Topsail Insider
Topsail Insider interviews local businesses and nonprofits in the Greater Topsail area of North Carolina including Hampstead, Surf City, Topsail Beach, North Topsail, Holly Ridge, and Sneads Ferry. Locals can learn about all the new businesses popping up in our area, prospective residents can find what’s available before making the big move, and vacationers will see we have much to offer beyond our beautiful beaches!
Topsail Insider
Web Designs Your Way
In this episode, we chat with Evelyn Wheeler, co-owner of Web Designs Your Way with her husband Chad. Their company offers essential digital services, including web design, maintenance, security, and social media management. We explore their transition to WordPress, addressing initial security concerns and highlighting its user-friendly and affordable nature.
Web Designs Your Way provides flexible, interest-free payment plans and exceptional customer service, guiding clients from start to finish.
We also discuss Coastal Masterminds, a Small Business group initiated by Evelyn and other Topsail Chamber ambassadors, aimed at solving small business challenges in the Greater Topsail area.
Website: webdesignsyourway.net
Email: Evelyn@webdesignsyourway.net
Phone: (910) 830-3108
Follow Web Designs Your Way on Facebook and Instagram!
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Welcome to Topsail Insider, where you can hear all about the businesses and events in the beautiful coastal towns in the greater Topsail area of North Carolina. Coming up, are you looking to build a brand new website from scratch for your business? Do you want to give, maybe, your current website a fresh makeover or undergo a complete redesign? Do you think that a professional, well-designed website is out of your budget? Well, think again. We have Evelyn Wheeler from Web Designs your Way joining us today and she's going to share how you can get an affordable, handcrafted WordPress website and take advantage of their flexible payment plans. Stay tuned for insights on web design and more on today's episode of Topsail Insider.
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Speaker 1:Welcome to Topsail Insider. My name is Krista and I am your host. Today. We are talking to Evelyn Wheeler, owner of Web Designs your Way out of Holly Ridge, north Carolina and beyond. Welcome, evelyn, and thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. I think this is going to be great. I say beyond because what you do you can do anywhere, right, correct?
Speaker 2:Around the world. We have customers in the Bahamas.
Speaker 1:yes, oh, that's great, I want to be one of your customers in the Bahamas. We're going to talk about what you do and why you do it. So, Evelyn, please tell us what Web Designs your Way does and the main services that you offer. Just a broad overview.
Speaker 2:So we do web design, website maintenance, redesigns, what we refer to as makeovers, security maintenance, social media for our clients. We don't take outside clients.
Speaker 1:Share with us how you got into web design in the first place and what made you want to turn that into a business.
Speaker 2:Very funny story here. My dad had called and asked my husband to make some updates to his website because my husband's very technical and we had just moved to Colorado when that happened and the job that took us there did not work out. So we got off the phone call. We kind of looked at each other and we're like, why not? What do we have to lose? So we literally started the business from a phone call from my dad. Oh wow, and I got some really cheap shirts made up and started just knocking on doors. This was on a whim. Yeah, it was not anything planned out. We went to Facebook and said we're starting a web design business. What are the top names you would use? We narrowed it down. That's how we even came up with our name for our company Web Designs your Way.
Speaker 1:So you had that name from the very beginning as well, the very beginning, and it was voted on for all of our friends on Facebook. We didn't pick it. That's so cool. Yeah, so you said your husband was very technical. Yes, what about you? Where did you fall into this?
Speaker 2:I fell into it, having to ask him every question. I am a people person and a salesperson per se.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get that about you.
Speaker 2:So that aspect of it I just was handed down for my dad because he had his own businesses and everything all my life that I can remember, so it was just very much run with it.
Speaker 1:How did you decide on WordPress? Or was that what your husband was already?
Speaker 2:familiar with. So we did not start WordPress until about nine years ago. June will be 14 years for us that we've been in business. We started with HTML only because of the security concerns that he had with WordPress. Then we started turning over or passing up so many jobs because, oh, I want a WordPress, oh, I want a WordPress. It finally urged him to look back into it and he found a lot of ways to lock down the site and secure it.
Speaker 1:Tell me why people outside of the design world were specifically requesting WordPress.
Speaker 2:It's an easy platform to go in and manipulate themselves if they want to.
Speaker 1:So once you build it, they wanted to have access to make the updates themselves.
Speaker 2:And WordPress is such a big platform that it gives you much more functionality, in our opinion, than some of these just drag and drop options that the DIY places do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you mentioned Colorado, but I saw Arizona on your website, so have you moved around a lot.
Speaker 2:Unfortunately. Yes, where are you from, where were you born and raised. I was born in Kansas, moved to California when I was six. What part of California? Ventura County, thousand Oaks. That's where I'm from.
Speaker 1:Really I'm from. I'm from. I grew up here in North Carolina. I moved out to LA but I met my husband in Thousand Oaks in Ventura.
Speaker 2:County, that is so funny.
Speaker 1:So after Thousand Oaks.
Speaker 2:So from Thousand Oaks, everything. It was just getting so expensive. We had had our daughter when she turned four. I didn't want her going through some of the things I went through as an athlete in high school Wasn't the girly girl, I wasn't the Barbie. So it was like, okay, where can we go? And my dad was like, well, arizona's nice. He originally wanted to go back to Kansas, but that's too far because Chad had his whole family in California as well, in California. And we're like, well, arizona's close enough. Yeah, well, arizona is close enough. So we went and we were able to buy a house and advance our life because the cost of living was so much better in Arizona at the time.
Speaker 1:I getcha, that's exactly why we moved out. We couldn't afford homes in California, not Ventura County certainly, Right yeah.
Speaker 2:So we packed up and went to Arizona and we were there for a long time until the recession hit. Then, that's when we moved to Colorado Because, same thing, cost of living was starting to go up. My husband at the time we didn't have our business was working a job that they just kept cutting his pay. Okay, and our whole purpose for moving to Arizona was so that I could raise our daughter and not have to work, and so that started getting harder and harder.
Speaker 2:Gotcha raise our daughter and not have to work, and so that started getting harder and harder. So he just started joking around and I put out there looking for places to live or something on Facebook and one of our friends was, like just come visit, you'll love Colorado. And then once she said it, I had about 15 friends from high school that were out there. So we're like sounds like this is where we're going. And so my husband just jokingly started putting out resumes and got an interview and we flew out. They hired him on the spot. We found a rental. Again, it was one of those. Well, I guess this is where we're supposed to be, it's meant to happen, yeah. So ended up two and a half three months into it the job didn't work out and then that's how our business started. Okay, so got going. I mean, I'd see now open signs, I'd turn around or pull into the parking lot and go talk to them.
Speaker 2:And I got my first job by doing that, so we just started building our business. The first year that we were there, we won the best of for our little town. That's great. Yeah, it was very exciting. I was surprised, but it was. Customer service is everything to us, so it was one of those things that I think that's what got us that award Very good. So then my parents' health just started declining, so in 2013, we moved back to Arizona to help them out. And then, 2019 lost my dad. 21 lost my mom. And then we're like why are we in Arizona?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you mentioned that. I'm sorry to hear that they were back to back right and yeah that's a lot.
Speaker 2:My dad was ready, but my mom I wasn't anticipating it and it just you know she gave up, but she had been with my dad forever. So you hear that too often. You lose your soulmate and then you're like lost.
Speaker 1:So, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we just kind of looked at each other and then we're like well, most of my relatives are still in Kansas, so we moved to Kansas.
Speaker 1:That didn't last but eight months why may I ask, and how's your daughter at this point, by the way?
Speaker 2:She went off to college, got her chemical engineering degree, yeah, and then went I'm either going to be, my career is either going to be here in California or Boston. So I'm going to Boston, okay, here in California or Boston. So I'm going to Boston, okay. She had had her apartment set up with friends out in Boston and took off, and now she's off and running on her own life, and she's off and running totally on her own.
Speaker 1:It sounds like she's doing really well. Yep, so you're in Kansas and what took you from Kansas to Topsail Is that where you moved next was greater Topsail area. Yes, and then specifically, y'all chose Holly Ridge.
Speaker 2:That's where our office is. Oh, okay, our house is in Hampstead. The same friend that took us to Colorado, that reached out, is the one that we came to visit and stayed at their parents' beach house right on the beach. I am a beach person, I love dolphins. We went out for a walk one day and there's dolphins and my husband just looked at me and he goes. This is where we're moving, isn't?
Speaker 1:it and I said most likely.
Speaker 2:And again, we were in touch with a realtor. We looked at houses, we made an offer on a house and here we are. What year was that? Last year.
Speaker 1:We've been here. Oh, that's right, you were just getting here when I started this podcast about a year ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was the end of March is when we moved here last year, are you? Happy here, love it, absolutely love it. I mean the price of the house and 10 minutes from the beach yeah, can't beat it.
Speaker 1:So I did notice that Arizona number on your website, but you're catering to people around the globe if you wanted to. Yeah, we kept the Arizona number.
Speaker 2:We got rid of our Kansas number but the Arizona number, that's where we built the majority of our business. We've been in business almost 14 years now, so we didn't want to get rid of that for all those customers that had that. And it is. We can work from anywhere. Like I said, we have, I think, three customers in the Bahamas. We've got customers in just about every state.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all about building the relationships that I've done that just get referrals.
Speaker 1:And Evelyn, you are really good at relationship building and I know that because I see you a lot at the Chamber of Commerce events and meetings and you've solidified your presence here really fast. If you talk about a course of a year for a business, you're here and you're very present and you're at all the events and it's really nice to see what has been the most challenging part of being here in this area.
Speaker 2:Well, I appreciate your kind words, because I don't always feel that way. But the hardest thing, I think, is making friends.
Speaker 1:Agreed.
Speaker 2:Just because it's a lot of people that have come here from different places. I think everybody's attitudes a little bit changed during the COVID lockdown periods to where we didn't have to socialize and for me, not socializing was horrible. But now everybody seems a little more not as giving with their time and or sharing information, and I am like I'll tell you my life story if you ask. Pretty much it's just one of those things that and that's one of the biggest reasons I joined the chamber and became an ambassador was because like-minded small businesses all in there helping one another, yeah, and you have a lot in common. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1:Moving on to the services that you offer your clients, let's just dive into the web design as a whole. You design brand new websites for businesses that have decided to have a stronger presence online, beyond just a business page on the social media platforms, which is where I started and then eventually decided like I think there's a benefit to having your own web page. Can you talk to me about why having a professionally built website is crucial for businesses in today's world?
Speaker 2:Social media is a great avenue for a lot of people to use, but what, especially here in this area? Yeah, I may know what pages to go on to to look or ask questions, but we're a big tourist city come summertime and those people don't know those pages. They're still going to rely on the web and not only tourists, but how many people we have moving here. So, having a website that can be found by Google, following Google's guidelines that change constantly, and having that online presence, not only with your website and your social media, but there's business directories, things like that that help you be found, and that's all stuff that we guide you with. How you build the website depends on the platform that you're using and what functionality that you have. So if you're labeling your pictures that you're putting on your website JPEG 1, 2, 3, that's not good Guilty. You need to. Well, the thing is, is your website needs to be found and read by Google's bots?
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Google's bots don't care what JPEG 1, 2, 3 is Right, they care about what is that picture titled? So you could name a wave top cell, wave 2024 or something like that. You want to be descriptive of what your picture is so that the bots can read that Interesting. Okay, and that helps you, because when somebody does a Google search you want to think about what those words are, that they're searching for your business and make sure it's in your content and that scenario right there about the naming your photos or naming your files is not going to work in social media, right?
Speaker 1:It has to be on your website, or does it?
Speaker 2:Well, the pictures should be named, no matter where you put them. But the social media more goes along the lines of the silly hashtags. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:On your website. You mentioned your website being mobile-friendly and responsive. What does it mean for a website to be mobile-friendly and responsive and how does that impact user experience? And also does it impact Google rankings? Google?
Speaker 2:put that rule into place several years ago that if your website wasn't mobile friendly, you were going to start moving down in the rankings. So what the responsive means is that it should be programmed on the back end. The responsive means is that it should be programmed on the back end and most themes nowadays are built this way anyways but it responds to whatever screen size it's being viewed on. So there's no more pinching and scrunching and trying to read something with the small HTML websites how they were built. Google has started, from my knowledge, moving those websites that haven't moved into this age down in the rankings. Now, if somebody knows the business name and they're going there, just like Pepsi and Coca-Cola, they don't have to do any SEO or anything. Because we know their name, we know who to go search for. But if you don't have a strong presence and following Google's guidelines, it's not going to help your business grow and be found.
Speaker 1:You also emphasized, and this is whether you're building a business's brand new website or you're revamping their website. You mentioned calls to action, or CTAs. Can you explain what a CTA is for people who may not know and why they're important for website functionality and the user engagement as well? It's ease of use for the end user.
Speaker 2:So let's say, you're going through and you've got five services to choose from and you have a button under each one that says learn more. That button is what's called the CTA call to action. Call to action.
Speaker 2:So, if they push on that button or click on that button, it should, if the website's built right, take you to that portion of the website that has the information about that service or product, and that's the ease of use for all of us. In the day and age of we don't have time to do anything and Google looks for those and by sending them to other places on your website, they're staying on your website longer, which helps you, because Google wants long viewings and if somebody is going from page to page and stuff, that makes Google happy. Okay gotcha.
Speaker 1:What if a person comes to you and you're building a brand new website and they're like I don't know what my call to actions should be? Do you guide them? Or how do you consult and guide them about what they need on their website when they don't know?
Speaker 2:It's a fun game to do. Actually. I enjoy it because we love educating people. On our website we list multiple themes that are on there and that people we have them go look at them and say tell us ones you like, tell us ones you don't like. These are the WordPress premium themes. And what premium means is. We have purchased them, so it's a theme that can be used hundreds of times, but even though it's a theme that's there, our websites we always try to make look different than the theme.
Speaker 2:We semi-custom it to make it their own. But they may say from this website I like this color of the called actions, or I like the rounded pictures instead of the square pictures, and we just guide them through and ask questions. That makes them think about it.
Speaker 2:And we ask them to provide us three websites of their competitors oh, that's a good idea and three websites that they like it doesn't even need to be in their industry Okay, like it doesn't even need to be in their industry. And then that way, when we do a screen share with them, going over their questionnaire with my designer, and then everything comes together for him, his design wheel starts going and you can see it we just develop it from those conversations I've had.
Speaker 1:And then when we do the screen share with them, what about branding, especially if they're coming to you with a brand new business? They may not have a logo, but you're going to help them with branding, so there's got to be a color scheme throughout all of the pages. Right, correct? So what about if they need a logo? Do you also do that?
Speaker 2:We can do very basic logos, but we have somebody that we've partnered with for years. We have several different partners that we like to be a one-stop shop for, so if it's something they need whether it's a logo, content writing, seo, things like that we have people that we partner with that we can refer them out to. We vet anybody that we work with before we use them ourselves, before ever referring them out to make sure that they have the same ethics and standards that we do and do quality work.
Speaker 1:Okay, when they pick a theme that appeals to them most, then you're going to take those logo colors or whatever their branding, their fonts maybe, and incorporate that into the theme Correct.
Speaker 2:The questionnaire that we send out before we do the screen share ask them for color schemes. It sends them to a place to look at color schemes together. It sends them to Google Safe Fonts. What that means is if there's, like Mac and PCs and everything, some of them do not have all the fonts that are out there, and what happens most of the time? If it's not a Google Safe font and the computer does not have that font on their computer, what will happen is it most likely will resort back to Arial or one of the standard fonts, and then it throws everything out of alignment and your website could be totally funky looking at it.
Speaker 1:Okay, when you said that you work with them for their social media accounts too, I'm assuming you're going to take that same brand the colors and the fonts and all that, and now you're going to manage it in their social media accounts for them, or help them with their social media accounts. How are you working with your clients in social media?
Speaker 2:So I have several clients that we do all of their social media for them. I'm also part of Kiwanis and I do the Kiwanis social media. Okay, the only reason I don't do it for somebody that's not our client is I feel social media is a very personalized thing to put out there and if I don't know the person, I can't do it properly. So that's why, working through somebody building a website, I really get to know them. So that's where I know their personality. I know what I can and can't put on there.
Speaker 2:And everything's always very professional, obviously, but some you can be a little more jokingly about with posts and others it is purely business. Yes, I mean I've got a church that I do. It's learning the personalities and knowing the person, the business and how they function to be able to do social media right in my opinion that makes sense is that built into the monthly maintenance fees that you have on your website?
Speaker 2:it's a separate fee that, if they want it or not, we we offer our security maintenance. We offer security maintenance plus one hour security maintenance plus two hours social media blogging. We've customized our pricing based on what they want. It's not like All a part, kind of Correct. Yeah, everybody's needs are different, so we have suggested pricing on our website, but that doesn't mean that it's always what we end up with, which we're going to talk about your pricing because I find it.
Speaker 1:I think it's wonderful. So, just to wrap up the web design part of this what is important for folks to consider when they are choosing a web designer to build their business website and what sets you apart? What are you offering to your clients that they can't get elsewhere?
Speaker 2:what sets you apart? What are you offering to your clients that they can't get elsewhere? Making sure your personality doesn't clash, I think, from the get-go, is very important in choosing a designer, because if the designer's not listening to you on what you want, you're not going to get the end product that you were looking for in my opinion.
Speaker 2:What kind of questions do they ask you? Do they base their suggestions on what to have on your website based on what you're telling them or what they feel you need? There's a big difference, because some people don't need a shopping cart, but somebody might be pushing for that With us. It's a very detailed first call.
Speaker 2:I always try to do a call rather than just going back and forth with emails because you don't learn anything and there's so many things that can be misunderstood Not that I can't in a conversation as well, but I try to get as much information from them, make any suggestions, listen to what they have to say and then go from there with a proposal for them. It's important to us the customer service and being responsive to them, outlaying what our process is. It's all about education, making sure the client is involved and providing the client what they want Wonderful.
Speaker 1:We'll talk about the website redesign service that you offer. You work with businesses that already have a solid website that's up and running it's been working for them for years but maybe just needs to be more current or updated with the new technology or the widgets or the modern look and feels, perhaps. What are some of the common signs that you see that indicate that it's time for a business to consider a redesign, and how do these issues affect the performance and the user experience of a website?
Speaker 2:Obviously, the big one was when mobile responsive came out.
Speaker 2:That was a big one that everybody pretty much had to redo.
Speaker 2:Nowadays, if the vision of the company has changed or they've decided they don't like their logo or they don't like their colors, sometimes you can go in and just manipulate what they have, but sometimes it's better to start fresh. What we've just unfortunately had to approach with a couple of our clients was everything is theme-based with WordPress. A couple of those themes were no longer supported by the developer, so that meant no security updates were going to be done to that theme, so we needed to get them out of that theme into a new one. So with that came, okay, we need to pick a theme. If you like what your website already looks like, we can rebuild it looking exactly the same, but just get you into a theme that we know is still supported, and so we gave them a huge discount, because nobody, we don't plan on that, but the shelf life, the general shelf life to a website is three to five years. That means styles have changed. You have to be particular with your fonts and that's why we always send them the Google Safe fonts.
Speaker 2:But, you may even come back and have kind of like a squirrely, almost a script type that we're going to say you don't want to use that because once you go to mobile that's hard to read. So that's where our knowledge comes in and providing you that information when we do our screen share. Okay.
Speaker 1:You've talked about security a lot and I know nothing about this. Explain why it's needed and what it is, and how fast it changes and what it's guarding us against.
Speaker 2:So security for the website, your WordPress website and many of them out there are just like your phone and your computer. Updates happen because most of the time it's woohoo, there's a new feature. This is great. Sometimes there's been a breach somewhere in that plugin or widget, anything even within a theme, so then what happens is the developer has to go and block that door that was opened. Then comes the update. Okay, so it doesn't mean your website has been hacked or breached. It means somebody with that plugin something's happened to their website and now you're vulnerable.
Speaker 2:And now you're vulnerable and what happens, too, is just if you're on a server with thousands of people, other websites you leaving yours vulnerable can penetrate other websites that are on there Interesting it can impact the server that they're on. So anybody that is doing the security maintenance with us we go in and touch your website once a week make sure there's no updates.
Speaker 2:If there's updates, we do them. If there's ever a problem that you come across and we're doing your security maintenance, you just notify us and we say we get it done. We don't charge you to fix something that occurred because of an update. That's not your problem. We also offer complimentary hosting if you're on our security maintenance and then that way we only have clients on our hosting and not we have a dedicated server type of deal.
Speaker 1:So if you build their website, they're not forced to have you host, correct, they can host it elsewhere, but that is something that you offer. Correct. Majority of the cases do they choose to stay with you for hosting the majority of it, it's more of the security maintenance.
Speaker 2:We just offer the hosting as a added benefit, something else that they don't have to pay for if they're doing the security maintenance. But yes, the security maintenance is very affordable, from what I've been told, and it gives you the security and the peace of mind. We have had people that have said, no, we're going to do it on our own and we do a video for them on how to do it, and they come back, okay, and have us do it.
Speaker 2:It's something that is a time consumption and, as a solopreneur, especially trying to remember to run your business, have a life, all of that, and then remember, oh gosh, I need to deal with my website.
Speaker 1:So that's what we're here for. Very good, okay. And what about content? Sometimes it's very hard for people to write their own content, and how do you help the person who's like I don't write copy for a living, I don't know how to do that. Here's what I do. Can you make it sound great? Yeah, do you do that for them?
Speaker 2:So we do have somebody that we've partnered with that does content writing. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And how long does it typically take to complete a redesign of a website?
Speaker 2:That's a very loaded question.
Speaker 1:I know, maybe we should. How long let's say that you're let's start with, you're building a website from scratch for a business. What's the typical turnaround? Is that still too tricky of a question?
Speaker 2:Well, I can explain it. So we always say in our agreement six, eight weeks. Now that is very, very dependent on the client. And if somebody comes to us, they have their pictures, they have their logo, they have their colors, they have all their content. We've finished a website in two weeks, wow, okay. Because there's not a lot of back and forth, but they've got to get us the content and they've got to get us the pictures and they, I don't want to say, weren't prepared. They're prepared in their mind to get it done.
Speaker 2:But we really have come across a lot of people that don't understand the process of building a website.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they don't know that they have to gather all that Exactly. And then they're trying to run a full-time business Exactly and give you the content that you need to run your full-time business. I can imagine that gets a little hairy sometimes.
Speaker 2:That's why we have partnered with these other companies, so that we can try to just ease that pain for them. Yes, it costs a little bit more, but when you have great content, google's going to like you Okay.
Speaker 1:The pictures. A lot of people don't have photos that they've taken and they don't necessarily. It's not a product, it's more of a service. How can you help the people who don't have photos?
Speaker 2:We have a couple of websites that we can send people to. One of them we have a premium license with so that they can look through those premium pictures versus just the regular. Those are options that we have to give them. Most of our companies are the small business, and budget is everything, so I would love to find a photographer that does like stock photography. Yeah, or something of that sort.
Speaker 1:So we're always trying to something that every business owner needs to know and that is pricing and affordability. I love how clearly that you lay out your pricing and your payment plans. Just the fact that you offer payment plans is a big deal and you put that out so clearly on your website. You offer a calculator built into the website right there so you can kind of envision what you have in your mind for your website and plug it in and come up with a ballpark figure of what it might be Businesses and their personalized needs for a website. They're never the same, so can you explain the flexible pricing solution that you've developed that keeps costs down for your clients Absolutely?
Speaker 2:So somebody starting out may not be able to afford the whole package of what we would recommend for what Google's guidelines are. So let's say you offer five services. Google would like for you to have a page for each one of those services. Each page becomes an additional dollar value. So what we always recommend is that's where we do our discovery call and figure out okay, what's the best thing, what kind of budget do you have here? The payment plans are actually interest-free as well, so we're not charging interest on that. We're not here to make money off of charging you interest.
Speaker 1:It's not what we're about.
Speaker 2:But if somebody is just like, okay, I only have this amount and I know that their five services or whatever is not going to correlate with the pricing Right, we always would recommend you make one service page. On that service page you put in order your most used or needed service and then, as your business grows, you build out the page and take that service and make it its own page. So we try to customize it as much as possible. The calculator it's a great thing because some people can go look at that if they want. It's a great thing because some people can go look at that if they want.
Speaker 2:But at the same time I always love doing a phone call with somebody, whether they use us or not, to educate them on this is why you need to do this. You don't need to do this. You need to get your Google business listing. There's all kinds of things that we guide them with and we try to structure. That's why we have a basic pricing up there, but everybody's needs are different and that's where that send them a proposal. If they get back and say I can't do that, that's when we revisit. We could do this, we could do that. What do you think about this type of thing? Interest-free payment plans came in during COVID because we had so many people that had gotten laid off from jobs or whatnot. That are like you know what? I'm going to run with my passion and see if I can make this a business. We still have probably 95% of those people that started their own business that were able to do these interest-free payment plans and their business is still going.
Speaker 2:I love that. So that's how that whole thing got started, and because it is just my husband and I, we're able to do it. We're not ever going to be millionaires with our pricing, but we know we're helping other businesses out there and that's what's important. That's great.
Speaker 1:I love that so much. Can you walk us through your pricing structure, big picture? You can do that here, or people can go to your website. It's laid out perfectly there. Oh, thank you, but just that basic price.
Speaker 2:So the first initial, we have a design fee that's $650. And what that is is it's setting up the skeleton and the homepage. So the skeleton meaning basically how many pages we're anticipating doing, and then each additional page is $249. So with that price comes us designing it for you, us putting the content in us, putting the pictures, putting everything together for you in there, making it look good, making it function, putting all the backend information that needs to be in there for Google for your site to be successful. So it's a pretty inclusive price. We will include in that putting in your social media basic contact form. You don't have to pay for more for a contact form with us, Okay.
Speaker 1:You mean the social media links? The social media links yeah.
Speaker 2:And if you want that plugin that brings in your Google reviews, we can add that in. There's a lot of stuff that's inclusive with us. The things that become extra are shopping carts Sometimes, if there's payment processing or bill pays or, like doctor's offices, appointment scheduling some of that, if we have to, if it's just an embed code, if it's just a code that's being provided for us to put into the website, we don't charge extra for it. If it's any formatting that we have to do within the website, we base it on the amount of time and that's what it's charged. That makes sense. Then, once a website's completed and it's live, if somebody wants to maintain it themselves, they absolutely do.
Speaker 2:When the website's paid for, they own it. If you're on our interest repayment plans, you would be required to stay on our hosting because you don't own it until it's paid for Gotcha. But that would be the price of depending on how many months 12 months, 24 months that you want to spread out those payment options. That, plus the security maintenance, would be your monthly payment. It's very affordable. But the big thing that I like about it there's an end to that. Some of these places that you just pay a monthly fee there's never an end to it, or the website.
Speaker 2:With us. Once a website's paid for, that price goes away. If you want us to continue doing the security maintenance, absolutely we can. If not, you own the website, you can move it and do your security maintenance yourself, Okay.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about the security and maintenance. You've got three plans there. You've got the basic, the business and the e-commerce. Can you tell me about those three plans?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the basic is for those that have just like two to three pages. What it basically boils down to is the amount of plugins and what kind of theme is on. There is the pricing, Usually once you go over two to three pages. That's where it takes you into the business, and that's $65 a month. All the options and everything. All of this is on our website and it's probably easier for somebody to visit that than to list them all here, explain everything here.
Speaker 2:But the reason that e-commerce goes up over the basic is because there's a lot more security and a lot more monitoring on our end because of the payment. Just because somebody has an e-commerce site doesn't mean people are going to try to hack it. Regular sites try to get hacked when there's no information that they can really benefit from, so we take security very seriously.
Speaker 1:So, everyone, you can go to webdesignsyourwaynet and they do have under their pricing page a drop down menu that gives you all of their pricing and some wonderful calculators for you to calculate what the price might be for yourself.
Speaker 2:One thing that is special about us is we do work on other people's websites that somebody else has built. We get a lot of calls where their web designer is not responding to them or this or that. So if it's a WordPress site, they own the website and have admin log in. We always ask for the login to look how many updates are behind, what kind of coding is in here and everything like that. But we've found a lot of other designers will not take on somebody else's work.
Speaker 2:And we are one of the few that will, after we've looked at it.
Speaker 1:Oh, good, good to know, and said that, yeah. What are the factors that contribute to the affordability of your website services.
Speaker 2:As we've mentioned before, we've purchased many premium themes so we can take that theme and manipulate it to however we need. So basically, what he does is he imports all of the coding but then goes in and changes the look and feel of it. So that's where it becomes a lot more affordable in our eyes is because we're not having to go in and custom code everything. We change coding on it, but some of the standard stuff is already there and that cuts down on the amount of time. It is like I'd mentioned, just my husband and I, so we make enough to survive. Having a website that is functional for other businesses is very important to us. So that's the whole reason why we're still going strong. I think is because we do care and we want everybody to be successful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you mentioned this a little bit earlier. Besides the additional pages, what are some of the add-ins that folks might want to choose for their website? You did mention e-commerce.
Speaker 2:The shopping carts are usually the biggest thing and that gets expensive from the fact that there's a lot going into putting in products, the shopping cart setup. We charge $250 for the actual setup, but then it's per product.
Speaker 1:Because there's got to be a picture for each product, a description for each product, and then sometimes there's the variable.
Speaker 2:So let's say you're going with a shirt, you've got five different colors to choose from and the colors, so those are all variables, what we refer to as variables. So that's the process of okay, how many variables do we have to add in?
Speaker 2:And we do that all based again on our pricing. One of the things that with our pricing, we charge 85 an hour but we bill in 15 minute increments. So even when the website's done and you have a change that you need done, you just call us or email us hey, I need this done. We quote you it's going to take us 15 minutes, this is your price, that's nice, it's not an automatic $85.
Speaker 1:Another hour? Yeah, that's really nice. Thank you Very generous again. What about photo galleries? And how do you handle videos and are people using videos in their homepages?
Speaker 2:Yes, we're actually working on one right now for the banner picture.
Speaker 2:They wanted a video going. What we recommend with anybody putting a video on is they put it on their YouTube channel and then we integrate it into the website. Okay, the big reason is if you get too many videos on there, or too large of videos, it slows down your speed for how fast your website will load, and that's a big ding by Google. But if it's sitting on YouTube's servers and just pulling in from there, the load speed isn't going to be impacted the way it is if you're just having the video sitting on there. Is that an add-in? It's a code. No, we don't charge extra for that.
Speaker 2:No, not at all.
Speaker 1:And lastly, let's talk about what your prices do not include.
Speaker 2:It basically boils down to the e-commerce any kind of configuring of something that needs to be put in Extended contact form. Sometimes, if they want somebody to have a fillable form on there For doctors and things like that absolutely not or if they're collecting any kind of social security, birthdates, things like that, you need another service that will encrypt that for you. We can build out. Let's say, they do interior design and they want to know what services that somebody's interested in and so they want to know is it for the bathroom, is it the bedroom, or there's got to be different options for them to do. Sometimes those fall into the custom formatting and how many options or questions that they're asking would be dependent again on our pricing, and we would just quote that out. We're pretty inclusive. From everything that we've come across, there's not a lot that we charge extra for, just trying to keep it affordable.
Speaker 1:Do you have any future plans that you can share with us?
Speaker 2:I have no idea where the chamber is going to take me, because I just absolutely love this chamber that we have here and being an ambassador with it. A couple of us ambassadors have started a coastal mastermind, so we meet the third Tuesday of every month. I'm currently at the chamber. With the way we're growing, we may be needing to find another space.
Speaker 1:Our fourth one will be June 18th, I believe it is Okay, give me again, there's the third Tuesday of every month, third Tuesday of every month, and currently it is at the Topsail Chamber in Surf City, correct, yeah, tell me what you're doing there, I want to hear.
Speaker 2:So it's a networking of some sorts, but we don't focus on networking. What we have designed it to do is anybody that has an issue within their business. They need help with that. They don't know who to turn to. Most likely, with the number of people that we have coming, somebody has been through it. One of our other facilitators, andrew, has four or five businesses and I have turned to him many times saying, hey, what would you do in this situation and things like that. So we have had a lot of conversations here recently about social media and you just kind of see people's eyes light up when you know it's sunk in of what somebody else is telling them to try or do or things like that.
Speaker 2:So we have just a splash page up coastalmastermindscom where somebody can submit a topic, or we just show up at the meetings we do a real quick introduction and then if somebody submitted a topic, then that topic goes first. Otherwise, okay, what do we need to talk about? Who has issues, things such as signs being put out in Surf City that aren't allowed, and we have all kinds of conversations and people have really, I think, walked away with some knowledge, and my main focus was to help this community grow. In the little over a year that we've been here, I've seen businesses that have come and gone in just that short amount of time and it just breaks my heart. But it's just getting them the knowledge that hey, there is people here to help you and that's where we're really trying.
Speaker 2:I'm posting in a bunch of different groups to just get the awareness out there that hey, there's other business owners that are here to help and it lets you get to know the business owners as well and ultimately we can solve problems for one another. Two, we can shop with one another and three, we become salespeople for one another and that saves on your budget for salespeople, because the more I'm all about knowing, liking and trusting somebody before referring them out, and what better way to get to know somebody than in groups like this? Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love it. It's a great concept. I love that you started this right. This was your baby.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it's a way to go and sit down with like-minded people and problem-solving together. You're right, I didn't think about that, but if you sit down at the table with somebody who's 10 people, chances are someone has already run into that problem and they found a way to solve it. And they found a way to solve it. And what a great way to share that information. I love that people not just people are showing up with their problems, but people are showing up to help people solve their problems.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love that. That's why we put the little splash page up for the website, so that if somebody was embarrassed and didn't, you know, sometimes it's like, hey, I'm struggling with this, with my business, but you don't want to talk about it because you're embarrassed. That, but you don't want to talk about it because you're embarrassed that topic comes in. Nobody has to know who brought the topic up. Oh, interesting, and that way, if it's a financial problem or this or that, we're all there. And that's the thing that I love about this community is that those people that do come together in situations like this are there to help. They need help too, but they are absolutely willing to give you their time and their efforts in any way they can, or at least from the people I've gotten in my path so far.
Speaker 1:Love this and that's what I love. All right, give us the website again. Coastalmastermindscom. Okay, I will be at your next meeting.
Speaker 2:And actually the next meeting. We have Andrew, who I mentioned is going to get up and just do a big or a quick informational on business and the book Traction. He has recommended that we all read Traction. Yeah, Like I said, Andrew has his hands in a lot of things and his business. He was in the military, I don't know what branch, but he is just this standup guy that I think is just amazing. And he has got so much knowledge that he's going to give us all topics and things to work on within our business that can help us, and then again it'll be a roundtable of, I'm sure, a ton of questions.
Speaker 2:That's wonderful, but the book. I've started listening to the book and at first I was like it's talking about employees, andrew, why are you making me listen to this? And I said something to him. I'm like, okay, how is this relating to my business? He goes, you know I don't have employees. And he goes, go back and listen again with an open mind. And I went back and I started listening and I'm like, oh, that's how it could apply to me.
Speaker 2:So there's something for everybody in everything, and that's the thing. So even if you don't have employees, the information that's in this book could help you.
Speaker 1:Okay, I'll be attending the meeting and I'll be buying the book. Okay, and finally, what is the one key takeaway that you want us to remember about web designs? Your way.
Speaker 2:That we're here to help. We want every business to be able to afford and have an amazing website.
Speaker 1:Is there anything on the horizon for web designs your way or for you?
Speaker 2:I just hope our business keeps growing. I love servicing this area. We again can work with anybody within the United States is what we try to stay with, but everything is local. Any of the people that we refer out is local to the US. It's funny with most of our clients or not most of them, but a majority of them in Arizona still that time change. I really didn't think about that. Some calls are still coming in at four o'clock and it's seven o'clock our time, so our phones are always on. If somebody has a problem, if their website's down, that's a major problem and we get it taken care of. Time isn't a thing to us.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, sometimes Okay, a lot of people shut down at five o'clock.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it phones off, but that's good.
Speaker 1:But if you're working across the US, you do have that three-hour time difference that you're going to have to accommodate.
Speaker 2:And even weekends. A lot of places just close their doors at 5 on a Friday and will not respond to emails. We look at everything. We may not respond or we may just respond. We'll look at this on Monday. But we have some of these business in our hands in a lot of ways with websites so we try to be as responsive as possible.
Speaker 1:If it's something critical that comes up, you'll handle it All right. So let's give out that contact information. Their website is webdesignsyourwaynet and the email is Evelyn at webdesignsyourwaynet. That's E-V-E-L-Y-N. E-v-e-l-y-n. At webdesignsyourwaynet. The phone number is 910-830-3108. 910-830-3108.
Speaker 1:You can find and follow Web Designs your Way on Facebook and Instagram and I will have all of this information in the show notes with the links hot so you can just click and go. So thank you, listeners, for joining us today. I always appreciate you listening each week and for your support, and thank you again, evelyn, for telling us all about Web Designs your Way. Thank you so much for the opportunity and thank you again, evelyn, for telling us all about web designs your way. Thank you so much for the opportunity. And YouTube.
Speaker 1:Please also go to topsoulinsidercom and join our mailing list by clicking on the Make Me a Topsoul Insider button. While you're there, you can click the Send Me a Voicemail button and let me know exactly what you're thinking. Your message just might be on an episode of Topsoul Insider. You can email me at krista at topsoulinsidercom or call or text me at 910-800-0111. Thank you for listening and supporting Topsail Insider and our local businesses and nonprofits. These are our neighbors and our friends and together we build a mighty and a beautiful community I'm super proud to be a part of I'll see you around Topsail.
