How to fail at your website

I'm a pretty big failure but something I don't fail at is my website.

These are things that I've seen over the years. 

You can fail at copy, at design, at UX, which is user experience. 

These are surefire ways to fail. 

On the other side, you can win by being clear - having clarity on your website, making it beautiful, and most importantly, easy to use.

I'm Terra Milo and I fail a lot.

I recently spoke at a conference for other digital nomads where I talked about how I'm just failing life and business and everything. But it's fun and we learn from failures.

Right?

I do consider myself a pretty epic failure these days but after running my own business since 2013 and helping hundreds of entrepreneurs and companies around technology and marketing, I know what works and what doesn't and I want to help you avoid some mistakes so that you can thrive and really grow your business.

Here are the numbers about how I fail.

2,378 followers

500+ entrepreneurs

200+ products launched

9+ years in business

As you can see, I have a pretty small following and a small email list, but I've been in business for more than 9 years because people keep coming back to me.

I know what I'm talking about.

They trust me and they get good results. I am good at business. I joke about failing but I am really good at this stuff and I want to help you too so let's dive in and talk about how to fail at your website.

Over the years I have seen some pretty bad websites.

Design

Let's talk about how to fail at design. Do not put a picture like this on your website, please. I have seen this picture on websites before. You gotta take that down. 

We all love flowers and nature and trees and all of that stuff but it doesn't belong on our website. 

I'm going to talk about good design but I did have to point out some bad design first. 

You also don't want to have old photos, bad photos. I've literally seen websites with old photos where people are cropped out of it and it's zoomed in real close on the face. 

That's not gonna work for a professional website. 

You can't have bad photos on a good website. 

Having too many links and making it clunky and hard to use. 

Using too many fonts is really going to throw people off your website. 

But how can you win at design? 

Instead of that colorful background, we have white space. It conveys a sense of possibility and the future and it's positive. 

We want to have updated and professional photos. It makes all the difference in your business, your confidence, your website, all of it to have good photos. 

You also want to have few but clear links so people know exactly where they're going when they visit your website. 

It should be easy to follow the flow... how they're supposed to go through your website. so it's really clear what they should do on every page and that goes down to design. 

You also want to have only two or three brand fonts on your website. 

It's way too easy these days to make a bad website using 15 different fonts and colors and all this stuff. 

Two or three brand fonts. Two colors. That's all we gotta do to make a beautiful website. 

Copy

How to fail a copy: 

• making that copy all about you

• no clear call to action. 

• super basic or

• too clever and they have to figure it out

• there's too much 

• not optimized for SEO

So let's see what we could do instead. how to win at copy: making it all about them. 

Even on your "about you" page or "about us" or "about the company", whatever... that About page should be about them first, and then it's about you.

There are good ways to do that that I can help you with. 

The whole website should be focused on the client, the benefits to them, all of it.

We want to have very clear calls to action. 

Make that call to action at the bottom of every page of your website. 

They get to the bottom and they're like, "yeah I love that. now what?" 

Put that call to action at the bottom of every page. 

You want to have copy that is interesting. It's clear. It's compelling. It drives them forward. 

That's what your copy should do and it should show, don't tell. 

Using testimonials and case studies to show that you know what you're talking about not just telling. 

You know what courses you've taken, and degrees and that kind of stuff, we want to show and really demonstrate that you have the expertise that they're looking for. 

You can also write copy with natural SEO and that's going to make things even better, especially with some recent Google updates around SEO, it's looking for more natural SEO. 

So you can write copy strategically to win that SEO on your website. 

Website UX - User Experience

Another place to fail on your website is UX - user experience. 

Again, you've got too many links - they don't know what to click. 

Or it's too wordy. It's gonna drive people away, or it's just not gonna pull them forward in the way that we want. 

Maybe your website is unclear. They don't know what to do next. 

There are too many options or there's no call to action. 

It could be both things like in your navigation across the top of your website, you don't want to have more than five links. Anything more than that is going to confuse people and they're not going to take action. 

"A confused mind says no." 

So here's what we want to do instead. 

How to win at UX - having a few clear links so they know exactly what to click on. 

Making your copy and all the information, all the words on your website more concise. 

They say exactly what they're supposed to. They are clear and purposeful. 

And the design, the flow of your website is intuitive so people are guided along the path. 

They see that call to action at the bottom of the page, they click it, it takes them to where they expect that they would be going when they click that button. 

It's all about that expectation. that whole experience, we want to make that feel really supportive and professional, like they're being taken care of.

If you want help with your website, we can do a UX Website Review, where I’ll look at design, copy, and UX to make sure it’s exactly what you want it to be. Book a call with me here and let’s upgrade your website so you can get more clients.