Marisa Shadrick [00:00:14]:
Hello. Hello. And welcome to the Amplify Your Authority podcast. I’m so glad you’re here. I am really excited to share with you today all about websites and how you can improve it or give it a makeover using 3 AI tools that I will mention throughout this training and give you a little bit of background about these tools, but help you in the process of improving your website. Now we’re talking primarily your homepage, but we’re going to touch on some other pages of your website. Why is this important? Because your website is a lead generation tool. And if you want to grow more leads, it is imperative that you have your website updated.

Marisa Shadrick [00:01:00]:
Why? Sometimes people want to find out more about your business. And where do they go? They’ll go to your website. So it’s really important to have that updated. So when they go there, they can find out more about you. And you wanna create a really great user experience. So they can download a free resource or schedule a call. Depending on your industry, the call to action will be different. But this is a lead generating tool.

Marisa Shadrick [00:01:26]:
So I’m going to share with you systematically some tips on the website, and then I’ll let you know which AI tools will be helpful in building out the copy for your website. So when we think about our website, we want to think first about the audience. So if they were coming to your virtual home, what would they see? So with the homepage, the headline is really important and the subhead, so they can self identify and know this is for me. The outcome of what your business provides is important too. So if you can put that in the headline and the subhead, they know exactly what it is that you sell, what it is that you do, and it’s a no brainer for them. Then they’ll go and look and scroll down and look for some more things and, hopefully, click on some of the tabs that you have. Now when you have a website, depending on the industry, again, the call to action could be to schedule a call or to download a free resource. It just depends on what it is that you sell.

Marisa Shadrick [00:02:28]:
But you can also have a start here button, which is very helpful for navigation. Because people, when they come to a website, especially if there’s a lot there, they just don’t know what to choose. Right? If you have a lot of tabs, and we’re gonna talk about the aesthetics of tabs in just a second. But if you have a lot of things going on, and there’s just the remote chance that it’s confusing, the first thing that you can do if you don’t have time to work on your website is just have a start here button. And that way, they can start their click it, and you’ll be able to direct them or have a video that directs them. That could be very helpful, which is a great segue for another thing you can have on the home page is a video. You can place a video there and have a really compelling headline, subhead, and a video that explains exactly what it is that you do and how it is that you serve your audience. And this will be really, really helpful for them to cut to the chase and hear your voice, hear how you care because you’re speaking from the heart.

Marisa Shadrick [00:03:28]:
You’re showing empathy. And we’ve talked about how empathy is really, really important when you’re reaching an audience. You want them to know that you understand what their struggle is and that you’re willing to help them or help them reach at least a milestone so they can continue on their journey. So the imagery is really important, and you wanna use a good color scheme. There is a great tool called colors.c0 that you can find color schemes. And I’ve mentioned this in a previous session. So you can go there, and you can check out color schemes. You don’t wanna have too many colors.

Marisa Shadrick [00:04:01]:
Maybe 2 colors that you change. Mine has blues and grays and whites. And then you wanna have a contrasting color for any buttons or any call to actions. And we’re gonna talk a little bit about buttons and fields and see, like, which one you should choose to leverage and optimize your page. So your homepage really needs to tell a clear story. And, again, depending on your industry, there may be just minimal things that you need on the homepage, or you may need to build it out and put a little extra. It just depends on the industry. Number 2, the secret sauce of freebie placement.

Marisa Shadrick [00:04:41]:
This is really important. So you need to consider, again, on the homepage, if you’re gonna have some type of call to action, which you should, it should be above the fold. What do I mean by that? Before people scroll down, so when they type in your URL or they find you on Google and they go to the website, the first thing they see is that headline, that subhead, maybe a little bit of copy, maybe a video and a button. So if you don’t have a video, maybe you have an image. That’s fine too. Again, depending on your industry, but there should be a button before they even scroll down. So it needs to be crystal clear as far as what it is that you do so that when they see that button, they’ll want to click it to maybe book a call or download a freebie. So the placement of the call to action is important as well.

Marisa Shadrick [00:05:30]:
Whether you have a button or feels, the thought behind it is a button creates a barrier because when you click the button, then they go to the form with the fields and they have to fill it out. But there’s those that believe that micro commitments is a good thing to first visit the page, to first click the button. These are micro commitments before you’re asking for the email. The other school of thought is that there would be some fields there. Now, if you’re asking them to book a call, this is gonna be hard because you’re gonna have to go to Calendly or some type of scheduler that you have, so they’ll have to click it to go there. But if it’s for a download and you wanna have feels, the school of thought is why create more barriers? Cut to the chase, provide the feels so that while they’re thinking about it, they can go ahead and put their email and their the name in the feels and then get their resource. So what’s the right answer? There is no right answer. It depends on the industry.

Marisa Shadrick [00:06:37]:
And again, a lot of this when it comes to lead generation, it’s testing and tweaking. It really is. You need to start one way and then go back and see, did that work? Do I need to change this and turn it into a button? Or do I need to change the button and turn it into fields? Do I need to remove the image in the header and put a video? This is all part of the process of testing and tweaking and refining what you’re doing on your web page. So the point is you should have a call to action. Whether you decide to have fields or a button is up to you. If it’s not working, then flip over to the other way and try it the other way. You also want to put the placement of a call to action in different places of your website. If you’re a writer and you have a blog, you should have a call to action where you blog.

Marisa Shadrick [00:07:31]:
So whether that’s in the footer or whether that’s maybe at the end of the blog post, somewhere where people can access your resource right from the blog without having to go somewhere else. If you’re a podcaster, there should be a call to action on the podcast show notes. If you share YouTube videos, you should have somewhere on there. Maybe you have a main page that lists all the YouTube videos. You should have a button somewhere in there so that they can, download something. Now here’s the thing. When you’re doing this, depending on which way they come to your virtual home, because your virtual home has different ways of accessing. Right? So if they’re really interested in the blog and the topic that you blog about is really compelling for them, then the lead magnet should be something that seamlessly works with the blog content.

Marisa Shadrick [00:08:33]:
You might even consider a content upgrade. So if you do a lot of how to’s in the blog, maybe you should have a content upgrade that you change periodically that relates to the topic that you write about, and they can download it. If you’re a podcaster, maybe be it could be as simple as subscribe to the podcast community. That simple. Right? If a YouTuber, maybe it’s, a 3 part video series, where you’ve taken the best of the best of YouTube, and you collected it for them, where they can start and they can achieve some type of milestone from watching these videos, or you can create brand new videos, 3 part videos. Maybe they’re 5 minutes a piece or 7 minutes, and you create these where they can get access to it. It should be related to the page that they came in on. That gives it a little bit more of a chance of being able to acquire an email from the person that is on that page.

Marisa Shadrick [00:09:34]:
Obviously, you wanna have a contact page. Now how you word this is up to you. But on your contact page, I recently changed mine. It said book a call, which is totally boring. So I changed it to free consultation. So you can change the tabs too. So if you have a tab that says, free consultation or contact me or something like that, that tab, you can change the name of the tab. So if for some reason that you’re not getting a lot of people to go to it, try just changing the name of the tab so that when they go there, they’ll be able to schedule a call with you.

Marisa Shadrick [00:10:15]:
And even on that page, you wanna make it really compelling on that page. Maybe even have a video, embed the calendar, so that once they’re there, they go ahead and schedule that call. So the placement of the freebies, whether it’s to subscribe to your podcast community or download a resource, it’s really important to customize it based on the page that they’re consuming. Because typically when they go to it, maybe you mentioned the blog post on social media, or maybe you have a newsletter and you mentioned it. They’re going directly to that page. They’re not going to the homepage. They’re going to that post. They’re going to that podcast.

Marisa Shadrick [00:10:57]:
They’re going to that YouTube video. So while they’re there, you wanna be able to capture those leads. So the placement is really important. In the about section, you might wanna have something different. Maybe it’s the same thing that’s on the homepage. But my point is, think about it a little bit. Think about their experience when they get on that page and what you should offer on that page. And, again, side widgets are the same way.

Marisa Shadrick [00:11:21]:
Think about the user experience if you have that. And the last part for placement too is the footer. The footer is usually universal, so it’s seen on every page. So you might wanna consider what would that be so that it’s something that they would want, all of them would want, that you have, and it would be kind of a universal free resource. Maybe it’s a challenge. Maybe it’s, a quiz that you have. What is it that you can provide in the footer that everybody would want? And then don’t forget the navigation menu. Now, when it comes to the navigation menu, those are the tabs in the top of your website.

Marisa Shadrick [00:12:01]:
You don’t wanna have more than 5. I would say 5 is plenty. But if you have more live pages that you wanna feature, but you don’t wanna have a row of 7, 10 tabs on your website, you can create what they call a hamburger menu, where you click one tab and you see below other pages related to that. Let me explain a little further. Like on my website, I’ve got my homepage, I’ve got my about page, I have services. But when you hover over it, you see under services, which is the tab that’s visible on the website, you see consulting, copywriter, and you see group coaching. But you don’t see that unless you hover over services, and then people can click one of those pages. And then I also have, which is another placement for freebies, I’ve collected a bunch of my resources and put them on a page of its own, and it’s called free resources.

Marisa Shadrick [00:12:59]:
So when they hover over, they can go ahead from free resources, check out the podcast, check out the articles, but also the downloads. So there’s a page there where it has all the free resources on a page, and it features all the free resources under downloads. So that’s another place that you can place your free resources when you have, say, 3 or maybe you have 6 of them, depending on how you wanna lay it out. You can create a page and start dedicating all your free resources on that page. That way, if you’re a guest on a podcast and maybe the audience is mixed a little bit, you can send them to that particular page that has a lot of downloads so they can choose. And that’s what I put on that particular page. When you go there, I tell them, choose your adventure. And then I put a little bit of text, and then below, it’s all the lead magnets below it.

Marisa Shadrick [00:13:59]:
So that’s a way to do that. But I only have 5 tabs, yet I have, let’s see, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 pages that are live on my website, but you only see 5 tabs. And that’s a great way to be able to not overwhelm your audience by using those tabs and then creating these subcategories below the tab, like free resource has podcast, articles, downloads. Services has consulting, copywriting, and group coaching. And contact has free consultation and speaker media kit under contact. So I have 2 pages there. So number 3 is scaling with multiple lead magnets. I touched on this a little bit.

Marisa Shadrick [00:14:42]:
It’s really important to have more than one lead magnet. And you can see that on your website, you can clearly have 3 or 4 or 5 lead magnets depending on the pages that you have live on your website. And you have more of a custom type of call to action for each page rather than one for all. Right? Because there might be a disconnect. Now when you have these different lead magnets, and again, scaling these multiple lead magnets, you wanna be able to create them, but also find out where people came from. And this is where tags come in handy. Tags are something that your email service provider allows you to do, and it’s a way to identify the contact. So you can create the tag and give it any name you want.

Marisa Shadrick [00:15:32]:
So if the resource is a free book, then the tag would be free book. Now what I do to organize my tags is I have tags for giveaways. So giveaway is spelled out in caps and then semicolon and whatever the lead magnet is. The second lead magnet would be giveaway, semicolon, whatever the lead magnet is. 3rd giveaway, semicolon, and so forth. I have that for the giveaways. I have that for events. I have that for various categories so I can find them easily and be able to, know where they came from.

Marisa Shadrick [00:16:11]:
Now, why is this important? Because if they download something and you find that a lot of people are downloading a free resource, wow, they’re really interested in it. And you’re identifying where they came from, and you can begin to segment that group and offer something that is unique for them since they’re so interested in that free resource. But you can also use tags in a way to show whether they’re a beginner, intermediate, or advanced. So if what you’re selling or what you’re promoting, a workshop, whatever it might be, if it’s more intermediate level, you can tag them intermediate. If they’re more beginner, you can tag them beginner. That way it helps you. If you’re thinking about what product am I gonna create, and you start looking at your tags and you see that everybody has the beginner tag, then you’re not gonna create something that’s more for an advanced level. If you’re creating content for beginner and you find that people are downloading resources that’s more advanced, then you wanna create a product or something for the more advanced students.

Marisa Shadrick [00:17:16]:
Right? So it’ll help you in understanding your audience. Okay. Let’s move on because we’re talking about website. I kind of digressed and went into the lead magnets. So in any event, you do wanna scale multiple lead magnets on your website. Number 4 is UX. So that is user experience tweaks that keep visitors coming back. So with this, I’m gonna go very quickly because I kinda touched on some of this, the usability.

Marisa Shadrick [00:17:44]:
It has to be very user friendly. A lot of white space, a lot of bullets, easy tabs, maybe no more than 5, maybe a start here, maybe a welcome video. Make the user experience easy. Guide them. Right? Number 2, accessibility. When you have videos, you want to be able to have all of the text visible on the video. For the people that are maybe hearing impaired, that would help for them to be able to to read it as opposed to just listen to it. And you wanna also make sure that it’s mobile friendly.

Marisa Shadrick [00:18:21]:
So you wanna check it for not only desktop, you wanna check it for tablet, and you wanna check it for mobile. So there are ways that you can do that, and you wanna make sure that it is very user friendly. Sometimes on mobile, I hide some things that are on desktop when it comes to mobile because I don’t need all that on mobile. And so I’ll adjust a few things on mobile. But you want the accessibility to be great and user friendly for people that are jumping in, either looking on desktop or looking on mobile or looking at tablet. The aesthetics, we talked about this too. You wanna make sure that the design is very appealing. No crazy colors.

Marisa Shadrick [00:19:00]:
Right? Less is more. And use visual hierarchy. So that would mean have bold headlines and subheads, so you can really see the breaks and see kind of with the headlines and the sub headlines. You can almost see a story being told just by looking at that. That’s what I mean by having that that visual hierarchy. The headlines are bold. Maybe it’s a contrasting color for the headlines, and you wanna make sure that they can see that very easily for those people that like to scan. And then the performance, you wanna make sure that all of your graphics load quickly.

Marisa Shadrick [00:19:43]:
If it takes a while for it to load, it might discourage people from lingering. So you wanna make sure that you compress your images and that everything loads very quickly and it’s not slow. And then the content, this is really important. Right? This, again, user experience. Is the messaging clear? We kinda touched on that, the headline. Is it concise? Is it tailored to your audience? Can they self identify? Interactivity is another. You could have a chat feature. Again, your email service provider sometimes offers that.

Marisa Shadrick [00:20:13]:
I’m sure there are tools that offer it as well. But you can add a chat feature where people can actually click the bubble, and you would get a notification, and they would ask a question, and you can answer the question via text. So that could be really helpful. So you can have engaging features like that. You could have maybe something that feels very interactive, like a quiz. Maybe you want to have that featured on your website so people will want to take advantage of that and self discovery is always appealing. So that might be something that they would like. And again, can they interact easily with it? Are the buttons clear? Is it visually appealing? Are you using big enough fonts? Sometimes the font is teeny tiny.

Marisa Shadrick [00:20:57]:
So you wanna make sure you do check on different devices to make sure the font is clear. Because not only are some people hearing impaired, but some people can’t see very well. So you wanna make sure that the font is a decent enough size so people can see it. And the last is the engagement tools. You have things like pop ups. Now some people say, I hate pop ups, but they’re effective and they work. They really do work. So you could have either a pop up that’s timed that appears, perhaps a few seconds after they scroll.

Marisa Shadrick [00:21:29]:
You could have an exit intent pop up, which is one that would happen when they are getting ready to exit out. Then the pop up appears, so you’re not interrupting their experience on the website. It’s only when they’re thinking about exiting that the pop up appears. There’s welcome mat, which is full screen. Those kinda bug me. But, again, you might wanna test. Maybe that’s something that you’d wanna do, have a welcome mat so that as soon as they go to the website, it kind of takes over the entire screen. It’s a full screen type of pop up.

Marisa Shadrick [00:22:02]:
But if it’s something really, really compelling or new news or something limited time, you might wanna use it. You wanna think of maybe using the ribbon at the top of your website for a way for them to subscribe to something. And, again, the chat feature is another thing that you might wanna consider. Now the AI tools are really simple. When you’re writing the copy for your website, you might wanna do a little bit of research, research competitors or research on your topic. And you can use perplexity to do all your research, and it will give you the cited work that you could check out. Maybe you need to freshen up the messaging. Right? Then if you need some ideas for your website or maybe some of the the wording, you can use, chat g p t for all the ideation of something that you want to create, and it will be great because they can search the Internet.

Marisa Shadrick [00:22:59]:
So the ideation process of it, if you’re not sure, you know, what should I put on my about page? The about page, by the way, is about your audience, not about you. You interject how you help them, and that’s how you start speaking about what you do. But you could ask chat gpt to help you with the about section. Just give it a little bit information about what it is that you do, and you wanna be more relevant. So how would the outline look for an about section if I wanna make it all about my audience and then come alongside them in the copy so that they see how I can help them, you can ask chat gbt. And then finally, for the final version, I would use Claude to be able to really make the copy sound human. So those three tools, perplexity for all the research that you would need so that you really dial in on the needs of your audience and check out competitors. Then ideation, I would use chat gbt to ideate some ideas for some of the pages or maybe how you want to stack, you know, the tabs.

Marisa Shadrick [00:24:02]:
Maybe you have a lot of live pages. I have these live pages. I only wanna have 5 tabs on my website. Chat gbt, can you help me figure out, you know, what I can title these tabs? All of that, you can use Chat gbt for any ideation. And then the final copy, once you have something written, you can go to Claude, give it an example of your writing style of your voice, and ask it to improve the copy for blank page. If it’s your home page, ask it to improve it with that, and then you can get a final copy that you can put on your page. And you can give your website a makeover using 3 AI tools, Perplexity, ChatchePT, and Claude, to improve your website. And make sure that, again, in recap, you wanna make sure you make your home page dazzle, that it’s really clear, Use some of the elements we talked about, like make sure you have a button above the fold, a video, a start here, whatever it is to help guide the people.

Marisa Shadrick [00:25:02]:
Number 2, the secret sauce of freebie placement. Keep it above the fold. You wanna have it in on every page, but you wanna customize the call to action so it fits the article page or it fits the podcast page. So you wanna have multiple ones. And then scaling all of these, you wanna be able to make sure you create these lead magnets, but then you can recognize where they came from. So you wanna be able to use tags to do this. And then the user experience is all about making it easy for them to navigate on your website, to be able to access the content, to be able to know where to go, to have the font big enough to read, all of those last details. And then you can, again, use things like pop ups, and you can use a chat feature.

Marisa Shadrick [00:25:52]:
You can use a ribbon at the top to try to get people to download a resource or schedule a call. And, ultimately, you can use 3 AI tools, Perplexity for research, ChatGbt for ideation, and Claude to refine your copy. So hopefully, that was helpful for you to maybe give your website a little bit of a makeover for the coming year, and it’s a work in process. You’re always gonna be tweaking and adjusting, but having a pretty well designed website does not hurt because people do go there to check you out, to see what it is that you do, to see if they wanna work with you. So I encourage you to give it a look and keep it fresh, keep it updated. So that’s all I have for you today. So take care, and I’ll talk to you soon.