Allegiant Web Wise - 001 - What is a Web Agency

Martin [00:00:11]:

Hello and welcome to the very first episode of the Allegiant Webwise Podcast. If you're a solopreneur, a small business or an agency that's involved in web design and build digital marketing or any other service that's designed to help clients succeed in the online world, then you're in the right place. The the Allegiant Webwise Podcast is for you. We'll be covering the business side of running your business, client acquisition, monthly recurring revenue, marketing yourself and so on, as well as the technical side from AI and Accessible Design to SEO and something that begins with the letter Z and everything in between. We'll also include some technical tutorial episodes with step by step videos. But listen, even though we do have a great range of expertise and I'll introduce your hosts in just a minute, we don't know everything and we don't pretend to podcasts live and die with audience reaction and we are really keen to have you involved. In addition to the usual podcast streaming services, you can also find All Episodes@allegiantweb.com podcasts where you can leave feedback, you can ask questions, and you can suggest further content. You'll also find a full transcript of each episode as well as show notes that summarize what was discussed. And of course, you know the drill. Please like and subscribe and share. This is your podcast. Let's grow it together and help as many people mike you as we possibly can. OK, enough of me talking. Let's meet your hosts. First I'd like to introduce you to Jill. Hi Gill.

Gill [00:02:22]:

Hi Martin. I'm Gill. Gill Wilson and I'm an entrepreneur, a coach, a snowboarder, and a mum. It's great to be here and I look forward to sharing some of our experience and learning as we go.

Martin [00:02:37]:

Fantastic.

Gill [00:02:38]:

I'll hand over to Mike.

Martin [00:02:40]:

Hey Mike.

Mike [00:02:41]:

Well, thanks Gill.

Gill [00:02:42]:

You're so welcome.

Mike [00:02:44]:

What a pleasure to be here. My name is Mike Devitt and I run a number of different services with our Allegiant Web Services team and I've been in the web design game now for around about nine years. And I don't know everything, but I know quite a bit and I hope to be able to share that with everybody through this podcast that we have started today. And I have been driving my web colleagues mad by my Benjamin Button regressive approach to music and buying things to do with music recently as well. So that's a little bit of my interests behind it.

Martin [00:03:30]:

Okay. Thanks, Mike. We'll find out more about that later on. And just briefly, before we get into our main subject, my name is Martin. I also run a web business, part of Allegiant Web, and I like traveling, et cetera. Actually started this business while I was living in Colombia and also have a passion for music as well as travel. Okay, let's get into what we're actually here for and talking about what is a web agency actually? What services do they provide? Mike, I'd like your perspective on that first, please.

Mike [00:04:06]:

Okay, well, with a typical web agency, as you grow, if you start off as most of us start off as like a freelancer, a solopreneur, we start off in that space, and we start off by really just going into it and being a web designer. We call ourselves web designers. And that's how I got into the game. And I didn't really know anything else about any other services at this point, apart from providing a web design service. But underneath that, all of a sudden you realize you need to have a number of other different skill sets that sit underneath that web design service. Maybe it might be something to do with networking and not that's not networking, where you're going off to a business network when you meet other people. It's to do with the way in which devices talk to each other and in ways in which we talk about the domain name service and resolution and getting into the details of IP addressing and all of those sorts of things. So you might come into this and you might be thinking to yourself, I can create a website. There's all of these tools out there for me to be able to create a website. I can create a website in WordPress, in Wix, in Squarespace, in all of these different platforms that are out there. Or I might have learned through a course I might have learned through doing a course on HTML and CSS, or I might have learned through creating websites using PHP, different coding languages, but it's all very well doing all of that. But if you haven't got a clue about buying domains, domain names, the DNS service, how to connect all of these things together and actually what your potential customers are going to want, then you're really just producing one thing and you've got to go and potentially get help from elsewhere, or you've got to learn quickly. And most of us end up in a learning quickly scenario. So I would say that whilst we will talk in a second about all the different services that you can provide and that you can build over the years to build an agency, most of us start off in the freelance sector, the solopreneur sector. And we start off by choosing the platform in which we're going to build, perhaps building some websites for ourselves first, just to build up, say, a portfolio. So we've built our own website, the one that we're potentially going to be putting on the web to advertise ourselves. But a lot of people fall into the game where somebody says to them, oh, I've heard that you build websites, could you build me one? And then at that very stage, you've never written a proposal, you've never written a contract, you've never written anything to do with terms and conditions and a scenario where you might potentially get yourself into a problem with somebody because now you're exchanging money. It's a whole different ballgame from just thinking of yourself as starting off in web design.

Martin [00:07:29]:

Yeah, I think there's some good points there, Mike, that, you know, it's not just web design. There's bits about running a business as well as just delivering a particular service. How do you like to add into that, Gill?

Gill [00:07:44]:

Yeah, I think Mike makes some great points there about how quickly things spread out into these other areas, and some of that is around client expectations and their understandings as well. So, for example, when I look after clients website, sometimes they will assume that I am also doing search engine optimization. They'll assume that I'm going to look after their Google business profile, that that's all included and whatever price you've quoted them is all inclusive. And those kind of things you start to learn. And you might never have touched Google business profile and you might not know how to set it up while making the client still the owner and you just managing the thing or something. Mike, that so you can get yourself into a bit of a frankel with a good Scottish word there, like, so then you're into learning, well, what is SEO, what is Google business profile? And you made a great point there about domain names and DNS, because it's all very well putting a website together, but then what do you do with it? And, yeah, I've just been putting a site live today and yesterday, and I was training our designer in that. And actually, it's very interesting to go back to the beginning and realize all the things that you automatically do that are not obvious. When you're moving a website from a development area into a live area, when the client already has a live website and all the checks and balances you have to put in place to make that all come together without completely stuffing up everything that they already have.

Martin [00:09:38]:

Yeah, again, some great points and as you see in this podcast, we'll try and vary between some really technical terms like stuffing things up to layman's languages like TCP, IP and stuff like that. And just for me, I found that, like Mike said, and like Gill said, you start off you're designing a website, but for me, there are three big buckets of things, which are the website itself. What do you want people to do when they get there? Does the client know what they want people who visit to do once they get to that website? Because if you're going to measure how successful it is, you've got to know what's the point of it, which is not quite as clear cut as it might seem. The second bucket is how do I actually get people to the website in the first place? So Jill touched on SEO and Google my business, and there are other things as well that are all about, well, how do I get people to the website? Because again, when we're looking at what clients want, obviously they want people to visit their website, and that's a different skill set to designing the website. There's overlap, but it's distinct. And the third bit for me is once people have even got to the website and they've left, how do you maintain contact? How do you build relationships? People buy from those that they know, like and trust. How do you build that trust once somebody has actually been to your website? So you've got that whole circle, because ultimately what we're trying to do as web agency, whether we're a solopreneur or a larger business, is to actually help our clients grow their business in the online world. And you need all three parts of that. And just the last bit about being a website agency is the bits that are nothing to do with the website at all, and they're the bits that any business has to deal with. So the client acquisition, how do you market yourself, how do you do your finances, all that sort of thing. And we'll cover all those, but that's all part of what is a web agency. Anything you'd like to come back on there, Mike?

Mike [00:11:44]:

Well, I would just say that I think what we should probably do is just say that what services, what an established web agency, the number of services and the different services that you can potentially provide. So it's kind of like wherever you are in this ladder, there are things that you've probably learned over the years, or you might be starting out brand new and you're thinking, okay, how can I grow this business and what could this business look like in ten years? With me either running the business as a person that employs people, or me building websites myself and having a number of services underneath them. So I'll just go into a few of those.

Martin [00:12:34]:

Sure.

Mike [00:12:34]:

So something that Gill touched on just a minute ago is Google Business profile that used to be known as Google My Business. Some people refer to it as the Google Maps, and it's also known as the local pack. You'll hear those words being used and that is where you find your business on page one of Google through the Google Maps Google Business Profile option, where you see three listed businesses next to a Google Map. Then we have a subservice of web design, which is WordPress for us, WordPress website maintenance. For many businesses that are running WordPress businesses, they run a website maintenance service because it's very important to keep your WordPress websites up to date and to keep it running in step with the code changes that are made. With the versions of WordPress, with the versions of the base coding language, which is PHP, moving that forward as well and making sure that everything stays in step and you stay ahead as much as you can of the hackers. That doesn't mean to say that your website is not going to get hacked at some stage. It's very possible it will, even if it's right up to date. But if it's right up to date, you've got a much smaller window of opportunity for people to find those vulnerabilities and exploit them. You might decide that as a web agency that you'll do email marketing. So that might be something that you put a team together for and a service. Pay per click. That's Google Ads. But pay per click can also be other types of advertising, like Facebook Ads, search engine optimization, that's a whole ballgame in itself. But it's again, as Jill mentioned earlier, it's something where people automatically assume that if you're building a website, you're going to build it, and I'm going to be a page one of Google. And actually, the chances of you being on page one of Google, unless you have the most niches, niches, nichest industry in the world that nobody's ever thought of, it's going to be very highly unlikely. There's branding, there's email hosting, there's discovery where you'll do before you even get into talking to a client about a website, they might want you to help them work out what they're going to need for their business. So before you start building the proposal for the website, you do a discovery about their business and you talk to them about all kinds of different aspects of their business. And that's a service that you can sell to your clients. There's website audits, which also comes along with that, and things like customer surveys and going after customer reviews. So those are just sort of a broad range of different Google services. Sorry, not Google services, but different services that you can provide. And if you really want to get into it deeper, you can do all kinds of other things as well. But most agencies, when they become an agency, tend to offer those services.

Gill [00:16:05]:

That's a really good point you just made there, Mike, and I was just thinking about that as we've been chatting. So what makes an agency an agency, and why should I even become one? What's wrong with being a freelancer? What's the difference? And where's the cut off point, if you like?

Mike [00:16:26]:

Yeah, I think it's what you want to do. If many people that go and start working for themselves, start working for themselves, because they might have been in management, for example, they might have been leading teams of people. And I've been a manager myself going back very many years. And I would say that managing people is one of the hardest things to do in life. Because if you're employed by anybody and you've got a team of people and you've got a job to do, and those people bring in different emotions and different problems into work every single day, you stop becoming a doer and you become more of having to get them to do for you. And if they don't turn up, then you're the one that's held responsible. So the owner of the business is the one that's accountable and you're responsible in the business. So they've made you responsible as the manager. And if your team's not working, then ultimately you're not being effective either. So people come into this game and they say, do you know what? I'm going to work from home. Because pre pandemic, working from home was not a novelty, but it had been going for very many years. But for many, many people, they hadn't had that experience before. I'm going to work from home, I'm going to work for myself and I'm going to do all of those things. So you either choose that you're going to be the only person responsible for everything and no safety net underneath that, or you choose to run your company and you have people work for you. But of course, the minute that you start doing that, you start to just become a boss of your own company and those people are going to potentially let you down. And hey, there's no safety net for me anymore, but I am actually in charge of myself, so maybe it's ultimately being in charge of yourself.

Martin [00:18:32]:

Yeah, it's a really interesting topic, isn't it? And one of the things that we're going to know as we go through this series, both Mike and Jill have touched on, there is one, the potential for growth. Do you want to grow? And if you want to grow, what are some of the considerations? Mike's already touched on a couple of those there. And in another episode, we'll be looking at some of the key skills that you need because mean, there are technical skills. But if we're going beyond just being doing a website and nothing else, there's also a lot of the so called soft skills and management business skills. And we'll be looking at what you need and how you can get those as well. So some great point. Yeah.

Mike [00:19:13]:

Because when you're talking about sales, for example, some people have never sold anything in their life, or they don't think.

Martin [00:19:20]:

They have, but everybody has sold something, maybe theirselves.

Gill [00:19:28]:

You've made a friend, you've sold yourself to somebody.

Martin [00:19:31]:

Good point.

Mike [00:19:32]:

Yeah. Maybe you've been in an interview. Who loves to be interviewed? Not many people. I think it's I've got an interview today sort of thing. And actually part of the problem with there is that some people are very good at selling themselves, but most people are terrified of doing it and they're terrified of being asked a question that they can't answer. And so part of the game of this isn't just about the start of your web design journey, it's about being able to sustain it. And I was very lucky at the beginning when I started doing websites, I just went from one referral to another. But for a lot of people, they get one website and they're like, I've got a website and it's this fishing excitement and all the rest of it. And then a phone call comes in, oh, I hear you do websites and then you've got to go into sales mode. So it really depends. You've got to have this broad set of skills. You're not going to get on with everybody, you're not going to get on with every single person that phones you up. There'll be some people who just expect you to know everything and for you to be the authority on what they're asking you to do because, hey, you do web design. Well, as we know, web design is so broad, if you've never built any forms before with conditional logic in them, that might be a scenario where somebody will come to you and they say, oh, I want this specific. Type of website, and you've never done that before. And you're either going to say, yes, I can do it, and you've never done it, or you're going to say, no, actually, don't have that skill, and potentially lose that sale. So it does become about sales even when you're doing freelancing, because you're building a business and you're trying to move that momentum forward. And we haven't even talked about the service, those recurring services that can help you build the foundation of a business that sustains you over a long period of time. And the classic line to earn money while you sleep.

Martin [00:21:58]:

Yeah. And again, we're just kind of feeding in some different ideas to what you'll be able to hear going forward. Because one of the other things is, of course, common challenges to overcome and the feast and famine one is probably the most common one. So, like Mike said, how do you actually overcome that? By getting some regular recurring income. Okay, we've come to the end of the first episode now, just to give you a flavor of what we're all about. Jill, a closing thought from you.

Gill [00:22:31]:

Yeah, I think that I am looking forward to what we're going to explore. This has been a brilliant opener. It's just like taking the lid off a big tub of Quality Street, isn't it? There's so many varieties inside. I can't wait to if only they did a vegan version, mind you, but there we go. Can't wait to dip in and unwrap.

Martin [00:22:52]:

All right, so, Mike, Jill's going to be dipping in and unwrapping the vegan sweets. Closing thoughts from you. What are you looking forward to?

Mike [00:23:04]:

Yeah, well, I mean, I think we're going to jump into all kinds of subjects here. We're going to really try and delve deeply into as many of them as we can for anybody at any stage. Hopefully it will help you and you'll get some sort of help and some information that you can take away with you. This is obviously our very first episode, so we are very much sort of just outlying some of the basics here. But if you come along and the basics is something that you need to learn and you need some help with that, then these podcasts that we're doing will definitely help you along your way.

Martin [00:23:47]:

Brilliant. Yeah, that's fantastic. And I think I just like to round up both things by saying one of the things is we are quite experienced now, we've run different businesses, but we all had to start somewhere and even now we're still learning. You never stop learning. And hopefully this podcast will be somewhere where we can have a community, where we can help you on your journey, maybe fast track some of the things that we did wrong, because we've done some stuff wrong and we'll be looking forward in these next few episodes to some of the things we've talked about. The potential for growth, if you want that. The strength of having an online presence. Key skills and experience that you'll need. And common challenges. So those are things that are coming up soon. So as we always say, like and subscribe, and we'd love to hear what you think. Thank you very much for listening and watching and we'll see you soon. Okay, take care. Bye.