From Overwhelm to Ownership: Empowering Yourself to Create a Website That Works

If you've ever stared at your website and thought, “I have no idea what I’m doing…”—you’re not alone. The good news? You don’t need to be a tech wizard to have a site you’re proud of—and that actually works. Today, we’re breaking through the fear and showing you just how capable you really are.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Overcoming Website Fear
• 3:12 Clarity Beats Tech Skills
• 6:02 Three Core Website Pages
• 9:04 When to DIY vs Outsource
• 11:54 The Converting Website Course
• 13:43 Final Thoughts and Call-to-Action

Transcript

Carrie Saunders: 0:01

If you've ever stared at your website and thought I have no idea what I'm doing, you're not alone. The good news you don't need to be a tech wizard to have a site that you're proud of and that actually works. Today, we're breaking through the fear and showing you how really capable you are. Welcome to the eCommerce Made Easy podcast. I'm your host, k Saunders. When we started this business, all I had was a couch, a laptop and a nine-month-old. My main goal To help others. Now, with over 20 years in the e-commerce building industry and even more than that in web development, I have seen a lot. I love breaking down the hard tech into easily understandable bits to help others be successful in their online business. Whether you're a seasoned e-commerce veteran or just starting out, you've come to the right place, so sit back, relax and let's dive into the world of e-commerce together. Welcome back to the show Now. While having people like us that are your tech wizards are definitely a great thing to have in your back pocket, there are many things that you can do as a business owner with your website to make sure that it does actually work for you. You know us tech wizards are great for whenever you have something broken, need more features, need things hooked up the bit, more complicated tasks, but when it really comes down to conversions, most of the time it's your content. So we want to get a frame of mindset that you can do this. We want to take out that tech overwhelm that really sucks down business owners energy and mental energy to whenever they feel like they need to be a tech wizard to be able to work on their website. Most fixes aren't as scary or complex as they seem. Many times it's the content, like I was saying, and the words on your site and how things are presented. Now you might need a little bit of help if you need things rearranged, depending on what platform you're using, but many times anymore those many platforms are a lot easier to do that and you don't actually need a tech wizard to make small adjustments and also think about it. You know we talk about on this podcast a lot the little things we can be doing to improve our website, so don't feel like you need to fix everything.

Carrie Saunders: 2:14

Pick one or two things that you regularly come back to. You know picking one or two things that you should be working on your website to make it get better and over time it really can make a huge difference. So there's some things that you can do as a business owner that don't require any tech skills, and clarity is one of them. If your message isn't clear, then that's going to cause lots of lost customers. They don't actually buy or purchase or they don't click on that newsletter subscribe button, they don't download your freebie, they don't browse your shop. So when you're not clear, this is going to be a great hindrance, and this is not really quite something that Most website developers think about, because many times they're thinking of the mechanics behind it. We're a bit of a blended system here, where we think about both sides of the equation the mechanics as well as what is actually on the website. But you, as a business owner, can make sure that your message is clear.

Carrie Saunders: 3:20

We want to make sure we're clear and not clever. We want to be able to better describe who you are as a business and who you serve and why it's important to that person. We want to make sure that we also don't have outdated or missing information. You know I will check regularly. I would say at least once a year. Is your about us page up to date and relevant? Does your contact page still work Now that one shouldn't break unless there's some major platform updates underneath, but want to make sure that that is still working. What about your offer section, whether it's your products or services? Are those up to date? Do those still speak to the current day? So making sure that our information is not outdated and making sure we don't have holes or gaps in our information is very important.

Carrie Saunders: 4:09

And then call to actions. We don't want our call to actions to be weak. We don't want it to be generic like book a call or sign up now. What are we booking a call for and what are we signing up for? Be a bit more descriptive in your words. Tell your visitors exactly what to do next and exactly what that button or that link is going to do for them.

Carrie Saunders: 4:32

So pick one of these and fix one this week, just one. Don't be overwhelmed by this. Pick one and really look through your website with the lens of. I'm a newbie here and I don't know what the website's supposed to do or supposed to say. We have to reframe our mindset whenever we're evaluating our own website and if you're starting from scratch, say you don't have a website yet, or maybe you just have a one page website. So far, the three core pages you need is your homepage, your about page and then some sort of page that's an offer or how to work with you. Whether you sell products or services. You want to have at least a page about that. Obviously, if you're an e-commerce store, you're going to have probably more pages than that as far as products go, but those are your three core pages that you want to have. So don't worry about getting fancy at first. Make sure these are nice and solid.

Carrie Saunders: 5:27

The content is really what is the key here. Making it pleasing to the eye is great, and you can do a decent job of this and still be simple. But the words is actually what really matters. The content, how it scans, whether you can really glance through it quickly to see what it's all about. We don't want to make people read right away, especially the first impression they're going to be scanning. So make sure the scannability of it is top notch and really up there to make sure they understand exactly what you do and who you serve and why it's important to them.

Carrie Saunders: 6:03

And there are just some great tools out there, like GoHighLevel. We are an agency of GoHighLevel. They make a great way to great drag and drop your website. It's super easy. We have found it to be very helpful for those clients of ours who like to be able to have that control and don't want to really get bogged down in the tech for, you know, making their website look pretty. So there are several tools out there nowadays that make it a lot easier for drag and drop, editing of your site and moving things around.

Carrie Saunders: 6:35

And so, if you're really stuck, some things that you don't need to worry about just yet, especially if you're just starting out or you're rebranding is pixel perfect design, like we don't need to have a super perfect website. Think about the websites you enjoy. I bet some of them are just nice and clean and have a very clear message and aren't like super fancy looking. They're probably really simple. We don't need those fancy animations or effects. Simple, we don't need those fancy animations or effects. Actually, one of the things that really drives me crazy is fancy animations or movies or videos that autoplay that is just so disturbing to my brain. I can't scan the website. My eyes focus on the moving objects and it either makes me motion sick or I just get mesmerized and focused on it. We all are trained. Our eyes are trained to pay attention to moving objects. It's how we survive all these years. So fancy animations or effects, it's just really not necessary, no matter what stage you're in, honestly.

Carrie Saunders: 7:39

And then a lot of people get so stuck on what platform they should use. Should they use WordPress, should they use Wix, should they use Squarespace, should they use Kajabi, should they use GoHighLevel, should they use Shopify, should they use Magento, like the example? We could just keep going on and on and on. But you want to pick the platform you're already on. If you're already on a platform, and perfect that first. There's always a perfect time to switch platforms if you've outgrown it, but we wanna make sure that we're using effectively what we have now. And if you're having trouble figuring out which one is best for you, you're always welcome to jump in our free Facebook group. That links are on our e-commerce made easy podcastcom website, and you're always welcome to ask the question there. And I'm going to ask you ahead of time too what are the things that you want in a platform? Do you want you know which features do you want? And if you don't know what features you want, I'll help pull that out of you to help help you decide which one is best for you, because not one software tool is perfect for everybody.

Carrie Saunders: 8:45

And then, if you're trying to do this on your own and you get stuck or hit a wall, there's just so much power and communities and support, which is one of the reasons why I have our free Facebook group. We have a great variety of business owners in there who are willing to help you from other angles, even if it's something that I don't know and it could be you know a business niche angle in there too. I'm there to help you from other angles, even if it's something that I don't know and it could be you know a business niche angle in there too. I'm there to help with all the website technology and strategies. But if you need other sort of business type help on selling online, you're always welcome to pop in our Facebook group and ask questions in there, and there are appropriate times when you do it yourself and when you should have help.

Carrie Saunders: 9:24

I don't want you to sit there and waste your time and spend a bunch of time on your website when you could be doing income producing activities Many times. What you need to be doing is making sure your messaging is clear and your components on your website are clear, but when it really comes down to potentially implementing that, you might want to hire that out. That is a really good way to end up making more money, because you can focus on your income producing activities. So work on a balance there. We don't want to be always thinking we have to do all the things on our website ourselves.

Carrie Saunders: 10:00

The way I find people grow their business is by actually outsourcing that to someone like us or their own trusted provider, because then you can focus on your work. Think about it what is your effective hourly rate when you're making money? How much do you make per hour? Well, think about then, when you hire somebody, how much you're paying them per hour. If you're paying them per hour less than what you're making per hour, then it's advantageous for you to pay somebody else to do it. Same thing comes for virtual assistant services and things like that, and so we're kind of going into a little bit of a business strategy here, but I want you to keep that in your mind.

Carrie Saunders: 10:38

I want to empower you to be able to do the things on your website, but at the same time, we also need to realize when it's time to step back and let somebody else do the implementing on it. So we want to be educated on how to do it too, but then also how to hire when that is necessary and when that is appropriate to do. And then there's also a great middle ground here. We've talked about doing it yourself and also outsourcing it. Middle ground here We've talked about doing it yourself and also outsourcing it. We actually have a great course called the converting website course. That is an in-between, it's a do it with you, we help you, we teach you, we teach you all these strategies that we're doing on the podcast, but even more in depth, even more concise, even more um, step-by-step, I would say. And so if you ever want information on the converting website course, you can go to e-commerce made easy, podcastcom forward. Slash TC W and we'll put that in the show notes and in the podcast description.

Carrie Saunders: 11:35

But we have enrollment opening, um, every so often, as of this release of this podcast we're in. We're having an open enrollment right now. So it'd be a great time to jump in to our course, to be able to feel empowered and what this is going to do. This is for anybody who is brand new to building a website to you know, 10s, 20 years established because things change and we want to make sure we stay up to date. We want to be empowered on knowing when things need to be fixed. We want to have the tools to be able to fix them ourselves, if we'd like, and also the tools to know how to better outsource it.

Carrie Saunders: 12:13

When we know the basics and the core and the foundations behind a website and what really makes them convert well, then that will help you outsource and hire when that is appropriate time to do that.

Carrie Saunders: 12:27

So I want you to know that you can make your website better even if you don't know how to code or you feel overwhelmed by tech. One small step at a time leads to massive improvement. And when it is the time to hire, outsource or work with us in our course so that we're doing it with you and helping you with all your little nuanced questions, then make sure that you take that time to do that and make that decision and be okay with not doing all the things yourself, because that's how we grow as businesses. That's all we have for this week's episode of the Ecommerce Made Easy podcast. Thank you so much for joining us and we would love it if you so much for joining us and we would love it if you would rate or review us on your favorite podcast player. That helps spread the word to those just like you who need website help, and we will see you next week.