--- title: Starting my own Website with Bill Campbell date: 2022-03-08T05:00:00-05:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-5/starting-my-own-website-with-bill-campbell/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)![Bill Campbell, PhD](https://website101podcast.com/uploads/hosts/_200x200_crop_center-center_none/bill-campbell.jpg)Guest Bill Campbell, PhD Professor of Exercise Science and Director of the Performance & Physique Enhancement Laboratory at the University of South Florida. Season 05 Episode 5 – Mar 08, 2022 53:54 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## Starting my own Website with Bill Campbell  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-05/S05-E05-bill-campbell.mp3) We talk with Bill Campbell, one of our subscribers, about the process of planning his website and then working with a web developer and hosting. ### Show Notes - Introduce our new co-host Amanda Lutz - Bill's background - 3 products that Bill will sell on his website - Planning pages and page content - Newsletter call to action - Domain should be separate from hosting company - Ecommerce & Security - Selling courses and coaching - Hiring a developer - DIY - pros/cons - User testing - Backups ### Show Links - [S03 E01 Do You Really Need a Website?](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-1/do-you-really-need-a-website/) - [S03 E11 Own your own content](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-03/episode-11/own-your-content/) - [S01 E08 What is a Landing Page](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-8/what-is-a-landing-page/) - [S02 E02 Web Jargon Part One](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-02/episode-5/web-jargon-part-one/) - [Shopify](https://www.shopify.ca/f) - [Kajabi](https://kajabi.com/) - [WordPress](https://wordpress.org/) - [Woo Commerce](https://woocommerce.com/) - [S01 E03 Web Design Shortcuts You Should Never Take](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-3/web-design-shortcuts-you-should-never-take/) - [Google Analytics](https://analytics.google.com/) - [Google Page Speed Insights](https://pagespeed.web.dev/) - [S04 E09 Website Optimization and Speed](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-04/episode-9/website-optimization-and-speed/) - [Shopify Backups](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/shopify-admin/duplicate-store) - [Shopify Apps](https://apps.shopify.com/) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Sean:** Hello and welcome to the website 101 Podcast. I am Sean Smith, your co-host with me as always is Mike Mella. And starting from today, we have a brand new co-host, Amanda Lutz. Amanda, say hi. Hey everybody, how you doing? Amanda was on an episode with us last season, and we liked her so much that we invited her to join us as a regular co-host. That's funny. **\[00:29\]** **Amanda:** You guys liked me before I was on the previous podcast episode. **\[00:33\]** **Mike:** That's true. We didn't start liking you only on that episode. We liked you well before that, so yeah. **\[00:38\]** **Sean:** Long before. Indeed, indeed. And joining us today is Dr. Bill Campbell from the University of South Florida. And he's going to be talking about starting his own website. He sent us an email with lots of details and referenced all the episodes that he's listened to and what he's learned from them with some more questions for us to talk about. Bill, welcome to the show. **\[01:08\]** **Bill:** Thank you very much. Thank you for I sent in my application, praying that I would be accepted as a guest because I wanted to learn. And thank you very much for inviting me on. **\[01:19\]** **Mike:** Yeah, this is great. It's great to have you on from the great state of Florida which is probably not buried under three feet of snow, like we are here in Toronto right now, I assume. I wish I was there. Not very sunny, wearing shorts and a t-shirt. **\[01:34\]** **Sean:** Oh man. We're recording this mid-January the day after our 60 centimeters of snow dumped on us. **\[01:44\]** **Mike:** So today Bill's gonna talk about his upcoming sort of project of building website for his business And kind of ask us questions, the typical stuff that we go through on the show. And we figure it be kind of like a fly on the wall episode where whether you're a developer or a website owner, hopefully you can get something out of this conversation that we're gonna have, I think it's gonna be really fun. **\[02:08\]** **Bill:** The podcast has been just a great blessing, just as an example. I don't have any business yet, I don't have a website. I came at this probably about two months ago knowing nothing about websites. The only thing I knew was that I didn't like GoDaddy.com, that's the only thing I knew. **\[02:28\]** **Amanda:** And you guys confirmed, I mean. My first question for you then is if web development is new for you, if you haven't done it before, if you're not in our already nerd technical universe, how do you find Sean's podcast, our podcast in the first place? **\[02:43\]** **Bill:** I am almost positive. I went to the Apple podcast and I put like starting a website or website information, some kind of general search for websites. And then me being a professor, it said website 101 and I'm like, well, that's basic. That's the beginner. That's me. So it was perfect. And then yeah, I didn't listen to every single episode because some definitely don't apply to what I'm doing, but I took notes, pause, rewind, take notes, in bed. I've kind of made it my digital Bible, so to speak, for the last couple of months. **\[03:26\]** **Sean:** Sounds to me like you took the approach you would like your students to take. **\[03:29\]** **Bill:** Absolutely. **\[03:30\]** **Sean:** I speak as an ex-teacher and Amanda is a current college teacher. Yes. **\[03:37\]** **Mike:** So before we get into these kind of questions, Bill, can you just tell us generally what kind what it is you do and what direction you want to go in with this website that you're building. **\[03:48\]** **Bill:** Sure. Yeah, so my job is a professor of exercise science and I'm at a research university, so I do research. And in an attempt to diversify my income, I have tenure, but you never know what may happen in five or ten years. So I've made a decision that I want to have at least something else in the pipeline for potential income, and with that I do, my plan is to sell some digital education products. So the main thing, the first product that I want to sell is a, basically, most people would call it a newsletter, but it's a research review. So in my field, there's about four competing products, and what I do is my research specializes on the vanity side of the discipline of exercise science. So some people are looking at exercise to cure cancer to improve diabetes. That's not me. I'm like helping people that want to look better. So it's, again, the vanity are the cosmetic side. So I specialize my research lab. We do research on building muscle and losing body fat, different exercise programs, different types of diets and supplements to improve one's physique. So my digital product will be a research review. So this will appeal to people who don't have the time to read the most current research, but who want to be on top of that. So personal trainers, online weight loss coaches, if they want to stay on top of the current research and get my interpretation of that research, they would be my target audience. So they would be the type of person. Hopefully that will purchase this. Because again, it's a very efficient way for them to consume the latest research, because it's very time consuming to read that and interpret it. **\[05:42\]** **Sean:** This is a very well-defined target audience. Oh, you've really nicheed down a lot. **\[05:49\]** **Mike:** And by the way, I can test to, in the preparation for this episode, I've been looking through your YouTube videos, you appear on all kinds of fitness-related YouTube shows and whatnot. And it's really impressive the work you do. By the way, I want to commend you on being a science-based guy in the world of fitness, because I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for you with all the nonsense floating around the wellness industry and detoxing and fad diets and all this. Like it must be so difficult to deal with that. I get frustrated and I'm nowhere near this circle, you know what I mean? So it's good that you're doing science-based stuff and evidence-based, you know? **\[06:27\]** **Bill:** Yeah, yeah, thank you for that. And it is a little, it's frustrating, But I also kind of interpret that as hey, there's a need for what I do and for what we're teaching our students to give it some truth. And the truth is not sexy, it's never sexy. The stuff that's just out there and that seems a little extreme, that's the stuff that people always gravitate towards and that stuff usually, it's just not helpful. In some cases, it's harmful. Mm-hmm, right, right. **\[06:54\]** **Mike:** All right, so your kind of goal here is to build a site where you can sell this product that you're talking about, where you can sort of connect with personal trainers and those kind of people who are interested in the work that you've done and the research you've done and whatnot. **\[07:09\]** **Amanda:** So, and from, wait, remind me again, just quickly, do you have any web presence at all right now? **\[07:14\]** **Bill:** I have zero web presence. What I do have is a decent size following on Instagram. So, that's unique because most people in academia are on Twitter and I chose to bring my research who not other Ackham editions, not, you know, not other professors, I'm literally targeting the end user, the personal trainers, and Instagram is that platform for me. And it's been a very good platform for me. **\[07:46\]** **Sean:** Right. Well, it sounds like you know your audience and you know where to find them and target them, so you're well on your way. **\[07:53\]** **Mike:** So did you want to just kind of dive into some of these questions that you had for us, some of the challenges that you're finding in preparing to build this website? **\[08:02\]** **Bill:** Yeah, so I think what would be helpful is for anybody else who's in my shoes where you haven't quite pulled the trigger yet so you're not a business owner, you don't know anything about websites, I'm just going to start going through the process from day one until today essentially and how much I've learned. So one of the episodes was season three that the title of the episode was, do I even need a website? Well, I had to ask myself that. I'm like, okay, that's a good question. I think I do, but do I really? And then after listening to that episode, I confirmed, yes, if I'm going to sell a digital product, I don't want to do that through social media. I want to have have a space that's mine on the web and that can handle that. So that was a pretty easy answer. And the other thing that I learned in that same episode was, do I need a website? That was the title. I needed to define what I want my visitors to accomplish on my website. So I wanted to find that. So I look at that as if somebody ends up on my website, if they did nothing else, what do I want them to do? And of course, I want them to actually purchase my product. And I do have a goal, I have three products in mind, I'll just say them now. But the first one will be this research review. But after that, I would like to sell webinars where I might talk for a few hours on a specific topic related to exercise and nutrition. And then after that, possibly some courses where it's a little bit more of a longer process. So those are the three things that I have in mind about what I would like my website to be able to handle. So do I need a website? Yes. And now I've defined what I want my visitors to accomplish. So that's kind of like the, I think the home, the, the base questions that, that I wanted to ask. **\[10:05\]** **Mike:** Yeah. And it's a fair question. And, you know, do I need a website? I mean, the truth is we really feel like a lot of people don't ever ask that question anyway. on that episode, we think that it's an important thing. The people overlook. But in your case, it is a fair question because if you have this big audience on social networks, like Instagram or whatever, it is conceivable that you might be able to, there are people who have entire businesses say on Facebook, they just have a Facebook page or whatever. And maybe that is good enough for them. So it's good that you did that research. I certainly do agree that with the direction you're planning to head in with the sales of the products and what not having your own website that you control is probably a great starting point. **\[10:47\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I can't imagine that you would actually be able to sell any product, digital or physical without actually having a website. **\[10:58\]** **Bill:** Yeah, and something else I learned and Sean actually confirmed this in one of the episodes, and I don't remember, but I do remember I was on my Sunday morning walk, but it was like you own your own content. So if Instagram is a title of the episode. Yes, that's right. So Instagrams, they only play some ad if my account gets hacked or if they change their algorithm. I'm done, like, I don't, I would have nothing. So I'm kind of in a hurry to get the website so I can get an email list so that I can kind of, then I'm not as somebody else's mercy, so to speak, if I have the emails. So the next thing that I did and I learned this one in season one and the title of that episode was what is a landing page And I love this this really made sense to me But I wouldn't have done this without getting my education from the podcast and it was the fact that every page Needs to have a purpose and I need to define that purpose such as who is that page for and what is the purpose of the page? page. So, again, that just makes sense. I just would have said, yeah, I'm going to have a few pages and let the developer figure it out. And that would be a, you know, I would hope that a good developer wouldn't do that. They would have forced me to do this. But now I just feel like I'm going, I'm entering into a conversation with a potential developer with knowledge. I won't be as easy to take advantage of. Hopefully that wouldn't happen anyway. you know, how the world works. **\[12:30\]** **Sean:** Well, ideally you're going to have picked somebody who's going to be good and ethical, but regardless, just the level of preparation is put you on the right path towards success. You're not going to have missing issue, missing things or an incomplete focus. Your site and pages are sound like they're going to be very focused and targeted directly at the people, you want to convert. **\[12:58\]** **Mike:** Yes. Yeah. And even if your developer has your best interests at heart, they might, in fact, just build you a site and overlook the fact that your pages do need a goal and a purpose that the visitor is supposed to do. Some people just don't think that. They think, well, once the website exists, people will use it and they'll click around and whatnot. **\[13:21\]** **Amanda:** even if the developer is 100% on the same page that yes, same thought process that you have that every single web page should have a specific purpose and for a specific audience. The fact is, it's your site, it's your product. You know who you're trying to reach. You know the best way to reach them. Or even like the way you want to try reaching them right now. And it's your product. You should be selling it. you should not only be the leader of that thought process and in control of all that information. **\[13:53\]** **Mike:** Yeah. So yeah, it's appeared on a few different episodes. This idea that make it explicit what someone's supposed to do when they reach any given page on your site. **\[14:04\]** **Bill:** So I guess that leads me to my first question. Is every single place that where somebody clicks on my website to go somewhere else? Is that considered another page? For example, if I have a link for them to sign up for my email newsletter, is that link that takes them to a different place? Is that a different page? **\[14:26\]** **Sean:** Yes, generally, unless your link takes you further down the same page, which is like a jump link and you'll quite often you'll just see the page will scroll down to this section, that's a jump link. But if they're going to a different physical page with a different URL, you're on a new page. **\[14:46\]** **Mike:** Okay. Yeah, I mean, if they click something, then they go to a different site. Like, so you mentioned, I think at one point, like a newsletter sign up. Some people do sort of old school style where it's like, you know, join my newsletter and you click on it and you go to, say, MailChimp or whatever your newsletter service is on their website. I mean, technically, I suppose that's not another page of your website, but it is another function of your process, right? You're still trying to get them to subscribe. **\[15:17\]** **Bill:** Right. OK, so a home page, which is obviously the primary landing page. And I think I would like to embed videos on that page towards the middle. Because I know that writing is very time-intensive. And videos I can do fairly quickly. And I have daughters that will do the editing for me. So I have, yes, I'll call it just the home page and about me page, another page to download my published research articles and then I would say the center or the focus with all the bells and whistles will be the page to purchase my research review and also, again, when the time comes a page to purchase my webinars. I do have an ebook that I just partnered with a company from so I would put a link to purchasing that guidebook and that would take them to my publisher's website. And then the last thing it's just a page or a link to subscribe to my email newsletter. So that's all of the pages that I did again that I thought about as I communicate that with a potential developer. **\[16:34\]** **Sean:** Okay. Yeah, my first thought would be the email newsletter. I would have a sign up in the footer of every page as well as just having a specific page that has the purpose of signing up to the newsletter so you could link to it and send people, hey, this is where you sign up if you meet somebody. But every page in the footer should have a newsletter sign-up option. Oh, okay. **\[17:04\]** **Amanda:** I agree with you, Sean, but I would probably put it higher than the footer. I mean, maybe also the footer, but especially the home page, maybe especially the about page, have it as an additional call to action up higher. You want it to be really visible to your users. **\[17:17\]** **Sean:** Oh, absolutely. When I said footer, I meant add a minimum, but yeah, Amanda's right. There's on specific pages, you definitely want to have a whole section. Hey, sign up here. **\[17:27\]** **Mike:** Yeah, because presumably someone might be that on any page in your site and decide that they want to learn more about what you offer, and they should have a quick way to do so by signing up for your newsletter right there, right? **\[17:39\]** **Bill:** Okay, that makes sense. So every page, somewhere where it makes sense, since that's my primary product, it's the whole reason for the website, give them the option. So I like that. **\[17:51\]** **Mike:** And you can embed, you know, if you have a newsletter sign up, you know, you're just looking for someone's email address and maybe their name they hit subscribe or something. Whatever service you're using, like I said MailChimp or something, they'll let you embed it right into your page so it doesn't have to be interfering with anything that the visitor is doing, right? It's just right there in a little component. Okay. That's exactly. **\[18:13\]** **Sean:** You don't need a pop-up or you don't need visitors going off site to sign up. I also have a quick **\[18:19\]** **Amanda:** question about when you were listing all of the pages and you were suggesting a page to purchase the research review in a page to purchase the future webinars and a page to, I mean obviously the page to purchase the book would go to your publisher site. I don't know if it would make the most sense to maybe instead of having separate pages just have like one shopping cart area, like one store area where then yes your users could filter by research paper. They could filter by webinar. But I would almost think that you would want to keep everything for sale in one **\[18:56\]** **Mike:** for sale area. Okay, yeah, that's a good, that's an interesting way to look at it yet. **\[19:01\]** **Sean:** Yeah, as well as having the each individual page, I think the that for sale page is a great idea. **\[19:08\]** **Mike:** It'd be like categories, right? Yeah, because again, if someone wants to buy any one of these, it's, you could assume maybe they're interested in something else as well, right? So, Why make them dance around looking for them all, I guess, right? So, what you're getting at, sort of, Amanda? **\[19:23\]** **Amanda:** Basically, yeah, like, if the user is like, so for now, these are the ideas of what you're selling, but maybe in the future, you're also going to sell, maybe you can get like, affiliation links for supplements or something like that. Instead of having a user click here to see your webinars and then click somewhere else to see what else you have for offer, just keep it all in the one place. **\[19:43\]** **Bill:** Okay. Thank you. Yeah, and the one thing about since I'm doing a research review, I wouldn't be able to do any affiliate leaks for supplements because I'll be reviewing the supplements. And then I'm biased. **\[19:55\]** **Amanda:** Right, right. I was just trying to think of something where you could expand in the future. **\[20:00\]** **Sean:** Yes. Yeah, but it could be anything. It could be all you did mention you want to have courses, so you could have courses there. You could have another ebook or a white paper that you want to make available and you could put it all into the same page. **\[20:17\]** **Mike:** Okay. Yeah, that's true. It is conducive to growing your site as far as things that you might choose to offer to sell at a later time, right? It makes it easier to add them on. Yeah. Or when you do just decide to start shilling for a big farm on, you can, you know, start **\[20:33\]** **Amanda:** doing that too. Or running shoes or Nike, who knows? Right, right. **\[20:39\]** **Mike:** Those possibilities. I know there are legitimate ones as well. Yeah. And I'm always up with the **\[20:43\]** **Bill:** the other educational products, of course. All right, so the one thing I have done, and I did this like six years ago before I was tenured, thinking of when this day would come, was I actually did purchase a domain name, or I think it might be called a registrar. So I do have a domain name and it's billcambophd.com, so I own that. All right. **\[21:05\]** **Sean:** Nice. Nice, good name. **\[21:07\]** **Bill:** Yes, yeah, very, very nice. So what I learned in season two, web jargon part one, was that my domain name should be separate from my web hosting company. And I heard this story of Sean why you recommended that. So after hearing that, I just eliminated that company as an option to also host, which I think makes sense for other reasons as well. And again, now I'm starting to think, OK, So do I need to work with a well web developer? What do I do about hosting? So now I'm into this area. So there's my first decision. Keep my domain name and my host from separate companies. I hear Sean's voice in my head because he said this multiple times was you get what you pay for. But in particular, season two, web jargon part one episode. So knowing that, that added to my decision, no go daddy, None of the bottom of the barrel race to the bottom like sites. **\[22:15\]** **Mike:** I mean, this is based, just to be clear, this is based on our own personal, at least my personal experience with GoDaddy and probably yours too, Sean, and maybe yours too, Amanda. **\[22:24\]** **Amanda:** Yeah. Oh, definitely mine. **\[22:26\]** **Mike:** Yeah. So, yeah, we don't want to talk trash too much about individual companies, but we've said, as you said, many times before, that we've had actual direct experience with some and they just don't work out. So yeah, that's cool. **\[22:38\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, I'm not about to say anything positive about the previous company we were just bashing. I do know people who have had positive experiences with them. I am not one of them. But especially if this is like your first website, just getting started out, you don't know the kind of traffic you're going to have, you don't know the kind of users that you're going to have, you don't know how many resources you're going to need. Maybe for the first year, you do just pay for a half decent shared hosting. It's not the worst idea. you can see where you're at, you can just get something online, you can start to, I'm sure Sean's got other podcasts about episodes, about analytics and things, and from that point, you can start to, you can build your marketing, you've got somewhere for people to go, you've got the domain name that's always gonna be yours from here on into infinity, and you can start building, like it doesn't always have to be like, top of the pile, be all in and all right now, I'm going to be breaking all of the servers with 100,000 users hitting my site every single **\[23:40\]** **Bill:** day. That's a good point. And I do think I don't anticipate a lot of traffic to my website. I anticipate, hopefully through word of mouth and through my own social media presence, that people who are intrigued with my research review, that they will go and purchase it. So I don't have any, remember, I have another full-time job, so it's not like I'm going to be producing tons of content which would drive traffic. **\[24:12\]** **Mike:** Maybe not at the outset anyway, but certainly. Correct. **\[24:15\]** **Sean:** Yes. You should also talk with your web developer and see what they recommend for hosting, because if they're building your site, they'll be familiar with what it needs. I agree with Amanda that starting out, you go with a lower end system, not the bottom of of the barrel, as you said. And then you can build it up from there. **\[24:38\]** **Amanda:** Yeah. Like shared host, most shared hosts, I think are what, like $150 for a year. Yeah. Or you could like jump on AWS immediately, where it's a hundred bucks a month. Like that's, that's a big difference. Yeah. Yeah. **\[24:56\]** **Mike:** Hey, this is Mike here. And we're currently looking for topic and or guest suggestions. so if there's anything you'd like us to talk about or anyone you'd like us to talk to, please reach out website 101podcast.com slash contact. So the next thing **\[25:14\]** **Bill:** through listening to the podcast, I got the impression that hiring a developer to set up an e-commerce and a payment process is just a huge project and I'm assuming this would be considerably outside of my budget, so I just gave me a little caution about starting from scratch. So that's where my research and my wife also looked into this a little bit, so initially I was drawn to e-commerce sites and Shopify was the first site that I kind of caught my attention. somebody else recommend that. That way I could, you know, what I believe is all of the e-commerce is already there that wouldn't have to be developed, per se. And I learned that I could hire a developer to customize my site around that core. So that's kind of what I'm thinking. And then just in the last few days, I came across some another product it's called Kajabi. And my impression, again, I haven't, I spent just a few hours. It seems like that. It seemed to me Shopify is probably a good choice. And I would love it for you guys to disagree if you have knowledge on this. Shopify seems like a great choice for people who need to ship physical products. Whereas Kajabi seems like it was, it's tailored towards digital products, which is what I'm going to be offering. So I'll never need anybody's address. So now I'm stuck with this. I believe that Shopify and Cajabi, they're both gonna be shared hosting platforms or systems. Should I be concerned about that? If that's indeed what they are, I'm assuming they are, but I don't know. **\[27:07\]** **Sean:** Okay, so I can speak to Shopify a little bit more than I can, Cajabi, but I believe they're both similar this area is that they're a hosted platform, which means you're not, you don't have the code yourself, they do it, and you have an interface where you work within it. It appeared to me that when I took a quick look at Kujabi this morning, is that it operates in the same way as Shopify. You log in, you create your account, you do all of your work inside of their website, and then you tell them what domain you want to use and they tell you how to set up your DNS and then your site works. So you're not physically putting code onto a server or a host, it's working within their platform. So it's a hosted website or a hosted SaaS software **\[28:04\]** **Mike:** as a service. Although I will say if you're concerned about the fact that it's technically sort of shared hosting that you might be. I don't know if their servers have a bunch of clients on the same one at the same, you know, sharing the same server or whatever. I wouldn't worry too much about that with either of those because since their business is all about dealing with money and credit cards and all that kind of stuff, they are going to be far more secure than any other regular hosting situation. Or some **\[28:38\]** **Amanda:** some e-com site that you're trying to set up yourself. **\[28:41\]** **Mike:** Yeah, exactly. **\[28:42\]** **Amanda:** Like WooCommerce on a WordPress site or something. You still have to do a lot of maintenance with security, whereas Shopify and this other one, Kajabi, they're definitely gonna, that's gonna be top drawer, security's gonna be high. **\[28:54\]** **Mike:** Yeah, that's their bread and butter, right? So they're gonna make sure it's pretty safe. So I wouldn't worry too much about the security of their sites personally. **\[29:03\]** **Sean:** You're monthly fee for Shopify or Kajabi includes all that overhead and that's why you're paying you know a hundred bucks a month versus **\[29:16\]** **Bill:** five or ten dollars a month for your shared hosting. Yeah okay. And by the way the information **\[29:23\]** **Mike:** that we referenced about you know having a developer build an e-commerce site for you would probably be a huge price range. Now that we have Amanda on the show she is a lot more experienced than Sean and I working with WordPress for example, and WordPress I know has, as we mentioned WooCommerce or all these other plugins to let you build e-commerce platforms whatever right into your site. Amanda, what are your thoughts on this? Do you think in general something like Bill's project should be on something like Shopify, or would you consider doing it on a WordPress setup? **\[30:01\]** **Amanda:** First, I want to take a brief detour, bill before you said something about how you thought Shopify was probably more geared towards physical products for sale. I can tell you 100% that any e-commerce system that's available, they are going to let you do either. They're going to let you do physical products. They're going to let you do e-products. They're going to let you do single payments. They're going to let you do subscriptions that renew automatically. All of the e-commerce want to be used. They want to be popular. they're all going to have those same types of features. **\[30:31\]** **Bill:** OK. **\[30:32\]** **Amanda:** So specifically speaking, having your own site on a, let's just say, shared host, that you are managing, you have set up, you've owned. Every single CMS is going to have an e-com option. Let's just use the word press. Let's use the words WooCommerce, even though there are also other plugins that will do that for you. Let's just use those words as placeholders versus using something that exists like Shopify, I think that the biggest difference is going to be the amount of initial effort for when you're first setting it up. I think that if you had a bunch of products, and if you were interested in doing the entire site, that was yours, that you had complete control over, yeah, for sure, go with the WordPress, go with the self-hosting, go with the WooCommerce or whatever it's called. However, in your case, because it's just right now, a couple of electronic products. And because this whole thing is brand new to you, maybe it's not worth as much of your time with the planning and the organizing and you're ready to get something online, you're excited to do that. Maybe because Shopify or Kajabi is a little more plug and play, a little more get into it, get it happening right now, that might be more of your alley. And again, this could just be something that you have set up for like the first year to see the traffic, to see what it's like. And then maybe in that time, you decide that you want to do the planning for something else. Cost is also gonna be a big factor. If you do something like, again, WordPress with WooCommerce, it's, if you're gonna do it yourself, and quite frankly, you could, you're gonna have minimal costs because it's just gonna be for the domain name that you've already registered and the hosting, which is really not very much. Wordpress is free, WooCommerce is free. Maybe there's a couple like WooCommerce editions that you might want to pay for. They're usually under $100 each. It's not that bad. However, that's taking up a lot of your time and effort. Maybe it's not worth it. If you look at the monthly costs for Shopify or for Kajabi, what wasn't it we were talking before about Kajabi? And I think that their minimum is like a hundred bucks a month. **\[32:53\]** **Mike:** Yeah, did you notice that bill that you look at the pricing difference and what are your thoughts on on that? **\[32:59\]** **Bill:** Well, my wife handles the finances in the family. She's a she's a former CPA So she says we have a total yes, yes, and I've I do other consulting Around my area. So I have been able to to to save some money to to kind of fund this But obviously those costs would be kind of transferred to the the higher monthly fees. Now, again, I haven't talked to developers yet. I was going to wait till after our conversation before I start reaching out. So that's my thought. So I'm, yeah, that's not scaring me. And then the reality is, if my new, my research review doesn't sell, well, then I'm, then I'm out of the game in probably a year or two. **\[33:42\]** **Sean:** Yeah. One thing I did notice when I looked at Kajabi is that they offer ways for you to do courses and run subscriptions. Coaching too, I saw that. **\[33:57\]** **Mike:** Yeah, coaching, that's right. **\[33:59\]** **Sean:** Yeah, coaching and courses so you could have like, Bill Campbell, PHP, PHP, PHP, PHP, PHP. That's me, that's what I do. Learn all about physical health science. I'm sorry, I forgot. Sure, that works. Yeah, and it would be really easy for you to set up like these courses in a sequential order with some simple testing or whatever. So that would be the advantage that Kojabi has over Shopify because I don't think Shopify set up for course creators. It's set up as e-commerce. **\[34:38\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, you're absolutely right, Sean, but there are other platforms that are available so you could sell it on Shopify and then do the course somewhere else. You could even just do it over email. In fact, that too. If there's not too many people, there's always, sometimes, the problem is that there's too many options. It's a little intimidating, a little overwhelming. **\[35:00\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I think Amanda's got a good point there, so, you know, you could start with Shopify to do your review download, and when you're ready for the courses, you could look at Kojabi or one of these other options and link off to it from your Shopify site or migrate everything if you really wanted to go that far. **\[35:22\]** **Bill:** Okay. So let's assume for the sake of argument that I'll go with Shopify for this. And I mean, again, it doesn't matter who I go with. My next questions are to share what I've learned is how am I going to interview a developer. So I would hire a developer that can customize my, I don't know if I guess it's my website, around the Shopify theme. And what I learned in season one, what is a landing page? I'm going to ask this developer, give me three references, name, phone numbers, email addresses, some examples of previous work, and a fixed price quote. And I really like that. I'm glad that you confirmed a fixed price quote because I hardly can, then I'm paying for somebody's inexperience, so I can appreciate the value of an experienced developer. On this note, I do know that Shopify recommends specific developers. There are people who say that they are Kajabi web developers that do custom, you know, that will take me through that process. I'm assuming that's where I would focus my attention on the people who are marketing their talents for those specific themes. Is there any part of you that would say, be careful? Or no, that's wise. **\[36:46\]** **Sean:** Well, if you, the best option would be if you know somebody who used a developer and they would recommend that guy, and you could just say, hey, this is what I want. Here's my budget. Can you do it? And he says yes or no. Then, you know, that would be the best option. Barring that, then I would look around for things like a professionals network where, say, Shopify has their certified or approved developers, they've been vetted somehow and you're likely to get people who are more professional, guaranteed to know what they're talking about and be able to deliver what they want. And after that, then Googling and looking at people's websites and interviewing or having a consultation, okay. **\[37:40\]** **Amanda:** Actually, I would even take a step back before that. If you decide to go with one of these platforms that already exist, a lot of times they have templates **\[37:49\]** **Mike:** already available. **\[37:50\]** **Amanda:** They're not going to have like a broad range. There may have, you know, a couple doesn't to choose from. **\[37:55\]** **Sean:** Right, for a do yourself. **\[37:56\]** **Amanda:** For a do yourself. And so, yes, your site may end up looking pretty similar to somebody else's, but what are the chances that that other person using the same template is in the same field or would have the same customer set that you have? **\[38:09\]** **Mike:** Right. Yeah, so if you find a design template for whatever Shopify that lets you build basically a shopping cart type site that looks pretty good, you put in your imagery and whatever else you want, you could get a developer to build a site. And then they don't need to know too much about the Shopify side of it, because it's already you're just using one of their templates anyway. That way you don't necessarily need Shopify-specific developer, right? So that could help. **\[38:41\]** **Amanda:** I'd be very surprised if sites like Shopify and this other one could jabby, I don't know for sure, but I'd be really surprised if they didn't let you also have like static pages. **\[38:51\]** **Mike:** Right. Yeah, I was gonna bring that. **\[38:53\]** **Amanda:** So that, you know, you probably, you may not have to have your website which links to Shopify. Maybe Shopify will let you make an about page, make a homepage, make a contact page, and then you could just keep all of the content right there. **\[39:06\]** **Sean:** I would say with 99% certainly that they do. **\[39:09\]** **Mike:** Yeah, so basically your entire site would live on Shopify, right? That's what we're going with that. I guess my only concern there is, I mean, maybe this is just being, you know, terrified of the future or whatever, but like if in the future you decide you want some new feature, like I just, the one that stood out to me was you mentioned Vimeo videos on the about page or whatever. I'm sure maybe they let you do that just fine, but something like that, I can see you encountering an issue in the future where I want to add this thing to my site, but Shopify won't let me do that, because I don't get access to the code or whatever, and my web developer is telling me he needs to get add this code. And then you might be a little bit at the mercy of whatever they offer. Maybe that's a little bit paranoid from my part, but that would be my only concern there. No, I think that's a **\[39:58\]** **Amanda:** valid concern for sure. And that's why it makes the decision at the beginning so difficult. There's There's no wrong answer, but making that decision now is kind of hard when you're so new **\[40:10\]** **Sean:** about everything, right? Exactly. And you also need to consider how much time you have available to play around learning the Shopify system. I would say that it's probably worth your time to go in, put a couple hours and see how simple it feels for you to do what you want. you're not going to get, you know, like the best thing right away, but you can get a feel for, yeah, this is easy. The documentation is good. It's a little bit intuitive. I can do it or it's overwhelming. I have to hire a developer. Don't just assume you need to hire that developer. Put a little bit of time in and then decide. Is it worth it to you? You know how busy you are between work, family, hobbies, whatever other things you've got going on? How much time are you willing to dedicate to putting this website together? **\[41:05\]** **Amanda:** A lot of these systems like Shopify will let you do a free sign-up for sometimes 14 **\[41:10\]** **Bill:** days. Yes. Yep. Alright, so now I'll go. Let's assume that my website is now up and running. Well, actually, this will be even the development part. Something I learned. I don't remember what episode. I think it was Web Design Shortcuts you should never take, which was season one. **\[41:30\]** **Sean:** Yes, it was. **\[41:31\]** **Bill:** first episode. That's right. Oh okay. It was about usability testing and I love that because I could just see the nightmare of I'm launching my website live to sell something and there's 48 problems and now I look like an idiot and nobody want you know that word will get out. So yeah the usability thing getting three people kind of separate from me separate from the developer just to go through the process, logging their experience, that was very valuable, so it's obviously something that I will do. I'll ask my developer if I go that direction. Hey, let's make sure that this is included in your fixed price. **\[42:15\]** **Mike:** Yeah, this is great. I really was giddy when I saw this one, because so few people, they always think, oh, I know my stuff. I know my content. I know how people are going to But you'd be surprised how much people use things in a different way than you expect. So this is, yeah, this is a great plan. **\[42:34\]** **Bill:** And again, with the assumption that I go with Shopify or Kajabi, now my question is the maintenance plan. Is there, is there features that I still would need to consider to do a maintenance plan? Or no, I'm paying for that with my monthly fee and that will likely be taken care of. **\[42:52\]** **Sean:** I think for a hosted solution that the monthly fee should be sufficient and that if you need new features or you find a bug, then you might need to call in a web developer on a project or hourly basis. **\[43:09\]** **Amanda:** If it's a bug in the core program, you would just need to contact Shopify or whoever and be like this happened. **\[43:15\]** **Sean:** Yeah. I meant a bug in the way that you had built it or the developer had built it, but yeah, Amanda's right. Yeah, these hosted solutions, I don't see a maintenance plan as being necessary. You're already paying for that. **\[43:28\]** **Mike:** Okay. Yeah, there wouldn't be a, in the sense that, you know, if you build your own site, 100% your site on some hosting platform that you found, you'll have to update the software like if you had WordPress or whatever, you update it once in a while. You wouldn't have to do that with something like Shopify because they'll be making sure it's the most up to date version. I would assume. I'm pretty sure that's how it works. **\[43:51\]** **Bill:** Yeah. Okay, and then the same thing with backing up my site, I would assume that they do that. And I feel like I wanna ask, is that on a separate server, because that's one thing I learned if it's not, that might just be a little bit of false confidence. **\[44:06\]** **Mike:** I looked into this actually before, and I couldn't find too much about it. I mean, obviously if you are hosting a shopping cart thing on Shopify, there's only so much backing up, they're gonna let you do anyway. It's not like they're gonna be able to, they're gonna hand over all of the credit card information that someone has used to buy your products, because that's what they're not gonna let you do that. So, I think most of the backing up as well is be handled by them. I don't know how, if they've had any big major meltdowns with backups or anything like that, I've never heard of anything like that, but. **\[44:38\]** **Sean:** I would assume, and I am saying assume here that these hosted solutions have backups included, but you might want to just double check and see Maybe it's a paid add-on that you get a guaranteed daily or weekly backup, or it could just be included like I assume. **\[44:58\]** **Mike:** And the off-site thing is a good question, too, it'd be nice to know if it's an off-site or because that can be an issue. **\[45:03\]** **Amanda:** I'd be really surprised if a hosted platform like Shopify or Kajabi or whatever. I'd be really surprised if they made you pay $100 a month and then made you pay extra for backups. **\[45:15\]** **Sean:** Yeah. I would be surprised by that as well, but you never know. **\[45:19\]** **Amanda:** Surprised and angry enough that I would shake my fist and walk away and find a different solution? **\[45:25\]** **Sean:** Yeah, a hundred bucks a month. That's $1,200 a year. That's not small change. **\[45:29\]** **Mike:** Yeah. So you might be in good shape as far as the maintenance plan and the backup, you know, the idea that you want backups. If you're going with a hosted service like Shopify, I think you're probably in good shape for both of those. I would think. **\[45:46\]** **Bill:** Okay. And cheaper alternatives may make me pay extra for those things. Is that a safe assumption? **\[45:53\]** **Mike:** I would think so just because they're not a big fish type thing, but I don't know like everyone here has said, the fact that they're dealing with e-commerce, I mean, surely they have backups as part of their business model anyway. **\[46:10\]** **Sean:** So I would say you probably only need to worry about offsite backups if you're hosting your own, like you're using WordPress and WooCommerce or some other thing that your developer is putting up to a shared host, then you want to make sure that it's backed up offsite. But like we said, double check that it's part of Shopify and I'm sure somewhere in their term as a service or feature list that it's there. **\[46:39\]** **Amanda:** Well, I bet they'd even have that information on a FAQ page. **\[46:42\]** **Mike:** I tried to find something about it, maybe I just didn't look in the right place, I'm not very good with the internet, but I couldn't find any information about backups on their site. **\[46:51\]** **Amanda:** Well, then I'm so glad you're here with us Mike, thanks. **\[46:53\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I hope to learn a lot from everyone here. **\[46:56\]** **Bill:** And going into my last area and then I'm going to end with my last question and I'll just prep you. My last question for you would be what should have I asked you all that I didn't ask. But before I get there, I want to something I learned in season three. Do I need a website? Was I need to track how effective my website is. So it makes sense. I'm investing in this website. I probably should know how it's performing. And the two things that I think I would use are Google Analytics. I heard that mentioned throughout the podcast series. And Google page speed insights. that was from season four, observation, and speed episode. So those are the things that I would kind of keep my tabs on just to make sure that things are functioning well. So with that, did I, is there something that I should have asked you, that I didn't ask as I prepared to, **\[47:50\]** **Amanda:** to follow through on this? Actually, I do, I just want to back up for a second when you were talking about things in ways that you can measure if your site is being successful using analytics, whether or it be Google or any of the other ones, I do know that a lot of e-com packages, again, whether it be something hosted like Shopify or something that you use on a shared host server, like WooCommerce or whatever, they will also give you information about people who have come to your e-com site, added things into their cart, and then just left, just decided to not make the purchase for whatever reason. And so information like that could also be helpful. I think that they even, with some of them, you can even automate like a reminder email. I find them as a user super annoying. Hey, you left us in your cart. Are you sure you don't want to come back? But oh, God, I hate that. But as a store owner, I could see how some of that information might be useful to yourself. **\[48:51\]** **Sean:** Yeah, you go to an e-commerce site and you fill in your email and then you change your mind. They've already saved your email and they're sending you a message an hour later or a day later. Don't you want to buy a widget X? **\[49:06\]** **Mike:** Well, I tell you, one of the tricks that I sometimes do is when I want to, I'm sort of interested in buying a product, I'll do that. And I abandon the cart on purpose because often they'll send you an email that says, hey, you didn't complete your purchase. If you do it now, it's 10% off. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. That's a good trick. We often do that and sometimes I purposely wait to see if they give me that deal and back it. **\[49:31\]** **Amanda:** We're shopping at different places. I've never gotten a discount offer. **\[49:35\]** **Mike:** Is that right? I never. I think it's happened once or twice or whiskey or something. **\[49:39\]** **Sean:** I got it once, which is why I didn't remember it, but it only once. I would like to back up even further than Amanda backed up because while you were talking about backups. I googled Shopify and backups, and I got a link to the Shopify Help Center page, which I will include in the show notes, and it's backups and duplication. You can export CSV files from your Shopify admin to backup your store information. You can combine these files with other data, for example, a copy of your theme to create a backup or duplicate of your store. And then there's a whole bunch more information on the page about how to do that. So it might be something that is more manual, but it's baked into the system as something you can do yourself. Now I'm going to save this link so that I can add it to the show notes later. **\[50:33\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, but my guess is backing up is just going to be like standard. It's just like a default function that they're going to let everyone be able to do. **\[50:41\]** **Mike:** Yeah. And like Amanda said about the analytics thing, I did notice for Shopify, they have something called apps which are like plugins, I guess, that kind of improve the functionality of your store. And I did see one that seemed to be offering more powerful analytics than you would get by default from Shopify. So yeah, it would normally track, you know, who did this and whatever, who bought these products, but this other app you can install on your Shopify site would give you like, oh, who came from this particular page and went and bought something? Or, you know, really detailed stuff. So I know you can install these apps. Some of them are paid, some of them are free. It's kind of like plugins in WordPress. So as far as tracking, you might want to look into that a little bit, depending on how much tracking you want to do. But yeah, like you said, if you have your own site that that you're going to build and you're just using Shopify to sort of as the store that you're going to plug into it, then your own site should definitely be running at least Google Analytics so you can track, you know, who's going there, how many people, all that kind of thing. **\[51:47\]** **Sean:** Yeah, so Bill, you asked if we have any questions we think you should have asked. I personally think you are probably the most prepared person I've ever talked to. So I don't have any questions that I think you should have asked Amanda, Mike. No, I wish most clients where this will prepare it. I wish I could say the same, that would be just amazing. **\[52:10\]** **Mike:** You did a really thorough job of researching this, and I don't know anything else you can ask. And by the way, if you do come up with something else, fire off an email, be happy to help you out. But no, this is great. This is really, really thorough and informative. **\[52:23\]** **Sean:** Bill, it's been a real pleasure having you on the show. It's validation for you, because we basically confirmed that you're so well prepared and you listened. And it's validation for me about how I created the podcast to help other people. So thank you so much. **\[52:39\]** **Mike:** And by the way, when your site gets up, by all means, let us know when it's up, we'll promote it on the show and talk about 10 people there. **\[52:47\]** **Bill:** And if you're looking to stay on top of the latest research on how to lose body fat and build muscle, well, I've got a product for you. Yeah, exactly. That's right. **\[52:57\]** **Amanda:** As computer nerds, we are not your target market. **\[53:01\]** **Sean:** Yeah, unfortunately. **\[53:02\]** **Amanda:** We should be, but we're not. **\[53:03\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I should be. I just need the motivation to get on to that. **\[53:07\]** **Mike:** OK, well, thanks very much, Bill, for coming on. This has been really cool. **\[53:10\]** **Amanda:** It was nice talking to you. **\[53:12\]** **Sean:** Yeah, thank you. The Website 101 podcast was hosted by me, Sean Smith. You can find me online at my website, caffeinecreation.c.a. And on LinkedIn, where my username is caffeinecreations. **\[53:31\]** **Amanda:** The website 101 podcast is hosted by me, Amanda Loots. You can also find me online at AmandaLoots.com. **\[53:38\]** **Mike:** And by me, Mike Mele, find me online at belikewater.ca or on socials at Mike Mele. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 05 - 1 [ Meet your Host - Sean](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-1/meet-your-host-sean/) - 2 [ Meet Your Host - Mike Mella](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-2/meet-your-host-mike-mella/) - 3 [ Wes Bos - Your Web Boss](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-3/wes-bos-your-web-boss/) - 4 [ Tailwind CSS with Adam Wathan](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-4/tailwind-css-with-adam-wathan/) - 5 [ Starting my own Website with Bill Campbell](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-5/starting-my-own-website-with-bill-campbell/) - 6 [ CSS is Awesome with Kevin Powell](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-6/css-is-awesome-with-kevin-powell/) - 7 [ Meet Your Host - Amanda](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-7/meet-your-host-amanda/) - 8 [ 11 Things to avoid doing on your website](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-8/11-things-to-avoid-doing-on-your-website/) - 9 [ Vanilla Javascript - Fundamentals before Frameworks](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-9/vanilla-javascript-fundamentals-before-frameworks/) - 10 [ Hiring Junior Devs and How to Stand Out from the Crowd](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-10/hiring-junior-devs-and-how-to-stand-out-from-the-crowd/) - 11 [ AlpineJS with Caleb Porzio: Lightweight javascript in your markup.](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-11/alpinejs-with-caleb-porzio-lightweight-javascript-in-your-markup/) - 12 [ Contract Opinions From Not a Lawyer](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-12/contract-opinions-from-not-a-lawyer/) - 13 [ Talking to a New Dev](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-05/episode-13/talking-to-a-new-dev/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>