In this podcast episode I am going to be introducing you to some awesome web design tools that are going to help you get more use out of your website.

These are tools built for business owners so you do not need to know coding or be super technical to use these.

But first I want to talk about a number cruncher that is doing marketing right.

So every once in a while I will talk about an accountant or person in the finance space that is killing it at marketing.

And today I want to talk about money with Katie on YouTube.

So in preparation like for this podcast episode I was browsing for some marketing news that would be interesting to talk about for the segment.

And while I was scrolling one of the articles caught my eye.

Five ways to make IVF more affordable and if you're watching on YouTube right now you can kind of follow along as I go through Morning Brew.

You can kind of see that I'm also going to be talking some tech later on.

This is kind of a new feature that we're doing and testing out.

So if you're curious about the article or Morning Brew a great place to kind of get some visuals is go to our YouTube channel.

You can also find that in the show notes.

But back to what I was saying.

Five ways to make IVF more affordable.

And if you're unfamiliar I spent three years trying to get pregnant with my husband and last year we were successful with IVF.

So it is something I am super interested in definitely I mean an article like this would definitely appeal to me.

And so I checked out this article and of course it led me to her YouTube channel.

I started scrolling through her episodes and I just want to say she has nailed down her

niche.

Like I'm her niche.

She talks about IVF.

IVF is likely a very popular topic with this demographic.

But I mean some of her other episodes you know why women are more likely to earn poverty wages the 10 best money tips for your 20s and beyond how to travel free in 2023.

She even has a video called why you shouldn't make content for everyone.

And I mean is that not the topic of this podcast episode or this little news segment.

And I mean here's the thing.

So she's talking about money on her YouTube channel.

That is kind of a topic she frequently comes back to.

It's not necessarily a topic of every video for example why you shouldn't make content for everyone but it has something similar to do with sort of the overarching subject of her channel making money.

If you have a similar niche you can very easily talk about these same subjects and sell your accounting services.

So bookkeeping and tax.

She has 13.5 thousand subscribers and she even talks about building a business.

So I know many of you are reluctant to pick a niche but her channel is an excellent example.

Of picking a niche doing it well and attracting the customers that she likely wants to work.

Now I don't think she sells accounting or tax services.

I kind of checked her out a little bit but there are still a lot of benefits to kind of approaching a niche or picking a niche.

And I want to kind of illustrate that with her channel.

I mean the first is you can attract a specific client.

I am certainly Katie's type of client and her content drew me right in so much so that I've made it kind of a segment on our podcast.

And also I mean with this kind of content you will stand out.

If she offered accounting or tax services there is no doubt she would have a steady flow of clients.

She has over 13,000 subscribers and I mean her content is very specific.

It is going to be very specific to that demographic that she's talking to and no doubt they will come in and want to work with her because she has made such unique content.

Also you will have an easier time marketing your services.

So her content as I mentioned it's super unique.

I have also not seen anyone in the finance space talk about IVF but it is a massive pain point with people in my sort of demographic.

One in five couples as she talks about in her previous video will experience infertility.

The cost of IVF is the biggest barrier.

She talks about it being like over 12,000 being sort of like I think she said the average or you know the minimum cost.

But it is such a popular topic for people with that demographic and she talked about it and she brought me in.

There's no doubt if you have a niche like this and you talk about a topic that is so specific to them that no one else in the space is talking about it there is no doubt that you will draw people in.

How I Select Our Tech

So out of all the things that we do at Media Books, designing websites is my favorite.

I love the psychology that goes into building a website, the opportunities to get creative and try to build something no one has ever seen before.

This is often where I get to know my clients super well.

There's a lot of sort of collaborative energy that goes into this process and part of this work is also providing you guys with a website you can actually use.

So we only use Squarespace and I'm going to talk about why in a little bit but I have a marketing client who came to us recently with a website that was already built.

It was really nice looking but her prior web designer used WordPress and if you have ever thought about building a website you are probably familiar with WordPress.

It is a great website builder.

You can do a lot with it, you can build you know crazy complex websites but the caveat is that it can get super complicated real quick.

So people that have used WordPress have come to me with issues like their theme expires and essentially their whole website is shut down because they have to start over or the plugins the designer used are so complex or niche or rare that they're not user-friendly, the accountant or the business owner doesn't know how to use them, they need help doing something so simple as like changing a little bit of wording on their website.

It just makes it super complicated to actually get any use out of your website and so this marketing client of ours was essentially in that situation to the point that they asked me to migrate them from WordPress to Squarespace and we were able to do this within a week.

They have already been digging into Squarespace, changing the wording, designing elements, changing images and more features.

Now I'm going to admit there is a learning curve like every platform but their ability to update simple things on their website has changed dramatically.

Before it took them forever and they had to ask essentially permission or help, now I mean they jumped in day one.

As soon as they had access they were able to update things on their website and ultimately this has allowed for a much more collaborative relationship that they can get even more what they want out of their website and we can make sure that they get what they want.

And I say all this to show that the tools that we work with are intentionally chosen so that you can understand what is going on with your website.

We do not code websites or use special designer tools because that's only going to make you more reliant on us.

I want you to be able to love your website, use it whether or not we work together in the future.

If I only put together websites that you have to rely on us to use down the road, I mean that just feels like shady business.

And so here I want to talk about in this podcast episode some of the tools that I have recommended to my clients to help them understand their website better and to get more use out of their website so you can easily manage it yourself.

Now as I mentioned in our little you know who we're checking out marketing wise, who's doing marketing really well, we are trying to add some visual elements to this podcast episode.

Testing it out so if you want to actually go to YouTube or later on you can go to YouTube and follow along, I'm going to be walking you through some of these tools just kind of showing just their website and so you can see a little bit of what they are all about.

Elfsight

But the first one is ElfSite.

ElfSite's whole premise is upgrade your website without coding.

Essentially you can add more premium features to your website with just a bit of copying and pasting.

So I mean there is coding but you are copying code and pasting it in to your website and just a step by step process, it is so easy.

I do not have any sort of professional education in coding.

I've looked up a few tips here and there but there are a ton of resources out there when it comes to coding where you can just copy and paste.

This is one of them.

And now one of my favorite features with ElfSite is this menu that they have and having, let me actually bring it up its a pricing table and essentially what you can do is have you've ever seen like those nice SaaS products where they have like a sleek menu with like the price and then the features that you can or can include with each program or you can get rid of you can create that for your website.

It looks super sharp tons of kind of walk through steps that make it really easy to kind of follow along.

They also have premium features that you can add like Google reviews or chat plugins so you can even build out your website even more.

A lot of the features they do have I will admit are already included with a website platform like Squarespace but you can certainly find you know a few hidden gems if you kind of scroll through their little widget library.

Hotjar

The second app that I want to talk about is Hotjar.

This is a heat mapping tool that can help you better understand how people are interacting with your website.

If you're unfamiliar with heat mapping essentially what it is is when someone visits your website the app will record what they click on and like how much time they spend reading different posts or how quickly they scroll through content.

They aren't recording like through your camera they're recording your screen and they can only record your specific website so they're not like looking at your email.

So it's just your website and just seeing how long people spend on it.

Give you a quick example.

A client of mine had a really nicely built website but people were not really interacting with it.

It's like they would just like pull up the screen kind of look around and like they weren't clicking on anything.

She had a really high bounce rate and people never really seemed to reach out to her.

So we added Hotjar and found that there were a few times where people were like clicking on images they weren't clicking on buttons or there were sections of her website that looked clickable but weren't.

So when they're on her website they would click on it and then nothing would happen and they'd just be like this is annoying I'm just going to go somewhere else and then they would leave.

We were able to recognize that we were able to shift some things around on her website and she noticed a change.

She noticed that people are actually spending more time on her website her bounce rate decreased and people are kind of able to enjoy her website and at least learn about her before having issues with simply like trying to click on buttons.

So the whole intention of this is to create a better experience for people visiting your website.

The best part is they actually have free plans for you to test it out.

You almost always can get the info you need within their free plan and as with all these tools and apps it is super easy to use and add to your website.

Flodesk

The next app that I want to talk about is Flodesk and if you've listened to me for any amount of time you've probably heard me talk about Flodesk.

It is my favorite and really you can do this probably with most if not all email campaign apps but I specifically like to talk about Flodesk because it is our preferred platform the pricing is right and they have all the features that you really need within one price.

So that's why we're such big fans of it.

But whenever people submit a contact form for example on your website whenever they download a leaked magnet or they sign up for your newsletter you want to collect that contact information and most website platforms, there's a way for you to connect that with your email campaign app.

But what I like about Flodesk is that I can just keep it all in one platform.

All I have to do is connect it to my website and then I can start the workflows, I can start the automation.

Actually I don't start it.

It starts on its own.

That's what automation is.

But it is all kind of set up, set up once, set it and forget it.

And so I can have pop ups, forms, workflows, or I can segment out my audience and just have that easily set up in one place.

If you don't have an email campaign app, highly recommend checking one out.

Flowdesk is, as I mentioned, it's our preferred one.

Some other popular ones include Mailchimp.

Mailchimp is another, it's probably our second favorite best.

There's other ones like HubSpot.

You can kind of get all of our opinions on our website on that one, but I'll talk about

that more at the end of the episode.

But Flowdesk is definitely a great one.

They also recently released some advanced analytics.

So while the analytics are more advanced, it is still super easy to digest their content.

One of the best perks of Flowdesk is that it is super user friendly.

It's pretty minimalist, but you can do really everything that you need in the platform without getting too crazy.

Squarespace

And the last sort of tech that I want to talk about is Squarespace.

Now at the beginning of the episode, I talked about a little bit why we chose it because we want you to be able to use your website, obviously, after we hand it off to you.

And if you are struggling with your website at all, building it, using it, updating it, I mean, heck, let's say like you haven't even looked at your website in months, so maybe finding your website has been an issue, you should seriously consider Squarespace.

As I discussed earlier, we chose it because we believe it is the most user friendly and provides you with the most professional and modern web design tools out there.

Having said that, one of the biggest concerns that people have when I am switching them over to Squarespace is will they be able to use all their old tech?

So will they be able to use HubSpot, Flodesk, Dubsado, what have you, all their old plugins?

We have never run into an issue with that.

We've been using Squarespace since day one and Squarespace allows you to embed all forms, coding blocks and integrations which accommodate every app I have come across.

So if you're hooked on WordPress because it does something that you aren't sure if other platforms can do, Squarespace probably does it or there's probably a solution out there where you can easily just integrate it and it'll work just as well, personally, if not better.

App Database

Lastly, the last thing I want to talk about is our app database.

So I mentioned a lot of apps in this podcast episode, but I want to encourage you to kind of check out our whole database of apps.

In our database, I talk about not just Flodesk, but I'll also talk about HubSpot, I'll talk about MailChimp, I talk about additional web design apps that can really, I'll actually bring up that page, that can really kind of help you build out your website.

You can visit, you can find our app database by going to mediabooksagency.com/app-database

or you can go to our website and under the resources tab, you can also find all these apps.

But we break them down into different categories like branding, we talk about web design.

If you're following along, you can kind of see these different categories.

I have general marketing categories and business building, we talk about a ton, stock photography, all those good things.

And so I talk about them, I give a little bit of our opinion on them, whether they're a good app, whether they're our preferred app.

And then through these links, some of them are affiliate links, and some of them you can also get discounts on.

For example, Flodesk, you can get 50% off for one year.

So highly recommend going and checking that out.

I will be sure to include that in the show notes so you can get on optimizing your own website.

MediaBooks

Episode 212: Web Designer Tools For Accounting Firms

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