Maestro Stevens – Streamlining Your WordPress Web Strategy For Scalable Websites

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION

This presentation is for beginners to intermediate users of WordPress who don’t have an effective website growth plan or need a refresher. It’s a great way to prepare for the 4th quarter to get a head start and take advantage of the holiday season, which has the most online activity of the year.

In this session, we will cover creating a plan using proven frameworks that help streamline the time it takes to build sustainable WordPress websites that scale. The topics taught apply to bloggers, content creators, small businesses, freelancers, and almost anyone looking to build a results-driven online business with WordPress. These topics include:

– Determining clear goals
– Staying market-focused
– Personalizing from design guidelines
– Creating a great user experience
– Building a future-proof web system

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Known as “The Fresh Prince Of WordPress”, Maestro Stevens is an international speaker and brand webmaster with a decade of industry experience. He is also the owner of The Iconic Expressions™, a creative web agency, and the founder of a startup called iconictemplates.com.

Maestro’s acumen spans digital marketing and brand strategy, web development, and project leadership, having steered many small businesses toward landmark achievements.

Outside of his professional prowess, Maestro cherishes fatherhood and relishes the simplicity smart technology brings to life, alongside his passions for culinary arts, literature, music, and travel.

SUMMARY

Determining Clear Goals

The first step in streamlining your WordPress web strategy is to determine clear and measurable goals. Website goals are specific objectives that a website aims to achieve, which guide its design, content, and development. These goals should be aligned with the broader objectives of the business or organization that the website represents.

When setting goals, it’s essential to use the SMART framework: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-bound. Some examples of SMART goals include:

• Increase monthly e-commerce sales by 20% in the next quarter
• Reduce cart abandonment rate by 10% over the next 6 months
• Grow the email subscriber list by 500 new subscribers in the next 3 months

Staying Market-Focused

Next, it’s crucial to stay market-focused by learning about your industry and competitors. This involves researching factors like their business models, value propositions, pricing, and more. Some helpful tools for this research include:

• NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) codes
• Data USA
• Built With
• Ibis World

Additionally, you’ll want to dive deeper into your target market by analyzing demographics, geographics, psychographics, and their pain points, needs, and buying motivations. Tools like Neilsen, Claritas, Facebook Insights, and Google Forms can provide valuable insights.

Personalizing Design Guidelines

With a clear understanding of your goals and target market, it’s time to personalize your design guidelines. This includes considerations like:

• Fonts, font weights, and sizes
• Color palettes
• Imagery, icons, and graphics
• Button styles and layout

Consistency is key when it comes to these design elements, as they contribute to the overall branding and user experience of your WordPress website.

Creating a Great User Experience

Crafting a great user experience starts with a well-planned site map. This bird’s-eye view of your website’s structure and navigation is crucial for ensuring a seamless customer journey.

From there, you’ll want to focus on the functions and features that address your target audience’s specific needs and challenges. This is where the research you conducted earlier comes into play, as you’ll want to align your website’s offerings with your users’ pain points and motivations.

Future-Proof Your WordPress Website

To future-proof your WordPress website, it’s important to carefully select the right tools and technologies. This includes plugins for security, e-commerce, content management, SEO, analytics, and more. Aim to keep your plugin count manageable, typically between 10-20, to maintain performance and scalability.

Additionally, focus on optimizing your website’s speed and user experience through caching, hosting, and regular content and design updates. Continuously gathering feedback and analyzing user data will help you make informed decisions to improve your website over time.

Conclusion

By following this comprehensive approach to streamlining your WordPress web strategy, you’ll be well on your way to building scalable, results-driven websites that serve your target audience and support your business goals. Remember, it’s a journey, so stay focused, personalize your approach, and always keep the user experience at the forefront.

If you’d like to access a free planner that covers the key elements discussed today, you can scan the QR code on the final slide.

TRANSCRIPTION

Rob Watson:

welcome everyone to the third Thursday Meetup of the West Orlando WordPress meetup group I’m Rob Watson a co-organizer and host West Orlando WordPress is an official WordPress Meetup Group affiliated with the WordPress Orlando and word Camp us meetup groups this presentation is for beginners to interm to intermediate users of WordPress who don’t have an effective website growth plan and need a refresher it’s a great way to prepare for the fourth quarter to get a head start and take advantage of the holiday season which has the most online activity of the year in this session we will cover creating a plan using proven Frameworks that help streamline the time it takes to build sustainable WordPress websites that scale the topics taught apply to bloggers content creators small businesses Freelancers and almost anyone looking to build a results driven online business with WordPress these topics include deter in clear goals staying Market focused personalizing from design guidelines creating a great user experience and building a future proof web system known as the fresh prints of WordPress myestro Stevens is a an international speaker and brand Web Master with a decade of Industry experience he is also the owner of the iconic Expressions uh of iconic the the iconic Expressions excuse me a creative web agency and the founder of a startup called iconic templates.com Maestro’s Acumen spans digital marketing and brand strategy web development and project leadership having steered many small businesses toward Landmark achievements outside of his professional prowess Maestro cherishes fatherhood and en relishes the Simplicity of smart technology that brings to life alongside his passions for culinary arts literature music and travel at this point I’d like to invite everyone to mute their microphones for the presentation and myestro thank you for being our presenter this evening time is now yours

Maestro Stevens:

all right um well thank you for that that intro and uh for and having me here with you all today it’s been an honor it is an honor uh to have gone through this process it’s been a while since I have spoke at a local Meetup so I guess you guys get to see if I got my chops back up but we gonna see how this goes um let me know if you can hear my Sounds here but I definitely want to give a shout out to everybody who has joined we can hear you just fine sounds good to okay okay all right as long as you can hear me you can hear my sounds then we gonna get the show started but that’s how I like to do my U presentations we just I just don’t like to present I like to put on a show this is a performance so we gonna be edutain if that makes any sense to y’all I like I’ll take a look at the chat when I can so for this uh presentation we’re going to talk talk about streamlining your WordPress web strategy for scalable webs sites and let me start off a little bit with a little bit of our our history so and this was actually kind of brought to my attention um I didn’t have these slides before but I was brought to my attention I need to add a little bit about us but our history um I started the iconic expressions in 2015 and started building WordPress websites in 2020 so I’m saying this to say y’all I ain’t no veteran I know some of y’all in here Sue I ain’t G to say no names people whove been doing this for a long long time I’m you know I’m G shot some names out to y’all but people who doing for a long long time I’m just I’m a newbie in it but at the same time I’m not so new or I don’t know what I’m talking about I’ve been here for a little while uh and then I started our first template platform in 2022 and that was using from the brink of using the foundation of cadence templates or Cadence uh cloud and creating templates with those and then spoke at Work Camp U uh EU and us and spoke at Work Camp Asia this past March as well but I didn’t put that on here yet I haven’t updated this and I won’t go through this until this was already read so I didn’t expect I mean I’ve never seen my face on a a person’s background before I feel a little narcissistic like I didn’t ask for that but hey shout outs to West Orlando be up for that appreciate y’all so let’s talk about determining goals let’s start with the and this is the way I like to present things I like to give you all the concept I like to give you all the process and I want to give you all the tools so you’re going to see those three things and if you don’t see those three things let me know but I’m telling y’all I don’t like to lie because time for that we ain’t got time for that so we gonna start with the first and then we’re gonna I’m going to show you when we get to the end how the first and the last are interconnected together and if you ain’t got them two things together everything else in the middle don’t even matter so when it comes to determining goals we want to make sure that we are looking at goals from a holistic perspective so website goals I’m just going to read this verbatim and then I’m gonna give youall my my my my my download definition of it okay a website goals are specific objectives that a website aims to achieve which guides into design content and development these goals are aligned with the broader objectives of the business or organization that the website represents so in other words you need to understand that your goals are your overall Target of where you want to go to where you want to end up where’s the destination if we taking a road trip where we going to end up on that road trip because there’s a lot of paths a lot of cars a lot of miles where are we ending up and how does that align with the vehicle which your WordPress website is supposed to be a vehicle not the endgame so I like to think of things from a smart goal perspective from a smart goals perspective and I think most of us here have heard heard of this acronym for specific measurable attainable relevant and time bound however I just wanted to remind you that that’s how we like to think of things if it’s not a a very specific goal that has numbers and has a dates uh and has reasoning and wise behind it then it’s probably not that good of a goal you know you probably want to rethink that goal so some go examples or some structures Frameworks for some gold examples this is very simple I’m purposely making this fifth grade elementary style in this particular trust me we going once we start flowing we going to start going but right now we going to ease into it but I want to keep it simple for right now so a goal example can be you want to help people to do this um XYZ you want to generate XYZ in sales you want to become known for something you want to gain x amount of members to your ex um platform or you want to gain subscribers and signups so just different prompts to give you examples of the goals now let’s be all to Wonderland and get a little deeper down the rabbit hole so some actual goals examples and I don’t know if yall ready I got some corny jokes sometimes they they gon stand sometimes they gonna fall we gonna rock tall we gonna make sure we have it all let’s get it going so when it comes to some goal examples we got e-commerce and I’m not going to go too deep into all of these you guys can take a snapshot of a picture of this but I want to keep it going so we have e-commerce go examples for monthly sales um we have card abandonment we have customer base the key here is you see some type of measurable outcome with a number behind it in a Time duration that’s a start of a good goal doesn’t doesn’t have to add too much to it some blog examples for bloggers out there so average session duration is what we’re making this goal by email subscribers social media shares right rising up our social media shares by a certain percentage by the next quarter over the next how many uh equal amount of months so these are just examples of goals that you want to start start with and that’s why I said in the beginning that the beginning and the end are going to be the two things that tie together more than anything and I think that these are the things that are more overlooked especially for WordPress users because we so we be so deep in the weeds and all the Technologies and stuff we forget about the actual purpose of the website just keeping it funky So speaking of let’s stay focused how do we stay focused and Market focused give you some examples first we want to think about see this this mouse button I’m us using the uh being in Cana but I wanted to do the presentation version uh but learning your industry and competitors when it comes to your industry competitors you want to look at a few different tools um I kept it very simple as far as a not a framework but just a structure you know you want to think of competitor one competitor two competitor three okay this Factor this other second Factor this third Factor what are those factors that you can say about three four five competitors that was would make sense to you you don’t have to make it over complicated but you need to do that because that’s going to give you some indication of where you want to go with the website then when it comes to the tools that you can use some of my favorite tools my tried and true these are my gems y’all I’m telling y’all this ain’t I ain’t this ain’t chat GPT or no I’m just coming up with stuff at the top of my head now everything I’m showing y’all I’ve been using these things for years uh but NES so using your NES code if you are living in the US I know we are west or but I know we have worldwide capabilities coming into this into this Meetup right so NES is going to be more for the US um it’s a special code that the US has they classify Industries and business businesses and sectors start there with the NES um and then you want to go to data USA that’s another free source right here we also have built with so data USA is more about um other Industries and and it takes a whole bunch of data it Aggregates all these free sources and puts in these nice looking charts and graphs data USA telling y’all gold built with if you ain’t heard of built with I don’t know where you’ve been with but built with I don’t know if it went past your head again but built with technology one of my technology tools I love this this is how you people say how do you know what I had on my website supy tool great thing to know how you can see your competitors and see other people and see your website built with and then Ibis is another great tool as well too um this is a worldwide it’s one of my favorite market research report uh report tools the free reports are expensive but the free information they give you I’m talking about Golden I mean it’s irrefutable evidence if somebody tried to argue what is and what ain’t show them the facts so other parts of learning competitors um just here’s some of the factors examples I give you examples of some factors from a you know dumb down but here’s more of a sample of some other factors business model value proposition their pricing just things like that and then you want to put it in a spreadsheet and just mark it a column in row and create the um your competitors that way way so when it comes to target market research here a couple other tools that I love to use this is and I didn’t put some of the um I should have added some of the text to it so that’s my fault but I’m I’m G let y’all know what it is uh but this is neelen neelon that’s how I say every time I say it in my head I see a little kid saying neelson in that way uh but this is neelson um one of the best market research uh uh data aggregators in the world um if you want to get some free reports go there Neil um claritas claritas I’m from San Antonio Texas so if you’re wondering why I put a little Espanola in my that’s you know that’s letting yall know giving you some history now but this is this is claritas now I’m saying that the American way uh and it’s another great this is another great market research tool but more for local research they have some really great free market research reports I’m talking about great reports that you cannot deny free then you have Facebook insights H it’s a it’s Facebook insights has been like like you know five years 10 years ago it was dope now it’s a little I don’t know it’s a little week and then Google forms so actually surveying so you have all these other research tools you can always use these tools to help give you a head start but the best information is the information you’re going to get from your people what are they really saying and then you want to combine that together and look for some of these uh demographics Geographics psychographics some of the stuff I know is overview for y’all but I’m going through it because I’m trust me we going to get to the point because this is a journey we are on a journey Alis in Wonderland y y’all know y’all seen it I’m the Matt Hatter all right so more Target research here um age gender income status we’ve seen these factors occupation interest lifestyle if you’re going B Tob company size fog Graphics type stuff and then their needs and challenges their pain points their buying motivations why is this stuff important because once we get to the functions and features area of creating a website strategy since this is this is what this is all about if y website strategy function features ain’t supporting what people’s challenges and what their motivations are what are you doing I’ll pause that for a second what are you doing because it’s your website’s supposed to be for them not for you unless you’re your best customer and if that’s the case well then you pouring in a lot of money just to you know what I’m saying it’s just like what are we doing here so these things have to match up with the tools that we use and the experience people have on our website if they don’t what are we doing so then we get into the activity tracking and Analysis U I’m I’m going to look at my chat because now we’re going to I’m going to add some a little bit of U engagement right uh meaning I’m curious on do y’all know some of these tools because some things I think y’all sleeping on some things I think y’all know about but I’m curious on this particular section when it comes to sorry and zoom is so crazy because you gotta meet you got to move all these different widgets and stuff like that out the way you got to move this widget that widget all the widgets you got to just move out the way just to see one thing it’s crazy like that uh but when it comes to this section right here uh there’s three parts of activity tracking and Analysis that I’m going to go over three parts only three parts what do you think that this part is referring to when it comes to activity tracking and Analysis I’m curious if anybody wants to guess I won’t take too long and I’ll move forward but just put it in the chat just throw it in there but when it comes to activity tracking and Analysis I do want to just go over three things that I think are important for our websites if nobody has it in that’s all good so this first one is going more towards the website AKA like user with the user’s activity so we are logging activity of the website users or people who are using the website that is important but that’s only one layer of activity tracking another layer of activity tracking is project management so these are project management tools very popular tools that I think most of us has at least heard of one of these tools um I’ve used all of these tools I particularly I lean on clickup now but I’ve used all these tools and that’s one a second layer of tracking and Analysis and then the third layer can anybody guess what this layer is for I mean this I mean these things excuse me this should give it away if not that’s cool nope okay analytics so the third layer would be anal ICS so we have user tracking we have oh I see I see okay okay think coming in late we have user tracking we have project management tracking and then we have analytics tracking people don’t think of these as tracking activities but they are things that you’re you’re tracking for the website to get built and then for the website to be maintained and to be optimized you can’t track which you don’t measure you know you don’t measure what you don’t track it’s always that weird like which way does it go I don’t know which way did he go which way did go George I don’t know but you know what I’m talking about bada bing bada boom all right now personalizing personalizing design guidelines let’s get into some of the parts of the the the dressing right we’re putting the dressing so when we think of this part it’s more of like what colors are the curtains of the house what is the floor what type is what kind of floor what what what kind of cabinet what is the the the the look and the feel of the wood that we’re using right so we’re looking dressing up styling in up the house or styling up our website that’s how I’m giving it to you guys and first things first thinking of the fonts the font weights the font sizes The Heading sizes very important when it comes to creating our WordPress uh web website strategy what are the alternative fonts that’s something that I don’t see a lot of people think about until too late meaning they have their fonts chosen or picked out for when they’re in the best type of environment AKA like their website for instance um or using their the theme of their choice or whatever the case is you know whatever is giving you certain fonts but then when you are in other platforms or other um things that you would use fonts for to represent your brand you don’t have a second you don’t have any other fonts that because you don’t have access to those custom fonts right you can’t add the custom fonts you don’t have access to them so what is the alter alternative font that’s close to your primary and secondary fonts just something for you to think about then we have C colors so colors um I would say you you get more well no because there are a lot of platforms that you only get eight colors 10 colors you only get a few colors so when we’re in WordPress we have way more flexibility um but in other places we don’t have the flexibility so thinking of what are your colors for you being in a website environment you being in your most optimal environment which is your websites like your home right you have way more control because we’re talking about wordpress.org not wordpress.com all Rob I brought it back but we talk about wordpress.org not wordpress.com right so when it comes to that we got more flexibility with flexibility comes responsibility that’s what Uncle bin said Spider-Man watch it let’s move forward imagery and icons and Graphics so thinking about your imagery beforehand what kind of icons do you want to use not waiting till the last minute to go into WordPress and then you got lucky because the theme you’re using um has a icon library and so you’re just going to random start choosing icons and the icons that you are using they aren’t even matching up with each other that should be a part of your website strategy don’t wait till you get to building out the website to start thinking about what kind of icons you’re going to use icons are very important they are the leaders of our future nope that was a joke but icons and website are very important because they give people um let’s see more signals so people don’t think of emoji as icon an emoji icon it’s an icon that emotes and you know it evokes an emotion it shares and it shows an emotion in one little picture that’s an icon the icons can do a lot they can summarize a lot of things you would say with words and an icon and then you have patterns as well too so Graphics patterns even illustrations thinking about those things as a part of your website strategy and not waiting till you start building the website or afterward that’s what this section here is about I’m looking at I saw something in the chat all right so buttons layout in um buttons layout and composition so when it comes to buttons I see this often a little too often um and I know some some little things some people would say well Myro you’re just nitpicking and I would I would say well maybe I am or maybe that buttons do also indicate signals of emotion and consistency um as well as action and other things so buttons are can be very very important if they are not very very important um they should be very very important and having button consistency in your sizes even your edges one thing that I know really kind of grinds my gear sometimes is when I see websites when they have all different type of edges on their buttons they have the soft edges the hard edges then they have the pill shape then they have it’s like you got to two out of the three three and if you’re going to do two out of the three have a reason for it but one for the most part but your edges like these things now I a’t talk about edges with the hair you know you know sometimes our edges on that on that head now we got to get them edges trimmed you know what I’m saying but sometimes your edges ain’t all lining up so we got to make sure that the edges are right so that way we all right everything is gonna be all right who’s saying that don’t worry thing that Bob all right so um creating a great user user experience all right creating a great user experience this is where the sitemap comes in so I think that when it comes to the sitemap sometimes we Overlook that or sometimes we don’t it really depends on your history with creating websites and I’m talking about sometimes we do Overlook that I’m talking about a point of maybe you’re a solopreneur or you are a blogger a diyer you know you don’t do this for other people so you’re not thinking of your website from a bird’s eye view you know because you are in the trees you know you are in the forest you looking at that Forest you know run forest run forest that Gump in you sometimes you got to look at it from the bird’s eye view type of things and that’s hard for us to do when we’re in the business and trying to work on the business at the same time so agency owners website Builders you’re going to have a different perspective of how why you need a site map why it’s necessary and then we are at the fun and feature section told y’all we see we moving hope y’all stillw hope y’all still awake matter of fact I’m get y’ D DeMarco thank y’all for being here with me today you know I want to say wow because it’s just crazy how West Orlando WordPress meet up the wow you know what I’m saying but but it’s hey this has been this has been great now when it comes to functions and features this ties back to the target audience part remember I said what they what do they want what are their challenges what are their pains if you are not adding the solution to that in in this area you’re doing your website and your business uh a disservice because this is your opportunity for that opportunity because this is where you’re able to say okay well you have these challenges and these pains in your general everyday life or your career or whatever I want to help mitigate that with our website the website is just a vehicle to get you to somewhere else you want to be and through the process of the website being the vehicle I want to make it even easier for you not harder for you because you have challenges and pains just like me so functions are um actions and processes what users will do um download watch something shop they sign up log in and then the features are the tool the assets on how they would do it a form a page a YouTube or vimeo video uh the the plug the payment plugin a p a file right what is the thing it could be any of that think of those two things combining together like peanut butter and jelly and that should be what’s helping serve your audience when it comes to your website I see Polo uh ux design and so when it comes to ux design this is where we are thinking of you know the wire frame um and we’re thinking of the customer Journey right so that’s what we’re thinking of the customer’s journey and and then wire framing that out what does the customer or the visitor or the prospect um or the member whoever it is what what do they want what ises the person coming to your website want to achieve through your website your website is here y’all dollar dollar bill y’all and I know sometimes some of y’all be trying to be like y’all be trying to hear that sound the ching ching sound get right here but you got to realize the website is through here and they want to get to here right here and so you’re wireframing to create that journey in between to get to there so one of the questions and I think I’m I’m GNA look at it because it it was a question that was pertaining to this one a let’s see what is a good strategy what is a good strategy to Future proof WordPress how many plugins would you recommend and so that’s why this is one of I’ll answer one of the questions and I’ll answer a couple of other ones as well I’m looking at it I just top ideas okay so now we’re just getting straight into the what’s what less content more tools I told y’all I strive to teach with the concepts the process and the tools I think when people leave those things out they ain’t giving you the juice and I don’t know how many of y’all watch movies but you got the juice now so I’m trying to give y’all the juice and that’s what we got to do here’s the juice now I can and I still do do vouch for a lot of these tools I don’t use all of these tools um still because some things I use alternative but everything on this list I have used or I still use I still I still love um for instance instead of ACF I use metabox but I know ACF is very popular I also use ACF too when it comes to building our templates so ACF is a great tool solid security WP Vivid sht cart so we’re looking at security plugins and backup plugins e-commerce plugins caching plugins your video player plugin your page building your hosting right your CDN this is all in tandem with your text stack now this is not a exhaustive list is that how you say it exhaustive list hear people say that this is not all a complete all list I’m just giving you guys ideas but this is a list of some a lot of the things that you’ll be thinking of when it comes to your Tex stack and so I gave you the actual tool but the words that I was saying was the category think about the category that you’re looking to set up then when it comes to content and SEO we have Google Trends Google search console Google ads YouTube Google PHP insights you see I have a lot of Google on here and as I always say Google loves Google more than Kanye loves Kanye and that’s a lot of love the next epis you know so we gota we gota we gota understand how you got to play the game sometimes and playing that game means if you ain’t you talking about SEO like if you talk about SEO I feel like Alan Iverson when he when they was asking about now I don’t know if you know some of y’all don’t watch basketball this is gonna go over your head that’s okay same for you but it’s a famous Allen Iverson line where he was being asked about practice because he wasn’t going to practice and Allan Iverson is a basketball player and Alan Iverson like we talk about practice practice we talk about practice what we we talk about not a game we talk about the game about practice not a game we a talk about the game we talk about practice that’s how I feel if you talk about SEO and you ain’t talk about Google what are you talking about like they own 86% of the internet uh of the of the internet if not more than that 90 something it don’t matter they own the internet search engine market share the word s stands for Search the word e stands for engine and the O stands for y’all know it already so it’s like if we ain’t talking now you can have your quarrels with Google that’s okay we all got our beats with everything right but we really talk about SEO if you talk about SEO with being in Yahoo that’s a that’s some a small pool of of of of market share and then we have other tools for our WordPress website like rank math um Uber suggest and Atri there’s SM rush and then there is Gemini and chat GPT so this list right here if you only use these tools and only use a couple of them your content in SEO game can be be on point because Gemini and chbt could write the content for you uh YouTube I mean Google again loves Google so they give you the tools and they give you the market they give you the real estate that’s all we’re trying to do is fight for Real Estate let’s be honest y’all it’s like real world we just trying to fight for the real estate online right we just trying to be hi I’m here we’re trying to be invisible that’s all we trying to do is fight for Real Estate so using YouTube I mean Google to fight for real estate and then using these other SEO tools that also inter with Google I have I don’t know any major SEO tool that anytime you log in and set it up it ain’t asking you for your Google something next thing you know they’re gonna be asking y’all for your social security number and y’ your’ passport numbers but they asking you for Google something right they playing the game too and then we got analytics and feedback and optimization so uh when it comes to we and this is a slide that you’ve already seen before but now we bringing it back because now we have Microsoft Clarity Google search console analytics uh Google analytics and Momo for those who don’t want to use Google analytics but you still need to be collecting and handling your analytics you can still use a different analytics tracking tool right uh versus Google analytics but also still be aiming to gain traction using Google in the search way so they’re not all one and the same and we all have to understand that or else we are we’re missing out on opportunities you know that’s just that’s it’s just a fortunate or unfortunate way and then we have more um feedback here so collecting feedback we already talked about it before but we talk about it again feedback can be collected through Microsoft Clarity user back hot jar Survey Monkey Google forms these are all different forms of feedback Microsoft Clarity and hot jar are great forms of heat Maps user recordings so you don’t always got to bother people or lean on all of your users answering questions to know what they’re doing you can spy on them with your own tools and these are not tools that Google analytics is going to give you the same type of detail and information with though these are tools that are going to be way better than Google analytics when it comes to that type of detail being able to see actual recordings of your users on their sites that’s what hot jar Microsoft Clarity does be able to see heat Maps Google analytics doesn’t give you heat maps how far people scrolling down on the website click Maps where are they clicking Google analytics don’t give you that either so you want to pair these things and then you want to use that with people Ser uh you surveying people you answering or people answering your questions that’s a better way to say it uh people answering um through your questions right they’re answering your questions so that’s the key thing when you add them all together and then optimization so you wrap that all up like y’all ever wrap up a nice now I don’t eat bacon no more but man oh boy I would what would I do for a nice bacon T WP right now uh but yeah you wrap it all up together and then you get this optimization process going you have all the information you need you’ve been tracking you you started off with your goals what you wanted at the same time you had to think about what are your users wanted because if your users don’t have alignment with what you want well then you gonna have a nobody wants you know I no want I don’t want and you don’t want that that’s something you don’t want either so whatever your goals are they got align with your audience in some way shape or form and having all that in between stuff with the tech and the and the design and all the look and the feel you have to wrap all that up get that feedback what really happens and then think about optimizing your website create a task list what is what is what are the tasks you’re going to do what are the things you have to do who’s going to do it is it going to be all you if it’s going to be all you you need to know all the task how to do all the task if it’s not going to be all you you need to know who’s doing it and then when is it going to get done is it funny how we going back to them goals what is it who going to do it when is it gonna get done if we ain’t gonna say when it’s gonna get done you might as well not even have a list of things to do because this is gonna overwhelm you and then you gonna be bothering people for no reason you know and we don’t want to be bothered for no reason we ain’t got time for that so that’s why I’m saying task people or role or Who and the uh time date calendar put it in there all right so that is pretty much it as far as the presentation is concerned but I definitely want to show you the overall connection real quick before I end it and say that as remember remember when I talked about determining your goals because now you’re looking at it from the BD the bird’s eye view right how many how often do you look at the slides and look at everything from the bird’s eye view you be looking at one slide at a time now you can see it all this is don’t do that don’t you when uh okay this is being able to see from a very fundamental standpoint a the path of a building the path of building a website website strategy right being able to create something that is going to be scalable so going back to answering the question how do you future proof and how many plugins would you recommend well you future proof it by doing this and not skipping no steps you skip some steps well how you gonna proof the future if you you got holes in your boat how you gonna get to the island what you gonna do roll faster you sinking you got to slow it down plug the holes up we be trying to roll so fast to the island because we sinking as entrepreneurs and business owners uh creators professionals especially with deadlines and building with WordPress that we don’t be plugging the holes up so we just try to roll to the to the island faster and then we get tired by the time we get to the island the destination we ready to die like we we so tired we burnt out so plugging Them Holes up that’s how I will future proof it by using some type of strategy like this and then as far as um plugins wise I would say that really all depends I know that’s a generic question starting off with that I wouldn’t go over 20 if you don’t need it if you don’t need it don’t go over 20 plugins if you only need like 10 to 20 you know I think you probably going to need at least five to 10 at minimum unless you gonna have a bare bone site depends on how how big your site is how robust it is 10 to 20 is a good rule of thumb once you get to 20 to 50 you better have some you better have a your hosting and your optimization uh your cashing better be on point better if your cashing it on point your hosting it on point then you are you hurting yourself you’re killing yourself Smalls U and then how do you factor speed into large websites so going to that point I just made I would say caching and hosting I don’t build or I’ve never built a huge Enterprise site that’s a 100 Pages or 500 pages or 200 Pages or even 90 Pages I’ve never built a site like that so I can’t give authentic you know answer to that but I can say there is a rule of a general rule of thumb how you make a $100,000 is the same way you make a million dollar you just do 10 times more people think it’s like harder to make a million once you make 100 they say no it gets easier to do things once you’ve already done the fundamental things because you just keep reapplying that’s what scaling is you’re putting you’re you’re not uh you’re getting more out without having to put as much in that’s what scaling is all about um and then what’s another question what’s a what are the top three ways so what are the top three ways you identify the top leads that was the one that threw me off I wasn’t sure as far as because this is more about website strategy but if I were to tie it to the top three ways I identify the top lead I would go to looking at Target Audi your target market if you’re if you’re going to if you’re identifying who your top uh top leads are it’s looking at your target market and then looking at your your analytics uh look at your kpis now we gonna use the nerd ter you know what saying we gonna use the jargon terms I try to give the simple simple part but now we got to use we gotta go a little deeper so yeah your kpis and your key performance indicators that are leading to your website goals um even more more specific your conversion goals or I think um Google analytics now calls them key events so they used to be called conversions in Google anals now they’re called key events so whatever those are whoever’s hitting your key events like your key key things I would say those are probably some good leads I could be wrong uh and then I’m learning to learn I’m I’m looking to learn some basic strategies to implement in my client websites well if you ain’t learned no basic strategies in this I I don’t know I ain’t do my job right um but yeah that’s pretty much all I have so going back to the to the last slide I did have uh a I have a planner that pretty much is this same thing if you’re interested oops and you can scan the QR code there and it leads to this uh website here it’s a free planner that pretty much has all the things I talked about today was there any other questions that

Rob Watson:

thank you so much this was this was amazing I got so much out of this and I I got a lot that I can apply to current situation that I’m working on so thank you so much

Maestro Stevens:

you’re welcome you’re welcome