The best social sharing snippet from this interview is by far… “I think a lot of people put so much emphasis on design and I’m speaking to myself where copy and messaging is kind of an afterthought. And again, I do not want to devalue design because it is very, very important with looking professional. And even if people don’t think they, the design matters, good design does matter and converting. But what I’ve learned and what I truly feel is true is that design engages. Words convert.”
In this episode I host Web Design Business Coach, Josh Hall, to discuss various aspects of website design. Josh shares his insights on the importance of combining design, SEO, and copywriting to create effective websites. He talks about the significance of understanding the audience’s goals and adapting designs to fit different contexts, be it evergreen content or short-term promotions. He also shares perspective on the impact of AI in web design, stressing its utility as a starting point rather than a replacement for personalized, high-quality design. The conversation covers when to consider redesigning a website, focusing on metrics and subtle tweaks rather than complete overhauls.
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Josh’s website
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Raw Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the small business sweet spot. I’m your host Barb Davids, and this show is dedicated to helping small business owners like you get more organic website traffic and also to help create and distribute content and analyzing the numbers so that we can make better informed marketing decisions. It is action oriented, direct, and conversational. And if you’ve been looking for SEO or content marketing help, please stick around to the very end where I share about the group coaching program, small business sweet spot. I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s go.
Welcome back to The Sweet Spot.
Today I have Josh Hall, web designer, course creator, podcaster extraordinaire with me, and we are going to talk about website design. So, thank you so much for joining me, Josh. I really appreciate your time. I am very excited to be here with you, Barb. So, excited to talk shop and talk web design and everything in between, I think.
Yay. Yeah. I was just talking to a copywriter the other day and I made a joke about a web designer, a copywriter, and an SEO walk into a bar and I’m trying to come up with the ending to that. Shocker. They’re all the same person. Sometimes they are. They all three go together. It’s a three headed monster.
Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. I’m gonna have to probably go to like chat GPT because I’m not a comedian, but I really think that there’s some joke there for sure. Something with like a holy web design trinity or digital trinity, I don’t know, something. Really, in all honesty though, One thing I teach a lot of my students now, which it’s tough because it can be overwhelming when you’re getting into web design.
But the reality is if you’re going to be a web designer, you’re going to need to know some SEO and you’re going to need to know some copywriting and some messaging. Those three are design, SEO, and copy. Those are all hand in hand. So we’ll come up with something good. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. All right.
So my first question to you is, Design is subjective. Would you agree or disagree with that? I would agree just because there’s, I hate it depends answers, but it depends. Like some design, some design is really important depending on the niche or depending on the industry, depending on your goals for a website or for a landing page or a sales page.
But then I’ve seen websites convert super highly that are Terribly designed. I follow a guy Ryan Lee, who’s like, I don’t know if you’re familiar with him, he’s kind of an OG in, in the course creation business and community business, and he I’ve been on his newsletter for a while. He actually does mostly just Google docs and like simple web pages that are.
mainly just text based don’t look that great, but it’s just all about the messaging. So by no means want to devalue design because I think it’s extremely important, especially for people who want to look professional and convert. But it is subjective in the way of maybe where design elements are versus the importance of copy and messaging.
So those two really need to be married. Pretty well together. Yeah. Yeah. That’s interesting about the, the docs thing and also very frightening that, that that’s still out there. I do sometimes land on web pages and they do seem like they’re from the eighties. And I do wonder, do they, do they get much traffic?
Does Google even see that? I wonder too. I don’t think Google, I mean, being that it’s a Google doc there, I can’t imagine a doc would get SEO value. I mean, I would always recommend making a blog post or making a sales page, but I guess in that example, that that’s more, he, he’s doing more like. Almost like a weekly offer.
So it’s not something that needs to live online long. So that’s a big distinction to how, how far you go into design and effort into something that’s going to be fairly brief versus a blog post or a sales page, it’s going to live on forever. My, for example, the sales page for my web design community, web designer pro.
I put a lot of work. Into that. And I’m actually revising it currently for like conversion 2. 0 of the sales page. And a lot of work is going into design the copy and even SEO now is, is a bigger implication. So I think those two variables, as far as it being subjective is really what you have to look at.
Like, is this something that’s going to be. An evergreen long lasting piece, or is it something that’s like a promotion or a lead generator that may be up for only a month or two? That’s a good point. The goal is a big deal for your sales landing page in your sales course. Is there sort of a a hierarchy or like a thing that you start with at the top to going down?
Like how important is the structure? Of the website page. So one thing I’ve learned, this would apply to any, and I think you probably saw this cause you went through my course on, on creating a course. I, I talk about the sales page in there and what I’ve learned is that a good sales page, whether it’s a course or a program is going to have a few common elements.
I think the most important thing to get up front is some sort of transformation ideally. And if you can get that in the headline, like when you go through this course, this is what you’re, when you come out of it, this is the result. This is what the goal is. I think that’s the biggest thing for any sort of course program.
Whatever it is, anything you’re selling, if you can get that transformation up there at top, that’s the biggie. Any chance that you have to personalize a sales page, I think is absolutely key nowadays, especially in the wake of chat, GPT and AI stuff. And, and just the fact that there’s so many templates out there.
I mean, if you, and by personalization, I mean, A video of you walking through, not everyone’s going to watch a video, but what I found is a lot of the people who actually buy Watch a quick video, whether it’s a minute or two minutes of a little bit about the course or the program, what to expect most importantly, those results that you could just articulate that you’ve already talked about in the heading.
That’s a biggie. The other thing I do on all my sales pages as well is. I like to call it a founder’s note, but it could also be like a meet your guide or basically meet the person who you’re going to work with or learn from. That’s it. That’s a biggie too. And that doesn’t need to be a video. That could be just a picture of you.
And then a little blurb about either the course or a little bit about your mission, or even a slight bit about your backstory to give some authority before they would purchase. So those are a couple of biggies. I could keep going on sales pages, but those are a couple of biggies is, Got to highlight the transformation, the result you’re going to get, and then personalize that in any way you can.
I promise it’s going to be a big converter. I love that. And I would say, I’m just going to plug your course because I took your course on courses a couple of like two, three years ago. So if somebody is looking for like sales landing page information, that would be a good course to go through. And it is, Ironically, I never created the course, but that was on me.
Like I had some things going on, but that was the only course that I ever actually finished 100%. So you have some really great courses. I think there’s a lot of information. You go above and beyond with your information. So just going to plug that a little bit for you. Oh, thank you, Barb. That’s so awesome to hear.
What a testimonial. That’s amazing. Yeah. So when people are setting up their website. There’s a lot of people I think that do redesigns. At what point maybe have you felt like people are thinking about doing a redesign and what should they consider when they’re thinking about they’re like, Oh, maybe my design isn’t quite where it needs to be.
Should I just do a full on redesign or should I just tweak a few things? I would always err on the side of tweaking. A few things first, because a redesign, depending on how big the site is, is always a big undertaking. Typically, I would recommend just looking at the homepage or maybe a couple of the service pages.
If it’s a service based business, if it’s a coach or a consultant or a web designer, SEO, or same thing, I would just look at primarily your homepage because you could save a version. And I would always do this too, always save your initial Version like version one, because what you don’t want to do is make a bunch of changes and revamp, and then see conversions go down and be like, ah, crap, and I have to redo or redesign the whole site again, save your original design.
But I would always start with just moving around elements or tweaking some of the copy or just revamping things slightly rather than a full on. Redesigned there. There’s definitely a big difference between. redesigning a site from the ground up with colors and design and typography and everything versus just making tweaks to what’s there.
So in most cases, I I’d recommend starting with that. I’ve found that for most of my clients that I worked with, once we got to the three year point, that was usually the time for either some pretty drastic revamps or a potential redesign three to five years. I feel like is, Is coming for a full redesign.
That said, I’ve got some sites that I designed for clients that are still up from like 2014. So we’re going on like a decade and they’re still going strong, which is the true Testament of a good design. My site at Josh hall. co as much as I want to like blow it up and redo things. I designed that in 2017 and it’s still converting really well.
So part of me is like. I don’t have like the, I don’t have a huge need to redesign everything necessarily. My branding hasn’t changed. I’m making a lot of updates and revamps to it, but I mean, that’s what, seven years old now and it’s still kicking. So yeah, I would take it slow and at all costs, avoid doing like a complete rebuild unless it’s just not working.
Yeah. Is there a couple of signs that someone could be like understanding that they might need a redesign? I mean, I guess the gimme is the. Less conversions over, you know, over time or over year over year, month over month. Is there anything else that maybe they could look at to say, yep, maybe it’s time to take a look at the design of the website.
Yeah, I would only really consider redesigning it if you see a drop. In those metrics, if you see contact form submissions going down, if you look at Google analytics or whatever analytics you’re using, and you see bounce rates go up, which means that people are bouncing from that page and not doing anything some of those simple metrics there will tell you, or even like lead generators, if you have a free ebook or a free guide or a masterclass, and then, you know, those just drop off completely, maybe that’s an issue.
But the other factor with that is that’s not always necessarily your site. That could be like a Google thing, like an algorithm change, or maybe if you stop promoting on social media, or if you stop doing podcast interviews, naturally, you’re not getting as many eyes on your site. So that’s going to drop.
So. If you can tell it’s like, I’m very, I’m very hesitant to have people change their website, unless it’s a very, really, really clear thing that the website is the problem, because I’ve actually found if it’s converting it all, then it should be converting, you know, ongoing unless something is changed dramatically.
So yeah, in that case, I would just make small tweaks rather than, yeah, you know, blowing, blowing something up completely. The other thing to remember too, when it comes to redesigns and revamps is we all get bored. With our own website, everybody, you know, Barb, you’ve designed something, you love it when it goes live.
And in two months, you’re like, this is horrible. What was I thinking? I’m so bored with this, but you have to like reel yourself in from that feeling and protect yourself from that. Because you almost have to remember how cool you felt and good you felt when you launched it, because that feeling dissipates very quickly.
So. I say that because I see a lot of web designer, like actually just yesterday, I was coaching somebody in my community and they said, I know I need to redesign my website. And I was like, well, maybe not. No, like it converted fine for a few years. It’s a few years old. My particular student, she was, she’s in a bit of a slump right now, but her site converted fine up to this.
So I’m like, I actually don’t think it’s that. She also had just got married and just went through a really busy life season. So I was like, I bet it’s just because you haven’t been able to promote as much, please. It’s just a season. You’re just, you went through a lot. You just got married. Your focus was on that, not on the business.
So let’s focus on marketing and promotion and kind of doing just a little bit of hustle, just a season of hustle to get traffic back, and then we can reevaluate. So I have that same mindset as well, that like we get bored with our sites. We think it sucks, but you know, hold off on that because what is old to you is new to a new lead.
That’s very true. I ended up going through a redesign middle of last year, but it was because my brand had sort of changed and my outlook had sort of changed, like a bunch of like internal personal stuff changed and my perspective on what my website was going to be and my business was going to be and all of that changed.
So mostly it was the colors that didn’t really reflect the, the personalized side of my business. So I went through a rebrand, but it was mostly on the the visual part of it. Not necessarily the redesign or the layout of my website. So, and that’s a biggie. It probably looks like a whole new site just with a fresh coat of paint, new colors.
And that’s where I would say, yeah, if you’re. If your brand is going through a bit of a redesign and absolutely, you know, redesign the site. But to your point, it sounds like you didn’t like blow everything up and completely start over. You just, you change colors and maybe change typography. I know that’s easier said than done, but that sounds super simple.
It’s not a fresh coat of paint. It’s like, you know, you’re doing a lot of work, but I always like to go back to some sort of house analogy because it’s basically like renovating a house. It doesn’t mean you have to blow up the house or tear it down. But you’re renovating, you may move a wall. It may be a lot of work, but it may do a fresh coat of paint, new siding, new roof, whatever, but the core is still there.
The foundation is still there. Do you have a favorite website core foundation platform? So I, I’m a WordPress guy and I use the Divi theme by elegant themes for WordPress. I’ve used that since 2014. So 10 years, it’s my 10 year Divi anniversary. It’s there’s so many platforms. Now it’s, that’s actually like one of the things that I have found myself with when helping early stage designers really trying to make that less overwhelming because as you know, Barb, especially with SEO implications, like There’s just so many dang options.
Now you could use WordPress within WordPress. There’s a ton of different themes and page builders. You could go Webflow, you could go Squarespace, all these different options. I really think when it comes to choosing the tool for you, I have a very simple. Kind of a path framework for that, which is look at the tool.
Do you like the tool? If you just can’t stand WordPress, don’t use WordPress, go to go to something different. But if, if you like a certain tool that uses WordPress, like I do with Divi, Divi is my personal preference, then use that and just stick with it for as long as you can. And the other aspect of that, there’s two other pieces that I recommend looking towards.
One is the community behind the tool. Make sure if you’re going to invest. In your website and in your business, especially if you’re a web designer, you want to make sure there’s a strong community to support you. Even when you get stuck, well, when you get stuck and then make sure that you trust the company.
That’s another big thing is a lot of companies now. Whether they are self funded or whether they’re like venture capital funded, that’s something to think about because they may get sold. You mentioned my course on creating courses. I run my courses in two different places in my community, web designer pro, which is built off of circle, which is my preferred plat, my community platform and membership, but then I use WordPress for my site and I actually have my courses over there currently still for one off purchases if you don’t want the community aspect.
So. I’m using a two different, you know, basically two different platforms. But why I mentioned that is LearnDash, which is what I use for my courses over at my WordPress site is a great platform. It’s been fine. I haven’t had any issues, but they’ve changed ownership, like. Three or four times in the past couple of years.
And that kind of scares the hell out of me because I’m like, I don’t know where this is going to go. So you really do have to look at the company too, and make sure you trust them. So the tool, the community, the company, those are my big three metrics when choosing a tool. That’s some good things to think about.
Where do you think web design is going? There’s been so much change in terms of the AI stuff happening and these Tools coming out saying you can build a whole website just by plugging in some information and then there you have it, a website. What, what are your feelings on those? I think AI overall for web designers is a good starting point.
And it’s kind of funny because what AI is doing now is what I was doing basically. 10 years ago, which is basically to have starter sites, like templates that are basically just starting points. And AI is really good for that. I’ve never seen any of these AI builders pump out a site with a few clicks that is actually like, wow, that looks incredible.
It’s very basic, very bland. You’re still going to have to add your flair to the content. Custom imagery, custom graphics, anything you can do to make those sites look not so dang cookie cutter is going to be key, but by golly, if it speeds things up, go for it. So I think AI in general is going to actually help web designers who use it from a standpoint of process and.
Just speed and profitability instead of tinkering around or, or just staring at the white screen of death where we’re like, I got nothing. We’ve all been there. Right. You design something and you’re just like, I don’t know. I just don’t have it right now. Whereas AI could be a really good starting point.
So that’s my, that’s my take on that, especially right now. I mean, maybe eventually AI will be able to do a lot more robust things from the build standpoint. But as of right now, and I think over the next few years, I can’t imagine it’s going to get so robust that a client. is going to be able to prompt AI.
I mean, good luck with a client being able to understand prompting. That’s good for them. The big joke in the web design realm is like clients have to articulate what they want to AI. So we’re all safe. Yeah. Cause they’re just going to say, make it pop, right? Yeah. Make it pop, make the logo bigger. But I do, I do think it’s a good starting point.
I will say though, as far as where the industry of web design is going in general for profitable web designers. One thing that I’ve noticed, a lot of my members of web designer pro who are at six figures and multi six figures are becoming more well rounded web consultants. It’s, it’s almost like the return of webmasters, not meaning that they’re all tech wizards, but it means, and this is another example I just went through yesterday.
One of my members had a WordPress client. Who wanted to take her courses and community into something like circle, which is what I use. So it’s not, she, she basically had to give up her maintenance plan and her recurring income with a maintenance plan. She was a little worried about that. So, but I told her, I was the student, Katie, I was like, the cool thing about this is your client is going to trust you enough to say like, okay, we could end our typical WordPress maintenance plan.
But I’m going to recommend this tool called circle that’s self hosted. So we don’t need to update plugins and everything, but they’re still going to have a lot of questions and support and ongoing needs. So you can actually create just a standard support plan. Yeah. You’re not going to worry about security hosting or plugins, but you could still support your client with all sorts of ongoing work month to month.
And how timely Barb just this morning, she said that they went for it. So when, however, she rephrased her plan, she actually did herself a favor by going from a web designer and basically just a task taker to a web consultant, who’s now looking into the best interests of her client and saying like, listen, we don’t need WordPress for this.
We can, we could actually do, you know, this subscription to circle and then I’m in your corner every month. For support for questions, maybe one thing that’s really popular that a lot of my students are doing is a quarterly strategy call for their monthly care plans. So whether it’s WordPress or Squarespace or whatever if every quarter, you offer a little window of strategy and consulting for your current set of clients.
You’re in their back every quarter and they’re paying you every month and they can take advantage of these quarterly calls, which then lead to more ongoing work and one off projects. So that’s what I’m seeing working right now really well is stepping into this more web consultant doesn’t mean you need to know.
Everything or be an expert in all these areas. But the reality is if you’re a web designer, you’re getting those questions. Anyway, you’re just not packaging it up or charging for it. So what do you call it? A strategist? What do you call it? A consultant a webmaster. It’s kind of all the same blurry line there.
Yeah. And that’s what we’re here for, right? As business owners to help the people that we serve with the solution that they’re looking for. So it just benefits them. Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting because I, as you know, probably, you know, I came from the WordPress world. And I was very just integrated in that world.
And I think anytime I think tribalism takes over when you’re in one group of people. And I just kind of thought everyone using Wix or Squarespace or Webflow was just a different breed of designer. What I’ve realized now is like, there may be a time where a Squarespace is fine for a website. It’s fine with SEO.
A lot of my students use Squarespace and killing it on SEO. There may be a time for show at whatever works for you. You can really make it work. I think WordPress is still the king for more robust builds and a lot of flexibility and control, but if it’s more standard portfolio sites or something that doesn’t need to go too deep yeah.
Some of these more like. Hate to say DIY style platforms, but something that isn’t as complex can do the job for, for a while. So I have students who use WordPress for more advanced sites and something like show it for fairly templatized, you know quote unquote, simple sites. Good, good, good. All right.
So if you were to think back about what we talked about. What would you say is probably the biggest takeaway that you would want somebody to walk away with as a designer, web designer, SEO, or your, your audience is probably a mix of, of both. I would imagine maybe probably some copywriters. I really think you need to get down to the results.
Right up front, like we talked about the, the heading idea or text that would really articulate the results. I can’t recommend enough that everyone look at your website, look at your sales pages and make sure the results that you get people are oh so clear, because that’s what’s going to separate you from the noise of AI copywriting and just kind of lazy.
Copy and messaging on websites. I think a lot of people put so much emphasis on design and I’m speaking to myself where copy and messaging is kind of an afterthought. And again, I do not want to devalue design because it is very, very important with looking professional. And even if people don’t think they, the design matters, good design does matter and converting.
But what I’ve learned and what I truly feel is true is that design engages. Words convert. So really look at the words, really look at what you’re saying and then you’re heading and the first few scrolls of a website, remembering that everyone scans websites and lets it’s a blog post or something meaty.
So homepages, results, transformation, quick, honest wins, personalization, anything you can do, homepage sales page that is going to hit all those boxes. I think that’s really what’s going to separate people moving forward here. That is a great takeaway. Thank you. All right. That is going to cover good looking website design.
If somebody is thinking about website design and they want to reach out to you or take one of your wonderful courses, how do they find you? Joshhall. co is my website. There’s a bunch of freebies there. You’ll, you’ll get there’s plenty of resources for my podcast, my YouTube channel and then my community is web designer pro, which you can also find it’s all at joshhall.
co. So just head there and then I’ll guide you through the right resources that are good for you. All right. Thanks so much for taking the time today, Josh. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Barb. All right. And that wraps up this episode with Josh Hall on good looking website design and helping your business thrive online.
We’ll see you in the next sweet spot. Cheers.
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