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In this episode, Phill and Adam discuss the practical steps required to create a website for a B2B tech startup. They emphasise the importance of not jumping straight into website builders without first defining objectives, value propositions, and brand differentiation. They recommend looking at competitors to gain inspiration and identify common threads. They also discuss the need for a conversion strategy and different conversion points based on the stage of the customer journey. They caution against focusing too much on the bottom of the funnel and not enough on getting people onto the website. Finally, they highlight the importance of defining the site structure and content before using website builder tools. The homepage of a website is not the most important page for attracting new visitors. It mainly serves as a jumping-off point for other pages on the site. The homepage should establish credibility, provide basic information about the company, and direct users to deeper information. Pricing pages are important for customers to determine if they are interested in a product or service. FAQs are useful for SEO and provide answers to common questions. Use cases and industry-specific pages can showcase how a tool or solution is used in different contexts. Comparisons with competitors can help buyers make decisions. Squarespace is a user-friendly tool for building websites, and starting with a template can be a good option for non-designers.


keywords
website creation, B2B tech startup, objectives, brand differentiation, competitors, conversion strategy, customer journey, site structure, content, homepage, credibility, pricing pages, FAQs, use cases, industry-specific pages, comparisons, Squarespace, templates


takeaways
  • Before creating a website, define objectives, value propositions, and brand differentiation.
  • Look at competitors for inspiration and identify common threads.
  • Develop a conversion strategy with different conversion points based on the customer journey.
  • Focus on getting people onto the website, not just the bottom of the funnel.
  • Define the site structure and content before using website builder tools. The homepage is not the most important page for attracting new visitors
  • Pricing pages are important for customers to determine interest
  • FAQs are useful for SEO and provide answers to common questions
  • Use cases and industry-specific pages showcase how a tool is used
  • Comparisons with competitors help buyers make decisions
  • Squarespace is a user-friendly tool for building websites
  • Starting with a template can be a good option for non-designers

Creators & Guests

Host
Adam Yaya-Durrant
Co-founder of Yaya
Host
Phill Keaney-Bolland
Co-founder of Yaya
Producer
Alexandra Pointet
Producer of the Cult Products podcast

What is Cult Products?

Dive into the essentials of start-up success with Cult Products, hosted by Yaya's co-founders, Adam Yaya-Durrant and Phill Keaney-Bolland. This podcast delivers sharp insights on creating revolutionary products, radical branding, and attracting a loyal following of early adopters. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, each episode is packed with actionable advice and stories from those who've built successful businesses. Join Adam and Phill as they help you transform bold ideas into start-up success.

Welcome back to another episode of Cult products with me Phil Keening -Bolland.

Adam Yahya Durrant.

And we are the founders of Yaya, a design agency specializing in helping at B2B tech
startups to get off the ground, creating a brand website, value propositions, products,

lunch menus.

Last time we spoke about websites.

So this is, this is actually part two.

And if you haven't listened to part one, suggest you.

go back and do that now.

In this episode, we are going to be getting into a few more of the practical steps
required to create a website for a B2B tech startup.

And last time, we finished on a cliffhanger, having set the objectives for the website and
created a brand that differentiates the business.

Today, we're gonna get into some of the...

tools that people can use, some of the newer tools that are designed specifically for non
-designers, non -developers, and how you can go about bringing that website to life.

So let's get into this then.

And there's lots of tools out there.

When is the right time for a founder to move into that kind of design and build
environment?

It's a good question, isn't it?

Because there are a lot of like shiny toys out there and they are very fun to play with
and we'll get into how fun they have to play with in a sec.

I think you have to be quite measured and have a bit of discipline because if you're
jumping straight into the deep end and just like thrashing about, you're just going to

make a bit of a mess.

So I think it's always good to just kind of take a little bit of a step back and really
think about

what your, you know, based on your objectives, your value proposition, what the site needs
to be.

and as we said in the, like the first pod, you know, work in Word to kind of create the
structure of the site and essentially to like what needs to be on there from a content

perspective, from a site map perspective.

And we'll go into kind of the things that we think should be on your first site.

But I think biggest kind of advice would be not to jump straight into those things.

and really kind of nailed down the site from an architectures perspective and get those
things really kind of solidified so you're happy and then and only then really go into the

kind of shiny tools to to kind of make it come together.

So you're saying then the first steps to creating a website are not go and create a
account with Squarespace or Wix or whoever and start building, which I really agree with.

that sort of that thrashing about in the deep end point, what I think that looks like
practically is because you haven't defined what it is that you're...

trying to build, why you're trying to build it and what good looks like.

You can either be led by the tools which will encourage you to create what it thinks you
might need.

And we spoke a lot in the last episode about how there are misconceptions and that, you
know, what the majority of people are doing around what they think they need is not

necessarily what you actually need.

So there's, there's risk in that.

Or you just end up creating stuff.

randomly, any of the missing out on things that are really critical, or including a load
of fluff that you don't need.

Which to be honest, both of those things can be as as bad as each other.

So I would say that while all the marketing for those tools suggests that that is that is
the starting point, let's go back a few steps.

Now you've got

As I said before, got objectives, got a brand, clearly defined what our value proposition
is.

I think a good kind of next step is to start looking for inspiration.

And we've spoken a little bit about where not to look for inspiration.

So I don't think typing in, me the 10 hottest website trends or the 10 coolest websites.

of 2024 is going to be the right approach.

But what are some of the things, Adam, that you would do if you were setting out to create
a website for your B2B tech startup?

I think exactly that, isn't it?

It's not kind of just looking at the kind of top 10 sites of 2024.

It's really thinking about your kind of competitors, like what are they doing?

What does that world look like?

What are the kind of common threads?

What are the things that are working well?

What are the things that aren't?

And I think getting a bit of, creating a bit of sort of analysis really around those
competitors to really get.

dig a little bit deeper into those things, I think is a good starting place.

Because, you know, you don't want to fall into the trap of saying exactly the same thing
and, you know, and communicating the same way.

So I would say that's a good kind of a good starting place, I think, to get an
understanding of the land of the the landscape that you're working within.

think to build on that, you select those competitors is really important.

Now, a lot of startup founders say that their business doesn't really have any competitors
because they're doing something totally new.

to some extent, that can be true.

You will be competing for the attention and the budgets of

people with other businesses.

it's likely that unless you're targeting a Amazonian tribe that hasn't had contact with
the rest of the world, you are competing with somebody, even though they might do

something quite different to you.

If that's the case,

It's an interesting reference point, but it might not necessarily be the type of
competitor that you actually want to look at in terms of what you should be doing on your

own website.

The thing I would say is if you think about who's doing a similar type of thing to you,
similar, similar type of business model, similar type of approach, and is enjoying a load

of traction, ideally that you can see is coming through their website.

those are the kind of people who are interesting.

So they might be playing in a slightly different space.

But they are, you know, they are they are a similar value platform aimed at a similar
segment of the market.

And I think one of the other key factors to look at there is, are they at

a similar -ish stage of the business to you or slightly ahead of where you are.

So if I was launching a new word processor, there's only so much that's relevant about how
Microsoft sell word processors to what I could do because they're Microsoft and because

they've got this incredible track record and scale and all the rest of those kinds of
things.

And the things that they are selling on a different to what I would be selling on.

So if there was not something I know a massive amount about, but if there was a company
making a word processor who had launched it in the past couple of years was growing

quickly, I'd learn more from looking at their website than I would from looking at
Microsoft because I'm likely to be able to employ similar strategies in my own website and

my own business.

Hmm.

I think narrows it down to people that you're to get relevant information from.

Then I think, what kind of information are you actually looking for and what's useful in
thinking about your own website that you can learn from those people?

Hmm.

It's a good question.

Cause I guess there's like, there's a couple of different layers to that.

Isn't there?

It's, it's, it's looking at like a brand from a brand perspective, like, so looking at how
they kind of communicate their brand effectively, like what kind of things are they doing?

That's like really kind of working in terms of their messaging framework, tone of voice,
in terms of how like differentiated they are with the brand that they've created.

structure of the site.

think it's really kind of important to kind of gauge from those kind of organisations that
you've pinpointed, how they structuring information, what's the kind of, is it clear what

the objective of the site is?

Understanding like, you know, how they're, how they're funneling people to certain bits of
content or certain calls to action, things like that, I think is kind of quite good.

get a kind of read on from from those people if they're doing it successfully for sure.

What else can we think of?

What else would you say in terms of...

would say what's interesting if you looked at 10 websites, what's going to be interesting
is what are the consistencies across these 10 websites?

So what are the things that feel like established patterns that users would just expect to
have?

And some of those consistencies can be effective, some of those consistencies can be
ineffective.

And you can take a look and say, everybody

is doing a pricing table on their website.

users expect to be able to go on and figure out how expensive something is.

You kind of have to do the same or for some strategic reason intentionally differentiate
by, I don't know, being a bit more mysterious around that kind of stuff.

Some things you might say, every...

every website seems to fall into this trap, I'm going to intentionally avoid it.

Then I think there are the inconsistencies, and they're as interesting as the consistency.

So you might find one site has something on it that is only on that site and is incredibly
effective and works incredibly well.

I'm not suggesting just copy it, like for like necessarily, but

What can you learn from that?

And what need is that serving for users?

And how would you design something that serves that need as well?

I think, you you're gonna find things that basically you either want to replicate or don't
want to replicate.

And those, think, are the kind of interesting things that you can pick up from looking at
competitors.

Yeah, indeed.

So, okay, let's say I've done that work then and I've created my own little kind of
auditing or kind of checklist of kind of doing an analysis of those different sites.

What do I need to do now?

I've got that information.

I've got a fairly clear idea of like the structure of the site and the kind of components
and elements that need to be on that.

What's my next move?

I think the next thing is, in a lot of cases, well, is there ever a case where a business
would say, don't want any conversions to come through my website?

I think the answer to that is probably no.

We've certainly worked with a lot of people who say it's not the number one priority.

And that really comes down to what your business development strategy is.

But for most people, that would, that would be beneficial.

So I think you then go there and you say, what is our strategy for getting conversions?

Now, you probably can't say that the only strategy you have is to put a big red button
that says book a demo in the corner of the screen.

The reason you can't do that is because.

you are going to get a mix of different types of traffic to your website.

So you're going to get everyone from, you have a, you know, attraction strategy and
advertising and marketing, people who have literally just found out who you are, or even

to be honest, don't really know who you are, but have ended up on your website, who need
some education and warming up, they're not going to just book a demo because they, you

know,

within within sort of 30 seconds of arriving on the site, you're going to get people on
there who are aware that they have a problem.

You're to get people on there who are aware that they need the kind of solution that you
offer.

And you're to get people who know who you are and would like to work with you.

Now, they're

you don't want to over complicate these things, but those different kind of people have
different kind of needs and need different kinds of conversion points.

And what I mean by that is, you know, some people will be ready to book a meeting with
you, or if your product is self serve to just create an account.

And some people are looking for

help defining what their problem is.

And that's where you need resources and content that helps explain that kind of stuff.

It's also where you need stuff like potentially, I don't know, webinars, training guides,
all those kinds of things that explain why your solution is the answer to that problem.

And what the game traditionally has always been is if we exchange something of value to
you, will you give us your email address?

And then can we use email marketing and other nurture tactics to warm you up to the point
that you then want to have a conversation about buying the product or book a demo or

actually convert?

And lots of people have lots of different views on this, but you need to have a view on
what that strategy is.

And you need to think about the different types of people and their stage that they are in
the funnel if they're going to hot, warm, cold.

What it is that you're going to offer them as a way to enter your ecosystem and actually
convert.

What we see a lot of is focusing too much on the bottom of the funnel and expecting

Well, two things really, expecting everybody who comes on the site to be, you know,
potentially ready to book a demo and not paying enough attention to how you actually get

people onto the site.

So the number of people who come on is low and the number of people who convert is low.

But if you can get to a place where you have a strategy for getting people onto the
website and that can be everything from organic SEO to pay per click, social media, to

paid advertising, YouTube videos, all of that.

stuff.

And when you're on the site, you have different conversion points for different people at
different stages of the funnel, then you've got higher volume plus higher percentage

conversion rates, more leads coming into your business and more potential opportunity to
generate revenue.

That is something that you really need to think about before you start designing the site.

And do you just, in terms of those conversion points are, what's the best way to kind of
map that out in terms of like, you were trying to figure out, okay, where do I, how do I

work out where these go?

And like, in terms of the structure of the site itself, what's the kind of best way to do
that?

And lots of people have lots of different ways of doing this.

I think my own view is that giving away a lot of value is a good is a good starting point.

So in all of the interactions you have with your market, whether they are one on one
interactions, or whether they're one to many interactions,

that your first principle is how do I make this stuff actually really valuable and helpful
and free.

And by free, mean, even just don't ask for email addresses to access it.

Take what we're doing, for example, this podcast is free.

Hopefully it's And it kind of, as we've seen since we started doing it,

increases the number of interactions we have with interesting people and deepens the, you
know, how interesting those interactions are.

I think that's a good starting point.

And that is really, that's about awareness.

So, you you don't really want to sort of charge people to become aware of you, I don't
think.

Then you get into a space where

people know you and they have a, they have an interest in what you're doing.

And particularly if you've already, you know, given them something valuable, they're,
they're kind of on the hook.

then I think you would like to try and take them from a place of, okay, you're interesting
to, yeah, I think that working with you can help me solve a problem.

And again, this is about providing value.

So that phase normally we would call.

consideration, but you could also kind of call it warm leads.

You've moved down a step in the funnel.

When you get to that stage, I think I think you can start to make things not be free.

I'm still not talking about kind of monetary value here, but it's okay to say, we're doing
a training session, it's free, but you have to us your email address to sign up and you

know,

part of that is we're then going to follow up and do nurture campaigns and all that kind
of stuff with you.

And, you know, once you've done that, and it's quite educational, and again, high value,
eventually you get people into what's called the sort of decision phase.

And that is generally where somebody is weighing up you against other people who might
provide a solution to their problem.

The kind of stuff people like to look at at that point, you know, they can be

business cases, case studies, you've gotten those kinds of things.

Interestingly, I think at that point, you kind of probably shouldn't be gating things and
because those people are like super keen, make it easy for them to access that.

And you should never really ask for somebody's email to send them a case study.

If somebody's at the stage where they want to look at a case study and they're evaluating
you as a potential supplier, don't put a barrier in their way.

and then the conversion point of that place is generally either buy or, or book a meeting.

And so you sort of want to think about all of those different stages and how you, interact
with people at each one of those different stages and how your website journey, caters to

all those, those different people.

Yeah.

And if you go back to what we were saying at the start of the conversation, that's exactly
why, you know, it's not a quick fix, just jumping into these kind of AI tools and, and

kind of mucking around because you're going to create a bit of a Frankenstein that doesn't
have that kind of structure or kind of user journey mapped out and articulated.

But, but given that you've done that work,

which, you know, that's, you know, that's the kind of holy grail of human that I think,

let's take a quick break.

And when we come back, we'll get into some of the tools and things that you can use to do
that.

Okay, welcome back.

Still talking about websites in this part of show, we're going to be getting into some of
the practical ways to actually design and build the tip of the iceberg, I suppose.

We've spoken now a bit about, you know, the sort of conversion strategy and some of the
inspiration that you can take from competitors, as well as the brand and overall

objectives.

Adam, what happens at this point if you just jump into the website builder tools now?

Well, yeah, I think if you jumped in at this point, you say you've got, you know, colours
and those kind of like more visual stuff probably defined by that point and you've defined

those kind of conversion points.

what you haven't really got locked down effectively is essentially the site structure.

So a site map and what we mean by that, that's kind of

what are the different kind of pages on a site.

So you have a homepage, contact page, about page.

So really kind of nailing those down.

And then the content that kind of sits underneath those pages.

kind of getting that in a structured form.

And we talked about in the first podcast, that can be as simple as doing that.

And actually is more effective just doing all that stuff in a Word document to enable you
to create that kind of flow and that content.

If you don't do that and you die straight in, it's an absolute mess still.

So you have to be a bit patient here and we're still not there yet.

I would suggest that is the next step to kind of undertake and really kind of pinpoint.

What do you think?

Yeah, I think if you don't have a clearly defined target that you're aiming for, you're
just gonna still be in that situation of, know, we've made things a little bit less fuzzy,

but you're still gonna end up with just a kind of random collection of components that
either the tool suggests that you have or that, you you just happen to sort of think of.

The good news, I suppose, is that...

I think you can start with a base site structure.

We've spoken at this that is that pretty, pretty well, understood at this point.

So there are, I would say some core pages that you need when you're starting a B2B tech
startup on your, on your website.

let's, let's just go through those.

So number one, I suppose the most, the most obvious, but not necessarily the most
important is the homepage.

A lot of people think of the homepage as the main page of their website.

Now, we do a lot of analytics tracking on sites that we build and there's a lot of
research about this, but the homepage, you've got to think about firstly, who are the

people who are probably going to land on that page and how are they going to get there?

If you have an advertising strategy that is based on sending people to landing pages,
which is generally the optimal way of doing that sort of thing, those people are going to

bypass your homepage.

So the people who just don't have a clue who you are...

are probably not gonna be the main constituency who hit that page.

It's mainly gonna be people who are coming via organic traffic, who are at least searching
for something that is relevant and served by you and your site.

So they have some understanding of who and what you are, or direct people who are just
putting the URL into their...

that kind of navigation bar or people who've actually searched for your brand terms.

So they're pretty well educated on who you are and what you do as a business.

Really, you can kind of assume that they're in the kind of mid to lower stages of the
funnel and focus on conversion on that page.

But also your homepage really is a jumping off page for other people, for other places on
the site.

You you can't expect users to go on a linear journey where they...

start in the top left -hand corner of your homepage, read everything down to the bottom,
then go to the about us page, then go on and on through the site.

It's much more like people are searching for, you know, a needle in a haystack and the job
is to make that haystack pretty easy to search through.

And the role that your homepage pays in that is, you know, cover the basics.

Who are you?

What do you do?

Are you a real company?

And then how do we get you onto the pages where you have much deeper information about
more.

specific things that you're interested in.

Yeah, it is the shop window, but it's not the shop window at the same time, isn't it?

It's like the thing that needs to have all the kind of links out to the kind of the pages,
but the amount of kind of energy and focus that gets put on that, that homepage is always

just like, it's crazy, isn't it?

And, and, you know, from our analytics and like what we've kind of known and experienced,
it just really isn't the, the most kind of important page of

of a business, even though every business seems to think it is.

So yeah, so I think that's definitely, definitely sound advice.

Okay, so we've got the kind of structure in and we've got the content.

Well, we've got the have we got the homepage.

Yes.

So we've only got one, we've only got one page.

That might be enough for some people.

As a first hurdle, we do talk about iterations.

One pages.

a one page website, one page website homepage, by the way, has a very different function
to a multi page website.

You know, an about as page.

I think this is really just about establishing credibility.

Are you a real business?

Can you actually solve the problem that you've got?

You you actually have people, technology, everything that you need.

You work in the right countries.

you know, you can scale to fit the type of organization that we are.

And then stuff about the mission values of the company.

a little bit about the history and background as well.

You know, how many years have you been around all that, all that kind of stuff?

there's variation in what.

different about as pages look like, but best way to think about it, think, is probably
like credibility and personality.

Yeah, think also, mean, one of your objectives is to, that you're scaling and hiring.

That's obviously like a place you want to put quite a lot of focus on in terms of, for
attractions and stuff like that.

it's a pretty good, pretty good bet.

Yeah, absolutely.

mean, there's, I think for the purposes of today, we'll part careers pages, but there's a
lot.

mean, that's that's a separate podcast, at least one separate podcast, just on how, how
you think about those.

They're almost a separate website in themselves in some cases.

Pricing.

Now pricing, think is the thing, you know, that businesses sometimes want to say the least
about and customers want to know the most about.

And I guess the reason for that is because you pin yourself down to a specific number, you
then end up negotiating from a, you know, a kind of defined spot.

Now, if you're, if you're doing the sort of high volume, you know, slack loom esque
product, I think, you you can't really get away from having pricing.

Nobody's going to want to have a negotiation for something like that.

know, when you're at the lower pricing end of things, I think.

you know, that, that makes sense.

If you're doing, you know, something that is like highly custom and flexible and you know,
into the sort of like six figures spot, you might want to keep the specifics back, but it

is a, you know, it is, it is a very genuine user need that use people, customers want to
know how much something's going to cost to determine whether they're interested in it.

It's like, have you, you know,

and look at a house, this is a really nice house and can you tell me how much it is?

it's, you know, 10 million pounds.

Well, I can't afford a 10 million pound house.

am I looking around?

You know, it's annoying and it's taken me like quite a lot of time and effort to go and do
that.

It's a similar, you have a balancing act there.

And the other thing to think about is

pricing pages are a good indicator of where somebody's mindset is and how far down that
funnel they are.

Because if you're interested in how much a solution costs, you're probably thinking about
buying it.

Good point.

Yeah, I definitely think, especially for like, know, SaaS business, having the pricing
being transparent is always the way forward.

And I mean, it's just kind of like a standard now, really, isn't it?

To have that, I don't think it used to be, but it's become standardized.

Obviously, enterprise packages are always kind of hidden.

another one, which is a good one, which is something that we say a lot to people who's
around FAQs.

I think they're quite

They're useful to have on multiple levels really, because it's a good way to house kind of
SEO rich content.

And, you know, people, again, if they're already interested, they're going to dive into
that stuff.

But it's a good one to kind of have on your site.

Don't necessarily need its own page.

It can be kind of tagged on as a component, but super useful, I think, for people who are
looking to, to kind of invest in something.

I think the, mean, I 100 % agree.

There are two different kinds of FAQs pages.

There are questions that a business is frequently asked.

and questions that a business has made up that they just want to communicate more
information, but do it in the form of a question.

And I think the former is the more useful thing, even if...

You know, sometimes the questions that people ask can be either very, very tactical or,
you know, potentially not the things that the business necessarily wants to be the central

message of, of what they have on their website.

you know, this is the way you can actually listen to what customers want and then, and
then build around it.

So I think that that is a much better user experience than just more content in question
form.

It's that is quite a funny point actually.

And I do notice that a lot, like, you know, especially on Amazon, like you're looking for
answers in the content the whole time.

And then you get to the FAQs and that's where you get them.

And they're just like very, I guess, boxed, like very just natural human questions.

That's a, which are kind of hidden from the actual like communication and marketing, but
yeah, it's just a interesting thing, isn't it?

Use cases, I think we'll put these together with the kind of industries and segments
pages.

So there's kind of a matrix of ways you could look at this stuff.

Either you put a bunch of pages in there, which are like, you can use our tool to do this,
which is the use case stuff, or these are the types of people who can use our tool and

what problems it solves for them.

Or you do both.

And in a lot of cases, that's what we do.

So for example,

You might say, here's a page talking specifically about how this tool is used in
healthcare.

Here's how it's used in manufacturing.

Here's how it's used in professional services.

Or you might say, here's how you use this tool to reduce your spend on something or
improve the quality of something or make it happen faster or even more specific.

things within within a tool like this is how it's used for scheduling, but this is how
it's used for communication.

You know, I think some, some blend of those that explains what you do, but that's value
proposition led rather than just pure features and benefits.

So, you know, we've spoken a lot about value propositions.

Let's not go back into what those are too much, but is ultimately on, why a customer gets
value from your solution, as opposed to just what it does.

And then I think, you know, case studies, great.

If you've got them format, those should basically always be, this was a problem.

This is the solution we put in place.

Here's, here's the results.

If you're a startup, you're unlikely to start off with a bunch of those, but they'll kind
of grow over time.

It gives you a bit more credibility.

landing pages we've spoken about a bit.

These are the highly conversion optimized pages that you can use for, targeting.

Adversizing keywords, SEO keywords, all of those kinds of things.

The way to do those is to get an SEO specialist to tell you what high volume search terms
in your industry are and then create content specifically around those.

And then the final thing I think that kind of just goes within the like, these are default
things that every B2B tech startup could have is actually comparisons.

And that's where you either compare your business against

a wide range of other solutions on the market and get into the specifics of why yours is
different, better, what it includes that others don't, what the package looks like, or

against one specific competitor.

So for example, if you're Slack, you might do a why Slack and not Microsoft Teams page.

And they're great because those are the kinds of questions that buyers are weighing up in
their mind.

But also it means that you can then

start to target their branded keywords when you're doing advertising and they are useful
for SEO as well.

So you could just start and say those are the pages that you need.

So home page about pricing, use cases, industries, comparisons, landing pages, case
studies, FAQs.

There's a site map.

Now can we build a website?

Yes, we can.

Well, we can find the tools to do so.

So we've been exploring some of those tools for you.

So save the time to have a play around.

obviously we are kind of very kind of in obviously our day to day we use a lot of kind of
more design, we could design based software, which is probably a lot, is a lot more

complex.

but we're kind of looking at this from the lens of not being a designer, being a founder
with no kind of prior knowledge to design and just kind of tested out a bit of the tools

which are out there and there's some kind of interesting stuff.

And the one that we're kind of focusing in on, because we think it's really easy and
really kind of user friendly and designed in a way that we think is really powerful and a

game changing is probably heard of at Squarespace.

It's kind of...

the one that I think is a little bit more easier to use for a novice than something like
Webflow or WordPress and more complex stuff.

And it's a great tool.

kind of brings in AI to help you essentially generate your kind of initial first site.

And it has almost what I'd describe as a kind of a website wizard type form kind of style
interface.

and that asks you some very top level kind of questions around what's the site's purpose,
what's the tone of the site, essentially you can kind of change, choose colors and color

palettes, but most importantly, kind of the structure and it will generate then different
types of kind of components that will sit within that structure.

So essentially once you've got your maps out, your site map, you can essentially just plug
that information into a tool like that.

and it will build you out a kind of already built kind of coded site that's fully
responsive which I think is pretty incredible really and can be adapted like in terms of

like content as well like tonally you can kind of play around with how you want that to be
presented in terms of like whether it needs to be more of a corporate looking site or kind

of

more of a friendly and familiar site.

basically there's quite a lot of different things you can do.

And having this kind of structure and everything we've talked about beforehand in place
means that it's a pretty quick exercise and we'll get you something.

It won't be perfect, but it will get you something that has a lot of the kind of basics of
a website already pre -built, which I think is great.

So I definitely had a lot of fun.

playing around with that tool.

I don't know, but your experience was light with it, Phil, and if you kind of thought it
was pretty powerful as well, because it's...

Yeah, I mean, think what you said is really important is that there are two distinct sets
of tools that exist at the minute.

There are tools that are designed to be used by designers, and there are tools that are
designed to be used by non -designers.

I think the potential of what you can achieve in the tools that are for designers is very
different to the ones that are designed for non -designers.

of course, with 20 years of experience and high capability in things like Figma and
Webflow and all those kinds of things, you're going to get to a different place to using

AI tools and Squarespace and those kinds of things.

that is fine.

It's not a good idea to try and use the tools that are there for designers because the
learning curve is going to be really steep and you'll actually end up with a worse end

result than if you use the ones that are like, you know, there's a cap on what you can
achieve in them, but it's easier to hit that cap.

in those environments.

So Squarespace, think, you know, we, we used to use that ourselves, you know, build
building website.

It's kind of, it's always been somewhere in, in between, you know, super user friendly and
has, has the capability to be kind of used well by designers.

The stuff that they're doing at the minute is very clearly focused on business owners,
founders.

And I think that, you know, that makes it really useful.

I would suggest that be again, before even going into that environment is take, take the
site map and the structure and, actually think about writing down, as we said in the

previous episode, all the content that you want to put on those, those pages.

because that will, you know, that will mean you can go a level deeper in the design
process to make sure that what you actually are building fits the content that you want to

put out there.

And using those kind of brutalist principles, identifying the things in that content that
need to be brought to life more with media and things like that.

I am interested.

there's sort of two routes available to people.

There's create a thing using AI tools from scratch or from the site map that we've come up
with in the content.

Or go down a

route of picking a template and then, and then customizing it.

And I personally would start with the template.

And the reason that I would do that is I'd look for, you know, I.

Popularity of templates is an interesting metric to look at.

don't think it, I don't think it's the worst one in the world.

If you can combine it with, does this template have the pages that I need?

Does it seem focused on the objective that I care about?

And is it.

You know, is it, you know, back to this idea of, it, is it popular because it solves a
practical need for the business and delivers an objective, or is it popular because it,

it, you know, hits all the latest design trends.

If you pick something like that, that already is designed and optimized for achieving your
objective and customize it.

Given all of the below the waterline iceberg stuff that you've done, I think that probably
is an easier place to start.

for a founder than even using it like from scratch AI tool at the minute.

And I think that will probably change as the AI tools become more sophisticated.

Yeah, I don't think there's much in it, to be honest.

think, you know, the sophistication of those AI tools are becoming so, so good.

And they are using kind of tried and tested patterns that, you know, it's hard to tell
really sometimes with them, whether they are like, really, sometimes they're a bit more

gimmicky than actually useful.

but yeah, I do agree with your point around like, you know, it isn't a bad

place to look at the kind of most popular ones and the ones that are kind of being used
more thoroughly because they're generally are because they're working well.

then again, it's about like, obviously, we don't want to have a site that looks like
everyone else's but your content and your brand will then come through and be that

differentiator.

So you don't need to worry.

But yeah, I think it's getting closer to a point where AI will be easier for people to use
and

and build sites, no doubt.

Whether it's there yet, not 100 % sure, but yeah, it's definitely kind of an interesting
point in site development and for people who don't have design backgrounds to be able to

pick this stuff up a lot more effectively.

I totally agree.

don't think there's much in it.

think the reason I kind of more towards the template thing is just that, like standing on
the shoulders of giants thing.

Like if you've got something that, you you know, works and is properly validated and, you
know, you can, you can sort of

know what good looks like.

think that's the thing with all of these AI tools and with empowering founders to do stuff
is it's easy to create stuff, but it's hard to know whether it's the right stuff.

And even with AI, AI can obviously hallucinate and go wrong on things and be very
confident that it's got the right thing and be totally wrong.

Where I feel like a bit more kind of...

social proof, community validation, kind of stuff.

Coupled with all of the things that we've spoken about, actually, you know, I think we've
probably given people, if we've given them value over the past couple of episodes, a

framework for thinking about how to tell whether a website is actually good and is
actually going to achieve objectives.

Then I think at the minute, for me personally, I'd probably go with a

a thing that exists rather than just start from scratch.

But I don't, as I say, I don't think there's much in it.

And I think what there is in it is gonna get less and less over time.

Great.

Okay, I think we've done websites, at least for now, haven't we?

think we have, yes.

Well done.

Hopefully that was interesting and hopefully people got some kind of really good value
from that.

Yeah.

covered a lot.

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And that's it from us.

Thanks very much for joining us.

Thanks, Adam.

Good to chat to you.

And we will see you for another episode next week.

Cool, see you guys.