Top 5 Website Mistakes Creators Make (And How to Fix Them)

0:00 Stay tuned on this podcast for the number one sin 73% of U.S. small businesses and content creators have. The number one sin. I'm the Jump Cut King and today we're going to talk about the top five mistakes creators and businesses make, how your website is quietly costing you credibility, conversions, culture, and the five deadly mistakes you can fix right now. We're going to start at number five. Treating your website like just a store or just a blog instead of a brand experience.

1:07 a store means missing LTV. You lose opportunities for email capture, storytelling, remarketing, and branded customer journeys. That's lifetime value. Lifetime LTV over one-time sale. Remember, you don't want someone to just buy something that one time. You want them to build a culture coming back to your site, especially when they're going to get lost in the stream of Google search engines and AI offering products to buy and TikTok and Instagram. If you have a shop or you have a blog or you have a website service, you want to build a lifetime relationship as opposed to just that one sale.

2:11 engagement and a lower bounce rate. That's typical of content hubs. Content hubs win. That's checking the definitions real quick. Content hub is a curated set of key pages designed around themes or problems your audience cares about. Not just a chronological blog, stories, and think of your customer on a journey. You want them to have a great experience from the moment they walk in the door if you have a storefront to the moment they leave, and even a great experience if they have to do with refunds and coming back because you want them to come back.

3:13 resonate with a blog that's just text on a page, and it seems AI-driven because customers are not stupid. Subconsciously, they know if something's authentic or if it's not. And now let's talk about tofu, mofu, and bofu. T-O-F-U, M-O-F-U, and B-O-F-U. And no, I'm not talking about being vegetarian, although I strongly recommend it. We're talking about a top funnel, your awareness, people coming in, people seeing your brand, knowing your brand, knowing your website exists.

4:20 is your website. And you're going to need a solid website to be able to take care of tofu, mofu, and bofu. I know, it's interesting. A good website helps more visitors move through the process and stages with clarity. Why it's wrong. Website is more than a storefront or journal. Now, I keep telling my clients to treat it like a good storefront. And what I mean is, think of walking through a Disney World experience.

5:21 and you'll see beautiful products that they've designed, beautiful marketing pages, but they all tell a story. In fact, it's designed so you spend more time on those pages to scroll with animations, and you have all the details, all the information you need, so you spend more time in the consideration phase, turning you into a conversion. So let's talk about blending storytelling, commerce, and authority. Content hubs and experience-first sites outperform one-off blogs in search ranking and visitors engagements, visitors from an impression of your site in 50 milliseconds.

6:26 local city sampling Columbus, Ohio, 500 websites sampled, only five looked modern and 50 looked creditable. That's it. Everyone else is using a Facebook page, is using their website, and it's just a website that someone else built that isn't working for them. Brands are shifting from catalog style homepages to story-driven layouts. Clear narrative, social proof, segmented call to actions that work for each individual audience. Segmented CTAs, storytelling narratives, all saw 20 to 40 percent higher engagement and lower bounce rate.

7:29 in the middle of the funnel, and bofu. Tofu, mofu, and bofu. Go back so you get those definitions. Add micro experiences. This is testimonial carousels, interactive, frequently asked questions, call to actions per audience segment. A website isn't a brochure. It's a stage where your audience decides that they're going to stay for the encore. Let's talk about slow loading pages and ignoring core web vitals. And if you don't know what a core web vital is, we're going to talk about some of them. 100 milliseconds removed from your loading time improves conversions.

8:34 in my review over Columbus, Ohio, had pages that were going above seven seconds. So if you have a nine second page, that's 9,000 milliseconds. And shaving off 100 milliseconds could give you an increased 1.11 percent in your conversion rate. This is serious. Think of it. If you're putting someone in that funnel and they never make it through to mofu or bofu because they're waiting for your page and they just move on, they're just falling off the top.

9:36 People have moved from Facebook to Instagram. People will not shop at Best Buy, not shop at Walmart, not shop at Amazon, except for the app, because the websites are slow. They'll move to something that's a little faster, even if it's a knockoff website that does not deliver the right product or service or quality product or service because that website performs better than you. Here's a case study roundup. Vodafone, Yelp, and eBay show speed is greater, decreases your bounce, increases your revenue.

10:41 loads all at once. It means when I get there, your website shows me information and I'm able to move through it. That means images loading on the front page, if you look at the viewport, the first page a user sees, I'm not talking about pages in HTML, but the first screen they see better show up as fast as humanly possible. In fact, we had clients using our platform and we had a good, you know, a second when it was rendering.

11:42 that you don't need to worry about because we took care of the complicated development for our clients. And this metric equally attributed to over 3000% increase on a specific client's website. 3000% traffic increase. More traffic was generated. Google saw that we changed the contentful paint metric and poured more traffic into that website as a direct result. The only thing we changed that entire three months for that particular website was updating the framework for lowering how long it takes for content to paint on the screen.

12:42 we're going to go ChatGPT, which by the way, responds faster and faster. The new research model, faster. Everything's faster. Everything's faster than performance. Why? Because they want to keep your attention and they want to be able to provide you a solution faster than your competition. Let's go to Starbucks versus a different coffee shop. There's a coffee shop locally in Columbus. It's a great coffee shop. I use the app to order. I go order.

13:47 animations, lowering the amount of content that's animating and videos and loading. You want to speed up that content full and you want elements to appear naturally and scroll responsibly. One second delay can cut conversions by 7% on mobile. Abandonment rises even faster. Why? Because they're not going to wait for a screen to load, especially if they have LTE or less than 5G and they're loading your website and your website just looks like a white page.

14:48 tell them to fix that now. In fact, not just font scripts, all scripts, most scripts. If your script isn't directly interfering with content loading, it should go to the end of the page. Dang, I can't believe I just gave it away for free. More than half of users will leave slow websites. I would almost say all of them because most people are impatient. In fact, I believe now you have four seconds to get people's attention now or even less than that.

15:51 describe the product I'm looking for, I can't find it here. I'm going to go somewhere else like Amazon. Let's talk about actionable fixes. If you right click any web page in Chrome, go to web inspector and you're going to see a whole bunch of design tools. And some of them include lighthouse, page speed and web page tests. Google even tells you how long it takes for your LCP, how long it takes for FID, INCP, your CLS, all those definitions we talked about earlier.

16:53 not be something you have. Multiple 10, 15, 25, 100 megabit images loading on your website is not mobile friendly. And there are great algorithms out there and great tools you can use to optimize. There are free ones like TinyJPEG and TinyPNG that you can upload. Why am I giving this content away for free? Just optimize your images. Okay. You can also use WebP and AVIF. Okay. What we call lazy load, uh, critical CSS only moving everything.

17:54 in as they come into the page. So you look like it's responsive, but I'm still loading in the backend. Apps back in the iPhone 6 plus, uh, 6s, you know, they'd have, uh, apps upload a splash screen and you'd go and it looks, Oh, the app is responsive. Oh no, I'm waiting for the app as opposed to waiting for the OS to load the app, even though the OS was taking a long time.

18:58 is pretty much all powered by JavaScript and layers and layers with Chrome and all of that. Even if it's compiled and all those kinds of things, it's just, oh man, I'm giving them away for free. I always feel this way. If you can take direct control of your CDN, direct control of your caching, using APIs, those kinds of things that you're in better hands. And that's why if I can take all those complications away from you with, uh, the user experience that The Universe app tools provide and The Universe will provide you.

20:02 that you have to design for all screen support. And that means I'm not going to create a mobile first website and then a desktop website and then an iPad website and then a virtual whatever website. I'm going to create a streamlined experience using modern CSS hacks, almost to none JavaScript. There is like one or two browser things I have to do for Safari because sometimes Safari just does not work the way that Chrome does.

21:06 can't do it on my phone, I'm not doing it. After about a year of working with them, they bought a MacBook Air. Praise God. Hallelujah. They got a laptop. But still, I mean, then, you know, they have to relearn how to use a desktop, which to me is baffling. Doing your entire business, QuickBooks, everything about this small business was run exclusively and primarily on the owner's iPhone. What? So that's what you have to contend with.

22:13 here, which is where most people hold it, they do not hold their phone here. As developers, we sometimes hold our phones here. Okay. Maybe I do. They hold phones here and they interact with the phone like this and they scroll through it that way. And if you have tiny call to actions, you have poor forms, slow images, directly increasing bounce and lowering checkout completion rates. E-commerce checkout friction, logging in friction, and all those components contributes to 70% cart abandonment.

23:17 at a substantial amount of money. They had 70% cart abandonment, just so high abandonment rates. So they removed checkout. They don't have checkouts. They come in in person. It's so bad that I decided to put on hold the editor. I'm working on the platform I have and giving you guys a software as a service so that you can design your own web pages in it. You can design your own web applications in it, and you can do everything with it.

24:24 Stripe, some developers are going to take a whole lot of time to understand, or worse, they have to use Stripe's own checkout experience. Integrating with Stripe, even in that and to offer the solutions and services you want with APIs and things of connection, developers take a whole lot of time. So I've integrated with Stripe, and I am reducing their API calls and helping you connect so you can connect and sell and have that streamlined, frictionless checkout, frictionless login, frictionless privacy, frictionless just the entire experience just in hands.

25:30 you to succeed. I'll get off my soapbox. So stay tuned, stay connected. If you haven't followed me on all my social platforms, go ahead, do so. Or go to EGT Universe and drop me a line, hit the contact button, drop me a line, say you want to be part of the founders. There's a whole founder package that's going to be, and when I launch the pre-launch campaign, I will add you to it.

26:32 even if you have your lawyer do it, the whole online process is great, but that it's there, but it's terrible for user experience. It's dreadful. In fact, I redesigned an entire form system in my software as a service. So I have clients who ask for custom forms. I provide that as part of my web design services to them. So it's like, I design it for them and eventually it'll be part of the software as a service.

27:32 That's just, let's reduce card abandonment. You're spending a lot of money in marketing. You're already spending a lot of money on advertisements. Let's just fix your website to save you money because you can throw all the money you want in ads, all the money you want to Google, to Facebook, to Meta, to all your money that you want. But if you have a terrible website, it's not going to perform. If your website doesn't tell the story, it's not optimized, it's just not going to work.

28:37 The reason why I say Chromebooks is they have a different height than desktops, traditionally. And desktops can be any size. And so just seeing how it adapts, using percentages very, very rarely. Only when you need to, and understanding how it will look in an entire screen. That's what you need to do. And I built all of my elements mobile, look at iPad, look at a Chromebook. And not just using Chrome's test suite, but I also have test devices that I use to test and make sure that each element works seamlessly across the board.

29:38 Chromebooks and desktops are still critical. If you have a software as a service, they're more likely to use a desktop to finish purchasing. If you have a certain type of client that's going to spend more than $1,000, they're more likely to be on desktop than mobile. Although that fallacy is being unproven every single day. And so I'm more inclined to believe designing for mobile and paying attention to that is more important than desktop, but it's still important to give a consistent user experience.

30:40 instead of adapting them. That hurts users' trust, because if they're not at home and they only have their phone and they need to run a report real quick and they find out you can only run the report on desktop, or you can't run it on Safari, or this particular app doesn't work on Safari, that hurts trust. There are a lot of SaaS apps that don't work on Safari because they just treat it like Internet Explorer 6 and just abandon it all together, but you can't because Safari is still an integrated component in much of the world.

31:46 some of my controls will actually have a mobile version plus a desktop version and it will sense in CSS depending on the view height which one they give you. I do that. Why? Because the information is better condensed and shown differently on mobile, moved around than desktop. We got more information, more room to share information and so I can spread it on a different layout and so it looks great on desktop as users would love to see.

32:52 And I would say even a 4K monitor, but that's because I'm a cinematographer and I prefer to see all of my real estate used. So weak design versus outdated credibility signal. This is number two. Trust is signaled by quality design, clear disclosures, up-to-date content, social proof and contactability. Not having a way for me to contact you, not having your prices up front for me to see if it's a software as a service and me having to call you or contact you.

33:56 especially since Let's Encrypt is free. And we automatically update all of your certificates you want to pay a lot of money for trusted verified $2,000 certificates. Users are less likely to know what SSL is. And I think Safari blocks HTTP sites. So it's just a basic trust requirement and it's just requirement generally. Sites that improve visible trust signals with testimonials, case studies, clear pricing, a refund policy, have better lead quality and higher demo requests.

34:56 That's what they decided to do. They wanted to control. And they lost access to their website for four hours. That's how long it took them to get the decision holder, make the change, buy the domain, and it was back up within four hours. Most people wouldn't know that their website was down because they're not using a down detector. They didn't get an email, they didn't get a text message, they didn't get a phone call.

35:58 stock photos, lowers credibility instantly. AI generated photos. Users form trust within milliseconds. Subconsciously, they can tell something takes too long to load. They can tell if it doesn't feel right. If it doesn't, remember your purchasers, your customers, your loyal customers are experience-based. If it doesn't feel right, I'm not going to connect with it. But if it feels right, I'm going to do it. You could be judged on design quality, polish, visual hierarchy.

36:59 website, invest in modern typography. Especially if you have a software as a service, update it more frequently. If you have products that you're selling in your store, update it more frequently. But if you have key components that, you know, give it a refresh every couple of months. Let people know that the website is new. Changing, let the algorithms know it's new and changing that you're updating. And you know, improve goals, add products, service lines that you just created.

38:03 and still kind of feels right, especially when loading on a mobile device that's, you know, in between towers, changing towers, has bad signal, etc. Fresh blog content, live portfolio, updates. Your website is a trust test. Outdated design says if they don't update their website, what else are they neglecting? Now, this is the biggest one that I almost slipped in last podcast to tell you about. And this is one I'm very, very passionate about.

39:09 this side of the 21st century, and not have a website. Not having one signals outdatedness, unprofessionalism, and around 73% of US small businesses have a website, but 27% do not. I did tests in two different major cities because I still haven't finished the other test. In Columbus, Ohio, just pulling Google Marketplace into a CSV or an Excel spreadsheet and just looking and comparing their websites, they list a website of Facebook or Instagram or YouTube or some sort of social media or some sort of something directory somewhere.

40:13 website, if you don't have a digital presence, you're not going to have customers. You're going to start being less and less relevant. Now, if you have a big whale that's going to stay with you and support you, great. Stay with them. But if you don't, if you want to scale, if you want to grow, period. If you want to start getting more evolving people, you have to work on your website. You have to have one.

41:18 store on North High Street in Columbus. There's this new store in Chicago. New store in New York. Great. Google. Well, I don't see anything about it. Must not be that great. Oh, Instagram. Oh, look. They got some social media here. Okay, great. Oh, that's a wonderful photo. I'm going there. Versus not having anything. Nothing. Nothing. Just nothing. If you don't, if you aren't discoverable, you don't exist. If I can't find you online, you don't exist.

42:21 No website means fewer inbound leads because you have no funnel to put them there. That'd be the equivalent of me having this soda strain bottle and trying to pour soda in here, just up here and just hoping and praying that the powder is going to go in there. You know what percentage of powder would go in this without a funnel? So infinitesimal amount, there'd be a mess. That's how you're running your business with no website.

43:27 limits. Most new algorithms actually now place limits on accounts discoverability because they have a limited amount of content creators that they're going to say are sustainable. Owning a website gives you your own dedicated channel for email capture, that's lead capture, search traffic, paid landing pages, revenue diversification, losses from downtime or lack of presence are real. Businesses cite thousands of losses when they're hosting fails. Conversely, being present reduces friction for customers. The number one sin in your business right now is if you don't have a website. 71% of small businesses have websites.

44:28 brand, we redesign your brochure, put it online, add some video components, add some spice to it. Adding brochure sites, booking widgets reported immediately increase in call volume and one to two times increase in qualified inquiries within weeks of launching, especially if they already have content coming in. If you don't have a presence, you don't exist. The presence effect. Industry surveys show businesses plan to create sites because shoppers research online first. Creators without websites rely on socials only.

45:33 email acts as a resilience insurance. Small service businesses launch even a one-page site, maybe a booking widget, maybe a quick contact form. We do quick contact forms that prevent spam and help people get connected with you. It increases your ability to serve your customers. Doubled inquiries within weeks. Client proven, not just a survey across network solutions and Wix reports. I've proven with my clients a single one-page website with an updated contact form replacing an old outdated website with just a single page, because that was in their budget, single page and a contact form tripled, tripled the amount of responses they were getting in emails.

46:36 in a mall in a mall or a conference and not showing up. Just having an empty stall there, just like I bought it. I paid for the LLC registration. I have content in my brick and mortar on a website. I don't exist. Don't exist at all. So next week, we're going to dive into repurposing like a pro. How to turn one podcast into multiple content pieces, just like I do. If you've ever struggled to keep up with posting everywhere, this one is for you, especially if you're a new content creator or you're a new small business entrepreneur, you have a small business and you're growing and you want to grow, doing a podcast helps.

47:42 and I can tell you I will walk into random places and people are like, oh, you're the guy. And I'm like, yes, I'm the guy. Not to mention all the comments I get about my teeth. Anyway, this is the Create Podcast. It's been great to be able to inform you about the five mistakes. Of course, if you need a website designed, look no further, drop me a comment, drop me an Instagram.

48:46 peace in your life. I pray right now that the Lord Jesus Christ gives you peace, that everything you do with creativity and every passion and purpose that you have, whatever your hands God has set to do work, shall prosper in Jesus' name. Not only that, but I pray that his peace and his guidance be with you, that he strengthens you with his righteous right hand, that he's with you every step of the way.

49:49 I even think I'm on Reddit. Praise God hallelujah. Be blessed. Next time we're talking about how to turn podcasts into a content-driven generation plan. So don't go anywhere. Subscribe, follow, like. See you all next time right here on Create.