#15 - Strategy First, Platform Second: Rethink Web Design

Most business owners start with the wrong question: What platform should I use? In this episode, we flip that thinking on its head. Ken breaks down why the real question should be: What am I trying to achieve—and who am I trying to reach?

From DIY builders like Wix and Squarespace to niche industry platforms and open-source tools like WordPress, we explore the strengths and traps of each. But more importantly, we expose how superficial choices—like picking a web company based on a friend’s referral or a good-looking portfolio—often lead to sites that look polished but fall flat in performance.

Learn how to qualify a real web professional, why goal-driven design matters more than flashy templates, and how the right strategy can transform your website from a digital brochure into a business tool that builds trust, drives action, and grows with you.

Because the truth is simple: pretty doesn’t convert—strategy does.

Over The Bull is brought to you by IntegrisDesign.com. All rights reserved.

Transcript

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You're listening to Over the Bull, where we cut through marketing noise. Here's your host, Ken

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Carroll. In the age of artificial intelligence and endless website builders, having a website is easy, but building one that actually works, well, that takes expertise. In today's episode, I want to get back to some of the basics, and one of those relates to business website design, and sometimes we call it business website development. Those terms are often used interchangeably, although they could have different meanings depending upon where you're coming from. So what I want to do is break down things like do-it-yourself website builders like Wix or Squarespace. Those niche builders, you know, if you're in real estate or vacation rentals or things like that, then oftentimes there are programs that offer a turnkey solution from managing bookings all the way across, including websites, and open source platforms like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. And let's more importantly understand what exactly matters when building a website. So just like anything else in life, Knowing what you're trying to accomplish before you do it is really important. You know, if you're buying a bunch of wood and a bunch of material and, you know, you don't know if you're building a house or a deck, you know, things can get adventurous really quick. But one thing's for sure, you're not going to meet an objective unless you know the objective you're trying to meet. So why should you have a website as a business? Well, the answer definitely is not because I need one because I have a business and I need something to look reputable. Now, that statement in itself is true. You really do need a website just as much as you need a business email address and not using things like Gmail addresses and things like that. But there's much more to it. You see, if you start with that premise and that's what you... ask your, uh, that's what you're searching to do. The problem is, is you're, you're like, it's basically like a blood in the water to a shark, especially if you're working with freelancers or designers because they see an opportunity to whip something together. That's not going to work for you, but it's going to be a high profit margin, easy turn project for them. Now, remember your goal is to grow your business, right? And the only way you can grow your business and use the website as a tool, which that's what it is. It's a strategic tool. Even though it's like foundation for a house, it's still a tool. So you need to understand what your goals are for that website. Are you trying to get more leads? Are you trying to sell something directly on the website? Do you want someone to sign up for something on the website? And what do you want to do for people who are kicking the tires, so to speak, and just shopping versus those who are serious? Because those actions that would be taken by people who are in different places in that cycle are would want different levels of engagement. So if they're kicking the tires and you're asking them to buy something, you're approaching that audience in the wrong way. So having different levels of commitment and understanding what your goals are and putting those on paper is critical. Now, conversely, if this hasn't been done with your current site and your current site started with picking a template or choosing a design or starting with designs, That's a sign that your website's not built with goals in mind. Now, the second thing is to understand your demographic. Now, we hear that word a lot and we go, yeah, yeah, what is demographic? You know, yeah, it sounds great, but how does that really impact anything? It actually impacts things quite a bit because different demographics, the color psychology is different. where you put things on a given webpage is different, the fonts that you would choose are different, the imagery you choose would be different, and even layout aspects would be different. And if you're a designer or you are just picking templates and not considering the demographic and how to make those adjustments, well, again, You're building something, but you're not really building it for the people that you're trying to promote your business to. So as you can see, that's also a pretty clear mistake. The next is trust and credibility. Now, trust and credibility is absolutely important. Now, in this whole AI saturated world we're living in, I mean, I jumped over to YouTube the other day And it took me about two minutes and I was sick of it. Now everybody's building all this artificial intelligence-based content where they're having celebrities and they're superimposing words that they don't say or they're superimposing fights that really didn't happen. And it's just silly. It's just this really silly game now of content that you can't trust, right? Because you don't know if that person really said it or not. And it's not worth my time to go find out if they did say it or not. And so I'm like, well, that basically is a complete resource of information that may or may not be true and could make me look incredibly stupid if I were to quote something that I got off YouTube, knowing that it's AI driven and it was never really said to begin with. So in the world of the web, that's the same thing. When you have a website, you need to instill trust and credibility. What this means is you need organic, real content. Just throwing up a bunch of chat GPT articles and content and everything is not going to get the job done. And the most important thing is you need to convert action or attention into action. You know, you want those bookings, those purchases, those inquiries, those things. And those things are usually not instant. I mean, when we run Google ads for people, it's often a cycle of setting things up, testing it, manipulating it, and then you have to wait. This is the most hard part of some of this stuff. You got to wait a little bit and let things kind of run their course and then test and then adjust. If you look at Google's 2024 recommendations, I don't know if it's prior to, I can't remember off the top of my head, but they had what was called the ABCDs of marketing, attention, branding, connection, and direction. You know, you get their attention, you show your branding, you connect with them in some meaningful way that means something to them, not to you. And then you give them a direction, you know, visit this, do that, those kinds of things. And so you see those things are still tried and true today. Now, if we break down the website options, we have to ask, are they meeting those objectives? And if not, what objectives do they meet? Pretty simple. So let's look at do-it-yourself website builders. This is your Wix, your Squarespace. It's these kind of situations. All right, so let's face it. There's a low barrier to entry. They have these pretty templates, and their message is along the lines of easy to use. I remember seeing a commercial not too long ago, and in that commercial, it showed a celebrity, I can't remember who it was, but she didn't come across as the smartest person on the planet. And she was talking about how easy it was to use one of these website builder programs. She said she just picked a template, put in her stuff, saved it, published it, and it made it look like, wow, this is just magic. Now, of course, the devil's in the details. What was she trying to achieve with it? Did she do it? Did she really build that website? Or is it just like the people who sponsor other things and they don't really use it? Now, they legitimately may have a website out there, but they also may legitimately may never touch it. It may be part of their whole marketing program for them to put that thing on autopilot and put a lot of work and effort and energy to address all these concerns or reasons you have a website above. So you see, there's a lot of that kind of game going on. Now, they also market it with the psychological hooks. You know, those things like, you're smart, you can do this. You're definitely smarter than that person on that commercial. Save money. You know, you can save money by doing it yourself. Why in the world do you want to pay a professional when you can just pick a template, drop in your content, and do what you want to do? And you can control every detail yourself. You're buying it. You're paying for it. You can control what gets added, what not gets added. So it plays to that ego that– You think, you know, hey, maybe they don't have it under control. And if the design looks really good and I put my own stuff in it and I understand everything going on, then I can build this and do this. And here's the other thing. There are risks with this. Like, for example, one risk. It's all marketing. Once you get into marketing, you understand everything. a lot more about how the game's being played. Like, it's really brilliant when they give things like a 30-day free trial because it's kind of like what they're doing is trying to get you tangled up in the spider web of their system because their system is proprietary. That means once you learn their system, that's all you know. You don't know anything else and you can't get away unless you relearn something else. But then you spend all that time putting in all your stuff and And when that time runs out, you have a tough decision. Even if you hate it, you put so much into it, you don't want to mess with anything else. And so that's just one of the risks here. But let's talk about these niche-based website platforms. Now, if you're in vacation rentals or plumbing or real estate or some of these other systems, there are these companies out there that offer 100% turnkey solutions. Now, these solutions, they include everything from, like, for example, if you take property management, it could include everything from making sure you don't overbook. It could include things like housekeeping, setting up a schedule for them, checking in, managing the details, special offers. Basically, it's a complete management and web design platform. So, you guessed it, they're built for specific industries. And they have these modules, again, like calendars, listing sync, etc. But here's the catch. They, too, are closed ecosystems designed to lock you in. So if you think about the do-it-yourself builder, they have a system where you learn how to manipulate a website using their system. This does the exact same thing. It has their system. Now, the Wix and Squarespace solution typically doesn't control every aspect of your business. However, these systems usually do. So you can imagine the ripples of trying to unplug from one of these website platforms if they don't allow you to use it in conjunction with something else. So let me describe that a little bit. Some of these systems are kind of unique in that they would allow you to use every single thing they have, and some force you to use every single thing they have. So in the case of web design, there are some of these closed systems where you can simply plug in widgets, basically just little pieces of code, onto, say, another website platform, and it works without having to use their entire system. That gives you a little bit more freedom. However, if you're using up everything they've got and someone will lock you into that, someone will absolutely say, no, we don't allow you to connect that in a meaningful way to your another website platform, mainly meaning another website solution. And they do that intentionally because they're trying to lock you in. They're trying to control every part of your business because once you're fully integrated, you're not going anywhere without a lot of pain, a lot of retraining, a lot of showing people things, a lot of stuff that goes on. So even if their development platform is lackluster, you're kind of stuck once you do that and you make that decision. And remember, the website's meant to serve goals. Now, although... There are utility-based goals that happen with a turnkey service like that that's unique. If they don't allow you to fully manage your marketing and the way you do things, then you're going to have a lackluster result from that website, even though it may be pretty and may be performing well. The question is, are you getting everything that you should get out of it? That was a mouthful. So a lot of these systems, they won't integrate with things like WordPress, and this is on purpose. It's a model. It's a business model. We don't want to judge people because this is what they're doing to try to generate money and more or less have you stick with them regardless by making it so painful for you to go anywhere else. So when you start getting tangled in the spider web, you could imagine that if you use like a Wix or a Squarespace or one of these niche-based web turnkey platforms, when you first go in, you could imagine the pain of leaving that system is easy. You don't have anything put into it. You don't have it integrated. You've not trained people on what you're doing with it. So you could leave fairly easy. But within a very short time span... It's going to be tough and real tough. And if you're trying to run a business, the last thing you want to do is relearn something. Because let's face it, relearning, that puts you back at square one. You see, there are games being played on this stuff. Now, I'm not saying the tools are not good. I'm not suggesting some of these tools aren't where you need to be. But if you put all your eggs in that one basket... And they don't do a good job of, say, optimizing for search engine optimization. Or worse, here's a bigger problem. When we develop websites, we need to be able to manipulate real quick where things go. As I mentioned earlier, if you run Google Ads online, It's very common to have to change up the landing page a lot, meaning where buttons go, what's in the top part of the website, also known as the header of the website, the body, which is the main part of the website, and then also the footer, the bottom part of the website, although that's typically not as important as the first two places. And being able to have extreme ability to manipulate it technically and creatively is huge. I mean, I can't imagine even trying to run a successful ad campaign with some kind of template because every business is different. I'm running ads for similar businesses across the United States, and they offer the exact same service. But the layouts and what you do and how you approach it has been significantly different. I mean, all the way from what we're doing in Google Ads all the way to the end. It's kind of like where you can kind of start with a little bit of knowledge in that industry, but you still have to make these adjustments. And not being able to do that quick is critical. I mean, it's critically bad, actually, not being able to make those moves because If you can move a button, let's just say we can move a button in the top part of the website, that header part of the website, and we can change certain things and it takes us five minutes to do that versus going and picking out a whole new template or reaching out to a do-it-yourself platform and asking them to make that adjustment or having to hire a someone to do it and then go back, then all of a sudden those do-it-yourselfers aren't so do-it-yourself. And then the tough part is a lot of times these businesses, most businesses I work with have no clue that they're missing out to begin with. They just think the web doesn't work as good for them. Patience is a lacking part of that equation also. So here's the other thing. Let's talk about these companies typically are not run by web design and marketing experts. You know, the web design part, making pretty sites is kind of easy, but making them work by combining real experience is really challenging. And so, for example, they could say they offer SEO-optimized tools, which would give you the ability to put in things like in the nerd language. And I'm not going to derail the train such as, you know, title tags or H1 tags or meta descriptions or things like that. But when they're offering these SEO optimized in quote features, these really are nothing more than kind of like the very, very, very top tip of an iceberg of criteria that's needed to do well. And having to be able to deep dive into a web platform beyond the topical is important. And people who are professionals understand this. And that's why oftentimes they don't use these systems or they steer people clear of it. Now, of course, we also have to look at the motivations of the people that are the professionals. You know, are they truly looking out for your best interest or are they trying to stack the cards in their favor? And this is a whole other aspect of this. But let's keep going with the platform. Then I'll talk about the developer, designer and all that stuff as we move on. So the next one is open source. So your open source stuff is like WordPress.org, Joomla, Drupal, and there's several other flavors out there. And I'm sure you've probably heard of WordPress. Now, there's actually two versions of WordPress. If you go to WordPress.com, you get a self-hosted version, which kind of puts you back into the do-it-yourself model. Or you could jump over to WordPress.org and you have access to the entire code. So think of open source as just being able to download and have the full suite of code. Now, this is important. This is critically important because when you download and you get access to all the source code, you can do virtually anything you want to with that or have someone who does it. So for the owner of a business, that can be overwhelming because it is a profession, just like I wouldn't go and try to sell plumbing services or electrical services. You need a professional to be able to manage something like WordPress. Now, When you look at different– by the way, these are also called content management systems. So if you break it down– Content, photos, text, pictures, stuff like that. Management means you manage them on a website. And system is just the system in which you use. These are all content management systems. The niche, the do-it-yourselfers, and the open source. So when you ask what content management system do you use, then they would usually have to give you one of those answers. And if they don't know how to answer that question, then that's a huge flag. That person probably is not the most well-equipped to help you out. So the benefit of open source is that they're flexible and customizable and scalable. They're also well supported. The reason our organization made the commitment, gosh, about, I don't know, I was early on in the game. We've been around for decades. about 20 years now as an organization. And early on in the game, we made the decision to focus on WordPress versus Joomla for various reasons. But one of them is WordPress is still the most popular content management system on the planet. Now, here's the downside of something like WordPress. An amateur can use it. and present themselves as a professional, you could use it or a professional can use it. And as a business owner, you probably don't have any clue which one is going to do the better job. And either you'll do what most people do, which is fall back on the price of an agency or a freelancer because you figure the more you pay, the more they know, which is a huge mistake. Um, or what you'll do is, um, uh, go based on the cheapest. So, so prices is usually one of those things that you'll do, or just whoever talks the best game. This guy seems to know what he's talking about or, Oh, he works with plumbers and I'm a plumber. So therefore he has to know plumbing. Not true. Not true guys. Um, so here's the thing. Um, When you work with these companies, oftentimes these small agencies, even large agencies, I saw one from a large agency recently, they slapped together these junk themes and outdated plugins or free plugins. So plugins, let me punt there for a second, tell you what a plugin is. A plugin is basically a feature. Like if you wanted to have a gallery on your website, there are premium plugins that you have to pay to play and And then you have the free ones, which you can download and just use. So if you can imagine, each one of these features in the world of open source are managed by different people, groups, organizations. And one organization could set up a plugin and never support it. Another one could support it. And one could have poor development techniques that conflict with other features, causing things to break. And so having guardrails and having a system that is consistent is incredibly important. And it's also important to use only what you need to use because the more you put into something, the slower it loads typically. And if it's poorly written, it'll load really, really slow. And so the point is that, remember, your freelancers and your agencies are in business too. They want to turn and burn these projects. And oftentimes, if they don't have a system, it's really easy for them to go and download a, I don't know, a$35 theme and then sell it to you for$1,000 as being custom. And so you want to be careful about that because these open source systems are really good under the right situations, but it's like the Wild West, right? Now, the other thing is, is maintenance. Okay. So if you think about it, the web is growing. Think about how often the web changes or features changes or your iPhone changes or whatever. The web changes with intense frequency, which means that the bad guys are looking for weaknesses. The good guys are updating their plugins. And you have to constantly manage and update your website in the world of open source. If you don't, your website is susceptible to be hacked. That's just one thing that could happen. The other thing is, is if the server code, I know this gets a little complicated, but if it conflicts with the outdated features or plugins, it can also break things. And so having a plan for this maintenance and growth are both important. And what you'll often see is a company would charge, say, a certain dollar figure. You know, I've seen it as low as, you know, probably, I don't know, today, I don't think I've seen it lower than probably 60 bucks, but it goes as high as like hundreds. but you never really see that it includes how they're managing it, how often they're managing it. What is the plan for maintenance? They're just charging you a lot of money for hosting. Now, the thing is, is that even the hosting is a game in the industry. So let's slow down here with open source. If you look at any of these platforms, any website, they usually have a couple of major components. One is the domain name. That's your web address. That's just simply your address. And you register that address with places like GoDaddy, and you own the rights to that address so long as you keep paying for that address. Then you have what's known as hosting. So think of hosting as like a computer on the internet that houses all the files that make up your website. Because a website is just a bunch of files that are organized in a way that's meaningful. And then you have your content management system layer on top of it. So what you could run into is you could run into things where you're using a really good system. but you have it on poor hosting. Now, the reason you don't see hosting on the niche-based platforms and the Wix and Squarespace is because they kind of offer that to you as a turnkey solution. They're offering you easy and simple. They're not offering you necessarily, in my opinion, effective. And so here's kind of the thing. Not only do they do the junk themes and junk hosting and Some of them even outright steal your domain and hold it hostage if you don't do certain things or they'll charge you long-term maintenance fees for your domain name. So there's all that. Domain name is a web address. And so bad WordPress in the end, just like bad Joomla in the end or bad Drupal in the end, is worse than do-it-yourselfers like Wix or Squarespace. Reason being is at least the– the Squarespace and the Wix program is keeping all the stuff in the background updated and configured, and the people that are doing WordPress bad are not considering any of the objectives that you're doing in web design. And so you can see the problem here. It's just so complicated that for a regular business to navigate the seas is tough. Okay, so now let's move into the, let's talk about the designer or the developer. And please forgive me, I've got a little bit of a cold right now. So if you pick up on any little pauses in the video, it's because I'm taking a break and drinking a little something. So let's talk about the designers here. Okay, the truth is there are courses out on the internet that that teach people how to build websites in a weekend or a week or a seminar style situation. The problem is, is that it takes a lot more than just the technical parts we discussed. It requires understanding goals and how to achieve those goals and knowing that you're taking everything to make it meet those goals. just understanding how to install WordPress on a hosting platform and publishing it is not going to get the job done. And the problem is that a lot of times they can mask the amateur nature at which they work and they can make you think that they know a lot more than they do. So you can imagine that this is pretty problematic and plus they get these ideas in their heads that they can charge a lot more money for it, even though they're not equipped to even do it. And so you'll have amateurs like right out of the box charging you more than some professionals charge you. Now, the other thing to remember is that even the seasoned company and the amateur, they're in business too. So look at it like this. Okay. Our system, we do a lot of development. We have a lot of stuff that we put into our system. We pay for premium hosting and all the features and everything that we build into it are trained internally where we understand it and we can fully support it. We have an infrastructure where we update what we do on a regular basis. We also manage marketing. We also adjust things and we make recommendations. And so this platform that we work from, even though it's based in open source, what we do is we put a lot of effort and energy to only put the best ingredients into the soup. So another agency, could do something where they're using really cheap hosting, you know, that computer that holds all your files on the web, so to speak. And they could also be installing WordPress, installing a free theme, which is a template, or a cheap paid theme, and they can put in a bunch of free plugins, and their overhead for their business is significantly lower than the overhead for our business. But when you look at the two sites, you have zero clue that one of them is a lot more stable, is going to be a lot more efficient, a lot more structured, a lot more managed, and the other one would not be. And so keep in mind that they're in business too. They're in business to make money, just like you're in business to make money. But shortcutting it is one of the ways in which they can dramatically decrease their overhead and dramatically increase their profits. You know, I still go back to meeting, gosh, this guy Denny's years and years and years ago. And he was introduced by a friend. And I remember he would talk about, this was before the days of AI, but he would talk about basically using a template, doing exactly that cheap process. And I remember asking him, I said, you know that you're part of the problem, right? Because you're not really helping the businesses succeed. And his answer to me was, well, yeah, but where else can you make thousands of dollars this easy? And now with the advent of artificial intelligence, you can imagine that now guys like that don't even have to hire a person to write content that's organic. Now they can use ChatGPT, tell it to crank out content, slap it on a page, and make you think that they did a lot more work than they did, or make you think that they did something more technical than they did. By the way, I met an SEO firm here in Asheville recently, the owner of it, and that was actually part of his process, was to use straight artificial intelligence-based content for websites that he does nothing but organic search engine optimization on. It's a little embarrassing, but it's true. That's exactly what's going on really behind the scenes. You walk into the sausage factory. This is what I see all the time when I investigate websites Big agencies, small agencies, and freelancers. It's really nice being able to be paid to investigate this because you can kind of see it. So what does a true professional do here? A true professional, first of all, they have usually a lot of experience and a lot of credibility. For example, you never want to pay somebody to run Google Ads if they don't have a partnership with Google Ads. A history of it, or at the very least, having certifications with Google Ads to prove that they know what they're talking about. They're also goal-driven. They're not just building websites. When you think of a website without goals, think of a boat without a sail, and think of it being placed in the middle of the ocean. Now, how valuable is a boat in the middle of the ocean with no sail, no motor, no nothing, just sitting out there floating aimlessly, but you own the boat? That boat is useless to you. And so a true professional understands this and knows that they're not just trying to build you a website. They're trying to build you essentially a machine, a mechanism that's going to generate something valuable to your business. This is significantly different. And professionals only choose high-quality plugins and modules. Now, there is a fourth option here. Some web developers, they use more advanced techniques. Like, for example, we have something called headless web development. You can also code a website from the ground up. Now, the question is, it's like, okay, what's perfect, what's good, what's best, you know, kind of thing. And you could say, well, by hand coding a website, I'm saving this or I'm increasing that. But if you think about it, think of the overhead you're adding to that website by doing those things. And at some point, there's a diminishing point of return. Now, I've hand coded a lot of websites and I can tell you, yeah, you can get a lot of efficiencies by doing that. But the question is, is how malleable is that for the user? How good is it for the user? And what is the recouping time for the return on investment? And if you get tired of someone that hand codes everything for your site and you want to find someone else to take that over, you could imagine that it would be like the first thing is you're giving someone a novel, the new person a novel and saying, okay, I finally found someone who could maybe take it over, but now they've actually got to go in and look at everything that was created and kind of relearn some of the stuff. And coders, just like these different people that build like things in WordPress, they have a similar problem in that what they do is they code on different levels. Some are really good, some are really bad, and some are in between. And so most small to mid-sized businesses do not need to go that route. They just don't. And so that's why I'm not really focused too heavily on the people that hand code. It's kind of like the OCD, spend a lot of money on it, make it so, you know, it would just be tougher to you free to manipulate as the owner of a business. While if you use something like WordPress, for example, it's Then what you run into is the ability to find probably the largest community of developers on the planet. And if you wanted to get rid or terminate your current designer for another one, then you can move over to another developer. you can find someone else a lot more easily that could help you manage your website. So those are business questions. Those are not scratching the nerd itch, which is what a lot of these developers who write by hand and build these websites from the ground up, that's kind of what they're doing. And their pitch is usually something like they'll hyper-focus in on speed. They'll hyper-focus in on things that are important, legitimately very, very important. But the idea is, does it really make sense to go down that far down the road for your business? And so there's always these nuanced questions that kind of get added into it. Now, the reality is, is WordPress is going to be more than enough for most of you listening out here. There will be a point where that can be outgrown too. Now, there's another aspect to the professional that really needs to be addressed here. And that is, what if you find a professional that builds in say Wix or Squarespace or some of these other systems? I have a real problem with that. And the reason I do personally is because what I see is I have a full palette of colors when I use open source. And I can take that color palette and I can paint any picture that I want to paint with it. Not only that, but I can go back in at any time and virtually change any aspect at any point and have full control over all those colors. Now, if someone's claiming to be a professional and they're using something like Wix or Squarespace, It's kind of like they're going, I'm a professional, but I'm only going to use 12 colors when I can have this whole suite of colors. So what that typically tells me is that designer or developer is not equipped enough or doesn't have the understanding that they're missing out on a ton of flexibility, which says they're probably not the person for you to use. Or we're back to the point where they're trying to turn and burn projects and make more money. And so by building it on one of these pre-canned platforms, they may be able to charge you a little bit less, but they're also making higher margins because they don't have to worry about all the stuff that goes into a professionally built website. So if I was in business and I was hiring a professional, and they said they built on a do-it-yourself website platform, I would not hire the person. I'll be honest with you. I'd be like, well, what are you doing? It just doesn't make any sense. So as we move across the bandwidth, the big question becomes, well, what do we use and how do we use it? And then how do we find out? So let's talk about WordPress for a little bit. And I'm going to make the argument for WordPress. Now, yes, WordPress can be used by amateurs. WordPress can be used by professionals. Amateurs will create a website that's not stable. It won't function very well. It won't convert very well. A professional can make WordPress dance and make it so scalable and easy to use and also easy to make adjustments to make ads work better. You see, I want to hit on this one more time because I really don't think some business owners understand this, but sometimes just changing where a button is or a graphic or a phone number and moving the position around can make big differences in how something converts. And so what that means, obviously, is one, you've got to have the ability to do that quickly and effectively because you don't want to take a week to move a button. But at the same time, you want to be able to be patient because you've got to move it and then test it and move it and then test it. So you can imagine there's a lot of mental gymnastics in that. So there's a patience factor as well. And so WordPress, when harnessed by a true professional, this means that You own the code. You control it. And it can grow with you. You see, do-it-yourselfers, they feel good. And I know they feel good. But they bottleneck at some point. They always bottleneck or they become more problems than they're worth. And then you end up having to jump ship anyway. And if you wait too long to move to something like WordPress or WordPress, in my opinion, I think it's the only one really out there. worth talking about at this point in the world. And I think it's been the case for some time. Just if you Google even the number of websites that use it, it's staggering when you see how many people use it and how well it's supported across the planet. But the idea is that you do own that and you do control all the source codes. So think about this. You learn WordPress once and you have a professional that shows you how to manipulate it. You don't have to learn anything else. If you leave Squarespace for Wix or Wix for a niche or whatever, then you're going to have to relearn a system all over again. You see, that's painful. And then plus you don't get to look under the hood. You don't get full flexibility. Now, WordPress is extremely, extremely flexible. It has all kinds of features. Remember, features equals plugins, SEO tools, and you can customize it in incredible ways if it's done professionally. If it's not done professionally, you can get into it and struggle moving or doing anything. And the common tactic that I see is oftentimes what you'll see is a I'll tell you something I do. I'm not going to go into crazy detail, but I'll basically tell you. If you open a website up and you right-click on it and you go to View Source in your browser, like Google Chrome or Safari or Firefox or whatever you use, and if you do a Control-F on a PC or Command-F on a Mac, you can search for the word theme if it's a WordPress site. And what's really interesting is it'll usually give you the name of the theme that's being used. And you can tell really quickly what theme they're using. And then you could, you'll say the name of the theme and then you can Google the theme and you'll be surprised more often than not. You pay thousands of dollars for a theme that costs about 50 bucks and they'll make the argument that they put all your stuff in it. No, it's not true. It's just simply not true. So, um, Anyway, just trying to empower you, I guess, and part of the ability to empower you is to kind of walk you through exactly what's going on. Now, this also means, obviously, you'll never be stuck. You're not stuck with one provider. You're not stuck with a Wix guy or a Squarespace guy. You can literally find WordPress developers under virtually every rock and in every location across the entire globe. Now, of course, you need to requalify them because you have good ones and bad ones, but you see the flexibility that you have with using something like WordPress, which is open source, not WordPress.com, but WordPress.org. Now, here's the truth that no one's going to tell you. WordPress is only as good as the strategy and skill behind it. Now, that's also true with these other systems. The problem is that you're hobbled using the other systems where you really can't even get over the goal to begin with. It's just their action. The reason you use them is for the reasons we talked about. You want something cheap, easy, and you kind of fell prey that maybe you're smarter than everybody else because you're using something and not spending the money other people do. And so you think you found like this little secret tool. game and you're smarter than everybody else. The reality is, is there's a lot of really, really good reasons that successful businesses have professionals managing their platform. It's because it's complicated and it requires expertise. So most businesses in the end, they fail because they choose the wrong platform. They fail because they choose the wrong developer. So how do people choose their the wrong people or agencies. I've seen a couple consistencies. One is they go based on what a friend uses. Two, a pretty portfolio design where they show you a bunch of websites. They won't tell you that those are usually themes if they are themes. A cheap quote or a really pricey quote. Keep in mind, there's two ends of the spectrum, because remember, psychologically, you think if you pay more, you're getting more. Not the case. Maybe they've got a flashy homepage with no real substance on their website. Maybe they don't have any credibility or credentials. I mean, we strive to become partners with as many organizations as we can that are meaningful to us. Like, for example, I don't carry IT certifications. IT certifications have nothing to do with marketing or web certifications. Don't hire your IT guy to build your website because he can fix your computer. No more than I sell myself to fix computers. Those are way, way too different disciplines. All right. So anyway, I've rambled enough about that. So here's the thing. A pretty portfolio, a pretty website is meaningless unless it converts. It's meaningless. If you're a real business owner, you want what works. You don't really care how it looks. Now, it doesn't mean– but pretty websites are important, nice-looking websites. Professional-built websites are really important. But if it's pretty and not working well, then it's no good to you. If only your employees like it or they like it because it's easy to manipulate, it's not really getting the job done. What you're doing is building a pacification tool for people that don't really matter in terms of the business, which are the people you're trying to serve. A lot of these have very poor SEO structure. I cannot go into all the details with SEO. Just keep in mind, there are a ton of factors that go into search engine optimization and putting in a title for each page and a meta description, even though it sounds really cool, that's like, again, the very, very tip of the iceberg. There's a lot of things under the hood you have to do to make that website effective. Lack of consideration. for your specific audience, as I mentioned, that's huge. Performance fine-tuning is also one of those things that's incredible. So the question is, is how do you hire? You know, I've been struggling with this since day one because the thing is, is that a lot of these companies who are not equipped to do the job, they're like chameleons and they can quickly change their color and look like they know what they're talking about. And if you hear the words, you may go, this person's it. I like this person, and they're saying things that sound super technical. I mean, let's face it, that's kind of what goes on, right? But here's the deal. They're chameleons. So you don't know the good from the bad. You don't know based on price. You don't know based on whatever. You can eliminate someone who claims to be a professional and uses like a Wix or a Squarespace if you see things the way that I see them. But the question is, is how do you pick the right person to help you? Because here's the bottom line. You can't do it on your own. You're not a web developer, you're on a business. And getting into the web development business and competing against people who know what they're doing is doing nothing but distracting you from running your business. And so any system that tells you you don't need a professional is absolutely selling you a bill of goods and selling you something that you want to hear because you don't want to spend the money or go through that extra effort. You just want to have that thing knocked off your punch list. And that is how most businesses fail on the internet, period. So if you're talking to a person that claims to be a professional, You need to ask a lot of questions. This is kind of where I'm at right now. So the first thing you could do is you could ask a question like, how do you define the purpose of a website before you start building it? You see, what you're doing is you're asking them to qualify their process of figuring out what your goals are and how they meet those goals and what they do to qualify what's needed to meet those goals. See, that's a lot different than do you build websites, can you pick out a template, throw in a bunch of text, send me some pictures, and it's done. A lot different. Maybe another question is, what's your process for understanding my goals and audience? Now, this is kind of a loaded question because, remember, they're chameleons. And if you're not careful, what you're doing is you're giving them clues as to what you're looking for. But what you really want to find out is do they even think about your goals before they do it? And also think about, are they even looking at your audience to begin with? You know, those people you're trying to sell to. Maybe also ask, do you offer planning or consultation sessions before the design begins? In other words, are you going to help me set the foundation for this? Are you going to show me how you're doing this? You see, this is a lot different because now we're not getting in and out of a project with someone. Now they're really having to show you what they do and what goes into it. You can also ask them, how do you handle content structure, SEO, and user behavior? Now, this is really important. A lot of people think that you hire an SEO person after you get your website, and that's something that should be done. Other people, they think, well, as long as you put in title tags, which title tags is like the title of each website, page has to have its own title, own description, unique. And some people think that's as far as it goes. And then you hire a professional if you want a deep dive. Now, as someone who's been in the SEO world now for, gosh, forever, and I'm not trying to be elusive. I mean, I can definitely point it back to 2006 and prior too. So I've seen kind of the evolution of SEO. But the idea is that it's not just that simple. It's also... the structure of your website, the name of your pages, where things point to, how much you use something, how little you use other things. And the thing is is that there are some points where it's very painful for an SEO guy to go in and modify a website legitimately because things that Google has already seen and has given you credit for needs to be changed in order for you to be optimal from search engine optimization. So the idea is that your search engine optimization structure really needs to be addressed before the pages are built on your website with an understanding of how they're used in the search engine optimization game. So it would be great to set that up prior to, otherwise you pay your web person to set up one thing and then your SEO guys basically doing the equivalent of redoing all the work. And you don't want to pay for someone to do that. Then the next question is, well, what's your plan for update support and scaling the site over time? So how far do you take it? Are you going to build me a template, put in some copy and some text, and then just charge me$85 an hour when I want to change a phone number? Are you going to teach me how to do minor changes to the website, but you do the heavy lifting, which is what most of our customers want? And we actually prefer that. We don't want to be doing a bunch of the minor changes because it just costs the customer more money, and they can easily do it, and they can get those little things done quicker. Some of these designers, what they do is they actually hold the keys to the castle, even if it is something like WordPress, and they won't give you access to it because they want to charge you every time a change needs to be done. You see how the game is being played here. The right partner, in the end, is never going to rush to pick a template. Picking a template, so you can imagine, now go back to your Wix, your Squarespace, your niche where they have these pretty templates. You can imagine now how crazy it is to start with a template. You can just see that there is a huge flag anytime that's what they're trying to do is enamor you with a template. The big questions are, what are you trying to achieve? Who's this website for? What are your goals? Why are you even here? Those are the questions that I typically ask someone when they first come in because I want to find out what they're really trying to do. I'm not trying to sell a website. I'm trying to help a business grow. And to be honest with you, it's tough sometimes because you take on a new client. You take on a whole new series of instability, insecurity, fighting budgets, problems. trying to work with patients, trying to guide a business legitimately through these cycles rather than just do the turn and burn. It's like you're going through, you know, starting over. You're dating from day one all over again, and you're having to teach a whole new business things that your established customers have learned over the years because we really focus on really teaching customers businesses what they need to know because we want to make them immune to those cold emails that say, hey, I looked at your website and I saw Problem X. These are all just scammy, spammy games people are doing to try to get your business. And honestly, at this point, if you've been listening to this podcast, shame on you. If you're looking at any of those cold emails and you're responding to them or asking them questions or letting them send you reports, you're just asking for pain and stress in your life. If you don't trust your professional, get another professional. But don't, don't, do these little games where you're getting these emails and then confronting them with stuff that they're using as a tactic just to try to take your business away from your person. If you don't like them, just hire you somebody else. So let's do some practicality here at the end. Most of you, bottom line, should be using WordPress. Why you should be using WordPress is not just about the design, the flexibility, all the great things you do, but it also gives your business flexibility as well. You're not locked into one system, and you can take that knowledge with you wherever you go. You see, that's important because it works just not from a marketing and design perspective, but also works good from a logistical business perspective to give you ultimate flexibility as well. It's the perfect combination for most of you. Find you a professional. Do not fall for the famous five minute install with it. Make sure they're using high quality hosting. In my opinion, Amazon, AWS or Google, they're kind of the gold standard. And anyone who's not using those tools, I would question it. Also, do a little bit of research into a company called EIG, that's Elephant Indigo Goat, and just a little bit of research and you will be surprised at how few choices you actually do have for hosting. You may even be debating things like, is HostGator better than Bluehost? That may be something that you've heard. Actually, they're owned by the same company. And as far as I know, they're operated out of the exact same location overseas. At one point, that wasn't the case, but they were acquired. So make sure you do your homework. Never believe a company when you say, where do you host? And they say it's proprietary or in-house. That's like saying, we know where we're hosting, but we're not going to tell you because we're really embarrassed to share that with you. That's what they're really telling you. And they know that if you do a little bit of homework and they tell you where they're actually hosting, then... they also are kind of giving away the keys to the castle and letting you know that they're not everything that they're claiming to be. So transparency is huge. I mean, you come and talk to us, Google. We host with Google. I don't care. I mean, because I know the system we use is one of the best ones on the planet, and I know why we use it far and beyond just the idea of stability. And I can explain every nuance of that to you. So strategy is going to be style. Keep in mind, you know, load fast, build fast, structured well, grows with your business, can conform to your businesses, and it speaks to your customer. That's how you're going to win. Also, by not doing it, that's how you're going to lose. So now you've got a bigger question. The other question is, is all you people out there who have websites that were built and you have no idea where you're at, use this podcast and then see if it passes the smell test. And if it doesn't, if you didn't go through where you started off by– asking a bunch of questions and getting a lot of answers and having a plan where, okay, once you start running ads for me, how do you know what people are doing when they come to my page? And how are you going to make adjustments if people don't start buying what I'm selling or what I need to have done on the website? You start asking these nuanced questions, you're going to be amazed at how little that they have. And you're going to go quickly from grassroots here. Let me show you on my screen. Let me show you the tools that I'm using and how I'm doing it, and let me show you what works and what don't work. That's a lot different than just giving you a bunch of hyperbole or a bunch of language. To give you an idea, oh, so first of all, what you need to do is you're going to need to find somebody else, and you're going to need to find a way to migrate away from the do-it-yourselfers. Don't buy into it. Don't buy into this herd mentality thing, too. Okay, here's a quick rant. One of the things is, well, all these people are using these do-it-yourselfers like Wix and Squarespace, so obviously it must be working. No, no, no. No, no, no. What that means is obviously their way that they're approaching you as a business is working. That's what's working. They're the ones on the Super Bowl, not you. Okay, so there's a big difference. What they're doing is they're appealing to what you want in the fantasy in your head, not what works in reality. And that's working for them. And then giving the trial to get people sucked in, but then making it painful to get out. Because a guy like me who goes in and says, okay, now it's time to move. And I look at all the stuff that's put in that website and I go, well, the cost to move this stuff is going to cost more than your whole new web package. That's why they're successful. So be careful. Ask a lot of questions. Here's a deal. You will have to move away if you've got it. You're going to have to find a professional if you do it. You're going to have to bite the bullet if you care about this. If you don't care about it, then why are you doing it to begin with? Now, that's the tough words, but that's the reality of the Internet today. It's become more competitive online. And don't get suckered into this artificial intelligence jazz. I do a lot of AI stuff, and it's a powerful tool. But there are so many little scams and gimmicks where now people are coming to you and going, using the latest AI approach, we can whatever. whatever. A lot of times that's nothing more than people using Chad GPT to generate content or using some third-party tool and sticking it on your website and not considering critical factors such as EEAT, which you should go check out that podcast if you're concerned about content. Just tons of information that I feel would really help you do good. Now, the hardest one of them all, I suppose in closing, is the niche-based You know, where it does everything from your accounting, your bookkeeping, your tracking, your follow-ups, integration into your daily business, plus a website. This is a tough one because if you're already using it and you're already so tangled up in it you can't get out, then you may have to work with the pro to figure out the best hybrid solution for you. They also... need to consider a lot of technical aspects like for example the way that you use even if they allow those widgets to be used on another website I mean, the features, like you can stick them in like WordPress, like you could take a feature that one of these niche-based companies have and stick it in WordPress and it looks like it's part of your WordPress. There's even ways that that sticks in a website. One way that's completely negates any search engine optimization benefit and one that greatly helps with search engine optimization benefit. So you're going to have to hire a professional to figure out what's there. And if they don't allow... those features to be embedded on your website. Embed just means stick in. Don't get hung up on the word embed. It just means it appears like it's on your website. If they don't allow embed features in their niche system, in my opinion, what they're really doing is that's a business strategic way that they're conducting themselves because they want to own more of your business. And I think that's a bad thing because I want to have flexibility and I don't like being forced into something. And the reality is, is that if they do care about it, then they should give you the ability to incorporate that into any platform that they have. And so you have to make some tough decisions because from a business standpoint and the logistics of your business, you may be so entangled, you don't know how to get out of it or if it's worth it. And so then the question becomes, well, What do you do? Do you go through the pain point? Should you go through the pain point? Are you getting into something that's worse by leaving them? And what steps should you take? For me, I don't think there's really an excuse not to be able to have external widgets and just having to link back to their system or use their forced website system. Me personally, I don't like it. I would want to get out of it, and I would want to have more control over my own destiny and my own code as much as I could. I do realize it's complicated. I do realize no man is an island. And I do know there's a place for these niche-based turnkey systems. There's no denying that. But the question is, is how do you hybrid that to where you're going to benefit your company and consider All the things that really need to go into a website to make it effective that is far beyond the technical needs that are met through those platforms. And a really good professional can help navigate that. A poor professional is just going to kind of hold on and hang on to the best of their ability. They'll probably more agree. Make it more amicable with you in the niche-based thing. There'll be less friction because... They don't want to look foolish in asking some of those questions. So hopefully this helps you out and gives you kind of a view of what this crazy world of web development and web design looks like and help you make good decisions for what you're going to do. Until next time, this is Ken with Over the Bull. I hope you have a great week and I also really hope for your great success.

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Thanks for tuning in to Over the Bowl, brought to you by Integris Design, a full-service design and marketing agency out of Asheville, North Carolina. Until next time.