147 Web Design Wisdom and Inspiration with Monica Pitts

0:00 Well, hello and welcome to Connect, inspire, create. I'm your host, carol Clegg, a progress and mindset business coach, here to help you thrive and flourish and turn those challenges into opportunities for growth. I'm so pleased you're here. Join me for the discussions that I hope will not only encourage you, but also provide the dose of inspiration that you might just need today. This podcast is all about giving you your weekly dose of practical strategies, motivation and insightful conversations designed to boost your business skills, personal growth and happiness. So, whether you're looking to find balance, say goodbye to procrastination, or just in need of a friendly nudge towards your goals, remember we're all on this journey together.

0:52 So grab your favorite cup of something, be it coffee, tea or something else, and let's dive into this conversation today. Well, hello everybody. In today's episode, our focus is on bringing your website's sexy back, along with a peek behind the scenes of building a business. So I am joined by my guest, monica Pitt. So welcome Monica. Thanks for being part of the show today. Thank you so much for having me. I'd love to. I'm going to tell our audience just a little about you, but then we're going to dig into some fun questions.

1:36 So Monica is the founder of Make Create Design and the host of Marketing with a Purpose podcast, so you have another podcast you can add to what to follow and what to listen to. She's a techie, crafty aerial dancer with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture. I just I love this, like agriculture, and I took you to where you are now. But she possesses a rare combination of design savvy and technological know-how, so she puts her down-to-earth problem-solving skills to providing solutions to marketing and communications. And then I see, when you're not running your business, you've got two daughters that I'm sure keep you on your toes a teenager there petting your puppies, travelling with your husband dancing in the air or digging in the dirt.

2:21 I guess that's where the agricultural side came in right. Well, I would love to ask you just to let my audience know a little bit from your side of things is can you just share a little bit about this incredible journey of where you started Bachelor of Science in Agriculture to where you are now? Well, art came very naturally to me and so I felt like I should be doing something harder somehow in my life. I think that's like where my initial young mindset was like you got to do this thing. You know that's challenging. And so I, my family, they are farmers and my dad's actually head of Ag Systems Management management at North Dakota State University, so he is teaching farmers how to farm and innovating farming for the United States of America.

3:12 It's been incredible to watch and so I was very inspired by that and I'm like I am going to show cattle, I'm a farmhand, I am doing this. And then I went to college for agriculture and along the way my mom was like you should take a design class, maybe you should take this web design class, maybe you should take this journalism class. So I had four classes from high school through college, maybe five, on how to do this marketing and journalism thing, and when I went to go interview for jobs, I brought a portfolio with me because I thought that's what you did. And then they were like oh, you can build websites. Look at that, because it was about 2003. So everybody understood that they needed a website at that point in time where they were starting to think that.

3:56 And so yeah, and so then, after a couple internships building websites, I worked for the family internet service provider because that was my dad's side hobby, and then I broke off and worked for an agency for a while and then I started my own company building websites in 2005. And I have been at it ever since. Wow, and back then, in those years, I mean it's so different now, isn't it? And the tools and the wonderful things that we can do, but that's incredible. And that journey of 2005,. Has it been as a solo business owner? What? did you have? It's been both. Actually, I started the business with a partner who actually came with me from the agency that I worked at and then she left pretty quickly because she got, surprised, pregnant and she was like this is not the right plan and I was like, okay, cool.

4:47 So, you know, I bought her out and then, when I had my babies, I was scared of being a solopreneur, quite frankly, and so I merged back with the family business, the internet service provider, and I worked with them through. You know, I think it was like six or eight years that I was with them and then once I realized that I had this moment of real clarity you know that moms kind of get when they realize that you, you used to go to work and you felt like I get to go to work, like I love this thing that I do, it jazzes me up and then you hit this moment where you're like I give up something to go to work.

5:30 Now I give up this time with my kids. So if I'm going to go to work, I got to rock and roll. That's what I was like. I'm like this has got to count right and it's got to match my lifestyle, it's got to match, my values got to match, and so I knew that it couldn't match if I stayed in the family business, and so I made the insane decision to let her get felt like a divorce, go through and separate from the family business and bought myself out again much more expensive the second time. And then operated the business on my own, starting from $0. In 2016, I had $0 in the bank account at 2016 and I have like six employees. That must have kept you awake at night, Rock and roll in here people.

6:12 We had a strategy and we went after it and we met payroll even the very first month and so, yeah, so it's been a journey that's incredible. So, if you had to change your mind about something. One of the things I think I saw somewhere looking at that you've switched to a four-day work week, which obviously ties in with that recognition of like, let's put, get our priorities right like what's important and I just hope that you know other people that are listening to that will be encouraged, because we can give our heart and soul away to working and just realize that there are boundaries that you can put in place and still look after your clients. I mean, you know, look at you, zero in the bank and meeting payroll.

6:54 I mean that's pretty cool. Yeah, that was back in the five-day work week days, but we still meet payroll and exceed it. I go four-day work week so it's like you know to tell me more about it. Just encourage others, they can do this. What have you put in place to make that happen? So we do work a few Fridays a year. We work around 10 Fridays a year and we strategically place them at different times, right? So one of the things that we did with our 40 work week is we were like, well, if there's a national holiday on a Monday, our four-day work week starts on Tuesday, and so then we'll have the Friday off before, the Monday off after, and then we have two four-day work weeks right there.

7:34 But you have to make money somehow, and so that was one of the compromises that we had. We do work a few Fridays in December because we take an extended leave over the Christmas holiday and everybody gets paid for that, and so that was another thing that we had to do there, so that way we would get our client work done and meet their expectations. And then we reserve our other Fridays to work on May Create. So we come together and we're like what do we need to improve in this company to make it better, to make it more efficient? And so we come together on those Fridays and then the following Friday we make up that client work.

8:15 So it's like you know. So we do that like four times a year and that's like the caveat that you know you have to. That's just how it works. Yeah, that's a small segment in the whole year when you look at it. I call by Friday my CEO day and I just give myself permission as a solopreneur that, yeah, sometimes you might work, sometimes you might want to work, sometimes you might wake up that morning and just feel so creative. It's like I'm doing this. It's kind of crazy. I'm in New Mexico, so when you talk agriculture it really resonates. My daughter goes to NMSU and agriculture college um. But the weather is so beautiful at the moment and I'm like hang on a minute, I need to change my days.

8:56 So yesterday I thought I'm going to work in the evenings. Now there you go about six o'clock till eight and carve out some time during the day to go get outside and enjoy this beautiful weather. So that's just my this week's um, you know light bulb moment but, um, let's talk about websites and, you know, bringing sexy back into your website, one of the things before we actually jump in there. That another thing, which is permission giving to listeners that you spoke about, finding clients that align with your core values yes, and that is another thing that becomes as we get older. We claim that, yeah, I want younger people to claim that, yes, and we did that.

9:41 So that was right around the time that I had that like aha moment, right, I was like, ooh, this is not working. You deserve to work with people who appreciate you. You deserve to work with people who value your skills. You deserve that we didn't start these businesses to get dumped on. That's never why you start your own business, right. And so we really felt like, as a team, we were not aligned with our clients anymore. Maybe never, maybe we were never aligned with them. You know, what I mean? Because we were just taking the business as it came in and we were like you know what? We are going to strategically decide who we want to work with. But who is that? So we looked through all the clients that we worked with and we had all these whiteboards out around the room.

10:27 We were actually in the basement of my house, I had the team over to my house and we had all these whiteboards out. So we listed off the names of everybody's favorite clients and projects to work on, and then what we did with them is, if you've ever studied disk before, we tried to identify those clients' disk profiles and then we tried to group them together by industry, right. And then we tried to identify their core values, right. So we're like, when we talk about them, what do we think that they talk? And then what we found was that we have a few industries that we really align with and that we love to work with as people and that are really easy to take through our process, that we feel empowered, helping, and we actually felt like by embracing those industries, we were doing a service, both for ourselves, because we got to work with people that appreciated us, but then also for them too, because then the conversation coming in wasn't about oh, how does your business run?

11:21 No, I know how your business runs. I know who you sell to, I know the challenges that you face. I know the vocabulary that everybody uses, because I work for businesses like yours all the time. You don't have to educate me, I already know what you need you know, and so that made us like a powerful advisor for them, whereas you know if you're looking at a new business. Sometimes that's really cool and you can come up with lots of new ideas that you can test and see if they work. And I still get jazzed up when I get to do that every so often, but I love working in the wheelhouse too. Yeah, I hear that synergy. You know that it just comes together. It's like you're already moving and running the wheel's already turning as opposed to that. You know, yeah, every now and then we need to little sidetrack and something a little new.

12:04 But so, looking at this website stuff, I know one of the first things is homepage, because if that's, the people don't go beyond the homepage. What needs to be on the homepage? So your homepage has four goals. The first thing it needs to do is it needs to introduce viewers to your company without making them think like it should be like automatic right away they know what you do Right. Like it should be like automatic right away they know what you do right. So people sometimes get this wrong because they are putting a big mission statement out there, and so this gets really challenging in people who are kind of breaking into a new territory in their business, like some healthcare providers right now. They're providing healthcare in a different way that's never been done before right providing healthcare in a different way.

12:50 That's never been done before, right? But it's difficult for their people coming to the site their potential clients to know what they do, right, and so they use these big, flowery words that don't make a lot of sense to anybody and could be actually defined as anything, where instead, they should just be like we make your headache disappear. Okay, great, that's all I needed to know. That's what I want, right? No headaches, and it's the same thing. Nonprofits do that a lot, too. So just let people know what you do really fast. Don't make them think they need to be able to identify you. So, then, the second thing that needs to happen on your homepage is you need to help people get where they want to go. So think about the questions that people ask you on intake.

13:31 Think about the reason that people are going to your website. What do they need? Get them there quickly without having to search for it, right, not complicated there quickly, it's like a springboard. So think about it like a springboard, and then you get to decide where you want them to go, and you get to build this story about your business by offering them information about that. So what does that look like? Is it that they need to see your portfolio, to see examples of your work, to see that you can do the thing that they need? Or maybe, back to that healthcare company. Maybe they need case studies, maybe they need resources that they can read about to understand why your treatment is going to be the right thing. Maybe you're a nonprofit, maybe they need to see events, or they need to want they want to look at your annual report or testimonials from people that you've helped or your board members, because you're trying to solicit volunteers.

14:21 So just think what else you can do, like the supporting information on that cause, and that's your, your gift to them. And then, last but not least least, we have to invite them to the party, right? So tell them what you want them to do so they can take action quickly and it's not confusing to them. Like, give it to them. I can't tell you how many times have you went to a website that doesn't have a phone number on it? and you're like, all I wanted to do is call you. No, I love that. What you're showing that last one, so important and I think about time and time again in all areas of marketing is make it easy. If you don't make it easy and I, you know, for me, by nature, I will google and I will search and if I need to find you, I will do that, but the 99% of other people aren't going to do that, they're just going to go.

15:02 I would love to work with you, but I don't know how to find you. Yeah, I don't know how to contact you. I mean, I I find that so much, even on LinkedIn. If you are connected with your audience, then so many of the things that you need to tell them are actually answered. It's not a mystery, it's a conversation and just an awareness. So, like if people come into your restaurant and they're like, oh, I tried to come in last Monday but it turned out you were closed. Okay, you need to put your hours like up on the front page of your website, like it needs to be the first thing that people see, so that way they don't feel disappointed by you, right? you don't want to let them down and you think I'm on vacation, but in actuality you are letting someone down, and if they would have just known, then it wouldn't be a problem. So I yeah, so just listen, and when you hear that thing you're like, oh, that needs to go on the website and yeah, yeah.

15:50 So I'm thinking okay, we spoke about homepage and then sometimes you have like so many tabs on the application. Is there kind of a sweet spot of how many? Because on one hand you're busy up a page and you have too much on one page, but then if you've got 10 tabs across the top, who's going to go through all 10? I know and I try to keep it pretty clean 10 is a lot. It kind of depends also on, like, how long the words are Right, so some people have longer page names than others. But if, if, like, whenever I'm art directing, I always want to have like around an inch, like, if, like, give or take, like what you don't want to do is look at the top of the website and have the words up at the top, be close enough that they feel like a sentence.

16:35 Okay, they have to. Like it can never be mistaken as a sentence. They need to be like, feel like separate entities that you could click on, and that's kind of my role there. So less is more, right, but you don't want to have nothing, because people use that navigation bar to be able to understand within your website. It's like an outline of what's on your website, right? So the people who only have three things up there, it's like I feel like you kind of missing the mark, because now I have to dig for what I want and I don't like that. I would much rather you. So if you only have two services, if you only have roofing and siding, and those are the two services that you have, you don't have to have a services page. Just have about, like home, about roofing, siding, and contact us, and so then they see they do what I want them to do.

17:25 And it's right up at the top. So think about it like an outline of your site, but give an inch between each one of you. I love that. That's a gem. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah, because love that. That's a gem. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah, cause it's just, it's a visual and it's so important and we get so bogged down about all the words that we put in and all the context and everything else in the copy running down. But if I've got to go way down to the bottom of your page to look for what I want and you've lost me in the yeah, so that's super helpful. So thank you. I do have a trick, like if you are an existing business and you maybe don't even have Google analytics or anything set up on your website. Go out to Google and Google search for your website and usually you'll show up with your homepage, will be at the top, and then there'll be a list of pages underneath it.

18:08 Those pages that are underneath it are the pages that Google feels are the most important to website visitors that search for your business name, and they almost always correlate with the most visited pages on your website. Like I cannot think of a time that they don't. So then I challenge you to go back to your website and be like where are these pages in my website? Because if they're nested six layers deep, that's not right, because Google thinks they're important. So they probably are, so you'll want to move those out and up like link to them from the homepage. Put those up in that top layer of dropdowns or in your top navigation, and that'll help you out a lot. Oh, another wonderful gem. So, monica, let me know if people are wanting to work with you, where do they start?

18:52 Do you offer different packages? Is this a consult call first? I mean, how do they jump in and get you to bring sexy back? Yeah, everybody starts at the same place with a conversation. We're not salespeople. We really approach everything like consultants and we have since the very beginning which really kind of was weird to people at first because they were used to marketers and suits who came in with a presentation and a slide deck and just telling you what they were going to do, and we do not believe in that. We believe in understanding you as a business, how you run and what your challenges are as a business, so that way we can set up a website that will help you solve those challenges and act like an employee or like a working member of your team.

19:34 That's always our goal. So it all starts with a conversation and then from there, we have three different ways that we build websites. One is we set it up and we teach you how to put your stuff in it, and that one is a very cost effective and a great tool for small business owners who just need support and they don't have a ton of money to invest, and it ends up not being that much more than going to Squarespace and doing it by yourself, right? And then our second package is our template library. You pick from a template, we customize it for you, we build it all out for you, we write all the stuff and then, last but not least, we do all the custom stuff, from shopping carts to learning management systems, and build all the the fancy um and so, yeah, those are the three ways that we build them, and we just guide you to the right one based on your budget and what you need out of it that's fantastic because having that option um yeah, they're absolutely the do-it-yourself, and especially businesses that are starting out they kind of go ah, I can't spend you know a living living fortune on a website and yeah, the consulting and just getting to understand what somebody wants and touching guys with them is wonderful.

20:39 And it's helpful because even that first option so especially if you have big dreams for your website like right now it's just a website, but you want to sell things later on, or you want to turn it into a learning management system, or you want to let people pay bills online Well, if you start it in the right system, it can do all of those things and you don't have to start over again. If you start it in the wrong system. It doesn't do that. So what I like to encourage people is, you know, make sure you understand what you want to do in the long run, so that way you pick the right system to start and then your website can be a stepping stone, you know, not a band-aid, because we want it. We want it to grow with you. And I'm not saying you're never going to have to redo it, because, let's be real, like stop changes.

21:22 Yeah, absolutely, but yeah, so that's a key point there, that's oh, fantastic. So the best way for listeners to get hold of you? Where do they go? They're going to go to maycreatecom. That is our website, m-a-y-e-c-r-e-a-c-ecom. And if you are planning a website right now, one of our most popular downloads, if you go into our resources section, is what to put on your website, and it's a checklist, page by page, of things that you should think about on each page of your website to make sure that you've got all the right stuff on it, just like we talked about with your homepage. So that's a good one, yep. And then, of course, you can check out our podcast Marketing with Purpose.

22:04 Oh well, I will make sure to have all those links in the show notes, and this has been a wonderful conversation with a lot of inspiration for my listeners, so thank you, monica. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it, it was fun. So thanks everybody for listening to the podcast. If you found it valuable, please rate, review and share it. You can find us on all the listening platforms, so just pick us on the favorite one and follow us, and you can connect with me on LinkedIn Just searching for me Carol Clegg We'll.