6 Stupid Easy Changes to Make Your SquareSpace Website More Pro

1. Use Center Text Alignment Less

It is super tempting to use center alignment a LOT. It looks kinda good on mobile screens but it’s more tiring for folks to read. Western eyes are used to left-aligned text and it takes more energy to read text with different alignments. Your site will look more professional with less center text alignment.

Example of a page using only center aligned text.

Revision with left-aligned text.

Unlike designing something that fits on a printed page, you have an almost infinite amount of vertical space to use on your website. Use additional vertical space to break up text in a way that makes it easy for visitors to scroll for the information they desire.

2. Less Background Colors Are More

I recommend using a limited palette of colors for your backgrounds. Most of my sites use primarily white, black, and grey backgrounds. I use photos and graphics to add color to my pages. Choosing a color palette and sticking to it gives your site professional cohesive look.

If you’re having a hard time selecting colors that go well together, you can cheat off a more experienced artist. Find a beautiful painting and pull your color selections from it.

Colors I choose for this site. You can edit your site colors in the Design > Site Styles > Colors sections of Squarespace.

If you’d like help from a web color expert (yep, they exist and I’ve got one for you!) register for my personal branding + website design immersion here. The immersion includes meeting one-on-one with Diane Wellman, who will help you select your colors and design a personal icon for you.

3. Add More Spacers (Blank Space) Around Important Things

Visitors to your site are scrolling quickly while half-listening to their kids scream and a podcast at the same time. Focus your visitors on what’s important by giving it lots of space.

4. Use Less Text

Again your visitors are busy and distracted! Use short sentences and easy-to-understand words.

5. Add a Video or Video Background

Using a video to introduce yourself to visitors is especially popular with folks who prefer to listen and folks who don’t like to read in English. It’s well worth investing in one short video about yourself that you can use all year. I had a Summit I produced in 2017 filmed professionally and still use that video to this day.

6. Backup Your Mailing List Subscribers on Google Drive

When you add a newsletter subscription box to a SquareSpace site, you can choose to have the subscriber email addresses sent to multiple places at once. On top of syncing new contacts to my email lists with SquareSpace, I always setup Google Drive as well. This way if there are any issues with my email newsletter provider, I always have a backup copy of my list.

Newsletter Settings for the footer of this site in SquareSpace. I’m using SquareSpace Email Campaigns & Google Drive to collect email addresses at the same time.

6 Practices to Support You Launching On Time Every Time

Getting a large group of women to pose for a group photo is a great test of your timing skills. This photo is from our first Women Grow Leadership Summit with about 125 women. It was great training for when we grew the event 10X the next year.

Let’s be clear. It’s easy to predict that a project is going to miss its deadline because the vast majority of projects do. But if you blow deadlines like a corporate cocaine addict in the 80s...here’s some tips on getting your sh*t done on time. 

1. Obsessively track your time (more than your money). I spent years tracking every minute I spent working. I have an inordinately good sense of how long tasks take me because I measured it. I’ve learned that money is an infinite resource (you can make more) but time is finite. Guard your time more than your money.

2. Know how you sabotage your own success. This is a big blind spot I’m still working on seeing. I knew how I misbehaved when things were hard but I didn’t realize that I had bad habits when things were going well. I used to occasionally wake up in the morning with the sense that something was wrong and blame whatever showed up first (my partner sleeping next to me or my first work meeting of the day). I learned that waking up motivated to make a change isn’t a bad thing but I’ve got to be conscious of what I use that motivation to make happen. My old habit was to pick fights in the morning. So I’m re-channeling that fire into more productive containers. In fact, I woke up today and was going to pick a fight about a project I’m on right now. Instead I meditated for an hour and then wrote this post to remind myself (and hopefully help others) find ways to build instead of burn down.

3. Make an altar with objects and notes that represent your big desires. Before every strategic work session spend a few minutes meditating in front of your alter. Remind yourself of the big priorities by keeping your working altar close.

4. Experiment with different ways to present your ideas to collaborators & customers. One of the most sensitive parts of a project is when the folks who have a vision try to get collaborators (and later customers) on board. The Visionary often underestimates how much energy they need to put towards clearing the team’s limiting beliefs or the customer’s objections. Remember that everyone you talk to is coming to this project with their own goals and fears. Try addressing fears as early as possible so they don’t come back to spook you later. Find your balance between wanting to involve everyone and knowing that every person will require time and energy to onboard. This is especially tricky when you’re trying to create a community. You’ve got to have awesome methods to onboard your community and channel their fire or they will burn you up.

5. Take up a practice where timing really matters. My definition of timing is being aware of what is going on and being able to act at the most auspicious time for all. I learned my timing being raised by musicians and then stage managing musical theatre. Here’s some hobbies to practice your timing: play any instrument, plan a party with a storyline, take an improv comedy class, or moderate on Clubhouse.

6. Try Gantt charting or working backwards from your goal. A Gantt chart is a project management tool where you assign a number of days to each phase of a project and then it lays the tasks out sequentially on a calendar. It makes it really easy to see things like if the graphic designer is 2 weeks late, you have to cut 2 weeks from somewhere else in the schedule or push the launch back 2 weeks. Asana is my favorite tool for doing this with a big team. For small team projects you can do it manually by working backwards from your goal. For example if I wanted to launch a new Course I would write down:

   0 Week: Course Start

   1-6 Weeks: Course Sales

   7-10 Weeks: Prepare Course Sales Materials

   11-16 Weeks: Outline Course, Research Ideal Customers, and ask Guest Speakers

   So in this example I can see that I need 16 weeks (or about 4 months) to prepare and launch a Course. Basecamp is my favorite project management tool to do this type of planning. 

What are your tips for hitting your timing without knocking yourself out? 👇🏻 comments please!

Building Your Online Credibility Without Going Back to School

When men want to learn a new skill they get a new job, when women want to learn something new, they go back to school — or so I have found in years of hiring.

In my experience, men were more likely to make offers that they were under-qualified for and plan to fake it until they made it. Overall they were right to do so, if you’re only applying for projects you already know how to do, you’re underselling yourself and stumping your growth. Here’s three methods to build up your credibility, make connections, and learn new skills–without going back to school.

Speak

You’re an expert in something and there are organizations that would love you to share your expertise. Not only will you get great practice at public speaking but the next time a friend of an audience member is looking to hire an expert in your field, you may be the first person they recommend. Most events have moved online and are looking for dynamic speakers that are comfortable on Zoom. Contact the organizers of groups in your lane to get started:

• Clubhouse App – as of early 2021 the hottest speaking and listening is happening on Clubhouse. Right now its an iPhone only App that you need to get invited to join. Follow me there as @jazminhupp.

• Live Interviews & Podcasts – look for social media influencers who host interviews about similar topics and start following their show. Once you get a sense of it you’re a good fit for their audience, reach out and ask to be interviewed.

• Meetup.com – lists thousands of groups on hundreds of topics. You may know nothing about restaurants but there’s plenty of restaurant owners who would love your advice on social media.

• Local Chamber of Commerce, co-working spaces, and professional associations – anywhere business owners and managers meet, you need to be.

• Conferences & Summits – you may not be ready for the big time but there are thousands of smaller conferences desperate for speakers. Start looking early though, many conference start booking speakers up to year in advance. I’ve booked speaking on smaller online summits within a week.

This is the best speech I've ever given in my life. If you're a female leader, give it a watch.

Publish

I self-published The Inside Guide, my first book. It’s my guide to intentionally using marijuana, MDMA, magic mushrooms, and meditation for healing.

It costs between $1,000-$3,000 to self-publish a print and digital book these days. Although getting picked up by a publisher is better for your resume, there’s no reason not to publish yourself now while you search for a publisher. Don’t think you’ve got enough material or time to write a book? Start a blog in your area of expertise and start writing one post at a time. Soon enough you’ll have enough content to string together into a book.

Volunteer

Want to learn a new skill or polish an old one? Volunteer your skill to the organization of your choice and you’ll get free practice you can add to your portfolio. Plus as you meet people throughout the organization, they’ll remember you next time someone they know is hiring for that skill.

• Hackathons are my favorite! They bring together inventors, designers, and coders to create technology over a weekend. Even if you don’t have the skills to participate you can volunteer to help run the event. You’ll meet hundreds of working and freelancing technologists in about 72 hours.

• CatchAFire.org – Matches volunteers with non-profits. Plus they’re a women-owned startup based in NYC.

• Idealist.org – Lists thousands of volunteer and non-profit jobs throughout the world.

• VolunteerMatch – A wide variety of local volunteer opportunities.

Diane and I designed a new website for Concrn at a hackathon in 2016. Concrn served people experiencing homelessness with mental health crises in San Francisco until 2019.

Pro Tips

• Always keep your business cards handy. Even if you don’t have a current gig, you should have personal cards made out with your name, general skill set/title, email address, and phone number. Add your personal blog, Twitter handle, and LinkedIn profile if you can.

• Get business cards from as many people as possible and follow up! Connect on LinkedIn within a week or send them a follow-up email thanking them for you their time and letting them know that you are looking for new opportunities if they hear of anything.

11 Things You Haven’t Tried To Improve Your Website’s SEO

“Best practices are things you should have done if you had thought of them first.” 

If all your competitors are doing it already, you won’t get the returns you’re looking for by jumping in late. Try taking best practices from other industries and reusing them. Here’s some lesser-known Search Engine Optimization techniques to try for your site on SquareSpace or Wordpress.

If you aren’t earning traditional press yet, you can increase your search ranking by getting covered by other blogs. Picture above of me on the cover of Dope Magazine, 2016.

How to Advance Your Way Up the Online Media Hierarchy

Here’s how to work your way from nothing to a top-level blog or news source.

• Do a Google search for “your industry blog” and “your industry news” and you’ll find the most popular ones. Pick a highly-ranked blog that speaks to your prospects. Then use Google to show sites related to the highly-ranked blog by searching for “related:rankedblog.com.” Less popular related blogs will be returned. Continue to do this until you find the most and least popular blogs with readership communities. Collect these into a list.

• Stalk your new blogger friends. Comment on every post they write on your industry and re-tweet their stuff. After a few weeks they’ll start to recognize you as a loyal reader.

• Write a post they’ll like on your blog and send it to them. For example, write a deeper-dive into a topic they cover or a clarification of something they wrote. If they repost your piece you’re in! Plus you’ll be the girl they turn to when they need a quote or clarification on your industry.

• Now use their repost of your content to trade up to more popular blogs. Most bloggers read all the blogs larger than theirs and a few sites less popular than theirs. Write an email to a more popular blog, “You may have seen my post on LesserBlog.com, I liked your related post, and so I wrote this post.”

• Continue trading up until you reach the top blog or media source in your industry.

Get More Shares By Giving Up Comments

You can get more shares if you make sharing the only action available at the end of your post. When someone gets to the bottom of your post, they typically have a couple of choices: commenting, reading a related article, etc. If you make the only option sharing the article with their network, you’ll get more shares. This works especially well with controversial content where your audience wants to add their input but can’t because you’ve removed commenting. Google doesn’t discern between people linking to your page because they disagree or agree with you.

Fast Content Gets Shared Faster

Content that is fast to read will get shared more often and more quickly. Shorter posts rise to the top of Reddit because Reddit takes the velocity of votes into account. So a photo that takes five seconds to read and react to will rise further than a well thought-out post that takes ten minutes to read. So if you have a long article, create an infographic of your top data from the post that you can share everywhere and then link back to your longer article.

Get More Shares By Figuring Out Why Your Audience Really ReTweets

Why do most people actually share your posts? They want to show off that they read your type of content (regardless of whether or not they do). This is why posts by Malcolm Gladwell are tweeted seconds after they’re posted. Your audience wants to show off how smart they are for finding your content and sharing it with their friends (Facebook) or potential bosses (LinkedIn).

Test Keywords Using AdWords Instead of SEO Because It’s Cheaper (Really)

Ranking on your keywords through organic search can take weeks and even months to climb to the top. You can buy the top slot through AdWords and check if the keywords you’ve chosen really convert before investing in a longer-term SEO strategy. Once your keyword terms move into organic search the conversion rate won’t necessarily be the same but this is a great tactic to compare potential keywords against each other.

Swap SEO-Friendly Headlines In After Human-Friendly Headlines

SEO friendly headlines are stuffed with keywords that target searchers. Human-friendly headlines use a teaser proposition, controversial view point, or question to encourage click-throughs and shares. You can post the article with your teaser headline, get a lot of shares, and then switch it to your keyword stuffed headline later. Your article will retain it’s popularity for being shared even after you change the headline.

Optimize Your Bio

What you may not have thought of is optimizing the keywords used in your bio. Try to keyword stuff the link back to your company’s site. So instead of “Jane Smith is Founder of Company.com” try “Jane Smith is Founder of the first Black-owned widget company in New Jersey.”

Links Are Forever

When someone posts about your business but doesn’t link to you, simply contact them and ask. Articles last just as long as the news cycle but links are forever.

Use The Most SEO-Friendly URL For Your Blog

Your blog’s URL should be YourSite.com/Blog for maximum SEO benefit to your site. If you’re in a “serious” business and the term “blog” isn’t appropriate for your target audience, use YouSite.com/Articles or YouSite.com/Research.

Where To Start Optimization Testing On Your Website

If you're just getting started with web optimization testing or have limited testing resources (hey that's like everybody), which pages you test is the most critical decision you have to make. At today's WhichTestWon's Conference I learned from Justin Rondeau that our optimization instincts are probably wrong on where to start testing.

Page Requirements for Optimization Testing

Before you can test a page, it must meet these two requirements:

• Does the page get enough traffic to reach statistical significance in a reasonable time frame (1-5 weeks)?

• Does the Page Directly Impact Conversation? If Yes, what is the current conversion rate? If No, what is the long term value of the conversion that this page lifts?

Start Lower in Your Funnel

For an eCommerce site, start as late in your conversion funnel as possible. Here's a typical eCommerce funnel:

• Entry Pages: These are politically charged since many people may be involved in creating these campaigns, skip optimizing these first.

• Category Pages

• Search Results

• Product Pages

• Cart & Checkout: START HERE. Few people will challenge you to improve the cart because carts are just carts. You can create a lot of lift here.

• Receipt/Thank You: Rarely tested! Try an up-sell or cross-sell here instead of during checkout.

Next, Where Is Your Landing Money?

Don't start with high bounce rate pages. We know–they're sinking ships that you'd like to save. Not worth your time. Try landing pages for your highest conversion traffic. Or landing pages for your most expensive (PPC) traffic.

Next, Test Your Conversion Path

Now that you've improved the beginning and end of the funnel, now you can test the middle. This means testing your category pages, search result pages, product pages, and so on. Find everything that is stopping people from buying in your funnel and test how to fix it.

Next, PPC Traffic

If you're paying for customers to click on your links, you need to nail the landing page. At a minimum, your page needs to feature what your ad claimed. You'll be surprised at how many people screw this up.

Next, Referral Traffic

Know who is sending you traffic and where they are sending them. Make sure you're meeting the standards that people expect.

Am I Done Yet?

Of course not! Follow WhichTestWon for more testing ideas or get you butt to Austin for the Live Event. 

2014's Hot Homepage Design Trend: Mega Images

Justin Rondeau examines tests from over a thousand brands every year, as Chief Editing & Testing Evangelist for WhichTestWon. Justin explained the Mega Image trend he's seeing across the industry and some tips on doing better testing at WhichTestWon's Live Event in Austin today.

Do Mega Image Homepages Work?

You know those giant brand images filling up new home pages? Looks great but does it work? Justin presented a case study from KinderCare, which had been fine tuning their home page for years but was looking for a big lift. After the redesign with a Mega Image, they experienced a 17% lift in conversion. That's a huge lift for an established homepage but the resources required to pull this off are also huge. Unlike changing the color of a button, you've got to coordinate fresh creative that blows your brand out of the water.

Mega Image Tips

• Make sure your photo scales with the browser window size.
• DON'T use stock photos: make it genuine, make it your brand! At one company we spend about $30K a year shooting photography of our employees and our customers. (If you're looking for a team to do the same for your business, I use Meier Brand's creative team.)
• If you're using faces, try to make sure the person in your photo is looking where you want the visitor to look. Faces grab a lot of attention and will be the first place your visitors look. If they compete with your main message you probably won't see a lift.
• Don't implement blindly, make sure to test this. Although there are lots of instances of this working for other brands, your experience may be different.

Mega Image Homepage Designs With Movement

I don't have testing data on these, but was intrigued but two Mega Image homepages that use movement to complement the design. Click through the images so see one very common and one not-so-common movement implementations.

How To Start Testing

Many marketers say they don't have the resources to start testing but tools like Optimizely make testing easier than ever. Here's a few tips on getting started.

• Education is #1: The tools are great, but it doesn't replace a sound education in testing fundamentals. I personally recommend WhichTestWon's Live Events to start. You can also download their report on testing trends.
• Hire a Proper Team: Optimization requires people. If you have no one, push for a part-time resources. If you have part-time resources, push for full-time, and so on.
• Push for an Ideological Shift: If your organization doesn't believe in a data-driven testing, you're going to have to push for that from the top down. That means constantly communicating how your testing, the learnings and your results (good and bad). Showing the improvements you're making constantly will build trust in testing.
• Stay Curious - Question Everything: If there is one thing to look for in your testing culture, it's insane curiosity. Do you question everything? Great! You're doing to go well here.

Stop Sporadic Testing

Many organizations are testing as they like without a methodology.

Why It Doesn't Work

• No Long Term Gains: You may be small lifts but you won't be able to scale that effect.
• No Test Learnings: Just because changing a button color created a conversion lift, doesn't mean you know why. If you can't figure out why, you can't apply that learning going forward.
• Higher % Failure Rate: Your tests are much less likely to be correctly formulated if you don't do this very often.

Why We Don't Test More

The majority of organizations only have one person dedicating half their time to testing. It's your job as an optimizer to build the case for more testing resources with a proven track record of successful lifts. If you're not reporting back on your successes and continually proving your contribution on the bottom line, start now!

Your Company's Facebook Posts Will Soon Be A Waste Of Time

Without boosting your Facebook boosts with advertising spend, you're shouting into the dark. No matter how hard you worked to build your fan base, as many as 98% of your fans never return to your Facebook page after liking it.

Facebook Organic Post Reach Is Diving Off A Cliff

The percentage of your fans that you reach organically (without paying for ads) is rapidly declining: from an average of 12% in October 2013 to 6.2% in February of 2014 (according to social@Ogilvy). The day when your organic posts will reach virtually no one is coming fast.

Shift Strategies or Abandon Facebook Organic Posts in 2014?

Even though Facebook has become an advertising network (with a social media network as a lost leader), you can still target extremely specific audiences. What other medium can you find 15-17 year old girls who live within 50 miles of Cleveland, Ohio, and own an iPhone 4 or iPhone 5? If you have the ability to craft campaigns that speak to your customers in their own homes and phones you can reap enormous rewards. I can't name another newspaper that is sent directly to all of my customers, for as little as $25 a campaign. Can you?

Custom Audiences Are Your New Best Friends

You're going to upload lists of email addresses and lists of phone numbers from your customer contact lists. This will allow you to target your current customers for ads (even if the haven't liked your page) and find more people like your customers on Facebook. Custom Audiences will allow you target people who have shopped with you before.Uploading your customer's email addresses and phone numbers to Facebook puts a lot of trust in their court. Facebook says that they encrypt the data that is uploaded, use it for matching purposes at that time only, and then delete the data. This means you should update the data periodically to add new customers. Privacy is never perfect but this is likely worth the risk for your brand. (Technically, they hash the data, not encrypt it, if you want the full technical explanation.)If uploading your customer lists are too creepy, try tracking everyone who visits your homepage. You'll install a tracking code in your header tags so that you can retarget ads to anyone who visits your company's website. Slightly less creepy and it continues to grow as your website traffic grows. 

Lookalike Audiences Are Your New Holy Grail

How often do we sit around as marketers and complain: "I wish I could find more people who are just like my best customers." Facebook is offering to deliver them to you. Once you've uploaded a list of your best customers, you can tell Facebook to match their entire database of people within any single country to your type of people. To get started, see Facebook's "How to Create Lookalike Audiences".

So Now Facebook Is Just Like Any Other Advertising Network? Nope!

It seems clear that Facebook is turning into an Ad network and should be treated like the New York Times or Google Adwords. But one thing still separates Facebook, according to the Ogilvy report. There's one thing that STILL means your social media marketing messages should be fundamental different from other paid ads.