Custom Designed WordPress Website that Rocks!

Congratulations to Rhonda, one of my wonderful clients. She hired me to design her a website. She is a member of my Listing Experts Academy and also a private coaching client.

Rhonda Fee owns her brokerage in Pleasanton California. She did all her avatar training which is in module 1 in Listing Experts Academy and then she hired me to help her with her keyword research just to make sure she was on the right track.

We discovered her avatar. An avatar is your ideal customer persona but it goes way deeper than general demographics. We really drill down. We were able to really narrow her niche to match her avatar.

From there I was able to take her logo as the guide to her colors and messege that will resonate with her avatar. It flows and tells her story in a way that will meet her avatar where she is.

It is so exciting to see all of the necessary pieces come together.

Check out her website at: http://HomeValuesPleasanton.com.

We have a webinar coming up on Wednesday: “Website Best Practices” to help you get your website on the right track.

Go here to sign up for the webinar: https://katerinagasset.com/2016-website-best-practices-webinar/

Here are some of the screenshots of Rhonda's Home page:

 

 

 

Webinar: Website Best Practices

Thank you all for all your wonderful participation in these free webinars that I am teaching a couple times each month! I love the questions and more so, I love to see how you implement the trainings in your businesses!

This next webinar is titled: Website Best Practices

This webinar is for you if you fall in any of these categories:

• You are looking for a new website
• You are revamping your website
• You might have a Google penalty
• You have never had a website
• You want to get your blog on your website
• You are going to build your own website
• You are looking at industry specific ( like Real Estate) website templates
• You are getting pricing on custom designed websites
• You are using your website for direct leads
• You want to have a website to get sellers
• You want to have a website to get buyers
• You want to have a website for your small business

We will go over the best practices for websites. This will be a live training where I will walk you through key factors and best practices.

As always, IF you register for the webinar and for some reason you can not make it to the live session, you will get the recording sent to you via email.

The webinar is on Wednesday March 30,2016 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Go now to register:  Webinar: Best Practices 

 

Does Your Website Resonate with Your Target Market?

Does your target audience respond to your website?

I will go over why a ‘unique for you' website is important to your target market and your conversions and how you can benefit.

You can have the most beautifully designed website on the planet but if no one finds it, what good is it?

It is good for your own ego, but ego does not pay the bills.

You can have the same template site everyone else has- what good is that if you are not differentiating yourself in the market?

You can have a great website that is found, but it does not convert the traffic that arrives, what good will that do you?

Many people look at a website as a technology based calling card or business card.

Then there are people, like in real estate, who want to copy the website format that the heavyweights have or be like everyone else because that is what appears to be the norm in the particular industry you are in.

Overall, these are very poor reasons to have a website.

Some people say they want to have a website and the only reason they know is because that is what they are “supposed” to have.

I firmly believe that nearly all businesses and solopreneurs and entrepreneurs should have a website.
But they should have one for the right reasons. Those reasons will vary depending on your niche and the strategies of your business plan.

You first need to create your plan for your website. You need to understand how it will play a part in your marketing strategy.

You need to have a goal first. What is the goal of your website?

Don't put up a website, just because everyone else in your market is doing it.

Website Marketing Strategies

Some niches don't need organic search because they drive the traffic from offline to their websites.

Others don't need organic search because they pay for Facebook ads or Google adwords which drives traffic to their sites.

In both of those instances you should have a landing page to drive that traffic to. If you are using Google adwords, there are a few more items you need specifically on your website in order to get approved for your ads.

For instance: if you are marketing to expired listings and are sending out a postcard to drive the traffic to your website- you need to send the traffic to a specific landing page or squeeze page on your website. Don't send then to your home page.

This is another huge mistake real estate agents and other marketers make – they send all their traffic back to their home page. Unless your home page is your landing page, don't do this.

For each type of call to action, you need to have a landing page or a pop up form that directs the visitor to what to do next.

In the case of expired listings, the visitor needs to be sent to a landing page on your website which is addressing the pain of having an expired listing, their house did not sell. Address this, loud and clear, and then have a very clear call to action.

If you are working with buyers you will want the home search fields above the fold of your website and a clear call to action. You need to then support that with community pages that address each specific neighborhood. But niching goes even deeper than this.

If your goal is to get organic search – that means you want people to find you on the internet and then go to your website- this is called SEO, search engine optimization, then you need to have an SEO friendly website. WordPress.org platform is great to accomplish this goal.

Know your target audience- your avatar

Who is your avatar? In my Listing Experts Academy we have an entire hour long module on doing your avatar research and defining your avatar. An avatar is targeting a specific person in your niche.

Before you ever hire anyone to build you a website you need to know your avatar.

If you are paying someone to build you a website and they are not having a strategy session with you about who your avatar is, you are wasting your money.

Even for paid ad traffic,  you will need to know who your avatar is.

You can not be all things to all people. You must target your avatar very specifically.

There is no way that in today's internet you can be a generalist.  There is no way you have the money to compete for the same traffic that Zillow and Realtor.com compete for. Get out of their lane.  You can fly under the radar of the heavy weights.

Color is one part of your website your avatar needs to connect with

Color is very important on your website.  Here is an article I wrote about how to work with graphics on your website and social media.

Tips on color:

• Use very little black – don't overdo it with black background sites
• Use white text only for accents, titles, attention grabbers- don't use white text.
• Blue is for loyalty and soothes; great for dentists, medical sites, and water related sites like waterfront real estate.
• Red is the hardest color on our eyes, it is the most intense color of the rainbow. Be careful how you use it, great for accents and some call to actions.
• Use a color wheel to find complimentary colors.
• Make sure your logo and brand blend in, don't use opposing colors, that confuses your visitors.

 

Here is a video with some samples of some of the websites I am working on to give you an idea of different niches.

 

 

What pages do you need on your website?

There are specific pages that Google will require if you run adwords campaigns or adsense. There are also best practices pages Google likes you to have on your site which help to verify that you are a human and not a spam program creating thousands of websites at one time.

The only time these are not required is when you have a squeeze page. But even with a squeeze page – if you are sending traffic to it, make sure you have in small text under the optin box, your link to your privacy page and your disclaimer page.

For regular niche website you will need:

• Home page
• About page
• Main keyword topic page
• Testimonial page
• Blog page
• Contact page
• Disclaimer page
• Privacy page

 

Design for Your Website

After you know who your avatar is, start the conversation.

Design every part of your website as part of your conversation with your avatar.

Look at this screenshot of one of the websites I designed.  See if you can tell who the avatar is for this website.

The colors not only match the logo but they also resonate with baby boomers in Rhonda's niche.

You want to make things very simple and clean.

Overcrowded design no longer appeals to most avatars. You want clean lines, simple boxes, and lots of white space.

 

You also don't want your site to look the same as every one of your competitors.
So many times clients tell me, ” I like this website. I want my website to look like this one.” This is the wrong focus.  Your website needs to resonate with you avatar not with you. Then your website must be able to include your avatar in the conversation. You do that through the use of color, design, and content.

I have YouTube tutorials on how to build your own WordPress website.

Text me at 561-502-1577 if you would like me to build your website for you instead. Not everyone is cut out to build their own website:)

 

 

Apple, The FBI, and Individual Private Property Rights

Apple, the FBI, and Individual Private Property Rights

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc. wrote a letter to all Apple customers. It was one of the best letters in modern times I have read regarding individual private property rights.  You can read the letter by clicking here.

Private property rights are one of the rights of a society which honors liberty. There are very few countries even today who honor private property rights. It is one of the things that made our nation unique and created so much prosperity.

Most of us take our right to private property for granted. A part of private property is privacy. Privacy is something we hold dear. We like our privacy. We also tend in most instances to honor the privacy of others.

I commend Tim Cook of Apple for taking the stand against this unprecedented demand by the U.S. government to force a private company to create a back door in order to break into a phone.

Among those who are coming to the support of Apple in this case are: Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Airbnb, Twitter, LinkedIn, Twellio, Ebay, AT&T  and many others, the list is long, and several trade groups like the Consumer Technology Association and others. You do know that Google and Apple are not exactly friends. However, we must all stand together to protect our individual rights.

The reasons this has everything to do with your privacy is as follows:

1. Encryption is highly important to security. It is your personal security we are talking about. You store your photos, your personal information and now the Apple pay encrypted chip, and many other personal details on your smart phone.  The reason we have encryption is to protect our data from hackers, thieves, bad guys and anyone else we don't want messing in our business. Apple has always been at the forefront of protecting their customers with security for their data so much so that Apple does not even have access to your data.  They believe the content on your iPhone is not any of their business. They are correct.
2. The FBI asked Apple for help. Apple helped in every way they could.  Apple even had their engineers available to help the FBI.  One of the FBI agents  tried to reset the password to the terrorist's phone and then got totally locked out. Apple can not get them back in.
3. The FBI is requesting Apple to create a “back door” to the phone. This type of software does NOT even exist today. And thank goodness it does not exist. This could and most likely would get into the wrong hands. After all, how many times has information been in the wrong hands that was supposed to be secure? This is what Tim Cook said about this: “Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.” I certainly don't trust that it would only be used one time. It will be one time, then another time, and another…
4. The government is saying that Apple can create the back door for just one phone. That is not true. Once a back door is created, you open a pandora's box. This would be just the tip of what could possibly happen in the future. It would be like “making a master key” that would open every door to every bank, restaurant, office building. Do you really want someone having the master key to your private data on your phone?
5. Now, usually in these kinds of cases where the FBI is not getting what they want, the normal channel would be to go through congress to try to get something passed to force Apple to do something they are refusing to do. But that is not what is happening in this situation, The FBI is trying to use an very antiquated law, the All Writs Act of  1789 to force Apple into compliance.  Well, there were no computers in those days, no iPhones, no phones! The All Writs Act was created 50 years before the telegraph was invented and nearly 100 years before Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone! Now the government wants to use this old writ to force a company to do what they want it to do.

This is what Tim Cook says about this forcing: “The implications of the government’s demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.”

This is an overreach by the U.S. Government. Using “national security” as a reason or excuse to invade your personal space does not make it ethical or right.

Tim says it better than I could say it:  “While we believe the FBI’s intentions are good, it would be wrong for the government to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.”

Now Apple is tied up in Congressional hearings over this matte and going to court again.  The majority of Congressmen and women are really not that well trained in encryption data and security. All of the techie companies that do know about encryption and keeping our data protected and private have ALL warned against the creation of a back door.

Ed Black, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association  said the tech sector is very united in this case because the” FBI wants Apple to create weaker software or introduce “malware” to be able to crack the locked iPhone.”

He continued:

“…to give law enforcement access, Congress could in theory mandate that devices use automatic cloud backups that could not be disabled. But that would constitute a dramatic departure from current views about privacy.

“From an individual rights standpoint,” he said, “that would take away control by the user of their personal information.”

Briefs from:

From Airbnb, Atlassian, Automattic, CloudFlare, eBay, GitHub, Kickstarter, LinkedIn, Mapbox, Medium, Meetup, Reddit, Square, Squarespace, Twilio, Twitter and Wickr:

Dangerous precedent. “The government's demand here, at its core, is unbound by any legal limits. It would set a dangerous precedent, in which the government could sidestep established legal procedures authorized by thorough, nuanced statutes to obtain users' data in ways not contemplated by lawmakers.”

More important than ever. “The unprecedented scale of digital information used, stored and communicated on the Internet means that ‘privacy,' which ‘has been at the heart of our democracy from its inception,' is “needed now more than ever.”

And from:

From Amazon, Box, Cisco, Dropbox, Evernote, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nest, Pinterest, Slack, Snapchat, WhatsApp and Yahoo:

Outdated rules. “The government seeks a dramatic extension of New York Telephone (a 1977 Supreme Court case) to cover ever-evolving technologies…It is dangerous to extend that limited endorsement of judicial power over third parties to situations the Supreme Court never could have envisioned.”

Not just one hack. “The government's motion reassures the court and the public that the request here is a one-time-only hack. But there are already strong indications that law enforcement will ask for broad authority under the All Writs Act on facts far different from the terrorism investigation at hand.”

A most personal device. “Cell phones are the way we organize and remember the things that are important to us; they are, in a very real way, an extension of our memories. And as a result, to access someone's cell phone is to access their innermost thoughts and their most private affairs.”

And from:

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation and 46 technologies, researchers and cryptographers:

Conflict of expression. “The Order is unconstitutional because it compels Apple to express itself in conflict with its stated beliefs. The Order forces Apple to say something it does not want to say and that it believes is ‘dangerous.' It then forces Apple to endorse code it does not want to endorse and thereby undermine the trust it has established in its digital signature.”

This is a serious matter before us. While most people are being entertained by the politics of the day, this hearing is going on. This is a very important hearing and we should be paying attention to it. When rivals in the technology come together and even file briefs in behalf of Apple or any company put in this position, we should be paying attention.

The government has no right to force any private company to create something for them.  The All Writs Act also does not put forth the right for government to do this either.

Twitter and Ebay wrote this in their brief:

The All Writs Act does not authorize the government to make an end-run around this important public debate and our nation’s legislative processes… This extraordinary and unprecedented effort to compel a private company to become the government’s investigative arm not only has no legal basis under the All Writs Act or any other law, but threatens the core principles of privacy, security, and transparency that underlie the fabric of the Internet.

You can write letters or email your congressional leaders about your interest in this case and why.

Apple and the FBI appear in court again on March 22, 2016.  Let Apple know you support them if you do.

 

 

Webinar- Blogging On Your WordPress Website Fast

Free Webinar- Blogging on your WordPress website fast and easy! 

Are you ready to start blogging on your WordPress website? 

In this webinar I will share with you some ways in which you can post to your blog much faster.

• I will show you how to create your blog on using Thrive Themes- super fast.
• I will show you can add images, video and graphics quickly to your blog posts.
• And some more tips and tricks to speed up your blogging process.

This will be a rather basic webinar so if you are new to WordPress this is perfect.

If you are new to Thrive Themes, this will also be great for you.

Webinar:

Wednesday March 9, 2016 at 3 p.m. Eastern time

Register now: 

Free Webinar- Blogging on Your WordPress Website Fast