Helpful website strategies that convert with Ray van Hilst

• When it comes to website strategies and marketing, let’s master the simple and make sure we’re doing that well.


• Ask your self, “What are they coming to your site to do? What do they need from you?” Then let’s help them do that and get to that next page where you’re going to do that.


• It’s not about you. If someone’s coming to your website or engaging with your marketing, they’re looking to you to solve a problem.


• Go look at the top landing pages on your site. If you were looking at those for the first time, would you find them helpful? Do they convert?

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HELPFUL WEBSITE STRATEGIES THAT CONVERT

When it comes to website strategies and marketing, let’s master the simple and make sure we’re doing that well.

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Doug Morneau: Well, welcome back listeners to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. In-studio today joining me today as my guest is Ray van Hilst. He is the Director of Client Results at Yoko Co. Ray is an innovative soul and his with and charisma are present from the very moment you meet him. Ray seamlessly blends 20 years of marketing experience with modern web principles to establish advanced web presence of organizations that help build a better world.

Doug Morneau: When Ray isn’t in the office or a coffee shop, or a client office, or a wifi hotspot, you can often find him speaking at events about web strategy and marketing technology. I am super excited to have this conversation with Ray today. I earlier had the owner of the company, Chris Yoko, on the podcast as well. So I’d like you to join me in welcoming Ray van Hilst to the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast today.

Doug Morneau: Hey Ray, super excited to have you on the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast today. Welcome to the show.

Ray van Hilst: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me today.

Doug Morneau: So I’m super excited to talk to you about your superpower and how you help people in the sales and marketing field or at least help them with their digital footprint. Do you want to share with our audience just a little bit of your background in terms of what it is that you do?

Ray van Hilst: Yeah. Background for me, I am a web strategist with a digital marketing agency called Yoko Co, and we work with organizations to help them leverage their web presence to make a bigger impact on what they do, through society, through their work and things like that. My key role as a strategist, I describe my job as helping my clients get beyond the, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if” because when you start doing a web project or a marketing project, and it’s like, oh, people have lots of ideas.

Ray van Hilst: And so I work with my clients to say, “Hey look, get beyond the wouldn’t it be great if, and here’s what you really should do.” The superpower that I bring to the table for that is really focusing on helping my clients realize it’s not about them. It’s about their customers, their donors, their members, their stakeholders that are coming to them to look for information. I always say it’s not about you. Someone’s coming to your website or engaging with your marketing, they’re looking to you to solve a problem.

Ray van Hilst: They’re scared, they’re worried, they need education, they need a tool or whatever. And let’s make it easier for them to do that so that they like you a little bit better, and then they engage, and then we can convert them into our funnels. We go through that.

Doug Morneau: Well, it sounds like you may have been looking at my website because you just named all the things that I probably … On my personal branding site, that I’ve probably done wrong, so appreciate you didn’t mention my domain in that description.

Ray van Hilst: No worries. One of the books that have really influenced me when I started realizing this, I describe myself as being pathologically helpful.

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HELPFUL WEBSITE STRATEGIES THAT CONVERT

When it comes to website strategies and marketing, let’s master the simple and make sure we’re doing that well.

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Doug Morneau: I like that.

Ray van Hilst: It is true, people call me up or send me an email, “I’ve got a question. How do you do this?” I’ll look up like 30 minutes later, I’ve written 12 pages in the email to them about things I would approach for that. Adam Grant wrote a book called Give And Take where he just talks about being helpful and how helpful people make a difference in society.

Ray van Hilst: I think marketing has an opportunity to do that too, to be helpful and to be engaging, and it’s so much better than the standard like oh, sales call, or things like … The last time anyone actually went onto a car lot to buy a car and you had the salesman come up to you right away. That’s the old school way. That’s why I try to help my clients in this being helpful, helpfulness and [crosstalk 00:04:01 ]-

Doug Morneau: I’m going to weigh into that conversation. I remember my wife wanting to buy a car and it was an interesting experience.

Ray van Hilst: It is. I think people like us that do marketing, it sometimes becomes sport for us when we go into those kinds of situations.

Doug Morneau: Yep. Well, I’m just trying my best, I’m just going to ignore that whole conversation. Brings back this bad … Actually, it was a good experience, it was just a poor salesperson who unfortunately judged the book by its cover and said, “Oh, this older lady’s not going to buy anything today.” And then she left with a brand new Turbo Cayenne which really surprised him that somebody else got the sale. Anyhow. I promised I wouldn’t go there.

Doug Morneau: Let’s go back to your superpower and how we can help our audience today. In terms of focusing on the people that you serve, what are typically the one or two biggest mistakes that you see people make on their homepage?

Ray van Hilst: Yeah. One of my personal pet peeves, for example, is when someone’s looking at their homepage and it has their navigation, they put the about button as the first navigation. Like, “I’m going to tell you all about me. This is so awesome.”

Doug Morneau: Now that I’m done talking about me, why don’t you talk about me?

Ray van Hilst: Exactly. I think one of the opportunities that people should do is say, “Okay, if you’re here to be helpful and provide this service or someone’s looking for XYZ, make that the first thing that people see.” Really lead into that.

Doug Morneau: Okay. So just try to address their problem, the problem they’re looking for a solution should be the first thing.

Ray van Hilst: Exactly. And then I think the next thing, the mistake that I see people do is they try to fit too much into their homepage. I’ll admit, I’m guilty of it as well, and my creative director, Max, is one of the best people I’ve ever worked with and he’s trained me to pull some things out. But in our desire to get stuff out there, and sometimes in our desire to be helpful, we just start throwing things at people [crosstalk 00:06:10 ].

Doug Morneau: You firehose them.

Ray van Hilst: Yeah. And we overwhelm them with choices. Let’s find those choices of what is useful for someone, what are they coming to your site to do, what problem or thing do they need from you, and then let’s help them do that and make it easier to convert and get to that next page where you’re going to do that.

Doug Morneau: I’m just writing the notes here, so what problem are they trying to solve? Maybe I get, I can redeem myself. I’m not getting a gold star but I get a point because the about me part of my website navigation is the very last thing on my navigation.

Ray van Hilst: Exactly.

Doug Morneau: Okay. In terms of engaging people and helping to do that, so saying what problem are they trying to solve, so how would you typically work with