 My name is Martin, I'm here with Square, a small business and community advocacy team. We're gonna be going over how to bring your brand and business online. This is not square specific. This can work for any website builder you're using now, there are any platform you want to build. So it's not necessarily square specific. I do have well over now, almost a dozen years now in the domain name website industry. So a lot of my work has been in the e-commerce space. Obviously last year, much, much busier due to COVID and shelter in place and lockdown. So we're gonna be talking about today. For us, it's crucial here at Square that we help our sellers understand the importance of owning their own online store. So there's a couple of key reasons. One, when you own your own web store, you have full creative control. You can iterate on merchandising, how your products look, how you're gonna describe them. And there's really ultimate control over the vision. Second, you have control on price, right? So with marketplaces, which serve a purpose, there's usually commission fees or finding customers. But with your own online store, you have control over your price and a complete control over your margins. Third and most important, you own the relationship with your customers, right? I really wanna reiterate how important it is that you own that relationship with your customers. With some of the other platforms, you don't necessarily own that relationship, right? It's your brand, it's your name, but at the end of the day, that marketplace owns that relationship. So as we talk about your website and the purpose of your website, right? The somewhat obvious reason for what you think a website can do for you here, right? The on the left hand side, some of the more common purposes I hear from talking with folks. On the left, you know, attract traffic and grow an audience, showcase your products, share what you know, right? Advertise your business, really some of the more common issues there. I do see someone mentioning that I'm frozen, am I still frozen for folks? Kate, is everything okay? Martin, you look fine to me, but I am checking it out. But if it looks like Martin's video was frozen, please send us a message in the chat. But I think you're good to go, Martin. Okay. Yeah, we're getting a lot of not frozen now. It's okay. I think it's Susan might just need to like refresh. So while we'll just keep going here, while all those are great reasons to have a website, they don't necessarily help you do anything specific, right? Which is why you wanna turn that purpose into a goal, right? The goal is the main real reason why you wanna need a website. It's what's gonna happen as a result of you having it, right? So we see on the right hand side here the goals, right? So when I hear folks say, I wanna showcase my products. Really, it's just you wanna sell your products, right? You wanna sell more of those. You're not showcasing them just to have them look nice. You really want to start selling them, right? You wanna share what you know. At the end of the day, maybe it's because you want to become a public speaker and you wanna book more speaking engagements, right? Having that end goal in mind for when you're building your website, it's really gonna help you in that journey. So once you get really to the heart of why you want your business online, we're gonna go over next, really some of the content you need to make that happen. And so first up, we're gonna review some of the basics that really any successful website should have. And so we'll go over these here. Number one, a logo, right? If you have one and you definitely should, it should be displayed right away, right? Make sure that when it, you know, your logo fits into your brand in every way, especially with colors, right? Just think about when we were all consumers here, we've all spent a whole lot more time online this past this a little over a year now. Think about your own experiences, right? When you go to a website for the first time, usually the first thing you're gonna see is a logo either in the upper left corner or right in the upper center there. And that's intentional, right? You wanna show that, you know, a gift that's social proof, right? Oh, okay, this is the logo I recognize the brand. This is, you know, who I thought I was gonna visit. The second one here, the search box. It's a big one, especially when it's in the upper fold. And that's the upper fold when we refer to that, that's the top part of the page of a website you see before you have to do any scrolling down. So whether that's on desktop, laptop, and mobile, what you see before you have to do any scrolling, right? That's what we call the upper fold, right? Simply having the option to search, you know, helps put buyers at ease, even if they don't use it, right? It's a transparency queue for buyers. Letting them know that, okay, he's not hiding anything in the search for anything at any time. Your footer, right? Studies show that after a person visits your website, after looking at the logo, the main navigation, and the main, you know, image in your header, they're gonna scroll down through the website kind of in a Z formation, and they're gonna end up at the footer that's a great place, you know, for contact information, your phone number, link to your email, social media links, maybe even, you know, a newsletter sign up for, right? So speaking of social network links, right? This goes really to social proof and things that are familiar, right? Buyers are gonna do some investigating into your business, and that means looking at your activity on social media, right? The header image or the primary image or sometimes referred to as your hero image, right? It's one of the first pieces of content your visitors are gonna see on your website, and it really does play a key role in grabbing a person's attention and establishing a connection. Again, this is that first image you see before doing any scrolling. And that image really can give your website, you know, personality, make it stand out from your competitors, or really showcase, you know, your product. Mobile Optimize, right? This is very, you know, can't stress enough the importance of being mobile. You know, shopping from smartphones, major driver of e-commerce sales. The percentage of sales coming from a mobile device, you know, we see that go up year over year, and it only continues to do so. We did a recap of 2020, and we found that, you know, for Square and Square Online stores, 80% of the sales that went to Square Online websites were from a mobile device, 80%. So that's, you know, just an astronomical amount. Security SSL, right? So a must-have for any website, especially if you're taking payments, right? This helps protect you and your visitors. This is the padlock you'll normally see in the address bar of your browser. Sometimes you'll see, I'll say HTTPS, right? The S standing for secure. Most browsers, Google, Firefox especially, if your website is not secured, we'll, you know, give an error message or have a big red X there, showing that it's not secure. And warning folks to not visit your website. And then last, you know, standard pages, right? So when you're thinking about building your website and you think about visiting websites that you go to regularly, it's all pretty standard stuff for your homepage, about page, a shop or product page. Those are standard pages that any site will have. The names might be a little bit different, right? You can get creative with that. And of course you can have as many pages as you want. So, you know, I'll just take this question for Frank before moving on. Talk about being mobile optimized. Most website builders today, that's gonna be a major component already. So if you start to, you know, if you're looking at building a website for the first time, you'll wanna double check with whichever provider you're using if mobile optimization is automatically included, right? So, and most new, most up-to-date website builders automatically include that. Most of them are gonna be mobile-first by design, because it's just because it's such a huge portion of online visits. So that's, you know, you wanna just double check that when you're building your, you know, whenever you choose the website builder that you go with, if it's mobile-first, right? Most of them are. There are a few older platforms that you have to have a separate mobile site or you have to design it separately on mobile. That's, we're seeing less and less of that, but most of they will include that. All right, so next up, so that's just some of the standard pages, some of the standard things you'll see on just about really any successful, you know, website. Let's talk next here about what to consider when registering your business's domain name, right? So your address on the internet. The most common domain extensions, right? bn.com.net.info, right? These are some of the first domain extensions that were available to the public, which is why so many sites use them, right? And are most recognizable. So let's look at some of the, you know, some of the things you wanna consider, right? If you're using, you know, slang or words with multiple spellings, right? It makes it harder for your customers to find your site. For example, the one I see a lot is the word express, right? Whether you spell it with ex or just with the ex, right? If you're not actually sending somebody a link to your site or giving them a business card with the correct spelling on there, maybe you're just verbalizing it. They might forget how you spell it and maybe, you know, there's a competitor with a similar name and that domain name goes to their website. So be just be cognizant of that, right? Same thing with if your domain name is too long and complex, you risk your customers mistyping or misspelling it, right? Short and simple is the way to go as much as you can, right? Numbers and hyphens as well, often misunderstood. Is it the number five spelled out or is it the numerical number five, right? Hyphens folks tend to, you know, forget about those or misplace them and end up at a different, you know, website or even just to an error page saying it doesn't exist. If you don't have a unique business name, then consider using key words that describe your business and the services you offer, right? Do some research around it. Good example, like, you know, in San Francisco, right? If you're, if you're, you know, I just had to have my windshield replaced today. Let's say your windshield repair company in San Francisco, you know, you could do like, you know, San Francisco window repair, right? Or San Francisco glass repair, you know, something like that, you know, .com, right? Something that is key word, something that someone would just type into Google to search for and it ends up at your, you know, Mark's, you know, windshield repair, you know, business name, right? So that would be something where you use key words versus just your business name to kind of help with your optimizing of your search engine, right? Getting more traffic. And then, you know, choosing a domain name that's catchy and memorable is essential, right? To your overall brand scheme. So I'll highly recommend once you come up with a good name, that's available, I recommend blocking that in. Even if you think you might change it, right? Domains are pretty inexpensive today. I mean, most domain names are $10 to $20 per year. You can only register domain names in yearly increments. So the minimum you can do is one year, right? So $10, $20 for the year. Maybe, you know, a month from now, you will get a better domain name. There are domain names that folks purchase. They register in advance and then sell. What would be considered like a premium domain name, they register them in hopes that someone would buy it from them. Those are also some options for you. So now that you have your domain name locked in, right? What can you do with it, right? Number one, obviously connected to your website, right? That way you have a unique address on the internet for folks to find you and direct them to. Number two, create custom email addresses, right? So instead of putting in a Yahoo or AOL or Hotmail address on your business card or on your website, now you can do, you know, info at mynewdomainname.com or president at or sales at or anything like that with your custom domain name giving you a much more, you know, professional look and feel. And then third, when you do get a good domain name or register your domain name, I'd register your social media handles to match, right? Your Instagram name, your Facebook, your Twitter, those anything like that, use your domain name to match, you know, your social media handles as well, giving you a really consistent experience all the way around. And then speaking of social media links, David asked, how do social media links work? Normally in your footer or on your page, you're just gonna have the logos of each of those social medias and it's just gonna link to your actual profile. All right, so a big one nowadays, right? So when you're shopping online, you're paying really close attention to the images, really subconsciously, right? You know, you often don't realize it. We know that product photos are important and we've done research around that, right? We've done surveys of our sellers and folks who are looking to get online. Over 80% of e-commerce shoppers have said that product pictures are influential when they're deciding whether they buy or they wanna buy a product online. Conversely, right? Over 25% of online product returns are because the item looked different than the photos. So you wanna have a really sharp and accurate representation of your product. And most will say, you know, the old saying, pictures really worth a thousand words. If I can't see it, I can't make a decision about it so I'm normally not gonna buy it, all right? If you don't have a good photo or no photo of a product and you're trying to sell it online, it's gonna do very poorly. So let's look at some examples here. So this one here, this might be for example of this board game here and the green background itself is not necessarily bad but the reflection within the image itself is very distracting, right? So it looks like the board game is on like a glass tabletop and so that's kinda given a mirror effect with that background and then that pattern is there, right? So it kinda makes it a little distracting. If we take that away, right? The same photo with an all white background, no reflection makes the product really stand out. Those colors here really pop, right? And then so we talk about like the images here, right? So like I said, this is gonna be your standard photo on the internet, right? All white background, we call it the Amazon effect. When you go to Amazon, you don't see any backgrounds at all, just white. And again, this one here, although the color is great, you can definitely use some color there. I said really what's just distracting there is that reflection. So it's just some best tips and practices when you're taking product photos, right? Keep testing until you find what works for your product photos or works for something or one thing may not work best for you, but just keep testing, right? I mentioned the white backgrounds, but if you're looking to build a unique brand, right? For your site that stands out, you can definitely consider using bright colors, prints to match your overall brand as long as it doesn't interfere too much with how the image itself appears. Generally, two-thirds of our shoppers say that multiple camera angles are gonna be most influential in helping them make a buying decision, right? And then over half of those same shoppers said showing close-ups or even distance shots are important to them to get a really good look here. I just, you know, when you think about that, right? You're thinking about your product photos. No one can, you know, when we think about the in-person experience, right? If you have a physical product, they can touch it, they can see it. You know, if it's a bracelet, they can try it on. You know, some of your product photos, when you see jewelry specifically, right? You see it, it's on a wrist watch, right? It's on someone's wrist, a ring, they show it on someone's hand to really give you that overall look and feel of, oh, that's what it would look like on me, right? Giving them that kind of future-stating of, oh, that would look good on my wrist as well. You know, artistic considerations aside, right? Lighting that brings out the best representation of your products, whether that be natural lighting, studio lighting, but again, just really testing until it works best for you. And then queuing up the next slide here, where we'll discuss, you know, some really common uses for per video, right? And as we know, right? Nowadays, video is the king of content, right? So we're gonna look at some of the most used types of video in marketing today, right? So if you're looking to increase your brand discoverability, right? Educational videos are the best type of content to achieve that type of goal. Cure your video towards product benefits when you're doing product videos, that'll help resonate more with your audience, right? Not just listing, not just explaining a list of features, really letting them know how that product is gonna benefit them. And then everyone wants to feel like they're a part of a great story, right? Using company or culture videos to tell yours, right? Really show them the real people on your team, right? Help humanize your brand and boost trust. FAQ videos, right? Should help answer the most common doubts amongst your clients. A clear FAQ video can make your prospects doubts disappear and get them ready to move forward with the purchase. Testimonial videos, really powerful. Help build up your brand trust by showing your clients or your past customers, right? Talking about their initial pain points and how your product or service solved that for them. I really love testimonial videos just because they're about you, but they're not from you. Again, that goes to that social proof. Oh, it's not just, you know, Martin's website company talking about how great they are. It's this my neighbor or someone in the community that says, oh yeah, I did try their product or service. I did try their food, it was amazing, right? That really holds a lot of weight. And then how-to videos, right? I mean, that's, you know, the popularity of YouTube can really test to that. They're great because they show your prospects, you know, looking to solve a particular problem and a how-to video can really help do that, right? So that's when you want to definitely use how-to videos. Maybe using, you know, YouTube as a marketing channel as well, maybe a YouTube channel as well of how to use your specific product or how your product solves a specific, you know, and problem, right? I go to YouTube all the time for how to change, you know, I had to change the tail light in my daughter's car, right? It went out and went to YouTube and put in my make-and-model and found it exactly. And, you know, they had links to purchase the actual light bulbs from them, right? So when we talk about next up here are our next slide here, calls to action or what you might refer to seeing like in marketing, speak a CTA, right? You really want to use, you know, call to actions that guide your users to your site and down a path, you know, to do business with you, right? You really could just be driving away audiences and losing opportunities if you're not using those correctly. So when you think about a call to action, you know, I think about someone walking in your store and the signs that are in your brick and mortar telling them where certain products and services are or where to go, right? That's a call to action. You're not there on your website to tell them what to do. So you're using buttons or phrases to do that, right? So the two main purposes of your call to action, you know, should be to tell someone what they should do and give them the motivation to do that, right? Here we have an example of a call to action on Squared's website, right? You'll notice the blue button really stands out from the dark background. Your eye is really drawn to it immediately. And again, this is above the fold, right? You don't have to do any scrolling down to find that button. We'll have other calls to action below that in case you do scroll down. We have that front and center that, right? It's telling you, start a free online store. It's not maybe, or please, it's just straightforward to the point calling that to action, right? So you really want to place your calls to action where people can easily see them, idealate the top or the center of the page, right? Make them stand out by using larger font, bright colors, contrasting colors that we have here, right? Tell people exactly why they should subscribe if you're doing a subscription newsletter, right? Perhaps they're gonna enjoy special offers, exclusive content, discounts, right? What's in it for them? You could even use a call to action to drive your prospects, you know, to watch one of the videos that we just discussed or to go to one of your social media channels to, you know, maybe you're driving them to watch your Instagram live where you're talking about your new product and showcasing it and showing it up, right? So, you know, and of course who doesn't like, you know, free stuff, right? You know, you can use calls to actions to get, you know, free discounts, freebies. Maybe it's, you know, an ebook or a white paper, anything like that, right? Think about your own buying behaviors when you're going to a website and what makes you, you know, put in the email address there too, because, you know, that once you put your email address in there, you're gonna get something, right? You're gonna get something back. You've entered into what I like to think of a social contract, right? I'm telling you, if you, you know, sign up today, you're gonna get 25% off your next order. I'm gonna be expecting that email, you know, in my inbox after I type in my email address. A good place to use calls to actions is in your email marketing, right? In 2020 alone, over 300 billion emails were sent and received each and every day. I love email marketing because it's really just a tool that you can't afford to use because of the value it really brings. And, you know, people ask, you know, well, what is it? Simply it's just using email, you know, to promote your products or services. That's it. And there's a ton of different email program, email marketing program to do that, but it's not just that, right? It's a great way, you know, great email marketing program. I think, you know, it's a great opportunity for you to create and or deepen relationships between you and your customers, right? And still to this day, one of the most cost-effective forms of digital marketing out there. So if you're just getting started with an email with the website presence, I think, oh, maybe I shouldn't do that. I would definitely recommend anytime if you're getting a website up for the first time, definitely just add a pop-up or even maybe in your footer, right, a place for folks to sign up to receive information from you because that will just build up your email list and then eventually, you know, to where it gets to a bigger point, you can start sending out emails once you're in it and really, you know, have something to offer. I get folks all the time really, you know, feel weird about doing email marketing because they think, oh, I don't wanna be a spammer. I don't wanna do that. Yeah, definitely don't be a spammer, right? But again, when you put that on your website, there's nothing forcing someone to add their email address in there. It's, again, a social contract. If you're putting that on there, you know, you say, hey, I'm gonna send you, you know, give us your email for our monthly newsletter. Okay, I know I'm gonna get a monthly newsletter. If I'm getting a daily newsletter from you, I'm gonna mark you a spam and I'm gonna unsubscribe and I'm gonna be left with the poor customer experience, right? So live up to what you're promising there. If you're gonna give me, you know, a monthly newsletter, send me a monthly newsletter. I know that when I sign up, I'm gonna get that. That's why I have a specific email address that I used to sign up for offers from websites. So, you know, when you're talking about, you know, what kind of email should I be sending, right? Look at, think about, you know, what do I look forward to receiving in my inbox? What can I share that my customers might not know about me or my product, right? If I were my own customer, what would I find interesting? Right, these could be personal stories about a product or if you're a restaurant, it could be the chef's inspiration behind a new dish or, you know, news about the industry you're in, right? I'd like to say if you're informing, you're already being interesting and it won't feel like an advertisement, right? Even if you're not ready to start sending emails, definitely wanna include, you know, those, you know, start building up that list of interesting users. All right, so social media, a big one here and really still evolving. So I'd like to say, you know, no social media account can replace your website, which I like to think about as your digital home, right? It's the center of gravity for your online presence, right? So we're gonna review what you can do so that you can be successful with social media marketing, right? Number one, do your research, right? On what social networks does your target audience hang out? Where are your competitors, right? What does each network offer you? Don't be on every single network posting the same exact thing just because, you know, you wanna be on there, right? I don't, I go to YouTube specifically for some things that go to Instagram for others and Facebook, you know, for others. So don't just be on them, all of them, just to be on them, really figure out what's gonna work best for your business, right? And then number two here, you know, defining your strategy, you know, as you all know, right? Goals help us give direction and then it'll also know how we've succeeded, right? So what does it look like? What is it you wanna accomplish with social media? Your goals shouldn't just be followers and likes and we'll get into that here a little more. Maybe you wanna generate a certain number of new leads, drive a number or a percentage of new website views. Perhaps it's a certain number of inbound calls as a result of having a call to action to call in, you know, for a quote, right? Those types of metrics that you wanna look at. And then it's not simply enough for people to simply see your social media content, right? You want them to listen to it, engage with it. So it helps to ensure it's not just all about you, right? If they're commenting or asking questions, be sure and respond and answer as much as you can, right? I know that can be daunting because maybe you're just a sole proprietor and you're thinking, man, I have so many other things I'm worried about, I don't wanna answer, I don't have time to do that, right? Start off maybe with one channel and work your way up that we are not making too much work for yourself, right? They're following you because you're sharing interest information, they find your business interesting and so that creates opportunities for you to engage and relate with your client's health, right? So for the next two slides, I'll break them down on their own slides because it's a bit here. So when we talk about creating shareable content, this content's gonna be really similar to what we refer to as video content because it can be the same. Those videos could be the content you're sharing, right? How to, it could be a video demo, it could be photos, you know, anything like that. Inspirational content, you see that a lot out there now, right? Folks really trying to make someone's day, motivate them to action with inspirational content, right? Emotional content, like in the example I have here, a greeting card company, for instance, could show a child opening a birthday card from his grandparents, you know, as a reminder that, you know, email and video calls aren't everything, right? Something you wanna just hold something in your hand. Reviews, again, that goes with reviews and testimonials, right, it's not from you, but it's about you. And that carries a lot of social, you know, social weight when people are considering to do business with you. And then again, the insightful content, right? Don't miss out on that opportunity to share insights, right? Don't be afraid to get a little personal, show your followers what's behind the curtain. One of the most followed hashtags on Instagram, for instance, is hashtag BTS, which is behind the scenes, right, it could be you, you know, a lot, you know, a restaurant, for instance, will really showcase their dining room, right? How awesome it looks, how clean it is, their plates, right, how, you know, perfectly set up. But maybe you wanna, you know, show them behind the curtain and show them the kitchen and, you know, someone, you know, peeling all the potatoes for the day, or, you know, someone washing dishes, or, you know, the crew really hustling to get food out, right? Showing them, man, there's a team of people back here that are really working to provide you with a great experience. Maybe you're a jewelry maker and you're showing them your workshop and showing them all the tools that you use and all the things that go into, you know, that bracelet or that ring or that necklace stat that they're purchasing from you. So when we talk about measuring success on social media, right, how do you know if your work has paid off, right? What does success look like? Are you getting a return on your investment? These are some of the metrics you wanna consider. Followers, fans and views on their own, right? They don't mean much, but they certainly give you a sense of your overall reach. So when you're looking at marketing to those folks, right? Do I have 100 followers or do I have 1,000 followers? Do I have 10,000 followers? And then you're gonna know, right? If I close a certain percentage of those or a certain percentage of those buy from me, I'm gonna get this much in business, right? So that's where those numbers really kind of come into play. Engagement that are people responding to and commenting on your content. This is what makes social media such a powerful platform because you can get business level accounts on Instagram, Facebook for free, right? They're gonna give you stats on all of your followers. They're gonna give you all this data, all for free. Shares, right? And when you look at that data and what content is motivating your followers to share, right? Is it the emotional content? Is it the inspirational? Is it the how to, right? Which content is really resonating? Clicks, right? Are they following the links in your posts, right? You'll see in the bio is a lot of time. Click the link in our bio to check out our website. Our folks clicking, that's a call to action in itself, right? So if you're calling folks to action, are they clicking on those links? And then once they're clicking on it, are they completing the action that you're asking them to? Are they, buy now, shop now, buy today? Are they doing that? So you can see, okay, they've clicked on this. How many are actually doing that? Maybe if they're, you're getting clicks, but no action, maybe the wording on the button needs to be sharpened up a little bit or maybe you wanna test with some different verbiage on there, right? So when you look at the landscape of social media, there's no question it's vast, right? And I understand that can be overwhelming, especially for a small business I'm familiar with the topic. But if you take the time to learn it right and do it right, by being authentic, right? Offering content your audience craves, responding to and building relationships with their followers, it can really help generate some really big returns. Like I mentioned earlier, just in overall in 2020, we saw over 50% of online sales coming from a mobile device and square websites specifically, that number was 80%, right? So we definitely know that mobile is the mobile experience is something that you definitely wanna be paying attention to. And why is that, right? Your buyers are on mobile all the time, right? Think about your own behavior. Think back to the time you needed to order a last minute gift or order dinner for carry out or made an impulse buy while browsing social media, all while you're on your phone, right? So how do you prioritize mobile and how does that impact your approach to getting online? So let's look at that now. Actually, before we go there, I've been doing a lot of talking. Let me, I see there's something in the Q and A here. How do you prevent your website from being defaced or changed, right? So that's when we talk about security SSL, right? So that's the security protocol for an online website, definitely something you need to have on your website. The other thing is gonna be making sure, like depending on the platform you're using, if you're using any third party plugins, making sure that those are always up to date, making sure they're coming from reputable developers. That's where I tend to see most of those issues arise from is because someone is using a third party app that they added onto the website that may have added some great value, but the developer maybe left a backdoor open and someone was able to hack that. So just being cognizant of who you're using when you're adding content to your website. Thank you for the question there. All right, so back to mobile, right? The mobile experience creates a lot of focus, right? So first, convenience matters on a mobile device. You're likely multitasking, don't have your full attention. So having clear ways to discover, pay and fulfill are really crucial. For payment, native pay options like Apple Pay and Google Pay on your phones are requirements and most platforms are gonna include that. For fulfillment, you really wanna lean into your local presence and allow something like same-day pickup if you have a working murder location that's still open or local delivery, right? This can help you really compete with the two-day free shipping with Amazon Prime and give your customers really the intimacy they're craving, right? We saw, I mean, at the start of the lockdowns just a huge, huge emphasis on supporting local, supporting small business, right? Folks really wanted to support the businesses in their neighborhoods, really wanting to see them make it through the pandemic. So you definitely wanna leverage that. Second of all, the mobile focus is the user experience or you have the screen size, even though phones are getting bigger, right? The screen size is still much smaller, right? And being shrunk really forces the focus on what's most important. They're just the one-column view, less real estate on the page to add extra info, right? Because performance and speed matters, right? So it must be easy to navigate with larger tap targets, right? And additionally, your phone is contextually aware, right? So it can help your buyers find your store and get even directions right to you. One of the biggest trends Google saw last year in their search was terms like near me, right? Pizzeria near me, clothing boutique near me. Those were things that folks were really looking for because your phone knows exactly where you're at and so it can find what's nearest and closest to you and you're able to support that business there. Branding on mobile can get really simplified, even for the largest of companies, right? You'll see very simplified color palettes and user experiences, right? When we talk about brand and how that can apply to mobile, it really helps focus the conversation, right? So you're no longer talking about flying animations and moving video because on mobile, buyers don't usually have that time, right? They wanna focus on what's most important. So really focusing on your colors, your fonts, your logo, your domain name are crucial elements there. But also think about how those are being applied, right? Think about the application of that, of how you're using color on that page. And the Nike example here, right? There are some pops of red, which is their main brand color, but in general, the page is very, very clean and simple. You can see they have like that light gray background on all their product photos that stands out from the overall white background of the site. You know, when buyers can't come into your store to touch and feel products, right? They need high quality images of what's available to them. So really focusing on product photography is a really key to that mobile experience. Alas, the quality of the end-to-end shopping experience really gets overlooked, right? So again, if you're going online for the very first time, pretend to be your own customer, go through the whole buying experience from front to back to know what your customers experience when they're doing business with you. But for any pain points and any bumps in the road there, just to make sure everything is as smooth as can be. Lost my screen here. All right, so moving on to search engine optimization, right? So the goal of, and what we also referred to as SEO, you know, it's not just getting visitors to your site, but the right type of visitors to your site. Tons of free tools out there for SEO or search engine optimization, right? Google My Business Listing is free. Google Analytics will give you tons and tons of data, really easy to apply to any website again for free. These are, most of them are gonna be Google search tools because Google is the king of search, right? That's where everybody goes to do their searches. Google Ads, although Google Ads is a paid platform, they do have a free keyword planner. So you can actually put and look for specific keywords and see if they're getting a lot of hits, if that keyword has a lot of traffic going to it or if it's a keyword that's maybe not being used that much and maybe something you can then leverage to use for yourself. So again, tons of free, free stuff out there, right? So when we talk about search engine optimization, right? You wanna make it easy for search engines to understand what your website is about. Just my screen here. All right, so you definitely wanna make Google believe what you're saying about your business. So you definitely wanna add your keywords, right? Your site description, your product description is gonna be a huge factor in your overall search engine optimization, right? Some of the examples here, you know, Kitto, which is a children's fatigue in Chicago, right? They did a great job highlighting the specific types of products they sell, eco-friendly children's clothes, right? They most likely did keyword research ahead of time to understand if people use different variations of that word, some IT organic products, that type of thing, right? Chica, a small Mexican restaurant in downtown Oakland, right? They make sure to add a site image to their overall, you know, to their links. That way it kind of gives you a picture, right? Of their food immediately when you see there, when you see there, when you see their ad there. That thumbnail acts like, you know, just, you know, there, again, we all, and what they say, you know, you eat with your eyes first, right? You see the food, you see that, it makes you even more hungry than it wants to order more for them. So really, when you're building your site out, right, looking at what keywords are gonna be most relevant to your website, using those on the page, your product descriptions are gonna be really, really key, especially, you know, if you're doing any commerce type of website, really focusing on those product descriptions, letting people know exactly what it is they're buying, because they're gonna be typing in exactly what they want into searches, and if your product description has that in there, that's what they're gonna come up with. All right, so that is pretty much the end of my slide show here. Happy to take any questions, any other questions that we have right now. I know I answered the one in the Q and A, but if anyone else has any questions we're not happy to take those. Thank you, Martin. There was one more question from the Q and A about, do you recommend any books about building a business website, marketing, et cetera? Oh, wow, books, so. And I did put a link in the chat, everyone, to our library catalog, where you can see a number of tutorials about building business websites. And I also wanna put a plug in for our LinkedIn Learning, which is free with your library card. Do not pay for LinkedIn Learning if you have an SFPL library card. So we have those resources, but do you have any favorites or any go-tos that you like? I don't know that I have any go-tos or favorites for books and I have a sense to recommend one. I do read, I have actually a goal of reading 50 books this year. I don't think any of them are on how to build websites just because I've been in the industry so long. And sometimes when you read them, like so many things have changed, right? The industry evolves so much, a lot of it. But I would probably focus on marketing books, the most, the latest marketing books. One author I read, I'll go as far to recommend one is Seth Godin. He's a marketing guru out there. He's got tons of books out there about marketing. But yeah, just do your research. I mean, use the library as a great example. I love LinkedIn Learning, so that's really good to know that you get that free with your library card. For those that don't know LinkedIn Learning, as you get a lot of experts on there basically teaching you, there's a tons of them on there for marketing, social media marketing, website building. So use those resources first. But how do you recommend those? Great, thank you. And then there was another question from the chat. You mentioned about having sort of social media links on your business website. How do those links work? It's the question. Yeah, so you'll see those on most websites as the social media icons, right? In the footer, you'll see the Facebook, the Instagram logos, and then you just link those to your actual profile. Right, pretty standard. Most will include that automatically, so. Okay, everybody, we've got the expert here. If you have a question, oh, there's a couple popped up in the Q&A. What is your take on squares? I think that's Squarespace and for a novice like me to build a website through them. Oh, well, you're certainly qualified to answer that, Martin. Yeah, so people get confused, right? So we're Square and there's a company called Squarespace. But Squarespace also offers a website builder. And it's a great one. It's a drag and drop website builder. Most websites builders now are gonna be that, right? They're gonna be geared towards making it fast and easy for you to get a website up and running. They don't, you know, we don't want you spending all your time having to learn to code or do any of that. We wanna make it, they almost all build themselves nowadays too. So there's a tons of them out there that can do that. Most, I see John here, most website builders nowadays require almost no coding. All right, that's good to know. And then, David, I'm gonna go ahead and put a link in there to some of our business legal resources that might help you with that question about whether or not you need an LLC. I see Steph has a hand raised. Steph, I'm gonna click to unmute you. Did you have a question? No? Okay, it might be a little bit hard to unmute but feel free to type it in the chat if you would like or use the Q&A. Yeah, I saw the question you mentioned from Judy about the books. It can be daunting, right? Just because things are changing so much, that's why a book could have been published two years ago and it's out of date already because the platforms evolve so, so much. But YouTube is a great resource for that. The library with the LinkedIn learning, you're just gonna get the most up-to-date information there. We actually get a subscription through that as well. So I've used that a bunch and I've learned quite a bit from there also. Yeah, that's pretty great. Do you have any websites that you think have done a small business website that you think have done a great job that you would hold up as an example for people to look at? I could probably get you some examples and I don't know if you guys do a follow-up email after. Yeah, we do. I could probably link some of those. Most of them are gonna be square sites. I don't wanna be biased. But we're all online all day, all the time. We're online right now. So when you're online, you can see the eye test there. I mean, you can see most of them are gonna be very similar, right? They're all gonna be pretty clean with images being the main focus and a lot of video content on there as well. Great. Okay, last chance to ask the expert once. I think Julia, has COVID changed how everyone will now do business? Absolutely, it definitely has. One of those we see in the restaurant industry. So at the beginning of March, right? When the lockdowns took place, when really you started to see a lot of things shutting down because of COVID. Something like curbside pickup was not on our roadmap at all at Square. But we started to see that become a demand because folks had to shut down their dining rooms and had to have a way for folks to be able to pick up food in a safe manner. And curbside pickup became that. So that was something we at Square had to adapt during COVID to offer that on our website, Builder. And it became the number one way for folks to fulfill sales on our platform, whether it be retail or food and beverage, right? Curbside pickup or just in-store pickup for that. So we've seen a lot of changes. You're seeing a lot more drive-throughs like coffee shops doing a lot more drive-throughs, food and beverage doing drive-throughs, smaller, for newer locations, smaller dining rooms. Again, more emphasis on ordering online, ordering ahead, picking up that. So we've definitely seen a huge change in that. And most of that will stick. Obviously, we're not gonna go 100% back to the way it was. Folks have adopted all of these new buying habits during the pandemic and a lot of those have stuck, right? Being able to just order food on a whim from someone's website directly, right? No more calling into order. It's all done directly from the website or from an app. So yeah, just some of the smaller things that have changed, but it's definitely changed the landscape there. A couple of questions about domain names. How do I purchase one? And how do I safeguard my domain name? Tons of ways to purchase domain names, lots of different companies out there. You can get one through Square, you can get it through GoDaddy, Google. I mean, there's tons of domain name providers out there. And most of them will provide, actually nowadays, almost all domain names will come with privacy protection. So it doesn't put your name, it used to be that you had to pay extra for privacy, which I wanna refer to that, like when you register a domain name, you have to be a real person, you have to put an address, phone number, email. That stuff used to be publicly available online. Now it's all hidden and only like through subpoena on law enforcement, you're able to get that. So there's that safeguard kind of already in place, but there are some other like buy-on options where you can lock a domain name where it can't be transferred or moved without jumping through a bunch of hoops. So your domain provider will offer that. Usually it's extra incentives. If you haven't purchased a domain name yet, there are, I would Google domain names. Most domain companies offer a special deal on your first time purchase when you sign up. I know I've gotten a lot of $1 domain names, that way myself, just Googling domain names. You'll see all the different domain providers offering their special for first time domain purchases. But again, most of them are gonna be from the 10 to $20 a year range. And again, the minimum you can buy a domain name for is one year, the maximum at any time is 10 years, and you just have to keep renewing it. You don't ever just own your domain name outright. So like Coca-Cola, they could let their domain name expire and their website would go down, but they pay that. They just keep adding 10 years every time they can. Well, Frank has an interesting question in the chat. If you purchase a domain name through one vendor, does that protect the domain name from other providers? Or do you have to pay for each domain provider? Yeah, so yeah, that's a great question. So if I buy, I bought martinguerarrow.com. No one else can register that domain name. That's my domain name. Now, someone could get martinguerrow.net, which I also own. So no, I can't buy martinguerarrow.com at GoDaddy. I can't buy that same domain name at Google at the same time. Only one person can register a domain name at any given time. Thank you. And we have a question from our YouTube viewers. Can you talk about alt-image tags and also permalinks? Permalinks, okay, great. Yeah, so alt-image would be, so anytime you add an image to your website, you can add an alt-image tag, which is essentially letting, it's tagging that, so let's say I have, I'm selling a red t-shirt, right? And I have that t-shirt on my homepage. I would add an alt-image tag to let it know it's a red t-shirt in whatever brand. That way when you do a Google image search, Google image, you will know that to show that image as a red t-shirt because of my alt-image, right? That also works with like, if you're using a website reader, maybe for someone who's visually impaired, it will read the alt-image tag and let them know you're seeing an image of a family or a dog or a t-shirt, right? So that's the alt-image tag that helps with the actual image searches. And then permalinks would be like, your domain name, slash, whatever comes after that, right? So if I share a link with you, it might be this huge paragraph link. A permalink is usually will shorten that down. It's really easy to read. Again, in that example of if I'm selling a red t-shirt, instead of it having a paragraph of text behind it, it's my domain name slash red t-shirt brand name, right? Something like that. So that would be a permalink, something shorter and sweeter for it to be easier to read and more memorable. Great, thank you. And then I hate to put you on the spot, but we also have a viewer who would like to know your thoughts on GoDaddy. Would you recommend GoDaddy? I do have some thoughts on GoDaddy. I worked there for almost 10 years. So yeah, they're the largest domain provider in the world. The domain largest domain registrar in the world. So I mean, pretty safe to buy domain names for them. Good deal. Frank Catawan, if I purchased the domain name from one provider, when it's up for renewal, can I renew it from someone else? Yes, you can. So that would be a domain transfer. So a domain registration would be the very first time you register a domain name, right? And then at the end of the year, you're now renewing that domain name, right? So if you're getting close to the end of the year and you wanna switch providers, maybe that provider's offering you a promo deal to transfer that, right? When you transfer a domain name, that adds another year registration on this. You can absolutely do that. You can move your domain name around. It's good to know, thank you. Good question, yeah. Okay, again, I hate to put you on the spot, but can we have your PowerPoint to send out to attendees? Yeah, I'll send that to you. Thank you, that's very kind. Thank you. No problem. Oh, we have another question from YouTube. Can you explain the difference between alt image tags versus meta tags versus tagging in general, like on Facebook? So yeah, alt image tag is gonna be specific to any image that's on your website. Meta tags would be a description you add for the page. So like maybe my about page, right? In my meta tag area, I would add just a brief synopsis of what that page is about. That would be my meta tag, right? So that would, and that's gonna be specific to the page, kind of a synopsis of what you're gonna see on that page. Alt image tag would be, again, just describing the image that you're seeing for image searches. I mean, tagging on Facebook would be like, you know, tagging someone in a conversation. It would be completely, that would be something really not in the same vein. A lot of uses for the word tag these days. Yeah. So and where would you add an alt image tag and a meta tag? So how would you go about adding both kinds of tags? So that would be what you're building the website within like your page and your page settings. There's usually gonna be like in within a square, like there's a spot for that. Most of them will have spots for that because that's a really common thing to have to have. Think about like the meta tags. When you do a Google search, right? You'll see usually like a name. You'll see the link to the actual website and underneath that a brief description, that's gonna be the meta tag. All right, thank you. And then a follow-up from Frank about domain name providers. How would you go about deciding who to choose? Is there a reason to use one provider versus another besides price? I mean, really personal preference and reputation, right? I mean, obviously there are some of the bigger ones out there, GoDaddy, Google, Network Solutions, I think is probably the oldest one out there. They were one of the first. Yeah, it's really just personal preference. Thank you. And then you can, you know, one thing when you buy your domain name, you can buy your domain name at one place and connect it to a website builder somewhere else, right? So, you know, Frank had buy his domain name at GoDaddy and connect it to his Squarespace or his Wix or Square Online website, right? They don't have to be in the same place. Okay, last questions, you guys. I think that might be it. Thank you so much for this wonderful overview of how to get going on the web. So important these days for business. Yeah, it's crucial. It's critical to have a website nowadays. If you don't have one of me, you just don't exist almost in business nowadays. So happy to be here and some great questions. Thank you, folks. Thank you, everybody, we appreciate it.