071: From Frustration to Freedom - Making Your Website Work for You

In this episode, Jules shares insights from a recent website transformation project, exploring the critical decision between WordPress and FEA Create and why the right platform choice is essential for business success.

Jules discusses the importance of website control, the risks of losing valuable traffic during a migration, and how keyword analysis can inform site structure. She also highlights the significance of understanding search intent and ensuring a website is not just visually appealing but also user-friendly and conversion-focused.

Key Takeaways:

• Choosing the Right Website Platform: Learn why WordPress was the best choice for this project and how platform decisions impact long-term website management.
• Avoiding Traffic Loss in a Website Migration: Discover how to identify and preserve high-value traffic when transitioning to a new site.
• Understanding Search Intent: Find out how different types of search intent affect content strategy and website structure.
• Making Your Website Work for Your Business: Understand why a beautiful website isn’t enough – it needs to be functional, user-friendly, and aligned with your business goals.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Episode 010: Website Migration Mistakes That Can Sabotage Your SEO
• Book a Power Hour to get tailored advice on your website’s next steps.
• Free Beginner’s QuickStart Guide to SEO – Start improving your website visibility today

If you're looking to make your website work better for your business, this episode is packed with practical insights. Don’t forget to subscribe for more bite-sized website and SEO tips!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:30 Client's Website Issues
• 1:41 Choosing the Right Platform
• 4:20 Importance of Migration Planning
• 5:09 Keyword and Traffic Analysis
• 13:05 Website Structure and User Experience
• 15:50 Conclusion

Transcript

Introduction

Morning, happy Friday. Hope you've had a good week. I have been working with a new client this week, which has been, I… I say that she's not a new client, we're just a new… it's a new project we are working on together.

Client's Website Issues

So she's a local service provider and she's got a website that was custom built for her a few years ago. Uh, actually six years ago, so a long time ago. And it's a beautiful website. It looks amazing, but it's not really working for her business.

She has changed the direction of who she serves and what kind of work she's doing. And… the website was set up in a way that she could add blogs to it, but she can't actually go in and make changes to the fundamentals. 

Things like the navigation menu, the like the core structure of the homepage and those kind of things. She doesn't have any control over that.

So she's got this website that's really not working for her business. We did a power hour… um, maybe a year or so ago, about 18 months ago, where we looked at some of the things that she could do. 

Some of the ways she could use the blogs and the bits that she did have access to, to be able to try and at least start moving towards that different direction that she's doing in her business.

She's now at a point where she's got the budget to be able to invest in us actually setting her up on a platform that she can use and getting rid of a lot of the excess weight from the website. Getting rid of a lot of the stuff that's now irrelevant.

Choosing the Right Platform

And, it's been really good to… we had the first day on Wednesday… did a kickoff call, uh, or kickoff day. Actually, it was a whole day together and we had some objectives for the end of the day of deciding a hundred per cent which platform we were gonna go for. 

'Cause I was undecided between whether to go with WordPress or go with FEA Creates. And there's different… there's definitely different… for different businesses…

The platform that you use to build your website is important. And I, I love having chats with people about this. Quite often people will be just not sure which way to go with their website builder, and it's not the same for every business. 

And I think for me, the most important thing, and this is why I've sometimes moved away from WordPress and more towards FEA Create, is it's important to have a platform that's easy and simple for you to use.

And WordPress isn't always that way, depending on how it's been set up and what functionality you need. Sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming, which is why I've moved more towards FEA Create. 

Not to say that that's not overwhelming when you first dive in, 'cause there's so much to it and so much functionality that it sometimes can feel a bit like, whoa, what have I done?

But it's easier… it's easier to find help. It's, like with WordPress, there's so many different things. If you're using different plugins and all sorts of stuff then that can be complicated. But we're not gonna have that problem with this client because I'm gonna set it up for her and make it so that she can actually use it. 

And we are working together on actually building out the new website. So she will have had a lot of practice of actually doing these things, work with me on calls so it… it will all be okay.

But the reason we decided to do WordPress is because we need to set up a lot of redirects. So one of the things we discovered is that she has, on her current website, she has 8,000 images on there. 8,000 images on there. So it's a bit like, okay, we need to find a way to deal with those. 

The majority of them are now not irrelevant. They are definitely still relevant to her business. She hasn't completely changed her whole business.

But she's changed who she's wanting to serve, and the direction she's wanting her business to go in. So a lot of those images we'll need to set up, just redirects that then goes to a general page that has a few similar images on. 

But we looked as well at the traffic that's coming into her site, 'cause she has actually got traffic coming into her site. The site's doing well and that was one of the most important things that we needed to think about was not losing relevant traffic.

Because I have talked to so many people where they've migrated their website and they come to me and it's like, agh, what do I do? I've lost all my traffic. And at that point it's… it can sometimes be a bit too late depending on how quickly you realise that and how quickly then you can make a decision on, oh no, we need to go back to where we were or we need to do something to make sure that we've not lost all our traffic.

Importance of Migration Planning

And it's something that is a real problem actually, because if you don't realise, you don't know what you don't know. And I actually talked about this in another episode. I can't remember which episode it was. 

I meant to have a look, around why you need a migration plan. And it's really important because we kind of think if we are rebuilding the website and it's pretty much the same, then that's gonna be okay.

And Google will understand that this is still the same website, but there's so much that can change. And especially if you're moving platforms, if you're changing a lot of the content, which often happens where people will think, okay, I am gonna do a redesign, or I'm gonna change a lot of the content on my website and I'm gonna move platforms as well.

And if you do that, then that's where you can then end up losing all your valuable traffic. And it could be that you've got an amazing backlink from an article that's actually bringing in a lot of traffic and you don't even realise it's there. And then once it's gone, it's like, okay, we need to now try and work out what happened.

Keyword and Traffic Analysis

So we wanted to work out… we wanted to work out what traffic was coming into her site that was relevant, was actually helping her… her business was helping with the inquiries coming through. 

And when we looked at it, it was really interesting actually, because she's got a lot of keywords. She's got about 2000 keywords that Google is associating with her website.

So that means she's got 2000 keywords that Google is showing up somewhere in search results to do with her website. But when we looked at it, we dived into her Google search console. 

She'd never been in there and sort of had a look around and understood how that all works. So that was one of the first things we did. Got in there, just had a little look at where the traffic was coming from.

She's a local service provider, in this area, so Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire. London within those areas… she's not really gonna be working with clients outside of that, maybe somewhere else, but UK very much just UK based. 

And when we looked at the traffic that was coming into the site, it's about a third of the traffic was coming from UK visitors. So those are the keywords that we then would need to focus on.

So that all, she had quite a lot of traffic coming in from the US and when we were looking at what those search terms were and what pages they were coming into, it just helps us to make some informed decisions about the structure of the new site and what we need to worry about saving and what… which bits we don't, and… It was really interesting actually to go through that and we also looked at which of the keywords were the ones that are gonna be most valuable.

So looking at which ones are actually people coming through with a commercial intent and… search intent is something… it's really important to think about if you're doing anything like keyword research or you're thinking about what you want to… uh, what content you wanna create for your website. 

If you think about the… that search intent. So thinking about whether people are looking to make a purchase or they're looking for information, or it's a navigational search where they're actually just trying to find something.

So either find a particular website or find an address or find out information about opening times, those kind of things. Or there's also transactional search intent as well, which is where people are ready to make a purchase and you wanna be that page showing up basically. 

And we want to focus on… when we are thinking about this, think about those commercial or transactional intent keywords first, really, because those are the ones that are gonna then bring money in.

Those are the ones where actually people are ready to buy something or looking for more information but they have the intent of buying something ultimately. So, um, yeah, we looked at that, looked at those keywords that were more informational ones. 

And this can be quite interesting where you… when you are sort of thinking about your content, you'd then be thinking, okay, what… what type of page do I need to create?

So if you have a commercial intent keyword, something where people are actually ready to make a purchase or they're looking for something around making a purchase, and if you're not sure what kind of intent a keyword has. 

So if you think, I know, I want to show up on Google for this particular term, but you're not sure what kind of page to create. So whether to create a blog or whether to create a services page or a sales page or a product page.

If you're a product based business, then actually just going to Google and doing a search is the best place to start really. It's one of those things that actually if you do that… just look at what other pages are showing up on Google in a search results page, that gives you an idea of whether Google associates that term with a blog or whether it associates it with other things. And sometimes you can find that you get different things coming up.

So it might be mixed search intent where Google's not quite sure what people… most people are looking for in relation to that search term. And one of the other things that you often see, and this is one that was quite important for her, is sometimes you'll see local search results. 

So you might see people's Google business profiles showing up, which is… that's really important. If you're a local business, you're trying to attract local customers, and you've decided on something that you wanna show up for on Google, you do that search result and it's showing Google profiles and it's showing local businesses, then that's a… a really good indicator that you need to get your profile… Google profile optimised for that… that search term really.

So yeah, we started with that. We looked at the keywords, looked at what we needed to save and what we didn't. We mapped out all of the pages that she currently has on her website. 

So we, I think we worked out that she's got about 200 URLs that are indexed in Google, or 200 pages that are actually webpages that are indexed in Google. And then that was when we looked at the images and that was when we worked out she had 8,000 URLs for images. So this is another reason that WordPress was the best choice here because we can set up a plugin that will automatically then deal with those redirects.

So we don't have to go worry about either going through and redirecting 8,000 images, which would never be commercially worth doing that. Or just ending up with loads and loads of errors, loads and loads of 404 pages. 

And it's one of those things that… that when we're actually migrating a site, when we are moving from one platform to another, or if you are moving domain names, so if you decide to change your… your address of your website or if you are changing a lot of the content, if you're deleting pages, those kind of things, then we need to let Google know that that's happening.

So we can do that in Google Search console and we… uh, we would expect there to be a bit of a drop off in traffic as well. So it's one of those things, especially with this client, we are expecting that her traffic will drop off and it's okay because we know already that two thirds of her traffic were coming from international inquiries or things that aren't related to what she does right now anyway.

So we are expecting that we will get a drop in traffic and you would get that anyway, even if you weren't changing direction in your business, you would just… making other changes.

It's always good to have that expectation of… it's probably gonna take a bit of a hit anyway, especially if you are moving platforms because it takes time for Google to then go through and re-index everything and to understand what's happening with your site. 

And this is one of the reasons why I tend to say to people not to do the migration and not to do, like when people think about, oh, I want a whole new website. Google's not keen on a fresh start because it can't then understand… it sort of… it doesn't like that thing of everything changing all at once.

So that's why it's actually better to just keep making incremental changes to your site and if you need to move platforms. So say you are at that point where you just think, I have no idea how to… or… or it's not even no idea. 

Because if you are… if you just need some training on how to actually use your website builder, if it's something that you have access to everything, you just dunno how to use it, then it's far better to invest in… well, depending on what platform you're on, it's far better to invest in some help with that.

And that's the kind of thing I do with my clients as well is actually just spending some time together showing them how to use their website builder, what bits to focus on, what bits they can kind of ignore and… like with this site, obviously it was custom coded, so she… she didn't have the option of being able to go in and learn more about how to use her site. But being able to use your website and  being able to update it regularly is one of the most important things.

If you're trying to get a successful website, if you're trying to get a website, that… that is actually doing well from searches, converting people, so getting people to take the action that you want them to take when they go through your site, then being able to use it yourself, and you don't have to be an expert on it, but just being confident in what you do and being confident in how the platform works is one of the first steps really.

I always think that if you are, you know, if you are just paying somebody to do your website for you, ticking that box, it's done. Okay. I can forget about that. Then you're never gonna be progressing really, in terms of getting more traffic, getting more sales, because it is an ongoing process really.

 It's not something that you can just like create your website and then forget about it. Especially if you… if you want to make sales, if you want people coming through and actually booking through your website. 

Then it is really important to… to understand how to use it and to be able to make those changes yourself and just updating it regularly, just keeping your content up to date lets Google know that there's still an active business and this content still is relevant.

We did that. Then what else did we do that on?

Website Structure and User Experience

The kickoff day, we planned the structure of her new website. And this was nice because she's got quite a complicated structure as well. At the moment, like the navigation menus aren't particularly clear, so the user's journey through her website isn't particularly clear. 

It looks beautiful and I think this is often the case where websites look beautiful, but they're not necessarily user friendly, like the user experience.

It isn't always clear what people should do when they actually come through the site. Isn't always clear the action that they… you want 'em to take… isn't always clear what you do. And that's a really important thing. 

So one of the most important things when people land on your site is that they understand what you do, how you're gonna make their life better and what they need to do to get it. And that's something that is often missing from sites really. So it is something that… sometimes you just need a fresh pair of eyes on it.

And that in itself can be enough just to say, well actually no, it's not really clear what you do. Like my 80-year-old mum or my 9-year-old nephew wouldn't be able to tell you what you do. 

So working out the structure of the new site and working out how we would create those pages… what we need to have in terms of the… the backend of the website and the structure of all that and what… how we're gonna then just slightly change the navigation menus, or I say slightly, completely change the navigation menus actually, so that it's just a lot easier for people to actually get to where they need to be to get to the point where they can actually put an enquiry in for her.

And this is one of the things… on the current website, she's got a couple of ways that people can enquire. So there, she's got an enquiry form that goes directly through the website. And then she's… which is actually set up for the bit that she's focusing on. 

The new part of her business that she's focusing on… that bit is just going directly through the website, which is not particularly helpful for her. So she just gets an email saying somebody has enquired, but then she's got Dubsado, which is, um, a CRM… a client relationship manager program that will allow her to have beautiful forms that are very specific.

It could, you know, there's… people can tick options of what they want and it will then send information through to… back end, and then she just has to go in and like have a little look at a quote and, and actually they can go through, people can go through and book that way. 

So having that connected up to the pages that are relevant for the new business will be really important. She also has a client portal that people can go into. And we need to get that into the new website as well. So there's a lot of structure, there's a lot of things that we need to consider. There's a lot of moving parts with this and I'm really excited about it.

I think it's gonna be great. I think it's gonna… the most important thing is it's gonna be amazing for her to actually have control of her website. It's an exciting time in her business. Things are changing, things are improving. 

Things are, you know, she's going in an exciting new direction and I think it'll be amazing for her. Really, I'm very excited for her to be able to still have a beautiful website, but one that actually works for her business.

Conclusion

So I just wanted to pop it on this morning and let you know about this… this sort of project and some of the things that we discovered, like the 8,000 images and that kind of stuff, that actually most people that I speak to don't have that level of complexity in their website. 

And I think just spending a bit of time there, actually thinking before you start thinking about new sites and thinking about, okay, yeah, I need a whole new website. The majority of the time you don't.

I think people often feel like they need a whole new website and actually there's usually things that you will be able to move forward, and certainly with this site, the majority of the content and the majority of the new copy will actually just be slight changes to what is there already. 

So it's something that… usually don't need to do a whole new site. It's just taking what you've got and making it better. And that's what I love doing with my clients, just helping them to understand how to take what you've already got and make it work better for you. So I hope you have a lovely day and I will see you soon. Bye.