AP 0597: How Do I Make My Website More Professional?

AskPat 597 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what up everybody, Pat Flynn here and welcome to Episode 597 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions, five days a week.

We have a great question today from Paul but before we get to Paul's question, I do want to thank today's sponsor which is Harry's. Harry's like the name, but also stuff that you'd use if you are hairy. Because this is shaving stuff and I actually subscribe to Harry's. I get their shaving gel, the razors are great, they are super cheap and so if you want to get a great gift for somebody or something for yourself, I would highly recommend using Harry's products.

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All right, here's today's question from Paul.

Paul: Hi Pat, my name is Paul Carlson and I'm the owner of Safety Solutions Academy com and the host of the Safety Solutions Academy Podcast. I'm a professional defensive firearms instructor and I first of all want to say thank you and then get right to my question.

How is it that a person, like me, who really just wants to teach. I'm not so tech savvy but I love teaching. How is it that I can make all the important parts of my website work together? Do I need to learn how to use all these tools intimately, do I need to find the right people to make it work for me or do I need to find the right tools that work together so that's easy.

I got some great feedback from a student at a live class this weekend. His comment was “Wow, this was a fabulous class, I can't believe how much I learned and you really need to smooth out your registration process and your email process because it doesn't make you look as professional as you are.” It's a wonderful compliment, it's great feedback and it's nothing that I don't know. But I am struggling at making my website, which is WordPress, work with the Magento store and the plugins that go with that, that have little glitches in them and all of the different challenges that I find. So Pat I would like your advise on how it is that I can make my registration process, make my lead into my classes as professional as I am.

Thank you so much for everything you do, Pat. I look forward to hearing your response.

Pat Flynn: Hey Paul, thank you so much for the questions today. I appreciate this. Awesome comment, I mean I wish I got more comments like that from my audience and I do get them, every once in awhile but I love when they give me something constructive like that. And I think that was probably a big eye-opening comment for you and something that perhaps prompted this question.

Now, really what it comes down to is tech, obviously. And tech can be very, very confusing especially for those who are just starting out and for me when I first started out I kind of fought my way through everything. And things didn't work always as planned but here's the thing, I asked people who were doing what I wanted to do. So I don't sell registration for courses and I don't use Magento but you might find somebody. And the best thing you can do is find somebody who is doing it to just show you, or point you in the right direction. I don't know if that is necessarily possible at this time but you had mentioned getting connected with the right people and that's what it's really about.

When I first started I was using a tool called E-junkie to sell information products, namely an ebook to help people pass and study for the LEED exam. And I didn't know how to use it and I fought my way through the knowledge base there and I talked to their support and that helped a little bit. But what really helped me out was somebody who was already using that software. Who was like “Hey Pat, let me show you how it works” and we got on a call and literately in 10 minutes I was up and running and all ready to go.

So with what you have going on, if you find somebody who's using it, you might want to actually want to reach out to shopping cart and see, their support services, and see if there's any other examples or people they can connect you with to point you in the right direction or at least you can get some experience going through other people's sites and registration process's through that particular platform. And then you might find that, well maybe that's not the best platform overall and you might want to look at something difference and find other sites out there who are similar in a sense that their registering people for courses and whatnot. And you can just simply reach out and ask them “Hey, what particular shopping cart are you using? What registration process are you using?” By far the number one thing that has helped me move forward with my business technically is just asking other people. Seriously, by far the more I find myself trying to work through these things on my own, the more time I loss, the more gray hairs I get, and just the more stressed out I get. So try to find other people, if you can.

WordPress is a good solution and it is probably going to come down to the right, either people or if not the right software to go on top of it and I don't know specifically why you chose the one you chose but there are other ones out there and it shouldn't make you look unprofessional. If it's not working the way it should, somethings wrong and I like that your asking this question now to try and find the right solution. But, you know, hire out is what I would recommend if you can't find somebody who can just provide you that information at this point and time.

There are great sites out there that have experienced people on there who can help you with these particular setups. For example, Upwork, upwork.com which is previously Elance and also previously oDesk. They both merged and turned into Upwork and upwork.com is a place where you can go to find developers who are very familiar with these particular things. You can look for things ones that are setup and have expertise in eCommerce. Make sure you look at their portfolios and try to get references. It's going to be a little bit of a process to find the right people but by far it's going to help you more than anything. I would just make sure you take it one step at a time because it's a very daunting process to go over and kind of just do a overhaul but with that said I think it's one of these things that when you have it working finally and the way you want to it's really going to pay off for you. I mean, if your getting this kind of comment from an existing student, imagine the people out there that are going through that registration process and seeing you Paul and saying “Wow, I don't know if this course is going to be great as he says it is because I'm already having a terrible experience, getting signed up.”

So those are some things you can do to improve that experience and I hope that helps you Paul. If anybody else has experience with Magento, I think it's what you called it, yeah, Magento, eCommerce solution. And there are a lot of others ones out there but if anybody has any experience with Magento or some advise for Paul, just use #AskPat597, again #AskPat597 and hopefully one of you can help even further point Paul in the right direction. And Paul, I want to wish you all the best of luck and I apologize I just didn't have an ‘oh do this and that's it' but it is going to take some time but I definitely and highly recommend finding other people out there who can help you, specifically through getting that customer experience right, right from the start.

Thank you again so much, Paul. I wish you all the best and I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show like I do with everybody and for those of you who are listening, if you have a question that you would like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page.

Thank you so much for your time and attention today. I really appreciate it and I really look forward to serving you in tomorrows episode. But before that, I do want to give you a quote. And this quote is from Wayne Dyer. And he said “Be miserable or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done. It's always your choice.”

Love it! Take care and I'll see you tomorrow at the next episode of AskPat. Thanks so much. Bye