#113 Should Your Website Match Your New Logo? Plus AI Pitfalls and SEO Quick Wins

-: 00:45

Jonny Ross

: Hello and welcome. It's the 90 Day Website Mastery Podcast, the perfect companion to our 90 Day Website Mastery Programme. It's the 33rd episode. We're excited to bring you even more valuable insights and practical advice to help you enhance your website's performance. Join us as we explore strategies to make your website work harder for you, reigniting your pride in your online presence. I've got my co-host here, Pascal Fintoni. You're joining us from France. That's where you are at

-: 01:09

Pascal Fintoni

: the moment, yeah? Yes, this is an international streaming service, you know, that we offer to our wonderful audience. So now I've looked at the show notes. This is really exciting. Across our 4 segments, we're gonna be covering issues like rebranding, the use of the term AI in your website content. Is it good, is it bad, is it different? And as always, we're gonna give you some tools to try out and some actions to do right now.

-: 01:17

Jonny Ross

: We want you to feel proud of your website. Let's dive in to our first segment, You ask, we answer.

-: 01:55

Pascal Fintoni

: Now during a recent workshop, I had a very interesting conversation during the breaks with 1 of the attendees. And what is interesting, Jonny, that's almost building up from a recent question we received around this idea of when I'm changing my business strategies, I'm changing my services, should I change the website design? And this 1 is actually even more kind of precise. This idea of I'm about to rebrand my business and I'm going to have a new logo and therefore should I change my website color schemes and more to match my logo and my identity? And it

-: 02:08

Pascal Fintoni

: was just, it's a simple question, but actually it's really rich in context and kind of follow up actions. So yeah, new logo, would you go ahead and therefore change the website look and feel? What say you, Jonny?

-: 02:47

Jonny Ross

: Well, it's important to have consistency, brand consistency across, you know, If a customer or a user or a potential client sees brand assets in different places, it's really important about consistency. But also you've got to consider about what impact that has changing the website. So I wouldn't suggest just sort of changing the logo and changing the color scheme and just not even thinking about it, because the danger there is that when you're straight in that mode of thinking around colors and design and the, and the, the logo, you forget about user experience and you forget about

-: 03:15

Jonny Ross

: how the website actually feels. So I think it's really important, but it has to be done in a way that's not going to break anything in terms of user experience, that's not going to change anything in terms of what people were used to. And also, you've got to make sure that it's definitely still talking to your target audience, not just with the colors and the logo, but the actual, the way the website works, the way the website flows. So there's definitely pros and cons here. What are you thinking, Pascal?

-: 03:42

Pascal Fintoni

: Well, I'm listening to you reminding me that, I mean, by far, you know, the investment into your brand identity is going to be on par with the website. What I mean by that is the amount of time you're going to spend through the deliberations. If you're guided by a professional agency, they're going to really take you through a number of steps so that you can settle on the way you're going to express visually what you stand for, your values, the way you do what you do. And what I mean by that is that as an exercise,

-: 04:10

Pascal Fintoni

: it's so enthralling and so captivating that you could be tempted then to go and and using the same kind of energy Let's go through the whole website and change everything in 1 fell swoop and might it would be actually you do that all the time Now it may well be that in fact you look at the brand you look at the logo and its manifestation and you kind of go, that is enough. You know, we're just going to fix this onto the website and of course our signatures and more. But the website, the way it stands

-: 04:40

Pascal Fintoni

: for now, I'm not going to go ahead and make any changes. I'm going to wait that it's settled because actually the question is more to do with now that your logo maybe expressed more clearly who you are and what you stand for, then can we challenge the website? And is it kind of matching that level of clarity? And the 1 thing I will say is I've never felt the need over the last, oh goodness, nearly 30 years, listen to me. I've never felt the need to match the logo colors, if there are any, because sometimes they

-: 05:09

Pascal Fintoni

: are monochrome. I never felt the need to match the colors of the logo to the rest of the website. And in fact, all of you, if you're listening, if you consider some of the big brands and some of the consumer brands, I mean, give an example, you mentioned I was in France for a few more days. I've been really surprised to see how famous French car manufacturers have changed their logos. I mean, they really have gone more modern and sometimes better recognizable, but the website's not changed really. They've not changed the colors of the web pages

-: 05:27

Pascal Fintoni

: and so on and so forth. I think for me, there's that you have the logo, you have the manifestation, but ultimately your website itself is more guided by your own values, the sector you operate in and so on. And I think it's very, very healthy to not let the logo dictate the way the

-: 06:05

Jonny Ross

: website looks and feel. Yeah, I like what you mentioned about the iterative approach as well, because that's what we should be doing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis is learning and adapting. And just because we've got a new set of brand assets, logo, color scheme, doesn't mean we should make a huge change instantly on the site. So yeah, and I guess the only other thing that I've not mentioned, which is my background, is search engine optimization. Making big changes to a website in a short period of time can have a huge impact from Google's point of

-: 06:27

Jonny Ross

: view. Long term, it may have a positive impact, but short term typically has negative impact where Google sort of sees the change and thinks, oh, right, we need to sort of reassess this website. Let's just reconsider our ranks and reconsider how much traffic we're going to send to this website whilst we sort of really understand it. So you've got to consider things like search engine optimization as well.

-: 06:58

Pascal Fintoni

: For me, the final point would be, so if you make the change and you are changing the identity in a quite a significant way, I think what would be very helpful is to explain to the audience why and what it means to them and for them. So I think definitely as opposed to jumping sort of ahead and changing the colors of photography. I think there's a story to be told here within the blog sections or maybe something. Of course. Yeah. CEO's column, if you will, to say this is our journey to date and this is why

-: 07:11

Pascal Fintoni

: we're changing. This is what you can expect and forward to. The kind of what's in it for me. I think it's probably what I would focus on necessarily and then wait until you get reactions and feedback from the audience to make those decisions

-: 07:19

Jonny Ross

: on the design itself. Yeah for sure, for sure. Let's move on to our next segment, which is website stories.

-: 07:59

Pascal Fintoni

: Now in this segment of the show, we review an article, a podcast, a video, maybe an infographic, something that can help us reflect what it means to be a web manager in today's economy. I've just written an article, Johnny, that is going to help us actually almost explain and express our position when it comes to AI. But before I do so, let me share with everybody the title of the article, customers don't trust AI, and the rift might be hurting business. And this is written by the editor of Marketing Dive, Kristen Durer, I hope I pronounced

-: 08:35

Pascal Fintoni

: her surname correctly. And I would invite you to follow the hyperlink in the show notes because it's rich in considerations, insights and data about this side day of, we are at the time of recording more or less, Johnny, 2 years into the launch of ChatGPT with all the chaos that ensued, particularly across media. And if I read the subtitle of the article from, I think you understand where we're going to go with this. The side of researchers, I should share a little bit of an incisive anecdote. Researchers find that not only are customers wary of AI,

-: 09:15

Pascal Fintoni

: but the inclusion of AI terminology actually decreases customers' purchasing intention. So what we have is a situation where you have a drive by businesses across all sectors to introduce the cement of AI powered services and products. And therefore, markets have been tasked with advertising the very fact that we now have those AI powered services and products. But actually, consumers think that that's not really helpful to them. They even sometimes link it to something that is quite negative. And the research is quite clear. You know, the first thing that the first reaction consumers will have, and we

-: 09:53

Pascal Fintoni

: can all relate to that would be the moment you see the term AI in marketing copy, that could be on a website, on a flyer, on the exhibition stand and more, but the moment you see the term AI, you're strictly linked to issues around misinformation, disinformation, copyright infringement, and essentially what does it mean to the site in general? Are you coming after my job? And back to this idea of the anniversary of the when people see or read or hear the term AI, AI-powered. The next reaction is simply, well, actually, is it an over promise? Is

-: 10:25

Pascal Fintoni

: this going to actually do what you say it's going to do? Because there's also issues around performance and accuracy when it comes to AI. So really, the article is great and it gives a lot of scenarios across technology, car manufacturing, travel and so on about the reaction and the test are very very clear. You know when people see and perceive the element of AI they have less intention of buying what is absent. So that is a warning for all of us out there who will introduce no doubt AI solutions because the whole thing is, and this

-: 11:01

Pascal Fintoni

: is where on occasion, you and I can despair at our function of marketing, being hijacked to just share short messages. AI is a feature, therefore, and not a benefit. And people don't want to buy AI to quote the article. What they want to understand is the value for them of you using the element that you've kind of fixed the short-cycle name in the world called AI. And if I was to again read, you know, what's in the article on behalf of the consumer, you've got to almost play in your own head, right? So You claim that

-: 11:13

Pascal Fintoni

: now you have AI as part of the delivery of all the social products. I don't know why this is gonna help me. And therefore I become very distracting of your brand and your business.

-: 11:56

Jonny Ross

: Yeah, I mean, what we're talking about here is whether customers are still trusting AI or not and whether that is hurting your business. And what I've heard you say, Pascal, having read the article, is that if we went back a bit here, the use of the word AI in marketing was brilliant. It brought curiosity. People thought that you were at the front end of things, but there has been a shift. And there is now a huge danger of using the word AI in that copy. And what we're certainly not saying is don't use AI. We're absolutely

-: 12:35

Jonny Ross

: embracing AI. It's how you use it. It's how you test it. But it's also how you then sell your products and services. And so I came up with, in preparation for this, I wrote down 3 potential marketing slogans that might be out there and what you could use instead. So I think you mentioned 1 right at the beginning, which was AI powered inventory system. Instead, it could be called real time inventory optimization to reduce waste and improve efficiency. And so you sort of describing the pain points instead of just using the word AI. Another 1 might

-: 13:16

Jonny Ross

: be AI customer service. Well, instantly that makes me consider that the customer service potentially could be terrible. So what better could be 24-7 support that responds instantly to your needs? The last 1 I wrote down was AI driven insights. Again, there's a question over, well, how clever, how accurate are those insights? So instead get actionable, accurate data forecasts to drive better business decisions. So I think it's focusing on the pain points, focusing on the value proposition and not just jumping on we sell AI products and AI solutions.

-: 13:47

Pascal Fintoni

: Thank you very much for taking the time to work out those examples, because that's exactly right. So, you know, the article says very much the same point, which is don't hide the fact necessarily, because you will find that there are many benefits and advantages, but you've got to be explicit, not implicit. And certainly in the kind of English language, the use of acronyms is just rife. And I have some sympathy because people want to say things in a very succinct way. They don't want to waste anybody's time. They're worried that the reader or the listener or

-: 14:18

Pascal Fintoni

: the viewer is not gonna pay attention beyond 15 seconds. Come on people, you know, we couldn't watch movies for 2 hours. So, you know, sustain the interest. And when we talk about storytelling, you and I cover that extensively as part of this podcast. And this is just the same, which is, don't think that this is the silver bullet and magic wand you've all been waiting for, just put the word AI throughout the whole website. And people say, oh, well, let me buy from this organization. They will buy from you because they've understood how well they're gonna

-: 14:56

Pascal Fintoni

: be looked after and how you've chosen to express that in so many different ways across the website. So indeed you know if you are going to introduce AI powered services This again merits a full article to explain within the context of the blog or the social media platforms, the why, the what and how is it making a difference to me as a consumer. And very quickly, therefore, You and I have a very clear position about AI, a great, great tool to assist you in making good decisions to kind of really stimulate your creativity and imagination, to

-: 15:31

Pascal Fintoni

: do some very interesting kind of market research and more. But ultimately, you've got to tap into your humanity to then, you know, settle on what will be the final form of expression. And, you know, if you stick with the AI powered and fill the blank, then you've done enough of the work. And I think for me, the timing is impeccable. So big thanks to you, Kristen, for marketing dive, for taking the time to research all the data and the insight to everyone, read the article, because there's some great, great example, including the PL disaster with Google

-: 15:52

Pascal Fintoni

: for the Olympic games that took place in Paris as some of you will know. And then you can go back in the office and say, listen, listen, you know, we will, all of us move with the evolution of technology and digital. And we will eventually, all of us have some AI powered solutions and features, but we've got to put forward the pain points and benefits as you heard at the moment Johnny explained to you.

-: 16:04

Jonny Ross

: For sure, for sure. So consider your copy and don't just jump on the bandwagon of using the word or the phrase AI. Let's move on to our next segment, the website engine room.

-: 16:22

Pascal Fintoni

: The segment of the show, we'd love to recommend 1 app each or 1 software solution that can make life easier as a content creator and website manager. And what is your selection, Johnny, for episode 33?

-: 16:53

Jonny Ross

: Here is a really simple quick win from an SEO point of view, a really low hanging SEO fruit for you. And this is using Google Search Console. So the app is Google Search Console. That's nothing new, but it's 1 of the features in there that I'm gonna recommend and 1 of the ways of using it. So what I'm gonna suggest is having a look at the data in terms of the keywords, the phrases that are bringing traffic to your site. And doing a search, you can use a regular expression, I'll put some details in the show

-: 17:26

Jonny Ross

: notes, where you can search for questions. So any phrase that contains, for example, the word how, the word were, the word what. And then what you're looking to do is to filter those results and find any questions where you're typically ranking in position sort of 15 to 30. So that means typically page 2 or 3. So what you're doing is you're finding the questions that people are searching in Google, that Google is driving traffic to your website and where you're ranking in position 15 to 30. And I've done this with a number of clients recently. Then

-: 18:00

Jonny Ross

: all you do is start optimizing for those questions. So you find the page that ranks for it, you start optimizing it, adding perhaps a bit more content, making it a bit clearer that that is a question and that there's a very clear answer. And I've seen results where you can get to page 1 within only sort of 10 to 14 days, the bottom of page 1 very quickly. And so it's really quick wins, very simple, Google Search Console using a bit of custom redjacks to find those questions that people are searching where you're ranking 15 to

-: 18:03

Jonny Ross

: 30 and you can get to page 1. That's my tip for this episode.

-: 18:40

Pascal Fintoni

: That's fantastic. Do you know, I'm always surprised that Google Search Console somehow is not necessarily top of mind compared to Google Analytics, for example. I don't know whether that's actually a fault on Google Spark where they're not pushing that platform. The same with Google My Business. I think that's 1 of the small business, small kind of secret weapon of sort. And it doesn't get enough profiling and visibility. So I'm glad you brought it back to the fore. I've gone back to AI for this 1. And now some of you may remember that in earlier, in a

-: 19:15

Pascal Fintoni

: little of this podcast, I was a bit critical of AI power to actually image creators. You know, I was thinking, yeah, it's okay, but actually it's a big waste of time because you don't like anything that it produces. But of course it's getting better. Like a good bottle of French wine with age and time, things are improving. But As predicted, the brands who already have an established position in the world of graphics and video editing are doing a lot better. So I want to talk about Adobe. It's not new, but they've re-released, if you will, Adobe

-: 19:52

Pascal Fintoni

: Firefly. Adobe Firefly allows you to use conversation style, prompting and instructions to create new visuals. And I think for me, therefore, my kind of recommendation is to start to be skilled at writing those prompts and those briefs to get good visuals because there would be a time. We're talking about weeks and months, Johnny, not years. We'd be able to, for example, upload your brand guidelines, upload images of your logos and so on and so forth, and then request a number of visuals like a match of promotional social content. The 1 thing that I really like about

-: 20:21

Pascal Fintoni

: Adobe Firefly is that the interface is really nice. It's not as clunky as, let's say, some newcomers in the marketplace. And you can do a number of things, such as removing elements within the photo. So you may have photo of a product or service, maybe it's your team, but there's somebody that doesn't belong, they just walk past or there's elements that you want to remove. But also there was 1 that was absolutely lovely whereby you can extend the photo. So let's say you have a square image and for your blog section maybe or for your products

-: 20:55

Pascal Fintoni

: landing page you need the picture to be more horizontal to have more the shape of a rectangle and AI can essentially guess what should be on the left and the right of the square and add the element. And honestly, it's really quite something, to see the additional part of the room that was in there, being added. So Adobe Firefly, to practice writing those great briefs and prompts to get good visual for your website, ready for a time where it's gonna be really, really powerful and you wanna be ahead of the competition.

-: 21:11

Jonny Ross

: Great tip, great tip, I like it. I mean, it's the amount of evolving apps in terms of imagery. But you've always got that core Adobe product where they invest a lot into their products and it is worth looking at.

-: 21:11

Pascal Fintoni

: It's a

-: 21:19

Jonny Ross

: bit more expensive, but there's some good stuff in there. Let's move on to our next segment, which is the website call to action.

-: 21:33

Pascal Fintoni

: This is about the 1 change or adjustment that you should be making right now for you and your audience. So Jenny, what is your recommendation?

-: 22:06

Jonny Ross

: Well, I can't believe that we've not recommended this 1. I was looking back at some of the recommendations we've done over the podcast series. And the idea here is to give you 1 thing that you could be doing right now to make a big difference, to start feeling proud of your website. And this 1 is about building trust. So we always talk about how can you build trust. And 1 of the simple ways is user generated content, asking your users to create content. And that's around even just as simple as customer reviews and testimonials. And I

-: 22:38

Jonny Ross

: imagine if I was to ask you the question, the website managers, the business owners that are out there, the marketing managers that are out there, What is your testimonial strategy? What is your review strategy? And I imagine that a lot of you still do not have 1 in place or are not optimizing it as well as you could be. And could you be generating more content from your users to build that authenticity, to build that trust and to pepper these things across your website. All it takes is adding a tiny little quote from a user, an

-: 23:02

Jonny Ross

: authentic quote from a user on a homepage, on a service page, perhaps a couple of times in a few different places. The power that that can achieve is immense. And the question is how many of actually doing it? So that would be my website call to action for this episode, go and ask your users for more testimonials and reviews and start using them on your website.

-: 23:29

Pascal Fintoni

: I love the fact that you said peppered across the website because that's really important. We know for a fact that to have a page called What Clients Say with a long list of testimonials, somehow it doesn't work. People say, Well, I can't find my way through all this information. I don't know which 1 is relevant to me or relevant to a particular service or product. So it has to be across the entire website. And there are different ways in which you can get those reviews from actually write them in advance and saying, would that match your

-: 24:01

Pascal Fintoni

: experience all the way to ask people to write on the card. And there's different ways, even apps would mention, oddly, on the show. So for my kind of call direction, it's not dissimilar to what you were suggesting about Google Search Console. It's a novelty, but a goody. So I'd like people to enter their business names on Google. All the search engines are available, but you know, ultimately Google is dominating the marketplace. And then once you've done so, I want you to select the images tab. And what you'll have here is what I call your photo CV.

-: 24:33

Pascal Fintoni

: So I want people to look at the first 20, which is roughly what you'll have displayed on a laptop screen, and then simply kind of ask yourself the questions, am I happy with this visual CV? Am I happy that the photos listed by Google is a fair representation, is current representation of my business? And more importantly, I want people to read the very short description. Usually it's very, very brief, no more than 5 to 10 words below the photo and you're happy with that because ultimately that is taken from your website so you can tweak it.

-: 25:04

Pascal Fintoni

: So the side idea of have a look at the photos and the question is is it how the world to see our business understand our business and if not do we need to update our photos and get some more recent 1 on the website. And am I happy, particularly with the description? And you can do the same actually with individuals. So if you have some customer facing individuals, if you are indeed the head of the business and people could Google you and then Click on images and see what kind of images you have of yourselves. Again,

-: 25:28

Pascal Fintoni

: are they current? Is your name spelled correctly? Is the description or the positions, would I say, still current and that kind of things. And that seems like a silly little exercise to do. And why would I bother people don't click on images? They may not, but when Google presents your business and they create those summary windows, photos are usually listed and imaginal tech control.

-: 25:59

Jonny Ross

: Yeah, And this is about owning your space in Google, isn't it? And really actually having a look at your digital footprint, nevermind your personal footprint, but your brand's footprint as well. So very, very good advice there. That is episode 33. What are the things that we've covered? Well, we've helped you think about the pros and cons of rebranding your website to match your new colors and new logo. Perhaps you've gone through a rebrand and you've got new color scheme. We've made you think about some of the pros, but also some of the cons that are out

-: 26:36

Jonny Ross

: there and how to navigate that. We've talked about the use of the word AI and AI powered. Don't be using it all the time. Think about it carefully before you're using it because we're seeing data that it's having a negative effect and hurting your business. So really consider the use of AI. We've given you top tips on how to start feeling proud of your website. Again, that's what this is all about from Pascal's checking your brand, but also an AI app in terms of creating better imagery. And I've given you some really simple ideas on how

-: 26:51

Jonny Ross

: to increase your search engine optimization and to use your users to get those proof, those testimonials, those customer reviews to enhance your authenticity and to enhance your trust. A great episode Pascal.

-: 27:22

Pascal Fintoni

: Oh absolutely and I kept thinking you know the subject is so rich and vast and I'm very very pleased we'll be able to make a difference but again this the production of this episode is in some fashion AI powered, but we're not letting it take over. The fact that John and I are thinking about you, our audience all of the time, thinking about what you need to know, what you should be focusing on and so on. And indeed, we've gone as far as creating some very useful resources for you on our official websites. If you find,

-: 27:53

Pascal Fintoni

: for example, this idea of trying some new apps very, very interesting, we have for you an ebook with our top 50 recommended apps and software solution that can make a difference. And if you find this idea of making some small adjustment interesting, you could book a specific day and time of the week to just do that 1 change. We have for you something fun to utilize called the Action Randomizer. You're gonna roll some dice, you're gonna get a number, you're gonna get a short snippet of a video with Jonny or I giving you an extra bit

-: 27:59

Pascal Fintoni

: of task to complete on your website, all this on our official website. And the URL is Jonny.

-: 28:34

Jonny Ross

: 90daymarketingmastery.com, Head over there because there's some great resources that we've put together. And so we'll put that in the show notes, of course, the 90daymarketingmastery.com. That is a wrap for episode 33 of the 90day website mastery podcast, your audio companion to the 90day website mastery program. As we've said, for more information, visit 90daymarketingmastery.com where you can book a discovery call with either myself or Pascal. It's goodbye for now. We'll leave you with a fun video and audio montage to enjoy whilst you review your notes and action steps and head over to the website to see some

-: 28:45

Jonny Ross

: of those features giving you those little bite-sized tips that you can start actioning right now to start feeling proud of your website again. Take care, we will see you all soon. Bye, Pascal.

-: 30:04

Pascal Fintoni

: Bye-bye. Bye bye. Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!