Today on the Book More Show, I sit down with Philippa Gamse, co-author of 42 Rules for a Web Presence That Wins, to break down the essentials of web strategy and analytics. Philippa shares how her book, inspired by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, simplifies digital concepts into 42 straightforward rules designed for business owners building an impactful web presence. We discuss creating accessible content that establishes authority without overwhelming readers, especially those new to the digital landscape.
Philippa and I then explored the importance of business analytics. She shares client stories illustrating how connecting website and social media analytics can drive tangible outcomes—like tracking product sales or course sign-ups—by turning data into actionable insights.
As we wrap up, we look at optimizing podcast and website strategies. She then offered practical tips for increasing visibility and making the most of existing content.
This conversation is packed with advice on leveraging relationships, customer feedback, and content planning to refine your digital footprint. Join us for insights that can transform your web presence and business growth approach.
SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
In this episode, I welcome Philippa Gamse, a web strategy and analytics consultant who co-authored "42 Rules for a Web Presence That Wins" with Mitchell Levy. The book draws inspiration from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and offers 42 concise rules for creating effective web content.
Philippa discusses the challenges and benefits of writing succinct content that is accessible to business owners without overwhelming them with technical details, particularly for those at the initial stages of building a web presence.
We explore the importance of integrating website and social media analytics to track tangible business outcomes, such as product sales and course sign-ups, and the need for a well-functioning analytics setup to support data-driven decisions.
The episode highlights the limitations of analytics in understanding user behavior and the value of direct customer feedback and user testing to uncover insights beyond what data alone can provide.
We delve into privacy legislation challenges in digital analytics, emphasizing transparency with users through clear privacy statements and easy opt-out options.
Philippa shares strategies for increasing the visibility of podcast content, such as leveraging AI tools to extract engaging quotes for social media and organizing episodes by themes to enhance discoverability.
The conversation underscores the importance of content planning and AI tools to keep content fresh and engaging while maintaining the human touch in content creation.
Philippa encourages leveraging existing content and using tools like Google Analytics 4 to optimize content for better outcomes and maximize impact.
We discuss the transformative power of conversational content creation and the strategic use of existing materials to enhance engagement and visibility.
Philippa shares insights from Philippa Connects, emphasizing the importance of relationships and feedback in refining web presence, and invites listeners to explore the potential of transforming their information into a book with Nine Minute Books.
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Philippa Gamse:
LinkedIn: Philippa Gamse
Website: Websites that Win International
TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Stuart: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Bookmore Show. It's Stuart Bell here, and today joined by Philippa Games. Philippa, how are you doing?
Philippa: Hi hi Stuart, Another Brit.
Stuart: Another Brit, Another Brit. That's it. We're slowly taking over. We were chatting on the phone yesterday and I suddenly realised that I think four of the five previous calls when we spoke were also with Brits. So must be something about the time of year.
This is going to be an exciting call because I'm really keen to share this idea with people that we're going to get into around, kind of maximizing the assets that we've got and particularly talking to you. We're going to talk about the website stuff. But there's a book connection as well, as always is on the show, because we were introduced. I think our connection was through a couple of mutual connections that we have. I think our connection was through a couple of mutual connections that we have, but one of them is a friend of ours called Mitchell, and you guys actually wrote a book together a little while ago. So why don't we start off with a bit of a background of you and the organization and then how the book came about, and then we can jump into some more details on some website stuff that we want to talk about?
Philippa: Yeah, actually. So I'm a web strategy and analytics consultant and I've known mitchell levy uh should give him his full name for a long, long time, because we live in the same area out in california and um. But mitchell uh used to have this book series that he dreamed up and created called 42 rules, and so for anybody who's old enough, you know 42 is a very significant number and it comes from the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, and I'm sure that there's loads of people going.
What is she talking about, you know, but um, it should be required reading in all high schools. Forty two is the answer to everything in the Hitchhiker's Guide and Life it's life, the universe and everything, isn't it?
Yeah, but Mitchell had this concept where he had this book and it was basically literally 42 rules and every rule is a facing page, so it's very short. And there were 42 rules for all sorts of different things, like doing business with China or, you know, having a really wonderful dog investing. And then I got invited to write mine on Web Strategy, so it was called 42 rules for a web presence that wins, because my domain is websites that win. It's such a fantastic connection.
Stuart: Connection I mean it does what it says on the tin. It's obvious, it's helpful, there's a strong connection.
Philippa: You can add value right and and just, uh, you know, just as as authors um, you know, we were talking about this it that meant that, as as the author, you had to literally come up with the first rule and the last rule were fixed. So the first rule was kind of setting up the concept and the last rule was if you don't do anything else, do this or something like that. But in the middle you had 40 that you dreamed up and we were talking about. So that's a facing page, which you know, with the formatting and everything is between sort of 550 650 words. It's no more than 650 words yeah, and and it's
Stuart: quite yeah, as you can say as an idea to be able to share those bite-sized pieces with people in a way that establishes you as the expert.
Philippa: It's very manageable and addressable yeah, and it's great in the sense you can open up the book at any point.
I mean, it's not a sequential book, so you know it's in sections, and here's a section about, you know, thinking about strategy. And here's a section about, I don't know, personalization and customization and talking to your visitors. And here's a section about analytics. But for the, for me, as writing it for each one, in that pretty small word count you've got to come up with, you know, what is, what's my rule, what's what's the idea here, what's the concept, what does it mean? Um, why is it important?
Stuart: you know, maybe some sort of a case study or example to show how it works, and then obviously wrap it up with with and, you know, say it all over again um, and that's actually I, as I discovered, it's much easier to write 1200 words than 600 words when you're, when you're trying to do something like that so so it was actually quite challenging to write a short book, which was interesting it is interesting because you tend to think that longer is harder and more is more, but so oftentimes just being able to cut to the chase and be able to share that nugget in a way that is digestible for people, without needing too much context or the background or too high a level of knowledge.
We're often talking to people when they're thinking about creating something to engage potential clients at that kind of first point in the funnel, that first point of contact. Because as business owners we're in the weeds all the time. We're dealing with this straightforward stuff just takes care of itself. So we're just naturally surrounded by the more complicated stuff all the time and we've got a passion for most of our businesses anyway. So we're kind of naturally drawn to that more complicated end, that to position something that is an introductory piece, that's a straightforward and easy to understand without a whole lot of baggage. It does take a moment to reposition or recontextualized where you're, where you're positioning this thing that we're creating right and the good news is.
Philippa: So I'm actually just writing my second book and, uh, I so I'm very excited about it. It's it's to inspire business owners to use analytics really well without having to understand any of the technology or the techie stuff, and that's in a very conversational style, so it's very informal. Probably some of it isn't quite grammatical, but it doesn't really matter because it's how we talk and that's just gone to my editor so we'll see what he does with it. But it was a very different style of writing and again, you know, I've got a sort of ideal length, but it doesn't have to be an absolutely specified number of words um at least you're not trying to fit it in a specific container so so we'll see how that, what he thinks of it.
What was the?
Stuart: uh, the first book was a few years ago now, so this second one being more conversational, perhaps more accessible than some of the techie based conversations that you have particularly given your niche, that job of work of deciding what was included and what wasn't included, like mentally, where you drew the line between whether to describe it in this way or that way, was that an easy task or did that take a little bit of of thinking about in order to keep it positioned at the right target level?
Philippa: well.
So, basically so, the idea behind the book is is well and as we were talking yesterday, this kind of applies to you there's, there's lots and lots of business owners who have a website, and maybe you've got analytics running on it, maybe you haven't, and then, um, but either way, you honestly, honestly, haven't really looked at it and you really don't know what's going on with your website, which, as we've talked about maybe we'll talk about in a in a few minutes means that there are, potentially, opportunities that you're missing, as well as things that have gone wrong that you, you weren't really aware of, and so you know.
That's the premise, that that, for most people, if you're not looking at your analytics, you're you're completely shooting in the dark with what you put up, and because there are things that you you can't possibly tell just by looking at the site, right, and so, um, you, you're losing opportunities and you're wasting money on stuff that doesn't work potentially, especially if you're doing things like advertising, um, that that is maybe going to the wrong people or not worded, right, whatever, whatever's wrong with it, right, um, and so I have tons and tons of stories, because I think the stories are the proof.
You know, my goal is to is to help business owners without getting all techie, because there's plenty of material on how to use analytics. If you want all the techie stuff, and this is what button you press and this is how to put this dashboard together. And and that's not what I want to do, because I know that for a lot of people, that's just like eyes glaze over really fast. Yeah, um so, but I want people to be able to talk to somebody like me, who's who does know how to do it, but in a in a way that gets somebody like me to get the right answers for them or to know the direction that they're going in, so I can really help.
Yeah, um and so I I have all these stories and and so writing the book. Sorry to go on a bit, but writing the book was really like. Here's a list of all the stories and and the outcomes and the reasons that we did things and the great things that happened because of it. Um, plus thinking about all of the conversations that I have with people again and again about hey, you haven't, are't, are you doing this? What does this mean? What happened here? And and sort of putting those in. So that's really how it came together.
So, no, it wasn't difficult.
Stuart: Cause honestly there's.
Philippa: There's a lot of stuff that's kind of similar, and a lot of the time, I get asked you know, do you have experience in my industry? And and the answer that might be yes or it might be no, but I don't think it matters, because, you know, the thing that I want to say is that you're the business owner, right, and we talked about your business and we'll do that, and I'll shut up in a minute, but, um, but, but you're the one who understands your business better than I ever will and what you're trying to do and who you are, who your audience is and everything, and I'm the one that can say okay, in that case, here's what we need to look at. Yeah, and here are some numbers that are important, and so that, putting that together, the sum is how does it go? The sum is greater than the parts, or however?
Stuart: that goes Right. Yeah, exactly that synergy of their domain expertise and your specialization expertise in collecting the data that can then be interpreted. I think that's such a important point, particularly as people are thinking about analytics. I know it's something that I should have, but I've got someone technical doing something. They're probably a contractor, either a contract analytic resource or a web developer. They might well have moved on from whatever engagement you've got them to set up in the first place and actually thinking from kind of second degree personal experience it's probably just something that was added by the web development company in the first place and they're never touched again.
But this ability to share with the business owners fundamentally like the, the the principles of what they're looking at and not get stuck in the weeds so they're not getting glazed over, they're seeing, asking questions and seeing outcomes, not worrying about which button to press I mean it's really the case that, as we've seen, for us there's a lot of opportunity to dive in and get some insights really from that feedback.
It's interesting because as you were talking, I was thinking that the and again it's maybe a filter bubble problem of as you look at a certain piece of information on the internet, you're then presented with much more of the same stuff, but from a creator kind of space. You get a lot of people talking about linkedin impressions and using tools like authored up or tapio or shield to see their analytics, or on their instagram or the facebook side, similar thing. There's likes and page views and engagement metrics, but all of the focus seems to have switched onto that and away from the fundamentals of the website analytics. I can't think of an example, recently at least, that I've seen a. Well, maybe this is the problem a social media influencer talking about analytics and engagement and tying it at all to the website, where still a website accounts for 100 of some part of the transactional journey. Whether they've seen, you are not the social media channels to begin with, not 100, 99.99 of people then at some point touch the website.
Philippa: So it's really interesting that it seems well and, to be clear, we're talking about people running a business, right so right, um. So your website is where you can really talk about who you are, what you do, what your expertise is, show that your authority and your credibility. And I mean you can do that a bit on social media, but but in my experience, social media people are not wanting to engage with you in that way. They're, they're I guess their attention span is is a lot less for any one thing, because you know, we're in the age of tiktok.
Six minute video, six second videos and stuff like stuff like that, um, and also, obviously, you know, selling thing is much easier on a website and so forth. So yeah, and it's very interesting because that's such a great example I see so many business owners spending a ton of money, for example, on social media advertising, because the word is that it works. Well there's a lot of hype around social media advertising and if you have website analytics working properly, you can isolate out the traffic that comes from social media advertising and even from different campaigns within that.
So you know whether it's instagram, whether it's tiktok, um, and and within that, which posting, which campaign, etc. Right, yeah, and literally tie that to the outcomes that you're looking for. So I want somebody to sign up for a course, I want somebody to, you know, download my, my field guide, as we were saying yesterday, um, my lead magnet. Whatever that is right or whatever your outcome might be, I want something to buy, something, um, and in my experience and you know, yours may vary, and I want to make that really clear. I'm not saying this is a hard and fast rule, but a lot of the time, the social media traffic is actually a lot lower quality right than, for example, traffic from organic search, um, because in organic search people are actually proactively looking for something right, which they're not necessarily doing when they're on social media.
Stuart: Yeah, and at least they're knowing and understanding the difference. So the totality of views on a page might be higher quality intention based traffic and lower quality entertainment based or just very top of the funnel early day search, but at least when you know, you know and you're not under any illusion about it being different way around. Um, you were talking about your experience and I don't want to kind of dive into that for a second more because it is pretty substantial. I mean, this isn't your first um, this isn't the first week in the job. So over the period of time and again, I don't want to age either of us too soon either, but we've been doing this for a fair time now. So in your time and experience, I think people often ask what's changed over that period, but I think almost a more interesting question is what stayed the same? So, from analytics back in the early 2000s through to today, I imagine there's some fundamental principles that it would be good for people to remember.
Philippa: Yeah, Well, you know, analytics is a tool, right, it's not the answer. It's the tool to find answers. And I think what we're finding answers to hasn't changed. Because selling I know when we were talking yesterday you were saying you know you sell to people and being authentic and genuine and being clearly showing up as an expert if that's what you're selling, I know that's probably a lot of your audience and being helpful and valuable and wanting to create relationship I mean none of that goes away. I mean that's you know. So the way that we can use the analytics is to interpret whether that's happening successfully.
And I should also say, you know, analytics doesn't always tell you that, because while the analytics are really interesting and they can certainly tell me how many of my social media visitors signed up for my newsletter or whatever I'm looking for they can't tell me why, like, if they didn't do something, why not? What went wrong? And I can guess. I mean, obviously we talked about everything yesterday. So I can say this we did find a broken link on your site yesterday, so why they didn't do it? If it's a broken link, obviously that's pretty straightforward. But if everything's working and they stop midstream of doing something, like buying a product or whatever. We don't know why, necessarily so.
So there is also no substitute for actually talking to customers and people who you know might buy from you if you, if you're able to interact with them and and and even testing your website, with people sitting at it and you're watching what they're doing, but not in a way that influences them, obviously and sort of set them a task and say, hey, go and buy this, this product, or sign up for this course and tell me, or record maybe you know your responses to the page how you feel when you see something. Do I like this? Is this too long? Is this confusing? Yeah, um, I mean, yesterday we were looking at your site and saying that perhaps for me, some of it honestly was a bit confusing, like your process, exactly how it works and the steps and which page am I supposed to be on to do this bit? Um, and that could just be because I'm stupid. I don't get it, I don't know.
Stuart: No, not at all.
Philippa: But you know, it might be interesting to do some user testing around that to actually get some really helpful feedback, because the analytics will tell us that people don't go from this page to this page or people don't stay on this page very long. But I think it's also important to remember that they don't then say why not?
Stuart: Right that intelligent insights on top of the data, the turn the data into information. That's the. It's not just a tool that's there that is going to tap you on the shoulder and say do X, y, z. And I think that I mean for us that was the case. I'm sure for others. I know I need to set it up. I've set it up, okay, now I'm on to the next thing and forget about it and years go by and don't really look at the insights and don't kind of do that second pass of analyzing what's going on and really thinking about the user journey. So that's probably a good segue into using ours as the example.
And then the reason I wanted to kind of share all of ours is because we send the email out releasing the podcast to all the audience. All of the audience have probably been to the page, so there's some understanding. So, rather than using just some random case study, I think it'd be quite beneficial for of the audience. All of the audience have probably been to the page, so there's some understanding. So, rather than using just some random case study, I think it'd be quite beneficial for people who've got a familiarity with what we've had to see what we've discovered, and then we're a couple of weeks ahead on recording to releasing. So maybe by the time they then go back and look, they'll maybe have seen some changes, some, some changes as well. Where's the best place to start? So for the audience, I would say go to nightminutebookscom and re-familiarize yourself with the site if you haven't been there for a little while, just to kind of contextualize what we're talking about. But where's a? I've got a couple of ideas, but where's a good place to start?
Philippa: um, to kind of set the scene of of what we had and then look at the opportunities of what we've got um, do you, do you want to just very briefly remind people what the site's about and what it's supposed to be doing?
Stuart: yeah, yeah, yeah, great point actually, let me see if live demonstrations are always terrible, but let me see if I can do a screen share on this end without it causing too many problems. Let me just make this a bit more rectangle and then it'll probably come across a little bit better, and then share the screen. So for people watching on the website, you'll be able to see. If you're just listening, then there'll be a link in the show notes through to 90minutebookscom. So probably head through to the podcast, rather at 90minutebookscom. So probably follow that, at least for this section, and then you can see what we're actually talking about.
So the 90 minute books website is our primary tool, is our shopping cart. It's where all of the business comes from, um. It houses the couple of guides that we've got and some lead magnets and downloads. It talks about our process, at least maybe not in the most clear way, but at least to a certain degree, and then the podcast is on there as well. So as far as content goes, we've probably got 20 pages of maybe a few less 15 pages of static content, including the home page.
We've got a blog that's off off to the side. It's actually on another subdomain, um. So that was one opportunity that we identified. So that's off to the side. It's actually on another subdomain, so that was one opportunity that we identified. So that's probably got 100 or so posts on there. It's got the shopping cart element, which is obviously the transactional stuff, and then it also houses the podcast. So there's 180 or so podcast episodes with transcripts and probably the last 50 or so of them have video. Um, so there's quite a lot of. Over the years we've built up quite a lot of stuff.
Philippa: Um, just maybe not, uh, not orchestrated in the best way right and actually, if we can just say, you know, as we're looking at this, so you've mentioned the podcast several times and obviously people are here because of the podcast, but if you look at your navigation across the top, uh, it's on top of write a book that builds your business, um. So those it's actually quite small um, but where it says home how it works, etc. So those are then the links to get around the site and you'll notice, well, yeah, you put your mouse there because you, as a business owner, know where that is, but if you take your mouse away, right, right, they're not.
There's nothing that says so I have to figure out where is the podcast. And we know already from the analytics that, honestly, people, um who come to the site aside from when you send the email out and says, hey, there's a podcast um, don't typically go to the podcast pages. And I'm I might I mean, I didn't say this to you yesterday, but I just thought I'd say this now.
Stuart: You know, since this is on the screen, that if you want, you know, a lot more visibility for the podcast, perhaps they should be, uh, more visible on in the navigation yeah, yeah, it's interesting and again it's such a clear example of have someone else go through the site and then watch what they do, or have philip go through the site and have her tell you what she was doing. Um, but the idea it's never particularly dawned on me before the even the navigation at the top. I mean it's kind of. I mean you can kind of tell their links because I mean what else would it be up there? But I mean really you could also understand where people don't necessarily clearly see that their links, because the text is the same size and color as the body text, they're not underlined or circled or outlined in any other ways.
Philippa: Um, I just realized there's a much bigger element underneath that says write a book that builds your business, which is not a link right.
Stuart: Right, yeah, yeah and pulls focus away from the other things.
I think again. We were talking about this yesterday when we were running through some of your findings. The premise of what we've done years ago is create a website that supported traffic that was going to this destination, almost as just an executional. People knew us and wanted to work with us. Something not to do with the website. They, they knew us and and had already decided they were already converted. We just created something that they could kind of execute on that conversion, which, I mean, wasn't terrible in the moment, but that's not really fit for purpose where we are today and therefore the website really isn't doing what it ideally could do.
Philippa: And if you can scroll just a tiny bit so you can see the form there.
Stuart: Yeah.
Philippa: Stop, stop. So you know, for people, people watching, this is a very interesting issue and you're actually trying to do serious analytics so you can see, there there's a sign up form that says you put in your name, you put in your email, and it says send my copy of the 90 minute book.
Um, I guess that's a one that's your lead magnet, right that's that's to get people onto your newsletter, um, and you can't tell just by looking at the website. But actually that form that that is is in what we call a frame. There you go. Yeah, so this is not actually part of your website or it's not your code. This is actually code that's embedded in there from the provider of that function, of that little thing that says embedded in there from the provider of that function, of that little thing that says put in your name and your email and it will collect their email. And so, because that code is actually coming from a different provider, regular tracking that we can put onto your website doesn't work, right, so there's actually, from a tracking perspective and seeing if people interact with that form and how many people do, and so on, there's actually a black hole in the middle of your website, right, and there are ways around it.
And, as I say, we're not going to get techie at this point, but just to point out to people that there are sort of a lot of technical pitfalls in analytics, that perhaps, when you said what's changing, I mean that, as as the sophistication of what we can code changes, then sometimes that also sets up more problems, um, and the other thing. I know you've had this uh little widget on your site for a while, um, I pointed out that um in it doesn't validate that the email address is correct. So I actually was able to put in, just literally test and test so not a real name and not a real email address and get access to your material, which doesn't give you my lead. Now maybe you said, actually that doesn't seem to be happening very much on your site, which is good. Now maybe you said, actually that doesn't seem to be happening very much on your site, which is good.
But if, if you're seriously trying to collect leads these days, you know you want, you want some sort of validation that it's a real email address, and a lot of people what they do is, as you know, they you put in the email address and you get sent a link to download the material so that if you don't put in your, your email address, you actually won't get what you're looking for. The other thing that actually you don't have there and now something that has changed big time around analytics, which is causing more and more problems, is the whole privacy area, and so, especially if you're dealing with anybody from Europe, and actually in California as well. There's a lot of privacy legislation now that says that you really, somewhere there, should have a statement that says you know we're not going to sell your email address or give it to any third party and you know, if you want to leave our list at any point, you can do so very easily, and all that good stuff that people expect to see now.
Stuart: Yeah, it's interesting isn interesting, isn't that credibility expectation. So the double opt-in or check tops, in a number of years ago we kind of explicitly decided not to include that because, um, for whatever reason, but there is something of a an expectation of people seeing that the the form on the site I was describing yesterday that when we updated it, this was a quick fix to iframe or embed the well, iframe the form from the crm rather than deal with some extra steps to do it. But it the consequence of that is twofold. One, there's maybe technical black holes in terms of seeing the data, so we don't necessarily get to see everything that we could see. And then I kind of knew that, um, but then hadn't really paid that much attention to it, which and then years go by and really that would be useful to have. But the other point you made is the way that the iframe works. It actually displays it's the thank you page on.
The other point you made is the way that the iphone works. It actually displays it's the thank you page on the crm form that displays the download, which in another context is actually fine. We want it to intentionally do that, but the way that it works here it displays that form within the iphone window. So I think what probably happened is we had an old form. That form broke, so we needed to do something. The quickest way to do something was to reuse another landing page form where that thank you route did make more sense, but it doesn't. Here and now. We're, however, many years later and it's still the same problem. So I think one of the key opportunities is to have someone like you go through it and point out all these things, which you probably were aware of in the moment that they were done, but they were the quick fix, confident in the knowledge that future stewart was going to go in there and fix it in the near future.
Philippa: And then years go by yeah, you actually used quite a lot of techie language there, so let's just explain to people that some of what happened here, you know, as you said, we haven't sort of paid attention to for a while and it's causing some sort of usability issues potentially. But let's maybe, if we scroll down, so a couple of things else that just to let people know that analytics can tell you. So, you know, the homepage is reasonably long and one of the things that can be helpful, especially if you've got long pages.
So again, obviously the podcast pages we'll look at in a minute can be quite long, but where you've got pages that have a lot of content on, one of the things that analytics can tell you that's very helpful is how far down the page do people scroll because, then if you've got information towards the bottom of your page that are is really important for people to see, and maybe that's where your main call to action is um, but the majority of people don't get that far, then you know they're not going to see that important content or that important call to action, and so, again, that's really helpful information in kind of optimizing, making sure that people get what, tell people what to do and if you don't show them where to go and what to do next.
They often won't, because people don't spend time unless they really, really, really want what you've got. They're not going to spend a lot of time figuring out how to do it if it's not obvious and they're not really invested.
Stuart: Yeah, even more so. As you said before, talking about social media and the bounce rate and people's attention span. I mean, there's definitely well, I think it's a, it's a search console analytics the bounce rate from people coming from a search page into a company page but then bouncing straight back out again. I think that's even a metric of of uh, I've intended google pays attention to, so let's go and take a look at your podcast page and and because I'm conscious of time.
Philippa: I know we don't want to go to for too long, but let's um give people an idea of yeah, so we've been talking so far about stuff that isn't working, and you know that that's kind of a problem, but let's talk about, maybe, some opportunities. So, um, here's your podcast page and, and, and. So a lot of people have podcasts, and this is something that I see a lot um, not just on your site, but it's very typical. So you tend to, what you do is you record your podcast and then you put the most recent podcast at the top of the page and everything else starts moving down, and as everything else starts moving down, it becomes less and less visible. So you've got five podcasts on your first page and then, um, you've got to, you know, go to the next page to see more and the older posts, something like that.
Right, a lot of people are really not going to do that and so again, we can tell from the analytics that the views on the not recent podcasts are absolutely minimal.
Yeah, um, and yet obviously you've got some amazing content with some amazing people. Um, and, and this is true, as I said, for many, many podcast sites I've worked with right and there's nothing wrong with what this person has said, and for many, many podcast sites that I've worked with, right and there's nothing wrong with what this person has said, and it probably wasn't recorded even that long ago. It's just you know it's moving down and we also know that the way that you get traffic is you put out your newsletter with the latest podcast in, and the analytics will clearly show a massive spike in traffic, right when you put out your newsletter and for a couple of days afterwards as people read it, and then it goes way, way down to an absolute triple every day until you put out the next newsletter. Yeah, to an absolute triple every day until you put out the next newsletter. Yeah, so your, your marketing and and getting people to come to your website is a hundred percent essentially dependent on your podcast now, on your newsletter.
Um, and we also talked about I mean, there are some searches coming in from google which we can also see people coming from Google and we can get an idea of what they were looking for. And we saw that everybody coming from Google to your website was looking for 90 minute books. So in other words, people who had already heard of your business and just couldn't remember your URL, your web address.
Stuart: Right.
Philippa: So, in terms of a marketing mix, essentially you haven't got one, and for those of us that really want to attract good, qualified and consistent traffic on a regular said, you know, with AI tools these days it would be really easy to take the podcast as it comes out, get some really cool quotes from it and start posting those on social media and that would bring people, hopefully, to the site. So that's something that everybody can do. But you know we also talked about with other clients. We've created, for example, category pages. So you know you also talked about with other clients. We've created, for example, category pages. So you know you've got people talking about sales. You've got people talking about, I don't know, leadership, or you know you could easily divide your podcast into some different categories and those categories would create keywords that would be helpful in search Plus.
It would help people to get around the range of podcasts that you've got. So you know you could have a podcast main page that introduces the series and then say you know we've got content in these various areas and have thumbnails and tape and make different category pages as well as the different individual pages. And you've got transcripts. Sometimes. You know transcripts is long, but you know, summaries with keywords that you bring out, maybe with some bolding and so on, but what that would do is give you a whole lot more content for search engines so that when people were looking for something other than 90 minute books, there would be a potential that they would find your site. Yeah, so that your your range, range of reach and search engines would also increase, giving you a better sort of way of acquiring visitors.
Stuart: Yeah, it's such a great point because we started recording with no clear plan 10 years ago with, again, the plan of, well, let's just get started. And then, well, not quite 10 years ago, but a long of, well, let's just get started. And then, well, not quite 10 years ago, but a long time ago, let's get started. And then we'll tweak from there and then have done minimal tweaking or at least minimal tweaking in an orchestrated way. And I think that's what really stood out about this conversation and I know that we're not alone because I see it as well so the the crossover between what we're talking now in terms of websites and with what we talk day-to-day with people about in terms of books. Just build it and they will come or create something and then something will happen. So that's fine. I mean, I beat people ahead all the time when they do that in their book but then doing it on the website, we were doing exactly the same. So this idea of let me just go back to this screen again on one of the podcast episodes. So even looking even a cursory glance at this particular episode, then the description is accurate to what the show was, but it's not really pulling out any of the key elements. I mean even the fact that Donna and Jeff were two authors that wrote two separate books with us. Even the fact that that was the case isn't really reflected in the words in a way that's easy to read. The show highlights yep, they're accurately picking up some highlights from the show, but it's not in any orchestrated way around the book creation process or some of the challenges and cross-linking.
The best job we've got in terms of linking is linking people off to the scorecard, which we regularly do, and in fact, even then the scorecard. I mean you could probably well someone whose eyesight is better than mine could maybe see this scorecard without even doing anything. So maybe that's an issue. Or linking off to some of the other workshop things. But actually, even now, as I look at this, it's so crazy. Knowing what to do and doing it are two very different things. The way that we link these shows we've got the URL hyperlinked and not the display text. So the book titles workshop would probably be a better anchor text than 90minutebookscom forward slash workshops.
So even silly things like this, it's just really that idea of taking a second to orchestrate a strategy and then putting that strategy in place. There's 180 episodes where. So there's 180 episodes and there's probably 100 blog posts which are in a similar state of of disrepair. Even the smallest long tail keyword strategy would probably get quite a bump quite quick because of the age of the domain. And again, not wanting to get techie, but this website has been around for a long time. It's not new. There's a lot of content on there. It's just putting it together in a way that is not just build it and they will come, but actually build it for purpose.
Philippa: Right, well, and then thinking about you know the viewers, at the point where the podcast is on the page, what it's not really saying to me, the visitor, is what's in it for me to watch this podcast, what will I learn? What benefit will I get? And that's really where that should be going. Yeah, right, what are the learning points?
Stuart: and really sort of bring those out um, which again is day in, day out. We're talking to this in the context of people with books. So, just and actually, this is an interesting point as well, and again we could. As always, time time flies, um, so we could probably do a more than one episode. But the idea of what's in it for me, writing from a book perspective, writing something that just cuts to the chase, that delivers value, that doesn't make people think too hard, that does what it says on the tin, it's relatively obvious. People are there for a reason.
I mean, all the time people get hung up on the idea of writing a book. Is this big thing? It's complicated, it's difficult, it takes a lot of time and thinking, and I'm trying to share this idea of no it's. It can be a lot more simple and straightforward. Like all of the knowledge is there already, so that's a done deal. It's not a research project. The way that you would talk about it if someone walked through the front door of the office, you could probably talk to someone for an hour about it without thinking, sweating, that you got to do a whole lot of research. It's just the framework of the book. You're getting hung up, caught up in the mechanisms or the assumptions of how difficult it is, and what we've done for the last half hour is just to illustrate that I'm doing exactly the same on the website side. This is a classic build it and they will come type. Well, I've done something, check the box and move on to the next. So right.
Philippa: So unfortunately, the analytics are the proof that it's currently definitely not optimal. Um, and it's interesting what you're saying, because I have to say you know, yes, writing a book is daunting and you have to think, oh my gosh, I've got to write x number of thousand words and everything. Um, I actually you're right, because I'm much better at talking than anything else and I found that what was really really helpful that wasn't available to me when I wrote the first book was literally to go down, hang out in the sun and talk into my phone, into otter I see, use, I was using otter as well and just talk, talk the book, get Otter to give me the transcription and then edit that into something you know readable.
And that made it so much easier.
Stuart: It's a game changer, right? I mean, that's why I love if someone wants to DIY it themselves. That's absolutely the way that I would say to do it. I love our process because that back and forth interviewing type style it is easy for people to do. It's more conversational and it's easier, like you were saying with your second book, to position it at a level of not getting drawn into the technicalities but just to talk as if you were talking to a human. Having that one-on-one relationship is just through the medium of words. It's so much easier.
And now, in a world of ai, what we can do to take those words and turn them into something that looks more like a book is so much more. Um, it gives such a better outcome, rather than some people will say, well, can't ai just write it for? And no, we could interview for an hour and get some fantastic content and you could mess around with some prompts for an hour and be no further down the track. I mean, it's just not in any way, shape or form quicker. But yeah, that idea of, in all of these things, the purpose of the podcast, as far as we're concerned at least, we're not selling advertising, we're not NPR. The podcast isn't the product, it's the engagement with a person. The same with a book. We're not Random House or Penguin. We're not a publishing company. We don't care about the book as the product so much as we do the conversation at its start. Ultimately, that's what we want the conversations.
So to break that mold from the, from the baggage, to the job of work. And again it's. It's the code that we've cracked for for over a decade now in the book space, but it's such a I need to take my own medicine or or hit myself with the same birch stick that hit other people with with to apply it now to the website. As people are listening. Again, it'd be great to we'll circle back, I think, at some point in the future and then we can talk about the changes that we did just to give people bookend the differences. But as people have been listening, they may be resonating with we do that as well. We've got some pages and some content that we don't really do stuff with. What's a couple of action steps that like the low hanging fruit or the easy thing that people can take away, both in terms of analytics, I guess, to get the data, but just thinking about their site generally?
Philippa: Yeah, I mean I'm using Google Analytics 4, which I do really like. It's very powerful. You might need a bit of help to get it properly customized for you, but then it can do things's if you need it. And then you know. Just the way to get into this is to think about what do you want to happen on your website and start asking questions about is that happening? Is it? You know, are people going to the page where this happens? Are they consuming the content? Are they fulfilling the outcomes that I want?
And if you have lots of content, you know starting to think about how could I leverage this better? You know, how could I keep it evergreen? Because you've got the asset. You've worked to get it. Everybody's fixated on having to make yet another podcast, but you could rework a lot of what you already have to stay visible and stay top of mind, and there are, you know, the AI tools out there that will help you do it. So, you know, take a long, hard, look at your content and and think about what's still current, and then you know what.
Stuart: What could you do with that yeah, I think that that's exactly the same as we talk about with the books. You've got years of experience in your head. The ability to kind of craft it into something is the easier problem than not having the knowledge and trying to think about inventing it. So the same on people's websites. You've got so much stuff there.
Philippa: Just dial it in a little bit and think about the opportunities to to reuse it and and if I could just say stewart, I mean you were very kind and looked at my uh, so-called lead magnet and made some very, very helpful suggestions. So you know I would also encourage people like if you have content and you want to, you want to fine-tune it and make it sing better, then, um you know, go to stewart and ask for help, ask for feedback fantastic.
Stuart: Well, I mean, looking at yours was so interesting because, again, all the knowledge is there. You know exactly what you want to do and whether it's just a case of an outsider's eyes on it. So you're not looking at the subject in context with all of the mental baggage that you can't unplug the other 80% of your brain and just look at this piece in isolation. You can't unplug the other 80 of your brain and just look at this piece in isolation. So sometimes it's easier, being an outsider, just to look at that piece in isolation and not have the other the other things come in. Either that or I mean, obviously there's the expertise. This is what I've done with over a thousand people now.
Um, like you, with looking at over 5 000 websites, it becomes a little bit second nature. But yeah, this idea of and I think that's why there's such a great crossover in what we're talking about, whether we're talking about a book or we're talking about a website it's this idea of what's the job of work, what do we want it to do and what signals can we get that prove it's going in the right direction or give us a hint that we need to change tack slightly into a different approach. So, yeah, such a great, great crossover and thank you, it was really a great opportunity to look at what you've done. Where can people find out more about you and the organization? I want to give people the now that their eyes have been opened to what they should be doing, perhaps I want to give them an easy path to get to someone who can help.
Philippa: Yeah, well, I'm very visible on linkedin and I'm always happy to connect with people and you can find me I think I'm the only person in the entire universe with my name, so you can easily find me on linkedin. My website is websites that wincom, and on that website you'll find the uh, the ebook that, uh, we were talking about, you know, which has got five ideas, um, from my experience, of ways that we help businesses to grow or to change the website based on things in the analytics that you wouldn't have otherwise seen. Um, it doesn't yet incorporate your suggestions, but it will, um, and that's absolutely free and it's basically just designed to give you some ideas, um of the kinds of things that you can find out and do, and obviously I'm always happy to hear from people and see if I can help you out fantastic.
Stuart: Well, I'll make sure that we put links both through to directly to your linkedin profile and to the website on the podcast feed so as people are watching or listening on a podcast player or on the website, there'll be links straight through. And again, just want to say thanks for the uh, thanks for the, the time and the insights into the site. I mean, we go to such um, there's such a volume of work there of things that we've collated over the years to just even if it's um, even if we spend another hour just that turning in and actually the one of the calls this morning I had was with the podcast guys and we're already implementing some of the changes to the podcast setup and then we'll hit the website next. But, yeah, thanks again for your time. We had a long call yesterday and we've run through it again today. So, yeah, really encourage people as they're listening.
If there's any doubt about the effectiveness of your own sites, check out Philippa Connects so that you will listen to the podcast and pinch some of the knowledge from her head and start the relationship there. Great, thank you. Fantastic. Well, thanks again for your time. Everyone, thanks for listening. Reach out to us at Nine Minute Books, if you want to talk about captions and review your information, some of your knowledge, into a book, or if you want to talk about any of the website elements, and then, of course, reach out to Philippa Connections direct through below. We'll keep you posted on how this work goes and we'll talk to everyone in the next one.