S5E27
· 56:28
Hey. It's Matt. Welcome to Money Lab. I am taking a break. And I don't mean from the podcast.
Matt Giovanisci:I mean, just from today. Because I've, and I figured I'd record an episode while I was taking a break from work. Because for the last 3 days, all I've done is sit at this computer in the basement where my office and studio is and just cranked on code code and design for 3 days straight. Marathon session for sure. So, what am I talking about?
Matt Giovanisci:Well, I just wanted to sort of recap all of the work that I've done and kind of why I chose to do it. Actually, it's funny because yesterday, I had worked, you know, I think from, like, 10 AM till maybe 9 o'clock at night. And I thought, yeah, these are, like, full days. So almost not almost 12 hours, I guess, of work. But, and I usually get into this mode.
Matt Giovanisci:Whenever whenever I'm, like, designing a website and in the code. So I'm, like, doing a a combination of things. Like, I'm writing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, whatever, PHP, whatever I need because I'm on WordPress. And I am also designing elements in Adobe XD and exporting them for bits and pieces that I need for the website, background images, images for custom pages, etcetera. So I had done an episode where I was where I'd mentioned that I was gonna do an about page and all of the elements that go into an about page, and that's currently what I'm working on.
Matt Giovanisci:And I spent some of the day yesterday and most of today dealing with it. And so far, it's coming together. It's intense. It's a lot of when you look at it, it's like, okay. That doesn't look like a lot of work.
Matt Giovanisci:But because I hand code everything, it's just a lot of work. There's just no way around it. And I kinda like it. I just put on music and I just go. And it's fun because it's one of those tasks that I can just I can just keep going.
Matt Giovanisci:I don't, you know, I don't know why. So I know that if there were ever a if I ever lost this job for whatever reason, that's like you always do that. I feel like I'm pretty good at it too. I've been doing it for a very long time. So, anyway, somebody on Twitter actually wrote something, which was very nice.
Matt Giovanisci:And it you know, not that I wanted to highlight it, but he wrote, really like the SEO strategy design, etcetera, of swimuniversity.com by Matt Givannissi. Excellent simple layout. Nice use of quote unquote cheat sheets to draw in email subs, integrates YouTube videos in his post that are actually enjoyable. Content is excellent, not mindless AI drivel loaded with ads. Thank you.
Matt Giovanisci:That was, hidden small caps at hidden small caps, Mike. So I appreciate that because I was he had took he took screenshots and posted it with my updated design that I've been working on for the last 3 days. And it's just funny that he picked my design, or he just picked like, he just looked at it. I don't know. For whatever reason, however, he found it.
Matt Giovanisci:And so I, yeah, I kinda wanted to go over those pieces and why I think it makes sense and the changes that I've made. So some of the changes we're if we're on the you know, and I'm still making them, and I actually have a huge list of things. So one of the things that we worked on, Steph and I worked on this, the first thing you'll see, the biggest difference is that I changed the main text when you go on the home page. It used to say, easy pool and hot tub care all in one place. That was our, like, tagline.
Matt Giovanisci:And I just kind of randomly came up with that. And I threw it on there and added it across all of our social media profiles. The more I thought about that, the more I was like, it's not great because we're an education company, and we are not helping anybody take care of their pool. It looks like a pool care service or a hot tub care service. And all in one place is more of, like, a software thing than a than a, you know or, you know, it could be like a one stop shop, so it could be even a service company.
Matt Giovanisci:So Steph and I sat down, and we thought, like, what is what is the main thing we want people who come to our website? What what are we trying to do? We're trying to teach them to take care of their pool. Right? We're not we are not taking care of their pool for them, and we don't have software that takes care of a pool or anything like that.
Matt Giovanisci:We don't have a service. We have education. But, ultimately, the way Steph put it, she was like, we're we're solving problems. We are we're solving pool problems. And I was like, okay.
Matt Giovanisci:Yeah. I could get behind that. So we wrote, finally, your pool and hot tub problem solved. Not nothing revolutionary, but it's definitely better than easy pool and spa care in one place. It's a little shorter, and, yes, that's what we do.
Matt Giovanisci:You know? It's we we are the go to source to find answers on things. The other thing that I did was I changed I added. This is a design thing, but it gave the website more personality. So I added some texture to the website.
Matt Giovanisci:And what I mean by that is I used to just have solid blue backgrounds, which, you know, is fine. And it's because I didn't like having backgrounds with images in them because it's just one more thing that the website has to load, which decreases page speed. And I couldn't really figure out, like, what I wanted in the background. And so as I was designing the cover for I've been designing some covers and some, like, featured images lately, and I've been really using this, like, bubble background. And it was something that I designed in XD, Adobe XD, which is where I do most of my designs, unless I have to do something crazy, then I'll use Photoshop or Illustrator.
Matt Giovanisci:But XD is for, like, quick stuff. And all I did was draw a bunch of circles, and some of those circles are an outline and some of them are solid. And I just randomized it, just kept, like, putting them where I thought they would go, different sizes, and I created this, like, bubble textures, bubble pattern, I'll say. Right? And so I started adding that behind like, as a texture to just sort of make the plainness of the blue sort of disappear.
Matt Giovanisci:And then I thought and then I was I also created this, like, wave pattern. And the wave pattern just looked, like, really eighties to me. And then I thought, okay. Well, I like the wave thing. And and, again, I'm saying all this as if you know what I'm talking about, but if you go on the website, you'll see it.
Matt Giovanisci:There's, like, visual like, I used to have just, like, straight lines. So it it would be like a blue block with white text in it, and it'd be a straight line. But now that blue block has a wavy bottom or a wavy top, depending on where it is on the on the page. And the background is this, like, light gradient bubble pattern. So I kinda gave the whole website this watery feel, which makes tons of sense for what Swim University is, but I think it just added to the personality of the website, which not that not that it lacked personality, but I think it really helps make the website more fun, and it makes it look more professional, honestly.
Matt Giovanisci:Now that wasn't like that was super hard to do, by the way. It's like so much work for such little payoff. It's not gonna help my website. It's really I don't you know, it's really just for me to be like, okay. I'm putting effort into this website blah blah blah.
Matt Giovanisci:But a lot of the work that I've been doing has been SEO focused. And I just been I just rambled for 9 minutes about design choices, but let me talk a little bit about the SEO choices because that might be a little more applicable. So I don't know why I chose to do it this way, but I used to have it where so okay. Rewind. Way, way back in the day, I had I had 2 main categories on my website, pool care and hot tub care, plain and simple.
Matt Giovanisci:When you click those pages, they were categories. And on those pages, it there were subcategories. There was about 5 subcategories. It'd be water chemistry troubleshooting, equipment, opening and closing, and maintenance. And then underneath each one of those subheadings, which was a subcategory, there was a bulleted list of blue links that were all of our articles.
Matt Giovanisci:That's all it was, and I had that for the longest time. And my thought process was, everyone knows how to use control f, right, and find what they need. Like, what's the point of having you know, I had a search bar, but I thought, oh, this is way better for SEO because it's just, like, every freaking link is one click away. Right? So you can get to every single post on our website, one click away.
Matt Giovanisci:Or I should say, yeah, on that page. So if you're on the home page, you click to that page, and then you're at a post. So literally 2 clicks. Okay. Then I had this crazy idea where I didn't like, I thought the wall of text on those pages just didn't look good, and I wasn't able to highlight the most popular stuff, right, and move it to the top.
Matt Giovanisci:So what I did was I kept the same subheading breakdown on those category pages, But then I added more context. I added a featured image, the title of the blog post, and then the, technically, SEO title or, sorry, SEO description of that blog post. And instead of doing it in bulleted list, like, straight down, I now have 3 per row. So I don't think that that saved any room. In fact, it probably took up more room real estate wise, but it looks way nicer, and it and it blends the site together better.
Matt Giovanisci:However, what I decided to do is not put every single post on that page. So now my website took 3 clicks to get to any blog post. But that, I I was it was worse than that. So this is where I really fucked up. So I have my parent I I have 2 main parent categories in WordPress, pool care, hot tub care.
Matt Giovanisci:Then underneath each one of those, I have about 5 subcategories. Those are my categories. I technically have a third, I guess, a sub subcategory, and I use tags for that. So, for example, I have pool so I have an article about robotic pool cleaners as an example. Like, what are the best robotic pool cleaners?
Matt Giovanisci:Right? So that's an article. Then I so I have that under pool care, parent category. Right? Subcategory, pool equipment.
Matt Giovanisci:Sub subcategory, automatic pool cleaners. Right? Now Now the reason I chose to do tags was that tags allow me to programmatically have related posts appear at the bottom of each post. So I could basically refine okay. I have, you know, let's say, 6 posts that are all roughly about automatic pool cleaners.
Matt Giovanisci:Right? They're technically all under the same category of equipment, but there's a it's just more nuanced. It's more specific. And so what that does is whenever that post comes up and if you go down to to the bottom of the post, there's related posts, and it pulls whatever tag is related. It pulls the other post from that tag.
Matt Giovanisci:Now I thought, well, for an SEO this for SEO, this is actually pretty good, because I don't have a page, right, that's just automatic pool cleaners. So I can programmatically create a page called automatic pool cleaners that shows all of the different, you know, articles underneath that tag. Even better, I used to not have pages for subcategories. So, yes, I had a page for hot tub care and pool care, but I didn't have a page for pool equipment or pool troubleshooting or pool maintenance or any of those things. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:I just had articles. So what I did, I think this was, like, 2 years ago, I decided to create category pages or I should say subcategory pages and tag pages, and then link them all together. So this worked, but it made my website very deep and less shallow. Meaning, in order to get to a post, it would take, like, 4 clicks to get to it. If if the post was old or wasn't highlighted.
Matt Giovanisci:So, you know, let's say you click into pool care, and then you'd only see, you know, 6 posts per subcategory. So you have to click see more posts. So So let's say you're in you're in hot tub care and you go to hot tub troubleshoot you see hot tub troubleshooting is your first category, but out of the 6 posts there, which are the most popular, that's not listed. So you click see more. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:And that took you to a page. Now here's where it really fucked up. The the the that was the subcategory page. So the subcategory page being now hot tub troubleshooting. Great page to have, but on that page, I broke it down by tag, and I only showed 3 posts per tag.
Matt Giovanisci:And then I had a see more link that would take you to the tag page. And I went and so in my head, it made sense. But when I went back and looked at it, I was like, this sucks. This experience sucks for the user. I don't have that many posts.
Matt Giovanisci:You know, If my website was absolutely massive, like, we had thousands and thousands of posts, then I may have to do something like this because, otherwise, pages, like, subcategory pages would be out of control. Right? I would have to have a see more link, but that's not where we're at right now. So what I did was, I went in and I basically removed the tag pages, not completely. There's still a way to get to them, but it's not through the subcategory pages.
Matt Giovanisci:So now when you click hot tub troubleshooting, what you see is every single post for that category. So now I went from 4 clicks down to 3 clicks away to every single post. And, technically, it's 2 clicks because all of those links, all of those subheadings are all linked in the footer. So from an from a technical SEO per perspective, you can get to any post in 2 clicks from the from any page. So that makes the website more shallow.
Matt Giovanisci:I still kept the tag pages, but what I did was I linked them only on the post itself. So let's say you're reading about robotic pool cleaners. You at the very top, you see my name, and then you see, what is it, pool equipment as the subcategory and then automatic pool cleaners as the tag. So those are both links. So you can click those and get to those respective pages.
Matt Giovanisci:So that works way better. And I think from an SEO perspective, for the last 2 years, I had fucked up, and I'd I'd overcomplicated it. So I went back and kept everything, but just cleaned it up. So I'm I'm happy that I did that. That was, I think, important.
Matt Giovanisci:And my website looks nicer. I had to go through all of my course pages. So I one of the things that I did was, 2 in 2021, I switched from using Podia sales pages for my courses over to Leadpages. And I started use using Leadpages for any page on my website that didn't need to be SEOed. So if I just needed to spin up a quick landing page for an ad campaign or something or, you know, I had a new product that I just wanted to test out, I could just spin up a page really fast.
Matt Giovanisci:That's what I use Leadpages for. So Leadpages was hosted on a sub domain, which was pages.zoomuniversity.com. And that was fine for a while, and it's still nothing wrong with it. But I really lost the ability. I I kinda like fragmented things.
Matt Giovanisci:So, yes, I could spin up I mean, technically, I could spin up a web page very quickly using Leadpages, but it still took me a ton of time to design that page because I'm a designer. So it wasn't, you know, it just I wasn't doing it by code. I was dragging and dropping. But still, like, takes forever to make that. You gotta write all the content and it's I'm actually way faster at building a page in HTML because I have all my assets.
Matt Giovanisci:I've been doing it for so long. I could just blap blap blap, you know, boom. It's like I can just repeat things over and over again. So and what's nice about doing it that way is I have the I can choose whether or not I want that page to be SEO ed because it's in WordPress. It's a little harder to manage.
Matt Giovanisci:Not everyone like, I'm the only person who can do it, but I think the reason I switched to Leadpages was because I wasn't as actively involved in the company. So if I just needed to jump in and do something, I could do it. Right? It's the same reason I use Canva. It's like I started using Canva, and I'm like, yeah.
Matt Giovanisci:My my ultimate goal was to build assets in Canva, and then I could hand that account over to another person who wasn't a designer and they could just do Canvas stuff, which was easy. But, again, I'm a designer, so I hate the lack I hate the limitation of software like Leadpages and Canva because I can't do everything I want to do or exactly the way I wanna do it, or it's just, like, not intuitive and whatever the case. So I basically stopped using Canva and brought everything back to XD, which is what I use. And I'm just noticing, like, everything just looks better because it doesn't feel like you know, you can sometimes well, I know, you know, Canva has a lot of templates that people like to use, and you can it's like it's kinda how I feel about AI. I can always tell if it's an AI image.
Matt Giovanisci:Like, it you'd have to really fool me. Like, possibly, you could do it with a photo realistic thing, but when it comes to animation, like, I can always tell. And the same thing with Canva. Like, pretty much always tell if it was made with Canva or not, because Canva has, like, all the same stuff. And now I'm not knocking it.
Matt Giovanisci:I think it's I think it's good. I think both I think everything's good. I think Leadpages is good. I think Canva's good. For me personally, though, I I lose the personality because I start to look cookie cutter.
Matt Giovanisci:So that's on anyway, that's a a a ramble. So going back to SEO stuff. So, yeah, that's that was something that I did that I thought made it better, and I added more posts. So on the category pages now, there are just more posts to choose from, which is just better for SEO. There's just more stuff to scan on the page.
Matt Giovanisci:It makes the pages longer, but, ultimately, like, you know, at this point, I was really trying to make it user friendly for the for the audience, but Google is like, no. You know what? We need content on the page because we're still a robot at the end of the day. And it's like, okay. Well, let's let's let's do that.
Matt Giovanisci:So, yeah, I that's what I did. So, anyway, on the post itself, what else did I do here? Okay. So one thing, I thought was a good idea. So at the in the recommended guides at the very, very bottom, which is controlled by tags, I used to only have 3 options.
Matt Giovanisci:So it would only it would only pull the latest three, related articles. I added 6. I could probably add 9 because, again, the more content on the page, the better, I think, at least in terms of SEO. So I I think 6 is good, because, again, I have to worry a little bit about mobile as well. Like, I don't want you scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.
Matt Giovanisci:Although, fucking that's what TikTok is. Right? Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, constantly scrolling. So, like, people are used to it. It's fine.
Matt Giovanisci:And then again, I gotta be more concerned about SEO. One of the cool programmatic things that I did so and this is an SEO play, and it's also a backlink play, honestly, is I started doing a podcast. Actually, I started 2 pie. I started 2 shows. 1 show is about pools called Pool School.
Matt Giovanisci:You know, Pool School by Western University. The other one's and the other one's called Hot Tubs 101. Again, going for school themes here. And the reason I decided to separate the shows was I thought that would be better for SEO in Spotify and Apple iTunes or whatever. You're you're probably typing in the word pool, and I didn't want it to be, like, just Swim University.
Matt Giovanisci:So I have 2 podcast, which is fine. It's basically the same show, just one is all pool content and the other is all hot tub content. Right? And that's, again, an SEO play. And it makes me look like I have 2 podcasts.
Matt Giovanisci:Even though I'm technically doing 1 podcast, I just have a different format for each one. And same format. I just say different things. So my my thought process there, and I've talked about this before, is every single time I publish a new blog post, I record it. I read it out loud.
Matt Giovanisci:And I read it out loud in a show format, similar to what I'm doing right now, except I'm reading something on screen. And it the episodes usually turn out about 15 minutes, kind of in that range. And I'm kind of reading it, and I'm kind of riffing. So I'm, like, I'm kinda using the article as a guide. And sometimes I'll read a full sentence, and then I'll embellish on that sentence or I'll read a full paragraph and embellish on that paragraph.
Matt Giovanisci:And I title it this I title the episode the same as the pie as the, you know, article, and I just have, bumpers. So I have an intro with a CTA, and then I have an outro also with a CTA. And, again, episode 15 minutes. I got my music in there, which is the same music we use on our YouTube videos. And I when I published it, I published them on transistor dot f m, which is the podcast hosting company I use.
Matt Giovanisci:If you wanna support me, I guess, in this show and you wanna start a podcast and you like this idea that I'm doing, I don't have any I don't have anything to report to you so far because I've only been doing it for a month, but I'd like the idea. If you wanna do it, go to moneylab.co/transistor, and that's my affiliate link. And you can sign up there. So and so what's nice about Transistor, it can have unlimited shows, so it doesn't actually matter. And what's nice is Transistor actually is a pretty decent player, like an embeddable player.
Matt Giovanisci:And what I've been doing is every time I publish a new a new podcast episode, I will embed I will take the embed code and I would go into the post and I would add it at the bottom of the post in my brand colors. And then I thought, well, there's gotta be a way to do that programmatically where I don't have to go in to each post and actually add the embed code. I can just, I don't know, add some sort of ID somewhere. So that's what I did. I use a plug in.
Matt Giovanisci:I think it's free. I'm pretty sure it's free. I'm almost a 100% positive it's free. It's called advanced custom fields. And if you're not using this plug in, I highly recommend it.
Matt Giovanisci:It's it's really good. I use it in conjunction with advanced custom fields. No. Advanced no. Add they're almost the same acronym.
Matt Giovanisci:Admin columns pro is another one. That one I pay for. And the reason is because it allows me to customize in the WordPress back end how posts are displayed, and I can do quick updates to things without going into each blog post. And it works with advanced custom fields. So, for example, I have an advanced custom field cluster that has all of these variables.
Matt Giovanisci:One variable is video. Right? And so what I do is I associate videos, like you like, actual YouTube videos that we publish, the URL. I just add that to the post. Now it doesn't publish it.
Matt Giovanisci:It just set it just shows me in my WordPress post view, does this post have a video or not associated with it? And if it doesn't, well, that gives us fodder to go make a video about that and then I add it to that WordPress post. And that allows us to basically go, hey. I wrote a script. There's no video with this.
Matt Giovanisci:Steph, can you make a video for this? And then once she does, I take it and add it to the WordPress post, and now that video is associated with that. But that's nothing. I also use Clearscope for SEO, and Clearscope gives you letter grades depending on how well you do. And the the dip the problem is is that there's no way to display that in the post view, so I can't sort by, like, okay.
Matt Giovanisci:How many posts do I have that don't have an a plus plus rating? Like, I wanna know that so I can go in and update those posts and, like, fix them and optimize them. So I use an advanced custom field with a drop down of just the letter grades, and then I just once I get my letter grade from Clearscope, which is built into the which has a plug in that's built in, then I go, okay. I selected a plus plus, and now it shows me on the post page via admin comms pro that that post is an a plus plus. One of the other things I did was I added a podcast column.
Matt Giovanisci:So now I can go into transistor and just pull the ID of that episode and plug that ID into the post. So in in my code, I create because of advanced custom fields allows you to use PHP to grab those codes and do stuff with them on your theme. So I took that ID and automatically just created the embed at the bottom of the post. So now I don't have to manually go into every post with the full embed code and paste it. All I have to do is take the podcast ID from Transistor and plug it into the post.
Matt Giovanisci:I don't even have to go into the post itself. I can just do it from the post screen through Admincoms Pro, plug in that number, and automatically, it will embed the full podcast player at the bottom of every post. I could also do some very interesting things with that that I'm thinking about, which is so if you're reading the article and you happen to be somebody who would have rather listen, well, you don't know that that podcast episode's down at the bottom of the post until you get to the bottom of the post. So one of the things I might do is if there's an ID associated with the post, a podcast ID, then I can show an icon somewhere at the top or maybe something that's floating on the page that's that's just like a button that says, like, listen to this, what do you call it, listen to this article. And it would be cool if it was, like, an absolute floater button on the page so it works on mobile and desktop.
Matt Giovanisci:And then when you click the button, it just auto scrolls you down to the podcast player where you can see it. I don't know what that will do if that like, I don't know how that would affect what do you call it? You know, could affect affiliate link clicks. It could affect lead generation, although lead generation is in the podcast episode itself. Like, there's a call to action there, so maybe not.
Matt Giovanisci:And I'm not taking you away from the page. I'm just scrolling you down to the bottom. This would absolutely be something that I would I would put in place. Right? And then in Crazy Egg, which is what I use for, conversion rate optimization, I would just pick a post that gets some decent traffic and has a podcast associated with it, so that button appears.
Matt Giovanisci:And then I would snapshot it So I could see how many people are actually clicking that button and then how long they're staying on the page. And if, you know, that page I could also monitor the I could also monitor if people are if it's, like, killing the business or something. I doubt it would. Like, maybe it increases podcast subscriptions. I don't know.
Matt Giovanisci:But, again, like, ultimately, with our website, I'm just trying to capture leads. So who knows? Okay. There's more. If you're listening if you're you're still listening, email me, mad@moneylab.co.
Matt Giovanisci:Because I know this is, like, super technical and I'm doing this via audio and it's like, does this even translate? Blah blah blah. Anyway, so, yeah, the podcast player is pretty cool. I like it. I like it a lot.
Matt Giovanisci:Now I'm I'm what's the other thing that I did? Oh, so yeah. So still on the podcasting, I am I'm working on and I probably won't be able to do it till next week. I'm working on creating podcast pages. So these will be custom pages within WordPress where I there you know, it's like a it's a sales page, essentially, dedicated to each podcast show.
Matt Giovanisci:So it'll have, like, the actual podcast art with a tagline or a headline, and then where you can subscribe, like, links to subscribe and then the latest episodes and then ways that you can contact the show and, lead generation, things like that. So I'm gonna make those 2 pages, and then those pages will only be linked in the footer underneath each subcategory. So I have pool care and hot tub care. And so what I'll do is I'll add, you know, pool school 1 on 1 podcast and hot tubs 1 on 1 podcast in each one of those columns. And, again, that makes no sense unless you know what I'm talking about, visually.
Matt Giovanisci:One thing that I'm trying to do that has been a struggle, but I I'm hoping this gets solved, and it's kinda out of my out of my court. So I use Klaviyo for email marketing now. Holy crap. It is so much better than the experience is so much better than every single email software platform I've ever used. And I and and so many different ways.
Matt Giovanisci:But one thing that it does really well, it does, I think, better than anything I've ever seen, is they have sign up forms. And their sign up forms are super elegant. And they load fast, and they just look good. And they have to do this because they're they work primarily with Shopify, and no one's taking their code and embedding it manually. Like, they're just not gonna do that.
Matt Giovanisci:And it they make it really hard to do that, in in fact. They make you use their sign up forms, which is good because it actually simplified my process a bit. So I created, I created all these forms. They're all the same, but they they, have different for each cheat sheet. So there's 3 forms.
Matt Giovanisci:And they allow you to do a trigger. So you can you can do a custom JavaScript trigger. So if you have a class on a button, it will trigger whichever, you know, pop up you have. And it happens to be really fast. It doesn't slow down the website at all, which is great because I I used to use ConvertKit, and I'm sure it's changed by now, but it's massively slowed down my website.
Matt Giovanisci:So, it's nice to have a pop up that looks really good and is super fast. The other thing is that you can do a lot of cool things with the pop up itself. Like, when someone enters their email address, you can submit hidden stuff with it, which is, you can do with a lot of stuff. Now this makes a lot of sense because if you sign up for the pool cheat sheet, I know you're a pool owner. So I tag you as that.
Matt Giovanisci:Right? Or I add a custom field. Pool owner equals true. Great. And that sends you through the pool owner, you know, flows and puts you on the correct segments and all that stuff through Klaviyo.
Matt Giovanisci:If you sign up for the hot tub cheat sheet, which again only appears on hot tub posts, then you are designated a hot tub owner. True. So you can be both. You can you could sign up for both the cheat both cheat sheets and you go through both flows and, you know, that's your choice, which is great. It's not binary.
Matt Giovanisci:It's both. Now there's a problem, The home page. The home page just happens to be one of the only pages on the website where I don't know what you are. Right? You could be on the home page.
Matt Giovanisci:You could own a pool or you could own a hot tub. You could own both. Now I could make the argument that the about page is similar. Right? But the podcast pages won't be.
Matt Giovanisci:I'll know what you are. Right? Because you're either on a hot tub page or you're on a podcast or a pool page. Right? So the home page, where we get a lot of traffic, I would like to start collecting leads there.
Matt Giovanisci:But I've always had trouble figuring out the most elegant way to do that. So, obviously, there's work around to this, but hear me out for a second. So the home page. The person who lands on it, I don't know who you are. So right now, I have 2 buttons, which sucks.
Matt Giovanisci:The 2 buttons that are on the main page are pool care and hot tub care. All those buttons do is take you to those category pages, which are the same links that are in the top, which are, like, not even, like, 50 pixels above it. So it's redundant, and I hate that. Ideally, I would want one button on the home page. I don't want a choice of 2 that are ultimately the same color too.
Matt Giovanisci:So it's like, it's not I don't want 2 buttons of the same color right next to each other on a page. I want one button. So, ultimately, I want that one button to be subscribe or something along those lines. I wanna collect the leads on the home page. We get a lot of traffic there.
Matt Giovanisci:K? Now I thought that I figured it out, but I didn't. And here's here's the way it has to work. So I put a button on the home page that said, like, join the newsletter. Simple as that.
Matt Giovanisci:And I have to be very specific because join now, the fuck does that mean? Right? It's like or, you know, sign up is not ideal because that's you know, or subscribe is not ideal because subscriptions now are paid, so I don't wanna deter people. So it say, like, join our free newsletter or something along those lines. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:So I designed this Klaviyo form for specifically designed for the home page. So when you click the button, you get a pop up. And it says, join over a 100000 pool and hot tub owners, you know, get free pool and hot tub kits kit, tips sent right to your inbox. Pretty simple. It asks for your name, your first name, and your email address.
Matt Giovanisci:And then you hit join now or submit or whatever it is. Right? Okay. What's cool about Klaviyo sign up forms is you can have multiple steps. So I was like, oh, shit.
Matt Giovanisci:I kinda didn't know that. So I go, okay. Let me just get let me let me appeal to both people. Right? So give me your name and email address.
Matt Giovanisci:Great. The next page, right, it asks you a question. It says, do you own a pool or a hot tub? Essentially. And there are 2 buttons.
Matt Giovanisci:Now I think what it says is, like, what would you like free advice on? And then there's 2 buttons. There's pool care and hot tub care. Now Klaviyo gives you many ways to do this. They they give you radio buttons.
Matt Giovanisci:They give you multiple, choice checkboxes. They give you drop downs. But to me, radio buttons suck. Design wise, they're terrible. Checkboxes are better but harder to click on mobile.
Matt Giovanisci:But, again, with a checkbox, you can do 1 of 1 of 2. So you can check both things. Now the reason I don't want you to check both things, like, say, pool and hot tub care, is because the the third step is I wanna take you to an OTO page. An OTO page pitching our our flagship course at a discount. Now, well, I have 2 completely different courses.
Matt Giovanisci:I can't just pick 1. Right? Either it's either a pool course or a hot tub course. So the solution, I was like, oh, I can just have 2 big ass buttons. Right?
Matt Giovanisci:Just like I have on the home page, but now it's in the form. So it so it asks you for your name and email address. And by the way, if you cancel out, I have your name and email address, but I don't know what to send you. Like, you're not on any list, so whatever. But the next page, pool care or hot tub care.
Matt Giovanisci:When you click one of those buttons, each button should do 2 things. It should, 1, record what you picked, whether you're a pool owner or a hot tub owner. So I should store those values in Klaviyo. And then the button should send you to a custom URL, which would be the OTO page. So it technically works, and it makes a ton of sense why it works.
Matt Giovanisci:But there's a bug in Klaviyo where it doesn't record if there's 2 buttons on a form, it only picks 1. So and and it or it cancels it out if there's 2. So it doesn't actually record if they're a pool or hot tub owner, but it sends them to the right page. So I'm like, well, that doesn't help because I need to record if they're a pool or hot tub owner. Now, technically, I could probably solve the problem by building out some sort of segment that says that this person visited the hot tub course page.
Matt Giovanisci:Like, I know that because it because Klaviyo tracks all that shit through the reform. And I could perhaps just create a flow that assigns them to that thing. I don't know. But there this shouldn't be an issue, and they're figuring that out. And so once they do, then I'm gonna be collecting a lot more leads because I'll be able to put that on my home page.
Matt Giovanisci:And I've thought of other solutions like, okay. Yeah. The button could still say newsletter, but when you click it, you get taken to a newsletter page, which I also wanna create. I wanna create a newsletter page, right, that sells each newsletter. So if you're somebody who, you know, wants to join the pool newsletter, there's sort of like a a sales pitch for that newsletter.
Matt Giovanisci:And by and same for the hot tub newsletter. And link to those pages, again, just for more pages of SEO juice. Right? Just to have those pages there. And perhaps people will click them because people clearly go to the footer and click that stuff.
Matt Giovanisci:I also wanna include the join newsletter button in the header so it's on every single frigging page. And when it's on every single page, I don't actually have to know if you're a pool or hot tub owner. So I have this, like, ubiquitous button that collects leads, you know, but if the button and what's great about it is that it's a pop up. So it's not like, oh, I'm reading the about page and then I clicked the join now button at the top, and I'm taking this whole other page. And I kinda feel like that's jarring.
Matt Giovanisci:It's better if it's a pop up because then you could just be like, I'm done. I don't want I don't wanna do this right now. But now you know where it is. So now you can continue reading the page and go about your business. So it's still something I'm working out, but I'm excited for them to fix it because I think, 1, if they're able to fix it, then that opens up a whole new world for their company.
Matt Giovanisci:Because now they can start collecting like, companies can start collecting data about their customer and send them to different pages based on the button they click after they fill out the form. It just makes sense that that should work. And I and I'm surprised that I'm the only one who's found it, who's found this bug. I'm sure like, how has no one tried this before? I'm sure someone has, like, but why am I the one bringing it up?
Matt Giovanisci:Or why hasn't it been solved yet? So, anyway, so I'm excited about that because I think that that will, again, increase leads. So, yeah, as far as SEO and, you know, I've obviously, I always keep track of page speed and and making sure that that's fast. And every time I do design stuff, I'm always looking at it on my phone and making sure it works on mobile. Now I happen to be on a huge phone, so I'm not the best candidate for this.
Matt Giovanisci:Like, I should probably just own a phone that's tiny just to test stuff on the website, but I don't. So that's the case there. Trying to think if there's anything else. I mean, I have stuff that's coming up that I'm gonna work on. So oh, yeah.
Matt Giovanisci:This is another one. Alright. Yeah. Nothing crazy there. There's one thing that I found out that sucks.
Matt Giovanisci:I'm disappointed, but at the same time, I'm relieved. So I actually started recording a podcast the other day where I was gonna switch from I was telling I was telling myself I'm switching from using Podiaf to host my courses over to Thinkific. And the reason I wanted to move over to Thinkific is because Thinkific has a plugin or a Shopify app. So I I can sell my courses through Shopify, and they will automatically be enrolled over at Thinkific. But there's an issue.
Matt Giovanisci:So and I had to test it. So I basically so the issue is well, okay. So it works if someone's enrolls in a single course, and then they're automatically put in the Thinkific. Great. Currently, the system that I'm using is when someone buys the course on Shopify, it requires a zap from Zapier to ping Podia and put them into Podia, you know, enroll them into the course.
Matt Giovanisci:And that honestly has worked pretty well, but I didn't wanna pay for Zapier. It's like this middle man. It's like, I wish I wish I didn't have to pay for this middle man. Okay. So Thinkific's the only course company that has this capability through a Shopify app, and it's free.
Matt Giovanisci:Okay. Great. So maybe Thinkific's the move. Well so I'm like, well, before I start switching everything, I gotta test to make sure that this will work. And one of the big things is I use an app on Shopify called I think it's called Aftersell, and the idea is that I I have upsells through Shopify.
Matt Giovanisci:So when you buy a course, I can pitch you another course, And then you enroll in that course and it's a one click upsell. Great. Well, I'm like, will that work with the Shopify or the the Thinkific Shopify link? Will that work? That that upsell thing?
Matt Giovanisci:Because it works with Zapier, but not every time. It works enough, but every once in a while I have to go, like, oh, shit. The other course didn't trigger. So they never got an email or it never showed up in their profile. So we have to do that manually.
Matt Giovanisci:It doesn't happen that often where it's like, it's fine, but I'm like, okay. Maybe Thinkific solved this. The other thing was we have bundles. So we have bundles on Podia of all of our courses combined. And that's a lot easier because it creates a new product, a new, you know, SKU within Podia.
Matt Giovanisci:And so we create a new SKU within Shopify. So when you buy the bundle, you are essentially buying a a singular product. And then when you go to log in to Podia, all 3 of your or 4 of your courses are all there. Right? Well, Thinkific, the way that their app connects to Shopify is it's automatic.
Matt Giovanisci:So you can't manually link courses to a product, which is the problem because, yes, you can create bundles in Thinkific, but those are not automatically created in Shopify. So right then and there, I have to use Zapier just for bundles on Thinkific. So I'm like, well, again, that should have been like, well, fuck this then. But then secondly, the upsell thing didn't work. So I'm like, okay.
Matt Giovanisci:So even this Thinkific move, I would still need Zapier, which is kind of the reason I wanna move. So it doesn't make sense. And thank god it doesn't make sense because moving course platforms would be a fucking nightmare because every single one of my existing customers is gonna need a new login, a new password, at least. And now all that's gonna do is trigger an email to all these people who are like, yeah. This oh, I didn't know this.
Matt Giovanisci:Blah blah blah. I gotta do this fucking work and all you know? And it could lead to to to refunds and just a nightmare headache technically on my side. It was hard to do when I moved the podium, but I didn't have nearly as many customers. I've had customers been building since 2019.
Matt Giovanisci:So we're talking, like, yeah, 5 years of customers, of customer data just piling and piling on. So I'm only so I'm basically sticking with Podia. As much as I don't like some of the design stuff, I think that I might be able to manipulate it with some custom CSS. I'm gonna look into it and see if I can do it. So that should be interesting.
Matt Giovanisci:But otherwise, it works. And it works with Zapier and fine. You know what I mean? It's like not ideal, but could be worse. So it's so that little test alone saved me probably a month's worth of agony, and I'm glad I did it.
Matt Giovanisci:I'm glad I tested it first before I went full bore into it. And, you know, I would have been like, oh my god. I have to use Zapier this whole time. Like, what a fucking mess I've put myself in. So, yeah, that's kind of the end of that.
Matt Giovanisci:Now that my hour long break is over, Bra break. I took a break recording a podcast. I'm still technically working. But, anyway, I'm gonna go back to work. I'm gonna finish up the SEO stuff on this website.
Matt Giovanisci:And it's Friday as I'm recording this. You're probably listening to it on a different day, but it doesn't matter. I'm getting brew some beer this weekend. I got some beers I wanna drink in the garage tonight, the brewery, and I might do some more talking. I might might record another podcast to get some steps in today.
Matt Giovanisci:So, yeah, that's it. If you've gotten this far, if you're this far into the episode, please email me, man@moneylab.co, if you have any questions about my SEO strategy on the website or technical stuff. I I don't really can't answer technical stuff. I'm not a technical person. I can only do with what I have, but I can at least maybe offer some sort of here's what I would do scenario.
Matt Giovanisci:I don't know. But, yeah, mad@moneylab.co. Alright. Bye.
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