we got on this podcast that.
Philippa Gamse (34:42.764)
Right. Right.
Philippa Gamse (34:51.66)
Right.
Frank Hereda (35:02.106)
You know, I kind of look at a website to give you credibility a little bit. I think we've, we've touched on that brand wise. How much is it really as big as I think it is to help you build your brand or not really so much in today's age? Like, what are your thoughts on that? A little bit.
Philippa Gamse (35:17.868)
yeah, I, you know, it's interesting because I hadn't changed my website for a long time until I did recently. and I, I tend to sort of see almost like my LinkedIn profile that I do keep up to date is almost more of a branding tool for me. I don't know. it's interesting. Yeah. I don't, I don't know if there's a definitive answer to that or, or if I can think of one anyway.
Frank Hereda (35:35.13)
Okay, I'm just curious. I mean...
Frank Hereda (35:43.034)
Yeah, that's interesting. Okay. I was just curious because I know, you know, you get either people that are passionate about it or just like, whatever, I think, especially with social website has taken such a backseat. There's clearly some really intelligent uses, but that I think people are missing. And I think that's really the overarching idea here, but you know, some are passionate about it for the branding and some aren't. So I think it just depends on how they're using it.
Philippa Gamse (36:10.348)
I think, I mean, it depends how often people come to it as well. I mean, you know, you've got a podcast, so you're out there all the time. So that's more kind of a proactive way of reminding people that you're around. Because the website is still a passive thing, you still have to remember to go to it.
Frank Hereda (36:22.138)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Frank Hereda (36:29.498)
Describe vanity metrics.
Philippa Gamse (36:33.836)
So, okay. I think, I can't remember if we said this earlier, you know, a lot of people, if you say analytics, I mean, I know I've done a lot of public speaking and you say, I'm going to talk about analytics now, right? And everybody glazes over immediately and, you know, looks for the coffee in the exit. And I don't blame them. And if you go to Google analytics or something like that and you don't know what you're looking at, I mean, yeah, there's an absolutely massive numbers and charts and...
whatever, and you have absolutely no idea what what it is. And, and your big, your, you know, your instinct is, is, is to run. And so I do think a lot of times, people so a vanity metric is a number that really doesn't mean anything in and of itself, it just makes you feel good. So people will do things like, especially like they might have a marketing agency or whatever.
me and they say, did we get more visitors this week than we did last week? I mean visitors is a huge example of a vanity metric. And if the answer is yes, they'll go, great, everybody must be working well, everything's good, and now they can run, they can leave the analytics alone. And of course it's a vanity metric because if you got X percent more visitors but none of them bought anything or fulfilled any of your goals, it's like, so what?
Frank Hereda (38:00.57)
Gotcha.
Philippa Gamse (38:00.748)
And if you're paying for that traffic, it's an even bigger so what, right. Another one is bounce rate. So people obsess about the bounce rate on your site. So the bounce rate describes the people who come to your site and basically take one look and walk away. So, you know, like the social media people that we talked about earlier. But, and yeah, if you have, if your bounce rate is 95%, then obviously you've got a problem. But you know, people would obsess because their bounce rate is maybe 30%.
Or even 50%. And I'll say, you know, firstly, there's always going to be a bounce rate. There's always going to be some people who come to your site, doesn't work for them. They're in the wrong place they leave. And quite honestly, if they're in the wrong place, you don't need them there. If they're not going to do business with you, go away. Okay, fine. Right. And there are people who come to your website for a very simple reason, like they just want to pick up your phone number or something like that.
or your email or whatever it might be, and that's all they want. And they get in it. And that's it go and they've gone. But actually, it wasn't essentially a bounce. It was a bad they got what they needed. And the other argument is, okay, let's say you have a 50 % bounce rate. Why are you obsessing about the people who left as opposed to the 50 % who stuck around and wanted to see some stuff and see who you are and what you do.
and how to make that experience for them better so that they're more likely to do business with you, right? So, yeah, there's this, so vanity metrics really are an excuse to be able to not think about it more deeply.
Frank Hereda (39:31.546)
That's a good point.
Frank Hereda (39:42.234)
Yeah, okay. So glossing over it. And I think digging deep is where the magic's at, right? You're digging deep to really kind of see where you can go. And I think that's what you've been alluding to this whole time is...
Philippa Gamse (39:53.804)
Well, yeah. And again, to go back to the experience, the example I gave of the difference between social media visitors and search engine visitors. If you just look at your overall visitor numbers and you say the bounce rates 80 % I mean, I literally had this client this conversation with the client last week bounce rate is 80 % right. But if you take out the social media people, the bounce rate is way down. So you can't just take the conglomerate number you've got to say, well, what is this composed of? And what does that tell me?
Frank Hereda (40:15.546)
Yeah.
Frank Hereda (40:24.442)
Interesting. Wow, okay.
Frank Hereda (40:33.594)
Let's talk about the, the, the one thing we still haven't touched on is what you said earlier that intrigues me, which is the emotional connection through the web. So tell me how you work on that and what are some ways we can do that? Because I would agree with you that everything's about relationships. Business is about relationships and in doing well in sales is about relationships. And so people buy on emotion. So, you know, is this, are we talking about.
amazing testimonials that tug at the heartstrings. What are we talking about when we say emotional connection on the web?
Philippa Gamse (41:06.284)
So I think there are some emotions that it's really important to create. So I mean, definitely one of them is that you're credible and that people can trust you. And yeah, testimonials, reviews, any statements that you can make about how long you've been around, any awards that you've got, that kind of stuff. And people have to like you. And I think you have to appear, especially, I actually, you asked me to look at your website and I,
your website is your homepage is still sitting on my second screen, my monitor, my other monitor. And you know, it kind of slides between pictures of you with a great big smile on your face, which is still flashing in front of my eyes. But you know, it's great because I get a sense of who you are, you're coming across at me in that as that happens. So I think you have to be authentic.
Frank Hereda (41:36.586)
you
Philippa Gamse (42:02.252)
And obviously you have to make it easy for people to do business with you and that makes and there's techie stuff in there that you know, everything that should work on your site works. If you're selling something, it's easy to complete transactions and so on. But I think you have to be relatable. People ask me how you write copy. And I sometimes feel like when I write copy, I just think about an ideal client.
and try to write as if I'm just speaking to that person. So being sort of personable and talking about I and we and you as opposed to I and they, you know, it's like trying to create a relationship online, but thinking about some of the emotions that, and telling people that they're important to you.
Frank Hereda (42:43.802)
Sure.
Philippa Gamse (42:56.204)
you know, so after somebody's completed one of those outcomes, you know, then what do you do? Do you do you appreciate them? So you reach out and say, how's it going? And, you know, when they come back to your website, if it's appropriate, do you already know who they are? So they don't have to tell you all over again. So as I said, there are some technical solutions to that, and also some just the way that you present it.
Frank Hereda (43:19.706)
Interesting. Okay. I think that's really, I think that is, I don't know anything close to what you know about websites, but that sounds super important to me. So, the emotional connection I know is definitely important in business. So interesting. What would you say? Is there anything that we missed? Anything that you're like, Hey, we need it. This is something that the, that, that,
Small business owners or anybody who's starting a website, they need to get these this down. They need them. They're missing this. Is there anything that's super important that we haven't covered? Cause I feel like we've done a good job, but I'm not the expert. So I just want to make sure there's nothing big that we're missing.
Philippa Gamse (43:55.852)
So, I mean, I would just say to everybody out there, you know, if you have a website and if you've put money and time into it, then I think what you need to understand is if you aren't looking at the numbers behind the site, so there are tools that are free like Google Analytics and other tools. If you're not looking at those or having somebody look at them for you, then you're actually shooting in the dark with what you've invested because you don't know.
you really don't know what's going on. You don't know how many people are seeing the site. You don't know how many people are seeing your calls to action and not doing what you wanted them to do. You don't know if the site's working for them. You don't have the opportunity to look at some of the things we've talked about that you wouldn't have otherwise known like, like what's happening with the site search and stuff like that. So so you're just missing out on potentially making more money, and also potentially saving money on on things that aren't aren't effective right now.
And, and you know, if you don't have to do it alone. And I offer I mean, I do do a free 30 minute consultation, obviously, most of my services on free. But, you know, like I said, my the example of the employment lawyer ended up in additional revenue. And there's certainly many other examples like that I can give but but but you need to know what's going on. And it
And it can be much less scary than you might think it is.
Frank Hereda (45:26.746)
Interesting. Okay, great. Where can people find you? Where would you like them to find you? Should they want to take you up on the 30 minute free consultation? Where can they find you?
Philippa Gamse (45:36.62)
So my website is websitesthatwin .com, which hopefully you can put in the show notes. And I have on that website a free, so I do have a free ebook, which is called Hidden Gems. It's five stories of insights and other, it's not the one I told here, so different stories of things that we found in the analytics that we couldn't otherwise have found, which allowed that business to make a transformational change, either to the website or to the business overall.
Frank Hereda (45:42.458)
I will.
Philippa Gamse (46:06.156)
And it's all in English. So, so my goal is not to be overwhelmingly techie, but it tells you what we found and what we did. And in different industries, some are B2B, some are B2C. But the goal is, my goal is to inspire you to, to think about what you might find in your own analytics based on these examples, because you can extrapolate from each one of them. And
and see if you really might want to take a look. So please feel free to go to my website and pick up this ebook.
Frank Hereda (46:37.114)
Okay.
Frank Hereda (46:40.986)
We will put all the links in the show notes. Absolutely for your website, for your ebook. Done deal. No doubt. and if people have any question, they can reach out to me about it in case they can't get ahold of you, at frank, read it .com, but, absolutely. We'll put all, we'll put all that in the notes. This has been great. I, I, I love this because this is a topic that isn't talked about enough in my opinion. So, hopefully, this helps.
Philippa Gamse (47:06.764)
So let me turn it back on you. What was your big takeaway message from what we talked about?
Frank Hereda (47:12.282)
I think the big, I had two actually. One is the emotional, like how to connect to people emotionally. I never really looked at it that way. I think that's a very good way to look at it. The two is the idea that you gave me of, you know, wow, a site search and then using that site search to look at what they might want from you by, by looking at their searches. I think that's huge. So those are the two pieces. And I, I also like that you're not so,
social media, social media, social media, because that takes some pressure off my shoulders, I feel like, because I feel like lately I'm just about, you know, it's like so much the burden of keeping up and staying, and not that you shouldn't do it, you need to do it, but it's just not as important as I think in some ways. But then I also think you made a good point with you gotta understand your business, right? You gotta understand what works for you, because some people, maybe their website, no matter how great it is, they're so great on social that.
Philippa Gamse (47:41.1)
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Frank Hereda (48:05.338)
That's just the medium they should stay in their lane.
Philippa Gamse (48:08.428)
And honestly, my business coach who's wonderful constantly tells me that he really doesn't care about his analytics because he's doing great. I mean, I argue with him, but you know, what can I say?
Frank Hereda (48:17.786)
Yeah.
Yeah, but it's still important. And, and I think that if you're going to do one, do it right. And that's like anything else. So if you're going to do one, then let's take advantage of it and not waste this, the other website.
Philippa Gamse (48:26.22)
Yeah, right. Right.
Philippa Gamse (48:31.596)
Obviously, if you're in an area where social media is important and community is important, maybe you have a Facebook community. I mean, we're not dissing that at all, right? That's a different application. So, yeah.
Frank Hereda (48:38.842)
Yeah, no, for sure. But it's refreshing a little bit to just kind of take a step back. So I appreciate that. all right, great. Well, look, I appreciate it. Well, probably this won't be the last podcast. We're going to have to have you on again in a couple, who knows how long to make sure we're, we're staying up to speed with our website and I'll definitely probably have to take, take use of your 30 minute consultation there for sure. But, all right. Well, everybody appreciates you, listening to the episode and, we'll catch you on the next one.
Bye, everybody.
