#133 Should You Learn Website Design? UK Online Trends, AI Search & Smarter Website Tools

Jonny Ross

-: 00:28

Should you learn website design? That's one of the questions we're gonna be asking today in the 90 Day Website Mastery Podcast, episode 52, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 00:43

I know that's rather exciting. Thank you everyone for joining us either live or on replay. But yeah, today's about looking to the future, looking after yourselves, looking after your audience and finding ways for your website to work harder for you. And of course, for you to feel proud of your website again.

Jonny Ross

-: 01:02

Yeah, for sure. This is the 90 Day Website Mastery podcast, part of the 90 Day Website Mastery program and our recently published book, Web Proud. We're delighted to have you join us, whether you're joining us live or whether you're on the replay or listening on the podcast. However you're here, we are delighted and we're going to have our four segments as always.

Jonny Ross

-: 01:26

And well, yeah, our first one will be You Ask, We Answer, where we're going to take something that's been submitted by one of our community and I've asked a question. Of course, we're gonna give you some actionable tools that you could be using as a website manager and a call to action. We always finish content with a call to action, do we not? So, should we get started with our first segment?

Jonny Ross

-: 01:31

The you ask, we answer.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 01:50

So on this occasion, Jonny, this is something I received via email quite recently, one of my mentees. And the question is literally word for word as follows. I'll read it out to you. Hi, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 02:02

I've been thinking about something. Should I go on the training course to learn how to design a website? Would it make it easier for me to update my website content and optimize it correctly? What say you, Jonny Ross?

Jonny Ross

-: 02:21

Well, I'm all for training. I'm all for CPD. Should you go on a course to figure out how to design and then design your own website is a question. I'm not quite sure whether I'd say absolutely yes to that.

Jonny Ross

-: 02:42

I think training is important. I think upskilling is important. I think understanding what can be done and what can be achieved is really important. But I don't know if it's the right analogy, but a bit like, you know, if I was getting a house built and do I want to do all the work myself or do I want to go on a course to understand how the best way of plastering is

Jonny Ross

-: 03:18

done, how the best way of painting is done, to then actually just be able to choose the right supplier and to give them the right brief and to be able to challenge them. And I think that latter bit is far more important. In fact, only this morning I was internally briefing a new website for a new client and I was internally briefing my designer in terms of what we're wanting. And the only way that you can deliver a decent brief is by really understanding how design works and how to design and how the tools work to then make sure that you're asking for the right things within the brief.

Jonny Ross

-: 03:29

Am I then going to go off and design it myself? Absolutely not. I can go on a training course, but that's not going to help me actually design. I don't have that creative design skill.

Jonny Ross

-: 03:43

So I think training is really important. I think you need to be clear about what it is that you're wanting to learn. And I think it's more about upskilling so that you can challenge and so that you can brief and so that you can really understand how things work. That's what I think.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 04:03

Yeah, and in a way, if you look at the question again, it's in two halves, isn't it? This is designed to learn how to design a website to make it easier for me to update my website content and optimize it. And I'm like, ah, right, now we have two different kind of categories here. We have website design and actually what you and I love, the running of the website.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 04:30

And they are two different things. Now, I'm with you. It certainly would help for you to be kind of conversant in website design, to A, be sensible about your aspirations and expectation in terms of pace and momentum when it comes to design. But if your desire is to be a better content creator, content publisher, and optimizer, that's a different training, I would say, a different kind of skills development.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 04:56

But also for me, the conversation should be more about, all right, then can we actually step back for a bit? And can we be more strategic and think about maybe a learning plan over the next 3, 6, 9, 12 months? So as opposed to kind of maybe reacting to a challenge. So this was, I would imagine, inspired by my client going on the WordPress CMS and then struggling a bit, you know, because actually, I think it's become a bit clunky.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 05:20

when they introduce things like Elementor and a few other things. It doesn't make it any easier, I don't think, but that's Pascal's position, happy to be challenged. So I think for me it would be, instead of reacting to challenges and thinking, oh, I need a training for that, step back and start to list on a bullet point style what you'd love to learn, but also what you would enjoy doing. I think it's really, really quite important.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 05:37

And then maybe kind of spread this over the number of months and then look around what's available through your own kind of business support network, growth hubs, Judy and I are very involved in the north of England in that kind of things. But I'd love it to be more part of a learning and development plan than just reacting for sure.

Jonny Ross

-: 06:11

Yeah, and I think some of the training is too focused on the tool itself as well and less about the strategy, and I think that's more important, which I think is what you're tapping into. So, you know, things around messaging and the structure of it and even considering accessibility and considering user intent and customer journey across a website. Those are far more important than how to use a specific design tool, for example. So I think I like the idea of having sort of a bigger plan on training.

Jonny Ross

-: 06:37

But I think we're both agreeing that upskilling is so important to be able to understand what's achievable, what's not achievable. And as a website manager, sort of being able to be able to, um, be clear on what the strategy is, what's, what's important, what, what do we need to focus on and what do I need to make sure I deliver or, you know, work on over the next quarter or, uh, and the next year.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 07:08

Yeah. And to your point, though, this would be informed by the business strategy, you know, so you can cascade down. So you've got the vision for 2026, you've got your sales goals, you've got a number of kind of key performance indicators as a result of which you believe that you have to upskill yourself and your colleagues. And you're going to do this all in a number of months, not just a one-off like you and I did in our younger days where we were sent to a Microsoft Office course just as a kind of one-off and then nothing else was done or said about it.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 07:21

Now, I mean, you and I obviously are part of the digital skills agenda. Of course, we would say to people, you need to upskill yourself. But I like the idea of someone to be able to articulate the reason why and when they're going to do it. Yeah.

Jonny Ross

-: 07:59

And the other thing that we always talk about is that, is your time best spent designing the website? And actually, is your time far better spent on delivering what you're passionate about within your business? And a portion of that time being strategic about sort of shaping the design of the website, but not actually doing it. So, you know, think about how much you can earn during the hours that you end up potentially going down rabbit holes, which I think is the other thing to bear in mind hugely.

Jonny Ross

-: 08:06

But having the skills to be able to brief and challenge is just so important as well.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 08:22

That's interesting. That was quite a simple question, but we ended up talking about it quite a bit. You know, you should not be asking trainers whether you should go on the training course, but it's like asking a watchmaker what time it is, you know, it's just the dumb thing. So hopefully that's been really helpful for everybody and go through it again.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 09:01

I would love for you to send us, you know, your suggestions about your own learning plan for 2026, but it's time to move on to our next segment, website stories. Now, can I just say that I'm really excited about this one, Johnny, because every year where there's two reports that I look forward to, this is how sad I am. There's the Ofcom report on what they call online nations, and there's the Hootsuite report on social media trends. But this one really, is looking at 2025 and the behavior of our customers when it comes to internet usage.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 09:21

So this report is 114 pages, 114, 114 pages. So I recommend, of course, you're using the AI summarizer to pick out the best bits. But I wanted to focus specifically on what would relate to website and behavior. So I'm going to go through some of the headlines.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 09:43

It's not going to cover everything in this report, as you can imagine. And the link is in the show notes for everyone who wants to download it and look at it. But for me, what has been interesting is that adults in the UK, on average, now have spent four and a half hours a day, which is up from last year. Now, the reason why this is important is because over the last two or three years, the time spent online has plateaued and was the same.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 09:57

And you and I can assume, ooh, are we going to get into the beginning of a decline of time spent online? But we've been up now by 10 minutes a day, which is not negligible. Four and a half. The vast majority, of course, has been using smartphones as a gateway to the internet.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 10:21

And the top three, the kind of gold, silver, and bronze medals have been awarded to WhatsApp, Facebook, and Google Maps. And I want to go back to that, Johnny, because I think it has some bearing on our website marketing strategy. In terms of platform on the up this year, Reddit is on the up, influenced by YouTube. On the down quite a bit is Twitter.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 11:10

And I think Twitter is going to become essentially now completely irrelevant in some sectors, but still relevant in others. And surprisingly, but then again, we need to remember that this is a UK report, Quora has been down quite a bit. on the app and also it's a marginally down so i don't think it's something to be worried about interest messenger and ebay the one major major kind of twenty twenty five trend that's been reported by ofcom is the a i overviews and summaries and saying that you can't adult internet users meticulous almost half as likely to click on the links from the summaries we sing a massive shift which you have discussed many a time on this on this podcast which people being satisfied to just read the information presented by the summaries and not clicking on

Pascal Fintoni

-: 11:30

the links so that's quite quite important one. Trust is an issue on the Internet, and literally only a third of the adults being surveyed actually believe that the Internet is good for society. So we need to bear this in mind. How do we operate as digital marketers in an environment where trust is down?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 12:00

Excuse me the one thing to also bear in mind is obviously this idea of the agentic a i have discussed this within the term is awful but this idea where i will start to be able to work autonomously and the number two use cases will be to compare products and services or to plan holidays. And the majority of the comparison will come from your presence on google maps and your presence on google overviews. So Google Maps is a massive, massive part of the report.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 12:30

It's been actually interestingly called or kind of labeled the high street, the high street of the digital world. And whilst there are other apps like Waze and Apple Maps in the marketplace, frankly, Google Maps is by far dominates literally 80% of all ages uses Google Maps. So reflecting on this kind of top level summary of the inside, there's a lot more in this report. And from a marketing and website experience point of view, there are three core pillars that people should focus on.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 12:47

Become the answer, and therefore publish content well. Go deep, but don't go wide. So you've got to give people a reason to go on your website. and become your sector's trusted voice.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 13:08

In a way, that's quite reassuring because that's not new, but it's even more, I would say, urgent that people do so. I'm going to leave you with a statement that I thought was really quite interesting for all that's about social media. It goes, your customer is not on social media. They are on the specific platform for a specific reason.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 13:26

So if you were to change the term slightly, um, Johnny, your customer is not on a website. They are on a specific website for a specific reason. And I think for me, that's kind of the idea of, you know, the focus and, and making sure that we use those insights to inform our strategy for 2026.

Jonny Ross

-: 13:42

Yeah, I mean, it's quite a report. When I saw it on the show notes, I thought I better have a quick look at this report. And I like your idea of running reports through AI to give you sort of the highlights as well. Nothing wrong with using a digital assistant.

Jonny Ross

-: 14:04

And what I took from it was this isn't saying do more marketing. Um, it's saying be present where, um, the attention is all where, where people already are, uh, and they already have their attention. So, you know, for example, websites are no longer, uh, brochures. They are feeding the machines.

Jonny Ross

-: 14:22

And if you want to be visible and seen and, and mentioned. you've got to have good enough content to be able to feed those machines and not just have some kind of brochure website. So it's quite fascinating, some of the read. I love the focus on Google Maps.

Jonny Ross

-: 14:37

I've always thought about websites as shops on the high street. That's the, not terminology, what's the word? It's the way I've always thought about websites. Using SEO to get on a busier high street, basically.

Jonny Ross

-: 15:02

And Google Maps is sort of the signpost to all of this. So yeah, I love how this is being highlighted. And it's, I think, What the report suggests is that the attention actually is more concentrated than fragmented. So actually, people are spending time specifically on certain things, like you were just saying earlier, Pascal.

Jonny Ross

-: 15:32

And I think that means that we just need to make sure that our websites are really helpful, really engaging, that we've got really good, strong visibility on the likes of Google Maps, and that we're making sure that we're using content that really works on, for example, things like YouTube. which is making a big difference. I know that you mentioned one of the things that it highlights, which is fewer feel the internet is good for society.

Jonny Ross

-: 15:48

I think I'm hearing more of that as well. In fact, even on the radio, they were talking about it this morning on the Today program. And then there's a growing awareness in terms of doom scrolling and brain rot as well. My kids are always using that phrase, brain rot.

Jonny Ross

-: 16:07

So there definitely is this growing awareness. So for SMEs and for website managers, it's about bearing in mind that hard sells are not going to work well. that type of content will struggle. Generic AI content is also not going to cut through.

Jonny Ross

-: 16:26

It needs that real authenticity, that real story, that real human aspect. And real expertise is ultimately going to win, which, like you said, Pascal, is nothing new. It's great to hear that. It's just more focusing on what matters and what delivers.

Jonny Ross

-: 16:30

So, yeah, fascinating report. Thanks for bringing this one, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 16:46

Not at all. I thought I should share it because every year I look forward to it. It used to be published in the summer, in the previous years, and now kind of end of years, which is nice because it gives you... And for me, I'm guessing, you know, our viewers and listeners have been nodding, thinking, yeah, that's pretty much what I gathered intuitively.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 17:35

And I've got the stats and the data to back it up, you know, because we're very good to pick up human behavior and what's happening out there. What is very interesting to observe about the lack of trust or the decline in trusting that what's happening on the internet is always for good, it's across all generations because there was a time when digital was deemed to be a young person's game. what's your generation will be the first one to walk away i'm gonna go to church has been recorded to say that it's gonna be a massive unplugging away from social media and more towards communities i make sense to me so i think reddit is a very good example why you know this is happening cause people want to join a forum with a like minded individual were actually kindness and openness is actually at the heart of it.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 17:58

And you can express different views on life and work in general. But for me, there's a sense of urgency. And we keep saying this every year. But I reckon now, particularly the AI overviews, if you're not paying attention and you're not engaging your creative flair and self-expression when it comes to blogging, which I know is a very ancient term.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 18:29

It feels like we shouldn't be doing it. But Jonny and I have been telling you for decades now Get started because this will will pay dividends and move on to the next section you'll see why i'm so for me there's a sense of urgency to get focused to really reconnect with what makes you know different in the marketplace and you got to start telling those stories. The for me digital marketing and website management in twenty twenty six is about the out of being explicit.

Jonny Ross

-: 18:33

Nice, nice sum up. I like that.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 18:35

Be explicit.

Jonny Ross

-: 19:24

Yeah, it's just a huge reminder on do what we instinctively think is the right thing and be the expert. Some of the training courses that we've done recently, there's so much up inside a business owner's or founder's head that actually they just haven't shared or haven't told and all that sort of magic that happens behind the scenes, that happens prior to a service delivery, or during a service, or after, that they just haven't shared. And it's that sort of stuff that is real gold dust, that is even more and more important to actually bring out and say, oh, by the way, do you know that this is how we have come up with this, or this is why we do it, or this

Jonny Ross

-: 19:36

is the passion behind it, or this is the best practices that we have in place Yeah, mental. Shall we move to our next segment? Or did you have more to say, Pascal?

Pascal Fintoni

-: 19:57

Well, if you don't mind, quickly, you and I have said this all the time. People will come back to you, Johnny, and say, well, actually, it doesn't matter because people must know this, or others have already said it. I say, yeah, but what matters is that you have not said it. And the absence of the evidence that you care, that you're passionate, and so on, is what's going to slow down your progress.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 20:11

And you heard it a moment ago, and this is now official through Ofcom. People just look at the AI overviews, and that's it. They will not click on the link. But the AI overviews are an overview of what's on your website or Google Maps.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 20:12

So get started.

Jonny Ross

-: 20:19

Very good. Let's go to our next segment, the website engine room.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 20:39

Now in this part of the show, Jonny and I like to be able to test and report back to you an app or a software solution that can make life easier as a website manager or content creator. So Jonny, what is your discovery for today?

Jonny Ross

-: 21:16

This is clay.com. Links will always be in the show notes, as always. So if you're looking to research and turn data Ultimately, if you're looking to research, you can turn data into action with flexible, iterable workflows, including integration into Google Tag Manager and all sorts of different CRMs. So ultimately, if you manage a website and care about the results, Clay's seriously worth looking at because you can capture data from forms, you can capture data from Google Tag Manager and turn that into proper real actions that mean something.

Jonny Ross

-: 21:47

So that's gonna help grow growth goals, it's going to take complications. Instead of over-complicating things, it makes things easier to understand. Ultimately, increasing customer journey experience, increasing return on investment, and it just feels like quite a modern tool in this sort of digital age on how websites should be built. So yeah, it's quite fascinating, and I'd really suggest having a play with it.

Jonny Ross

-: 21:49

So that's clay.com.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 22:14

Thank you very much. So I've gone old school, but only because recently I was talking to a client where actually, bearing in mind the conversation we had a moment ago, they have been really quite busy in content creation. They have a really extensive library of blogs, and podcasts, and videos, and resources, and so on. It's so huge that even they've lost track of what's in it, and they seem to sometimes be surprised.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 22:32

So I remembered from the recess of my mind a platform called MeetEdgar. Do you remember MeetEdgar? Because it used to be very, very popular many, many years ago. So this platform is perfect for any marketers, website managers, where you have that extensive library of evergreen content.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 23:10

Because what you can do is actually pre-program bit of a schedule of re-sharing and reminding your lovely audience and yourselves for that matter about the different content on your website because there is a thing about recency and novelty that is a bias towards that particularly when it comes to search engines as well but sometimes you know It's worth, you've written an article that is still relevant, or you still feel strongly that the points you've been making two, three years ago are still very, very valid. So because time is against you, what you can do is put together that schedule in advance. You get, of course, nowadays, a lot of assistance with AI.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 23:32

You can do some A-B testing. But more importantly, you get some analytics as well. But the one thing that I loved is also this integration with Chrome. So you actually, you could visit your own website, which sounds very strange, but you could visit your own website and via Chrome, you could actually set the schedule of resharing and reminding the world, you know, what a great content creator you've been.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 23:39

So meet Edgar, your kind of assistant to help people not miss out on the good stuff in your website.

Jonny Ross

-: 23:51

What a great reminder of a tool that's been around a while, but can make a big difference. I like it. Let's move to our next segment, our final segment, the website call to action.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 24:05

So this is about the one change to one adjustment you should be making right now to feel proud of your website. Johnny, what is your call to action?

Jonny Ross

-: 24:41

So if you've been following my call to actions, I will have mentioned putting pop-ups on your website to try and grab data. The sooner you've got data, the sooner you can start nurturing potential clients, potential customers. This call to action is is sort of in a way slightly against it in terms of making sure that you haven't just sort of put loads of pop-ups up and not made it easy for the user to just close them easily. So the important thing here is don't just plaster your website full of pop-ups that are just constantly coming up and are really difficult.

Jonny Ross

-: 25:07

I think they're really important as part of the strategy, but also as part of the strategy, Make sure they're mobile friendly, make sure they're timed well, make sure they're easy to close. What you don't want to do is frustrate visitors either. So it's about well-timed, it's about bringing them up at the right time, making it really easy to close, and especially thinking about how do they work on mobile as well. So I absolutely advocate for pocket pups.

Jonny Ross

-: 25:17

If you haven't got them, you should have them. But my call to action for this podcast is make them easy to close as well. And don't frustrate your visitors.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 25:33

Super. And listen, this has been my experience, you know, uh, I don't know what's happening with the big brands. It must be so worried that people are going to close the pop-ups that, do you know that they even hide that it will cross on the top right-hand corner. They make the cross the same color as the background of the box.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 25:57

I mean, all those different tactics, you know, it's just like, come on, you know, uh, You just heard a moment ago from Ofcom that people are getting annoyed with you, so just don't do that. So my call to action is actually inspired by something that I'm going to do for my business. I hope that's all right. But because of looking ahead for 2026, I'm getting all the renewals, memberships, and that kind of thing.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 26:28

So my call to action is for everybody to review all the memberships and all the different kind of professional bodies you've joined or that you're a member of for 2026, make a list. And make sure that against that list, you have some key contacts in those organizations. Because I think what you should do is, particularly, of course, if you are renewing your membership, that would make sense. Actually, I would invite them to join you for a Q&A session where they can actually tell you and therefore your audience a bit more about their organization.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 26:42

But they can have a conversation. about the future of your industry, or have a conversation about the impact of AI. You can have just a meaningful conversation that can then be used for content for your blog. And of course, because you've had a guest, they will share this with their network.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 26:57

And it's an extensive network, because they are part of a membership organization, which will add traffic to your website. So review the membership, invite guests on your blog, podcast, and video series, and enjoy the rewards.

Jonny Ross

-: 27:06

And I'm hearing that you're going to be doing this yourself, which is great. I am. I like it. Brilliant call to action.

Jonny Ross

-: 27:13

Thanks, Pascal. So we've thought about training. Should you be having training to learn web design? We've made you think about that.

Jonny Ross

-: 27:25

We've made you think about it in a bigger picture. What should your training plan be actually for the next 12 months? and what are the right things to be trained on. We've highlighted the Ofcom report and where to spend time focusing on your content.

Jonny Ross

-: 27:40

Websites are no longer just brochures. Well, in fact, we've never advocated them as just brochures anyway. But just to distill that myth, they are really not. And what's on your brochure is appearing in AI overviews.

Jonny Ross

-: 27:52

Sorry, what's on your website, not on your brochure. What's on your website is appearing in AI overviews. and only if AI likes it. So you need to really be the expert and focus hard on your content.

Jonny Ross

-: 28:01

Like we've always said, we've shared some great apps and some call to actions as well. It's the wrap for episode 52, Pascal.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 28:24

Thank you very much. And yes, I mean, I think for me, what's been interesting, this one is looking slightly ahead by your own personal professional development, but also looking ahead at, you know, informing our tactics based on data as well as, you know, good observation and intuition. And, you know, when time is against you, make sure that you've got the right toolkit. to kind of, you know, support you in undertaking those.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 28:58

But for me, you know, I've realized now that now we've passed way, you know, what we're on to episode 52. So that means that we've shared, you know, today, let's, let's be very, very clear. over a hundred calls to action so i'm planning i'm plotting behind the scenes but how we gonna convert all this for you we should also over one hundred apps and software solutions that can make life easier we have reacted to over fifty articles podcast infographics and more and we have replied to over fifty questions from the community so Yeah, it feels very special.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 29:12

And thank you for allowing us to continue because we didn't have, obviously, a plan as such. We wanted to continue the webinar series. We wanted to build on the program. We wanted to have a companion to the book.

Pascal Fintoni

-: 29:17

And you've allowed us to do so. So thank you very much, everyone.

Jonny Ross

-: 29:52

I'm under what would be amazing is if you could let us know what you think so please do come come and reach us on social tell us what you think the podcast and if you'd like it. Tell apple get on there and leave a review because that will help others as well and it'll be it'll be a lovely touch point for us that was the. podcast episode 52 of the 90 Day Website Mastery podcast, your audio companion to the 90 Day Website Mastery program. For more information, visit 90daymarketingmastery.com where you can book a discovery call with either myself or Pascal.

Jonny Ross

-: 29:55

It's a wrap for yet another episode.