EP 92: Your Website is Costing You Leads – Here’s How to Fix It
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Hey everybody, welcome back to the Acquire podcast. I'm Jenny Wright and I'm a list building lead generation specialist. And on this podcast, we talk about list building, lead generation, obviously, launches,

websites, everything in between, scaling and even exiting your business and selling it and putting a lot of money in your bank account. So we have a really interesting conversation today. I'm actually sitting down with somebody who knows firsthand how to make your website work for you and not just sit there and look pretty. Andrea Kronis is the co-owner and creative director of Inkling Design, where she helps heart-centered business create branding and websites and marketing materials.

that actually convert, this makes me very happy. And a very fun fact, Andrea and I actually go way, way back. We grew up in the same area. We actually went to the same high school, although a few years apart, which I think was super cool. And we reconnected at an in-person event here in Toronto a couple of years ago. And I literally was losing it. I'm like, you went to this school? Oh my God. And we were like, it was a fun time. So I am really excited to talk about this. So Andrea, thank you so much for being here.

Yeah, I'm really happy to be here today. Yeah, it's going to be fun.

I really wanted to sort of get into your brain about why a well thought out user experience, or we'll call it a UX, and sort of like a customer journey on your website is really the key to converting leads and growing your list. So I kind of wanted to dive into your philosophy, your thoughts. So in your head, when you think about this journey, what's the biggest website mistakes that people are making over and over and over again?

I'd say the biggest one is people that are not clear on what their goal is. So you have a website, what do you want people to do when they get there? Because every single thing on your website needs to lead people towards that goal. So if you're selling a product or you're trying to build your list or you have an event coming up, that needs to be front and center. And as people are flowing through the page,

As soon as they say, okay, this is what I want. I'm in the right place. You need to make sure it's easy for them to take that next step. So sometimes people have too many call to actions. It'll be like, join my list, come to my event, buy my thing. And then people just don't know what to do. They freeze. So to have that one clear goal and make sure that that goal can change. But at any given time, there should be one clear goal that you're driving people towards. Yeah, I love that. I think sometimes people overload their websites with CTAs all over the place. Yeah.

Yeah, and people, they just don't know what to do. They freeze if they see too many things, too many options. They just want to know, okay, I want, what's the option? Do I want it? Do I not want it? They don't want to think about, oh, what about this one? What about this one? Absolutely. In your opinion, does good design, like what does good design actually mean? Is it constantly changing or is it a fundamental? And how does it impact conversions like overall? Yeah.

The design needs to really take into account how people interact with your page, how they get what they need out of it as well. So good design will always be kind of how that page is structured, how the information is conveyed. Is it really clear? Is it easy to read? Inconsistencies can really throw people off. So if there's like a margin that's really big here and then the margin that's smaller here and everything's kind of clumped in one spot, then whatever.

people's brains just get tired from that. So you want to be really like this nice smooth flow through the page. And if that's not the case, that is usually poor design. So design is making it pretty. It is making it look on brand, but there's also that strategy behind and the UX piece is so key to that being.

I'm part of that.

I'm always thinking of the journey of the person kind of looking like where's the eye going to go and how is it going to gently or purposefully lead them through the page to what I want them to look at, which is the buy now button or the register now button and so on and so forth. When you look at a page, what are the important things that make it a pleasurable experience for the viewer that are literally like a fundamental?

It's how those content blocks are structured because someone doesn't want to come to a page and read this big wall of text. If there's too many images and they're taking too long to load, that could also be a problem. So it's really how those content blocks are structured. Do you have good headings, subheadings? Do you have images and other images of you if you're a service-based business or of your product and high quality images if you're a product-based business?

So that as someone's there, they get a really good idea of who you are, what you're selling, what you do. Because the flow through the page, as soon as they decide this isn't for me, they'll leave and then the rest of the flow doesn't matter. So making sure that you do capture them and that story is coming through, that connection is coming through. So-

a lot of it is having those high quality images, having copy that converts as well. 'Cause your goal on the landing page is the same as my goal on a website. Get people to that contact and at the bottom and make sure that they know what that action is and that they wanna take it when they get there. - Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Although I am just not a great website builder. I'm a good project manager for websites

with a designer who can do it. But I'm not, I don't know, once it's past like, you know, the sales page, it's just not my, it's just not my cup of tea. But when I look at the sites that I know that like you, even this, like the site for your own business, and I've seen you like talk about sites that you've done for clients, and I've taken some, you know, maybe I've like stocked a little bit just to kind of see. I noticed something that I find really, really cool is everything seems to be calm. Yeah.

And I don't find, and I love that as somebody who doesn't like coming to a site where everything is, do you remember like all the flashy, flashy stuff, right? Yeah. Oh man. I actually, I'm seeing one really big entrepreneur right now return that way. Like somebody who's really, really big. It's a big influencer. I just went to one of their sites today. They had a sales page for an offer that they're doing and it is,

crowded with different elements that are all like all the boxes are all different sides and like sizes and they're all like angled weird and some of them overlap and some don't and then there's different font usage and like it's just really like I was like whoa okay this is really busy and it did the exact opposite to what they probably wanted which is I was like this is too busy I cannot get this message clearly without it overloading I don't know some synapse and I was gone

And what I find is the pages that I've seen and the websites that I've seen that you built and your team built have a just more of a, I can't think of a better word than it's just a more of a sense of like calm and enjoyment of the experience and a little bit more of like a flow. And I think that's really important.

'Cause I find that I've seen a trend recently that said that more of that collage style is gonna come back. And I was like, people can really do that well, or they can do it really poorly. And what you're talking about is that like when they do it poorly and it's just like, it becomes a mess and people don't know where to look because there's no hierarchy on that. And it's just, they don't know what to do next. And people, there's so much noise online in general that why have your website, the one place that you can control, why have that also be messy and noisy?

I love things that are just like modern and simple and like it doesn't have to be boring to be calm, but it just has to feel good. Exactly, exactly. And I mean, you and I could nerd out about hierarchy because I think that's really underutilized. I don't think a lot of people realize the importance of the hierarchy in your website and how you use it properly. And I know it sounds really, really nerdy, but it is actually super interesting when you get into sort of like

how people approach a page and what copy needs to be a certain, you know, level or certain hierarchy and so on and so forth. I just think the nerdier you can be on this process, which is why I think you're perfectly like, you're perfect for what you do is, you know, you, you can really look at that and you can decide, you know what, we need this with like this, this headline has to look like this, this subhead has to be here. This body copy has to be this and so on. And I think the calm that I see is,

And the enjoyment of the sites that I've seen is, um, everything, nothing is causing a, um, like a, a flashing red light in my head, right? Everything's just kind of purposefully moving through the fonts. Aren't freaking me out. Right. I hate when people overuse like a Sarah font, uh, and the kernel links too close and this and that, like we could really geek out, but yeah, like all of those things. Um,

But, you know, and if you like this kind of stuff, you're probably like nodding your head, listening, going, yeah, yeah. Kerneling drives me crazy. But, you know, for the rest of everybody, trust me, it actually really does matter.

What I'm seeing a lot, and I'm wondering if you're seeing it too, is a lot of people are focusing on SEO and pretty branding, but are really neglecting the customer journey. And so I wanted to talk to you and I want to ask you what your opinion was of building out a really thorough and enjoyable customer journey. What are the fundamentals there that you just stand behind? Yeah.

Yeah, I've noticed that too. A lot of people are like, oh, it's just about the SEO. And I always find there's a bit of a battle between the UX and the SEO because SEO is for search engines. UX is for the person. I want a person to come to your site and have the best experience they can. If Google can't find you, that's a problem. But we don't want to have so many keywords jammed in your headings that it just, the flow isn't there for the person that's reading it. So you need to just make sure that everything is

works, it feels good, you can flow through the pages that people can take a breath and pause throughout it as well. So when you have like a break in the content, it's just enough of a break that people can, okay, now I'm going to the next section. Now, I could take a breath. It's not like you're just going through everything really quickly and

never getting to breathe. You just want to think of it as this joyful experience kind of going through the page. This is your chance to connect with someone. That user experience is key in that. If they don't go through the page, they're not going to do that. And then from page to page as well, throughout the whole site, it has to be a journey going towards a destination and you know what that destination is. So

On the homepage, making sure that's really easy for people to get to your blog if you have a blog, to get to your about page, to get to your services page, your product page. So just having enough on that homepage that no matter what someone wants to do next, if they don't want to join your list right now, they need a bit more information, what do they need from you? Do they need to learn more about you from your about page? Do they need to see what your services are? Do they need to read like your latest blog post and think, okay, this is an expert that I definitely want to connect with?

So just making sure that you're kind of hitting all those different ways that people might want to take that next step if they're not ready to give you their email address yet or make that purchase. I think that's incredible advice. And I think it can be very challenging.

almost bespoke depending on the person, the business and the goal. So not everybody has to have their blog posts located on or like a right widget or something, you know, and not everybody has to have the late, like some sort of a, you know, opt-in banner along the top or whatever everybody wants. I love that depending on the goal, depending on the person and depending on the audience that that can all be changed up. Um, but now, okay. Nerd question. Um, what is it?

Nerd alert question. What do you guys like to build in? Are you like Elementor people, Divi people, none of the above? We actually do those two. So we do WordPress specifically. And yeah, Divi and Elementor are the two that we go to. We tend to prefer Divi. Elementor has a lot. So it can be overwhelming for people if they are going to maintain their site going forward. Whereas Divi, we can kind of customize it exactly to what they want. But

either of those are good options that we like to use. Absolutely. I'm a big Elementor fan because it mimics the way that I build landing pages with the elements within it. So I found it intuitive to use it. Divi, I think Divi is pretty intuitive too. And I agree with you on if you're going to maintain your own website to have something simple enough that you can do so without it being overwhelming with all the options and things. And I think Elementor can be overwhelming.

Sorry, I actually completely agree with you. I'm like, yes, I'm on both. Most of the clients that I ended up consulting with, some of them were like, yeah, I want to use Squarespace or something. And I'm like, no, please don't. We used to sometimes help people with their websites if they were on Squarespace or Wix, but

We're not experts in those areas, and we do find they're a bit more limiting when you get to those customizations. So when we want to do something super custom for someone to make sure that that UX is exactly what we want it to be, we find it so much easier if we build a theme from scratch in WordPress versus trying to make something else work. We always struggled with that. Yeah, I hear you with that too. If the goal of the website is lead gen,

What is your best piece of advice for optimizing a website for list building in like specifically? I would say if you're trying to build your list, you need to make sure there's something on your website to make people want to join your list and making sure that you're promoting that enough so that

people join. So do you have a freebie that you have on your website that's easy to find, that people connect with? Are you part of an event or a summit or something that you can advertise on your site and help get people to know who you are, who've come to you through some other link, but then also to get them on your list, you need to make sure there's something there for them. What do you think of people who just say, join my newsletter on their website? Yeah.

No one wants to just join. We have it on ours just because it feels like a default you have to have on your website. But at the same time, someone would really have to love you to want to join your mailing list without knowing enough about you and not to get something from it. We've all subscribed to way too many things. We're trying to clear out what we've subscribed to. We don't want to add more. So I don't think those are going to go away anytime soon. But like, just join my newsletter. But you do have to do more. If that's your only way to capture leads, you're not going to.

capturing leads at all. Yeah, I completely agree. But I do feel like it's a default. I do feel like it has to be there.

And for that one person that's like, I want to join their newsletter and I don't know how to do it. Yeah. I saw Andrea on such and such, and I just totally want to, you know, hear more. That's, I absolutely get it. And I think your audience really needs to know like somebody, you know, somebody who's big enough and who's been around long enough, people will just join the newsletter because they want to keep hearing from that person. But if you're just building most likely, no. And, and usually a lead magnet is more in tune. And I think that's

probably where you should focus and then obviously summits and so on and so forth. I was going to ask you because I found it really, really interesting. I just had this conversation with another entrepreneur friend of mine. When you're gearing up for a launch, let's just say, what website tweaks or changes or improvements should you be prioritizing that could help that launch? Like what do you have to look at? What are the things that you would checklist?

I would make sure that whatever that launch is related to, that that level of your expertise or your product or service is highlighted front and center. So when someone gets to your website, it's not that usual flow and then all of a sudden there's this thing that's different that you want them to do. It has to be

you have to warm them up to what you're trying to get them on. So making sure that you are changing your call to actions, making sure that if you have testimonials that they're relating to the thing in your launch, just making sure that everything works for that, not just slapping it on and hoping that people buy.

And also just checking, like, does your website still work? Sometimes people won't check their websites and they have a launch and the link's broken or there's something else that's not working. Like, make sure everything's working really well. So if someone does go off and explore your website, they don't end up hitting that link that you didn't update yet or they try to download something that's not relevant anymore. That may or may not have happened to me at the end of last year. Maybe. I switched from ActiveCampaign and Calendly over to HighLevel.

and realized that my blog and uh everything on my podcast like all the show notes was all pointing to the wrong thing so that was a herculean task to go through every blog post uh and all the show notes for every episode of the podcast and make sure everything was pointing the right way but it was a great I actually was really I felt really accomplished when it was done it was a great audit

It was super, I mean, I thought I was going to hate it, but I actually super loved it at the end. I was like, felt super good that I was able to go through and now everything's aligned and pointing the right way. And I think it's important to look at that, especially if you forgot that you've changed a service. Yeah. You know, book a 30 minute call with me and it goes nowhere. I was like, oh my God, I can't believe I did that. And I'm like in this business. I know. So people don't think of it though. They're like, okay, everything's ready. And then.

Like you should just get in the habit of like, I've made a change somewhere. Let's just make sure everything works. Or I have a launch coming up. Let's just make sure every single thing on my site works. So there's no way that someone's going to get a link that's broken. Absolutely. And I think fresh eyes. Fresh eyes are important too, because you just miss, like you just glaze over and you're like, yeah, good, good, good, good, good. And then all of a sudden you're like, oh crap, that really wasn't good. I missed that. And check it on mobile and tablet too, because you might've checked everything on desktop, but maybe...

Maybe you have something in your code that's making it different on mobile and you haven't tested on that. Then if traffic's coming from mobile, then you're going to lose those people. Oh my gosh. Okay. Talk to me about tracking for a second. What are the must-haves for your clients that have to be on the website? What tracking software are you using? Are you a SEMrush person? Are you Google Analytics? Both? What do you love having on there?

We've mostly just been using Google Analytics because it's easy for our clients to manage. So they can go in and check it out themselves if they want to. If they have questions, we can always check it out as well. And it integrates really well with WordPress as well. So we have the, we can have the widget on the website if they, if they don't want to log into Google Analytics on their own there as well.

But people often don't realize that they need analytics until later. They're like, "Oh, I kind of want to know how my site's doing." And it's like, well, that's why we set up upfront. Let's get Google Analytics on there so that you can, when you do start to want to make decisions based on where people are going, you have that data. If you don't collect that data, you have no idea where the people are going on your site. And it takes a little bit of time to collect the data. If you expect that you're going to put it on there at two o'clock in the afternoon, by 10 o'clock, you're going to know the results. Good luck.

It has to be accumulating data for a little bit and then you can do that. Because how much traffic you get too, like if you don't get a lot of traffic or if you're a new business, it'll take even longer for that steady flow of business to come in for you to be able to analyze how things are doing. Absolutely. If you're thinking about trends, like we're at the time we're recording this, we're early in 2025. And if you're thinking about the trends for 2025, do you have like a little bit of a crystal ball sort of thought feeling of what,

is the big thing for UX or what's coming down the pike? I would say a lot of people, there's going to be a bit of a divide. A lot of people are relying like really heavily on AI right now. Then there's also people that really want to give that personal experience. So

while there's gonna be more and more things that are the copies written by AI, the images are generated by AI, there's also a trend towards people wanting to think, okay, this is who I am and I want to connect with people on a personal level because I miss human interactions. There's only so much you can do talking to a robot versus talking to a person. And I love the more personal interactions as well on the website. Like you want, that's your chance to talk to someone, to connect with them. So

why not write that yourself or have a copywriter that knows who you are at your essence do that for you? I completely agree. I think we'll see both. I think we'll see both growing over the next year. I think so too. I do think we're going to see a pendulum shift over and back, like back towards human-based content versus AI-based content. I think people are really getting savvy to what's being written by AI. Yeah.

Sure, you can pump out content like nobody's business. I can have 10 blogs written in five minutes if I want, you know, but there's, I mean, there's just no, there's no soul. There's, it's missing that one, you know, it's missing those intrinsic pieces unless you've spent a ton of time training up your AI. And I, although I think a lot, I mean, it's not going anywhere, but I do think a lot of people are, at least in my understanding, are shifting a little bit back and going, I really just want that human to human approach and connection. Yeah.

And wherever possible. And I think we're going to probably see a little bit more of that myself. I think so too. And also because anyone can pump things into AI and be like, oh, I'm an expert. I've written this blog post about it. It'll become very obvious who the actual experts are. Like I have over 20 years experience. So I can write my own blog post and talk about my unique point of view and what I know and what I do.

And if someone has a question, then I can answer that question as well. Whereas if you're just using AI and it's writing it for you and it's not really what you know, but you can like, okay, this is what AI says it is. So that's probably what the experts are saying. How are you going to actually engage with someone if they have a question about that? And how are you going to use that to actually improve their life if they do hire you? So I think that's a lot of it too. I do too. Yeah.

I want to ask you this and I think it's really interesting because we did go to the same high school, which I think is fun. How did you end up doing this? Where did your path go? Because I know my path was not a straight path into entrepreneurship. I had an English degree and I actually wanted to have a French degree. I wanted to actually be a translator for the UN and travel and do all that kind of stuff. That was my original plan. And then everything kind of changed. And when I graduated from university, I never left the job that was paying for university.

And I got into marketing through that job. But I was never in marketing. That was never my plan. Like, how did you end up in this field? Was it a straight path? Was it? No, not a straight path. So I went to university for two years for nutrition because I was always told, like, it's harder to get a job in the arts. So like choose science pretty much. So I did. And I didn't like it. So.

So I was trying to find out what can I do with my passion for art. And I didn't even know graphic design existed. But then a friend told me and I was like looking up college courses. And I said, okay, this seems like it kind of marries design and art, which I like. And you can actually get paid for it versus like if I was a visual artist, you have to be very good to get paid. So switched to graphic design, got a couple corporate jobs on the side, started my own business. I was just like, I'm just going to freelance on the side.

Didn't have any actual plan of how am I going to get clients, what's going to happen? But one of my friend's moms knew someone that needed a website.

I was a print graphic designer. I'd never done a website before, but I said, yes, I will do that. I think I charged like $400. At the end of the day, I made like $2 an hour because I was learning how to do websites. And that was over 20 years ago. So back then a website just had to be up. It didn't have to be, it could be pretty, but within limitations because there were very strong limitations back then, but there was no UX. There was like no thought to like every website just had the same kind of things like,

the buttons, the links, some texts, some images. And that was it. Um,

But got that first website up and then the business kept growing. I was freelancing for a long time and then started to get too busy. So quit the job that I had, got a business partner seven years ago, grown our team. We now there's six of us, including myself and my business partner, and we're able to serve so many more people. And UX is a huge part of what I do. Like I do the design, the UX, I still do graphic design as well, but yeah.

I love UX because it's just like, how can we make something work so well for people when I've come from a place where websites didn't do that at all. So I know what that experience is like when that was the expectation and that's what websites looked like. That was fine. But now like it can be beautiful. It can be strategic, but

And it can work for you. Like a website has so much potential to be this like great sales and marketing tool for people. But so many people are just like, man, whatever, I'll get to my website when I have time. Focus on Instagram, focus on something else where you don't have that kind of control over the whole user experience. I think it's fascinating how we get into entrepreneurship. Yeah.

Right. It just, it's super fascinating. And I love your journey. I think it's so cool that you started off it like, I mean, thinking, oh God, I have to have a, an applicable skill to make money and I'm going to go into nutrition and just wasn't the thing for you. And graphic design worked well.

like for you and then also you were able to build a business off of it. I find that just an incredible journey and they know they never seem to be straight like they never do. They're never like A to B to C. It's always like A to AB and then you know one two three and then maybe you get in a loopy loop and then you end up back where you are and I find that so fascinating and you've been doing this how long 20 years?

In November, it was my 20-year anniversary of creating Inkling Design. Oh, my God. Congratulations. Thanks. If you asked me 20 years ago, would I have my own business? Would I have a business partner, a team? I would have been like, no way. That sounds way too risky. I like things to be safe and to not take those kind of huge leaps. But I'm glad it was a slow leap because it took 20 years from then until now. But zero regrets. There's no way I could ever go back to working for someone else. I just love that.

what I do and just being so involved with the clients and getting to see what their dream is, what their vision is, and then make that into their website or their branding, whatever we're doing for them. Yeah. It's going to be 13 years for me next month. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. But 13 years feels like baby years compared to the 20 that you've got popped in there. Once you fit like five, six years, I feel like anything after that is like, okay, you're good. Yeah. I feel, I start to feel like you start to feel like you're one of the entrepreneurial elders. Yeah.

You know what I mean? And because you've got people coming and going, yeah, I've been doing this for two years. And you're like, cool. Talk to me when it's been about five and you've gone through a recession or a pandemic. And then we can chat. So many learning experiences throughout the way because anything that happens in the world, I feel like we really feel it as entrepreneurs. Yeah. It directly affects us because what's going on in the world directly affects our clients and their ability or their tolerance to

for doing things within their business. Like a website could be put off. Yeah. And that's a shame. Like I always find that people, one of the first things that people start to pull back on is the things that we do. Meanwhile, literally if you double down into the things that you and I do, it'll actually bring in more money. And that's what I did during, at the beginning of the pandemic. I was like, okay,

Things could get crazy here. I'm just going to literally double down on list building and get people to do more of it and encourage them to do it. And it'll get them through what I anticipate is going to be a really bad time. And it was, I mean, my business actually grew during the pandemic and I didn't think it would. But I felt very fortunate that there was a lot of people who saw it the way I did and

Yeah, I thought a lot of people were reaching out. But because Kelly and I both had young kids, there was just we didn't have the capacity without school without daycare. So we had to turn people away, which is hard, because we always want to be able to serve people and help them. But

It just, we just couldn't, we were at capacity. Of course not. I mean, if you've got kids at home during the pandemic, I mean, that must have been crazy for you. I can't even imagine how that would have been. My gosh. Oh, okay. Well, Andrea, I could keep this going forever and ever, and I definitely have to have you back. I want to get more in depth into UX on another conversation, maybe on a totally different tangent, but I could have so much fun doing this. This has been

Such a good conversation. I feel like you've broken down exactly what your website needs to do, not only to just look good, but how it could work for you and guide visitors on your website sort of like seamlessly from curiosity to creating that conversation, which I think is just hyper important right now.

And if you've ever been putting off your website like I did at one point, let this be your sign to stop leaving leads on the table and go ahead and take a look at your homepage, your calls to action, do your own little audit and look at your flow of your own customer journey because I guarantee you there's something in there that needs a tweak.

and possibly even an overhaul. And if you're looking to do a website redesign, then I think you should absolutely be reaching out to Andrea and Inkling Designs because I think they're fabulous. And so if you haven't done that or you want to, go check it out. We'll have everything in the show notes for you to go and check them out. I think they're fabulous. Also, I'm always going to, you know, push a hometown girl and what she does. So Andrea, thank you so much for doing this.

Thank you so much for having me. It was great chatting with you. Yeah, it was absolutely a blast. I loved it. I loved it. So if you've made it this far, congrats, you are at the end of the podcast. But before you go, make sure you go ahead and follow the Acquire podcast wherever it is that you're listening.

I love your feedback. I always love getting reviews and seeing, you know, what you want to hear about or what you think of the podcast. So please go and do that as well. And we've got great guests coming up. Andrea is just a drop in the bucket of the amazing people that are coming up in 2025. And I'm just super excited for you to get all of the good stuff. So make sure that you are following the podcast. And thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you all soon. Take care. Bye.