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Do you ever wonder what you might be doing wrong on your website? Or maybe what you could improve, even if you’re already doing a lot right?

Today, we’re talking with Michelle Pontvert who will rip apart our website, tell us everything we’re doing wrong… and then how to fix it.

This is an episode you do NOT want to miss.

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(while you’re there, grab Michelle’s Guide to do an audit of your own!)

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Schedule a discovery call to get a website audit with Michelle

Alyson Lex 0:03
When Jenny and I met Michelle, we ended up with a really great conversation. And by the end of it, Jenny and I were saying, Hey, can you destroy our website live on an episode? That would be super fun. And to our excitement and a little bit of our terror, she said, Yes. So today, we have Michelle porvair, who is going to audit our System to thrive.com website, tell us everything we're doing wrong. Hopefully, tell us a few things we're doing right. And we are going to let her share the lessons that you can gain from our mistakes. You might be asking why we're doing this. And it's for a couple of reasons. Reason number one. It's so that you can see exactly what it looks like to have an amazing web designer, web expert, user experience expert, come in and look at your website, and really give you that personalized feedback. But also, we want to show you that even though we know we're doing a lot, right, we also know we're not perfect. So you can feel like you don't have to be perfect, too. So Michelle, thank you so much for being here with us today, we are super stoked. Thanks so much for having me, I'm really excited to dive in, which is going to be really fun.

Jennie Wright 1:35
I'm excited for this too. And I just want to share that at the time that we're recording this, the System to thrive.com website does need a desperate refresh. Again, Allison and I got that website up in 30 days. And it's been sitting there ever since. And it needs a good refresh. So when you're listening to this episode, the website may already be done, it may already be updated. And if that's the case, we're including screenshots of what Michelle is going to be talking about and looking at, at the time that we're recording this so that you have something to reference and look at and see what we were talking about in the moment versus you guys going to the website and going well, it doesn't look like that now. So we're gonna make sure that we have those reference points for you so that you're able to clearly see what Michelle is talking about. So Michelle, thank you so much. I can't wait. I'm like super excited, like, let's go for it.

Michelle Pontvert 2:26
Okay, well, I'm really excited to dive in. So I'm going to pull up the website, so I can kind of look at it with you. So first things first, I am really happy to see your faces on the website. I think anytime we have personal businesses and brands, it's super important to actually make some connection with those people and see our lovely smiley faces and put sort of some personal touch on it. So I will start off with that, I think that is a really, really strong thing to have, especially in this top part of our website. When we're looking at a website, this first part of our page, the homepage, in particular before you scroll down, is called a hero section. And that is because it is a hero of your website. When we actually get someone onto the site, you get about three seconds, give or take to make that first impression before they will click away if it's not a good fit. So this is by far the most important part of your website. So optimizing this to really capture people's attention, make sure they know they're in the right place is I think one of the most important things to work on. When I looked at your site, I do see some really good pieces here. But there's some space to improve. So I think your headline here were coaches, experts and online business owners discover how to serve their clients and the life their business is building. That's lovely. But right now, I don't actually know that this is a site for podcast, what is your sort of quote unquote, selling. And really, I don't have a way to connect with what what it is you're offering, why I should stick around. So while this is great, it really means a subheading to explain a little bit more in context of like, what System to THRIVE is, who this is for specifically, and what they're going to get out of sticking around here. So I'd say that's a big piece to work on. And then I would I would strongly encourage you to put a call to actions that's usually a button right below that. And really what we want that call to action to be is the very next step you want someone to take in your customer journey, and your customer journey being the ultimate journey from perfect stranger to customer. And when we've got someone on our website, they're often not that far into the customer journey. They don't know you all that well. So I really like particularly for businesses like yours, to lead them to a about or work with us page depending on sort of what you're offering. So I would encourage strongly to put something here to lead them on that next step if they're ready to move. forward, we want to give people as little thinking as possible to do, once they get on their sites, you know, a lot of people are giving you split attention while they're doing something else, often on their phones. So we don't want to make it any harder for people to navigate the site than necessary. Speaking of phones, one of my biggest kind of pauses, I would say is that this website looks great on desktop, but really struggles on mobile. And I would say that it's a really, it's a handicap because about 40, to even 50% of website uses look at websites first and only on mobile. So when I reduce the size of the screen, I lose a whole bunch of your text, when I scroll down to the second to section here, I can't make head or tail if the text is running off the other side of the page. So if I'm looking at this on a cell phone or an iPad, I won't be able to make heads or tails of what this section is about. So really important.

Jennie Wright 6:02
That's awesome advice, though, that, you know, when we we know that we struggled with this for mobile, but this is this is amazing. Please continue to tear it up.

Alyson Lex 6:11
Now, I also really wanted to just mention that what Michelle is doing is simply changing the size of her browser window. And that is a really good and quick way to check to see if you're optimized for mobile, because if you are, your website will change with the size of your browser window. And so that's something that I've been doing, if I'm checking some sales pages and things like that the journey builds, I want to see how it looks on mobile. But I don't feel like pulling out my phone, I will just change the size of my Chrome browser, and it'll make it fit the way it would on a phone. So I just want to call that out. Because again, we're trying to take a very visual episode and turn it into audio.

Michelle Pontvert 6:57
Yeah, thank you for talking. That's right, I think it's, it's something that's really easy to just manually check like this. There's also some really great sites that you can plug in and see what it would look like on an Android on an apple on an iPad on a Samsung Galaxy, like all different types of mobile or different kinds of screens. So if you want to a more in depth view, there's definitely ways but this is my quick and easy cheat to just change the size of the browser. So I would say that's sort of the biggest win, quickest change, that would make a huge difference to your website, it also really helps your SEO, because Google and other search engines really prioritize sites that are optimized for mobile. So if you're looking to get some traffic from organic searches through Google, or Bing, or whatever search engine, that's a really quick win, to be able to just optimize it there. As we go through, you've got sort of the core of everything you need on your homepage. And your copy is actually really lovely. I would say one of the big pieces that feels missing to me is some hierarchy, meaning the sort of overarching flow of the websites. And I like to think about it as your homepage is like the index of a book, we want to be able to skim through and get an overview of the entire business overview of the entire website, on the homepage. And ideally, you want to be able to skim read the entire site by just reading the headlines. So if you can break down every section with the headline, and then even subheadings, if you go into a bit more detail, I love bullet points because it's really easy and quick to scan. So I think formatting is actually going to be really powerful here. And again, that's something that Google really loves, is having really clear hierarchy. So it's sort of a win win. But this teal section here, your very next section after that banner at the top, this is really going into what this business is about. And at the moment, the hierarchy sort of upside down, I get some small body text first, some sort of medium sized, and then a bit bigger at the bottom. And that just feels upside down, we really want to start with heading the biggest first and then break it down smaller and smaller as we go. I will also say that, again, people are giving you most likely partial attention. So anything longer than a sentence, I really like to break up and break up into bullet points break up into smaller sentences break up into paragraphs, just so it's really easy to read. And again, this is sort of a double when because when we do reduce things down into a small screen, what looks like a fairly small sentence on desktop actually runs into a few lines on mobile. So if you have a traditional paragraph, let's say five, six sentences on desktop and look, okay, but once we get into mobile that is booked through. So you don't want to make it too hard for people to actually work their way through those sentences that are really important to explain what the business is about and what you have to offer. I think that's a quick answer. easy thing to kind of work through as well,

Jennie Wright 10:02
that's a really good point that you're making with how it feels upside down to you. And as you're talking through it, I can see it. So to visually describe again, what we're seeing here is we're looking at a toolbox. And we'll include this in the show notes. So go to System to thrive.com, find this episode, and with Michelle back, and then you can see this, but this this teal box, and we have a copy of a paragraph. And then we have a smaller like a bit of a color, and then a little bit of almost like a headline. And the way that it's being described as it's almost like body copy. And then there's this sub headline and like the headline and the text gets bigger as we go down. I see how this is reversed than what it should be. And this is a really good point. And thank you for for sort of describing that in more detail to us.

Michelle Pontvert 10:46
Yeah, now and later on in the website, you actually get the order the right way around, just this particular section feels like it's upside down. So you have got the idea elsewhere. So I love this idea of bringing in the different types of episodes that people can can dive into on the podcast, I think this is a really compelling piece of the homepage, I will say it takes up a lot of real estate. And I think it's interesting, but probably not the most compelling thing. Ultimately, my guess is and please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing this website serves a few purposes, it's trying to get listeners for the podcast, trying to get some guests for the podcast, I assume. And then it looks like you also have some offers to sell people to help people with something. So right now I get a lot of podcast. Before I even find out there's anything else to this and the chances of someone scrolling through the entire homepage, to find what else you have to offer is pretty slim. So again, I really like to keep home pages pretty high level, and leave the more detailed pieces for a separate dedicated page so that people can take the choice to move forward and go in more granular detail as they want to dive deeper. So I think having this what we cover on the podcast section, just broken down into sort of a slightly higher level view. And these topics are great, it just could take up less visual real estate so that you leave space for other topics, which are going to be really powerful, like your actual most recent episodes, which I think is really compelling. And probably, ultimately something people will want to click on more readily. So yeah, I think that could that could really help you just optimize the space you have. It is and you know,

Alyson Lex 12:37
that's a really good lesson too. So when we built this website, we pretty much just had the podcast. So in the last year, between when we launched and about one more recording this, the business of the podcast business, if you will, has grown and shifted and changed. But the website hasn't. And so that's a really good lesson and a really important thing to ensure that as you're evolving in your business, your website is staying up to date with those changes. Absolutely.

Michelle Pontvert 13:11
That's such a good point, I really like to tell people that your website is a living entity, it's not ever really done because your business is never done. And it's just a virtual representation of your business. It's like a storefront. And you wouldn't if you had a traditional storefront shop, you wouldn't just leave it abandoned after you opened up, you would keep refreshing it, you would keep changing it so that it is up to date with what you have to offer inside. So it is something that's worth kind of taking a little bit of time to keep up to date as your offers change as your business grows. So I think that's really valuable to just think of as you do maker ship. So diving into the next section after this, I see some introductions of you, Alyson and then Jenny. So I love getting to know the people behind a business. And I think it's a really, really lovely way to make this feel more personal. I will say this is again, quite a lot of information for a homepage. And this feels like it would be more at home on an about page because that's when someone is really ready and interested to get to know you on this granular detail sort of levels. So I would encourage you to simplify this down into something quite a lot smaller, and then lead people through to the about page to read these sort of more minute details as they want to get to know you a little bit more. I also really love whenever in about section which this I would qualify as an about page can be written from the perspective of actually being about the person this is for this business is for so whether it's your listeners, or your customers or your clients. And whenever I see the word I said too many times in the sections sort of brings my little alarm bell because ultimately as the user as the person I'm reading this website. Yes, I care about you, Alison. And yes, I care about your journey. But ultimately, I want to know what you can do for me. I don't want to know why you other people who can help me. You know, we as humans, are mostly selfish. I think there's nothing wrong with helping people see themselves in the business first, and then sharing why you are the right resource for them sort of secondary. So I really like to position these sections as a, why this is the best fit for you, and why we are the experts to help you with this. So I think thinking through that, honestly, a lot of the content here is great. And it really builds a lot of trust, you talk about a lot of your kind of record your achievements and sort of your qualifications. I think these are all great assets to just be reframed in that sort of view of being how it helps you be a better service to the people you're helping. That makes sense.

Alyson Lex 15:54
It makes total sense. And as the person who wrote this website, and who preaches exactly what you're saying, I'm feeling a little because it's basically do as I say, not as I do, when it comes to this, because you're so right, it is a lot. And looking at it now objectively through fresh eyes. It's like, what was I thinking? Right, which is, you know, we're gonna put my ego aside. And that's also normal, like you can know everything about how to put together a great website, when you do it for yourself. It's really hard.

Michelle Pontvert 16:37
Oh, yeah, no, it is, it is really a challenging thing. It's like trying to put yourself on stage or public speaking, it's always so much harder to do it when it's used. So I do really encourage people who aren't naturally great at copywriting for themselves, or making websites for themselves to just find valuable resources to double check it. Whether that is you know, web design a friend, I often, like I offer audits, there are other businesses who offer audits and just some feedback that just a business friend who can give you that outside perspective will be really helpful because it's way too close. You know, you can't see it because you're too close. So it is really valuable to get the outside view because often we know better. And when I call out these things, in Wednesday, or this afternoon, like of course, I know that you just don't see it when it's yours.

Jennie Wright 17:29
I'm so enjoying this episode, I'm going quiet. But I am sitting over here, just taking a bazillion lines of notes. And I also know we're gonna have like, you know, kind of like a come to the mountain meeting after this. Because this is awesome. This is this is fantastic. This is so good. I can see exactly why people hire you to do what you do. This is phenomenal.

Michelle Pontvert 17:53
Oh, I'm so glad. And I think it is really just taking that step back as you were saying to like be a little bit objective and look at how this is serving the business and what it represents for you. So I think it's always good to have a check. I like to think of it almost like a health checkup like we as people go and have a doctor check us why wouldn't we go and have one of our biggest business assets be checked up to That's an

Jennie Wright 18:16
incredible point. And I and I want people to really get that one. If we go for our health checkups, and we do our yearly physicals and things like that, we should also be doing the same on our website. 100%. Yeah.

Michelle Pontvert 18:30
So we've got our about section here, which we chatted through a little bit, I see this call to action. And I'm happy to see you have some but when I was looking through the way you've worded this about the thrive system is slightly misleading to me. And I would encourage you guys to think through really what this means because I've got a traditional about on the navigation here. I'm sort of used to, and conditioned to think of like, Okay, this isn't about section I'm going to learn more about the business. And the thrive system, to me, implies a system that I can use as a business owner, which would indicate to me that this is going to tell me about your program, rather than about you as a business. So again, it's it's a slight tweak of the wording, but to be really cautious that we're not sending misleading signals so that either people will be nervous to click on this about page because they think they're going to go to a sales page and be pitched. Or that they will head to this page thinking that they're going to learn about the system that they can go by and implement, and then just be finding out about the business. So to sort of think through the phrase ology, that call to action just to help make sure people really know what they're going to do when they click. I like to think of it. Anytime we ask people take an action, we are asking a favor and you don't want to ask a favor without knowing what you're going to get in return. So to make sure that that is sort of an even exchange that you have asked them to click this button, and they know what's gonna happen. And next, we don't want any surprises when it comes to websites, or web business really, in general, it really builds a lot of trust. If we know what's going to happen at every stage, and know ahead of time, what's going to happen when we take an action. next section we have is the episodes, I love this, I think this is really great to have, the only piece I have to say here is that actually don't know really where to click. And if I was looking at this particular on a desktop, it has a sort of air of a blog about it. So I'm looking for read more button at the bottom of this body text here, after I've got the image, I've got the episodes that have heading. And then I've got a little brief here, and sort of expecting a button or a read more button down here to know how to take the next step and learn more about this, you do have this sort of hover effect on the episode image. But it's quite subtle. And I like to think about making websites accessible, particularly for people who have different abilities. And if I was, you know, colorblind, or if I had sight issues, I probably wouldn't notice that this was a change and indicating to me that it is going to lead me somewhere it's clickable. Yes, my mouse does change into the little like white glove hand, but only once I hover over this really quite small section here. And I will flag this that this will not be big enough for our mobile to actually.

Michelle Pontvert 21:58
So when I come down to the next section, we've got the most recent episodes. And this is a really great section to have, I think this is ultimately if you are promoting this elsewhere will be one of the sections that people are looking for. So I think working on this will be really valuable. And there's a few pieces here that I would encourage you to think through for a few different reasons. So right now we've got this sort of blog format with the image, the title, and then little sort of summary of what the episodes about. And I'm conditioned as a website user to sort of recognize this, and immediately look for something at the bottom to click through to to dive in deeper, whether it's a Read More link or a button, something like that. So I would encourage you to just follow that sort of traditional layout, because we are conditioned to expect it to just add like a Read More link down here. Then the other piece, I would say that there's really here, we've got this image at the top, which has the episode and the title. And it's got this really subtle hover effect over the image when I put my cursor over it. And while that's quite pretty, it's not particularly accessible. And I really like to think of how to make websites accessible for people of all different abilities. So if I was, for example, colorblind or had, you know, poor vision, this probably wouldn't register me as a change, it's it's very, very subtle the difference. So if you're going to do something like a hover effect to indicate that this is a clickable area, it's really worth making sure that it is something very obvious even in black and white, it's a kind of easy, quick way to figure out if something's gonna play for people with all sorts of different vision issues. So right now I yeah, I don't see a huge difference if I translated this image into black and white between the hover version and the regular version. With that being said, there's also a couple of pieces that make me hesitate whether this would work particularly well on mobile. So at the moment, I do have my cursor turning into a pointer when I get onto the image, but I also have this kind of curious little button off to the side with two arrows, which I think is also a link. And it kind of makes it a little bit confusing to know, which is the button. So I would encourage you to just pick the entire zone to be clickable. And ultimately, that's going to work really well on mobile, because we'd like to make sure that anything that is a clickable link button image has a large enough surface area so that on a phone, our fingers can actually hit easily that target. So there are some sort of minimums to keep in mind. But if you make this entire picture clickable, you've got no problem. And again, this title here, this is a nice big clickable zone. So this is really good. I would just make this whole image the button and get rid of the sort of secondary button that's a bit misleading. To make it just really obvious now I get into that episode, because this is ultimately I think what a lot of your visitors will actually be wanting to go and dig into So I think that's, that's sort of the main thing. The other piece, that would be lovely to see, it's just a way for me to go and find out more of the episodes, I have a teaser of three here, they don't really have a way to go and see the rest of the episodes off of this section here. So having a nice button to say, like, see all episodes is just a really great way for people to get into that archive, and not have to make the mental effort like oh, maybe up in the top, we have a button in the navigation to go find it, we don't want to make people think so once we've got them captive and interested here does make it really easy for them to dive in deeper. And that's a really quick win.

Michelle Pontvert 25:37
There, then I scroll down to this next section. And this is a slightly curious section for me. Um, ultimately, we've got two pictures here side by side, one that says listen now with a big button in the middle and one says be a guest. Listen now, I think is basically the same as what we've got here, the most recent episodes. So if we have some form of, you know, listen on Apple podcast, for example, that could be interesting to just break that out into its own specific section of like, listen to the podcast here and then link out all those places, they can actually go and listen to it, versus reading the shownotes. Because that's two different actions. And that makes sense to be two different sections. So I quite like that idea. Although I am hoping that in each of the episode, pages, there's links to go and watch all of the to listen to one of the episodes. But it could be nice to sort of call that out separately. Be a guest is actually a really different thing. You're asking for people. So having the side by side is sort of asking me like, Who am I? Am I listener, am I a potential guest. And we don't want to sort of throw people off. When you are asking, ultimately, some of your biggest calls to action. This is the kind of main goal of the website. So making these two sections really compelling, I think will be really powerful, because these are the ultimate goals you want for the site. So I would encourage you to break these into two completely separate sections, making the listen now about how they can go listen, and then making it be a guest a really compelling call to action for the right kinds of people to get onto the podcast and why it's interesting and valuable for them to be on the podcast. I think this really could be its own page as well. And I don't see it up in the navigation, I'm sure is a page. But if this is something you're actively working on getting new, really high qualified guests, I would encourage you to make that something really obvious and easy to find. Because this is sort of your secondary user of the website, your primary user is the listener potential client. But then really, your secondary user is someone who wants to be on your podcast. And they have kind of two different customer journeys, let's say, ultimately, the guest probably isn't going to be a customer, but they will be someone who engages with your business in a quite different way. So I really like to make sure that both of those user journeys are easy to find and easy to access. A lot of times I see this with websites where people get kind of conflicted when they have two different types of clients. And they stress out and put all sorts of buttons everywhere. So it is really important to pick whoever the primary user of the website is. And I think for you, it's your listeners, and give 90% of the website to them. But just have that little options so that the people who want to have that secondary user journey, can opt into it and figure their way through it. So I think a really clean easy way to do that would just be to pop a link in the navigation and then make this a separate section way down here about being a guest. And that means I can sort of figure out from there, how I can take myself through that journey. And the rest of the website can be really geared towards the listener, that potential customer

Alyson Lex 28:45
really wanted to bring in Jenny and I are both Yeah, I have a Google Doc open. We're furiously taking notes. I'm trying to take notes and screenshots for the shownotes. And Jenny's making a to do list for us. So hashtag ulterior motive for this episode. But what I really liked about what you just said was identify your primary and your secondary user. Because even if you serve two audiences, you're going to serve someone mostly. And it's okay for them to have two different experiences. As long as it's clear how those experiences can happen. I really just wanted to call that out because I thought that was very poignant.

Michelle Pontvert 29:26
Yeah, I see it a lot, particularly with businesses who have gone on to create courses for people who have similar to them. I see this a lot that you know, you're a nutritionist, and you have all of your nutritionist clients, but then you also create something to train other nutritionists. And those feel like two really different businesses, but they ultimately still the same brand. They're still the same service, the same business. So we want two houses on the same website, but it can feel really conflicting. Like how do you serve both those people so just really important to keep in mind who those different people which one is ultimately Is the bread and butter of the business, and which one is the secondary, and make it really easy for both of those people to find their way through to ultimately, the end goal of working with you in whichever way makes sense for them. next section down, we have some testimonials. And I'm so happy to see these testimonials, some of the most powerful sales tool that I'm sure you know, that you can have on your website. So I'm always super happy to see these, I will say that I think they could be used even better. You know, you have some really lovely words here from people. And they're all clumped together at the bottom of the website, and nine times out of 10. People won't scroll down this far. But this is really powerful social proof, and something that's going to encourage people to actually dive in and listen to the podcast, potentially work with you. So I would strongly encourage you to break these up and move them throughout the homepage. And throughout the entire website. I really, really like to encourage people to not create a testimonials page, because you are asking your customers to make a separate click to go into a page to just read nice things about you, rather than scattering that throughout the site. So they kind of organically stumble upon it and get that really powerful, social proof while they're also looking for what they want. So you get the best bang for your buck, just getting those scattered throughout everything, and keeping them as relevant as possible to the page that you're on. So, for example, if you have a testimonial that's talking about how wonderful you particularly are as people, that's a great quote for your test for your adult page. If you have something talking about your program, that's a great book for your programs feature your services page. And if it's really General, then it's a great homepage. Easy way out. But I think these, these are underserving you as they are. So I think spreading these out and splitting them up throughout the entire website will be great. And then bonus points, if you can get a picture. We as humans love seeing other faces, and particularly for things like testimonials, where it is asking someone to sort of take a leap of faith that this is real. And if we can put a face to the name to the words, was so much more willing to put that trust into you as a business entity, the person giving that quote. So it's really, really powerful if you can get images of the people who are giving you those testimonials or even at the minimum, a logo of their business or a link to the business just to prove that it is real, that it is not just you cards making, even though I'm sure you wouldn't, it just helps me feel reassured that this is real. So I think that that's sort of the piece I would add to here because it is it's doing your disservice not to have this chain the way it should be because the words are actually really lovely. It just needs a little bit more formatting a little bit of support to make them really do what they need to do for you.

Jennie Wright 32:51
I don't know how we're going to look at this website the way like the same way again, once this is over, I'm the notes that we have are insane. This is amazing.

Michelle Pontvert 33:03
I'm so glad I think there's so many things that as you said like a very obvious once you once you hear it once you see it, but it's it's really hard when you're so close. So I'm really glad that we can dive in and you can get this external perspective with all the pieces that kind of go on in my mind is I look at a website, which I'm sure it's different than someone just coming to, to use it.

Alyson Lex 33:24
I think to when you when you think about updating your website, you think to yourself, I know I don't like it. But I'm not sure why. Right, it's hard to pinpoint step by step exactly what to fix. And that's why working with someone like you is so essential, because you're like, Well, yeah, you just do this, because of this. And this because of that, and this because of this way, because it's what you do, right. So maybe a good takeaway for that would be if you're overwhelmed by trying to audit your own stuff, one, you should just call Michelle, to look, start from the top and look at it as objectively as possible and just go screen by screen. Don't try to take in the whole thing. Just what is happening here. And what do I want to be happening here? I think that's probably a good place to start. And I know that throughout this episode, we This was literally just one page on our website. This was a true deep dive audit.

Michelle Pontvert 34:34
Yeah, and I always love to go as deep as possible on the homepage, because it's such a good towel for what, what else is buried beneath. And if you can get the homepage, right, you can sort of apply the same rules, the same ideas to the rest of the website. So it's a really nice way to just get in and get those ideas, that sort of concept in place. You were mentioning about sort of taking that perspective. I just wanted to share a sort of analogy in art when we're learning To draw, a lot of times, you will take the the picture you're trying to draw and draw it upside down. And having a different perspective kind of tricks your brain into not seeing what you're trying to draw. So say I'm trying to draw a face, it's really hard to draw faces, it's one of the most challenging things. But if you turn it upside down, your brain doesn't see it as a face anymore. And you're able to have that objectivity. And I think when we're looking at our websites, if we're able to create some form of objectivity, it really helps. And personally, when I'm looking at my own website, even just starting at the bottom, and moving up the website, can be a way to kind of trick your brain into not seeing it the way you're used to seeing it, because you will have seen the top part of your homepage 1000 times as you click on it, but you will have seen the other parts less. So just trying to think of ways to sort of trick you into seeing it with that objectivity, so that you can actually kind of take these these ideas, these tips and apply it to your own business, I think, can be really nice way if you do find that tricky to take that step back.

Jennie Wright 36:01
Absolutely. And I know that this is a trick when and Alison and I both do this, in sort of like a copy editing, like, I'll start at the bottom. And I'll work my way up from an email, like an email or anything because I that's how I find errors. Sometimes your brain, you know how you when you have ever seen those things where it's like, read the sentence and tell me how many errors are in it, and people don't see it. Because your brain just your brain fills in the gaps. Mm hmm. But if you start and you read it backwards, or you read it from the bottom up, and things like that, if you try and trick your brain, like you're saying, then you start to see those things, which is just amazing. Well, we could keep going, this episode could go on for another hour. I mean, honestly, we wish it would, it's that darn good. selfishly speaking, of course, but for the time that we have, we just you know, we're going to start wrapping this up. And I want to sort of call attention to some of the things that Michelle was saying, that are incredibly fabulous. We have so many callers In this episode, we have so much good stuff in here. And one of them I want to mention is accessibility, I didn't realize, and this is from a place of not having any vision visible or any disabilities, that sort of thing. I didn't realize where we were lacking that. And I'm truly, like, I'm truly aghast that we didn't think of that. But of course, again, we were too close to it and things like that. So the new website, which will definitely be happening, there will be accessibility. And I'm really thankful that you called attention to that. So that's my first takeaway.

Alyson Lex 37:41
I really am. As the person who wrote all of the copy, I'm still still feeling a little called out. But I think one of my big takeaways is when you're organizing the stuff on your site, really think of that hierarchy. Start with the headline, go to the sub headline, then go to the body copy, which that's how I write sales copy. So why didn't I write it this way? For the website? We'll have to ask Alison of last year, because I have no clue. That is, that's my big takeaway.

Jennie Wright 38:25
My next one on here is that you want to keep that homepage pretty high level, and leave the details for those second or other pages within the website, which I think is fabulous. And it makes me look at this, the sections on our website where it's you know, Hi, I'm Allison, Hi, I'm Jenny and things like that, and look at really changing up that content. So that it's really that high level and it draws people into the deeper end of the website. Like you said, your homepage should sort of be like a table of contents for a book. I believe that was the phrasing. And I really, really, really look at that as an impeccable way of looking at your homepage. And we're absolutely going to implement that. So that's my that's my that's the third takeaway. My second takeaway.

Alyson Lex 39:08
My last takeaway is that having someone outside of your business come through and take a look at your website is absolutely invaluable. And my recommendation is that you call Michelle. So Michelle, how can people get in touch with you?

Michelle Pontvert 39:25
Yeah, so obviously, my website is one of my favorite places to have people head I have tons of information about how you can work with me and all the different ways there. I'm also on Instagram and on Facebook. I am happy to kind of chat with anyone I really I believe in making sure that it's a good fit on both ends. So if you feel any insecurity Valley website or feeling a bit unsure about what to do next, I really like to chat with people and see where they're at and how I could be a best service if I'm the right fit for them. So I encourage people to reach out and I do have discovery calls Which are really a nice way for us to get to know each other a little bit more in depth and make sure it's a really good fit if we do decide to work together.

Jennie Wright 40:07
Well, sure, Michelle, you're being very, very modest with your skills and all this kind of stuff. Honestly, I would, I would very much encourage people this is this could have been a discovery call. And that's why we sort of did it the way that we did we really want to showcase your ability, and you've proven it over and over in this in this episode. So I really want to encourage people to take a look at everything and go and visit and connect with Michelle. Also, and I probably need a little bit of recovery time after this episode. You know, Allison's like, she has no ego with her copy. But she's totally like she said, she's feeling that called out so she's gonna need a little bit of soothing their their head pads. Oh, stop? No,

Alyson Lex 40:49
it's I'm sure this is good. No, it's so good. It's really important to recognize that. Look, Jenny and I are our successful business owners. And what's more, as we teach people how to be successful business owners, and we're not immune to messing up things that we're not the expert in.

Jennie Wright 41:12
Oh, yeah, stay in our lane, like copywriter for a reason, you know, strategists and list builder. Absolutely. That is, those are the areas that we need to sort of stick in, we can definitely give good comments on other people's websites. And to our credit, again, this website was put up in 30 days, it was created from scratch in three days. And we haven't touched it since except for minor things of updating. And what we've learned today is that we've got a good foundation, there's just the things that need to be improved. It's not a complete teardown, it's just getting it to the studs, and rebuilding from there. And I'm all about that. So we're really going to enjoy putting some of this into play. And I just want to take a second Michelle, just sincerely thank you so much for doing this with

Michelle Pontvert 41:55
us. I'm so glad I it's really lovely to hear how open you were to hearing about your website and how you can improve it. I really love engaging with people who are ready to take that next step and and make the point was I work for you ultimately, it's a tool. And yes, it's something personal, and it can feel like a piece of art. But really, it is just a piece of your marketing assets. And if you are too precious with it, it won't serve you that well. So I really appreciate you guys, we're both so open to, you know, taking an objective look at the site to make it work harder for you. I really admire that.

Jennie Wright 42:30
Oh, absolutely. We were We were in it all the way no problems there. So, thank you so much for being on with us, Michelle, we really really do appreciate it. And if you are interested in hearing more about what Michelle does, please again, go check her out. And if you've loved this episode and you want to hear more, please consider subscribing or following or listening to this podcast wherever you listen to your favorites, head on over to System to THRIVE comm check out the show notes from this episode to see all the screenshots of what Michelle was saying in the moment that she was saying it's going to make it a lot easier for you to kind of understand what she was seeing right then and it's going to make it a lot easier for you to sort of follow along. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back again soon answering another big question.