PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:

Ian R: Welcome back to inspector toolbelt. We have a great show ahead of us here. So today we’re going to talk about how to build your own home inspection website. Before we get into that, I’d like to introduce you to my temporary co-host Beon is off building fantastic things for our software. So today, we have Jason White. Hey Jason, welcome.

Jason W: Hey, Ian, nice to be here.

Ian R: The reason we have Jason white here today is because we’re talking about a subject that is dear and close to me, website development. So, anybody who knows me, that’s my shtick. I love developing websites. But Jason actually runs the website department for inspector toolbelt. So I had to hand off something very close and personal to me, to somebody else. So I couldn’t think of anybody better than Jason. So Jason, before he got into website development, and you you build fantastic websites, by the way, your SEO was on point. But what did you do before?

Jason W: Now I was in construction before websites. Yeah, that’s what I grew up doing. always enjoyed it, still enjoy it. But the wear and tear on the body is not the best.

Ian R: Yeah, and you know, I think that’s kind of why you fit so well into building home inspection websites. It’s, you know, not that there’s anything wrong with somebody who comes out of college and build websites right from the beginning. But they have to learn the content, they have to learn what trusses are, they have to learn what, you know, how a basement should be finished and things like that. You don’t need to learn that you’ve lived it. You know how that is?

Jason W: Yeah, I think it’s been a big help. And talking with the home inspectors, a lot of them also obviously come out from a construction background. So two people having a construction background talking about webmarketing is a lot easier than somebody who does not have a construction background and thinks totally different. So I’ve really enjoyed it. I enjoy building websites having that come together. Obviously, I enjoy working with home inspectors as well. It’s been nice.

Ian R: Yeah, and you know, the feedback has really been great. So I’m really thrilled to have you on today. Because if I’m going to talk websites with anybody, it’s going to be you. So we’re going to talk about a couple of different things today. This is obviously how to build your own home inspection website. So you could come to Jason and I and you know, get a fantastic website, somebody to do it. But if you want to do it yourself, these are the things that are going to help you. Because there really are no big secrets to website development. Everybody likes to sell you on that the companies from wherever calling your seven o’clock at dinner saying hey, we’re going to make you millionaires and build you the most fantastic website ever. There are really no big secrets, is just going with the science going with the data, what works and what doesn’t. So what really makes a great home inspection website. Ultimately, it’s one that wins you work, that that’s what we’re all going for. And it’s interesting, Jason and I were talking about this before the podcast here, the difference between cold internet leads versus customer journey. What would you consider a cold internet lead? Jason?

Jason W: Well, that just be somebody that probably just Google Home Inspection website and saw me and said, Hey, I’m just going to grab that guy. They didn’t know who I was at all, they had no introduction to me didn’t know anything about my reputation or background. I just popped up on a search. There I am. And let’s go.

Ian R: Yeah, that’s and that’s exactly it. And that’s what we’re kind of used to, since the 90s, when the Internet became something that people actually hired other people off of. There were cold internet leads, hey, I need a roofer. Hey, there’s a roofing company, and I click on it, and I hire them and we move on. That doesn’t happen as much anymore. Now we have what’s called customer journey, which is basically the opposite of what you just described. The average consumer and the data shows this that they don’t just find somebody in hire him on the spot, typically that’s becoming more and more rare. What ends up happening is they find your website, then they look you up on Facebook, then they see what ratings you have, then they ask their cousin and then they go to one of the forums and start asking about you and then they see all your different profiles online, but we call them citations. They go round and round and round, and then they come back to you.

Jason W: Right and that’s something that you know, like you said, we call that the customer journey. They have experienced us long before they’re looking to purchase from us. So some people refer to this more as branding, just getting your name out there getting known getting associated with whatever it is you’re trying to, to market yourself to people for us, obviously, Home Inspection Software, Home Inspection websites, we want to be associated with that. So we put our name out there linked with that, so that before they’re searching for our service, they’ve already heard of us. And that’s important, because the more you hear about something, the more you trust it automatically.

Ian R: So customer journey really comes down to being there when the clients looking for you. And we had a podcast on branding not long ago. And that’s all tied into the customer journey. So there’s not really one thing that seals the deal. But a lot of times we look at it as a linear process, the client gets three business cards from their agent for three home inspectors, the two other home inspectors, they don’t really get much attention because they look for you. And they find a great website, Facebook postings, you have postings on other things and online profiles, great reviews, blogs, and you just look fantastic. And then they call you and hire you. When you ask where they came from. All they say is I got your name from my agent. But that wasn’t what sealed the deal. That’s what killed the other two home inspectors from sealing the deal. So it’s the environment that we create. And a large part of that is our website, that’s really going to be one of the biggest impressions that we can make during the customer journey. So let’s really dig into that what makes a great website. How do you go about that? The first point that we’re going to talk about just choosing the right platform, why do you think that’s important? Jason?

Jason W: Well, it’s like the foundation for your house. If you’ve got the wrong situation, if you’re building off the wrong platform, your website could be buggy, it can have issues, even if it displays everything correctly, but doesn’t communicate well with Google and the other search engines, they are not going to want to post it, they’re not going to want to say hey, this is a good reputable source of information. So that correct platform is just getting started off on the right foot.

Ian R: Yeah. And it really comes down too, to choosing a platform that can grow with us. It’s funny how sometimes we’ll pick out a website platform as a home inspector and say, Oh, this looks good. And then three years later, we hit a wall with it. We don’t want to hit that wall, say, Oh, I can’t do this. I can’t do that. It won’t do this. This part doesn’t work. We want to choose a platform that we can grow with. And there’s two that stick out in my mind. First of all, WordPress, would you say WordPress is pretty much the best in your opinion? It is in mine.

Jason W: Yeah, it’s definitely the best. It’s the biggest out there for a reason. It is the most popular, it is the most capable.

Ian R: Yeah, the problem with WordPress is it does tend to be a little bit more advanced. And if we’re not really accustomed to using it, it’s easy to break. So it’s just like if you bought a drone or something, it’s easy to use the simple drone, but the more complicated one that has all the features that you want, is there it might be a little bit harder to learn, and a little bit more work to maintain. So that’s the fallacy of WordPress. It is a little bit more complicated. So if you are thinking about doing your own website, think about WordPress but a good surrogate to WordPress to graduate into WordPress is Weebly. So you’ll see Weebly it’s recommended by a lot of people and companies and it’s just widely used. And it’s widely used for a reason because the drag and drop editors we call them out of those Weebly is probably the best, you’re still going to eventually hit a wall with Weebly you’re never going to get as far as you can with WordPress. If you look at the metrics, WordPress outperforms Weebly day after day on the internet, and for a lot of good reasons but Weebly is a good second place. So it’ll get you a good website that you can do and maintain yourself until you can graduate to something a little bit more beefy.

Jason W: Yeah, I found that to be really helpful for somebody just starting out.

Ian R: Yeah, and it really does work out well. So the next thing is USP, what’s USP? Jason,

Jason W: Your Unique Selling Point. And notice it’s singular.

Ian R: Yeah. And it’s singular for a reason. What sells you when you’re developing your website, have that in mind. What sells me because you want to have that front and center right from the beginning of your design, you should not have 30 USPs.

Jason W: Yeah, definitely not. There’s got to be something about you as a home inspector, that sets you apart from your competitors. Everybody is different, and everybody appeals to different customers. But what is it about you that you bring to the table that is better than everyone else, you need to focus on that know what that is highlighted on your website and emphasize it in your interactions with them in person.

Ian R: Yeah. And it comes down to the fact that if you don’t know what your USP is, or you have 30 of them, then you might not have a USP. So sit down and really think about what is your USP, I’m 50 years old, I’ve been in construction for 30 years. I’m in good health, and I can climb into attics. But still no more than the average contractor home inspector out there about a house. Awesome. You should have a picture of yourself front and center at the top of your website. So Oh, wow. Yeah, this guy looks experienced. But in good health and can climb an attic. Are drones your big thing? Okay, great. Have that up front and center. But when we try to put 30 USP’s at the top, it just becomes noise at that point. It’s nothing that anybody pays attention to.

Jason W: Yeah, it just gets watered down. It just none of them seem to be that one thing that really is good about you, when you try and inundate with a ton of USP’s. So, yeah, it’s important to know which one it is so that it can stand out.

Ian R: Yeah. And you can always mention later on in the website, you know, here are some other unique selling points I have. But pick one, maybe two max of your unique selling points to put front and center on the website. It’s kind of like I went to a restaurant one time. And I asked for a burger or what they made really great. And they said here checkout page 17. If you have, yeah, if you have 17 pages to your menu, there were more that was just the page I happen to go to, then you probably don’t know what you’re selling there. Are you an American restaurant or French restaurant or Italian? I don’t know, cuz you sell it all. And the buddy I was sitting with he goes, you know what this tells me when they have this many items. They make everyone just right. And we both laughed, because he was being facetious. He was making fun of them these like they, they probably don’t make any of these, they probably do a mediocre job at all of them. We don’t want to give that impression. So right off the bat, we’ve picked our platform. But before you design anything, know what your USP is, know your unique selling point. So now that we understand that, we need to start actually putting things together, we have what’s called before the fold. Can you help us understand what’s before the fold? Jason?

Jason W: Yeah, it’s pretty basic. When you open up a webpage, everything you see without scrolling is before the fold or above the fold. And it’s a very important part of the webpage, because obviously, it’s the first thing people see. And what are they looking at? Well, you don’t want it to be too busy. That’s one thing that everybody thinks, I’ve got to let them know all these things about my business. But we need to be really careful about getting it so crowded and so busy that people get lost. They have no idea what they’re looking at, they’re frustrated. And they just go straight for that back button and leave your site entirely.

Ian R: Yeah, we need to give people a reason to scroll down. The average person doesn’t scroll very far if they scroll at all on a website. So that’s why before the fold is the most important space on your website. And some people do just the opposite. They don’t have enough information before the fold. Just the other day, I was reviewing a website for someone. And I said, where do you service. And he told me, but it wasn’t anywhere on his website, let alone before the fold, I had to go to the bottom of the page to find his phone number. And I had to go through two menu items to be able to schedule anything, and I couldn’t find his email address. So even if I wanted to convert into one of his clients, I couldn’t, it takes too much work. So there are actually five things that you want to make sure are before the fold. And just if you’re wondering where before the fold came from, it’s actually an old newspaper description. So remember the old boxes of newspapers that used to be sitting around, or like Newsies. And when they folded the newspaper, the story you saw on the front page before you open the newspaper was before where the newspaper folded. That’s where you put all your important stuff. And it will always lead in different sections of the newspaper. Same thing with a website. But here are the five things and check out your current website, do you have these five things before the fold? One, they need to know who you are. That’s an easy one, you should have your logo there. Again, though, it shouldn’t be said, but I’ve seen so many websites where they don’t have a logo, they don’t have a business name. It’s just a picture of a house. And that’s it. Number two, what you do. So we know we’re home inspectors, but we need to make sure that we have the word home inspections, home inspectors, or something along those lines, front and center, so that they can see what we do. Because to be perfectly honest, a home inspection website can very easily be misconstrued for a real estate website or a contractor’s website or an architects website. If we don’t make it clear, hey, we’re home inspectors. So we don’t want to make people have to look harder to know what we do. Number three, why they should hire us. Now, we just talked about USPS. So I can tell Jason has something he wants to say on that one.

Jason W: Yeah, that’s that’s exactly the point. Right? Right there from the very beginning, you have to know that USP and then once you know it, use it. Right at the very top, at the very beginning. I am an experienced Home Inspector, I have 20 years experience doing this. I was in construction for 30 years before I started, whatever that USP is know it and use it right there before the fold.

Ian R: Yeah, and I think for a lot of us, like I grew up in the construction industry, that was my USP that I grew up in the construction industry. So just a simple line, it should never be people don’t like to read anymore. They like to look at blurbs and be able to assimilate a quick thought. So something quick, like a lifetime and construction at your fingertips or something along those lines saying a lifetime of construction is a phone call away. Or premiere Home Inspections from real experience, however you want to say it just a short little blurb to catch their interest. We’re not telling them the whole story, just catching their interest. And none of those actually really sounded appealing as I was saying them. But hey, you know, we’re just spitballing here, right Jason?

Jason W: Yeah, that’s it.

Ian R: Yeah. The fourth thing, where you service? By far the most missing aspect of almost any website that I end up auditing. Where do you work? If somebody has to go to the bottom of your page to look at your service area, it’s not going to do you any good, because they aren’t going to make it there. We don’t have to list every single town and zip code and variation of a town at the top. But like in my area, it’s called the capital region. So I can list my primary city that I service and then say, serving Albany and the entire capital region. Boom. Now they know okay, I’m at least in the right general vicinity of things. And then the fifth point is, how to call or hire us. Do you see that missing on a lot of websites too Jason?

Jason W: Oh, yeah, I’m, like you just described the ones that you’ve looked at. And you’re looking and you’re like, Okay, let’s say I wanted to hire this guy. What am I supposed to do? I mean, the point of a website is to represent your company online, give somebody a way to learn about you. But from your perspective, it’s bringing work in, that’s what you want it to do is convert those customers into leads, or those potential customers into paying customers. So that is one of the most important aspects is either a call now button or what people prefer more is the schedule online.

Ian R: Yeah, let’s talk about scheduling online. So my company’s up to 30% of our leads come from online scheduling. I mean, it depends on the time of year, it could be more, it could be a little bit less, but that’s significant. The average millennial tends to like online scheduling, but even younger generations, if you’re 25 years old, you’re used to DoorDash and things like that, where you do all your ordering online. I remember we were doing an inspection for this guy. And I jokingly said, Hey, I’m glad you hired us today. How’d you get us? You know, we were just joshing around about something else. And he goes, Listen, in all seriousness, I didn’t have to talk to you. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. But I like to do all my stuff online. And that’s why he hired us. So it’s a mentality. People like to do that now. And you’re missing out on an entire subset of people if you don’t have online scheduling.

Jason W: Yeah, more and more people don’t want to make phone calls. They’d rather get a text message they’d rather schedule something online order something online. And it’s not just the not wanting to talk to people. It’s also clarity issue. There’s room for miscommunication when you and I are talking or there’s room for something to get forgotten, but when somebody goes online, sees what they want, books it, schedules it, it’s done. They have a level of trust there that they can depend on.

Ian R: Yeah, it’s a sense of finality, I clicked on a calendar, it confirmed and sent me an email, you feel warm and fuzzy inside,

Jason W: very warm and fuzzy,

Ian R: Also warm and fuzzy. But interestingly enough, a lot of times we try to skip the online scheduling and use a contact form, it is not the same. And as proven to lower conversion rates, people less and less use contact forms. And I’ll give you an example I actually filled out a contact form just to see if they would answer and they never answered. And just the mentality of I bet you they’re not going to answer just shows where my mentality is, people do not like contact forms.

Jason W: I think we’ve all had that experience where we reached out to a company or someone in just that fashion filled it out. And even if we heard back, we had that thought that you just described, I wonder if this is going to get me anywhere. So there’s, again, just the doubt in the back of your mind when you do that. And when you doubt it, what do you do? Well, you move on and try another one also. And the online scheduler, though, has that finality that okay, I’ve done it, I’ve completed this, it’s booked, it’s set. And then they can move on with their next task. Whereas, you know, you’ve got a job lined up.

Ian R: Yeah, and whatever scheduler, you use Inspector Toolbelt, we have a free one, even if you don’t use our inspection software, you can still use our online scheduler, just make sure that they have that level of finality. I clicked on this date. And they sent me a confirmation email. And even if you have to give them a call later on and finalize it, having an online scheduler is important. A lot of agents like to use is if you’re in an area where agents tend to schedule the inspections for their clients, they really like to be able to just schedule online without having to call you each time. And it comes down to again, you’re not going to know about the leads that you miss. You’re never going to know about those the people that go away from your site. Because it’s a contact form. It’s not going to work the same. So you’re never going to know the leads that you missed from that. So I’m a big proponent of online scheduling. Some guys, you might be in a really large service area, and you’re like, well listen, my service area is a three-hour radius, I could be on one side, and then my next appointments on the other side, and that’s three hours back home and three hours to my next inspection. That doesn’t work for me. That’s fine. You can always still go in and just say oh, hey, that timeframe isn’t available, because we’re not in the area that day. How about we reschedule to another time? At the very least you still have them in your environment?

Jason W: There’s still a customer.

Ian R: Yeah, there’s still 90% of the way there. You just need to reschedule. So for the little bit of scheduling stuff that has to happen, I think it’s well worth it.

Jason W: Definitely.

Ian R: So let’s talk about design, though a little bit. So you build home inspection websites, like I do, what are some elements that should be in there

Jason W: Pictures. We want to see faces. That’s as humans, we like that human interaction, even if it’s just a face something we can use to humanize a cold website. And that builds trust in us whether we realize it or not.

Ian R: Yeah, and there’s actually real data behind what Jason said. It’s not just an opinion. So they’ve done studies where they did split testing of a website. So some users landed on the website, and there were no faces on it. And without changing any of the content except just adding a random human face. Their conversions went up as high as 102.5%. That’s a huge jump, just by adding a face. No other changes.

Jason W: Now keep this in mind. You don’t want to add Ian’s face.

Ian R: No, no, yeah, I have definitely have what we call a radio face. No, but it is true. So putting yourself on your website is important. Now don’t get me wrong. Pictures of houses are still important. And a lot of people argue with me on that. I don’t want a typical home inspection website with a picture of a house on it. But you know, when I go to a bakery website, I want to see pictures of bread. It’s really great that I see the Baker and his team. But I want to see pictures of bread and cupcakes and bakery stuff.

Jason W: Now you’re making me hungry.

Ian R: Yeah, I know, right? We should have brought snacks. But having pictures of a house there. Give people a mental impression. We have data internally that when we extracted, took out the pictures of houses from a website, and only had pictures of people and not in home inspection situations, it actually increased bounce rate, and lowered conversions ultimately, because people were bouncing off more, because they didn’t immediately recognize that loaf of bread, so to speak. Pictures of houses are fine, just not too many of them. Preferably would love to have pictures of houses with you in them.

Jason W: Yeah, it’s very important. Like you said, before the fold, we want to make sure that you tell them home inspections or home inspector, this is what we do. You want to tell them and you want to show him? This is what we do. And then you have that picture of that house that enforces that you are a home inspection company there to do home inspections.

Ian R: Yeah, and consider a couple of things, though, I would say. And this is just guessing, Jason, I would say less than a quarter of our clients actually send us pictures of themselves, that’s not something we can produce. On our end, we probably use more pictures of houses than we would actually like in place of pictures of people. Or we use pictures of other inspectors with maybe a mask on so you can’t tell us not that person or something like that. Because I don’t know if it’s just we’re uncomfortable taking pictures of ourselves. Like it’s like, I’m a full-grown man who’s been a contractor for 30 years. I don’t want to go to JC Penney’s with some pink seafoam behind me taking glamour shots. It’s awkward. I hate it to death. But do it once and get it over with. Would you say that’s about right with the figure of how many people actually send us pictures of themselves?

Jason W: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s about right. It’s, it’s not many. And I think it’s also an inconvenience, we don’t think about it, when we have the time, when we have the time. We don’t think about it. But what it boils down to is that it’s just not a priority. But it really should be because it’s an important part of your website to have you and your face and you performing a home inspection on your website. It’s a huge selling point.

Ian R: Yeah, even for multi-inspector firms. If that one simple thing, could hypothetically with some of the statistics online from all the testing that they’ve done, could hypothetically double your conversion rate, double the people that actually hire you. There is a warning though, we have been sent some really, really bad pictures. I say this with all due respect. But we should be in clean clothes, shirt tucked in preferably clothes with our logo on it, and stop for a moment and have some self-awareness. And I say this because I’m thinking of this one instance, where I begged the guy that we not put his picture on the website, the ones that he sent us, he was wearing these tight red pants that he couldn’t button all the way. And this is no joke. And he was wearing a shirt that was dirty. And it was just the most unflattering set of pictures. And I didn’t know what to do. That’s not going to sell us. And you know, he was a great sellable person. You know, he was like 45 and looked like he had experience and, you know, if he had gotten cleaned up a little bit, it would have been great. But instead, he just had his wife throw some pictures together while he was hanging out in his chair on a Saturday afternoon. Give us some forethought. Self-awareness comes into play too, and we can ask all our family this and they may not tell us. Or maybe they will tell us too often. If we look too young, if we look too old, if we’re horribly overweight, or if we look like a serial killer, we should not put her pictures on the website. And that takes a lot of self-awareness. If you look up any of my home inspection companies, you will not find a picture of me. So I started out when I was 23 24, something like that. I looked like I was 12 No one would ever have hired me. If they actually saw me before the inspection. I’d show up and people would ask me, Hey, is your dad coming? No joke in what happened. I don’t know what I look like comparatively now. But we have to have self-awareness. It would have killed my conversions to have a picture of me and a website. So you know what? I went with the stock image of somebody else. But you know, another one of my inspectors, actually, my business partner and one of the companies. He’s the perfect shot. He’s 45 a little bit of gray hair. He’s got this look like I’ll be nice to you but I know more than you. But that’s good for you. And like it makes you want to hire him. Just have some self-awareness. And get some pictures, get some nice pictures, it’s a matter of this is going to sell you. What do you think are some good poses to be in to put yourself in there, Jason?

Jason W: The Captain Morgan.

Ian R: you know, the Captain Morgan pose is actually not a bad one, maybe lose the leg up, but the arms crossed. And off-centered is a great pose. For your opening image, I’m going to get to give a shout out to Dylan Morgan, one of my clients, if he’s listening, if you go to property doc, look up property doc inspections in Richmond, Virginia, and look at his shot up at the top of the page. Those are the kind of shots that you want, you know, he’s got his arms crossed, but not in the imposing way, kind of I know what’s going on. I’m the kind of guy you want to hire. And it just really works. Besides the Captain Morgan shot, which I’m going to call it that from this point forward. What other shots do you think are good to incorporate into a website.

Jason W: I like some action shots, I like to see them doing an inspection. But it’s also nice on the About Us portion to have just a nice, almost like a headshot but a little bit bigger. Just a nice picture of you in a clean shirt, hopefully with your logo on it that just says who you are, and that you can clean up at the end of the day.

Ian R: Yeah, people expect you to get dirty on your inspection, but they don’t want to see you dirty before the inspection. It’s just a mentality, I expect my mechanic to get dirty working on my car. But I don’t want to see a picture of him all covered in grease. And you know, it just doesn’t give a good first impression. Pictures of you climbing a ladder on a roof, climbing in or out of a crawl space. Those are great shots, even writing your report or something you really want to avoid. Like I see guys put pictures of themselves at a desk writing a report. That’s not the part of the job. People want to see you do they expect that they want to see you getting down and dirty and getting into the inspection. Another thing that we want to keep in mind is kind of the structure of the website. It needs to be pretty. I don’t think anybody ever married their wife and said, You know what? She’s not that good looking. But she functions really well at doing this or that and making sure the house is clean, the dishes are clean. That’s not, you know, we’d like to say, Hey, I like pretty things. We’re humans. And it’s interesting. That’s probably a completely inappropriate illustration, by the way, but I’m here with Jason today. So I figured we were going to be a little bit more inappropriate. But John Mueller, naturally, yeah. John Mueller with Google search. He’s the head of Google search. If you end up following him, he actually says websites that are prettier, have better conversion rates, better SEO and lower bounce rates. It’s just human nature. We want to see pretty things.

Jason W: Why do you want to see ugly things?

Ian R: Yeah, exactly.

Jason W: If you go to a website, and it’s ugly, and it hurts your eyes, and it’s distracting, you’re going “What is this?” and you start picking it apart, you have no idea what any of the content is because it’s so unattractive and unappealing. Like he said, you leave.

Ian R: Yeah. And we’re not going to get into the reasons why things are pretty and go into all those design things. Because there’s just not enough time on our show today. So what I usually recommend, if you’re going to build your own website, find a website that you really, really like, you might not know the reasons why it’s pretty. But just take it and try to mimic parts of it. Don’t copy the content, don’t copy the pictures, just mimic the feel of it. So I don’t know why this picture works. But I’m going to try to mimic how it is. And you’d be surprised, you’ll come up with something different. But it’ll look really nice. And you might not know the reasons why, but it’ll be pretty. So typically, you’re going to have a menu at the top, or a side menu, whichever you prefer, but more modern, it’s going to be a top menu, then below that have your hero section. So the menu is going to contain a couple of elements like your logo, your phone number, links to other pages, then you’re also going to have in your hero section, hopefully, a picture of you where you service, why they should hire you in just two quick sentences at most. And all those other elements. It should be clear and open and make people want to scroll down to see the rest of your pretty site. So what are some basic elements that you think would just kind of help somebody design besides saying hey, just go mimic somebody else’s say? What do you think would help?

Jason W: We want to have a clear idea. You want to make sure that you stay consistent from page to page you want to not be too busy, especially when we think about the menu. We want it to give you a direction to go to but have not have so many directions that you’re going to get lost. So you don’t want more than 10 pages off of your menu from that front page. To head in.

Ian R: Yeah, and that kind of goes back to our illustration of the restaurant. If you have so many pages there, it just creates what we call CTA confusion, CTA is a call to action, I want you to call me or I want you to schedule online. And if we have too many options for them to pick from and all these pages and things, they never really get to what the call to action is. So we want to make the call to action clear and give them reasons to go to that call to action, design-wise, go to a website and extract the colors out of your logo. There are free websites all over online, that you can just put in your logo, and it’ll tell you what those colors are. It’ll give you what’s called a hex code. So now you can have all the colors on your website, match your logo. Also, you can take some themes that you like, that’s an easy way to start out Weebly has themes WordPress has themes, you can say, Oh, this kind of looks like what I’m looking for. Put that in. But don’t just make it look like a standard theme. Make it match your logo. Try to avoid colors. Like if you listen to our branding podcast, try to avoid too much brown or black. Black kind of gives a weird impression. It’s just a little bit intense, kind of like red is a little bit too intense. It can be used very well, but just don’t have everything all black or all red, try to mix in the colors and tone down the intense ones. And emphasize the colors that you really want to have standout. I have a note to talk about mobile optimization. But I don’t think there’s a platform anymore that isn’t mobile-optimized to you, Jason

Jason W: Now being that most people visit websites on their phone, websites are designed to be visited on the phone, it, it makes sense to even if you build it on the computer on a desktop, take a moment and look at it on your phone, just to make sure there’s nothing silly going on.

Ian R: Yeah, and look at it on multiple people’s phones. So every phone is going to render a website differently. An iPhone eight is going to render a different than an iPhone 13 pixel is going to be different than a Samsung, they’re all going to be completely different. Grab an iPad, a Samsung tablet, and three different phones and just look at it. Something looks off, it’s easy to just go in there and tweak it. But you don’t want to lose a conversion because a button is off-center, you know, and it’s or it’s off the page. But remember, Google is not that this is an SEO podcast, but Google is mobile-first indexing. And they have been for a while that means they index, the mobile version of your website first. And primarily. So whatever is on there is really what’s going to matter most. And then another thing is site speed. What is site speed?

Jason W: There’s nothing more annoying than visiting a website and just watching that spinny wheel or seeing half of a picture and just waiting and waiting. And we don’t do it. We just don’t wait any more. If it doesn’t load, what else is wrong with the page? Why can’t they get a good enough web page here that’s actually going to load and we leave. So speed isn’t everything. If you look at some of the most popular websites, Amazon, it isn’t the fastest site in the world. And it doesn’t have to be in your site doesn’t need to be the absolute fastest in the world. But try and make it quick enough that people aren’t going to leave because they’re waiting for it to load.

Ian R: I’m glad you brought out Amazon too, because I use that as an example not long ago, because Amazon gets a Speed score out of 100 from Google itself. 60 to 70 out of 100, which is just a little bit above average is not a great speed score. So a lot of times we talk about speed with SEO, even Google itself said speed is a factor. But it is by far not one of the most important factors. It’s just “a factor”. So to get your site to go and get a 99 out of 100 Speed score, you kind of have to strip out some of the stuff that makes it cool. So if you have a little animation, or a nice high res photo, or some other stuff in there that makes it look really neat that actually engages your users. You can rip it out in a load fast, but then it looks not that great. And then they still bounce off. So find a balance. If you can get even, we’ll call it the Amazon level of 60 to 70 for your speed score. You’re doing pretty good. That’s not bad. Just make sure it loads in the first couple of seconds when the user is on there. We can test it with on Wi-Fi and then we can go and use cell data. If you have a low cell signal. There’s nothing that you’re going to be able to do to get that website to load a lot faster. But don’t strip out all the cool stuff, just to get a good speed score, it’s not going to help out your SEO as much as you might think. But at the same time, it’s not going to create a great user experience. It’s about balance. So is there anything else that you can think of Jason, that you’d like to let people know about when they’re building their own website,

Jason W: Take other people’s opinions into account. Sometimes we get, let’s say, emotionally attached to an aspect of a website, that we feel like, our website just has to have this picture of my cat on it, or else it’s going to be doomed. And it’s something that we find very important. But other people might not appreciate at all, or even find repelling. So share the website with your family members. And if everybody tells you, hey, this one thing, you got to get rid of it, listen to them. So be balanced.

Ian R: Yeah. And I’m really glad you brought that up because sometimes we tend to ask people who either don’t know, or will just tell us what we want to hear. So going back to a guy that came to me, and I looked at his website, I’m like, I couldn’t hire you if I wanted. Where’s your phone number? And he’s like, literally, no one’s ever told me that. Everybody tells me how great my website is. I’m like, You have no logo. I don’t know where you serve, you have no phone number. And there’s no email and I can’t hire you. He was being he laughed, because he’s like, Yeah, you know, they’re, they’re just trying to be nice. That’s not what you want. You want to find the biggest jerk in the world. And say, just tell me what’s wrong with this. Just a warning. Peer to Peer is great. But sometimes we send a website over to Home Inspectors. And I’ve seen some interesting things said, You need to have more content. Look at my website. It’s like an encyclopedia. That’s what you want. That’s actually the opposite of what you want. And some guys are like, Oh, just strip all of that other. You just want your phone number and your logo. That’s not what you want. Either. You want in between that. So we as home inspectors, we’re not the ones you’re trying to market to go to real estate agents. Go to consumers. Like if somebody does hire you. Just on the side. I’m a real talkative guy. Hey, did you like our website? Be honest, I had one lady actually tear my website apart. She was a designer. She was a client of mine. And she goes, let me tell you something. And that was the most helpful thing. Did I cry? Maybe? no just kidding. But it was the most helpful conversation because she just tore my website apart. And it was great. And it got better. So get some real opinions out there. But I tell you what, if you have questions, if you go to inspectortoolbelt.com and go to the website page, you can contact Jason right there. You can email us at [email protected] or [email protected]. We’d be happy to answer your questions. Hope you enjoyed this podcast and Jason, thank you for being my temporary co-host today.

Jason W: I appreciate you letting me join today.

Ian R: You don’t have the same fancy accent as Beon, but you’ll do.

Jason W: I’m more generic, It’s okay.

Ian R: Alright. Well, thanks a lot. Jason.

Jason W: Have a good day.

Ian R: You too.

Outro: On behalf of myself, Ian, and the entire ITB team, thank you for listening to this episode of inspector toolbelt talk. We also love hearing your feedback, so please drop us a line at [email protected].

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