Full Transcript
[0:00]
Welcome to the eight of five web minute. And today we're talking about why your business website might be turning away customers right here on the central coast just because it looks a little dusty. It's a it's a really frustrating thing. We see all over San Luis Obispo County. You're pouring everything into your business, you know, managing inventory, staff, service, but that one digital front door, your website. If it looks neglected, that first impression cost you real money every day. Absolutely. And we should frame this, I think, not as a tech problem, but as a branding and a trust problem. We're not talking about some massive multi thousand dollar redesign. No, not at all. We're just talking about the basics perceived professionalism and the speed at which people make that judgment is frankly unsettling. It should be for any business owner. It should be because that window of opportunity is just tiny. Research shows visitors form an opinion about your website and by extension your entire business in just 0.05 seconds. 50 milliseconds. That's I mean, a human eye blink takes 10 times longer. We're talking about an instantaneous subconscious reaction. That's it. It's faster than they can even read your company name. It's purely reflexive. Your brain just decides, is this place legit? Does this look professional? Can I trust this all before your conscious mind even knows what you sell? And if that snap judgment is negative because the site looks old or clunky, it's overwhelmingly negative. And that's the thing. People have so many options now. They aren't going to stick around and give you the benefit of the doubt. Your competitors just one click away. And there's data to back this up. It's not just a theory. Oh, absolutely. We see a quantified get this 75% of consumers admit they judge your company's credibility based only on your website's design. Three out of four people. So three quarters of your potential customers are deciding if you're trustworthy just by the look and feel of your site. Exactly. So if your hours are wrong or the team photo is from 2012 or you're
[2:00]
still showing a Christmas sale in March, the customer just connects the dots. They think, well, they don't pay attention to their website. They probably don't pay attention to the details that their service either. That neglect. It sends a signal, a signal of being out of date or worse, just careless. And here's the brutal part. People do not give second chances online. They don't call you to ask if your hours are right. They just leave. They just leave. So what does that look like in the numbers? Because the retention rates are what I think really shocked business owners. They're staggering. The data shows that 88% of online consumers will not return to a website after just one single bad experience. Wow. 88%. You paid good money probably to get them there and then poof. They're gone forever gone forever. And let's narrow that down even more. 30% will stop engaging completely. If the content or layout just looks unprofessional, they see the dust, they feel that friction and they're out. They go straight to your local competitor here in SLO County who, you know, kept their site fresh. It's a measurable leak in the revenue pipeline. A huge one. OK. So if the penalty is that high losing almost nine out of 10 potential return customers, why do so many successful small businesses right here on the central coast have these, you know, aging websites? It can't be that they don't want to succeed. No, it's definitely not a lack of desire. If you really do a deep dive into why these updates fail, it always comes down to the business owner battling to relentless constraints. Let's start with the big one time. Time. Exactly. We have to acknowledge the workload. Small business owners are wearing a dozen hats. The stats say 84% work more than 40 hours a week. We know it's often way more than that. They're doing sales. They're doing payroll. They're handling customer emergencies. And here's the most damning stat for me. The average business owner gets about one and a half hours of uninterrupted, truly productive time per day. And hour and a half. That's it. That's the golden window. It's the most valuable thing they have. And that time has to go to tasks that are urgent.
[4:01]
And in a small business, the urgent never ever stops payroll is urgent. A customer crisis is urgent. A leaky roof is urgent and updating the website. Well, that's just important. It feels like it can wait. It won't crash the business today. Precisely. So the urgent stuff eats up that 90 minutes. Right. And the website update gets pushed to tomorrow, which becomes next week, which becomes never the site fails because the owner is just overwhelmed. Okay. But let's say they do it. They find that hour, they sit down, determined to make changes. And that's when they hit the second barrier, which is, I think, even more frustrating, the complexity. We call this the easy trap. Because every DIY platform promises it's simple. Just log in. It's so easy. And then you log in and it looks like the cockpit of a 747. Just dozens of confusing menus, warnings and 37 plugins that all need an urgent update. You just want to change one price on a service page. But now you're scrolling past settings for, I don't know, SEO, database configuration, caching. And there's that big scary publish button. The fear of clicking the wrong thing and breaking the whole site is, it's paralyzing. And that paralysis just leads right back to doing nothing. The site stays dusty. And look, this isn't the user's fault. These systems were built for web professionals, not for a local plumber or an accountant in Paso Robles. The numbers prove it. Almost half of users, 49% say publishing content or making a simple change takes them over an hour and hour and get this 14% said it takes a full day or more. That's a whole day of lost time for a business owner here on the central coast, trying to fight with software that was never made for them in the first place. And then there's the other side of it, the person who built it, the ghost designer, you paid a freelancer or maybe an agency, a lot of money. And now they're gone or they charge, you know, $150 an hour just to change a sentence. So you wait. You decide to wait until you have a huge list of changes to justify the cost. And in the meantime, the site just sits there untouched, getting older and older.
[6:01]
It's a false economy. So that combination, the lack of time and the fear of complexity, it creates this perfect storm for neglect, but that neglect, it's not just about looks. It opens up a much bigger threat. This is the invisible killer, the hidden security risk. Most websites are built on platforms that rely on third party add-ons or plugins for basic things like contact forms or photo galleries. And those plugins are the weak points. They're like leaving little side doors unlocked all over your building. They're exactly that. In fact, 97% of all security vulnerabilities come directly from those plugins. If you're not constantly updating them, you're leaving your back door wide open for hackers. And since we just established that owners are too busy or too confused to even log in and update content, they are definitely not logging in to run security patches. The hackers know this. Oh, they count on it. And the risk is accelerating. Last year alone, almost 6,000 new vulnerabilities were found. That's a 24% increase. And these aren't personal attacks. It's just automated bots, right? Scanning millions of sites for known holes. That's the key. They use automated tools. If your site has an outdated plugin, a bot finds it in seconds, injects some malicious code. And suddenly your website is selling fake sunglasses to people in a royal grandeur. Your reputation is just destroyed overnight. So security maintenance isn't a nice to have. It's essential insurance. But let's shift from avoiding disaster to actually driving revenue because keeping your site fresh has a huge, huge upside. A massive, a measurable benefit. And this is where it gets really interesting for a business owner. We always think about adding new pages, but what about the stuff you already have? That's the gold mine. Those service pages you wrote three years ago, old blog posts, that's your online authority and search engines reward freshness. So you're saying SEO success is less about the one time sprint of building the site and more about the long term marathon of keeping it maintained. It absolutely is. The data is clear, a staggering 76% of monthly traffic and an incredible 92% of
[8:03]
leads come from content that has been kept fresh over time. 92% of your leads that just completely reframes the whole idea of website maintenance. And here's the best part. You don't need a total overhaul studies have shown that when businesses just update their existing content, polish it up, refresh some stats, add a new photo and republish it traffic to those exact pages goes up by an average of 106%. You double your traffic just by tending the garden you already planted. That is an incredible return on your time. It proves that search engines and your customers are just looking for signs of life. But we run right back into those same barriers, time and complexity. So the payoff is huge, but the owner still doesn't have the time or the technical confidence. So what does this all mean for someone listening? The only logical path is to what take it completely off their plate. It's the only sustainable answer for a task that needs constant vigilance like security and consistent effort like updates. The only way to guarantee it gets done is a managed solution. You need someone whose only job is to own that entire problem for you. So let's unpack what a truly managed approach looks like. How does it solve the time, complexity and security problems all at once? Well, the key difference is responsibility. First and foremost, with a managed approach, you never log in. That whole intimidating dashboard, it's just gone from your life. You need to change. You send a quick email. You make a call. We handle it, usually within the business day. So no more fighting with block editors or worrying. You're going to break something. The burden is just gone. It's gone. Second, security becomes our problem, not yours. We build our sites on a secure architecture from the ground up, which means we get rid of all those exploitable third party plugins in the first place. So it's secure by design instead of needing constant patches. Exactly. And maybe most important for businesses here in San Luis Obisco, the service is local. You're not a ticket number in a call center somewhere. You're talking to a neighbor, someone who actually understands the local market.
[10:04]
When you need help, someone right here in a royal grande, answers the phone. Your small update is our top priority. That ghost designer problem is solved forever. It's the peace of mind that lets the business owner get that precious hour and a half back to actually focus on their business. You get the professional look you need to compete without having become a part time web developer yourself. It's about letting you focus on your mission. You eliminate the headache, the risk and then neglect. And you make sure your digital front door is always open and welcoming. That's the quick tip for today. If you want a professional website without the agency price tag or the DIY headache, here is the better way. At UGRO.Pro, we build it, we manage it and we handle every update forever, all for just $70 a month. There is zero setup fee, no contract, and it is strictly month to month. So there is zero risk. We're local here in AG and we can have you live in days, not months. Want to see what your site could look like? Go to UGRO.Pro right now and we'll design three custom mockups for your business, completely free, no strings attached. Thanks for listening and keep growing.