194. The Importance of Walking in Your Coworking Customer's Shoes

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194. The Importance of Walking in Your Coworking Customer's Shoes

00:00:01 Welcome to the everything co-working podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host coworking space owner and trend expert. Jamie Russo, Welcome to the everything coworking podcast. This is your host. Jamie Russo. Thank you for joining me today. Before we dive in, I have to share that I am alone in my house.

00:00:38 This never happens. And we're any of you that are experiencing this challenge either you're working at home and everyone else is at home, or you are working at your coworking space, but you don't give yourself an office because who does I never did. And you're constantly interrupted. Your brain is not working at its best when you are surrounded by other people all the time and interrupted all the time.

00:01:07 I noticed such a huge difference when I have peace and quiet, my brain works completely differently. The creative downloads only come when I have quiet. And of course this can happen during workouts or walking the dog. Although these days I don't even walk the dog by myself. I always have my daughter with me because she's still part-time in school. So she has no recess.

00:01:30 So I am her recess and I have to get the dog a walk as well. So anyway, try to carve out some peaceful time for yourself. And I will admit, I skipped an afternoon of skiing to stay home and catch up on some things I was having in a centralist moment. I was like, I cannot do all the things I cannot.

00:01:54 And my husband was like, it's our last day of skiing of the year. And I know that, and I'm having major FOMO, but the creativity is coming. And so I'm feeling, I'm feeling okay about having to make some trade-offs here. So here's what we're going to talk about today. We are going to talk about the customer journey and the customer journey as it relates to your website.

00:02:19 And I think this is applicable to you if you, well, if you are one of the folks whose websites I'm going to include in the show notes, you probably don't need to listen to this. Although it's always a good reminder. Some of the things I'm going to talk about around how a customer gets to our website, from what context, and then what is their experience with it once they get there?

00:02:44 I think we can always think about this because even if you have an amazing website, you're always creating new marketing campaigns. And we must always think about the customer journey when we create a new marketing campaign, add social media posts, email campaign, cetera. So here's where this is coming from. I have been looking at a lot of coworking websites recently,

00:03:06 mostly for my mentor program. So I have been onboarding new folks into my mentorship program. And of course either when I'm doing a discovery call with someone, whether I onboard them or not, or when I onboard them, one of the first things we're going to tackle is the website, because your website is so critical because it's oftentimes the top of your sales funnel.

00:03:28 It's how people find you. Your Google, my business listing is also important. And you've heard me talk about how 20 some of you will get 20 times the traffic to your Google, my business listing as your website. So sometimes they're bypassing your website, but they may also go to your, find you on Google my business and then hit that website button and come over and look for what they're searching for.

00:03:50 So we want to think about that as a use case, but today we're mostly going to talk about marketing campaigns and the customer journey through the sales funnel. And what I'm noticing when I look at websites is that there are some really amazing coworking websites that do all the things, right? And I'm going to put a short list of those in the show notes so that you can take a look at them and see examples of really well done websites.

00:04:19 So, but oftentimes I see real challenges where someone has made a website that makes sense to them as the owner, but it doesn't represent how the customer is going to experience your site, what they are looking for and what they're thinking. And so we really, really need to put on the customer lens when we go through our website, which can be challenging.

00:04:41 So we're going to talk about how to solve that challenge. So we're going to talk about how to evaluate your website and how to make a few simple tweaks that will lower your bounce rate and increase your conversion rate. So really quickly bounce rate, bounce rate. You can get from Google analytics. If you don't have Google analytics on your website, you need to put it on and you need to learn.

00:05:04 At least the basics. You can watch YouTube videos. You can take a class, you should have some basic understanding of your bounce rate. So if your bounce rate is high. So here's what the bounce rate is. The bounce rate is someone shows up your website and they leave pretty quickly. I'm sure there's a more formal definition of that, which you can look up,

00:05:24 but it basically means they've come and they've left because they didn't find what they want or they got distracted or they got confused. They left your site. So they certainly didn't take any of the actions that we want them to take and they didn't stay. They didn't book a tour, et cetera. And if you have a high bounce rate, like in the eighties or above even probably 50% or above,

00:05:44 then your website is not doing its job. And if it's not doing its job, we don't want to send people to it. So before you worry about marketing campaigns, you need to make sure your website is doing its job. You want a low bounce rate, and that will enable you to convert people. You can't convert people into a tour if they show up at your website and then they leave because they're not finding what they want.

00:06:07 So there are many reasons why somebody might get to your website and it's not what they want. And your SEO and your keywords can, can have something to do with that. But we're not going to talk about that today. So website, first of all, before we start kind of talking about the customer journey, well, we're going to talk about some specific examples of customer journeys,

00:06:28 how they get to their website, your website, and what they're looking for. First, we want to talk about the grunt test. So Doug Miller is one of my favorite business mentors. He's wrote several business books. He has a business membership, education membership. Andy has a podcast and his mantra, one of his mantras is you confuse, you lose.

00:06:50 So he says, you need to grab a customer's attention. They need to come to your website. Edwin within three seconds, need to pass the grunt test, which is, can I grunt out what your business does and who it serves in three seconds or less? And if that can't happen, then you're confusing and you probably lose. So one of the other things that he says is like,

00:07:15 look, people are kind of lazy. They don't want to burn a lot of calories. He calls it. So if they have to poke around and scroll and click to find what they're looking for, they're burning too many calories. If they have to read a bunch of copy to figure out what's happening here, who's this for is this for me burning too many calories and they're kind of lazy and they're going to move on.

00:07:36 So even if humans are not lazy in the general sense, they're going to be lazy about your website. That is for sure a fact. And so we need to immediately grab their attention and tell them that they are in the right place and we can solve their problem. So for example, if you have a huge image at the top of your page,

00:07:55 I was looking at someone's website today. They had a very large image at the top of the page, but with no headline over it. So if it's okay, if you have a huge sort of hero image, that's a lovely photo from your photo shoot that represents the vibe of your space. And there's a headline over the top of it. That's really easy to read that tells your potential member exactly who you are,

00:08:19 what problem you solve for them. That's okay. But if it's as just an attractive image and I have to scroll down to get to a headline or a list of services, three seconds is gone and I'm gone. So if I have to click a mem menu bar to find what I'm looking for, again, I might get bored and go look for a snack.

00:08:40 And while I'm getting a snack, I check my emails on my phone and I realize I owe someone something, and I never go back to your website. So this current test is really, really important. So most of us are not good at judging our own websites, right? We made them, we have this story to tell we're very biased. We,

00:09:00 it's hard for us to sort of cut to the chase and look at our website with a critical eye. And so we need some help with that. And that's the first thing to be super aware of is that you probably are not evaluating your own website. Well, at all, in every conversation I've had this, this is clear, and I know this about myself.

00:09:21 It's just human nature. It's like, when you write something, you can't see your typos. That's the website thing. You have to get somebody else more people involved. So the very simple act of getting another set of eyeballs involved will be life-changing. They will simply see things that you won't. So I want you to find people to help you do the grunt test on your site,

00:09:43 not just one person, because you, you know, we want a bigger sample size, try to find at least three people. This is the first thing who first activity, who don't know your business at all, or very well to evaluate your site. If they know your business, they're going to have the same curse of knowledge that you have right there.

00:10:02 They're not going to be as critical because they know what you know, your businesses and what you offer. And they won't necessarily be critical enough to say that you're the language on your site. Doesn't tell the story fast enough, right? Because they already know what you do. They don't really need to evaluate the copy. So how might you do this?

00:10:20 You might have to ask strangers or ask, you know, a friend of a friend to get on a zoom with you for five minutes. This doesn't take long. Right? All you have to do is literally show them your website, put your timer on and ask them, what do I do? And who do I serve? And if you're in a coffee shop,

00:10:41 you might offer to buy somebody a coffee. They probably won't take you up on it. So you have to kind of get out of your comfort zone to do this, to find two people that don't know what you do, but it's super helpful to do that. There are fancy expensive services out there who will do this for you, by the way.

00:10:57 But I think get scrappy and find someone who will do it for you. Again, it might be a friend of a friend who talked somebody into getting on a zoom with you for five minutes. It won't take longer than that. And then the next step would be take that feedback, make some tweaks, right? And then find two to three people in the coworking industry to review your site.

00:11:15 And you might choose people that you think have good websites. Maybe it's someone in our, everything co-working Facebook group, but ask them for unrestricted feedback on anything about your site. So I have the curse of knowledge, right? I understand the business model. I know what you're selling, and yet I can still give most people a pretty significant list of things they need to update on their website to make it more clear for the customer.

00:11:40 So there are some very good websites out there that I have trouble finding challenges with a couple of my mentees at one of them in particular. And I'm going to put her website at the bottom of the list or on the show notes page. I could hardly find anything about her site that I would change. It's very clear and very well done, but for most websites I can find 10 things pretty quickly.

00:12:04 And so you'll find that with people who are in the industry, they can be helpful and they can give you feedback on things that you simply don't see yourself. A couple of examples, the header image I mentioned earlier, I was like, are you an interior design business? What do you do? This is a beautiful photo of what could be a living room or flex,

00:12:29 you know, lounge seating in a coworking space, but with no header, I don't know what you do until I scroll and I don't want to have to scroll. And then I have another member of one of my groups. I had been looking at her website for a couple of, I can't remember why. And I think I looked at her Google,

00:12:44 my business website. And I remember having this like light bulb that I had a much more positive impression of her design, her space design and the vibe from her Google, my business listing. And I just like thought, why is that? And so I went and compared them and I found that her Google, my business listing just had the really more vibrant photos.

00:13:09 And the colors in her space are really fabulous. And you can see how like really tall ceilings and just beautiful space, really well done and some great seating areas and meeting areas and some cool mid-century furniture, things that I was really drawn to, but her website, the images had this filter on them. And she's probably listening. I hope you don't mind that I'm kind of vaguely sharing your story.

00:13:35 And the only word I could come up with was that the images looked slightly gloomy and they just didn't represent this vibe that I saw in her other photos on her Google, my business listing. And I thought if I see that, I wonder if other people see that and they're kind of turned off and they leave the site. And so I reached out to her and I just said,

00:13:55 look, this is totally unsolicited, but I feel gloomy about your photos. What do you think about getting rid of that filter? And she was like, you know what? I had had that instinct and, but my web designer wanted to leave it on. She's like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to get rid of that filter and see what that does.

00:14:11 And again, she was like, you know what? It's just having someone else's eyeballs on your site that can be all that you need to do. Okay. So after you get some of that input, which will give you a little list of things that you need to change, then I want you to review your website through the list, through the lens of your customer.

00:14:32 So this is the best approach to making simple tweaks to your site that have a big ROI. And again, have somebody else do this. If you are not seeing things that need to be changed, if you go to your website and you're like, it's awesome. It might be, but it might not. Maybe it's just that you can't see the issues.

00:14:50 So find a friend and it can be someone who knows what you're doing. You know, what you do, but they probably haven't spent time on your website. So ask them. And again, you can just do a quick zoom session with them, ask them to screen share, and just watch them navigate through your page. There are, by the way,

00:15:07 software apps that do this Hotjar is one of them. There are a bunch of them that allow you to track user activity on your, on the screen so that you can see where people are clicking, how long they're spending. Can't really tell why they're bouncing if they bounce immediately, but that can be super insightful. So software apps that can do this,

00:15:29 but also, so you can do that. It's another thing you have to spend money on. And so we might start with finding the glaring issues by just doing this with somebody who will screen share with you and do that and show you where they're navigating. So just let them get settled, get to your website and ask them to research, membership options,

00:15:50 choose a membership option. And what you should do is ask them to talk out loud while they're doing this process and take notes, ask them to walk you through what they're reading, what they're thinking about, what questions they have, you know, kind of where they're looking on the screen. If they're trying to click somewhere else, what is easy for them to find?

00:16:08 What's hard for them to find this is called usability testing. So anybody who developed software or, you know, does website design would do this type of testing. Probably your website designer did not invest in this process. And so it was great to do it on your own. Again, you could pay somebody to do it. There are services out there who will do this for you.

00:16:29 So certainly if you are at that level where you're ready to invest in the professionals, totally, this is the DIY approach. So ask them to research, membership options, and then ask them to decide if they want to book a tour, you know, ask them to figure out where would they do that and ask them to book a tour, whether they want to or not,

00:16:47 and go through that process. And again, just have them talk through everything they're thinking about, you know, if they find anything confusing or annoying or distracting, or if they want to get up and get a snack because they're bored with your site. So that will also give you some insights again, through someone else's lens. And then the next step I want you to take,

00:17:08 which you'll need to do on your own. If you've T a team, you know, community manager, someone who helps you with marketing or an accountability partner or someone else who can do this, it's awesome to do this with someone else because they'll see things you don't, but if you're preparing to do a marketing campaign, so once you've kind of tweaked your website and fixed kind of the,

00:17:28 you know, the really obvious things that need to be changed, this will be an ongoing process, right? Because we can always optimize our website. We can always be looking at data and figuring out where people are going, where they're landing, where they go next, and try to make that more simple and more clear, because what we want is for someone to book a tour,

00:17:49 right? Ideally we either want them to opt into our newsletter list so that we can capture their email address, or we want them to book a tour to come in. Anything else that would, that they do on their website is not that helpful to us. So that's the action we're going after, right? Unless it's a current member in there, you know,

00:18:07 logging in to book a meeting room or something like that. That's a different, different thing altogether. But I should mention that, you know, folks like officer and D or a sentence or proximity, they do usability testing, for sure. That's part of their process. So all the things that you do in your management system, certainly I'm sure some of you,

00:18:27 you know, there are things that you wish were programmed differently or designed differently, but they've tested to make sure it's easy to navigate and that you can figure out what to do. So we want to do that on the front end of our website. Okay. So here I see this often where people will run an email campaign or a social media post,

00:18:46 and they haven't thought through the customer journey, where is the customer going to go? And how do we get them to take the action we want to take, which is probably to book a tour, right? So here's an example. You're sending an email out through MailChimp or active campaign, whatever you use advertising that you have some new dedicated desks available.

00:19:08 I want you to write down or whatever your campaign is, write down the exact steps that your potential member will take from reading your email to signing your membership agreement. We're not going to go through every single step here, but I'm going to go through the first few steps to make some points. Okay? So the potential member is on your email list,

00:19:27 which is awesome. They open your email, okay. They wonder they see some images and some copy about dedicated desks. They think what is the dedicated desk? Do I do I need one of those? Is that for me? That's what they're thinking About, right? Like, why do I care about This? They're not just interested in you and your business,

00:19:45 right? They only open it to see, can I learn something? Or is there a story in here I want to read? Or if you're pitching a product to me making an offer to me, do I need it? So make sure you have their interest in needs in mind. So your email from the customer journey perspective should explain what the heck a dedicated desk is and who needs one so that your reader can be informed and understand if it's for them.

00:20:14 And if you can throw a story in there that's short and relevant, then that may help as well. Okay? So they're going to click on the link in the email to learn more, right? Presumably you're trying to sell these desks. And so you want them to book a tour, to come in, to purchase a dedicated desk membership. So here are a couple of things that might happen.

00:20:33 One, the email link goes to your homepage. And the first thing they see is a video and they watch it. And it's three minutes long. And at some point in the middle, they get Distracted and they check their Slack notifications. They forget all about the dedicated until you send another email. But basically for now, they're gone option two, they go straight to a landing page that has no navigation on it.

00:20:57 It just has a few photos of your space focusing on the dedicated desk that you would like them to buy. It is beautifully staged. The desk is, and you have a few bullet points highlighting how this dedicated desk membership will solve your potential members problems. The next step your customer might take in their journey is they book a tour because there's a book,

00:21:21 a tour button on that landing page. That's the only thing they can do on that landing page. There are not 26 things they can click on. They cannot go read your blog. They can't look at your other memberships. They're just reading about dedicated desk and all they can do is book a tour. That's it. So when they click the book of tour button,

00:21:40 a couple of things might happen on your site. They might see a form to fill out so they can request a time and you'll email them back. So they start to fill out the form and then their email notification dings, and they hate filling out forms anyway. So they go check their email and they never come back. I really dislike. It's not that I dislike.

00:22:01 I get very worried. When I see forms on a website, it is very, very inexpensive today to subscribe to an app like Calendly or acuity and allow your potential members to book in real time to come in for a tour. It is very old school. And not at all accommodating. If you are making people email you about a time to come in for a tour,

00:22:28 and then you play email tag, right? So the second option here is they go straight to a booking page that is hosted by a Calendly or acuity acuity. And they book a time to come in for a tour. And then they come in for a tour, right? So in the first case, they fill out this form, they get it,

00:22:45 they don't fill out the form, they get annoyed, they go have a snack, check, their email, whatever they don't come back. This is how we lose people. We make it hard again. If your website has a high bounce rate or it has any of the things we talked about above, you should not be running ads. You shouldn't should not be doing email promotions or social media promotions until you fix these issues.

00:23:03 So do your user testing, think through the customer journey and make sure that the customer journey is airtight, right? They're seeing only the things that are relevant to them and the decision they're going to make. And it's very easy for them to take an action, like booking a tour. If you still need to set up Calendly, if you still need to,

00:23:23 you know, adjust the order of your website and the call to action, do those things, and then run your marketing campaigns. Because if you're running campaigns to a website that doesn't convert, you're wasting your time and your money. So you got to get this right. You can find affordable website developers or people that can make tweaks to your website on Upwork and Fiverr.

00:23:44 You literally, this is why I was walking through a list of website, changes with a woman. I was on a call today with, and we had a long list and she said, it's no problem. I have a website developer that I work with on Fiverr. And I'm just going to pass him this list of change requests. And I work with him,

00:24:01 you know, ongoing. And so he understands my business and my website, and he'll just make them in, you know, the next week, it's not a big deal. She was very comfortable and confident about that, which is awesome. So you want to have somebody like that in your arsenal because you will constantly make tweaks or you should be constantly making tweaks.

00:24:22 Oh, by the way, I should mention lots of challenges with my website. I need to do all these things to my website. It's an ongoing mission to always improve your website. And as your business evolves, my business has involved, evolved quite a bit in the last year. You know what I offer, what I focus on. I need to update all of that on my website.

00:24:41 And I have scheduled time in the month of April to do that. And sometimes that's what we need to do. We need to just say, we're going to schedule this out. We're going to commit to this. Unfortunately, websites are big investment, but they need, they're like a garden. You constantly have to weed them and replant them and give them soil and you know,

00:25:00 do water them, all the things they just they're living and breathing and they need to be maintained constantly. Okay. So just a few things again, that I see thinking about this customer journey. Again, the customer journey is what is the customer doing when they get to my website? How do I make it? The fewest steps possible for them to learn what they need to learn and book a tour.

00:25:25 So again, here are a few common mistakes I see happening, which may be the case, even if you have an amazing website. So one mistake you promote your membership on social media, but the social media link drops the user onto your homepage, which might be very well done. But also probably has 26 things that could click on in the navigation,

00:25:48 in the body and the footer. And they don't even know exactly what they want or what they're looking for because they just came from your social media posts and they were intrigued, right? So this may be, if somebody is coming from social media, they are not necessarily an active searcher. And so you want to help them decide what to do on your site.

00:26:09 You need to guide them through that, right? So if somebody comes from a post and drops onto your homepage, they don't know exactly what action to take. They're not actively looking for space right now. So they might click around or feel confused and leave the page. And if your bounce rate again is high, this is what's happening on your site.

00:26:29 So your promotion should always go to landing pages that are focused on what you're promoting and give the user one action item to take. Usually that's book a tour. If it is a promotion on social media that is helping to educate your market. Because again, usually on social media, we're not talking to active searchers, right? We're trying to build awareness.

00:26:54 We're trying to help people know that we're around and help them understand why they might use a coworking space. And so what we, what might be our action for social media posts is get these people on our email list, right? Because they're not actively searching, but if we get them on our email list, then we can talk to them every week or every two weeks.

00:27:14 And then when they are ready for a space, we are top of mind. So don't send those people to your homepage because they're just going to poke around and then they're going to leave and they won't have booked a tour and they won't be on your email list. So send them to a landing page that teaches them about coworking and who it's a fit for and how people use coworking spaces and give them a compelling reason to join your email list,

00:27:38 which might be, Hey, do you want to hear this stories of some of our top members? We'd love to tell you Joe's story. You know, he's, you know, the mayor of our community, and here's what he does. Click here to hear the rest of his story kind of thing. Or you might, you know, offer some sort of educational download,

00:27:58 whatever it is that you want to do. We won't go into downloads right now, but this is, you want to get them on your email list. You want to give them an action to take, or maybe it's a free day pass. Maybe you, you know, talk to them about what coworking is and how people use it. And you say,

00:28:12 Hey, you know, put your email in here for a free day pass, and then you can follow up. You can talk to them on the phone, explain coworking, ask them more about what they do for work, make a connection about how they might use a coworking space and invite them in for a free day pass. Or do you use a couple of free meeting room hours,

00:28:31 but make sure that you're not just dropping them onto your homepage. So again, even if you are in the camp of your homepage, your website is awesome. Make sure you're using landing pages. Again, if you have offices that are open, don't drop people onto your homepage, put them on a page that has photos of the offices that are open with some range of pricing and a book,

00:28:53 a tour link, or a call us link, you know, and the call should not go to a forum that people don't like forums live, chat, or call us, or email us or book a tour. Okay. So another big mistake I see in the customer journey is you okay? I already talked about this. So this is a repeat,

00:29:11 but I feel very strongly about this. If you have a member interested enough in booking a tour, do not make them fill out a form to schedule a time. So again, if your ideal community avatar is someone that can afford your membership, they don't want to spend their valuable time filling out your form. They're busy. They have some amount of success because they can afford your membership.

00:29:34 And so they don't want to fill this out and wait for an email back and play email tag over scheduling a time to come in. You need to use Calendly or acuity. Please. I will give you a non coworking example. I would very much like to have someone come organize my garage. I recognize this is a first world problem, but I,

00:29:54 my garage is out of control. And I don't know that I can fix it on my own. And one of The problems I have is I think I need A third party to negotiate. What stuff gets thrown away because I live with two people who are pack rats. And I am like a minimalist. I want nothing in my house that isn't being actively used.

00:30:13 So I work out in the garage and I'm very distracted by all the extraneous stuff that's in the garage. And we have like the before picture, our garage looks like the before picture of an, you know, an organized, like if you follow the home edit, we would be the before picture. So I follow this local organizing company on Instagram, and I decided I'm going to reach out to them because I want to talk about what it takes to get my garage organized.

00:30:39 So I filled out their contact form and they sent an email, which I didn't see for some reason. And they called and the woman called I do not answer my phone. And I suspect that again, any professional that can afford your coworking membership does not pick up random phone calls. So this woman's in the Bay area and she keeps calling me from a McKinley,

00:31:05 Texas phone number. And I don't know anyone in McKinley, Texas. So I'm not picking up that call. Even if I'm phone, my phone is not undo. Do not disturb. My phone is always on. Do not disturb. I don't answer it. I'm too busy, right? I can't answer random phone calls during the day. So it is on do not disturb.

00:31:20 So she's calling from Mickey McKinley, Texas number, and I live in the Bay area. This makes no sense to me. So I don't think I even processed that she left a voicemail. Then I see your email. And she says, I'd love to connect. When's a good time. So I think, Oh great. I'll respond to her email.

00:31:38 And because we're both professionals and business owners, I will tell her when I'm free and she will send me a calendar invite. Really. I just want to book an appointment on her site, but this is not possible. So, so I give her times, and she does not email me back. She calls me during one of those times, but my phone is on,

00:31:58 do not disturb. And I didn't know she was going to call. She didn't tell me she was going to call. And so I don't pick up the phone. And again, she's calling from a McKinley, Texas phone number. And so I still haven't connected with her and it feels very hard. And I want this to be easy. I just want a little button on our website that says,

00:32:15 book a call with us. And you know what? There may be that button, but it was confusing because you can book a call for a virtual organizing session or an in-person session. Well, I don't know, am I do? I think that's why I reached out to her. I was like, I'd like to book a call, but I don't know which one can you please tell me?

00:32:34 And so now I have to talk to her live for her to tell me which one, like, why can't she just tell me that over email and give me the link to book. So it's too hard. It will get done at some point, but not with my busy schedule. It won't get done until spring break. When I've blocked off my calendar and don't have meetings and we'll have time to play phone tag with this woman.

00:32:51 If I was aware of another organizer, it was easier to work with. I would use them. And so you are losing leads if you make this difficult because your potential members are busy. If they can afford a coworking space, they are busy. They have work to do. They have clients, you know, they have zoom calls all day. And so you have to make it really easy for them.

00:33:10 Okay. Then the third, sorry, that was a, getting a little intense about that one. So the third biggest mistake that I see is your homepage talks about you and not about how your membership options solve a problem for your member. Don Miller talks about this a lot in his book. StoryBrand he talks about how you should be the guide for the hero,

00:33:33 which is your customer. So your customer potential member is the hero of this story. And you are simply a guide. So he uses the I'm going to get the characters wrong hunt, like Yoda and hunt solo, right? Your potential member is hunt solo. Am I getting that right? I mean, I have not seen star Wars in a long time and you are Yoda.

00:33:54 So you are simply the guide. The story is not about Yoda, right? So we don't want to see about you on the homepage. I do love founder stories. And if you are a local boutique space, for sure your members want to know your story, why you started the space, your background, what's, your dog's name is all the things they want to know those things,

00:34:17 but not on the homepage. They can find it and read it sometime in your footer. Or you can send it in a newsletter. You can put it on social media, don't put it on your homepage. The homepage is all about the problem you solve for your member, potential member and the S the options for solutions that you offer them and getting them to click a button,

00:34:39 to book a tour. So don't distract them with stories about yourself. Okay? So the summary of my rant here today is about thinking about the customer journey in terms of your website and how you're sending people there, your website, we can talk about all sorts of things about your website, like SEO and all sorts of other things. But I want you to think about the customer journey and do some user testing so that you can get some eyeballs on your site that are not yours.

00:35:10 And again, if your site is not optimized, then you are not converting people. And that is a waste of your resources. So if you are investing in marketing campaigns, but you have issues with your website, that you are wasting your marketing budget. So you need to get your website optimized. It's super important. And you need to do that through the lens of your current ideal customer avatar.

00:35:35 So in the show notes, you can find links to coworking websites that pass the grunt test and make it very easy for potential members to understand what problem they solve and how to take an action to learn more. And if you're in my mentorship program, you have access to Kevin. Wieland's training the anatomy of a perfect co-working website, where he walks through,

00:35:54 step-by-step what your website should solve and how you should lay it out and what it should include to make it really easy for your customer to do what you want them to do. And if you're working on optimizing your website and you're in the mentor program, that resource is a great place to start. So you can find the resources mentioned in this podcast, we'll link to Don Miller's book and the coworking website links that I mentioned.

00:36:19 You can go to everything co-working dot com and go to a podcast. And you can find this episode, which is one 94 and grab those resources. And if you're interested in learning more about the mentor program, you can go to everything. coworking.com forward slash mentor and book a call. Okay, next week we have an interview. We are talking about search engine optimization.

00:36:43 So I look forward to connecting with you next week.

For the full show notes of this episode, click here.

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