Why Your Website Feels So Overwhelming
And How to Make It Easier

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT - MAY CONTAIN ERRORS

Introduction

So, hi, welcome back. Do you ever sit to work on, it's like sit down to work on your website and end up staring at the screen, moving buttons around for hours and just feeling like you're not really getting anywhere.

You're definitely not alone, and it's something that's not your fault.

It's basically just your brain trying to do too many jobs at once.

So I have always said to people when I've been talking about website building, I've always said that I feel like we should plan it out on paper rather than diving into your website builder and just trying to build it straight away.

If you actually take the time to step back and plan out either on paper or in a document, or if you've got like a blueprint document in my membership where I have, blueprints that people have for their homepage and things like that.

And just taking the time to actually map it out outside of your website builder, is something that I've always said.

But I was on uh, some YouTube training with Jerry Potter a few weeks ago, and he mentioned the fact that when we try to do the planning stage and the implementation stage.

He was talking about YouTube videos, it actually uses two different parts of our brain and I'd never really thought about it like that in terms of why I always recommend doing that like building out the plan before you start actually building the website.

So I looked into this a little bit more and it's definitely something that is very interesting and

I'm building this out more in how I actually structure the content in my membership as well.

It's always kind of been how I've worked with clients anyway, that I've always worked with people. And we've started with the strategy first, starting with making sure that, that your pre-work is, is in, is really in place before we actually dive in and start a build.

So there's kind of three main areas that I'm gonna talk about today.

And the problem if we don't do this, don't do it this way, is people just get really confused.

You feel really overwhelmed.

Feel disappointed with what you've created as well. So if you're creating your website yourself, then you create things and then you feel disappointed that it's not like it doesn't look like you want, it doesn't sound like you want, and it just generally tends to make people feel like it's just difficult the whole process of building websites is difficult.

So they end up going back to social media and getting the hit of dopamine from there, because you can do something.

It feels simple. It feels easy, even if it doesn't always feel fun and you don't feel good afterwards, you get that dopamine hit of feeling like you've done something.

And I think that's sometimes why websites get neglected a little bit, because we start off, we're trying to do everything at once.

And actually then that doesn't work for us. And the more we do that, the, the more our brain will resist doing that again.

'cause then we have those feelings of not achieving things or and not feeling good enough really. So, yeah.

So what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna break this down into the three parts that we need when we are actually trying to create a website or update a website into something that actually works for our business.

I'm gonna talk about those three parts and what you need to do for each bit and why it all matters really, and hopefully this will just give you permission to take a step back and do this in a more logical and easier way that really helps you to end up with a website that works for you.

The Strategy Mode - Using Your CEO Brain

So the first thing we need to think about, and this is often the stage that gets skipped out, and gets or skipped over rather, and gets missed out basically is the strategy mode.

So this is the bit where you step into your CEO brain and it's really all about understanding what your website needs.

So regardless of whether you are starting a website from scratch or you're actually just trying to make changes and improve your existing website, you, you can't really do anything until you know what's missing until you know what's, what needs fixing, what's not there, what you actually need on, on that particular page or that, that part of your website that you're working on.

And this part of your brain that is responsible for this CEO mode and this strategy mode is responsible for planning and goal setting, seeing the bigger picture, decision making, prioritisation, like integrating logic with imagination.

So basically the mental energy that it uses, like analytical, visionary problem solving, that those kind of parts of your brain that really need to understand what's going on and to make a plan.

So the practical part of this, is knowing what, what is missing from your website. As I say, knowing what you actually need on there and what you actually need to be able to do this part is you need to really know your audience well.

You need to know what problems you solve for them, and you need to know what you want to be known for, and this is all part of this strategy.

So before we, we can even think about building a website, we need this information in place for the next phase, which is when we start creating the content for our website.

We need to know what we're trying to achieve with it. We need to know what problems we are helping people with and the jobs that we actually want our website to do for us as well.

So we need to understand. Once we've done that, once we've got our messaging in place, once we know what, what we, or we've, we know what we need in our, our messaging.

We know what we need to actually uncover in terms of the problems that we solve and those kind of things.

So we can then put that into language that connects with our customers.

We need to then look at what we've got already and understand what's missing.

So understand what's underperforming on your website. Understand where those problems are.

This is like the diagnostic part of it, of actually understanding what bits of your website are not quite right. So that you can then put a plan in place for writing new content, for creating new things that are actually gonna help then to improve that part of your website as well.

So basically it's spotting the problems, knowing how to fix them, and then also prioritisation as well 'cause there's always 1,000,001 things that need doing on a website. So it's very easy to then focus on the things that feel like they're important.

Things like visuals is often something that feels very important, but it's not necessarily gonna move the needle and it's not necessarily gonna get you those quick wins on your website, really.

So it is. That is all part of this strategy phase is actually knowing what to fix first, knowing what to focus on first and knowing what bits are actually gonna make a difference and gonna make a difference quickly as well.

And then also there's learning. So there's learning within this, this CEO and the strategy phase there is learning enough about SEO conversions, content, website flow.

There's You need to have enough education in those kind of things so that you can make informed decisions yourself.

And quite often I talk to clients or I talk to people on discovery calls who have maybe been paying an SEO agency or they've had a website built for them and they are still no further along in actually getting any results, but also understanding why they're not getting results or understanding what things make a difference that do get results.

And that's one of my priorities in my business is that if you come and work with me, whether that's in my membership or as a one-to-one client, that you leave having more knowledge about what you need to change and what needs to happen in your business, not just right now, but also moving on and moving forward.

I don't wanna be a gatekeeper. I don't want you to then be reliant on me or an SEO agency moving forward.

It's always about you, having those, um, informed decisions. If you then decide to outsource getting your SEO done and those kind of things, then if you understand the basics, if you understand what needs to happen, you're not gonna get bamboozled and you're less likely to get ripped off from somebody who's actually not doing the things that are going to make a difference really.

So there's definitely that, there's definitely sort of the education part of all of this, making sure that you know, enough to I wanna say know enough to be dangerous, but that's not the right, right term.

But you know enough to basically be able to direct again, you as that CEO of your business, be able to direct the strategy and to direct what you actually want to happen on your website, regardless of whether that's actually you doing that or somebody else that you're bringing in to actually do that for you.

A lot of business owners tend to skip this phase. It's something that they often don't even realise they need.

They don't realise that they need to take that step back and actually focus on the strategy for their website, or they'll just try and wing it. So they'll try and do this while they're building, while they're writing copy, or almost do the minimum that they can with this.

But without the strategy part, everything else that you're doing is just kind of guesswork really. You've not got that foundation, that structure in place that supports everything else that's happening with your website and your messaging.

And when you do this kind of work, this strategy work, it doesn't have to only apply to your website.

This can also apply to all of the other places that you are, you know, wherever you're using messaging. So you can use this strategy to dictate your email marketing strategy or if you're, creating podcasts, if you're creating YouTube videos, if you're using social media, then this will all help.

This strategy part is that big picture thinking where you become that CEO of your business and actually are making those decisions as the strategist really.

And so yeah, just makes everything else a lot, lot easier. So it's all about switching into that CEO brain and zooming out, making a plan before you actually jump into the doing of your website.

And I think often people confuse that doing with making progress. So it's, you feel like I'm working on my website, I'm making progress, but actually it's just tinkering.

And if you're just tinkering, then it's not really gonna get you the results that you want it to. I think there's definitely a philosophy of just get started and fix it along the way.

And I a hundred percent believe that. I think that a website that is out there and is not perfect, like your website's never gonna be perfect, but one that is actually out there and, visible, is better than one that is almost perfect.

But you haven't even published it yet.

But I think the just start part shouldn't necessarily be just start and just build it and throw it out there, because I think that's where often you do get stuck because you are trying to do that just start part, you're trying to build it whilst writing the, the copy whilst doing the strategy.

And actually that's kind of what this whole episode is about really of, yes, just start, but start with the foundations first and make sure that you are making your life easier, making your brain's job easier. Definitely.

And I think sometimes what we end up doing, is like those little things that you, you might find yourself doing is like, things like rewriting your homepage headline 10 times without actually knowing what message you're trying to convey and without actually knowing what you want it to say.

Tweaking layouts to colours, buttons, moving buttons around. All of those kind of things before you've even decided what that conversion goal is for that page.

What action you actually want people to take from that page, or adding in new pages to your website and stuffing in keywords without a clear strategy on what that page is actually doing, how it fits into the overall picture of your website.

I see this quite often with people just creating blogs, so they're just creating new blogs all the time without a strategy. Around how that blog fits into the rest of your blog strategy and how that blog, the whole of your blog fits in with the rest of your visibility really.

so that's the kind of things that actually can sometimes feel like you're being productive and can feel quite safe, but really that can just be procrastination disguised as progress really.

So it feels a little bit uncomfortable. When we're doing this strategy work, when we're doing this hard brain CEO stuff, it, it, it requires reflection.

We have to think about it and we have to really, be intentional about what we're doing. So a lot of people will just skip it.

But if you do this and you do it well, especially at the beginning, it can save you hours, hours and hours later on.

And you, it saves you from kind of getting stuck in like endless, endless loops of tweaking things. I think that's the big thing is it's you, you can just end up, um, going round and round in circles really, because you haven't got a framework guiding you on what you need to change, why you need to change it, what's missing and what you need to do to build on that really.

So I think that's definitely one part of this, especially if you are building it yourself. But one thing that can also happen, and I see this happen quite a lot with clients as well, is they'll have a website built for them and then this, this strategy stage still gets skipped.

So they might hire someone to build your website.

You might, you might have done this yourself. You might have hired someone to build your website or to update your website, and then they'll send you a questionnaire just to asking you some questions about the content that you want on your website.

Or not even a questionnaire, they might just ask you to provide content for the website and you can end up with a website that looks okay, but it doesn't really feel like you, it doesn't do its job properly.

I talk to so many people who have this, where they've created a website and it is not bringing in enough traffic. It's not actually converting, it's just not doing what it should do, or it doesn't sound like them.

They're not really keen on the look of it. And because somebody else has built it for them, they can't really make changes very easy or easily, rather.

So even if you hire somebody to build your website or to design your website, you are still the CEO of that message. So you are still the one who needs to be in charge of the strategy.

It's like no one else can know what you want to be known for, who you help, what your key offers are, what's important to you as the business owner. That clarity has to come from you.

and I say you, if you've got a team, it could be somebody within your team who knows your business inside and out and who is really, involved in your business.

And it could be them that's doing this strategy, but for a lot of the time, these are those CEO things that you need to be doing as the business owner, and that's where actually having somebody who can guide you through this can be really helpful. So someone who can help you to make those decisions, ask the right questions, help you to spot what's missing, keep you focused.

I think that's the thing. Keep you focused on the things that are going to make a difference.

That can help to make this whole process feel a lot lighter, a lot clearer. And that's the kind of work that I really love doing with my clients.

So helping them to actually have a plan of the things that need to change so that they can then make some decisions around that and make some decisions on who's the best person to actually then implement those changes as well.

The Creative Mode - Using Your Storyteller Brain

So once you've been through your strategy mode with your CEO brain, then you need to move into your creative mode.

And this is where you use your storyteller brain. So this is the part of your brain that focuses on language centres.

So you are, you're actually writing your, this is where you are actually creating the copy that you need to go onto your website, choosing images, gathering assets.

Actually bringing everything together that you are then going to implement and put into your website. And this can be tweaked definitely.

So it's not necessarily just for if you're write, rewriting whole pages. This can be if you're rewriting a paragraph of your website.

This could be if you're rewriting one headline, but it uses a different part of your brain than knowing what you need to say, or what, knowing what's not there, then actually translating that into writing copy and writing a message that will connect with your customers and, sounds like you.

And you know, it is not easy. Copywriting is definitely not easy.

And this might be one of those things that you then choose to outsource to a copywriter.

Or if you're using AI for this, then that's great, but you've still then got to be thinking about how can I make this sound like me and not sound like it's been written by AI, which unfortunately there's a lot of websites out there right now that have a lot of AI written content, and it's not necessarily helping those businesses really.

But this uses the, like your analytical language processing and your emotional resonance. So basically it's using your grammar, your structure, your word choice, making sure that it actually makes sense, and then also that emotional area of tapping into the empathy and the storytelling mode so that it, it does actually connect with people so people feel seen.

People can feel why you are that trusted guide that's gonna help them to get to what, to the solving their problem or getting that desired result that they want from buying your product or service and working with you.

This mode of, of your brain. This does, it does take a lot of focus.

It takes a lot of emotional energy and it's definitely a different kind of energy and a different kind of brain power needed for this to strategy. And switching between that, switching between strategy planning and writing.

If you are trying to do that all in one go, so you're trying to keep switching between what am

I creating and where, what, what is it the actual language that I'm using for that?

It's your brain is basically shifting between abstract and logical to emotional and expressive thinking. So it's something that, again, it, no wonder, it feels so difficult.

You are trying to do those two things at once. You're using those two different parts of your brain and it's not really helping you to be able to be doing that really.

But it's all about making sure. So from a practical point of view, this part of actually that process of creating a website, is finding words that that sound like you, words that connect with your audience, matching your messaging to your visuals.

So making sure that your photos, your graphics on your website match your brand tone, making, actually creating those visuals as well that can be part of this sort of creative mode.

creating consistent language across all of the pages of your website as well. That's really important.

Making sure that all of the pages of your website sound like you, sound like you in other places as well online.

And also sound like you, if somebody meets you in person, you don't want your website to then sound really stuffy if actually on your social media. And when somebody meets you, you are not, you're really casual and just use completely different language in those places, really.

People get stuck in this mode because they try and do this before they've done that strategy.

So before they've done that CEO part of planning, understanding what they need to write before they then dive in with writing, and you then end up going round and round in loops trying to make it sound good where actually you're not quite sure on what you're trying to say and what you actually need to say.

And, and this applies against any area of your website.

it could be that you're trying to write a whole page or as I say, just trying to rewrite a headline for one part of it. And then once you've got that, so once you've actually created, so you've created your strategy, you've created the content that needs to go into your website, then...

The Implementation Mode - Using Your Builder Brain

And this is the part that people tend to dive straight in with. This is when you go into implementation mode, and this uses your builder brain, where you're focusing on the structure of your website.

You're actually building it out, the functionality, building it all together in your website builder.

And it's things like uploading content, adjusting layouts, linking pages, setting up menus or calls to action checking your SEO is working, checking that it works on mobile, checking the user flow, and you are switching again to another part of your brain for this. So this is like detail orientated, methodical.

You're focused on accuracy, repetition, and logic. And this is a lot less creative.

So this is more of like your mechanical brain where you're actually you. It likes that precision.

You like checklists in this, in this part order and just really make like step by step almost with this.

And if you separate those parts of your brain out so you, you know what the strategy is, you've got the content ready to go, then actually , having that pause before between doing that and then trying to build it makes everything so much easier.

And I think this is what I see time and time again with people when they get stuck is they're trying to do all of it while they're in this builder mode.

And that's really, really hard, frustrating and just so like.

Just so time consuming. Really, it's, I think it's a bit like sort of trying to build a house whilst you are still creating the plans at the same time and no wonder you're gonna get stuck and feel frustrated and also end up with a house that's probably not gonna do the job very well or might fall down somewhere.

If you, try and do all of that at once.

And you know, with this whole episode I've said about the fact that we've got three parts, but

there is also a hidden sort of fourth task within this as well. And this is one of the ones that it might not apply to you if you've been using your website for a while.

The Hidden Fourth Task - Learning Your Website Builder

And if you make lots of updates and you feel quite confident with it, this might not apply to you. But a lot of business owners have a, have a, then a fourth layer of complexity added into this that uses completely different mental energy to everything else as well, where it is literally just cognitive load of actually trying to understand how to make these changes in your website builder.

So trying to work out how your website actually works.

And I think this is often the common problem, and especially for a lot of women in business where they maybe aren't, they maybe have a bit of, lack of confidence around the tech and they're worried about breaking their website.

I talk to so many business owners who don't have the confidence to make adjustments to their website 'cause they're so terrified of actually breaking it.

And this, I think is, is a really tough one. I would often advise people to maybe create a practice site, so like a sandbox site in, your website builder, even if it's just one page where you can literally get used to dragging the boxes around what the different boxes mean, how to add things in, how to duplicate boxes so you're not starting everything from scratch and just generally how to get used to actually working in your website builder.

If you've made a decision about a website builder that you know you're gonna stick to. And I would definitely say if you haven't done that, that is coming back to that strategy part of knowing that your website builder is gonna be right for your business right now, as well as moving forward.

I've got a few episodes about this. I should have, um, got the numbers for them, but I'll put them in the show notes anyway for this of a couple of episodes around how to choose the right website builder, the ones that I recommend, and it does all depend on your business really.

But ideally, you don't wanna have to move website builders once you've already created it.

So once you've done that, once you've decided, okay, this is the website builder that I'm sticking with, then just taking some time and having that as a session on its own of just learning the basics of how to build within your website builder.

I think of this when, if somebody is actually trying to do all of this. So trying to create the strategy, create the content, build the website and learn their website builder all at once.

it's a bit like Jane Austen trying to write a novel whilst also learning how to build a typewriter in the meantime. And also she'd have to learn how to invent a typewriter as well. 'cause they weren't invented in her day.

But it doesn't have to feel as difficult as all this.

You don't have to do all of this at once. You don't have to mix all of these things together.

All of these four, three or even four modes of trying to write plan, build, learn to use your website, all of this at once, so your brain is switching gears all of the time and you're trying to do this all together.

And I know especially as women, we are great at multitasking, but actually, why not make it a little bit easier on your brain and not increase that confusion, exhaustion, that feeling of why is this taking me so long?

And also, that feeling of failure, because then you don't get to a point where you've, you've kind of closed the loop on that part.

You've closed the loop on the strategy part. You've written some content then you've implemented it, and then you can loop back around.

When you're ready, you can loop back around to the strategy part. Once that's been live for a while, once you've seen how it's performed, then you can loop back around and look at the strategy again and think, okay, what do I need to change and improve?

Then I spend some time, you know, writing it and then implement that. And this is something where once you separate those into those clear stages.

So the strategy first, which has to be you or somebody who knows your business inside and out. Then that creative part, which you could use a copywriter for that, you could use a graphic designer to create visuals.

You could use Chat GPT to help you with this. Then the implementation part, which you can then use a website developer to use that or to do that rather, or a VA or a member of your team to do that.

But once you separate those into separate parts, then everything becomes simpler.

Everything becomes easier, everything becomes faster, and I can help you across all of these phases as well.

So this is something that I work with clients across all of these different phases.

So if you would like to chat about that, then you can book, a discovery call. You can go to my website and book a discovery call or send me a message and just let me know what bit you're feeling stuck in and I'll let you know how I can help you.

So if you're thinking about how you can do this yourself, how you can get started with this. I would definitely say start with that strategy phase.

Take a step back, understand what you know and what you don't know as well, because sometimes we don't know what we don't know, but if you are feeling stuck on what your website actually needs to contain either to show up on Google or to actually convert and get people to take the action you want them to, then that's the first problem to fix.

If you're not sure on your messaging, if you're not really clear on who you help, what problems you solve for them and how, what's the next step for them to take to actually get that?

Then start with that part as well, or first rather, and then create the content. So once you're actually clear on your strategy, start creating your content, start writing some paragraphs.

Start writing or start gathering some images and things so that you are ready when you then go into your website builder. If at that point you're not feeling confident on how to use your website builder, then that's the next thing you need to do.

So just getting a little bit of confidence and you don't have to know everything at once and you certainly, your confidence will improve. The more you learn and the more often you use your website builder, the more often you make changes, the more confidence you're gonna have and the easier it will get over time when you then need to make more changes.

This is something I help people with as well. So if you want some help on actually understanding how to use your website builder, this is also something I can do.

I love helping people with this kind of stuff. And then the final part of this is this, this build it.

So actually then go in. Once you've got your plan, once you've got what needs to happen, you've got your blueprint almost of what needs to happen, and then you go in and build it.

And it feels a lot less frustrating, a lot less confusing that way.

Conclusion - Being the CEO of Your Website

So, being the CEO of your website means understanding why your website exists, what it needs to communicate, what role it needs to play in your business.

And this is different from the implementer, who handles then how it's built, how it looks, how it functions day to day. But when you blur all those roles together, you either get stuck in trying to do everything yourself or you hand it off and then you feel disappointed with the results.

But if you can stay in that strategy mode first, make those decisions from clarity, and then you can either delegate or implement that plan yourself.

So I think starting in the strategy mode so that you don't get lost in that builder brain, and you are the person directing the vision instead of just drowning out in all the details.

Really. So, yeah, I think that's, that's my main advice on that really.

But, so if you've been feeling stuck with your website, remember it's not you, it is just your poor brain trying to do strategy, creativity, tech, even learning your website builder. All at once.

So inside my membership, the website Growth Club, we work on each of these phases step by step, so that you can finally make progress without the overwhelm.

Visit my website, thewebsitesuccesshub.com/grow to find out more. But until next time, take a deep breath.

Feel like I need to take a deep breath. Use one part of your brain at a time.

And remember, your website should be your hardest working team member & social media is optional.