Well, good afternoon. Welcome everybody to another live iThemes Training event. My name is Nathan Ingram. I'm the host here at iThemes Training and today I am joined by Elizabeth pampelonne. Elizabeth is going to be talking to us all about website usability. Elizabeth is a marketing minimalist and award winning entrepreneur and international speaker and an innovative podcaster. her innovative approach helps overwhelmed business owners and burnt out nonprofit directors achieve success and freedom through the power of absolute marketing. Welcome to iThemes Training. Elizabeth, how are you today?
I'm doing great. Thanks for having me.
Absolutely. I've been looking forward to this one. What is by the way, a marketing minimalist.
So I have been in marketing for a long time over 20 years and what I've seen over those over that time is people just take marketing and then they just add to it and add to it and add to it and kind of the idea that you're just mentioning about that book, that old book, right? Those things are still true today and I think sometimes we just overcomplicate things. So it's my job as a marketing minimalist to come in and strip away all the fluff all the extra that people just added on it's not necessary and get back to the basics because that's actually the stuff that works. And that's what I've seen this work for my clients.
Very interesting. And so if you weren't with us in the pre show, we were talking about this ancient book called Don't make me think which was like one of the old the core book on website usability probably published in the early 2000s. Good stuff. So we are talking about website usability today. So Elizabeth, why is that important? Why should we care about website usability?
So a lot of people will come to your website and if they don't see that it's easy to use or that they're not finding the right thing at that right moment right off the bat. They're just gonna leave and you might see that as your bounce rate or as like, you know, just not converting views, but at the same time, you're not really grasping like, why is that? person leaving, you can't really determine that from just someone leaving your website. So they might be leaving because it wasn't the right thing for them, but probably they're leaving because it's not converting them. So the usability should also not only just be ease of use for the consumer, but it should also be a converting option for the user so that they can bounce faster if it's not for them, and they can stay longer if it is.
Yeah, that's great. And in your bio, you talked about you work a lot with nonprofits and we do as well on the agency side and the work that I do. And it is amazing to me how many nonprofit websites they got this homepage with lots of things and you have no idea who they are or what they do. Like it's it's astounding to me how that happens.
Yeah, and I every time I work with a nonprofit, I'm like, What's your 32nd pitch? What's your one sentence that tells me everything about you? And they're like, well, we don't have that you have this really long mission statement. Exactly said nope. What's the one sentence? Sure. So we usually have to work on that first.
Oh, goodness. So website usability today. Give us an idea if we were going over the next hour. So
we're going to talk about what exactly the test is. So I'm going to teach you how to do this specific test that I learned from someone else and I've adapted for myself. And I'm going to teach you the test specifically. So you can do this for any website you'll ever build in the future. And I'm also going to go over some things specifically on each website that we've got listed in the q&a and give my you know, very specific recommendations. So I'm going to say hey, as far as usability goes, here's what we need to change. Here's what you need to fix. So we're going to do a little bit of intro and then we're gonna go right in some live demos.
Fantastic. So as you probably all have surmised that you're not going to be bored for the next hour. Elizabeth is great. Also, we're going to do things a little differently as far as the chat and the q&a. So pay attention if you're a regular I iThemes Training person. We're going to put the questions in the chat today. Okay, so back to old school, I iThemes Training. If you've been with us a long time questions are in the chat. Elizabeth is going to be watching the questions and comments in the chat because she wants this to be really interactive and so that's the best way to do this. So, questions go in the chat. If you want your website to be evaluated as part of this process. Use the q&a we have eight websites looks like in queue right now. So if you'd like to add yours to the list, drop that link in there and that'll be stacked up for that throughout the webinar as Elizabeth is actually doing her thing. So a couple of other housekeeping details as we go. Again, questions in the chat links for websites to be evaluated in the q&a. There are no slides today. It's going to be all live demo. And if you're just joining us, I want to drop the link bundle back in the chat because there you will find a very important link which is all the free stuff on Elizabeth website at get absolute marketing.com/free. There's a link to a toolkit that's there. There's a link to get her video library that's there. And so I would highly recommend that you do that and make use of those free resources. Also, we'll have the replay of this event up in about an hour after we wrap up and that'll have the video, the chat log and the live transcript that's happening. You can go back and rewatch this or you can share it with a friend. So with that I'm gonna be quiet and disappear and turn it over to Elizabeth.
Awesome. Thank you so much. Nathan. I really appreciate it. So I'm gonna go ahead and get my screen shared here so that you guys can just see a little bit of this. I just have a couple of slides. These are more my intro slides. They're not nothing too crazy. And we're gonna go ahead and start with this. Again, if you want to get your website reviewed, do put that in the q&a. I will be going to those in a few minutes. And if you have a question, put that in the chat and I will see it there for you. All right. So again, my name is Elizabeth pampelonne. Nathan Inter. He introduced me so well I don't even have to do that for myself. And I do have a podcast called Marketing minimalism. It is found on all the podcasts, things you can find it on. So if you're interested in podcast, check it out. It's a two minute podcast so not too much of your time. But we're going to talk today about usability testing. So what is usability testing? And the best way I can describe it is it's the your mom test or the your nana test or the Aunt Becky test. This basically it's a test for us to determine how simple is it for us to use your website and I can tell you that my mom was always asking me how to use websites and how to do things on websites. So sometimes I just called the your mom test because my mom's always asking me those questions. And what we're gonna do today is we're gonna go through a few things on your websites that you guys have put in the links, you're specifically down here, which I'm so excited to look at. And I'm gonna give you these this test. So we're going to do the test on one site first, and then I'm going to go through and teach you how to do it on each site as we go through but first thing I want to talk about it really quick is there's two things you need before you even do this usability test. And that is you need a good brand and you need a website. So if you don't have a good brand, your website is going to kind of fall flat anyway. And you're going to see that happen if you go to a site and you're kind of feeling like it's disjointed. Or you're not really sure what to do next means the brand isn't there and the brand can be everything from your messaging to your you know, your logo, the colors, all of those things kind of encompass your brand. I do all training on that kind of stuff. So do you know if you want to have more information about that just check out my website, and we can talk but definitely your brand is going to help your website it's going to also help that usability side of it. Yes, colors do matter. fonts do matter. All that stuff is going to really help your site have less usability problems if you keep a consistent brand. So in order to do that, we do want to have some file formats and things of your logos are just kind of like a precursor and if you've worked with a graphic designer or you are a graphic designer or you do DIY thing, it these are some things that you're probably going to have already hanging around on hand and it's just going to help your site be more cohesive. And so that's a huge piece of usability is just to make things so simple. And not have it be this disjointed thing that the consumer has to kind of figure out right? You just want it to look they just get there. They're just like yes, I'm here. It's lovely. And then it all kind of fits and feels good to them. So the next thing we're going to talk about is the website itself. And I'm going to go through just a few elements of the website. And then we're going to look at these things in each of your websites. So what do you want to you what do you do you have to tell people what you do and you have to be clear, there should be one message Okay? should just be one message. And I'm going to look at that as I go through each of these sites, is there one message and then defining that target market speaking to one person so that it's almost like we're having a conversation? And then what is it your website is actually supposed to do? These three questions, if you can answer all three of these questions. This is the first part of the usability test. But this last question is really the most important. So when you do a usability test, there's a couple of things that you need to do. First thing is you should do it in person. It's the best to do it in person. But we're not in person today. So I'm going to do this live for you. And you want to pick a person to do the test with you. Who does not know anything about the website that you're looking at. Okay, so let's say I'm going to review um, man whose site or Ben site, okay, I don't know anything about their websites. I have never been to their websites. I have never, you know, seen their sites. I don't know them personally. So I don't know anything about what they're doing. That's the first thing I'm a good candidate because I don't know anything about their sites. The second thing you do is you sit the person down who doesn't know anything about the site in front of a computer? And you tell them what is the number one thing the website should do? Okay, so in the chat, I want you guys to put in the chat. What's the number one thing your website should do? And that means What's the number one function of your site? When someone a consumer goes there? What's the thing you want them to complete the task you want them to complete? The thing you want them to accomplish by being on your site? Is it to listen to one of your podcasts is it to listen to your radio show? Is it to download something from your website? Is it to buy a product? Like put it in the cart and purchase right? Is it to book a call with you? Is it a service based business? Tell me what that website that you've put in the chat or I'm sorry, you put in the q&a? Tell me what that website should do. So we've got a couple of things. I want to sell a product so you want them to put something in the cart. Okay. fill out a contact form. That's a great one contact you by filling out a form to schedule a call with you. Okay, perfect. Choose an estate plan. Now, if John if they choose an estate plan, what happens after that? Are they just looking at the list and going I choose a out of a b and c i choose a then what? So maybe what's the final outcome you're looking for from them to fill out a contact form?
Let's see. Um, buy organic building, okay, so you want them to put something in the cart. So what I'm doing here is I'm looking at what you're saying and fill out a contact form is like a great option because even though it sounds really generic, it's actually the the final destination right? It's the last thing they have to do before they can walk away from the computer and have done their job as a consumer right. So the by our organic clothing, that doesn't tell me exactly what they need to do as their final destination before they can walk away from the computer having done their job as a consumer. So really, then yours would be I want them to purchase something and check out right so they have to put it in the cart and they have to checkout fully checkout and then they can walk away. They've got the receipt in their email, right. So this is the kind of stuff we want to kind of boil it down to almost this kind of simplistic version. So for example, I'm going to show you my site here, let me just switch this up a little bit and this is my website. And I can tell you that there is one thing I want you to do if you come to my website, and that would be okay, you're reading a little bit about me getting to explore some options. I'm leaving you okay, I'm not telling you boom, boom, boom. Here's the thing. That's one thing I'm leaving you to that okay, explore the options. What does that mean? Simplify My business. Okay, here's the pricing. Okay, great. But what does this say? I'm ready to cross marketing off my to do list. Yes, I am. Oh, wait, it's booking a call. That's what I'm leading them to right. It doesn't mean you have to push the thing in their face. But it doesn't mean you have to lead them guide them get them to check out the other pieces you want them to see along the way. Kind of like you're the the the guy that the sightsee and you're like, Hey, look at that. Look at that. Don't forget this on the left, you look at that on the right. You kind of showing them all the sites as you go through getting them to this one point. So you might want them to look at, you know, your pricing, you might want them to look at what the power day includes. Right? So I'm showing them everything before they actually get to the point of Alright, I'm ready to do this. Let's do it right. And then that means they're going to actually complete the process they want them to complete. Now, if they go to the website, and they're like, I'm ready, I'm already done. I'm already kind of one of those consumers that's just raring to go. Look at chats right in the corner. First thing, it's right in your face, but it's not the only way that they can get there. So I just wanted to show you this kind of an example before we start looking at some of the other sites. And it could be multiple ways that we want them to get to this place. It could be just one direct link or we just say hey, this is the only thing I saw buy it but a lot of times the reason we have a website is because we need to explain things, right? This is why we have a site need to explain things. We have other stuff that we want to offer them. For example, I have a podcast, I have consulting, I have free stuff. I do speaking engagements. It's not just about the one thing that I want them to do. There's other stuff that they could be interested in that might be helpful to get them to make that one decision. So all right, let's go ahead and do a test. On the first site that comes up, I'm gonna pop this over here. So this is accessibility for okay, we're not working on accessibility. Today we're working on usability. And I'm going to tell you about the next piece of this usability tests. The first piece is you find somebody that doesn't know anything about the site, you get them to sit down in front of the site, then you tell them what's the one thing they should do. Okay, I need you to put this thing in your cart and checkout. Okay. So, for this, this site right here, vantage point, did anybody tell me anonymous you're on here? If you could tell me what this site is supposed what I'm supposed to do here, what's the number one thing you want me to do on this site anonymous. So now we've got the person in front of a computer, we've told them exactly what we want them to do. As the designer is the person who made the site. Guess what? It's time for us to sit on our hands and be quiet. It's the worst thing ever. So you literally cannot help from this point on. So I'm guessing just waters. It says contact us via contact form or phone. Okay. So perfect. Now you have to be quiet, and you can't tell me anything else about what you do or the site. Now I have to figure out what you do. I have to decide if I have enough information to make this decision. And then I have to see if these things are accessible to me after I've poked around a little bit. And no matter if I get confused, no matter if I read something wrong. No matter if I make some grunting noises or some I don't Oh, wait, if I make any kind of noise. You can't say anything like oh, it's just in the right corner. CSCs you can't do that. You can't point you cannot you can't go You can't help. And the thing about that is it shows you where the consumer has the frustration and the issue. Okay. So that way you can see where the stumbling blocks are in the site. And then you can fix those things in the actual design or in the actual flow of how the consumer experiences working.
Okay, so um, vantage point, technology partner. Amazing experience Okay, VPN, okay, VPN, so I don't know if I need a VPN but wonder if they do other technology things. Okay. Cloud Services law firms. Will not a law firm, not association or nonprofit and I'm not a government contractor. But, I mean, maybe we should learn more. Maybe they serve other kinds of services. No, they really don't serve other services. Hmm. Okay, well, then I guess it wouldn't be for me. So to see how that I just kind of decided based on that, that it wouldn't be for me. I work in Marketing. I have a marketing firm, even though we might have these things like servers and stuff. I wouldn't be for me, because that's not here. So that's kind of taking a little bit of a different usability tact. I'm not going to do the one thing you want me to do. Because I'm not part of your sphere. Okay? If you're trying to eliminate everybody, but the people you've listed, you've done an amazing job. But if you're trying to say, Oh, well, we didn't want to eliminate you. You're in the marketing field. That would be a great person for us to know then you might want to reevaluate how things are worded and what you do include and then like and more something like that. Hope that makes sense. So just some different things about when you're limiting what you're saying versus if you want to be more niche, perfect, be that way. I think that's great. But if you want to if you think you've excluded, something that you did actually want, make sure that you're going back and re evaluating that. Alright, let's go back to the homepage. So you want me to contact you? Well, I'm scrolling and I see a we get it. We're here to help. But what if I don't even know what I need help with yet? I'm not even really sure. Um, see here. Ah, okay, business solutions. That sounds like a good one. Let's go there. Business Solutions. I'm reading some stuff talk to us. We get it. Okay. Let's I think I've read enough. I think I got some good information. Here I am at the contact form. So you're leading me there to see how that works. Where I was, I read through some things it made sense to me. And then it's right there at the bottom for me to go ahead and make the make the connection to actually contact you. Having the phone number up here isn't bad because it probably a lot of your current clients are using that. But it's probably not going to just let me I'm not going to just make a call, right? If I'm just randomly finding you or if someone's referred me over. I'm not just going to just directly call. I'm gonna do a little poking around first. So let's just check another one of these technology services pages. Right there at the bottom. Great. So you've got a call to action on each page. And that makes for better usability. And then the last one is I'm going to go to the leadership page because the about page is actually your second most used page of your site. Most Viewed page of your site. And there's not really a great call to action on the bottom of this page. I would say that of course there's emails here and stuff, but I would say almost you need another, you know, meet with the team or contact us kind of button here to kind of help with that funneling of the people over because pretty much they're gonna go to look at the services they're going to look at maybe Oh, I'm a law firm and this is what I'm looking for. Let's see if they can help. Sounds great. See how this one just leads you right over to it but this who we are page doesn't so take a look at that and see if you might be able to add a few more calls to action. You got one here on the core values page. So
just make sure you add one to that leadership page. All right, um, let's see. And then this work with this page is interesting. I almost think that this might be a great thing to add to your homepage. Oh, no, sorry. This is your your employment. Sorry.
I thought it was like a here's what we do. Okay, perfect. So yeah, this is like employment. Okay, great.
Um, and the only other thing about the homepage is you did lead me to where you wanted me to go. Like I said, I was looking at it from a consumer standpoint, probably not your ideal consumer. But I was giving it those like questioning things like well, what about this? What about that? The only thing about the homepage is I think instead of having this box here, on the bottom, right, I would probably put a call to action button like one of your little, little easy buttons that you had. I would actually put that there. And have it lead me to a form unless you're getting tons of stuff from this form. I would say maybe swap it to more of a visual because you don't have a lot of visuals on this page except at the top and then lead them to the form rather than just like for put the form on the front because this kind of overwhelms me with a lot of you have to do something right this minute. Whereas the other one is more of an invitation to do something. So that might be something that you could look at and see how the engagement is going with that form. But overall, I think you have some good lead ins you have good information I know exactly who you are from the from the front you know from the get go. I even think the technology partner thing it's almost gets lost here in the corner with the post it note I like it. It's cute. But I almost think you could probably make that your main banner and not have rotating banners and maybe have a rotating banner for your your testimonials instead. And so like no we are your technology partner and then below that is your rotating like testimonials. So something to think about. It's more of a design thing, rather than like usability thing but usability and design kind of like go together they can use the utilize the same same principles and things I think so. All right. Well, hopefully that was helpful. And we're going to move on to another sites. See here who do we have? Derek websites and more. All right. Okay, Derrick, good to see you. Um, all right, not too bad so far. Um, so, from the what from the name I get it and from this top, like, you know, introduction sentence here. I get it. I think the picture might be too big. I don't know something's off here. Like I maybe I'm thinking that the tech should be over the picture or somehow a little different but it does make sense. So as far as usability it's not terrible design might be there might be some things you could move around but I don't think that's too terrible yet there's nothing core horribly wrong there. Digital Marketing Services Okay, so you got three across you've got quite a few Wow got a lot while you do a lot of stuff. That's awesome. Okay, oh, and then many more services. Okay. I think that's just maybe too much for the consumer. Just as a consumer myself, and also there, let me know what your number one thing is. Just as I'm scrolling through the homepage, like what is my number one thing you want me to do? On this website? As a consumer, what's the final destination of me? Is it booking is it contact form? Is it phone call? Like what what are you really trying to get me to go here? Fill in the contact form. Okay. Um, I think having all the listings on the homepage is just overwhelming as a consumer, especially if I was on a phone. This would be it's a lot of scrolling, just in general for just a computer. So for a phone this is going to be even more overwhelming. Okay, so we've got another thing I like your comparison here. Why hire you? Okay, I might condense the Why hire you to a couple of bullet points just a lot. Like I'm just seeing like scrolls so lots of scrolls. There are things we can do like long sales pages and the sometimes those work but for a homepage where you're not. It's not built like a sales page, because sales pages have very like specific formulas that they use to create them.
I would definitely reduce some of the content you have on the homepage. I'm not saying get rid of it completely. I would maybe put it on other pages and let it be on those other pages like on your services page, put all the services maybe on your about page put some of these extra Why hire me's but maybe just put three like your top three. And same thing with the services your top three interesting thing about the top three though, if you put your top three, put the two that make you the most money and one that you don't really do much of that you really love that can help to kind of boost that. But people can only handle three or so at a time maybe four across at the most. You don't want to overwhelm them with like six or eight things as you're scrolling especially. So that can be a little bit too much for the consumer to handle. Um, okay, so you're a member of this chamber of commerce, and then you have SiteGround but I think there's a picture missing maybe right there. So these things like why would you choose SiteGround? So I'm not even sure what I need from you yet. So I'm not even sure why I would choose SiteGround so I'm that one might be a little much unless people are specifically coming to you for SiteGround information and you send them to your homepage just for that. You're probably wanting people to like what kind of marketing services do you need and this is what we offer kind of like what I do. So I definitely think oh might be blocked. Okay, that's a good, that's a good observation. Um, so for this, I might actually put it on a different page and say like, Hey, here's all the resources that I recommend. If you look at my toolkit, you'll notice that that's what that is. It's all the resources that I recommend and all of my affiliate marketing and just stuff that I liked that I just like to recommend to people anyway. So so definitely maybe move that to a different section. You could still have it as like a hey, check out our resources and then link over there but you don't want it to be like so much text portfolio prices. This is a great section. I love this very succinct. A client could just pick at it and like go yeah, see the portfolio, see the prices. Another thing term again, you've got that listed there. I put that on the resources page. And then you've got your BBB here I would take your commerce and your BBB thing and moving to the footer. That way it's not in the clients view is like you're not putting it in precedence or even over your testimonials because I think your testimonials for a client standpoint, just from being able to use the site that's going to be more important than the fact that you're a chamber member. So maybe put those two things in your footer and you don't really have to explain them. I'll just maybe put them in the footer. Um, then you got some good testimonials here. They might be a little bit taking up a lot of real estate. They might not have to do that. You could put them in a slider or something. It gives you a little more truncated version of the same thing. And then helpful information. These might be great to do like blog post or social posts on payment options, payment methods. Okay, you've got lots of images here. I would actually put these on like a separate page because not every customer is going to need this specific thing initially. And this just might be overwhelming to someone just scroll through this. And I'm not picking on you Derek I just say that I'm the Gordon Ramsay have a website audits, especially when it comes to usability. So I can tell you that if it's overwhelming for me, and I do this all the time, definitely everyone for customer and then give certificates like you have that at the bottom. I may actually put that on like the contact page even for another page of like how to work with you or something where you kind of want to funnel them to okay now you're ready to buy let's do this. So I didn't actually really get okay way at the bottom. I said that and here it is. way at the bottom it says contact me for a free consultation. Okay, this is so small. Derek you have so many awesome things on the site and then you have this tiny little link. So as a consumer I'd never find that. I barely found it just now. So I would say if you want them to do things like book a console and contact you through your contact form, which I'm sure which is where this leads. Yeah, goes to the contact page be you need to have that button elsewhere also. So for example, let's say you cleaned it up exactly like I said, and you reduced all these things down. I would put a button
here. Like in this section right between welcome and digital marketing. I would say welcome and then please explore and then I would put a thing that says Get started now and that's your button that goes to your contact form. Then I would give your three top three, your digital marketing services. And then right below those three, I would say ready to get started like click here, contact us today and then like is that make sense? Like throwing in these little buttons that are kind of halfway down the page or sort of way down the page? That gives someone the opportunity to go Yeah, I'm ready like I've seen enough right and then when you're on these pages, so let's just look here real quick. When what we talked about with the last one too let's go to WordPress websites let's go to this one. It says see prices great see prices see prices. Alright, so we're only getting see prices here. Let's just click on this. Okay, so here's the pricing poopoo okay, I don't really have a button here that says let's do this. Let's book Yeah, I'm ready. So that means we after this, maybe at the bottom here or even right here right after you give a price. After you give a price. Then you say click here to contact us click here to get started. You have to have those funnels over because I might get all the way to this point and then go oh, now what? Where do I go from here? It's almost like having a map. So I think that's one of the things about great usability is if you have a good map, a good site map that is and things can you can lead someone to that point then you're always going to get them to do what you want them to do. And they're going to complete the action because it's almost too easy not to complete it right. So it's it's too easy to do it. They just they're not going to not do it. Hope that makes sense. All right. So I'm gonna go ahead and go to the next one. So let me close this one out. Thank you so much. All right. This one's here we got Winston Kuhn collection. Okay. German figurines. Tell me, John Johnson. Tell me what your site was. The number one thing I'm supposed to do on your site. Go ahead and look at this really quick. Like you have a video here. That's nice. Okay, now I will say this one thing your video does take me off site. Um, I would say that your video should not take me off site. I would rather you embed the video here instead of the picture so that I could just watch it right on your site. I might actually watch it like start watching it and then keep scrolling as I'm listening to it. So sometimes that happens too. Um, I would definitely look at that because that's going to make it easier for the user because they're not going to go off site and then go wait a minute. Now where was I? After they watched the video? They're going to still be on your site and they're going to still know that they're kind of safe within their little confines here. Rather than just being sent off somewhere and then having to come back. All right, um, there's a lot of text on this site. I know it's probably important to what you want people to know about what you do. But I definitely would say this is overwhelming for the consumer and I always feel like it's better to have more content than not enough. So you have enough content now let's just about breaking it up, adjusting how it's you know, viewed and then reducing it down for the homepage at least. So that that person can funnel down to they need to buy a product like they need to go to the put something in their cart and actually checkout Okay, um, and typically the cart is not front and center in the menu is typically on the left. Let me see if I make this a little bigger. Okay, so it's not really moving around too much. It's kind of staying in that center. I'm not sure if you can move that when the program that you're using, but definitely, the search is going to be less used than your cart. So I would say you want your cart to be all the way to the right hand side. And then your menu could be all the way to the left like it is here, but you want that cart to be definitely top right and that's going to give you that more familiar look. So see Max paragraph which should be 75 characters. Okay, you were talking about that? Sorry. Um, so anyway, um, the one of the things about usability is not just that you want someone to get from A to B, right? But also that you want to use some things have what's called like, what I like to call like web familiarity, where people are familiar enough with the process. They've done it on a lot of other sites, that if you go to Amazon, the card is in the top right hand corner. If you go to, you know, target.com the cart is in the top right hand corner if you go to literally any website, the cards in the top right hand corner and so we could be cute and move it but then we're probably going to lessen the amount of usability that our site has with consumers. So think about some of those things that are familiar like, menu on the left, and cart on the right. Okay, so think about those things. And see if you can use some of those familiar techniques, while still keeping your site unique, but you don't have to change everything about your site because consumers are going to get confused. And then that's going to lessen the usability.
All right, so I just think you have so much content on the homepage, I would probably reduce this down to excuse me. one paragraph per section. And I think even maybe use another video to explain some of it if that would be possible. So um, or maybe even have a thing about like, read the history or read how they're made or something like that. And we refer them over there and then refer them to the shopping page from there. So again, giving them a path to walk think of like Hansel and Gretel dropping breadcrumbs. So I'm gonna go to the collections page just so we can go ahead and see what it's like to put something in the cart. All right, let's look at the music boxes and wall clocks. Super cute. Adorable. Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and put this Sam this car random here okay, I can see pictures. Music Box, okay, so it tells me everything I can listen to the sounds that's perfect. I love that. I can choose the sound that I want. I can add it to my cart. Now if I add it to my cart, I'm going to look here to that right hand corner. That's kind of where my brain goes, right? Oh, I added to let me go here and put one in. Alright, so then I can go towards the checkout page. And let's just see if this looks familiar. It does. It looks good. And then just making sure I got my HTTPS Yep. Okay, perfect. So so this is all pretty familiar and and usability is very easy. It's easy to see like where I can purchase and things like that. It's just shop collections right here. I would I would probably say there needs to be another two or three buttons if you're going to have all this text on here. Add some more buttons in that says View this collection or view the wall clocks. You don't have to just say all shop everything, like take them directly to specific things because I wouldn't even known that you did wall clocks because it just says specializing in the finest German figurines, but when I click there, now I have this view of there's curiosities. There's wall clocks. There's Christmas tree decorations. There's a whole like white timber edition, which is totally different from the other things, what's retiring, I think that would be great to put on the homepage as a link. So you want to bring in some of those specialty pieces to the homepage so that you can then get people to do that and that will lead them closer. Get them a little like one step. Closer to purchasing in putting it in the cart. And then also offering things it's not necessarily usability but offering some kind of incentive that you know if you do this we'll give Robert for free or something I don't know but like showing me something on the homepage that's like no entice me to go, Oh, I do need a gift for and so and so you know that kind of thing to kind of trigger some of those things for the consumer to get them to even move forward to that next step. So, but yeah, I've just reduced some of the text and I love the video and no gifts Okay. Um, but yeah, it's like it's up to your business model. I'm just giving, you know, also examples for anybody else who has sites that are similar with products. But yeah, I would just maybe reduce a little bit of the text down and give some more links to specific areas so that I can get straight to it rather than having to do multiple clicks to get to you know, the wall clocks for example. All right, hopefully that was helpful. I'm gonna go on to the next one. Thank you, John. All right, Phoebe, she says she wants their customers to purchase something. So they're going to put it in their cart and purchase. Okay, so quilt designs, quilt patterns.
Let's see here. Okay, pattern gallery free patterns. Um, okay. There's a lot on here. Wow. There's so much going on. Um, okay, hold your survival. Get basket gift. That's awesome. Let's see. Okay. I think the sidebar is a little bit confusing to me, just because it's it's kind of giving me like these two things I have to look at at the same time. So that might be something I would look at as maybe rearranging or putting as a footer or introducing as sections into your site instead of just having two things happening scrolling at the same time. That is something we used to do. I know and Nathan would know this like back in the day that was like, the thing to do was have a sidebar, right? So cool. But at this point, people are looking at things on their phones. And so what ends up happening anyway, is a sidebar gets kind of shoved to the bottom, and it's after the content anyway, so I'd rather people not miss some of these things like et Cie, or something else that you might want them to see like the blog, because it's hard to like, look at two things at the same time, even though they're both scrolling. It's they're kind of off center. Do you know? And so I would say just make your site have the sections that go across. It'll help make it responsive and it will allow people to see some of those things they might have missed. When they were just looking at the content, the main content rather than the sidebar content, so I'm gonna just be one thing there. And I'm not really sure where to purchase from here. I'm going to keep looking, but I want you to know that at this point, I don't really know where to go and I saw free patterns. Okay, let's go to alphabetical list of patterns. And I also don't really notice that this is a purchase site doesn't really tell me that I don't see a cart in the corner. I don't see anything that would say that this is a site I would purchase from Um, okay, so let me go to this one. Let's just go aim high throw quilt plant quilt pattern. Okay, can order the digital order the physical so now I've seen that it's in you know, it's like an E commerce site. But initially, I don't get that from it. So I wouldn't really know that that's what I was supposed to do. I might see free patterns and then go oh, it's free pattern site and the blog and not really notice it something else. So that might be something you might want to get rearranged that homepage a little bit, get it a little more streamlined and say shop here by now. That kind of thing. To get people really interested it's a e commerce site as well. And then let's do VP says I think you're right I don't tell people to buy on the first page. When I take out the sidebar. I will do a shop here. Yeah, that's great. Like just the top of the put it in a nice picture at the top and then say shop, you know, shop now and then do all the other cool stuff at the bottom. Let's do order a digital pattern. Oh, it takes me right to Etsy. I definitely would say if you're going to do this through Etsy and you're going to just take people over there there are Etsy embeds you can get for your website and I think that might actually be more beneficial. There's like SP plugins and stuff. Look into that because it can present your your images and all of your ecommerce stuff a lot better than me tried to hunt around for it as you could kind of tell I was like confused. It would bring kind of elevate what you have and it would give you all the pieces you need and it would just be like a quick plug in you wouldn't have to do a lot of extra labor around the the tables and stuff. Yeah, and Nathan just put one in the in the chat there. So I've worked a lot with that see plugins. Oh my gosh, they were amazing. And it could save you have so much time so definitely not only for your usability, but for the consumers usability as well. And the fact that you were an Etsy shop owner, I almost just clicked on that and just went to the Etsy shop and then search there. So if you had the plugin I think it might make it easier for the consumer and you might make more sales that way. And also that people might connect that you have an Etsy shop it's kind of gives you that little bit more credibility than it just being like a random shop online, right. How do I know if you're gonna even send me anything, but with the Etsy backing it gives me a little more confidence as a consumer to say, well, she's legit Look, she's had two or three sales and she has five stars. That's awesome. So I'm letting people know that you're an Etsy shop owner is one thing, but I probably would have just if I was looking for myself just skipped right over. So um, so yeah, they do an Etsy like an Etsy plugin, then that might save you a lot of time and be really great for your
sales. All right, perfect. Love it. You got some really cool stuff on here. By the way, Phoebe, it's gorgeous. But yeah, save yourself. Some time girl good stuff plugin.
All right. Let's go ahead. Do the next one. Thank you Phoebe. All right. What do we got here? Manos sites. native voice TV. Okay, so it's like TV station, or like the streaming kind of like online streaming.
Okay, again, these got these kinds of things in the sidebar here. I would remove the sidebar and put it in a more prominent place. If that makes sense. I would have like a section that says read the magazine. I would do your section at the top that would have your videos first and then do your read the magazine and like sponsor and things like that. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do on this site. I mean, I could watch a movie like watch a video right? I know I could do that. But they don't have play buttons on them so I'm still a little confused. I'm Nick kind of know that their videos because it says TV right? So man who can you tell me what I'm supposed to do on this site? What's the number one thing you want me to do on this site? Let's look at the about page. Okay, that's a good about page. It's got some good info, some pictures. information so it's really an informational sites for me to just browse around. Take a look. There's nothing you want me to specifically do. Um, let's go to the TV stations. Okay. I mean, if it's an informational only site I would say you're doing a good job with that. I mean, I'm in more informed now. Of like, what this is and what you do. But I would definitely maybe say like voices of native people. That's like your tagline. I might expand on that and say something about how this is the platform for the voices of the native people to be heard. Does that make sense? Like, say like, this is the place for that to happen, you know, because you have this magazine here. You've got the videos. You've got the sponsorship option. There's books, there's articles there's a blog, like maybe you could kind of say well this is like the the information sector for that this is where we gather all the information almost like oh, what I'm gonna call it like a chronicle or almost like a news outlet that is for the voices of native people, which I think was is amazing. So, um, yeah, maybe kind of give a little more information about that on the homepage, and then talk about here's our videos, here's our magazine. Here's all the other things we're doing and list them like you know, 123 in rows like that. Think that might be helpful and it might just help people get more information and actually hunt around a little more if they're given things in a very like linear fashion. So hopefully that helps you but I like it. I like how it's really dark and then you have this like, you know the videos on top and everything so it's India makes them stand out really well. And I normally don't recommend black sites like that. But this one looks pretty cool. Like does it lend itself to what it's supposed to be doing? So good job with that. Awesome. Okay. Let's look at the next one. I think we have time for one more and then I'm gonna go ahead and pause on the live audits. I do apologize to anyone who didn't get their site on bid but if you would like to, you can go to my website, get absolute marketing.com. And I can You can book a free call with me and I will look at your site as well. This site is in a different language. Maybe I need to translate English this is true. All right, let's look at it and see. Okay, so we've got this the organic clothing when I think Awesome. Okay, yeah, eco tops for women. Okay, look, I'm just gonna click right there. That's where it's where I'm going with it. Awesome. Oh, it's on translation. Great. Okay. Um, oh, that's really pretty. Oh, I like this one a lot. So I'm going to click on this. Let me buy it. Let me do it. Okay. Yeah, navy blue. I like that. I'm guessing you want me to put something in my cart? Right. That's how I buy things. That's as you wanted me to do is like buy something I'm in. I think it was great. The The reason I liked this site is because it told me what I was here for. Right. He told me earlier it was the organic clothing and I'm sure that's what this says it just I can't read it in this language, Swedish but it says organic clothing. That's what I'm here for. I clicked on tops you know for women. Perfect. I found the one I liked. I put it in my cart. And the pictures were drawing me to it and the way that the you know, the models are styled and like even these pictures look great. Like I love that and like if I hover I see that a picture of somebody wearing it. I would probably put this in my cart to
let you guys know what my style is. Um, but my point is like it's it's easy enough. It's not going to there's nothing holding me back here. So I really like this. If you're having trouble with sales it might be a marketing issue. It might be people don't know about you issue. But even this, like I think this is great. It's got good links. You've got good information. Everything is sectioned. So if I was on a phone, it would be easy to use as well. Yeah, I mean, I think it's great. I actually really liked this one. So good job in love it. All right. Um, and also Yeah, somebody said that you make the ecology stand out in the language in a natural way. I like that and also just the visuals for me like as a girl. The visuals on the site are just like drawing me in, too. So, way to go, Ben. All right. That's all we have time I think for today. Let's see what Nathan says.
Good stuff. This has been fun to watch I've learned some things watching this whole process go. Any other questions for Elizabeth as we're starting to wrap up today? Really interesting evaluations. Thanks, everybody for putting the site links in. Yeah, a lot of love for Kadence happening in the chat. That's always good as well. Yeah. Elizabeth, this has been fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing your expertise here. Any any of your thoughts as we're starting to wrap up?
I think we've lost you. Let's see. Are you false here on me? Oh, there we go. There we go. Okay. Okay. Great question from then how about mobile usability?
Yes. So essentially what I do typically when I do the usability testing, I just kind of focus on one thing at a time. That's why I was telling everybody to rearrange their sites and that gets to kind of almost an accessibility, you're kind of dipping your toe into that side as well. But when you want, you want your site to be as responsive as possible, meaning you don't want to have to do a mobile site and a desktop site if you if you don't have to make it as easy as possible by doing sections. So you just want to have like with full width sections that go all the way across and you can actually either check it on your own phone, a lot of programs that you would use WordPress included, will have an option where you can actually just see what the mobile version looks like and then pop back out to the desktop version. So if you have three things across, you know, it might put them all in a row like this, you know, 123 up and down. That's why I was mentioning to Derrick at the beginning was that he had so many of those little kind of little tiles type of things, and they were all going to just be one after another on a mobile view. And it was going to be so much more by scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. So think about it as make it as short as you can on desktop so that on mobile, it's going to look pretty decent. Or you can build a separate mobile site. But I try to avoid that at all cost.
Absolutely. Let's see a couple of suggestions there. responsively dot app. There are lots of tools. Yeah, there's a lot used to test on responsive to responsive use of devices. Good stuff. All right, Elizabeth, any final thoughts? As we're starting to wrap up today really appreciate your your your expertise so far? Yeah, it
was really fun. I like it. I love looking at different people's sites and seeing how they have done different, you know, design differently and different businesses people have and I know Derek asked a question do I sell website audits? I suppose I do. But I do really in depth ones. And first I just like to talk to people on the phone and maybe just give them a few pointers like I did here today. And then if they want something really in depth I do like a video audit and I send them a checklists and everything and it takes me about like two hours to do all that. So I usually just try and do like a free one for people just to give them some pointers because a lot of times it's just really simple stuff you can fix really easily.
Yeah, fantastic. So we've dropped the link in a several times throughout today's webinar of the free toolkit and video library that you're making available on your website at get absolute marketing.com/free What's behind those, those those things.
So the pro toolkit is actually every tool that I use in my business, my, you know, like accounting software, my email marketing software, the web hosting, like everything I use over there. And also the behind the video library. It's all the sessions I've done that have been recorded, and that I've been able to use for my own business. So if anybody's given me a recorded session, they're all in there. Everything I've done on social media, everything I've done on building websites or email marketing, blogging, all of those things are listed plus a bunch of things like I have a five day challenge in there are due this first marketing tasks are going to be added there in a couple of weeks. So we got a lot of stuff in there and I just don't leave in like charging people for things that I think should be free so I give it away.
All right, there you go. So make use of that, folks. If you're watching this on the replay, the link is there in the webinar description. So you can click that link and go check out all the things Elizabeth has to offer. Elizabeth thanks again today. Any any last thoughts? As we're wrapping up here?
Yes. So definitely do your own usability test on your site with someone who doesn't know about the site doesn't understand it very well, and see if you can get a different response out of them. Then you did me again, I'm a marketer. I do this for a living. So I'm going to have a little bit more insight to give. Whereas somebody else might just get frustrated and say, I can't find it. And that's gonna give you a lot more information even on top of what I gave today. So if and if you didn't get your site reviewed, grab a friend, get them to sit down in front of the computer and just watch them and take notes as they hem and haw over everything.
Absolutely. It is amazing sometimes what you will realize that you completely missed when you see somebody else using a website that you built. Oh, yes. Sometimes it's a little makes you question your existence on the planet when embarrassing. Well, thanks very much again, Elizabeth. Great stuff today. Thank all of you for being with us as well. The replay I just dropped that link in again in the chat. So the replay in the chat log and the transcript all those things will be up and ready in an hour or less from now and you can feel free to share that link. It'll be public or anybody that you think might want to watch all this information that Elizabeth has shared. So thanks, everybody. We're back tomorrow at one o'clock with an i theme security webinar with Timothy the lead developer providing security talking about the new features that we're going to be adding to I think security using some really cool passwordless login so if you have the problem with either yourself or your clients struggling to use two factor authentication trouble struggling to use a complex, unique password for every website, you're gonna love what Timothy has to share tomorrow and then I think security webinar, please join us for that and it's one o'clock Central Until then have a great rest. of the day. See you back here tomorrow and iThemes Training where we go further together.