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Alright. Welcome to another edition of Webinar Wednesday.

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It's really nice that, we can take the time this week and, spend it to help grow our online

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communities.

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We have a lot of great updates to share with you today as well as a great tip of the week discussion.

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I think everyone will be able to, get some benefit from what we're gonna share with you guys today.

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If this is your first time joining us, welcome.

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I am Jason Darr on the left, and we're lucky to be joined by David Rocklin, the digital strategist

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and mastermind behind putting together all these amazing webinars

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for us. So, Dave, thanks for taking the time to join us today.

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Hey, everyone.

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Really excited to pull together a few different concepts that we've covered in previous webinars in this week's tip of the week, so that'll be coming up soon.

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Thank you, David.

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And I always like to mention if you're not already part of our Facebook group, I do encourage you to join.

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You can head on over to brilliantdirectories.com/facebook.

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It's a great way to keep in touch in between webinars.

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Lots of productive and constructive conversations and discussions in there. I'm in there myself.

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And, yeah, if if you have questions after the webinar, you can join us there.

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Just head over to broilingdirectories.com/facebook

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and click on that blue join link if you're not a member yet.

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And also for those of you joining us for the first time, welcome.

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Webinar Wednesday is a great,

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channel and platform to talk about strategies for growing your online community.

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We like to tie in features of the software that you can leverage and utilize

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to achieve the growth

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of your community.

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So we like to talk, about things like how to convert visitors to members, like what kinds of things should be on your web pages,

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identifying revenue opportunities.

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One of my favorites I always like to mention is how to improve your website's

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flow and navigation.

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I'm a big advocate for simple and clear calls to action,

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to get users to the finish line of what you're hoping for them,

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to achieve. And also a good note on that, a lot of times people are not ready to sign up or buy.

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They're in the awareness

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stage. They are exploring options.

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So you also wanna have assets and resources to appeal to those people who may not just be ready to make a buying decision or sign up decision

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as of today. We wanna find ways to bring them into our ecosphere

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of your community,

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to get them in, involved and get them on your email list or just get them engaged with you.

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So that's also part of important,

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clear and simple navigation of your site.

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Alright. So we have not too many BD Lab updates the last few weeks.

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Actually, this whole year has been,

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pretty strong with the the amount of work that's coming out of the development team here.

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I just have a few simple ones that I'd like to share with you guys, Kind of a few nuances that you can see on your sites that are gonna provide and deliver a better user experience for both your members and the general visitors

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who are coming, to your sites.

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And the first one, I did make an announcement of this one, in the Facebook group.

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The newsletter module, some of you may be using the newsletter module in the footer of your site.

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It's that one bar and there was a single email input field down there.

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The problem with that was because it was on a single line, it was hard to include the Google security, recapture security.

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And if you're using GDPR,

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it was hard to find an elegant way to design in those consent check boxes as well.

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So based on the suggestions in the Facebook group,

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the best direction to go in would just to be to make this a button and you get a pop up with the form.

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So I can show you what that looks like, for everyone here.

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Okay. I think we can work on this sample site here.

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If we go to the footer, this is just a demo site we work on.

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So now you'll notice in the footer of your site, instead of the input field, it's just a single button here.

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And you can click this button

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and you'll get the join newsletter form. And you can see here in this example,

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we have the GDPR consent boxes

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if you have that enabled.

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You have the Google recapture.

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And what's really nice about this form now is

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in case you wanted to capture,

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more than just a name and an email address for the newsletter sign up or maybe you're repurposing it.

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It's not even a newsletter sign up. You're calling it something else.

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It's an application or whatever you're using this for to collect data.

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You can certainly customize this form and add additional fields.

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And because it's in the pop up here, you know, adding four or five or however many fields is still gonna look nice in the pop up.

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Whereas if when it was on this single line here in the footer, it was really hard to add all these very important elements.

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So, if you have that footer newsletter, footer sign up,

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enabled on your site, this is the the way it'll work now on your site.

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Okay. This is a nice one. It's a really small change but I think it'll make a really big impact.

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Let me show you an example of this. Let's go to our demo bootstrap site.

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When you're logged in as a member, you have this little module here with your picture and there's a little tiny picture here as well.

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What we've done is usually when you go into a mobile view,

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it would just say my account and there was another icon here.

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It was like a little user's icon or it was actually a text label so you could make that icon whatever you wanted or not even include an icon.

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Now it will kind of emulate what's happening on the desktop view

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with that little drop down. It'll use the profile picture here.

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So when users are on mobile view, it's gonna be a little more clear

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because they see their picture there and what they expect.

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They can now access their my account sidebar

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information

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there. And what's really cool is that I think last year we made it so this pop up

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works on mobile no matter what page they are on the site.

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They don't have to be on one of their member dashboard pages.

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In fact, we're on the homepage right now.

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The member is logged in and they can still toggle their sidebar here.

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So a really nice control there just to give an additional

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personal touch to the member as they're browsing your site and they're logged in from a mobile device.

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Okay.

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This one was actually, let me see if Eric's not joining us today, but he's been advocating for this one for a while.

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Up until now, there really hasn't been a way if you wanted to view for example all the events of a single member

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unless you went to their profile page and looked at all the available tabs

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on their profile page.

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What you can do now is and you can create your own links if you want to and and whatnot, but but there is a method now for designers and developers out there and,

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we we'll probably create documentation on this to make it easier for you guys to add this to your site.

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But let me show you an example. You can now,

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link

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to all the posts of of of a member. And let me show you an example here.

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Let's go back to this site and let's go to blog.

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So this is a stream of the the website's

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blog articles.

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And I guess I'm logged in as John Smith. Let's see what his ID number is or her name.

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I guess it was just so this person is member ID 61744.

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So what we can do is you could do question mark

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user ID equals,

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And it will pull the post just from that member.

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So if I change this ID number to something else, I'll just put like 50.

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Should see no results because there's no member with that ID number.

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So you could do any of your features, for example, events. As long as you go to the URL

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and you do, you know, user ID and their ID number, you could link directly to all their articles.

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And we're gonna create more documentation on this so you could create like sidebar links

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or other links for example.

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A good place to put this probably in the future now that it's available is when you are on a member's profile page.

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For example, John Smith blog articles may be including a link right here, view all articles by John Smith.

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And it would take you to that search results page.

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And that probably would be good for Google as well because it would you know, just do more internal linking on the site overall.

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So now that I'm thinking out loud about this,

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that's a really high value

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feature that we'll be able to leverage more and more as we move forward with it and we can get some feedback from you guys now that it's available as well.

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Let me talk about one more thing about that.

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So I showed you guys an example when it's question mark again.

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Now I'm speaking to kind of the people who are a little more developer savvy.

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So if we do, like category one

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and hit

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search, over here you'd want to do and

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user ID

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equals

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the user's ID number here.

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So you can put that at the end.

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When it's all these question marks or ands or additional search parameters, so you can also use and.

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But if it's the first search parameter, you're going to use question mark.

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Alright. Let's move on.

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This is more updates to the text editor in the admin area.

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Now you can easily replace images,

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in the text editor as you're working.

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So prior to this, if you if you created a page in the text editor and you wanted to replace an image, you'd have to delete the image and then add a new image.

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Now you could do it really elegantly,

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with just a few clicks. Let me show you how that works.

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I know more and more people are using the the text editors here. So if you go to edit web pages

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and let's go to the home page. Let's add an image into here.

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We'll just pick an arbitrary image that we have on this test site.

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So what you can do now is when you click on the image, you'll see these arrows

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pointing in opposite directions. It says replace. You can go ahead and click on that.

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You will be prompted with the

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the options to select additional images and right there in that same space,

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it'll replace the image. So you don't have to delete the image, come back here and and click it.

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And it's especially helpful if you've also already created a nice layout for the page.

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You can now use that replace

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button here and it would just do it inline.

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And we've mentioned this in a couple webinars, the billing reminder emails add on.

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It has been released to a few beta users. We just wanted to do some soft testing with it.

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It is going to be released probably

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May 1 for all VIP add ons club members and then if anyone wants to purchase it, a la carte.

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And what that is going to do is you can choose to enable,

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reminder emails for upcoming payments and you can choose up to fourteen days in advance if you like those emails to be sent to members.

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And I think what's most important is the automated emails when a member's payment is past due.

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And you can send up to three past due emails.

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So you can send a reminder on the first day then maybe a second email on the third day and then seven days later.

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That will keep your members engaged and inform them of payment activity that's happening on your site and you could be totally hands off after you just set the initial settings of what you want enabled and disabled

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with regards to the available email settings.

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So probably in the next webinar we'll have that released for everyone and we can get some more feedback

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on how you guys are using that and enjoying that.

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Some things that are coming soon, more control over your homepage design and elements.

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You'll be able to add a cover overlay over your home page hero image. What does that mean?

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Let's say you have an image and you want to put like a filter over it like a maybe like a shadow.

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The image is too bright. It's not contrasting the text nice enough.

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You'll be able to create that color overlay.

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More options for your streaming widgets, you'll be able to choose if you want rectangle or square shapes, if you want the the image to fill the whole space corner to corner or you want the image to definitely

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contain based on the image proportions

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and some other options as well.

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There is one that I can show you.

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In the hero divider, you'll soon be able to choose if you'd want to continue using just icons

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or what I'm excited about is the ability to choose images and let me show you that here.

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So it will be this is that test site we've been playing around with.

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In your home page hero divider settings,

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you'll be able to choose use icon, which we're all familiar with and it's the standard right now for everyone.

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Or you can toggle it to use image and then you can upload your images accordingly.

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Just a pro tip, you probably just wanna make sure the three images are the same sizes so one isn't taller or wider than the other.

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But when you do do that,

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let's go to this demo site that we play around with here.

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You can have images here on your home page as opposed to just the icons.

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And then one more thing we're doing with the hero divider settings,

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you'll also be able to choose the top and bottom padding.

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Let's just do something extreme like a hundred pixels.

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And what's really nice about that is you can then make your the hero divider a bit more of a showcase on your your home page.

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So we can see here with the background color we added and the spacing, you can really make an impact with three good calls to action right there on your home page for whatever you wanna use these, spots for.

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Soon you'll be able to turn your post category pages into their own static pages.

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So if you wanna add custom content to let's say you have products and one of the categories is furniture so you can create a landing page for the furniture search results of your products post types, that's gonna be really great and again add additional SEO value and control for you guys.

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And then something that's been rec requested in the Facebook group is when members are logged into the site and reviewing other members,

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they don't have to reenter their email address since we know that they're already logged into the site.

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So that should create a more streamlined experience when leaving member reviews.

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So lots of stuff in the labs, lots of things coming down the pipeline.

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A lot of it is based on your feature suggestions and feedback. So thank you everyone.

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I know I always say a mouthful when we're coming to these BD lab updates,

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but personally I'm just really excited to share all of it and, really happy that we could continue delivering happiness to you guys, with all these cool updates and features.

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Alright. Let's just take a minute. I know that I just dropped a lot of information here on anyone.

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You guys have any questions about these features or any of the new features that are released on your sites?

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Maybe we could take a question or two before we go into the tip of the week here. All right.

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Toby's got his hand up. How are you doing, Toby?

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I'm very well. Thank you very much. I

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was just wondering on this color overlay for hero images, any idea when that might be available?

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Yeah. I think that's going through our QA process now. I'd say less than two weeks.

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It'll be available maybe within a week. I don't want to overpromise.

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A safe bet would be within the next two weeks or hopefully sooner.

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Perfect. Thank you very much indeed. You're welcome.

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Alright. We got Rich. How you doing, Rich?

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Great information so far. The quick question was on the newsletter,

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module update. Will that,

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avoid or deter or reduce the amount of bots that's tried to subscribe to our newsletter?

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That's exactly the intention of that update.

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Usually bots are looking for kinda like open forms that have no validation on them or no security checks on them.

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In this case, it isn't a pop up although the form is in the source code of the site but now you can have the consent boxes.

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You can have

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the Google security.

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So it should definitely reduce the the spam bots coming through the site. I I never wanna say it'll

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reduce spam a % because just as technology evolves so do the spam bots.

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So we just have to keep our pulse on on what's happening.

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And then some good some good best practices if you are receiving,

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you know, inquiries to your site from unwanted inquiries to your

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site. You know, we always recommend, you know, block the IP in your admin.

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Those are some things you can do.

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Just make sure you have there's no software updates on your homepage dashboard in your admin area.

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Sometimes there's just some things to add additional form security there for your sites.

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Those are always safe,

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to install on your sites. They just have to be clicked on and and checked on periodically.

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You know, we only we only push those maybe a a few times per

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year. So check look for the software updates,

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in your dashboard. Let me show everyone where that where that is. If you go to your dashboard

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but if you go to your dashboard here, you can see install new updates and you can check for updates.

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And generally, we get a lot of questions like is this gonna change anything on the front end of my site?

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What this is really doing is it's,

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adding and unlocking additional settings in the admin area mainly.

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So if it if it's for form security, it's adding extra fields to your database tables,

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to allow for the extra security checks,

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and things like that. So here's one. This site actually has like enable form spam security.

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If you see stuff like that, you definitely wanna install it on your site.

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Alright. Good question there. Before we move on, Don had a really great simple question.

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He wants to know how to block IPs.

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I'm assuming we can probably just show how to do that from, like, the form inquiries page.

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That's yeah. That's a great,

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great question. So,

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I'll show a couple places actually.

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Let's look at search members.

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Let's look at,

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emails form inquiries.

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And we can just leave it there for now those two. So, let's say you're getting a bunch of

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member sign ups.

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You know, it's very common when you offer a free membership plan that these bots or sometimes SEO companies,

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their job is to just get their clients listed on websites for backlinks and whatnot.

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But on the search members page, if you notice that, you know, you're getting a bunch of unwanted sign ups,

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you can certainly

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the IP address is here from the page that that that they joined your site from.

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So if you're seeing the same IP over and over and over again,

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we're actually seeing that here in this case. Well, this is the test site that we're working on.

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But you can just copy this IP address here and then you'll also notice whenever we show the IP address, there is a block IP button.

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It's just a two step process. Click the button.

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It's gonna take you to the area where you can block an IP. Just paste it here and click add.

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I I don't wanna add this IP because I think it's one of our developers who's working on this test site.

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And the same thing under your emails, form inquiries.

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Again, if you're there we show an IP address here, which is again really good for your security and to know where all this stuff is coming from.

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There's the same block IP button,

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so you can just copy this this here

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and then,

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block the IP,

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here. It's it's a good intermediary solution.

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You know, IPs can be changed by bots or SEO companies and whatnot, so it can kinda

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get, annoying sometimes especially if you're offering a free membership and they're just continuing to take advantage of that.

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Just some things you can do if you wanna kinda deter them.

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You do have the ability to moderate all sign ups.

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So maybe they can create a free listing but it won't go live until,

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you moderate and then you look at it.

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You can do that here under membership plans.

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And so here's general user

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free account.

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So what you can do, general settings tab. Oh, here it is. The first one.

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After sign up, set account status as

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so if you wanna moderate them, set them to on hold.

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And then the welcome email that they get, like this welcome basic, you can edit this template and remove

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the link they usually click on to verify their email address for their free account.

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So again, that's another way to suppress free sign ups, free kind of unwanted sign ups to your site.

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There really is no silver bullet.

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Just kinda staying on top of it and finding ways to deter them and things like that is is usually the best bet.

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But hopefully, it's not too rampant that,

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it's ruining your day every day.

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Any other questions, we got out there, David? Typed in?

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We do have a few, but, they're a little bit more complex, so I think we could probably leave them until the end of the webinar.

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Get to them then.

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Alright.

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So we've got a great tip of the week this week. I think everyone can take a little bit, from this.

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David has taken the time to kinda put together,

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five home page elements

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every website

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needs.

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And I think this is really important because a lot of us, we get so immersed in our projects that we sometimes overlook

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some of the basics,

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that we should include or,

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we might drown them out with too much noise around them.

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Again, going back to, you know, keeping a clean and simple navigation for the site.

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So Dave, if it's okay, I'd like to pass it over to you to kind of walk us through some of these, five home page elements

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and some of the benefits and goals that each of these elements,

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add to the user experience.

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Yeah.

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So before we get into this, in previous webinars, we've covered, a lot of the design settings, different elements of the home page, but we never really,

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brought it all full circle. So hopefully this presentation will kind of

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pull everything together, give you a good idea of what elements you should have on your home page,

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since that's probably the primary source of where new traffic is going to. And so the

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first element,

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everybody should have on their home page, there's different ways to utilize it,

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is the hero section.

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So you could have a search module here. You could have some buttons

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as call to actions.

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You could have just text without any buttons or any search modules.

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There's a lot of different ways you can utilize this section, but it's really an attention grabber

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and so you should use it in a way that will allow your website to instantly connect with the people who are coming to your site for the very first time.

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You can like I said, you can utilize it as a call to action.

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If you know that the majority of your new visitors are looking to maybe perform a specific search.

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You might just wanna have your search module there.

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Otherwise, if you wanna provide them with a little bit more information about what your website offers,

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you can,

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you can have just text there explaining your mission,

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maybe how long you've been around, you know, if if you're the industry leader,

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something like that.

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Just giving that some initial information about your website and what it offers.

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And before we go any further,

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I think a great tip and an element to keep in mind as we go through these these elements

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is to always keep in mind as you're visiting your own website, keep in mind the target audience that you're focusing on,

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what it is they're looking to get out of your website, and what mindset they may be in if they're coming to your website for the very first time.

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Is the messaging clear? Does it make sense?

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Is there a clear direction? Or are you directing the users to take clear action on your site?

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Otherwise,

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if

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they get to your site, they're not ex exactly clear what it is your site offers or does for them or what the benefits are and what next actions to take,

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they might end up going back to Google or or go into a competitor site. So,

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always keeping in mind and trying to put yourself in the shoes of your first time visitors,

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is really important, and, I think will provide you a good insight

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into specifically what elements and what messaging you should use on your homepage.

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Yeah. And with that, I just wanted to to,

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also mention, you know, a lot of people share their site in the Facebook group, and, they say, can I get some feedback?

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What do you think of my homepage?

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And this is this is what, like, a a standard site starts with.

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It's meant to be kinda stock and default so you can, you know, add your personal touch to it.

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A lot of people leave their mess the default message which is search our online member directory.

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Of course, this is meant to be changed and edited to match your website's goals.

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So, yeah, back to to David's point here, you just wanna make sure that you have something that's compelling,

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that makes them want to,

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go further and deeper into the website pages.

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And the second element you should have on your home page is to list your website's benefits, what it is you're offering

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to the users of your website. I think it's safe to say most

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website owners here in the webinar,

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their primary goal of their website is probably to get users registered and to become members on their site.

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And so you want to be upfront about why your website will be beneficial

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to these new visitors. Why should they create

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an account and register on your website whether it's a free account or paid one?

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Be upfront with them about what it is you're offering and why you can solve whatever problems it is they're coming to your site to look for solutions to.

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And we've we've spoken in previous webinars, you know, let's say you're a local business directory.

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Well, you have two audiences.

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You have the local businesses that you want to join your site and then you have

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the consumers or the end users who are gonna search your site for those businesses in this example.

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You know, your home page should cater to the end user, to the consumer. So

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this area on your home page highlighting your features or mentioning the benefits, it should appeal to the users.

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And let's stick with the local business

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directory example, you know. Find trusted businesses, find businesses faster,

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get quotes from multiple businesses. These are benefits for the end user and the consumer.

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And then on a separate page, kinda like the Yelp thing, you know, if you go to yelp.com, most people use the app.

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But everything's geared towards the consumer.

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In the bottom of the footer, it says, you know, list your business.

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A business will see that your site is is, catering

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to consumers and they're naturally their normal intuition is gonna tell them, okay, how can I get added into this, directory?

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However, if your site is not a local business directory, if you're really a membership community, maybe you have private

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content or premium content

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and you're just selling access to your premium content, then of course you can directly

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you really have one audience there.

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It's the people that you want to access your site for that premium content.

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You can of course explain the benefits of becoming a member of your community,

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right there.

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So just keep in mind who the audience is that you're gonna be talking to on your home homepage.

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Maybe you have multiple audiences so you wanna prioritize who's gonna get the attention on your homepage

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and then just keep those things things in mind.

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But definitely wanna highlight some features on your homepage because it gives them a sneak peek inside

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what they can get excited about and what they can expect,

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from your community.

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And element number three, testimonials

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from your members. This can play off of

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the section on your homepage where you list your website's benefits,

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but we've talked about social proof a number of times in previous webinars.

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We've typically mentioned it in context of landing pages, but having one or two testimonials on your home page is a fantastic idea as well,

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because just as many, if not more, website visitors are probably coming to your home page as they are any landing pages that you have set up and directing traffic to.

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So the thing to

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keep in mind with the testimonials

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is you don't wanna just have a block of text. Most of the time,

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website visitors, I think if you think about your behavior online, we typically just scroll past or skim over blocks of text.

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It's images and titles that really capture our attention.

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So you can see here in the sample testimonial that we have.

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We have a really nice image, a smiling guy. He's happy

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and, and we've highlighted the title. We've made the title stand out that way.

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Hopefully that'll catch visitors attention and if they want to read more about what this man has to say, then they can read the short testimonial

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just below the title.

401
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But social proof, it's a phenomenal way of demonstrating that other people in the community,

402
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trust and believe in your website

403
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and that they're enjoying and then are benefiting from what it is you're offering.

404
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So social proof really goes a long way.

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On the home page, it's great to have a simple testimonial like this on maybe some of your inside pages or your landing pages.

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You might want to,

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include video testimonials as well if you can get some of those from your members. Those

408
00:29:25.320 --> 00:29:27.019
really bring everything up a notch.

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00:29:27.240 --> 00:29:30.679
And just, you know, testimonials can be a touchy subject because,

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you know, you're asking someone to, you know, maybe they wanna remain private.

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They're just kinda using your service or community

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on their own. They don't want to be, you know, publicized or whatever it is.

413
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If you can find the right timing to ask for a testimonial, so if you can identify like a key performance indicator when you know

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a member is happy, maybe they're they've purchased three leads from your site, you know that the platform does

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support purchasing leads and referrals.

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We can assume that that person is enjoying their experience on the site.

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If you see someone who has a really decorated profile, they've gone all out and they've added events or whatever content you're allowing them to post, that's probably someone who really likes your site.

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And there's there's no shame or no harm in incentivizing them.

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If you can share a testimonial we'd love to add, you know, six months free to to your membership or three months or whatever.

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Something to incentivize them,

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for taking the time

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to share their honest opinion and experience.

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And again, it's also a boost to yourself and a way for you to engage

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with your members and get get to know them on a more personal level,

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rather than just everyone is, you know, anonymously

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working on the site and things like that.

427
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It's really good to get personal and it really doesn't get any more personal than a testimonial,

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or some type of social proof of someone's

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experience of how they're enjoying your site. So I know it's hard to ask for testimonials sometimes.

430
00:31:00.565 --> 00:31:02.505
Again, you gotta find the right timing.

431
00:31:02.645 --> 00:31:12.010
So maybe look for some key performance indicators when you know there's a high probability the person is enjoying your website or your service, and that might be a good time to kinda

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politely and humbly ask for a testimonial, whether it's by email or in a Facebook post or or something like that.

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Those are some really great tips. Another one is

434
00:31:23.830 --> 00:31:25.515
to try to use

435
00:31:26.055 --> 00:31:28.875
negative or less than stellar interactions.

436
00:31:29.815 --> 00:31:33.755
Try to turn those around and turn them into into beneficial interactions. So,

437
00:31:34.375 --> 00:31:36.715
if a user is coming to you with

438
00:31:37.095 --> 00:31:42.610
a problem that they're having on your website or they're not happy with a service that you're offering or,

439
00:31:43.070 --> 00:31:44.610
they just have a general question,

440
00:31:45.470 --> 00:31:50.049
try to provide them with the absolute best customer service you possibly can.

441
00:31:50.350 --> 00:31:54.495
And if they're blown away by it and they replied it back to you and they say, wow.

442
00:31:54.495 --> 00:31:57.795
I'm, you know, I'm blown away. I didn't expect this kind of response.

443
00:31:58.575 --> 00:31:59.635
Thank you so much.

444
00:31:59.695 --> 00:32:03.455
You can then follow-up one last time with them to say, you know, it's my pleasure.

445
00:32:03.455 --> 00:32:05.760
You know, this is this is what we're all about here.

446
00:32:05.840 --> 00:32:15.300
If you wouldn't mind, we'd be thrilled to, to have a testimonial from you on our website or something like that so that you can not only use

447
00:32:15.760 --> 00:32:16.580
great interactions

448
00:32:16.880 --> 00:32:18.980
to your benefit and members who are

449
00:32:19.395 --> 00:32:19.895
succeeding

450
00:32:20.195 --> 00:32:29.955
on your site and getting use out of it, but you can also turn those negative interactions around, maybe save potential refunds, and then also get a good testimonial out of it.

451
00:32:29.955 --> 00:32:37.700
So there's a lot of ways you can go about it, but, I think Jason's overall tip about looking, for the for the right times to ask for testimonials

452
00:32:38.080 --> 00:32:43.140
is really important. I was gonna touch on that one more time because what you said is so important

453
00:32:43.440 --> 00:32:46.180
and something that I truly believe in personally.

454
00:32:46.665 --> 00:32:58.605
You know, all problems are opportunities and if someone's having a tough time with your site or they had a bad experience or who knows they were they were billed twice or they weren't billed the right amount or they something's not working for them.

455
00:32:59.080 --> 00:33:04.220
It's it's like game on. Alright. How can this this person is probably one percent of your users

456
00:33:04.680 --> 00:33:06.300
had a bad experience or,

457
00:33:06.760 --> 00:33:07.480
is unhappy.

458
00:33:07.480 --> 00:33:12.860
And generally, if they write you a message, they're actually not as angry as as the message they write sometimes.

459
00:33:13.065 --> 00:33:18.284
But it's a great opportunity to dive in there, give them some attention, give them some TLC,

460
00:33:18.825 --> 00:33:25.304
and demonstrate that you do care about them and you could and really wow them in a way that they weren't even expecting in the first place.

461
00:33:25.304 --> 00:33:30.470
So going that extra extra step and extra mile to to try to deliver happiness,

462
00:33:30.770 --> 00:33:37.030
to users who might have had a something go wrong, who knows what it could be or or some frustration with your site or service,

463
00:33:37.650 --> 00:33:41.990
that they're giving you an opportunity to to really step up to the occasion

464
00:33:42.505 --> 00:33:44.985
and and turn the situation up up on its head.

465
00:33:44.985 --> 00:33:49.465
And that is a great time to ask for a testimonial after every you've created that relationship.

466
00:33:49.465 --> 00:33:53.164
You've gone through that emotional roller coaster with them. You've resolved their issue.

467
00:33:53.544 --> 00:33:55.405
You're kinda buddies with them now.

468
00:33:55.519 --> 00:34:02.320
And then again, humbly, you can ask them if they mind sharing their experience or writing a review online or or something like that.

469
00:34:02.320 --> 00:34:02.820
So

470
00:34:03.200 --> 00:34:06.559
don't be don't be afraid when, you know, those types of,

471
00:34:07.440 --> 00:34:11.795
problems occur. There's always when you're doing a business or something, something's gonna come up.

472
00:34:11.795 --> 00:34:19.335
So just handle it as gracefully as possible and see how you can use that as an opportunity to deliver happiness to that person.

473
00:34:20.675 --> 00:34:24.295
Alright. Number four. So one of the primary goals,

474
00:34:24.780 --> 00:34:29.199
maybe not the primary goal, but a primary goal of virtually any website

475
00:34:29.660 --> 00:34:33.840
should be to try to collect as many email addresses from your visitors as possible.

476
00:34:34.380 --> 00:34:50.745
The primary use for this would be to kind of allow them to get a foot in the door and then at a later time, you can follow-up with them, you know, through newsletters or promotional emails and try to, try to close them that way and, and get them registered on your site.

477
00:34:50.745 --> 00:34:54.445
So having a lead magnet or a free offer on your homepage

478
00:34:54.745 --> 00:34:56.409
is one way to do this.

479
00:34:56.409 --> 00:35:01.230
It could be something as simple as asking them to sign up for your newsletter.

480
00:35:01.850 --> 00:35:04.670
It could be offering them a free PDF download

481
00:35:05.130 --> 00:35:12.355
or a free business audit or anything like that to get at least just their email from them.

482
00:35:12.355 --> 00:35:15.575
That way you can follow-up with them at a later time.

483
00:35:15.635 --> 00:35:23.815
And so there's a lot of people who may not be willing, especially if you're not offering free memberships, they may not be willing to immediately sign up on your site.

484
00:35:24.970 --> 00:35:29.070
But if you can get them to provide you with at least their email address,

485
00:35:29.610 --> 00:35:32.570
you can then follow-up with them at a later time.

486
00:35:32.570 --> 00:35:36.750
Even if they may have already forgotten about your site, you can stay top of mind

487
00:35:37.095 --> 00:35:39.755
and remind them that, you know, your website's there.

488
00:35:39.815 --> 00:35:46.695
It has beneficial offerings to them and that they may wanna revisit the site and, and maybe it's time for them to sign up.

489
00:35:46.695 --> 00:35:48.875
So there's a lot of benefits with lead magnets,

490
00:35:49.175 --> 00:35:51.035
and it what you're offering

491
00:35:51.335 --> 00:35:51.835
to

492
00:35:52.430 --> 00:35:59.010
get that email address from the visitors is really dependent on who your target industry is, what your website

493
00:35:59.390 --> 00:36:01.090
is offering. But typically,

494
00:36:01.390 --> 00:36:02.930
a free PDF download,

495
00:36:03.310 --> 00:36:07.250
some kind of simple free service that really doesn't take a whole lot of your resources

496
00:36:07.745 --> 00:36:08.485
is usually

497
00:36:08.785 --> 00:36:12.645
the the best and the easiest way to to go about doing this.

498
00:36:13.185 --> 00:36:29.160
And we've done webinars on lead magnets before and how to, you know, create those landing pages, but this goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning is some people may not be ready to sign up or pull their wallet out and or, you know, pay for a membership or whatever it is you're offering today.

499
00:36:29.380 --> 00:36:30.600
They are in the awareness

500
00:36:31.060 --> 00:36:36.605
stage. So we should have something to still supplement their needs. They are browsing the internet.

501
00:36:36.605 --> 00:36:37.905
They're looking for something.

502
00:36:39.005 --> 00:36:40.464
So if you could find,

503
00:36:40.765 --> 00:36:41.984
as David said,

504
00:36:42.765 --> 00:36:45.185
create some kind of a resource or

505
00:36:45.565 --> 00:36:47.805
linked linked to something on your site,

506
00:36:48.125 --> 00:36:50.545
but you know in exchange for an email address

507
00:36:51.770 --> 00:36:56.830
that that satisfy satisfy something that they're looking for, that that's gonna go a long way.

508
00:36:56.890 --> 00:37:00.910
And and the lead magnets start doing the work for you because now you're bringing,

509
00:37:01.690 --> 00:37:04.990
qualified prospective members into your top funnel.

510
00:37:05.050 --> 00:37:07.805
So you have to you have to look at the math on this.

511
00:37:07.805 --> 00:37:12.625
You know, let's just let's say a thousand people visit your site a month just using simple numbers here.

512
00:37:12.765 --> 00:37:16.765
Let's say 10% of them are actually people who would be potential members.

513
00:37:16.765 --> 00:37:19.025
Everyone else is just kinda like a looky loo.

514
00:37:19.430 --> 00:37:23.450
So out of those 10%, another 10% will eventually sign and pay,

515
00:37:23.990 --> 00:37:24.810
each month.

516
00:37:25.190 --> 00:37:25.690
So

517
00:37:26.070 --> 00:37:31.590
if if we could bring more people into the the top funnel, so we know a thousand people are visiting the site.

518
00:37:31.590 --> 00:37:34.410
If we can increase the 10% of people who are interested,

519
00:37:35.265 --> 00:37:42.964
in your solution to let's say 20%, those are the people who are filling out the forms the lead magnet forms and giving you their email address,

520
00:37:43.265 --> 00:37:46.325
you can increase your recurring revenue over time

521
00:37:46.625 --> 00:37:52.490
with the right lead magnets in the right places because you're just increasing the number of people that are coming through

522
00:37:52.870 --> 00:37:56.970
your top funnel of your website who are prospective and potential paying

523
00:37:57.270 --> 00:37:58.250
members. So,

524
00:37:58.710 --> 00:37:59.910
what's a good lead magnet?

525
00:37:59.910 --> 00:38:05.545
You know those are things like ebooks, like ten ten step guide for, you know, x y and z.

526
00:38:05.765 --> 00:38:09.065
Really what you want to do is is let me go back to slide one here.

527
00:38:10.325 --> 00:38:13.445
Your ebook should be just as compelling as your homepage title.

528
00:38:13.445 --> 00:38:17.464
It should be something that they want, some information that's easily digestible.

529
00:38:18.300 --> 00:38:20.480
Here's an email and then instant satisfaction

530
00:38:20.780 --> 00:38:25.440
after they receive it. If you don't know how to put together like a pdf and an ebook,

531
00:38:26.380 --> 00:38:30.075
the easiest thing to do is just kind of clone your contact us form

532
00:38:30.635 --> 00:38:38.335
and after they fill out that form redirect them to like a private page on your site that has just a regular web page that has the information

533
00:38:38.954 --> 00:38:43.535
there that you created with the text editor. That would be like the simplest simplest thing

534
00:38:44.220 --> 00:38:44.700
to do.

535
00:38:44.700 --> 00:39:01.085
Or even the newsletter sign up is have them fill out the newsletter form and then the email they get, the confirmation email they get when they fill out the newsletter form, include the link to the secret page where they can then consume the content that you promised them, that you would deliver to them.

536
00:39:01.085 --> 00:39:07.265
So a lot of it is connecting emotionally with people and giving them something that's going to

537
00:39:07.565 --> 00:39:11.420
want them to trade their email address for that valuable piece of information.

538
00:39:11.420 --> 00:39:14.400
And again, this is more for people in the awareness stage,

539
00:39:15.500 --> 00:39:22.880
who are just browsing and who will potentially and eventually turn into members, a small percentage of them, hopefully a large percentage of them.

540
00:39:23.885 --> 00:39:28.065
And last but not least, providing access to some of your free resources.

541
00:39:28.925 --> 00:39:31.345
Again this is one of those things we've really

542
00:39:31.885 --> 00:39:34.545
stressed a lot in previous webinars is providing

543
00:39:35.165 --> 00:39:38.385
free resources, free content to your website visitors.

544
00:39:38.780 --> 00:39:43.680
It allows again, we're we're trying to keep in mind the first time website visitors here

545
00:39:43.980 --> 00:39:47.839
because members who are already registered on your website, they're probably

546
00:39:48.140 --> 00:39:56.565
they probably already know what's on your home page and they're probably looking more at some of your internal pages for some for when they keep coming back to your site.

547
00:39:56.705 --> 00:39:58.005
So on your home page,

548
00:39:58.305 --> 00:40:03.045
you do wanna provide that access to some of your your invaluable free resources

549
00:40:03.425 --> 00:40:04.645
that you already have.

550
00:40:05.105 --> 00:40:07.605
This could be articles that your members are publishing.

551
00:40:07.665 --> 00:40:11.200
It could be blog articles that you as the website owner publish.

552
00:40:11.500 --> 00:40:13.119
Could be videos, tutorials,

553
00:40:14.060 --> 00:40:14.880
news insights,

554
00:40:15.580 --> 00:40:16.080
really

555
00:40:16.540 --> 00:40:17.040
anything,

556
00:40:17.420 --> 00:40:22.080
any content that is of value to these first time website visitors.

557
00:40:22.605 --> 00:40:25.665
Again, you have to figure out what it is why they're coming to your website.

558
00:40:25.805 --> 00:40:28.845
What problem do they have? What solution are they looking for?

559
00:40:28.845 --> 00:40:33.665
And if you can provide them a little nugget of a solution and some of these free resources,

560
00:40:34.365 --> 00:40:42.050
that's the first step in in building a relationship of trust with these website visitors that hopefully over time

561
00:40:42.350 --> 00:40:43.730
could evolve into,

562
00:40:44.750 --> 00:40:46.130
into a a membership.

563
00:40:46.590 --> 00:40:48.430
So there's a lot of different ways.

564
00:40:48.430 --> 00:40:55.255
We have a lot of different streaming widgets that you can implement on your homepage for all the different kinds of content you can have on your site.

565
00:40:55.555 --> 00:40:56.615
But, I think

566
00:40:57.075 --> 00:41:02.135
a big tip for this element at least is not to overdo it.

567
00:41:02.515 --> 00:41:04.550
If your website has articles,

568
00:41:04.850 --> 00:41:05.350
videos,

569
00:41:05.970 --> 00:41:06.950
photo galleries,

570
00:41:07.570 --> 00:41:08.070
and

571
00:41:08.450 --> 00:41:09.350
property listings,

572
00:41:09.650 --> 00:41:12.850
you probably don't want to display all of those on the home page.

573
00:41:12.850 --> 00:41:15.670
If you have all of that content, it can be a little overwhelming

574
00:41:16.210 --> 00:41:19.355
and visitors may just end up skimming over most of it.

575
00:41:19.655 --> 00:41:20.795
So figure out

576
00:41:21.175 --> 00:41:25.595
what piece of content or what free resource you have that's most valuable

577
00:41:25.975 --> 00:41:29.415
to these website visitors and then put that on the home page.

578
00:41:29.415 --> 00:41:35.900
And then from there, once they get into some of your inside pages, some of those content pages, they can further explore

579
00:41:36.200 --> 00:41:39.400
some of the additional resources that your website has to offer. Yeah.

580
00:41:39.400 --> 00:41:41.260
I think you made a really good point there.

581
00:41:41.400 --> 00:41:47.135
You know, when you're gonna showcase free resources, we what we mean is, you know, your your site is a public site.

582
00:41:47.135 --> 00:41:53.055
There's areas of your site that's that are probably members only and then there's areas of your site where anyone can browse and search.

583
00:41:53.055 --> 00:41:55.715
So that very well may be the local business directory,

584
00:41:56.095 --> 00:41:59.555
that you have. That could be all the events that you're listing on your site.

585
00:41:59.580 --> 00:42:01.200
What you wanna do on your homepage

586
00:42:01.740 --> 00:42:03.120
is take your strongest

587
00:42:03.660 --> 00:42:04.060
and,

588
00:42:04.620 --> 00:42:06.240
I guess most jam packed

589
00:42:06.700 --> 00:42:11.360
resource that has the most content. So when people go to that section, they're like, oh, wow.

590
00:42:11.675 --> 00:42:14.095
This site has a wealth of of information.

591
00:42:14.875 --> 00:42:20.795
What you don't want to do is, you know, link to your events and you only have one event posted in there.

592
00:42:20.795 --> 00:42:24.015
That's kind of like a weaker section or area of your site.

593
00:42:24.075 --> 00:42:26.075
So you don't really want to highlight that.

594
00:42:26.075 --> 00:42:34.609
You want to highlight the areas of your site that are the strongest and have your best content to showcase because you basically want to put your best foot forward

595
00:42:35.390 --> 00:42:41.250
with regard to the content that you have on your site that that is rich and that you have a lot of.

596
00:42:42.545 --> 00:42:49.845
Another thing to mention on top of this is let's say you don't have a lot of content on your site like events or articles or or whatnot or videos.

597
00:42:50.065 --> 00:42:52.164
A lot of that does take time to create.

598
00:42:52.704 --> 00:42:54.724
Maybe you're more comfortable with,

599
00:42:55.030 --> 00:42:58.330
you know giving people access to a Facebook group. We did a webinar

600
00:42:59.110 --> 00:43:08.970
a few webinars ago actually I think four or five where we talked about strategies on how to develop a Facebook group that then converts those Facebook group members

601
00:43:09.455 --> 00:43:10.835
into paying members

602
00:43:11.135 --> 00:43:15.395
of your site. So maybe you're more comfortable giving them free access to,

603
00:43:16.175 --> 00:43:19.315
you know, your again your Facebook group as one example.

604
00:43:19.855 --> 00:43:22.115
It could be different from industry to industry.

605
00:43:23.135 --> 00:43:24.035
You don't need

606
00:43:24.540 --> 00:43:26.800
so many different resources. Again, with

607
00:43:27.100 --> 00:43:34.720
with most of us, we are working on the site on our own or we have a very small team working with us so both time, money, and resources

608
00:43:35.020 --> 00:43:35.760
are limited.

609
00:43:36.220 --> 00:43:39.440
You wanna find out what's gonna appeal most to your industry.

610
00:43:39.665 --> 00:43:43.265
Maybe they wanna see videos, so create a strong video section on your site.

611
00:43:43.265 --> 00:43:45.605
Maybe they want articles, maybe they want PDFs,

612
00:43:46.224 --> 00:43:51.045
maybe they want a Facebook group. But just pick one that you're comfortable with personally,

613
00:43:51.744 --> 00:43:52.244
curating,

614
00:43:52.545 --> 00:43:53.845
moderating, and nurturing,

615
00:43:54.339 --> 00:43:55.400
and focus on

616
00:43:55.940 --> 00:43:58.839
developing that as your strong free resource.

617
00:43:59.140 --> 00:44:04.599
And what the point of the free re resource is, the most important thing, is to demonstrate your authority

618
00:44:04.980 --> 00:44:05.640
and credibility

619
00:44:06.099 --> 00:44:08.119
and to show people that you are established

620
00:44:08.495 --> 00:44:16.095
and that's gonna build that trust factor and really pass that sniff test when people are checking you out for the first time and wanna see if you're legitimate or not.

621
00:44:16.095 --> 00:44:19.555
So when you have that great even that one great free resource,

622
00:44:20.575 --> 00:44:25.270
that's that's gonna help convert a lot of people who may be on the fence on if

623
00:44:25.650 --> 00:44:28.710
if they like what they're seeing on your site or they're not.

624
00:44:29.090 --> 00:44:33.190
Something that we did at Brilliant Directories actually, I'm happy to share this,

625
00:44:33.650 --> 00:44:34.950
is our own blog.

626
00:44:35.330 --> 00:44:37.590
If you go to brilliantdirectories.com

627
00:44:37.944 --> 00:44:39.484
and go to the blog section,

628
00:44:40.105 --> 00:44:41.805
we actually had these resources.

629
00:44:42.664 --> 00:44:44.825
You know all the webinars are here and things like that.

630
00:44:44.825 --> 00:44:48.025
These were actually scattered on different pages of our site.

631
00:44:48.025 --> 00:44:50.444
We had a whole separate section for webinars.

632
00:44:51.039 --> 00:44:55.619
We had a separate section for kind of like tips for membership and directory sites.

633
00:44:55.839 --> 00:45:00.579
What we decided to do even for Brilliant Directories is bring it all into one place

634
00:45:01.119 --> 00:45:04.420
and, you know, if you come here now, now it's been a few years,

635
00:45:05.435 --> 00:45:10.415
you know there's a wealth of of articles here. If you came here and just looked at this blog,

636
00:45:11.035 --> 00:45:13.775
you would you obviously it is established but

637
00:45:14.075 --> 00:45:19.980
you know if you're just starting out you can give the impression which is the goal especially if you're starting out.

638
00:45:20.060 --> 00:45:24.160
You want to give the impression that you're established, you're credible, you have things together,

639
00:45:25.180 --> 00:45:29.180
and that people should trust you and and what you're doing and what your mission is.

640
00:45:29.180 --> 00:45:36.355
So try to think of what that one free resource is or multiple free resources that you can really excel at.

641
00:45:36.355 --> 00:45:40.375
And when people come there and check it out, they're like, wow. This is really a great organization.

642
00:45:40.595 --> 00:45:43.655
How can I get involved more? How can I join it?

643
00:45:43.795 --> 00:45:49.730
So I know that's a mouthful but those are some things to consider when we talk about offering a free resource.

644
00:45:49.730 --> 00:45:52.310
It's really how can I showcase my best content

645
00:45:52.770 --> 00:45:57.910
or put my best foot forward with with content that I want to engage people with?

646
00:45:58.450 --> 00:46:01.490
And with that said, we we've been showing you this sample site here.

647
00:46:01.490 --> 00:46:06.055
I think Dave, we were gonna kind of scroll down this page and just kinda

648
00:46:06.515 --> 00:46:13.075
show people how they can recreate, not necessarily this specific home page, but how we we added these elements here to the home page.

649
00:46:13.075 --> 00:46:13.575
Right?

650
00:46:13.954 --> 00:46:17.895
Yeah. It's pretty simple. We utilized some of the, some of the default

651
00:46:18.500 --> 00:46:19.079
homepage section

652
00:46:19.619 --> 00:46:20.119
options,

653
00:46:20.660 --> 00:46:22.440
and then we kind of mixed in

654
00:46:22.740 --> 00:46:27.640
some custom homepage content, and we utilized the new the new table option

655
00:46:28.020 --> 00:46:29.400
in the text editor

656
00:46:29.700 --> 00:46:30.839
that we explained

657
00:46:31.140 --> 00:46:35.635
a few webinars ago. I'm just gonna quickly go through the the sections, David,

658
00:46:36.095 --> 00:46:38.275
just to show people where we edited things.

659
00:46:38.415 --> 00:46:42.915
So first, the hero section, we're all very familiar with this. If you go to design settings,

660
00:46:43.375 --> 00:46:45.475
and then you have your home page layout

661
00:46:45.800 --> 00:46:47.500
and your homepage search settings.

662
00:46:47.880 --> 00:46:52.380
This of course is here. We've we've, selected our image, some of the orientation

663
00:46:52.680 --> 00:46:53.180
options,

664
00:46:53.720 --> 00:46:59.000
and that two button code thing here, I think we're gonna be converting this to just options rather than code.

665
00:46:59.000 --> 00:47:05.684
But to get the code example here, there is button example code and this is what's represented here as the two buttons.

666
00:47:05.744 --> 00:47:11.924
And of course, you wanna direct people to the different areas of your site that you wanna channel them and funnel them down into.

667
00:47:13.730 --> 00:47:17.430
So that was there. And then, David, you scroll down here where I'm seeing a bunch

668
00:47:17.730 --> 00:47:19.510
of images and text.

669
00:47:20.050 --> 00:47:23.990
What did you incorporate here on the page? How'd you incorporate this here?

670
00:47:25.170 --> 00:47:25.990
Yeah. So,

671
00:47:26.609 --> 00:47:27.589
as you showed

672
00:47:27.984 --> 00:47:29.445
at the beginning of the webinar,

673
00:47:30.145 --> 00:47:35.525
that hero divider, eventually, you'll be able to have, images there instead of just icons.

674
00:47:35.825 --> 00:47:37.045
So when that's done,

675
00:47:37.345 --> 00:47:41.359
you could utilize that option, that feature for this top row.

676
00:47:41.420 --> 00:47:47.279
For right now, we just did that in or as part of the custom homepage content utilizing the,

677
00:47:47.579 --> 00:47:48.640
the table tool.

678
00:47:49.420 --> 00:47:52.400
So what we did is the homepage section order, everyone.

679
00:47:52.785 --> 00:47:53.845
The first section,

680
00:47:54.464 --> 00:47:57.365
David had selected custom home page content.

681
00:47:57.905 --> 00:48:03.285
So if you're not going to stream like events and things like that, you can actually put your own custom home page content.

682
00:48:03.665 --> 00:48:06.390
Let me click here so we can edit that home page content.

683
00:48:06.390 --> 00:48:08.730
This is something we've covered in the previous webinar

684
00:48:09.030 --> 00:48:10.890
is you can now create tables

685
00:48:11.589 --> 00:48:16.410
of, to organize text and images, get them on nice evenly, even rows.

686
00:48:17.270 --> 00:48:19.130
So this is what we're seeing on the homepage

687
00:48:19.510 --> 00:48:20.010
and

688
00:48:21.085 --> 00:48:24.045
you can put whatever you want here. It really gives you the freedom when you do this.

689
00:48:24.045 --> 00:48:27.585
When you do this, I've I've seen people, they're not even using the other streaming

690
00:48:27.965 --> 00:48:29.425
content. They're just creating

691
00:48:29.725 --> 00:48:32.305
a killer homepage now with just with these tables.

692
00:48:32.845 --> 00:48:35.185
So we can see here we just created a table

693
00:48:35.550 --> 00:48:37.150
and here's the table option here guys.

694
00:48:37.150 --> 00:48:40.610
You can have one, two, three, or four columns and rows, etcetera.

695
00:48:41.470 --> 00:48:46.530
And what's what's really nice is you can drag them to make the images larger or smaller,

696
00:48:47.150 --> 00:48:48.050
for your liking.

697
00:48:48.405 --> 00:48:52.185
But if we scroll down here, you can you can really easily create these things.

698
00:48:53.845 --> 00:48:55.705
Here it talks about what we're about.

699
00:48:56.405 --> 00:48:59.545
Here's here's the school. This is a table with two columns

700
00:48:59.845 --> 00:49:03.305
and inside one of the cells, there's another table with two columns

701
00:49:03.770 --> 00:49:07.390
to help organize content here. And then there's a bullet list here.

702
00:49:08.569 --> 00:49:13.150
So again you could put kind of like a table in a table with two columns to help organize your content.

703
00:49:13.290 --> 00:49:15.069
And then of course the member testimonial

704
00:49:15.609 --> 00:49:20.684
is just the image on the left. It's again another two column table. And then the text on the right.

705
00:49:20.684 --> 00:49:24.224
And of course, we're just giving the text a different color

706
00:49:24.765 --> 00:49:25.265
here,

707
00:49:26.365 --> 00:49:30.625
and, just some styling to make it stand out a bit. So you selected

708
00:49:31.005 --> 00:49:35.960
custom homepage content, David, and that's what we're seeing here. Let me scroll down a bit.

709
00:49:37.619 --> 00:49:41.400
Yeah. And that recent table update really made all of this possible

710
00:49:41.700 --> 00:49:44.680
without the need to know any HTML or CSS.

711
00:49:46.100 --> 00:49:51.075
Right. You're just kind of most more like Microsoft Word or something like that, which is nice.

712
00:49:51.075 --> 00:49:51.575
Exactly.

713
00:49:52.355 --> 00:49:57.715
So then after this testimonial, which is the last thing on this page, let's go back to the design settings.

714
00:49:57.715 --> 00:50:01.175
You have section two. You're showing the about and the join offer

715
00:50:01.475 --> 00:50:02.855
module that we have.

716
00:50:03.200 --> 00:50:10.260
And this module, it has those two boxes, so it's an easy way to add some calls to action to your home page.

717
00:50:10.560 --> 00:50:15.220
As you can see, we have the big button on the left, then we have the smaller link on the right.

718
00:50:15.695 --> 00:50:22.275
And another recent update was the ability to choose different background colors for all of these homepage sections.

719
00:50:22.655 --> 00:50:24.435
So just to break up the monotony

720
00:50:25.055 --> 00:50:34.779
of having the entire homepage be white, I selected a light gray just to help make that one section stand out a little bit and help break up the home page.

721
00:50:35.799 --> 00:50:41.259
And so you'll see right here selecting the light blue, that'll change on the front end as well.

722
00:50:44.025 --> 00:50:49.565
Oh, yeah. Nice. I have some good news for you guys also. I should have added in the b d lab updates.

723
00:50:49.865 --> 00:50:51.805
This these two modules here,

724
00:50:52.425 --> 00:50:52.925
currently

725
00:50:53.464 --> 00:50:55.244
let me just toggle this closed.

726
00:50:55.625 --> 00:50:57.405
You know, you edit it down here.

727
00:50:57.760 --> 00:50:59.700
Right now they're just text inputs

728
00:51:00.240 --> 00:51:03.060
so styling it has been a little bit difficult for people.

729
00:51:03.440 --> 00:51:06.820
We're going to be updating this to be the text editor.

730
00:51:06.880 --> 00:51:13.185
So you can fully style these input fields here with all the same settings that you would have on a web page.

731
00:51:13.185 --> 00:51:14.405
So you can add images

732
00:51:14.865 --> 00:51:16.305
and everything else you see here.

733
00:51:16.305 --> 00:51:22.885
So those two modules, the about and the webs, the the join offer, basically, they're just two separate modules.

734
00:51:23.040 --> 00:51:25.620
You'll be able to have the full text editor here,

735
00:51:26.160 --> 00:51:27.060
to really decorate,

736
00:51:27.360 --> 00:51:28.100
and enhance

737
00:51:28.400 --> 00:51:29.380
these two boxes

738
00:51:29.760 --> 00:51:32.820
more so than just the plain text that we're seeing here.

739
00:51:33.360 --> 00:51:36.260
Yeah. That'll really add a lot of functionality to those two.

740
00:51:37.125 --> 00:51:41.445
Alright. So and then for section three, I guess we're just using three sections.

741
00:51:41.445 --> 00:51:44.265
You're showing the recent member articles with the sidebar

742
00:51:44.645 --> 00:51:45.145
there.

743
00:51:45.925 --> 00:51:49.305
So if we toggle these closed, then there's section order options.

744
00:51:50.120 --> 00:51:54.300
So these are some sec check out the latest articles for members. We're showing three results,

745
00:51:55.000 --> 00:51:56.940
and that's what we have down here,

746
00:51:57.320 --> 00:51:59.740
with a sidebar displaying as well.

747
00:52:00.920 --> 00:52:02.620
And you can obviously select,

748
00:52:03.025 --> 00:52:06.885
which sidebar you wanna use. So you could choose not to use a sidebar,

749
00:52:07.585 --> 00:52:10.485
but having that sidebar provides a little bit more information.

750
00:52:10.865 --> 00:52:18.850
You could create a new sidebar as well, add some, some different widgets in there if you wanted to just display some some information specifically

751
00:52:19.390 --> 00:52:24.190
for the home page that's not being utilized in a sidebar elsewhere on your site.

752
00:52:24.190 --> 00:52:30.555
So there's a lot of options with that. But like Jason mentioned, if you really don't need to use,

753
00:52:30.935 --> 00:52:33.195
any of those streaming home page widgets,

754
00:52:33.655 --> 00:52:36.155
you can just use the custom home page content.

755
00:52:36.855 --> 00:52:42.315
You can utilize those tables now, so it's really easy to format the page and stylize it.

756
00:52:42.935 --> 00:52:43.435
It's

757
00:52:43.860 --> 00:52:46.440
just as easy as using Microsoft Word now.

758
00:52:46.900 --> 00:52:53.800
And, again, it largely depends on who your target audience is, why they're coming to your website, what solutions you're offering them.

759
00:52:53.940 --> 00:52:59.080
But, in many cases, I think offering a combination of those streaming home page widgets,

760
00:52:59.994 --> 00:53:00.815
along with

761
00:53:01.195 --> 00:53:04.015
custom home page content can really strike a good balance.

762
00:53:05.035 --> 00:53:05.535
And,

763
00:53:06.395 --> 00:53:09.915
yeah, I agree. And I think less is more on the home page, to be honest.

764
00:53:10.395 --> 00:53:13.295
Keeping it simple, having good messaging can go a long way.

765
00:53:13.400 --> 00:53:17.180
I'm checking now this replace image thing is is working here. So,

766
00:53:17.560 --> 00:53:19.100
you just click on the two arrows

767
00:53:19.480 --> 00:53:19.800
and,

768
00:53:20.440 --> 00:53:25.660
you can replace your image, whether selecting an image or however you want. So,

769
00:53:26.225 --> 00:53:29.665
that's working there as well. Alright. Hope you guys like that tip of the week.

770
00:53:29.985 --> 00:53:33.825
Let's take some questions from you guys. I'm sure, there are some out there.

771
00:53:34.545 --> 00:53:36.165
Darshan, how are you today?

772
00:53:36.465 --> 00:53:40.400
I'm doing good. How are you? Good. Good. How'd you like the presentation so far today?

773
00:53:40.400 --> 00:53:44.160
Oh, fantastic. Thank you for putting this together. Awesome. A lot of great content. Great. Great.

774
00:53:44.160 --> 00:53:45.859
And, what's your question for us?

775
00:53:46.240 --> 00:53:50.625
So I am a relatively new member. I'm enjoying the experience so far.

776
00:53:51.585 --> 00:53:53.745
So as so as everyone, I'm trying to get,

777
00:53:54.465 --> 00:53:55.685
more members registered.

778
00:53:56.385 --> 00:54:04.990
So I'm starting off with a list of about 300 members that I've essentially scraped and, you know, are part of my, the industry that I'm catering towards.

779
00:54:05.530 --> 00:54:09.290
Now my question is, how is it what is the best way to go and solicit them?

780
00:54:09.290 --> 00:54:12.490
Is it through claim listings? Is it to add them as free listings?

781
00:54:12.490 --> 00:54:14.750
And, you know, what are the advantages and disadvantages

782
00:54:15.210 --> 00:54:18.305
of those two? That's a really good question. A lot of people,

783
00:54:19.005 --> 00:54:21.105
you know, they acquire email lists whether,

784
00:54:21.485 --> 00:54:25.245
you know, they purchase you know, you could you could buy data basically online and stuff fine.

785
00:54:25.245 --> 00:54:30.865
But how you contact them really sets the tone of of how people are gonna perceive your site moving forward.

786
00:54:31.320 --> 00:54:31.820
Delicately

787
00:54:32.200 --> 00:54:34.540
is is is how you should approach it.

788
00:54:35.720 --> 00:54:39.020
If you wanted to call them first, I'd have some talking points,

789
00:54:40.120 --> 00:54:41.260
figured out first.

790
00:54:41.800 --> 00:54:43.455
Why you're reaching out to them,

791
00:54:44.415 --> 00:54:47.635
what your site has to offer them, why you've chosen them,

792
00:54:48.335 --> 00:54:51.155
you know, to to as as a person to contact.

793
00:54:52.815 --> 00:54:56.275
Explaining those things to them and then what they can get from your site.

794
00:54:57.050 --> 00:55:00.330
Those are some talking points that you should already have in place.

795
00:55:00.330 --> 00:55:03.790
Now the reason I recommend maybe calling one or two of them is

796
00:55:04.090 --> 00:55:08.730
so and then again, calling sounds really weird, but getting hands on and just

797
00:55:09.290 --> 00:55:10.910
even if they get mad at you,

798
00:55:11.385 --> 00:55:18.685
getting their feedback and and reaction is gonna help you in how you maybe send an email blast to the next group of members.

799
00:55:19.945 --> 00:55:22.925
And then that's another tip is if you're gonna send an email,

800
00:55:23.385 --> 00:55:27.640
don't send it to the whole bunch at one time. Send it to a smaller sample.

801
00:55:28.100 --> 00:55:30.980
See what the feedback is. Maybe you don't get a favorable feedback.

802
00:55:30.980 --> 00:55:35.080
Maybe you do get a favorable feedback. But that way, you can adjust your messaging,

803
00:55:36.020 --> 00:55:36.760
to them.

804
00:55:37.220 --> 00:55:38.200
And then lastly,

805
00:55:38.835 --> 00:55:40.055
relate to their ego.

806
00:55:40.515 --> 00:55:48.455
You know, let them know that you're they're a noteworthy person in the industry and you think that they'd be a perfect match for the service you're offering.

807
00:55:49.234 --> 00:55:50.775
They have a lot to benefit.

808
00:55:52.080 --> 00:55:56.020
You know, kinda kinda just build them up a bit that they're the perfect person,

809
00:55:56.480 --> 00:55:59.380
based on their experience and and whatnot in their industry,

810
00:56:00.000 --> 00:56:02.080
to be a part of your of your site.

811
00:56:02.080 --> 00:56:08.835
But the most important thing is what value or ongoing value are they gonna be provided with for being a part of your site.

812
00:56:08.835 --> 00:56:12.775
And if that's a true and genuine value that you're able to deliver for them,

813
00:56:13.555 --> 00:56:15.575
you know, then give them a small taste,

814
00:56:16.355 --> 00:56:20.490
no risk, you know, kinda like a a free trial where you don't have to put a credit card.

815
00:56:20.490 --> 00:56:22.030
There's no risk. There's no obligation.

816
00:56:22.650 --> 00:56:26.990
That's another a good way to approach it if you're if you're gonna be proactive in in approaching

817
00:56:27.290 --> 00:56:28.490
them to join your site.

818
00:56:28.490 --> 00:56:34.670
So there's no silver bullet when you're doing, like, claim listings or you're trying to contact a cold email list.

819
00:56:35.225 --> 00:56:35.885
You're basically

820
00:56:36.265 --> 00:56:38.925
prospecting. It's cold calling or cold emailing.

821
00:56:39.465 --> 00:56:43.945
So you just have to come at them with the right angle, and and that right angle is different for every industry.

822
00:56:43.945 --> 00:56:52.250
So would you even consider adding them as a free member or claim claim listing before reaching out to them or do you think people would be kind of bothered by that?

823
00:56:53.510 --> 00:56:56.150
Again, it depends on the industry how sensitive people are.

824
00:56:56.150 --> 00:57:03.025
Generally, people won't if you tell them like, hey, we found you as as, you know, a noteworthy professional in the industry and we've added you to our site.

825
00:57:03.025 --> 00:57:04.805
We invite you to add more content.

826
00:57:05.105 --> 00:57:09.445
If you join you can get the referrals that your profile brings and things like that.

827
00:57:10.385 --> 00:57:15.765
The way you frame their their profile you can you can say we've showcased you on our on our site.

828
00:57:16.660 --> 00:57:21.400
You know, high highlight them in a special way. Make it seem more than just like a business listing.

829
00:57:21.620 --> 00:57:25.560
Make it seem like something more prestigious. And again, that plays to the ego,

830
00:57:26.260 --> 00:57:31.000
of you know, everyone wants to be put on a high pedestal and and and champion. So,

831
00:57:31.335 --> 00:57:38.375
if you could do that in a tasteful manner that that caters to them, you'll probably get less backlash, from adding those people to to your site.

832
00:57:38.375 --> 00:57:40.474
And just another thing, if if you're adding

833
00:57:40.775 --> 00:57:45.580
adding them to your site and it's, I guess, it's information that's part of the public domain,

834
00:57:46.200 --> 00:57:52.840
I think it's it's perfectly fine to add that type of content to your site, that information that's already part of the public domain.

835
00:57:52.840 --> 00:58:01.585
But if it's additional private information or information that's not normally shared, I'm not sure, but you might wanna check if you have that permission to include that on your site.

836
00:58:01.585 --> 00:58:07.445
So you might wanna start with the basic information and then invite them to come add more information to their profiles.

837
00:58:08.065 --> 00:58:12.305
Okay. Thank you very much. Okay. I know it's not a perfect answer. There's no silver bullet, but,

838
00:58:13.100 --> 00:58:16.560
you know, just some things to consider, Dershon, when you're when you're approaching them.

839
00:58:16.860 --> 00:58:19.680
We do have our good friend Ken here. How are you doing, Ken?

840
00:58:20.060 --> 00:58:24.640
Hey. Very well. How are you guys? Good. Good. Thanks for joining the webinar today. My pleasure.

841
00:58:25.020 --> 00:58:26.720
And what's your question for us?

842
00:58:27.684 --> 00:58:31.944
Simple one, I think. Okay. I'm just wondering if there's a way to,

843
00:58:32.724 --> 00:58:34.825
like an undo feature if you

844
00:58:35.444 --> 00:58:35.944
save

845
00:58:36.565 --> 00:58:42.010
something that you're working on. If you're working on a page and you save it and then realize you

846
00:58:42.390 --> 00:58:47.130
made an error for whatever other reason, want to go back to a previous version,

847
00:58:47.750 --> 00:58:48.410
is there

848
00:58:48.869 --> 00:58:50.170
a feature for that?

849
00:58:50.710 --> 00:58:52.250
Okay. So good question.

850
00:58:52.790 --> 00:58:57.675
I've changed the images here on the this home page example. Let's save the changes.

851
00:58:58.775 --> 00:58:59.275
Okay.

852
00:58:59.815 --> 00:59:04.635
That's saved. You notice the page didn't reload. We just got this kind of alert here.

853
00:59:05.655 --> 00:59:07.035
I should be able

854
00:59:07.390 --> 00:59:11.330
to revert back with using this button when it comes to the text editor.

855
00:59:12.670 --> 00:59:13.730
Unless the page

856
00:59:14.190 --> 00:59:18.130
page actually reloads, you're you're not going to be able to use this undo functionality.

857
00:59:18.990 --> 00:59:21.970
Something we're looking at in the in the in the future

858
00:59:22.555 --> 00:59:26.655
is not just for web pages, but if you're kinda working on a menu or,

859
00:59:27.835 --> 00:59:32.575
a custom widget and things like that, we do want to include in the future revision history

860
00:59:33.115 --> 00:59:34.415
so that you can,

861
00:59:34.869 --> 00:59:36.250
up to a certain level,

862
00:59:36.550 --> 00:59:38.650
revert back your changes to a previous

863
00:59:38.950 --> 00:59:44.790
version of a specific widget or a menu or some individual item that you've edited that you wanna go back on.

864
00:59:44.790 --> 00:59:46.330
It's not quite there yet,

865
00:59:46.950 --> 00:59:49.050
but it is something that is on our road map.

866
00:59:49.575 --> 00:59:52.655
Okay. I'm looking forward to seeing that. Okay.

867
00:59:52.655 --> 00:59:57.755
In a worst Speaking of someone who makes the occasional error. Yeah. Well, in a worst case scenario,

868
00:59:58.055 --> 01:00:02.795
let's say you had a staff member and they've or something happened like you accidentally deleted

869
01:00:03.520 --> 01:00:06.660
a batch of members or something a little more extreme,

870
01:00:07.760 --> 01:00:12.180
all brilliant directory sites. We do have a one day backup of every site.

871
01:00:12.720 --> 01:00:14.740
If you have the fourteen day,

872
01:00:15.520 --> 01:00:20.405
website backup or the VIP add ons club, We have fourteen consecutive days

873
01:00:20.705 --> 01:00:21.445
of backups

874
01:00:21.825 --> 01:00:29.365
and in many cases if it's just one part of your site, maybe you don't want a backup, a reset of your entire site from the last fourteen days or whatever.

875
01:00:29.505 --> 01:00:33.799
We can restore for example, maybe just you just need your web pages restored

876
01:00:34.099 --> 01:00:37.559
or just your design settings restored. You don't need the whole site,

877
01:00:38.020 --> 01:00:39.640
backed up or or sorry, restored.

878
01:00:40.260 --> 01:00:42.760
You can email the support team for those things.

879
01:00:42.900 --> 01:00:45.480
And again, that's another thing we're looking at in the future

880
01:00:46.065 --> 01:00:46.565
is

881
01:00:46.865 --> 01:00:53.045
what what Ken was originally talking about was a revision history and being able to revert revisions of specific items.

882
01:00:53.345 --> 01:00:55.685
We also are looking forward to,

883
01:00:56.065 --> 01:00:56.885
in the future

884
01:00:57.505 --> 01:00:59.204
being able to put the restore,

885
01:00:59.744 --> 01:01:00.244
functionality

886
01:01:00.545 --> 01:01:09.580
in your hands where up to a certain amount of days that the backups are available, you can manually go there and reset certain parts restore certain parts of your site,

887
01:01:09.880 --> 01:01:13.320
based on a certain day that you know it was correct or something like that.

888
01:01:13.320 --> 01:01:23.255
So, those kinds of things are not only gonna help our support department by giving you guys more power to kind of, as Ken said, you know, undo some, you know, oopsie daisies that you might do on your site.

889
01:01:23.635 --> 01:01:35.690
But I think it's gonna help everyone have a little more confidence in working on their sites as well because it's if you do make an oopsie daisy on your site, you can always go back to a a revision or per previous version of that

890
01:01:35.990 --> 01:01:36.970
element. So,

891
01:01:37.670 --> 01:01:40.490
it's not exactly close, but it is in our roadmap,

892
01:01:40.869 --> 01:01:41.369
for

893
01:01:42.070 --> 01:01:43.210
this coming year.

894
01:01:43.715 --> 01:01:45.575
All right. Good question there, Ken.

895
01:01:46.595 --> 01:01:48.135
All right. We got Paul.

896
01:01:48.915 --> 01:01:49.975
How are you doing, Paul?

897
01:01:50.515 --> 01:01:51.555
Yeah. Hi there.

898
01:01:52.115 --> 01:01:56.770
I'm a new member looking at creating my first, BD website. Alright. Welcome to my

899
01:01:57.730 --> 01:02:00.710
focus thank you. I'm looking more of a focus on a regional,

900
01:02:01.809 --> 01:02:02.309
guide

901
01:02:03.010 --> 01:02:05.029
rather than a, industry guide.

902
01:02:05.410 --> 01:02:05.809
And,

903
01:02:06.210 --> 01:02:08.289
just going back to your tips for,

904
01:02:09.010 --> 01:02:11.270
about listing your website's benefits,

905
01:02:11.945 --> 01:02:13.645
making that quite important.

906
01:02:14.105 --> 01:02:15.405
You refer to Yelp.

907
01:02:15.865 --> 01:02:16.685
So I'm wondering,

908
01:02:17.465 --> 01:02:18.525
obviously, the

909
01:02:18.825 --> 01:02:19.305
the,

910
01:02:20.105 --> 01:02:20.605
revenue

911
01:02:20.905 --> 01:02:23.405
coming in to sustain the business would be

912
01:02:23.940 --> 01:02:25.640
from people paying for listing.

913
01:02:26.180 --> 01:02:27.320
But would you think

914
01:02:27.940 --> 01:02:35.079
it's important to list the benefits to the end user being the the people looking for businesses, or do you want those

915
01:02:35.540 --> 01:02:38.475
benefits to be, you know, why a business should be

916
01:02:39.195 --> 01:02:40.175
creating a profile?

917
01:02:40.715 --> 01:02:43.615
Because you mentioned the Yelp example was almost bearing

918
01:02:44.421 --> 01:02:44.921
the

919
01:02:45.728 --> 01:02:46.228
become

920
01:02:47.035 --> 01:02:48.495
a business member at the bottom.

921
01:02:49.435 --> 01:02:50.255
Good question.

922
01:02:50.810 --> 01:02:56.810
I would I would in in that case, the the homepage should be consumer facing, the end user.

923
01:02:56.810 --> 01:02:59.710
The benefits should be for the end user. Why should they

924
01:03:00.010 --> 01:03:02.270
delve deeper into the site to search?

925
01:03:03.335 --> 01:03:08.234
And then the afterthought of that is okay how to you know after that's been established,

926
01:03:08.694 --> 01:03:17.760
you don't want to totally hide it, but you do want to give the business an opportunity to participate on your site if they're part of that that local region.

927
01:03:18.620 --> 01:03:19.680
I I don't normally,

928
01:03:20.380 --> 01:03:22.880
unmute two people at a time, but we do have

929
01:03:23.180 --> 01:03:23.680
Colette.

930
01:03:23.740 --> 01:03:29.920
Colette, I'm wondering if I can unmute your microphone because I know your website is specific to a region.

931
01:03:30.305 --> 01:03:35.445
And I'm wondering if maybe, you could provide some of your own insight from your experience

932
01:03:35.985 --> 01:03:37.045
on how you

933
01:03:37.505 --> 01:03:41.765
how do you get businesses to join your site? What do you showcase on your on your homepage?

934
01:03:42.305 --> 01:03:43.925
Is it okay to unmute you, Colette?

935
01:03:44.559 --> 01:03:46.819
Yes sure Jason happy to help out.

936
01:03:48.000 --> 01:03:49.779
So I did try a bit with

937
01:03:50.079 --> 01:03:55.460
claim listings and all of that but as you said Jason the best option is

938
01:03:57.200 --> 01:03:57.700
phoning

939
01:03:58.445 --> 01:03:59.985
making that personal connection,

940
01:04:00.765 --> 01:04:01.265
offering

941
01:04:01.805 --> 01:04:04.625
more than they expect. All of those have done

942
01:04:05.005 --> 01:04:09.185
wonders for my website and especially during this lockdown session.

943
01:04:09.645 --> 01:04:10.625
I've been offering

944
01:04:11.005 --> 01:04:11.505
free

945
01:04:12.420 --> 01:04:17.160
listings for people who are offering vouchers to use after lockdown has finished.

946
01:04:18.980 --> 01:04:25.000
So it's really just about connecting with the community so no matter whether it's a small town or a region

947
01:04:25.540 --> 01:04:27.480
try to be as personal as possible.

948
01:04:28.655 --> 01:04:29.135
Very good.

949
01:04:29.135 --> 01:04:38.115
So we're on your home page here and again if I'm a consumer I'm loving everything I'm seeing here because it's all geared towards providing me with some valuable information.

950
01:04:38.975 --> 01:04:44.490
And then up here at the top we can see you have add your business. So it's not totally hidden.

951
01:04:44.490 --> 01:04:45.549
It's just not

952
01:04:46.010 --> 01:04:47.470
all over the home page.

953
01:04:47.930 --> 01:04:51.390
The home page content as you scroll down is geared

954
01:04:51.690 --> 01:04:52.829
towards the consumer.

955
01:04:53.724 --> 01:04:54.545
Thank you, Colette.

956
01:04:55.165 --> 01:04:56.385
Thanks for that. And also,

957
01:04:56.925 --> 01:05:01.405
I've chatted with Colette recently on Facebook. So thanks for your support, Colette, in New Zealand.

958
01:05:01.405 --> 01:05:01.645
So,

959
01:05:02.685 --> 01:05:04.045
and thanks for answering the question.

960
01:05:04.045 --> 01:05:08.599
It's pretty much reinforcing what you said about Yelp, having all the value for the consumers,

961
01:05:08.900 --> 01:05:09.640
the end user,

962
01:05:10.740 --> 01:05:12.500
front and center, and have the,

963
01:05:13.299 --> 01:05:15.640
the link for the business sort of off to the side.

964
01:05:16.099 --> 01:05:19.619
Cool. Cool. Good stuff there. And again, it's different for every industry.

965
01:05:19.619 --> 01:05:23.234
In this case, it's it's, you know, it's a local business directory in a way.

966
01:05:23.234 --> 01:05:25.155
There's more to it, but that's basically what it is.

967
01:05:25.155 --> 01:05:35.550
So we do want to give the consumer what they're hungry for first, and then the businesses will fall in line knowing that our site is attracting the consumers based on the content we're showcasing on the site.

968
01:05:35.790 --> 01:05:37.490
So thank you for that question, Paul.

969
01:05:37.790 --> 01:05:40.290
Let's see if we could take another question or two here.

970
01:05:40.750 --> 01:05:43.970
Alright. Let's come back to, to Rich here. How you doing, Rich?

971
01:05:45.070 --> 01:05:46.910
Great, Jason. Oh, I'm good. Hey.

972
01:05:46.910 --> 01:05:52.485
Quick question on the, what you described earlier about, you know, creating a profile for someone asking them to update.

973
01:05:52.625 --> 01:05:57.125
Is that similar or, you know, to the claim you're listing? I mean, how does that differ?

974
01:05:57.745 --> 01:06:01.205
So the official way the claim listing works is,

975
01:06:02.550 --> 01:06:06.010
I don't I can't think of an example off top of my head to show but,

976
01:06:07.270 --> 01:06:10.970
if they happen to stumble upon their business on your site,

977
01:06:12.070 --> 01:06:16.730
they can then it says there's a banner that says claim this listing or profile.

978
01:06:17.664 --> 01:06:19.125
And if they click on that,

979
01:06:19.825 --> 01:06:24.085
you can choose where the link goes to. Maybe you want it to go directly to the sign up page.

980
01:06:24.545 --> 01:06:33.330
Some we we try to recommend not leading them to a free sign up because then competitors can hijack the claim listing if it's free.

981
01:06:33.869 --> 01:06:39.090
So again, it might not be the case. It might not be abused on your site, but just a consideration.

982
01:06:40.190 --> 01:06:43.935
But you can direct them to where they can just self automate it.

983
01:06:44.015 --> 01:06:54.995
They can claim the listing, click the button, go to the sign up page, and after they complete the sign up form for whatever membership plan you direct them to, they'll then have ownership of that profile.

984
01:06:55.375 --> 01:06:58.355
The claim listing banner will no longer show on the listing,

985
01:06:59.020 --> 01:07:04.320
and they'll be able to add and control the content on that profile there as if they signed up as a regular member.

986
01:07:04.700 --> 01:07:05.200
Now

987
01:07:05.580 --> 01:07:12.675
what you can do if you want is if you don't want to use claim listing, you can certainly add profiles to your site

988
01:07:13.075 --> 01:07:15.875
and then just email them saying, hey we've added you to our site.

989
01:07:15.875 --> 01:07:22.695
Do you want the login access or do you want us to upgrade, you know, do you want to be an official member on our site?

990
01:07:23.235 --> 01:07:26.935
And at that point you can maybe manually provide them with their login information

991
01:07:27.579 --> 01:07:31.119
or something like that. They don't have to go through the claim listing process.

992
01:07:31.500 --> 01:07:40.720
So those are two different ways you can give people access to their profiles, whether it's manual or the self automated method of with the claim listing add on where they do it all themselves.

993
01:07:41.785 --> 01:07:43.785
Yeah. I like that idea the second and,

994
01:07:44.745 --> 01:07:45.225
the latter.

995
01:07:45.225 --> 01:07:52.665
I mean, I think what the earlier person was asking, is there, you know, any, best practices as far as, like, if we put a,

996
01:07:53.385 --> 01:08:00.040
you know, a sponsor or a company on there, you know, with their logo or some of their content to create some interest and excitement.

997
01:08:00.660 --> 01:08:05.060
But is there any pushback of, like, hey. We didn't authorize this or that kind of thing?

998
01:08:05.060 --> 01:08:08.115
Is there any best practices or, like you said, so long as it's Yeah.

999
01:08:08.115 --> 01:08:09.975
It's possible you could get pushback.

1000
01:08:10.355 --> 01:08:13.975
I mean, in the worst case, you just take it you take it down at their request.

1001
01:08:14.995 --> 01:08:17.015
It shouldn't be any problem with that.

1002
01:08:17.234 --> 01:08:21.335
But if you are concerned, you just might wanna approach with an extra step of caution,

1003
01:08:22.090 --> 01:08:23.469
in those cases.

1004
01:08:24.410 --> 01:08:31.529
But yeah, getting people to if you're gonna add listing we always recommend people say common question is how do I get my members to join my site?

1005
01:08:31.529 --> 01:08:35.710
I don't have members. Well, we say why don't you just add your first hundred members yourself?

1006
01:08:36.905 --> 01:08:41.865
You know, if you don't have people ready to join just add them and then see if they want to stick around.

1007
01:08:41.865 --> 01:08:44.525
Contact them, call them, let them know you've added them.

1008
01:08:45.065 --> 01:08:49.245
You love what they do in the industry. Again, play to their ego. You you want them to participate.

1009
01:08:51.409 --> 01:09:01.170
Give them your first hundred people like the free pro membership or premium membership that you're gonna offer to future people so they feel extra special that they got in, you know,

1010
01:09:01.729 --> 01:09:04.149
early bird or whatever it is. But

1011
01:09:04.465 --> 01:09:09.104
if you just if you're just getting the ball started, don't wait for your members to do something.

1012
01:09:09.104 --> 01:09:13.104
Just be proactive and and do it yourself and figure it out along the way.

1013
01:09:13.425 --> 01:09:17.265
At least you're being productive in that sense. Yeah. I like that idea. It's kinda like,

1014
01:09:18.050 --> 01:09:22.770
putting cars in the parking lot when you open a business, you know, create some, interest.

1015
01:09:22.770 --> 01:09:27.910
And people I don't think like, you know, joining or going into a restaurant if there's no cars in the parking lot.

1016
01:09:28.050 --> 01:09:30.530
Exactly. So some people get stuck on the chicken or the egg.

1017
01:09:30.530 --> 01:09:32.785
Like, why are visitors gonna search if I don't have have members?

1018
01:09:32.785 --> 01:09:35.404
Why are members gonna join if I don't if I don't

1019
01:09:35.864 --> 01:09:37.085
have visitors?

1020
01:09:37.465 --> 01:09:41.085
There's a flip side to that also is, you know, very common practices.

1021
01:09:41.304 --> 01:09:45.564
We always say you're building a marketplace like Uber has drivers and they have riders.

1022
01:09:45.944 --> 01:09:51.300
So you're building a marketplace if first you need to get one side of the marketplace.

1023
01:09:51.680 --> 01:10:00.580
So maybe you have a secondary product or service or as we talked about a lead magnet like an ebook and you build the list of one half of your marketplace

1024
01:10:01.055 --> 01:10:12.275
And then once you have that one half of the marketplace, then you can start advertising to the second half of the marketplace saying, okay, now we can really make the intended connection that this project was built for.

1025
01:10:12.335 --> 01:10:15.159
But in the first place, you can create a secondary

1026
01:10:15.619 --> 01:10:18.440
lead magnet or something to capture half of the marketplace,

1027
01:10:19.460 --> 01:10:27.239
and then you you once you have that half of the marketplace, that's automatically the the incentive for the other half to participate because now you're making that connection.

1028
01:10:27.715 --> 01:10:29.975
Well, I love that approach. I mean, you're definitely,

1029
01:10:30.435 --> 01:10:34.435
written the book on this and appreciate your time and, thanks again for answering the question.

1030
01:10:34.435 --> 01:10:36.775
Sure. Sure. My pleasure. Thanks for joining the webinar.

1031
01:10:37.555 --> 01:10:38.355
Alright, guys.

1032
01:10:38.835 --> 01:10:41.330
What a great webinar. Thank you so much for joining us.

1033
01:10:41.330 --> 01:10:44.710
Just to recap, the tip of the week, some elements to include

1034
01:10:45.410 --> 01:10:46.390
on your homepage,

1035
01:10:47.330 --> 01:10:50.390
access or showcasing your best free resources,

1036
01:10:51.330 --> 01:10:54.710
adding a lead magnet that will incentivize users to

1037
01:10:55.035 --> 01:10:59.935
trade their email address for like an ebook or access to some portion of your site.

1038
01:11:01.035 --> 01:11:03.614
Testimonials. Don't be afraid to ask for testimonials

1039
01:11:03.915 --> 01:11:04.415
especially

1040
01:11:04.875 --> 01:11:07.855
look for the right timing and key performance indicators

1041
01:11:08.235 --> 01:11:10.015
that will tell you that

1042
01:11:10.449 --> 01:11:14.710
which members are good candidates, to ask for testimonials at certain times,

1043
01:11:15.170 --> 01:11:16.790
during their journey on your site.

1044
01:11:17.250 --> 01:11:18.869
Definitely list your website

1045
01:11:19.250 --> 01:11:21.349
benefits and what the end user,

1046
01:11:22.050 --> 01:11:24.790
can expect and experience on your site.

1047
01:11:25.135 --> 01:11:27.875
In addition to that, use high quality imagery.

1048
01:11:28.495 --> 01:11:33.875
There's tons of stock photo websites out there, even free stock photo websites. There's no reason

1049
01:11:34.175 --> 01:11:39.475
not to have good high quality images. And again, a caveat to that, high quality doesn't mean

1050
01:11:40.140 --> 01:11:41.040
large proportions.

1051
01:11:41.180 --> 01:11:50.720
You want to keep the image sizes, the memory size of the images relatively as small as possible but you do want good quality images on your homepage.

1052
01:11:51.260 --> 01:11:52.000
And also

1053
01:11:52.300 --> 01:11:53.600
compelling and emotional

1054
01:11:54.225 --> 01:11:58.725
title messaging on your site that will immediately and instantly connect,

1055
01:11:59.185 --> 01:12:04.244
with the person who's visiting for your site and make them say why didn't I find this site sooner?

1056
01:12:04.625 --> 01:12:09.125
That's what the messaging on your site, should do to qualified and potential members.

1057
01:12:09.870 --> 01:12:11.730
So thank you David for putting that together.

1058
01:12:12.350 --> 01:12:16.590
If we didn't get to your question today, no need to fear, join us in our Facebook group.

1059
01:12:16.590 --> 01:12:21.070
We can go you can go to brilliantdirectories.com/Facebook.

1060
01:12:21.070 --> 01:12:24.370
We can definitely con continue the conversations over there.

1061
01:12:25.435 --> 01:12:28.955
The next webinar will be in two weeks. We do them every two weeks.

1062
01:12:28.955 --> 01:12:32.095
So generally, we hit, two webinars a month on average.

1063
01:12:32.315 --> 01:12:38.155
And on behalf of myself and David and the entire Brilliant Directories family, thank you guys so much for joining us today.

1064
01:12:38.155 --> 01:12:42.605
Hope you guys got a lot out of today's webinar. We look forward to seeing you in the next one.

1065
01:12:42.605 --> 01:12:46.545
So have a great day and a brilliant week. Take care, guys. Thank you.