Gill Andrews: Secrets to High-Converting Websites

Join host Nigel Rawlins in a captivating conversation with Gill Andrews, a conversion copywriter and website consultant, on the Wisepreneurs Podcast. Gill offers valuable insights into what makes the copy on your website truly effective in generating business, discussing topics like user-centric design, SEO, content marketing, and common pitfalls to avoid. Whether you want to revamp your site or start from scratch, this episode provides practical advice and frameworks to help you succeed online.

Mentioned on the podcast

• Book: Making Your Website Work, 100 Copy and Design Tweaks for Smart Business Owners by Gill Andrews
• Freelancer Homepage Checklist: Turn Your Visitors into Paying Clients https://gillandrews.com/freelancer-homepage-checklist-template/
• Business Soul Searching Self-Paced Course https://gillandrews.com/online-course-find-unique-value-proposition/
• The Emergent Approach To Strategy by Peter Compo

Connect with Gill Andrews
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/gill-andrews/
Website https://gillandrews.com/

Transcript

Gill Andrews

Nigel Rawlins: Welcome, Gill, to the Wisepreneurs Podcast. Could you tell us something about what you do and where you're from?

Gill Andrews: Thanks. Happy to be here. I'm Gill Andrews, a conversion copywriter and website consultant. I'm based in Germany, but I work only with English speaking clients. And, uh, if you've never heard about a conversion copywriter, we write copy, meaning marketing texts that are supposed to make your prospects do a certain thing.

And I do this for websites specifically for websites of service providers Meaning, if you work with me, I will help you, um, write text for your websites that generate more inquiries. And the website consultant part refers to my holistic approach to a website. While a usual copywriter will just, you know, take your brief, instructions, for whatever text you need and write text and that will be it.

I look at the website as a whole. I'm also like a user experience consultant, but this is a bit of a niche term. Not everybody understands what it means. So I chose to call myself website consultant, meaning whatever is wrong with your website, unless it's technical, except of the technical stuff, I will help you fix it.

I also consult on usability and design and work with web designers of my clients to produce layouts that are optimized for new inquiries.

Nigel Rawlins: I decided after many years of building websites for clients, now I'm a marketing services company. so basically I get the marketing done for my clients. So if they want a website, it's my job to help them do it. And only recently I thought, maybe I need to re look at this. So. I read lots of books on SEO, took courses on SEO, technical SEO as well.

And then I came across your book, Making Your Website Work. And I read it and I thought, Oh, gee. And I'm still coming to terms with it. And I'm still reading anything that you write on LinkedIn. And I go back to your books and some of your downloads and I keep working through them and I'm going over my websites and some of my client websites and I'm just going, you cut through all the jargon.

It makes so much sense. So let's explain a little bit more. Let's start with who needs a website to start with and then we'll go into what we mean by conversion. So does everybody need a website nowadays if you're in business?

Gill Andrews: Well, it depends. I would say a lot of people do because this is the behavior of your prospects. You're, you, you shouldn't ask yourself, do I need a website? But are the people who would be my ideal clients looking for products and services like mine online? If they do, you need to be present where your prospects are and the way to do it best would be having a website because relying on third party platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram is not very safe, I would say, because algorithm changes, platforms change, a change like Twitter, we saw so many advertisers, so many, other personal brands or companies they left Twitter because what happened to it, and they lost some of their income, I can imagine. And website is an asset that is, uh, totally in your hand, is totally about you. Also imagine if you are in, on the social network marketing there, you're one of the millions or maybe thousands of people who are in the feed of the prospect.

It's not a place that's only about you. So the moment you get the prospect to your website, a place that's only about you, you have much better chance of converting them. You also know, okay, they're more interesting in me just like, uh, compared to just scrolling, you know, through a Facebook feed or whatever.

So again, the answer to this question is, are your prospects looking for you online? If yes, you need a website.

Nigel Rawlins: Now that's interesting what you just said there. It's not about you putting up a website, it's about your prospects. And I think that's the message I got through from your book and all your writings, that this is about them, it's not about us. So when you talk about being a website copywriter and talking about conversion, let's go into that a little bit more.

I think in the past we just assumed we'd put up a website, people would come and visit us and they would just buy from us. But is that the case? 

Gill Andrews: No, there are so many websites these days. Maybe at some point back day, it used to work where not many people had websites, but now it's like you can have a hundred of hundreds of websites as a person, and it's like, it's also not super expensive. They're also like low cost versions of creating websites.

So you're competing with so many other people. So you really need to make sure you stand out because your prospects also compare you to your competitors. And they also have websites. Um, again, here, one needs to think, okay, uh, who are my competitors? Because your prospects are not shopping in a vacuum.

That's one thing. On another side, of course, they're not comparing you to everybody in the world. So you have your own set of competitors. For some people, it's super hard, because they are competing with many, many, many others. For others, it's less hard because they have a niche that is less crowded.

They do something super specific, but you need to know in which, um, part of this website universe you are operating. Okay. So yeah, but still you need to stand out. However, you won't be the only person. So you need to, uh, put a lot of thought into what's on your website and how it looks.

And it's not that straightforward.

Nigel Rawlins: I think in the past we always thought, okay, it's got to look nice. And, and lately we're realizing it's got to load fast, but the other thing is, you know, you come to the homepage, if they come to the homepage and then you've got to figure out, is this the right site for me? Is this going to help me? So how do they do that on your website?

Gill Andrews: Well, I mean, if they land on your homepage, the very first couple of lines need to establish a relevancy and value. So in your banner, this like, you know, the very first lines on your homepage, it shouldn't say, welcome to my website. It also shouldn't say, uh, best solutions for success, because it's like, what is this?

It just needs to indicate that, yes, whoever, let's say, was searching for, in my case, copywriting services or somebody who helps them generate more inquiries, it says, I help you generate more inquiries in a nutshell. Of course, not like this. This is also probably not the best way, but this would be better than saying, welcome to my website or solutions for success.

So, uh, remember clarity, relevancy and value, meaning I understand every word, it is relevant to my cause, and it brings me value, like communicates benefits, for example. So these three things is a must for the first lines of your homepage.

Nigel Rawlins: That's fantastic, actually, because the other issue, I think you wrote something the other day, is all about I, I, I, and it's not about I, it's about them. That made me change my one, again. So, what are some do's and don'ts, apart from that first line when you come to the website that it's, that it's very clear about who it's for and, and what the offer is, but what are some other do's and don'ts that people do on a website that you've seen?

Gill Andrews: Oh, I've seen so , so many do's and don'ts. Um, I often, I get, uh, asked this question quite often and my favorite answer is, the biggest don't is that they do not understand what they're doing. They're not approaching it strategically. They just think, okay, I know this about my business and I'm just gonna pour everything I think I need to say to my prospects on a website, and this is the wrong approach. The approach should be, what is the mental state of my prospects? How much do they know about their own problems and about the services that I offer and how generally speaking these particular services help them solve their problems.

What are their expectations? What are the results that they would like to me help them achieve? What can be the objections? It is super important. What can prevent them from hiring me? So the very first part of even putting a first word on your website is sitting down and doing this kind of I call it business soul searching.

You already referenced my course. That's the part of every project I do, whether it's a website review or copywriting project. The very first thing is I send a big questionnaire to my clients asking them all these questions to understand whether their website matches what their prospects would like to hear.

And my question to the audience who have a listening to this, have you ever done this? Because if you haven't, the chances are pretty high that whatever is on your website does not, is not that what your prospects need to hear to send you an inquiry or buy from you. So this is the biggest, and we can say the meta, you know, this, the biggest don't. this, this is the cause of all problems. The symptoms would be a lot of jargon, like solutions for success, a lot of a self centered copy, like we are proud to announce our philosophy, our mission. Nobody cares, especially, I mean, maybe if you are a charity, some kind of, uh, organization that helps people.

Yes. But if you are a software developer or a marketing agency, your mission, not important. Um, what else? Probably, fake benefits. This is the one that you are praising something people do not care about. You do not understand your selling points and value proposition. Just, better is I'm better or my services are better is not a value proposition or even a selling point because everybody can say it.

Your selling point is something that is relevant. Prospects care about, is valuable, meaning, yeah, they would like to have it. And third, your competitors cannot replicate or can replicate with like, it would be hard to replicate. Things like cheap, better, can be replicated in a second, you know. Um, But okay, I don't want to discourage listeners.

So what I also can tell you is that, especially for small and medium businesses, the copy I see on websites is really bad. So you do not have to be perfect. You just need to be clear, relevant, valuable, and what I haven't mentioned before, trustworthy. And trust is achieved by specificity, meaning you, when you're explaining and talking about what you offer, you don't say solutions for success.

Say we build websites that not only look pretty, but also generate business. Now this is specific. And trust is achieved by testimonials. If you have that, you will be above 80 percent of websites. that your competitors have. And you shouldn't worry about being too wordy. Sure, then, you know, if I come and work on your website, I would remove a lot of words, because you're probably using more words than you should.

But if you stay clear, relevant, valuable, and trustworthy, you already won over 80 percent of your competitors. This is about words. The other part of a website is design. There, I also see a lot of things done badly, especially by designers. Like people pay them money and they just take a theme that is already existing and like customize it a bit.

And the thing is the theme that is already existing, a lot of them have issues with usability. They have slider carousels. which are harmful for interaction on a website. They rotate too fast to understand anything. Studies show people do not click on them. They have images that are there just for beautifying purposes, which is also makes your website unnecessary long page.

I mean, especially you need to think people looking at your website on mobile. Like so many issues that modern design trends brought to us. And I read studies over studies that say, no, this is a bad pattern because it interferes with natural reading patterns of the visitors and so on and so forth.

And, uh, design, actually, that's the first thing people notice. Which is ironic because when I work on a website, I always start with words. It did happen to me a couple of times where clients came and said, we have this kind of a wire frame and design, write words into it. And I said, I'm not going to do that.

It can happen that at the end we, you know, we kind of see that it's kind of similar to what it's supposed to be, but I'm definitely not fitting the words into the boxes that you already created without understanding of the audience and the argument you're going to make. Because you need to think, okay, how would I persuade a person?

And if you do not know that, and you already painted, you know, the walls of your house without taking care of the foundation, the house is going to collapse. So, um, yeah, with the design, the very first thing that people notice is design. And design is quite often untrustworthy. And there are so many things you can do to make it trustworthy, I don't understand why people are not seeing it.

It's kind of odd to me, but I don't know. It's like my thing because I'm like, I'm in it, you know, and people are not because if you're a business owner who is now thinking, Oh my God, my website is not that it's supposed to be. Don't beat yourself up. Uh, this is the majority of websites actually. Uh, also even people who have bigger budgets, companies come to me and we fix their sites, especially if you're not a copywriter, not a designer.

Don't. I mean, don't beat yourself up. Sure. You should educate yourself to know, because it's like, it's something that generates your business. You have to educate yourself to not be able to do it, but to understand, uh, if you hire somebody, what the criteria are that you apply on the end result to decide whether it's good or bad.

Because it's not about being pretty, you know, it, it should be pleasant to the eye, but a painting, pretty painting and pretty website, it's completely different thing. So things on the design side, because you are saying do's and don'ts. On the design side, you have fonts that are too large, that are blowing up the length of your page.

You have a white space that is used inconsistently, where you have like huge amounts of white space, for whatever reason, we don't know. You have fonts that are too many. You need only three sizes of fonts for page titles, for section subheads, and for body text.

Everything else should be in either font number one, font number two, font number three. What I see that body font is often three different fonts. Just for body font, you know, you have a different font for testimonials. Then you had the layout of two columns that suddenly has a very different font from a one column layout.

Why am I saying this? It's not like I'm super picky. Every time you introduce a different font, it creates friction. And friction, you can imagine, is like a speed bump. So your, your prospect is reading, relaxed, concentrated on a meaning. Suddenly you have a different font and their brain goes over a speed bump and says, One second, what's happening?

You know, and suddenly they are distracted. And the more you do it, the more they are distracted. There is good friction on a website. When you introduce, let's say, imagine if everything wasn't the same font, we had no friction, and this would be boring, they would just fall asleep. It's just going, it's like going with a constant speed for hours.

You will fall asleep as a passenger, right? So you need speed bumps to say, hey, pay attention to this, pay attention to that. So every time you are using different font color, different font size, different font styling, whether bold or non bold or italic, or different font family, it's a friction. So think about it.

When you introduce it, would you like to have a speed bump here? Would you like them to pay attention? Or is it just for, because your design theme was like that or something that's like some technical glitch or what is happening? Um, if you have an image next to this text, you don't need to change the font.

You already have a speed bump. You don't need three speed bumps in one place. This becomes then, you know, too many speedmaps. They're getting the shake, shaken. Uh, they, they don't need this. So, um, it's actually not that complicated. And every time I work with a designer, I'm thinking to myself, like, why are people not seeing it?

So whoever's listening to it, please, you know, um, maybe rewind it a little bit and just note it down. Maximum three fonts, every different font, family font, size, uh, color is a friction. And think about, do you need it there? You know, do you need people to pay attention at this point? So yeah, these are my like biggest pet peeves.

Of course, it's also, uh, specific to a website. There are websites where I've seen, this is the only issue I've ever seen. The, the only occurrence of that issue I've ever seen is like website specific. But if you fix that, it's already like maybe 70 percent of stuff you fix. And the more, when, when you do this, when you have this different highlights, the text that is highlighted too much, you know, sometimes I see on one screen of a website, uh, two thirds of the text is bold.

My question, if, if you highlight too much, you highlight nothing. Highlight, a highlight, it doesn't mean it's bold. It just mean, means it's different to the rest. And if different to the rest means your regular font, you just highlighted the part in a regular font. Okay, last but not least, sorry, I'm just, I just can't stop.

Centered text. So many website themes come with paragraphs over paragraphs of centered text. The thing is, sure, you can center a subhead that is like one and a half lines, but the moment you start centering testimonials, which are like, I don't know, five plus lines on mobile even more, the brain needs to find the beginning of the line from the beginning every time.

The brain can't rely on the line to start at the same point. So it's super hard to read. Maybe it's funny to me that people complain about things on other websites, but the moment it's about their website, suddenly they become a different person. And they're like, no, on my website, I will do it differently, you know.

These other websites that irritate me, all these pops, pop ups, and carousels, and center text, well, I hate all of this, this is so unpleasant to read, it just like gets on my, you know, adds to my cognitive load. But on my website, I will do the same. I, sometimes they say, oh, because the competitor has it.

Another thing, your competitors, some of them, also have no idea what they are doing, I can tell you. It happens to me, it happened to me twice when they came to me and said, uh, we would like to have it, uh, like our competitor, and I knew that it's not working. And another page, they, they, uh, came to me with a page that I at first thought was awesomely designed.

They say it's not working. And then I started looking into it. Even I thought it was great because it was just a first glance. But then if you start reading into it and you understand, Oh, okay, now I understand why it's not working. So it's not at all the case that you look at the competitor pages and they, you, you are supposed to emulate them.

No, you're supposed to objectively understand the principles of good copy and good design. And then you can go open the competitor pages and think, Oh, wow, guys, you are really not that good that I thought, you know, and then you feel better. You go to your website and you do it right. So I think this is important.

 Educating yourself, not comparing yourself and thinking whatever is pretty works. No. Sometimes whatever you think is not that pretty works. A study show that simpler websites convert better because people actually do not want all of these pretty blinky shiny things that you think they want.

They want to quickly understand why they should hire you or buy from you compared to your competitors. This is their goal. How you do it, that's up to you. And sometimes, leaving away all this blinking, shiny, pretty stuff, it's a better way to go.

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, I totally agree. And that's what I love about your writing. And, uh, what I read from you on LinkedIn and your newsletter that I get, you just cut through. Um, and I think that's the issue. You've got a, a way of seeing a website and, and the text on the website. And clearly see what it means or what it doesn't mean. And so anybody who's listening to this, I think they need to listen to this a few times. Um, get your book. and, and sign up for your course, which I will be doing later in the year, even though I've been in the marketing business now for 25 years, I'm still learning.

And, and you've just given me a sharp jolt when I read your book and listened to you and tell me, well, I've got a lot more to learn. And I think you're right, you, you mentioning you need to go back in and understand what you're offering and what the customer needs. And I think that's really, really good.

So how does SEO fit into all this? Because, you know, we, we need to know that we've got to use all these keywords and stuff like that, but how does that work with copy that's clear and focused?

Gill Andrews: Well, with SEO, the thing is that what I do, if we just leave it at that, because what I write, my projects are usually between 3 to 10 pages, and I write copy for sales pages and sales pages are pages that are help you sell in the sense of either, um, making people like, uh, know and trust you more and know more about your offers.

So people who visit those pages are already interested in buying. Meaning I write homepage, about page, services, pages, case study pages. Contact page. SEO, however, works with articles because if you have five pages on your website and you're in a competitive niche, you are not going to rank in search. As far as I know, I'm not an SEO specialist, so correct me if I'm saying something that doesn't make sense.

So what I do, I mean, what I do for my website, because I don't like writing cold emails, I've never written a cold email in my life. I rely on inbound marketing, meaning I put out my content. I write articles that bring people to my site. And then they think, Oh my God, who is this knowledgeable person?

So I hope this is the, this is the theory, you know, and they're like , let's say a business, oh, this happens to me. One of the articles that is adjacent to my offering, how to create a website tagline ranks well in search. And I had multiple clients. And I keep having them that search in Google on Google how to write a website tagline.

They find my article and they're like, Oh my God, this was so good. This was so helpful. Who's this person? They start checking my website, my services, which are clear, uh, maybe even by my people who bought my book. This is also content marketing. This is also SEO. They go from this side, this page that just ranked in search and buy my book and then become my clients or my students of my course.

So SEO is there to generate traffic to your website. However, it won't, it would be super hard to do with just five pages. You would need a content strategy. You would need a topic, topic clusters, you know, and stuff like that. This is not at all easy. It's not like you just sit there and write whatever you want.

Because again, so many people are already writing whatever they want. Some of them know what, what they're doing and know the SEO tricks. So you also need to know that. And, uh, then you hope that people read your articles and then you need to see that you give them doors into more, uh, stuff on your page, uh, on your website.

For example, on some of my articles I offer free content updates like freebies. I have a checklist, like a checklist, website checklist, that makes sense to the person who is reading this article. I'm thinking, okay, what else they may need? If somebody comes and reads an article on, I don't know, lead magnets, like how to create a lead magnets for my website, I have a freebie that also gives you additional information.

Or I have Website credibility checklist that is just an article, but it comes with an additional, uh, freebie. Um, I think it's an, a spreadsheet, Google spreadsheet that helps you, uh, fix the credibility issues of your website faster. And you get it when you get on my email list. So SEO is there to drive traffic to your website and either convert them to a customer right away, or let's say a potential customer, because if we're talking service providers, it's inquiry.

If it's a product, a site that sells products, that may be a customer right away, uh, or In my case, actually both, to get them on your email list. If you would like to sell through email, which is also effective, because there you have even more attention on your stuff because email inbox is something more private, right?

Not everybody's allowed to email your prospects. And if you become one of the people who is allowed, then you're in a privileged position. better than them just looking at your website. And there you also have your chance to market. Of course, not right away. Of course, not blasting them with marketing messages three times a week.

One also has a strategy, but SEO helps a lot. Um, without SEO I wouldn't know how I would generate my inquiries. I hear people do it from LinkedIn. Yes, sure. I also got clients from LinkedIn, but to me it's it's less transparent with SEO. I see the statistics, uh, performance of my website and I was like, Oh, okay.

I see how many people went from this article to service pages, who converted, who bought, um, who bought like particular product, who downloaded a checklist. So I see also how SEO is working, how my articles are ranking. I also have a search function on my website. And I once noticed that many people were searching for the information on the about page.

And I did not have that post. So I created it. It's also helps you to see, okay, what people want from you, because many people come and they like the content and they want to learn more. They can discover it immediately. They use the search function. And then I say, Oh, okay, if I see that many people search for particular information, I create a post for that.

I also like looking at data. So I'm also like data based copywriter. Okay. I believe in data. I try to bring data to the opinion fight if, in case there would be any. And if, uh, I'm dealing with a website that gets amount of traffic that we can analyze, which means we have at least 200 visitors per page to analyze, that every visitor has no more than half of a percentage, uh, you know, influence, although it's still not, um, not ideal.

Then we work with data, of course. Then we look at, okay, how are my visitors behaving? Are they taking the paths as I want them to, to take? Are they scrolling down enough? What portions of the website they missed? And Uh, you know, what portions they focus on. Are there some rage clicks, so called? It's like they're clicking on something that's not clickable and stuff like that.

So data is also super important. SEO gives you more data because you get more people to your website. So it's actually very important, I would say. Though super hard to do, I would say, also.

Nigel Rawlins: Okay, one of the things I think you write about is storytelling. And I think, um, lots of people think, Oh, we've got to tell our story. And you see it everywhere now, I think. What, what are your thoughts on storytelling?

Gill Andrews: Uh, my thoughts is like, do whatever you need to, uh, convert a prospect. Do they want to hear a story? Ask yourself, you know, if you are a therapist, if you are a coach who overcame the same difficulties that they are struggling with, they may want to hear a story. If you're working with people, one-on-one closer, and they also buy your personality, like as I said, therapist, life coach, business coach then it may be important. But if you are a marketing, especially company, agency or whatever, I do not think they need to hear your story. What they need to understand is that you are a likable and easy to work with professional. How you're going to achieve that? Usually it's achieved with putting people's faces on your page, having professional photo shoots and putting photos that have some kind of personality but also look professional.

 Language in your copy, always staying clear, valuable, and relevant, but maybe introducing some kind of humor. It's not that easy to do because it may backfire, you may be doing it too much, but I once wrote a website, there is a video even on my YouTube channel if somebody is interested, how I use the word, Zombie Apocalypse on a page for a piece of software and a person let me do that.

It was a one business owner. That was really cool. And I love this page to bits because it's super clear, but it also has personality. So, uh, again, what do you mean by telling a story in my articles? I, you can, in my books, in my book, sorry, you, you know, I tell my story. But it's a paragraph, you know, just a paragraph, not a page.

And it relates to what I'm going to say. It's probably an analogy, a metaphor, uh, I don't know, something that helps you understand what I'm saying better. Uh, there I'm not trying to make you like me because with printed books and Kindle, it's more like, uh, I, I see it as like a one off thing. Many people just buy it once and never come back to my site.

So there I'm trying to educate them more than, you know, uh, making them like me. I'm just showing, of course, I'm having fun because I would like to be authentic in anything I do. But there I'm just trying to, uh, to teach them something in a way that is more pleasant than just grinding away, you know, and stuff.

And, you also maybe need to think about, okay, select three words, maximum, that you would like your prospects to associate you with. So what is this? You can be empathetic, you can be knowledgeable, and you can be funny. That's, for example, me. I just like, I don't know if these are the exact words, but to me it's important that I'm, okay, knowledgeable, empathetic, and funny.

Right? I would make jokes, but I won't go overboard. I empathize with you. I know how difficult it is if you're a small company taking care of your website yourself. And I'm of course knowledgeable because I believe that I know what I'm talking about. What are your three words? You know, and then especially on the about page, because they have a bit more space for talking about yourself.

Think, how can I communicate these values that I have or characteristics of myself to prospects without telling them how much coffee I drink? How, what my dogs are called and what is my exercising routine? How does this relate what you just, you know, figured out that you would like them to think?

To what you're offering to them. Why it's beneficial for them that you are knowledgeable, empathetic, and funny. I told you knowledgeable. I mean, I won't tell you any BS. Whatever I'm saying is supported by data in my experience. I'm empathetic. Everybody needs an empathetic person, whether it's a service provider or your best friend, you know, I will understand your struggles and I'm funny and then you will have fun working with me or learning from me.

How does what you would like them to tell about yourself within your story helps them in a way that with these problems? If it doesn't, leave it away. You know, this, this is my point. I heard many people coming to me. No, but I would like to tell sure. Okay do I mean, this is just my opinion, of course, especially if it's important to you to say, you know I I don't know.

Maybe some people would like to say I don't work with companies ABCD I also don't work with companies ABCD, but I will tell you when you write me an inquiry I do not have to put it on my website, but if somebody wants to they can, you know, and it's like, it's, of course it's your place. I can't tell you don't do this.

Don't do that. Oh my God. You need to be happy with your website. But I also believe that there is a golden middle. When you are happy, your prospects are happy, your bank account is happy. You know, it doesn't have to be one way. You shouldn't give up everything you like just to make your prospects happy.

Then you're probably not in the right business. Because then it means like you just hate your prospects. If literally, the, website that they would like to have from you, it's like completely something that you cannot stand behind. That something is wrong at the core. But if you like what you are doing and you're passionate about helping a prospect, there is a golden middle to have a website you're proud of but which is also attracting business and prospects are saying, wow, you're reading my mind. I heard a couple of times about my website, stuff like this. Oh my God, we want exactly the style that you have on your website. For my prospects it once was, uh, they said, I love this comment. It was just long ago, but I love it.

They say, our prospects often write us saying, Oh my God, guys, when we read your website, we have a feeling you understand us. And this is what you're going for. When they read your pages, they need to feel like you understand them, you understand their problems. Right? And if you are passionate about what you do, then I think it's totally possible to do that.

To have a website where they think this person knows what we need and they understand us. They are not trying to shuffle some, uh, solutions for success down our throats or telling us about their mission and vision and philosophy. They think about what we need and, you know, this is the approach.

Nigel Rawlins: I'm coming to realise that there's quite a discipline involved now in the thinking that goes into it before you even start building a website. And I've been reading about strategy, a fabulous book on strategy by Peter Compo. And it's made me realise that I'm not very disciplined myself. I'm not doing this sort of thinking and yet here I am running a marketing services company.

I look after 18 websites, I do anything that's needed to do to them. And I'm thinking, Hmm, I might need to clarify what it is that I can do for them and then just quietly go through and make sure it's all clean and tidy. But I'm working on three websites of my own. One is my company website.

One is the Wisepreneurs website and one is the podcast website that this will appear on. And I've just got to go, I've got to make sure they're working right before I can say to my clients, maybe we need to do some work here, but that's what I love about your work, is you're very clear about what that is.

So tell me about your course that you've got, because I've got a funny feeling this teaches people how to think like this.

Gill Andrews: Exactly. Yes. My course is called Business Soul Searching, which is a funny term. The process that it describes, actually takes you through a process I go with each and every of my clients, regardless of whether it's a website review project or website copywriting project, to learn more about their business offers, their target audience, and the points that they are struggling right now in business.

It makes us zero in on the target audience, understand who would be the ideal client, zero in on the offers to see maybe, okay, this offer, I should maybe restructure this offer, I should ditch, maybe I should, you know, simplify. And it helps you understand what your selling proposition is. Use a unique value proposition, one big thingy, and multiple strong selling points.

Basically to answer a question, why hire me and not my competitors? Bonus of this course is also that you get a good head start about starting to apply all of this. Because of course, it's just really first step. I call it a discovery phase actually in my projects. When I write a proposal, it's called discovery phase.

What I do with my clients, I send them this questionnaire and then they, uh, we talk about the answers in the sense of, I ask additional questions. It never happened before that I haven't asked additional questions because interestingly, even if you ask a person, what do you offer? The answer is sometimes not satisfactory to me.

It's too vague. It's unspecific. Even then I still don't understand what it is. Um, so I'm giving my feedback live when I work with clients. So this course is created in a way that you do not need me to give you feedback. We go through questions batch by batch, let's say two questions in a lesson, and before you answer the question, of course, you know the questions in advance, and then I tell you what What I'm looking, what we are looking for in an answer, what is bad example for this answer?

What is good example for this answer? I think it has, I don't remember, 10 lectures or something, 12 maybe. And somewhere around lecture 8, maybe, I don't, I don't remember, don't hold me to the numbers, but somewhere like down in the second, in the last third, the question is, what is your value proposition?

If I ask, anybody directly, what is your value proposition? They would be like, Oh my God, I start hyperventilating. I do not know. But the thing is, up till that point, you answered so many questions already that guide you to this answer. And this answer becomes super easy to answer.

This question, sorry. And I also show you what's bad, you know, value propositions, what does not constitute value propositions. Like I already said, being better, being cheap. And stuff like that. What is good value proposition? What are we looking for in a value proposition? And I also give you a framework to create a value proposition that is pretty easy to follow.

And, uh, there is also a module on comparing your website to your competitors. There, I'm not talking to you, you know, you don't even see my face. I give you an ex a spreadsheet and I tell you how to operate it. And then you go open the websites of competitors and you check for specific things. And then you understand what are my competitors doing well, and where do I need to match up, what they don't do well, and where is my chance to stand out.

This is a very systematic approach. I'm generally speaking a very systematic person when it comes to my business, not my house, because you shouldn't see my desk right now. This is not systematically organized. But if it, when it comes to communication, teaching, dealing with clients, I believe in systems. I believe in systematic strategic approach.

And I also believe in simplifying things. I see so many things being way too complicated, especially for people who are not going to pursue it as a profession. To take care of your website, you don't have to be a copywriter. You do not have to be a designer. You just need to understand a couple of things that are pretty simple.

I would even say common sense, but you know, you don't realize it that once you heard it, you're like, Oh wow, this is actually common sense. But you're kind of, in the beginning, you're just like, I didn't, didn't get this idea for whatever reason, but like, it totally makes sense. So, um, this is like the course coming back to the course.

And at the end, when you answered all these questions, so you covered, what do you offer for whom? I mean, whether you worked with companies, you need to like, we talk about companies, uh, but in any case, a person who will be looking at your website. What problems they are dealing with and the way we approach problems is also super specific.

I will ask you to specify their problems in a very particular way. Where you're like, Oh my God, I've never thought about it before. Actually my clients love it because every time they're like, Oh my God, you made me sweat. Oh my God, you made me think. And there are people who've been in business for years.

Some of them take weeks to answer that. You know, if it's like a complex business, they, they take it to their, you know, department of sales, they talk to sales and stuff like that. And they figure out together, although actually they supposed to have those answers already. But because they don't have these answers, it explains why the website is not working.

You need to know the answers first. What can prevent my clients from hiring me? How is my website a subpar to my competitors? You know, why are they choosing them, not us? Why hire me at all? You know, why? Sometimes people can't answer this question. They just think we are professional. Okay, great. You're competitors also.

So what is the other selling points? And this is with selling points. It's really hard. Especially if you ask this directly, if you look at the website, there are no selling points. And only you really need to dig deeper, deeper. You need to approach it step by step first, understanding from the very beginning, what's the offer, what the problems, what are the objections?

And then, you know, you understand, okay, this is how I counter the objection. This is how I approach the problem. And then you dig out your value proposition. Right. So this is, this is the course that helps you do that. And of course, after that, after you collected all this information, it gives you the pointers, where to start, where to put what answer, you know, you have like, let's say, I don't remember, 20 questions and what answer to which question goes on what page basically, plus it gives you some frameworks for Home page, about page and sales page.

Just really like a framework, like, like an outline that can be customized to your pages. So yeah, this is actually, it took me two years to create it. Could have been done faster, but you know, life. And personally I am happy I did it. I get also very good feedback. People are saying, Oh my God, you know, I've never thought about it like this.

Or it's one of the five best courses I've ever took. And this is also, of course, super, uh, pleasant because this is my mission and philosophy because I, I like helping, uh, people who do not have like huge budgets to have a good website. Sure, I work with people who have budgets, but I also would like to help those who can't hire me to write their website.

And just to show them that it shouldn't, it doesn't have to be that complicated, actually. If you have time on your hands, and you know, uh, um, discipline and patience to sit down and understand it, you know. If you don't have the money, but you have the time, sit down, understand it, you will be able to do it.

Nigel Rawlins: I totally agree. Sounds like I've got to do it sooner than later. Even though I read about all this stuff and I think about all this stuff and I put together programs and talk to people, it still is important to go through the discipline. So I would think that a lot of us are probably just cruising along and not thinking about it.

And then when it comes to crunch time. Where do I find the help? And, and that's why I love what you've written. I love your book. I've taken lots of notes and I keep reading it through and I've got the PDF, I bought that on your site. I really am strongly very supportive of what you're doing and, and really encourage people to listen closely to this and what you've been saying and then get onto your website, Buy your book and and do the course and I'm sure it's going to help.

It really will help and it will improve lots of websites out there. Now one thing you do mention, I think, in one of your books is one page websites. What do you think of those.

Gill Andrews: Oh yeah. Not a fan. Okay. Um, there is an article on my website that is called five reasons a one page website will bite you in the butt. Pardon my French. The thing is, um. Probably people who use their websites as business cards, meaning, okay, you met somebody at a networking event and you gave them your card or you exchanged links, whatever.

Um, this may work, but if you're serious about attracting new inquiries from your website, it needs more pages. The reasons I will tell you. So first reason is that It's not prototypical in the sense of most of the websites in your niche are probably multi page. So when a prospect comes to your website, they see all the navigation.

They click service one and it takes them down the page and they're like, what is happening? So they're already unpleasantly surprised, you know, you should never unpleasantly surprise your prospect. Then they start reading. And because there is no end to the page itself, they may go from service one to service two, something that is not relevant to them.

With multi page websites, when they are on service one page, let's say, my operating services, they get to the end of the page and then they know they should need to make a decision what to do next, send an inquiry, read something more, you know, whatever. On a one page website, you didn't tell them when that's time to make a decision.

And they are just wildly scrolling through your web site. Another thing is if you, uh, would like to, um, get inquiries from your website, you need to offer people specific information about your services and also back it up with testimonials. If you offer two services on your one page website, you need to tell them basic things about what you do, uh, what you offer and for whom.

This is in your banner. Then you go with your services. The moment you have two services. Your pages blows up, you know, even with one services, it's a bit more complex. And I mean, every service needs specific information and testimonials. It's already like getting bigger and then you need to have an about section, you know, and then you need to have a contact section.

If you need case studies, if you start putting case studies on your one page page, what we are talking, you know, these big rolls of, of, of paper that they used to use in medieval times when the king was speaking, you know, something like that. Nobody's going to read this. One page website, to me, it's like a lending page.

Landing page, you have one offer targeted to only one kind of awareness of a prospect, let's say they're already middle aware, they know about the problems. They know the solutions exist. They would like to know why to hire you. Then you use a landing page, but then you remove the navigation not to confuse them and don't call it one page website.

Website is targeted to prospects with multiple levels of awareness to people who never heard of you and see you for the first time in their life through search. They found a blog post and they go to post people who heard of you some, a couple of times on LinkedIn and finally decided to check your website.

People from your email list who know like and trust you and finally would like to buy. A one page website cannot do that. And last but not least, uh, actually I think it's one before last, is that when you would like to optimize your website, you need to see what path as your prospects take to, from homepage to services, to about page, to contact, for example, or from this particular article, to homepage to about page to service X, Y, Z On one page website, you don't have that.

The tools think it's one page and you do not see any audience paths. You do not know the time on page on the service part, you do know that, how long they stayed on the service part of your one page website. You lose so much data That is impossible to optimize or it becomes, it becomes very hard.

Sure, technically speaking, you can do it, but then you need to go and do a lot of technical work in the background. Do you really want this is my question. And I mean, the, the knowledge for that, I think I would be overwhelmed and I'm a former software developer and I do stuff like that on my website. But for you to track the engagement properly on this one page website, to understand what part of my website, whether it's services, about page, you know, initial part, whatever they engage and how, and it, it will just, it just not worth the effort I'm afraid..

And last but not least, SEO. One page websites do not rank in search. Right. I think everybody who understands the basics of SEO that you need, uh, of course you need backlinks, but you also need to show relevancy for a specific term. If you put everything about yourself on, on, on one page, it can only theoretically rank for one term, which is probably would be super competitive.

And your competitors have websites with multiple pages, which are much stronger in SEO terms, and you're just not going to rank. I understand the, the, the fact that it's compelling. Especially when you're just starting out, you're like, well, I offer just one simple service, I'm a tutor for whatever language and I just put one, one page, whatever.

My question, once again, do your competitors have one page websites? Only in this case, it may work because your prospects are not spoiled, right? They are not treated right anyways, you know, nobody in your niche is treating them right. So they're like, whatever, we will deal with one page website. At the moment you have a competitor, they have a multiple page website with service pages separately for each service.

They have a page with testimonials with specific explanation why they should hire them. You lose your one page website is immediately subpar, right? And who, who wants that? Nobody. So you just, uh, and especially if your business is growing, what are you going to do? Okay. Today you're offering one service.

You decide to go with one page website, you know, in a month or like in half a year, you're offering two services. Now you have to redo your website. So why not do it correctly from start? Even if you have one service. Rant over.

Nigel Rawlins: I have a client who's got a few websites. I've, I look after one, which is a multi page website, it's a medical practice. They have another medical practice, which is a one page website. And I compared the two and the one I look after loads very fast and works really well with the SEO.

The one I don't, is a one pager and boy does it load slowly, very slowly because it's full of pictures and everything and it just is very clunky and Google rates it very very low. So, technically, um, it can be a real dud if you're not careful, but they think it looks nice, but, um, I've got the heart to tell them yet. Okay. Um, This has been good. Is there, is there anything else you'd like to mention? Because, um, we're going pretty well on this.

Gill Andrews: Uh, nothing comes to mind. Um, I don't know what, okay, let's, let's put it like this. What's the biggest struggle of your audience? What would you say is with their websites? What would be the biggest struggle?

Nigel Rawlins: Oh, I think most of them, don't think about it at all. They just want it to look pretty.

The recent one, they just thought, oh, it's looking a bit old. 

Gill Andrews: Do they, I mean, they would like to generate business with their website? 

Nigel Rawlins: Most of mine are pretty established businesses. I've been working with most of my clients for 15 years or more.

Gill Andrews: So, they're happy with their website.

Nigel Rawlins: Most of them don't need clients through their websites, uh, because they've got enough clients. So the website tends to be more of a showcase.

Gill Andrews: That, that's fair. That's fair. I also think, I mean, if you're, if your business is running without a website, I mean, you don't need a website. It's not like everybody needs a website. You need a, you need a website if you want to get clients from online 

Nigel Rawlins: I'm rebuilding one for a fairly big client, most of my clients are professionals, but I've got quite a mix of clients because I'm a marketing services company, I've got entertainment venues. I've got medical practices. I've got construction companies and a whole lot of others.

Um, but say for example, one of the entertainment venues with a 250 seat bistro, where they serve meals. They get 3, 000 visitors a month to the website, so they're quite happy with that. Another site I looked after is a children's site for Australian history, and they get up to 20, 000 visitors a month, so it's mainly informational, um, they're not selling anything, they're just being helpful.

And the construction site just reinforces that this is the particular product in the area, but their minimum charge is $300, 000, so 150, 000 Euros. So, they only need a few clients a year. Most of them are repeat clients, so the website just adds to everything. But, since I've been reading your book, the one who gets 3, 000 visits a month, I've gone through and cleaned it all up, made it clear, got rid of the welcome.

Well, it might be still there, but not, not featuring and being very clear about what they do. And, and they're very happy with it now. They've just got to go and pay for some decent photographs, which will make it look a lot better. I think I've been very lucky with mine, but, I'm now rethinking how I think about things since I've read your stuff because it's so clear.

How would you like people to connect with you?

Gill Andrews: Well it depends on what people want from me. If you go to my website, gillandrews. com in one word, you will find, uh, the information about my services. If you would like to work with me, even if it's just to, you know, first review your website and see what can be improved. And to go with me through this process that I talked with you about with defining a value preposition.

If you would like to just follow me online, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and YouTube. These are the two channels I'm active on and posting regularly. There is also a book we were talking about. Uh, that is, uh, to be found everywhere, actually, where books are sold online. Amazon, Gumroad, Google Play Books, Apple, and stuff like that. You can check this out as well and that will be it because I'm one person in business. I try not to spread my myself too thin and wherever I show up I would like to show up in full capacity or as good as I can so it's not too many places , I'm not on Facebook for example.

But otherwise, yeah, feel free to get in touch. You can just connect with me through LinkedIn if this is where you reside. Otherwise, just write me a quick note saying that you listened to this podcast and I would be happy to connect.

Nigel Rawlins: That is fantastic. Highly recommend the book. It is so easy to read and it's in nice little chunks and you read a bit and you go, Oh, I'm going to try and fix that. And that's what I loved about it. Well, thank you very much, Gill, for, for joining me on the podcast. So thank you very much.

Gill Andrews: My pleasure. I hope it was helpful.