(00:00:00) – Welcome to Coffee Powered Systems, equipping women with actionable steps to overcome overwhelm and streamline business and life. So grab your favorite drink and come hang out with me. I’m your host, Miranda Merton. Welcome back to Coffee Powered Systems. I hope you’ve got your beverage ready. Today I am talking about websites. I have, um, I made some purity coffee and I am trying it with oat milk. Today I picked up some Chobani Extra creamy oat milk and I wasn’t sure what I would think about it, but this is quite delicious. So whatever beverage you’ve got, grab it. Sit down with me as I get into what I think is everyone’s favorite love hate subject websites. For me personally, I love creating and editing and playing around with my website, but it’s also my procrastination pitfall because when I don’t want to do something, somehow I end up justifying why I need to edit the random ass page that only gets 2% of traffic.

(00:01:04) – You know, the one, it doesn’t match the rest of my site. I’ve updated since then and I really need to get in and update this page or this blog post or whatever and help it to convert better, because if it’s prettier, it will convert better, right? But if you have been on my website lately, you might have noticed that I did change some things around a few months ago. I switched from WordPress to show it. But if you’re not used to, um, looking at the differences between websites, you probably don’t notice a change because essentially it’s just a theme or a hosting change. So you might not be able to notice that right off the bat, but why the change? So I have to admit that I was kind of bored with my website and the design of it. Um, it was kind of, I just didn’t feel like there was a whole lot that I liked about it anymore.

(00:02:01) – It felt kind of generic when you go on most websites and it’s just kind of like, blah, it’s just kind of there. Nothing jumps out at you and nothing really says work with me or this is what I do. So I wanted something a bit more lively and fun that offered me a bit more flexibility with the design. So really what I wanted was a custom design site, but I didn’t actually wanna pay custom design money. So that was gonna be a problem, right? If you don’t wanna pay custom design money, unfortunately you’re left with like these cookie cutter, um, straight out of the box kind of things, and you can design and tweak them a little bit. But essentially the theme is the theme. The template is the template, right? So what I remembered when I was thinking about this a while back is I remembered looking at ShowIt before and I decided to revisit it.

(00:02:59) – And back when I initially looked at it, I was really stuck and really just into using WordPress. So going to a whole new system and learning a whole new thing, um, just wasn’t on my radar. So really I just wanted to stick with something that was either on WordPress or compatible with WordPress. And sidebar here, my previous episode, um, number 88, if you’re listening in the podcast pair, it’s the episode right before this one. Or, uh, you can go to my website, miranda merton slash or miranda me.com/ 88. That was a Tip Tuesday show on show it. So be sure to listen to that one as well so you can get a little bit more about the features and pricing for show it. So I was familiar with show it, uh, the second time around when I was doing my research and I knew it had the capability and lots of customizations with the, um, plugins.

(00:03:57) – It did have the ability to use some of the same plugins as WordPress. And since WordPress really is like the popular standard for websites, I think about 43% is the number of sites that are currently built using WordPress. Um, so which with that much market share, I was just okay with sticking with WordPress and going with the flow. So while reviewing ShowIt, I came across a designer that built ShowIt websites and I was blown away with her designs and it was really what I was looking for, like something just slightly different and out of the box and had a little more personality than these boxed, you know, straight out of the box templates. So they weren’t the usual cookie cutter designs. So I got really excited and then I realized that a lot of ShowIt designers actually create and sell their own templates. So I found this lovely designer, her name is Emma Troy and I will drop the link for her website in the show notes.

(00:05:02) – And I fell in love with those templates that she offered. I think she had about, she has about five or six of them. Um, and my guess a new one has come out since I purchased my template, which I love her new one, but unfortunately I’ve already gotten a template. So, and they’re pretty pricey, I believe. Well, her site is in Australia, so there is a little bit of a price exchange there. So once you buy one, you don’t need more templates. So you buy one, you figure out what it is that you want your basic site to look like, and then you go with it. And Emma has actually introduced another service since I purchased a template. Now she will actually design or personalize any template that you buy from her. So you can purchase that as an extra service. So if you, so I guess it’s kind of in the middle if you don’t want the template and if you don’t want a full custom design site, you can actually purchase a service from her that she will personalize your template, which is awesome.

(00:06:01) – Some of the reasons that I love show it over WordPress is that the first one is there’s no code. So if you have been skeptical about using WordPress, if you’re using something like Wix or Squarespace, you’re used to a drag and drop builder, no code. If using code on WordPress sites really just intimidates you or if you’re over it, that’s one of the things that I do love. I don’t mind code, but I’m not a super technical, like I can read and write code like completely, but if I can build something without code, then why not? So I have less worry about breaking things. I have less worry about going to Google to figure out, hey, how do I write this in CSS to put it in the right spot? Um, you don’t have to worry about that. Another thing is that every aspect of it is easily customizable.

(00:06:53) – So unlike other theme builder sites like Squarespace, you can design every aspect of your show at site. So if you decided you want a different color on a different page or a different thought, um, you want the box a little bit bigger or smaller, you want to move a box slightly to the left or right, you can do anything that you want in real time. It’s kind of like a wissy wig. What you see is what you get on the page and it makes it super easy. I found that doing, uh, using Squarespace, like I have a couple of clients that have Squarespace sites with Squarespace, you have a color palette. Um, so you have your brand elements and basically it’s like if you are using this font on this page, the font is gonna be this size and it’s gonna be this color and it’s that way across the board, which is great if you just really want to get something out there and put it out the box and um, everything’s very uniform and it looks the same.

(00:07:53) – I don’t really like that. It really, when you get to a page and you just wanna change something, you don’t want it to look like that. Um, it really hinders your creativity and the ability to change things. So I love that about show it is that you can customize anything on any page along those lines. The mobile pages are completely editable from the desktop version. Now this is also a con and I will go into that a little bit later, but you can edit your mobile pages completely different. So if you wanted to choose a different image to show on mobile versus um, your desktop, or if you wanted to remove the image altogether or um, you want the words to say something different, you can edit those completely. Another thing is that show, it still uses WordPress blog. So if you do have a blog on WordPress, um, you would actually keep your blog and keep all of that on the WordPress site.

(00:08:50) – So if you’re familiar with WordPress blogging, it’s super simple and you just keep using it like, like that. Okay, so you also get a good reason for this is because Word Plus does blogging. It’s the original blog. Um, it’s really good with SEO and integrates with Google very well. So you get all of the power of that stuff and you can still use plugins like Yost seo, which is a great plugin to help you with those aspects as well. So another one is hosting it is included in the price in show it. So you don’t have to worry about which hosting provider you wanna use. If you wanna go with Blue Host or GoDaddy or SiteGround, by the way, I recommend Site Ground. If you are not using a show at site and you have to get a hosting provider site ground is uh, the one I would recommend.

(00:09:41) – And it includes hosting for you. So that’s just one less headache. You have to worry about all of the updates. They do all of the updates automatically for you. Uh, you don’t have to worry about the differences between, uh, the plugins and the themes if everything’s gonna work together or if you update something, it’s gonna break. That’s a real big headache that I was really over with WordPress. Um, wondering if I upgrade to this version, is it gonna, is this theme or is this plugin gonna be compatible? So you don’t have to worry about that with show it. Um, another one is that you can use some of the certain, some of the same plugins that are compatible with your WordPress blog. There are different pricing tiers, um, and you can check that out on your website. I went with the highest tier because I did have plugins that I wanted to keep that weren’t included in that middle tier, which is like the site with the blog.

(00:10:37) – Like for instance my pretty links. I believe I had to use my pretty links on the higher tier and I don’t wanna let that go. I’ve got a lot of pretty links and I need them to stay intact. So the next thing that I really love about ShowIt is that you can basically create portions of your site as templates. So if you have a call out or a freebie or a client testimonial block that you created and you’re like, I really love this and I wanna use it on multiple pages, you can save it as a template and then just pop it onto another page and that saves you so much time. And then if you update it in one spot in the template spot, it updates across your website everywhere. And also you can actually choose, like if first instance you have just a particular sales page and you wanted to use the testimonials for only things that were mentioning that particular offer, you can actually just edit it for that page and you can say, I don’t, I wanna use this template block, but I wanna change it around just for this page.

(00:11:48) – You can actually make that just for this page and then change everything and it wouldn’t affect the other one. So this was huge for me and I really love the um, customizable options with that. Um, also their customer support is fantastic. They’re super responsive. Uh, the migration for me to like change my site over was easy. Once I started it. It was quick and easy and they give you a 14 day trial to try it out and they’ll actually extend that if you need it. So when I did my trial, I needed a couple of extra days to trial it. I realized I was at the end of my trial and then there was something I didn’t try, um, or I just didn’t think I had enough time to play around with it. Uh, you know when you do these trials, the weeks and the times get away from you and you’re like, oh crap, that two weeks went by real fast.

(00:12:40) – Um, so I reached out and asked them if I could get a couple more days to really hone in and actually play around with it. Um, and they gave me another two weeks. So they are really flexible. They, um, are easy to talk to. There’s a lot of help articles that you can go through once you’re in there. Super simple to work with. So a couple of the cons that I will point out here really quick. You will have two separate logins if you have a blog option. So if you just have a website and you don’t have a blog, you don’t need to worry about that. You won’t have the WordPress login. But if you do have a blog and you want to keep your blog portion, then you will still have to log into WordPress to do your blogging and then you will also have the separate login to show it in order to edit the rest of your pages on your site or any other backend thing.

(00:13:30) – So that’s kind of annoying, but the blog part is so like such a small part of what I do now, it’s like not that big of a deal. And then going back to where I mentioned the mobile design being completely editable from the desktop, although I love that it’s not completely mobile responsive when you change things around and edit it. So you do have to make sure that you also use the mobile view, um, during editing to make sure everything looks good and it’s in the right spot. Because if you add a new headline in, um, your headline might land on top of an image in the mobile version. So you need to make sure you have that mobile version open while you’re editing or when you’re done editing the desktop switch over to the mobile version and you can see and edit how everything looks there.

(00:14:19) – So otherwise, if you’re not used to that, that can increase your design time considerably. It could double your time really if you’re not careful and if you’re like really super meticulous about things. So what happens when you decide to switch? So if you wanted to switch your website, your current website over to show it, you would leave your current website as is up and running. You don’t need to do anything with that. Um, right away you would start the 14 day trial for show it and see if it’s right for you. You can play around with it, create a new website, create, um, I would say create a few pages maybe like the homepage, the about page, maybe your services page, just to see um, how it looks. And then if you decide that you wanna go ahead and move forward, you would purchase a show it website template that represents your brand.

(00:15:16) – You can search Google for show it templates, um, show it actually has a like template marketplace. So they have some basic, um, templates and websites in their own marketplace, which are great. And so you can use the one that I used, the designer, the template shop that I used, and I’ll drop that again into the show notes. And there’s a few other ones that are really great. If you search online, you can find a ton and just pick one that goes with your personality and your flow and then customize your show at website while you are inside your free trial account. So while you’re doing that 14 day trial, go ahead and play around with it. There’s a bit of a learning curve to show it. So usually if you purchase it from a designer, uh, purchase a template from a designer or even if you just purchased it from the uh, show at Marketplace, they will provide learning materials or mini courses for editing those templates show it also has their own learning center with articles and videos.

(00:16:20) – So the only thing I will say is com if you commit to it, either purchase a service from someone that will edit your show site for you or commit to having the time over a couple weekends or some nights to um, learn how to edit, show it because it is, you know, it’s drag and drop. It’s pretty intuitive and simple once you get the hang of it. But there are some aspects to it that are kind of like different and you need to really get the hang of it to understand it. But once you get the hang of it, it’s fairly simple. So then once you have your main pages done and if you think that there are some like pages that you really want ready, once you make the switch, I would go ahead and create those pages as well. And then once you’re ready, you can request your migration with the show at support team.

(00:17:13) – And if you have pages that you wanna keep, just make sure the URLs are the same as the original ones before you do the switch. That way they will automatically switch over with the same pages or you can install a redirection plugin, um, and make sure that you send the old pages to the new URLs. So once you do that, the migration will take like a day or two if that. And then you can launch your site. And the migration depends on how many blog posts you have. Um, if you don’t have any blog posts, it’s really fairly quick. I think mine might have took like, I think they say 12 hours, I don’t know, it didn’t feel like it took that long. And then once you’re ready and everything is set, you can cancel your WordPress hosting after a couple of weeks. So that is basically how it goes.

(00:18:03) – And I know it sounds it’s scary, obviously I wouldn’t do it if you’re just wanting to play around or you’re happy with your website as it is. But if you’re in the market for switching things up, if you’ve been looking for something different, definitely I will go ahead and explore that. So your action this week is to see is your website working for you? And then explore your options with show it and whether or not it’s something that interests you. So you wanna take into the account the costs for your current hosting provider, any premium plugins that you already use. Cuz although a lot of plugins might be free, sometimes you pay for the premium version, you wanna make sure that you can still use those premium versions if they are, um, important to you. And then also any themes that you have purchased or templates that you’ve already purchased for WordPress.

(00:19:01) – You know, so you wanna take an account. Anything that you’ve already paid, you don’t wanna look at, oh, I’ve already put a thousand bucks into this website. If you’ve already done that, then you probably have a great website as is. So don’t make any hasty decisions just because it’s something new and shiny. And of course the shiny object syndrome not only takes your focus away, it takes your time away. So don’t get into anything just because I said I love show it and it’s a really great option. So if you already have a great website, this one is not for you. But if you are looking for something new and you’ve been wondering where to go next, definitely I would recommend checking it out. So I will drop the link for, show it down in the notes as well where you can go to miranda me.com/show it. Let me know if you are looking into a new website. Let me know how it works out for you. That is all I have for today. I will see you next time. Thanks for listening to Coffee Powered Systems. You can find links to everything mentioned in the episode down in the show notes or on the [email protected]. If you enjoyed this episode, rate and review it in iTunes or where you enjoy listening so others can find it too. And join me here next time.