Focus on Clarity with Micah Slavens

Focus on Clarity with Micah Slavens

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 62 of the business development podcast. And if you have questions regarding web design, we have the founder of Lift Interactive with us today, Micah Slavens, and he's going to teach us all about it. Stay tuned.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said, business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development, advice, tips, and experiences, and you'll hear interviews with business owners. CEOs and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business. Brought to you by Capital Business Development, CapitalBD.ca.

Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast. And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 62 of the Business Development Podcast. And today I'm really excited to have Micah Slavens on with us. You guys know how passionate I am about good websites.

How in the 21st century, I believe they are your 20 story skyscraper. Today, we have founder of Lift Interactive, Micah Slavens. Meet Micah Slavens, a true web pioneer with over two decades of experience in the digital realm. Since 1999, he has been at the forefront of the ever evolving web landscape, shaping the way that we interact with the digital world.

In 2002, Micah co founded Lift Interactive, a web design powerhouse that has become a beacon of innovation in Edmonton, Alberta, and beyond. Under his visionary leadership, Lift Interactive has taken on the challenge of redefining online experiences, consistently delivering outstanding results. With an impressive track record spanning more than 20 years, Micah has personally overseen and driven hundreds of successful projects.

His expertise extends to a diverse range of clients including non profits, technology startups, destinations, and attractions. Micah's unique ability to blend creativity, technical finesse, and a deep understanding of client needs has left an indelible mark on every project he touches. Micah's journey in the digital world has been nothing short of transformative.

His commitment to crafting cutting edge web solutions has helped organizations thrive in an ever competitive online landscape. His work not only elevates brands, but also shapes the digital future of businesses across various sectors. Having witnessed the evolution of the web from its early days, Micah Slavens continues to be a driving force in the industry, pushing the boundaries of what is possible in web design and digital innovation.

With him at the helm, Lift Interactive remains a trusted name for those seeking to transform their online presence into something extraordinary. Join Micah on his ongoing journey through the digital landscape where his wealth of experience and unwavering commitment to excellence continues to shape the future of web design and technology.

Micah, it's a pleasure to have you on the show today. How are you doing?

Micah Slavens: Doing well. Who were you talking about just now? I want to meet, I want to meet that guy.

Kelly Kennedy: Just some rock star. Just some Edmontonian rock star, I'm sure.

Micah Slavens: Thanks so much. You're doing well. It's it's Friday. It's we got a long weekend coming up.

It's it's going to be beautiful.

Kelly Kennedy: It's a beautiful sunny day outside here in Edmonton. It really is.

Micah Slavens: Yeah, we could we could clear out some of that smoke, but but it's going to be awesome. It's gorgeous out there.

Kelly Kennedy: I can't tell you how thrilled I am to have you on the show. I know we actually just met a couple weeks ago.

Kind of connected just regarding some web design stuff. And I remember just saying at the time, just thinking like, I have to have you on the show. I, I've wanted to have like a web design expert on the show for some time, but I didn't just want anybody. And when I saw the quality of the work that you were putting out at Lift Interactive, I knew it had to be you.

Oh,

Micah Slavens: well, I really appreciate that. I'm super excited to to talk about, you know, things I love, I love talking about. And I think this is just a great show too. And I kudos to you.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, thank you. I really appreciate that. I am. I have a passion for good websites being in business development. It truly is critical.

The image of your company is the most important thing really in 2023. But there's a cool thing about image of a company in 2023. You don't need to be on the 30th floor of the biggest skyscraper in your city. You just have to look that way. It really is that critical. And the way that you do that is through a great online and web based image, whether that be great marketing materials, a great website.

You can compete with the big dogs now. You really can. And image is critical. And a beautiful, well designed website is one of the most important things that any business can invest in.

Micah Slavens: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. That's something we've been saying, you know, for close to 25 years ago, for 25 years, when I got into this industry that, you know, back in those days, you were trying to convince people that a website was important.

Now, now you don't people know it is, but we've been saying that since the beginning that online, you can look as legitimate, you know, as you want, and I would say it's really important that it's also a truthful. You don't want to look, you know, like a hot shot and really, you know, you don't, you don't have anything, but you can show your best, most idealized aspirational self online and, and.

People can connect with you. And I would say even more so these days when, when we're not necessarily expected to have a big headquarters, like you said, or that 20, 20 story skyscraper, you can have distributed businesses. It's, you know, it's more important than ever. And we'll get into some other things, I think.

Today to the web is, is changing again first party data and some of those things, you know, those topics are at the forefront and you know, it's funny how relevant your own website you know, is, is in 2023. Yes,

Kelly Kennedy: it's absolutely critical. When I go into a new business with capital, the very first thing that I look at is their marketing material.

I want to see the website. I want to see what brochures and stuff that they have created, because if those are not where I need them to be. That's where we have to start it. We have to start with the image of the company before I can build interest in the company.

Micah Slavens: Yep, exactly. I mean, it's the first thing they're going to do.

Someone, the first thing someone's going to do, they're going to hear about you and they're going to Google, or they're going to type into that, that URL, or they're going to scan that QR code that you gave them and they're going to, they're going to form an opinion just like they will in real life at a, you know, at a networking event or in an elevator, like we always talk

Kelly Kennedy: about.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And so, you know. I want you to take us back to the beginning, like, you've been doing this since 2002. That blows my mind.

Micah Slavens: Well, I've been doing it since 2002 as Lift. You know, I didn't start a company, you know right outta high school. Yeah. So probably goes back to more like, you know, 97 or so.

Wow. So long time. You know, I still like to think I'm young, but but yeah, we do in a long time. And yeah, I mean, I can kind of go back to where that came from. I, like many, you know, I think even stereotypically young males was having a difficult time figuring out what I wanted to do to my do with my life.

And. You know, I had bounced around different school programs and as silly as it sounds I can't remember it was my fiance at the time you know, I was married fairly young and my father in law now said, well, why don't you try this is like 97, 98, why don't you try this computer stuff? And that was literally as, as, as, as generic as the comment was.

And I thought, you know what? Maybe, maybe I will. I like figuring things out. I like, you know, I like exercising, you know, that analytical side of my brain. And so I, I took you know, a program that doesn't exist anymore that was, that was a mixed bag of network support and design and a little bit of the very kind of fledgling side of the web.

You know, we were still pre pre. com boom and bust back then. We're just kind of heading into the boom and I, I stumbled into some, some design and web design and I just absolutely fell in love. There was a, a particular day where I ran into this 15 year old kid and he showed me this website he made and I, and it was, it had stuff that was moving around and doing cool things.

And I was just like, yeah, that's cool. OMG, this is so amazing. I have to figure out how to do this. And that, that really just sent me down a path of you know, I've always kind of been defined by curiosity and I started doing that, started freelancing. And then anyway, then it ended up at a.

Another agency where I started a web department for that, that small agency here in Edmonton. And shortly after was naive enough to think I could start you know, a business of my own at 24. Wow. And and then kind of the rest is history.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. So, like, what has it been like to see literally the evolution of the internet?

You've essentially been building websites since the very beginning of the internet. To today, like how has that must've been a roller coaster?

Micah Slavens: You know, it, it really has been a roller coaster. I don't know if there's many fields that have changed as much as, as this one has, and you know, when, when you're in.

In an industry that we're in, and and we've been, we've been bigger and smaller and we've got a decent sized agency for for a lot of years. And you're never just in 1 thing. So web design has been a core of our business. It's it's it's kind of our bread and butter. It's it's where our oldest expertise is.

But but over the course of that time, you get You dabble in a lot of things. So, you know, we've, we've built mobile apps. We've, you know, we do a lot of user experience work for large organizations. We consult on digital strategy. So you get, you get your fingers in a lot of, a lot of things that are adjacent but it's, it's just changed so much.

And it's, it's actually funny right now, you know, there's always something that everyone's talking about at a given point in time. Right now, it's AI. The truth is, we've been talking about AI for, you know. A decade and a half and even past that, you know, or before that, but I don't really get my backup too much on those things anymore.

Just because I've seen, I've seen the industry, you know, be up upheaval multiple times and it's always changing. And so I'm actually really, really excited for this next phase. This is 1 of the most exciting phases. I think we've had. Where things are really, I think, going to change a lot and I think it's going to create a lot of opportunity who know how to navigate navigate change.

Kelly Kennedy: What does AI mean for websites?

Micah Slavens: So that's a big, that's a big, big question. You know, let's get into it a little bit. I'm not sure how much it helps the average small business. Yeah. But so, yeah, so what, what we, what I think, here are the big questions I think people talk about. They say you know, especially when people have just started playing with chat G P T for, you know, for the first couple weeks.

You know, they say things like, well, this is amazing. You know, what what's going to happen? Are we all just going to be in chat prompts down the road? And probably you know, I think I think all the signals are showing, you know, your Google experience 5 years from now is is likely going to be dramatically different than it than it was 2 years ago.

But what I will tell you these experiences don't stay text based. Right? You know, largely, when I got into the industry, Google was just this this search box with 1 style of listing.

And then what happens is businesses figure out little ways to increase their advantage on that platform. They, the platform itself responds by giving marketers and business people tools to let themselves stand out. A lot of times those are monetized. Right? And so I really think a couple of things that you're going to see is, I think the general web is going to change.

I think, I think it's going to be a lot more about connecting with your audience and less about just smashing it full of, you know, mundane information, you know, the basics, because people are going to be able to pull that stuff up so quickly, you know, through those, those platforms. And we already can to some degree, but if you look at the modern web, a lot of it's been crafted to serve.

Search engines and those things. So so I think you're going to see probably that that general web be a lot more experiential and about connection and about understanding and that type of thing. But I also think you're going to see those chat platforms become more visual allow more design elements to enter in and we're going to be in the same game.

We are now where somebody has to know how to. Design and communicate and understand user experience and the customer journey and anyway, that's why I'm, that's why I'm excited about this next phase.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, the whole AI thing totally, I, I, you know, I mean, for you guys, it's been a long time coming. Yeah, for the rest of us, we're still playing catch up, like, even in the business development side, really, like.

Yeah, six months, a year tops, like since we've all started incorporating these things or trying them out or figuring out and businesses are still trying to figure out where, what does this all mean? What are the relevant AI platforms that are even going to help us? How do we utilize it? Like that landscape is pretty tough to navigate as a business at this point.

Micah Slavens: It is. And I would say, I mean, again, I don't know that we want to spend our whole time talking about AI, even though I often do spend hours talking about it. But totally. But I mean, the thing, the thing we come back to all the time is you're already using AI. Most of the, most of the large technology platforms you're using, whether it's for BizDev or CRM or.

Analytics, I mean, they're all, they're all chock full of, you know, AI machine learning. But it's this novel, I think it's this novel AI, the, the sci fi AI that people are really saying, you know, when is this going to be commercial? When is it going to be reliable? And that's, I think, just yet to be determined.

But I mean, there's lots of, you know, the AI chat bot, I think is pretty viable right now, especially if you give it a small enough, yeah. Sandbox and does a pretty good job and, you know, those things are neat, but you know, we've been talking about, you know, for you, I mean, from a sales perspective, the, the CRM have been generating, you know, insights and, and, and notify you of trends for, for years.

And it's just getting better and better.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure. No, I agree. Yeah, they, they have. rudimentary though, right? Like definitely not on the level of ChatVPT. Yeah, it's it's crazy. You know, even at Capitol, we've found ways to implement it over the last six months with this podcast, it's completely changed the way that we handle summaries and all sorts of stuff.

It's the time for me, it's the time, like. What AI has become is a gigantic time saver.

Micah Slavens: Yeah, well, totally. The thing, the, the thing I really like about it for me and my personal workflow too is I'm someone who likes, I enjoy swimming in a sea of a lot of ideas, but the thing is, you can only action so many ideas.

And I think what some of these generative tools that you do is that lets you explore. More ideas more quickly. And yeah, there's, there's probably some refinement, but that needs to happen, but it, it, it just lets you explore more. And I think that, you know, for an ideas person, that's really, really exciting.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I want to take it. I want to take it to lift. Sounds good. Let me just say, I think that your websites are absolutely stunning. And I've been talking on this show about the criticality of websites and how important they are and how to lay them out properly. And I would argue that when I found, when I saw your websites for the first time, if I was to go and design one myself and explain it the way that I explain it to all of our clients and to the people on the show, they would turn out just like yours.

They're absolutely visually stunning, they're clean, there's not too much information. There's just, everything is right. How did you come to that?

Micah Slavens: How did you, you know what, you're making me, you're making me blush. Cause those are the things those are the things I'm super passionate about. You know what it, it, it, it takes, it just takes a long time.

And I think that's one message. I mean, you, you talked about you know, all these platforms and I think they're awesome. I have, you know, if, if there's, if there's, if I volunteer. Or sometimes if I, let's say I do a favor for a friend, I'll use those platforms too. I mean, Squarespace we have our favorites.

Squarespace is great. There's things in the middle these days, like Webflow that we really, really love. That's low code. It's not no code, like a Squarespace, but it's somewhere in the middle. You know, WordPress is still valid. It's not my favorite. We can talk about why at some point if you want, but but there's lots of great tools out there, but ultimately It comes down to, do you know how to use the tools?

And it comes down to do you understand how, again, a customer goes through a process? You know, a visitor do you understand design principles? Do you have. You know, innate familiarity with conventions that actually make something successful and obviously it's, you know, it's a redundant question, but like, most people don't, right?

Just like I could give you a lathe or, you know, a table saw and you probably can't create a, you know, showroom worthy table for folks. It's not about the tools. It's about. It's about knowing how to use them. So, you know, I think that, that's where the, the, the job of the expert still comes in. It's, it's not about do you have the ability to get something online?

And sometimes if you're, if your job is simple, go for it, you know, you know, take a first crack and get it up there. Really where we come in is, is when you want it to work really, really well. Even if you're a small business, when the stakes are high and you got to get it right and you don't want to You don't want to get it wrong 20 times in a row.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, yes. Well, that's it. It's that's kind of the flip side is any kind of design like this, any type of creative project. It takes planning, takes time, takes effort. And I think the flip is that people aren't really thinking like, sure, you might be starting your business, but how much is your time worth?

Like, is your, is your time best spent designing your website or is your time best spent marketing your product or service expertise?

Micah Slavens: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah. And I was just listening to a book. I mean if there's service companies out there, there's a book called The Boutique that I've been kind of re re re listening to.

And he talks about the fact, you know, as as a boutique agency, like ourselves you know, we really need to be able to do it better, faster or cheaper. Now we're going to be more expensive than lots of options out there, but we're definitely less expensive than if you hire Deloitte to figure it out kind of thing.

We're definitely going to be faster than an internal team. And and I can, I can dang well guarantee we're going to be better too. So it's, it's those things that's, is it worth the, you know, the dollars to, to bring someone like us in. But yeah, I mean, there's, there's basic things we look at that are, that are like breathing to us, you know, is the navigation, right?

Is the messaging right? Does it pass, you know, some people call it the grunt test, you know, within five seconds. Do I know what this, this enterprise or this business I just landed? Do I know what it's about? Do you understand, you know, how did, how did someone get to this, this website you're on?

Well, you know, did they come from an ad? Did they come from a link on social media? Where did they land? You know, can they navigate properly to, to, to get where they need to go? I don't know. Are you asking for the conversion in the right spot? There's all these things that, as you know, I look at someone's site or talk through their business that we just kind of, you know, do really, really naturally now.

And a lot of that just comes from, you know, having it banged into her head, literally, you know, thousands and thousands of times over, and you see the same patterns emerge, and some of them translate from industry to the industry. Some industries have nuances, but it's really taking some of those universal principles some, some gut, some intuition, a lot of experience and a lot of data and best practices too.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes. And explain the collaboration process, typically, that, you know, obviously, you bring on a customer. And you're not the product expert of their, of their service. So like, what are some of the things that you guys need to do a good job?

Micah Slavens: Yeah. We, we need, we need customers who we need clients and partners who have a really good sense of their product.

And I would say usually people, usually people have a good sense of their product or their, or their service. If it's a service based company, because that's, that's, that's really the beginning of a. Of the entrepreneurial journey, right? You, you come into your weight. You're like, Hey, I'm really good at this, or I think I've got something here.

I have an idea. Usually you're pretty you're pretty confident the idea it's that next phase about, you know, how much do you know about your customer? How much do you know about the market? Do you know how, you know, how easy is it going to be able to reach that market? And that's where maybe it falls apart.

A lot of the time. I think a lot of us When we get into those topics, it's if their assumptions and a lot of times they need to be tested. The awesome thing that I love about digital is you know, again, whether it's your website or whether it's you know, digital marketing you know, advertising.

It's really easy to test those assumptions. So whereas some traditional formats and we, and we work with these 2, we have partners that we that we deal with, you know, on traditional channels, like, you know, radio and all those things. But with digital, you can just test those assumptions so much, so much more quickly.

Yeah. And when we talk about developing an audience or segment in audience, we're not talking about that, like, from a a conceptual level. We're literally saying. We can reach these, you know, 9, 432 people if we segment the audience this way. So that's something where we can take some of that knowledge.

And if our customer has a really good understanding, you know, sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, of their audience it's going to be, it's going to be successful. So but yeah, I would say, I mean, a lot of the things that, that we really need to do a good job are there a little bit more.

Subjective and nebulous. It's an open mind is really big. Yeah. So customers who come come to us. Maybe feeling overconfident about what they think they need there ends up being a little bit of unraveling. We've got to do of, well, you know, why do you think that a lot of times it comes down to, well, my competitor did it this way or you know, it's, it's not just enough.

Knowledge to be dangerous kind of level. Yeah. But when someone comes to common idiom, we'll say is, you know, come to us with problems, not solutions. So tell us what you're trying to do, what you're trying to fix or solve or improve. Yeah. And we can help you get there. When people come to us and say, you know, I want to place a, you know, I want my website.

I want this exact feature and I want, you know, a Facebook ad that goes here. Usually, we've got to like, back that up a couple of steps, but yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: It's like, in some ways, the, the ecosystem or the infrastructure has to somewhat be there to accommodate. It's pretty hard to make something that doesn't exist.

Is that a fair statement?

Micah Slavens: Totally. Yeah, exactly. Well, and I think one of the dangers of our world is, we use this stuff. We all use this stuff every single day. And so people formulate some assumptions about how they work. You know, one thing we deal with all the time is Hey, I want my website to do X, Y, or Zed.

You should be able to do it because I just used this feature last night on Facebook, you know, And that's usually an indication that you probably can't afford

1. Because guess what Facebook is worth.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no kidding. They have a big team.

Micah Slavens: They have a big team. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no. So I guess one of the things that I kind of wanted to chat with you about. Is what is the evolution of websites been like in the past, like five to 10 years. So I'll kind of I'll take you to where my my eyes are as a millennial.

I lose my attention span rather quickly. And so when I create marketing material or I talk to my and I'm advising my clients with regards to how they should redesign their websites. I want something that is short and sweet, but absolutely beautiful. I need something that, especially when it comes down to their website or their brochures, is going to stay on somebody's desks because it's amazing, you know?

And so like my number one that I look at is Is it visually appealing? Do I like to look at it? And you really nail that in the way that you've laid out, especially your tourism websites with, with Lift. Congratulations by the way you you've made absolutely stunning, stunning tourism websites for the city of Jasper.

Is it a town? I'm not really sure. One of the other and Fort McMurray, like they're, they're I just want to sit and look at them and that's hard to do with us. Millennials, right?

Micah Slavens: Well, yeah. So, yeah. Well, totally. Some of that is like one of the reasons we love that sector is, is one word, you know, personally, like you know, adventure is my.

You know, love language. So you know, I love the mountains. I love trees. I love, you know, you know, pushing myself out there. So that's 1 thing where there's a, there's a bit of affinity, but also with some of those, you get amazing photography. So there's a lot, there's a lot of material for us to work with.

And that's 1 of the reasons why we love it because I think it lets the work shine. But no, you're, you're right. You're, you're nailing it. That is one of the evolution you know, of the web. When I started there was lots of, it was a wild, it was a wild West. And then we kind of went into these web experiences that where you had a custom home page, and then usually you just had an inner page.

That was just a long blob of text. Yeah. Well, the attention span, I have kids and they're, you know, they're yeah. Well, 1 is 12, but they're almost all teenagers still almost 20. So the attention span is so low and we're not even like, you know, we're parents don't let them be on devices too much, but eventually they get Instagram and then, you know, tick tock and you know, then they don't even want to watch a movie because that's too much attention span for too long.

Right? Yeah. Well, that's just that's everywhere. That's on the web too. So, yeah. Terseness you know, brevity is just absolutely critical. Clarity is critical. So, you know, you don't want to have these big blobs of text you know, at the same time, I tell people you know, compare some of this stuff to real life.

You know, we always in business use this example of the elevator pitch, and, you know, I don't know how many of us have ever actually made a pitch in an elevator, but but we know what it means, right? Yeah, you're at a networking event. Just think about how much information you would give to that new, that new contact as the conversation develops, right?

So your homepage is like that introduction, right? So they ask, Hey, what do you do? You, you should, if you can have a really compelling. You know, thought provoking, probably emotional at some level, you know, speaking to pain or gain line that you give them, right? And that on our website, we call the hero message.

So that's in that big, you know, first block. Yeah. And then, and then the conversation develops from that. You, you're that contact your meeting. They say, Oh, that sounds really cool. You know, what do you mean? And then, you know, think of how that conversation develops from there, then, you know, do you go down the road of delivering, you know, 15, you know, minutes of, you know, spec sheet?

No, you don't. You, you give them another little line or two, you know, say, well, we do this, this and this, you know, and they go, wow, that's really cool. Tell me more about number two, right? And now you're into that kind of third level. Now you can talk a little bit longer. And, you know, I think if people just put themselves in that mindset of.

Knowing I can turn someone off in a conversation by blabbing on too long. It's, it's exactly the same on the web, maybe just even more accelerated, right?

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes. A hundred percent. And I think we can forget the purpose, right? I like, you have to remember when you design a website, it's not just to have a website.

There is a purpose. The purpose is to build interest in your product or service. Yeah, number one. That's it. That's it. You don't have to sell with your website. What you have to do is build interest, right? And so it's like you said, you get a lot of people that are technical minded. Maybe they are like the product engineers who are like, yeah, let's give all the technical data.

But like you got to understand that you were speaking to regular human beings like us. And while I wish that sometimes I understood every technical detail, I don't have, I don't have first off. The attention span and second off the technical knowledge to understand every in and out of your new gadget, right?

And I don't need to know and neither do most of your customers. They just need to know in a simple, easy to understand way. How is this going to make my life better?

Micah Slavens: Exactly. Yeah, a core usability principle is that's been around for decades now is, is what do you need people to do to take the next obvious step?

Right? And and the other principle we think about all the time is, there's an Einstein quote, you know, make it as simple as possible, but no simpler. So I think those 2 things together, you know, are kind of your, the key. Now it, it takes some experience and expertise and. And knowledge to do those things well, but really, that's what you're trying to do.

Anything extra just clutters and, and. You know, slows people down or get some to bounce or doesn't get to them to take that next obvious step down your journey, whether it's to doesn't matter if it's to an inquiry, or if it's to an online sale. Or it's to, you know, just reaching out, but but, you know, those two things are super important.

Simplicity. We've been talking about simplicity for two and a half decades.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. And I would say it's never more important than today. Like it's never been people have never had less attention spans. So like visual appeal, simplicity in the message. Short and sweet, as short and sweet as humanly possible, that still, like you said, gets the point across, is absolutely critical.

And so, yeah.

Micah Slavens: That definitely doesn't mean it, it, it shouldn't be cool or, but it should, but it should be authentic. But, but yeah, simplicity really talks about you know, as simple as possible, but no simpler. You have all the core things, but you don't add stuff you don't need. It's, it's that editing process.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And simple can be cool. It totally right. In some ways, in my mind, simpler is cooler these days, in my opinion. Yeah, right. Like you can say a lot with a little.

Micah Slavens: Yeah, totally. Exactly.

Kelly Kennedy: So I want to talk to you. Let's say that we're talking to our, our new businesses, maybe, or maybe it's time for a website redesign.

It's been five years, right? First off, what, how long do you think a company should go before they revamp their website? I think that's a good place to start. And then yeah. And then maybe second off, what should they consider in 2023?

Micah Slavens: Cool. Yeah, those are, those are good questions. So I would say the, you know, how long probably depends on a couple of things.

And again, we're talking off the cuff, so these are off the top of my head. But What's the rate of change, like in your business? So some businesses like the change rate, like your offerings changing constantly, it's a competitive sector, you know, how fashionable is it? You know, those should probably change it every couple of years or at least making sure it looks new.

You know, you don't necessarily need to do a platform change. And then, like, what's the size of your business to? I mean, and that probably has to do probably with rate of change to, but, you know, a major organization. I mean, they're going to change it every 5 or 7 years because it's a massive investment.

You know, a really small business. The cost, you know, is inexpensive as some of these newer platforms that we've been talking about are, you know, don't be afraid to change it often. It, it, it should look current and it should be true to what your business is right now. So if you, and I have this all the time where someone comes and says, well, it's really important, you know, we need to redesign because the website no longer reflects people say this all the time, no longer reflects, you know, who we are you know, what we do, what we offer.

And just. You know, we're better than we were, you know, five years ago when we did this. So but yeah, I'd say, I'd say the timeline is probably in that, you know, you know, maybe it's three years for a small business, two, three years. That's probably, you know, five, seven for a big company or a big organization.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. And what are like, so, okay, let's say that we've gotten to that point or we're a new business and we're just kind of getting started and we're looking at the landscape, we're looking at, you know, nowadays you've got Squarespace, you got Wix, you got, you know, amazing companies like yourselves who can kind of take this on and handle it.

How does a company go about making a decision to meet their needs? Like, what do you think is, is, what do you think they should do?

Micah Slavens: To like find a partner.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Or even like take that initial step. Like what type of, I don't think many companies, and I was one of them, knew where to start. And it's like, I initially started, luckily I'd spent a lot of time in business development, so I.

I know what a good layout looks like. So I had a slight edge, but I also knew absolutely nothing about web design.

Micah Slavens: Yeah. And I would say most people, most people know what they like but they don't know why. And, and what I would say is if, you know, if you are. If you are super into web design or typography, or, you know, design, you know, in general communication design if that's a personal interest, you know, go for it.

You know, have have an opinion if that's not really an interest. Like, there are people like us that, like, that is our favorite thing in the world, you know, just tell us maybe what you like and don't like, and we'll, we'll figure it out for you. But You know, I think people tend to have these opinions and they don't really know why they have them.

Usually it's because they've seen something, the moral custody. Same, same with food or coffee or any of those things. Why do you like what you like? Well, because that's what you've had the most of, right? That's what you've been exposed to. Exactly. What we try to get people on to is that really doesn't...

Matter. You are not your audience. What we're trying to do is, is build something that appeals and works for your audience. Now, your, your opinions and preferences might reflect your audience. You might be a part of that community. We'll definitely take that to account. What we're trying to do is make something that converts serves your users.

And is successful for your business, you know, not not chase those personal things, but in terms of like, what's where things at these days are cool. I mean, there are more platforms than ever. There are lots of options for people we try to take into consideration, you know, a few things what lets us as your partner be as as unhandcuffed as possible.

To build you the best possible experience to do those things I was talking about before make you successful. So that's, you know, 1 thing. How are you going to maintain this thing in the future? Are you going to call us? You know, and we typically build things on platforms where people can manage their own content.

You know, that's almost always what we do, but there are different levels of those things. And there's just a lot of choice. These days, what I would say people need to do be more of right now is more open to finding the right partner, especially if you think you're going to work with someone for, you know, 4 or 5 years, which usually we do and really listen to why they use what they use and why they like it, you know, and how it, how it makes them effective.

And then, and then, you know, how do you plan to manage it? But when I entered. Yeah. Stop me whenever to when I entered this industry. It's funny. The battle is completely flipped to what it used to be. So when I entered this, you know, and started our agency, I was constantly trying to convince people you don't need to spend, you know, and bigger organizations, but you don't need to spend a quarter million dollars on your web backend.

That's overkill. Look at all these new things emerging that are cheaper or free or all those kind of things. And we can do amazing things with. Right? So that was the battle back then. Right now we have the opposite. So every you know, every marketing professional has heard of, you know, a couple of these things.

Wix, Squarespace, WordPress whole Those are great tools for certain jobs for certain for certain problems. They're not the best for for other problems or other other goals. So I think people need to readopt, like, a little bit of an open mind for talk to your experts, you know, again. If this isn't the stuff you set up, you know, in the evening and research and think about and love it's probably indicative that, you know, that that that there's probably someone who can make a better decision for you.

Yeah, find that right person that you jive with on a personal level on intellectual level on a, you believe in their track record and and let them use the things they, you know, they need to use to do the best job.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, and you touched on something that I think is really critical that a lot of companies haven't been thinking about.

And it's that you have, you know, just like capital business development here, we have a wide brush of companies that we've worked with a wide range of understanding of that you just don't have if you're in a niche area. And so it's like you're the fact that you've worked with thousands of websites over your time.

It allows you to see a big picture that is just impossible to see unless you've been part of it. And so you know the trends before they're even happening. And you can end up with an outdated website faster than you think, unfortunately.

Micah Slavens: Yeah. Yeah. And we really try to be sensitive. Like we're with clients, we are constantly, we are not wanting to blow your budget.

Just for the reason of blowing your budget, what we're wanting to do is give you as much value, make this thing last as long as it can be as, you know, as performant as it possibly can as fast, you know, search engine ready look cool. We want it to be modular so we can swap things in and out. We want, if you find a 3rd party tool that you, you know, your marketing team, your sales team needs, we can, we can integrate that, you know, at a at a real level.

And so we're looking for the right tool for the job. And we do borrow from all of these in terms of where things are heading things are heading to a world. I don't know how technical we want to get, but, into this realm of headless they're called backends. So what all that means is just the, the front end of the website, the stuff people can see is completely separated from the backend.

So if the backend goes down, the website doesn't go, the website can't be hacked. It can't go down or almost impossible to hack highly performant, which search engines like and lets us plug it into lots of different devices and, and mediums in this, you know, hyperfragmented world we're in. Yeah, and just things like, you know, like WordPress to pick on it has been around for a very, very long time.

You know, that technology goes back to what, like 91, 92, 93, somewhere in there, you know? So it's, it's a really old model and and it's done a really good job, you know, the community is massive. So it's done a good job of keeping up with the trends, but It hasn't been easy to do that. And so sometimes when people want to you know, a website that looks a certain way they bolted on things and that can slow down a page or make it not performant or you know, other things we worry about is in that realm.

If you watched, you know, or googled every 2 or 3 months, there is a. You know, a WordPress breach that affects literally millions of websites are hacked every couple of months. So you know, again, don't let that scare you. If you're on that, there's ways where, if you have the right partner, they can, they can harden that stuff up and and make it work.

But it's definitely something we look at and are concerned about, especially with larger. You know, organizations with, with big aspirations.

Kelly Kennedy: So, do you guys utilize multiple coding platforms? Like, you use WordPress? Yep, for sure. Yep. But it just depends on the situation. Ultimately, you know, you can use whatever you need for the most part.

Micah Slavens: Yeah, it depends on what the client... Now, we don't use everything out there because that would be impossible to be familiar with everything. You know, I would say, you know, if we wanted to because this is what we do, you could come to us and say, I really want to use this platform. We could figure it out.

You know, would we, maybe not worth our time, but yeah, we use, we use kind of the gamut. Like if it's something needs to be up tomorrow, you can get that up on Wix or Squarespace. Or ready mag is a really cool one. That's all right now. If you know, if you've got a you know, a smaller budget and you want to self manage, or you've got a team that's familiar with WordPress, then you might need to do it on that.

Again Webflow is a really cool platform these days that our whole, our whole Nimble team, they're called, so nimble digital. com. They work with small businesses across Western Canada, and that that team primarily uses Webflow because it's super secure almost impossible to hack easy to use and it allows us to add some efficiencies that let us just, you know, give that small business more value and a really reliable site.

And and then when we work with bigger or more ambitious people, we use things like there's a platform called story block. That's one of these headless systems. And that with that, we can kind of do anything.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's very apparent when you check out your website, that stuff that you guys awesome.

Pretty, pretty awesome. Yeah. So where's the decision? Where does that happen? So, you know, let's say that you're dealing with a customer and they've been using Squarespace or they've been using all of these things. Yeah. At what point should they start to look for a professional such as yourself?

Micah Slavens: Well, I mean, I'm obviously super biased, so I'd say right away.

But, but at the same time, no, at the same time, like, I mean, I hope people are getting this, but we're, we hope we're really nice people too. And like we're, we're not. Here to, you know, dump on, you know, the work you've done you know, there's a little bit of sometimes you have this facetious voice where you, you know, you pat them on the back and say, nice, you know, nice try.

That was good. I have kids and you got to encourage them. But but I would say as soon as it matters, right? As soon as it matters as soon as, as soon as it's critical that you're successful, bring an expert in like, I almost. You know, can guarantee you, we can either do it better, faster or cheaper or all 3.

No, that doesn't mean you won't have to invest in some technology, but you know, I cannot tell you how many times we've worked with, you know, a large organization you know, a tech firm that's scaling or something and we will do a, you know, a 30 or 60 day engagement with them and. We will almost always end that and they will say, I don't understand how you guys did that.

So fast. Yeah. How did you do that? It's like, well, it's what we do. Yeah. We come in and we're like, where our job is to absorb the information. We've honed those muscles. You know, I promise you, we will understand your business after, you know, a few weeks. And. We can make a lot of headway really quickly.

Now some people work with us for years and years. Some people, you know, have internal teams, but, but yeah, as soon as it's critical calling an expert and that could, you know, what's critical could be, I need this to convert or there's a problem or we got or we're entering a new market or we've got a change that we need people to understand or, or it's a new business.

All those, those times are great. Points to call us and say, you know, what's what I really like is what's the best way to do this or the best way we can come up with now. And that's when we really if you, if you go to our website, you know, two words in an ampersand discover and unleash. I mean, that's what we're there to do.

Yeah. Our belief is you have probably got something amazing an amazing service expertise. Our job is just to figure out how to communicate that and unleash it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. Yes, I love it. If you're a new business, obviously, you know, you want professional help, if you can get it, but they can't always do that, at least not initially. Do you have any recommendations for them?

Like, does it make sense to put on a band aid until you can do it right? Or does it make sense more to just, you know, wait?

Micah Slavens: And know you're talking like DIY DIY recommendations. Yeah. Yeah. I, so it depends on how techie techie you are. These are all opinions. So if, if. You're just getting started.

If you've been okay at navigating, you know posting to social media or figuring out, you know, a social platform, or you tried, you know, something like Canva or something, these really entry level things then you probably could tackle a first go at, at that, at that website. I, I personally, for the, for the really self serve DIY, I really like Squarespace.

You know, I would literally probably, if I was doing a favor for someone, you know, I can, I can probably throw something in almost an evening for, you know, four or five pages. Because I have a good sense of where we're going to go with it. But yeah, I think that platform is great. It's got some really cool features.

You know, I'm not as big a fan of Wix, but lots of people like it. You know, I think Squarespace is better between those 2, but those 2 really compare. If you're a little bit more tech savvy and you want to teach yourself to do something, Webflow is really cool. For that, you know, people who Kind of know their way around Photoshop.

You can probably figure that out. They've got a pretty amazing university, you know, again, this is not going to give you 20 years of experience on how to make decisions. Yeah, but if it's really just presenting the world, you know, this is who we are. These are the things we do where we have these couple of products and, and you can't afford a professional yet.

You know, I would start, I would start there. And yeah, I guess we have to WordPress too. You can get up and running and buy a theme. The only thing I would say there is do a little bit more Googling and just also find out the things to avoid on word on WordPress. The hard thing with WordPress is it's such a massive ecosystem.

And most people want to use these DIY builders in it. Yeah. And there's about 3000 of them. And they're not all created equally.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure, sure. So like what you're saying ultimately is that if you are going to do it on a budget, you would recommend Squarespace just don't even necessarily worry about the other ones?

Micah Slavens: It's what I like.

And to me, it's by the time you outgrow Squarespace, you're probably ready for a professional. And, and then, and then, and then I don't want to dictate, they might use WordPress. They might use Webflow. They might use, you know, headless, you know, like we do sometimes, but Squarespace can get you pretty far.

And it lets you maintain these things. Yeah, I don't think we need to get into all of it. There's things that doesn't do well. You know, we could get into, but but for the average mom and pop shop, it is going to do it themselves. It does a pretty good job in the, the themes are, they're beautiful.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Which, yeah, no, I appreciate that because, you know, we are talking to a lot of newer businesses that frankly, They just don't have the budgets yet, but they still need a great online presence. So they need solutions. And I like it. I always like it when we have professionals like you, who isn't just like, Nope, there's no other options because I think it is critical to understand that businesses have steps.

And sometimes that first step is not a pro website.

Micah Slavens: Oh yeah. People who come in and say there's no other options. I mean, that's total BS. Like there, there are, there are more options than there have ever been. And they look pretty amazing. Especially, especially if it's not too complex, right. Or too deep.

Yeah. The. Yeah, the other thing I was gonna say, though, I mean, like, so that nimble team, we have that that's that agency for this. I mean, for 3 or 4 grand, I mean, they will build you a killer website and they will you know, if it's small enough and the budgets go up a little bit from there, but really competitive and they'll make all the decisions for you.

I promise you they'll make good decisions and you can kind of just give them the information and go. So I think people would be surprised. Yeah. You know, how, how inexpensive it can be to have, you know, professional do it if they've got the right you know, team.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, amazing. Amazing. And nimble's operating right here in Edmonton as well then?

Micah Slavens: Well, yeah, that's the that's the thing. We have our core team here. But then we do have folks kind of throughout Western Canada. Yeah. This is a hybrid world so that team, you know, comes into the office a couple days a week, but then we have a bit of a distributed team too.

Kelly Kennedy: What is you know, and I, you know, I might be putting you on the spot here a little bit.

I understand that when you design a professional website, there is a timeline associated. What does a typical timeline look like? What is realistic? Because I know you have people come in and they're like, yeah, I want this website and I want it in two weeks. And you're like no. What does a real timeline typically look like for, for a design build?

Micah Slavens: That is, that is the big question, right? So awesome question. What to expect? It really, honestly, it really comes down to the, to the client. Because thing is, we can, we can go super fast. This again, once you've done these things, hundreds, thousands of times, like, it's not hard for us to put the technology together.

What takes the time is tell us about your services. How do you describe yourself? You know, do you have imagery? All, all of those things are what takes time. You know, have you, do you have your product shots in order when, if someone were just to come in and, and if they could drop, you know, the files and the information and it was all perfect and we're always going to help you massage it.

Yeah, you can turn that around in two weeks, but I would say the average small business probably takes eight to 12 weeks. Okay. And and there's people that take way longer because what ends up happening is this is a little bit like therapy, a little bit like consulting. Once we start asking questions you know, people often go, you know what?

I don't, I don't actually know who I am. Yeah, I don't know how to tell people what we do.

Kelly Kennedy: Agreed. I, you know what? I think that that's Problem. It's definitely a problem with with businesses that have evolved over time too. I noticed that as well. The businesses, especially some of the ones that have been around for 10 years, they started out as something completely different than they are today.

And sometimes it does take that come to Jesus moment where we're asking, okay, wait a second. Who are we today in 2023? I know we started in 2010, but who are we in 2023? And that can be a completely different. Answer than you would have had in 2010.

Micah Slavens: It really can. And some people have never done that, you know really thoroughly, you know, figured out.

Does this, you know, is who I say I am. Does it actually matter to the people I'm trying to reach? So yeah, that can take some that can take some time. And I'd say that's content is what holds things up every time. Yeah. And we do consult on that stuff to write content. But yeah. It is a collaboration, you know, I can't well, I could, I, like, I could write out, I, for capital, even I can go write a website and a bunch of content for you and it would, it would be okay.

It would work, but the thing is, you know, is it you, is it Kelly? Does it ring true with who you want to be? And that's the thing where it's, there's gotta be some element of truth to it. So that takes them back and forth and, and some, some people honestly just aren't ready for that. So, you know, back to, you know, what does it take to be successful, you know, it's understanding of that audience and, you know, do the work at a time to know who you are.

There's lots of great resources out there you know, for those of us, those following along with us you know, stay tuned to NimbleDigital.com. There will be more and more educational resources coming out in the future that we're just going to give away for free to talk about how do you craft your message.

Have you thought about positioning? You know, do you know what that means? Even Yeah, what about, you know, audience development or audience segmentation? You know, these are big, heavy concepts, but it's things that every small business needs to be thinking about.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. And it definitely can. It can take that leadership to help them through that process.

And that's something that you guys can deliver totally. So I want to just kind of nail you with one final big question. If you could only give one piece of advice with regards to web design, what might that be?

Micah Slavens: Oh

It would probably be around, you know focus on clarity. Clarity. Yeah, I think that's I think that's just that's number one. And that's a really, that's a really deep topic. It can mean a lot of things, but it's, it's clarity in your message you know, clarity and in the value you bring to a customer, your value proposition clarity and what makes you unique you know, clarity and what people can expect to work with you, all of those messages.

But then it's also the functional stuff, you know, clarity in your navigation. Okay. Clarity in your calls to action. If people know what that means, you know you go to these websites and you know, stupid little example, but you see, you know, maybe on one page, you see 15 learn more buttons. And those just start to filter out to people's brains.

Yeah. Clear. learn more about my, you know, sausage products.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. I think you hit the nail on the head. I think clarity is critical and that's an amazing message. Thank you so much, Micah. This has been episode 62 of the business development podcast. We have been graced with Micah Slavens, the co founder and principal of Lift Interactive right here in Edmonton.

They built absolutely stunning. Websites. Let me just say beautiful Micah. If people want to get ahold of you, what is the best way for them to reach you?

Micah Slavens: Best ways is through the website. Go to liftinteractive.com. There's a form there. I see that. And some other people on our sales team see that. And I promise you.

We are really ruthless. We will get back to you probably that same day.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. If you've enjoyed this episode, please like, follow, subscribe on your platform of choice. Until next time, this is Kelly Kennedy, and we will catch you on. The flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly.

Kennedy Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020, his passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists.

For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.