Navigating the Digital Landscape: AI and Misinformation | Philippa Gamse

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this episode of the Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim speaks with Philippa Gamse, a digital strategy and analytics consultant. They discuss Philippa's journey from the UK to California, her motivations for entrepreneurship, and the importance of analytics in business. The conversation also delves into the impact of AI on search results, the challenges of misinformation, and the growing need for authentic connections in marketing. In this conversation, Philippa Gamse and Christian Brim explore the evolving landscape of AI, its practical applications, and the common pitfalls businesses face in marketing. They discuss the importance of understanding visitor behavior, the significance of key metrics, and the necessity of having a clear strategy in business. The conversation also touches on the challenges of sales and the need for effective communication in interpreting data for clients.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Philippa Gamse emphasizes the importance of making websites perform better.
• Entrepreneurs often seek independence from corporate politics.
• Analytics can provide valuable insights for business improvement.
• The shift to remote work has changed how we manage outcomes.
• AI in search results can be both helpful and concerning.
• Misinformation is a growing challenge in the digital landscape.
• Authentic connections are becoming essential in marketing.
• Consultants should focus on deliverables rather than hourly rates.
• Understanding website performance is critical for business success.
• Creative types often struggle with data but can benefit from it. AI tools can enhance communication across languages.
• The current AI landscape resembles the internet boom of the late 1990s.
• AI is beneficial for data analysis and identifying trends.
• Businesses often jump into tactics without a clear strategy.
• Vanity metrics can mislead businesses about their performance.
• Traffic without conversion can be counterproductive.
• Understanding visitor behavior is essential for business success.
• Key metrics should align with specific business goals.
• Sales skills are crucial for entrepreneurs to succeed.
• Effective communication is key in interpreting data for clients.

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.612)
Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the internet where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. A special shout out to my one listener in Broomfield, Colorado. I hope you're not under snow at this point in the year. I am your host, Christian Brim, and joining me today is Philippa Games of Websites That Win International.

Did I get that right? Yes, yes, I win. So, Philippa, tell us, you don't sound like a native of California, so why don't you give us the journey of how you got here?

Philippa Gamse (00:32.339)
You did, thank you.

Philippa Gamse (00:49.461)
Well, right. I'm happy to hear that actually don't sound like a native of California. I've been in California for about 25 years. So it's good to know that I retain, you know, for some reason Americans like British accents. Yeah. Well, of course I am smart. No, no. Right. No. So yes, I'm originally from London, been in the US for all 30 years or so.

Christian Brim (01:03.274)
Absolutely. It makes you sound smart.

Philippa Gamse (01:17.809)
living in California for most of that time. yeah.

Christian Brim (01:21.794)
Very nice. I'm a bit of an anglo-phile. My mother put me in front of Monty Python's flying circus when I was young, and it has warped my sense of ever since.

Philippa Gamse (01:30.164)
you

Philippa Gamse (01:33.823)
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Right, and unfortunately, you know, there's not many of them still around, but we still love watching it.

Christian Brim (01:44.99)
No. Yes. You either love it or you hate it. Like, see, I liked the original Office better than the U.S. Office, but they're both very funny, but they're very different audiences. So what do you do in California at winning websites internationally?

Philippa Gamse (01:50.634)
Mm-hmm.

Philippa Gamse (01:59.637)
Yeah.

Philippa Gamse (02:07.231)
So I'm a digital strategy and analytics consultant, which I know sounds terribly boring. But basically what I do and what I hope I can help your listeners with for a few minutes is helping you figure out how to make your website sing better, both in terms of making more of what you want to make, which is usually money, but sometimes various other things too.

Christian Brim (02:15.022)
But if you say it in a British accent, it sounds okay.

Philippa Gamse (02:37.211)
wasting less resources on it if some of the things that you're doing aren't actually working for you.

Christian Brim (02:44.086)
Okay, I have an interesting question on that, but I'm gonna wait to ask it. So, how long have you been doing this?

Philippa Gamse (02:51.909)
too long. No, long time, long time. So which in some ways has its benefits because you can you can kind of see, you know, the internet is this world where everything changes all the time. So, you know, I do a lot of teaching, which I really enjoy. But every time I teach a course like digital marketing or analytics or whatever, I have to revise.

Christian Brim (03:06.03)
Mm-hmm.

Philippa Gamse (03:18.539)
Excuse me. mean I have to check and make sure that all my material is still up to date and everything even if I only taught it a couple months ago I once met an English as a second language teacher who told me that she hadn't changed her lesson plans in 20 years So, you know, there's the difference

Christian Brim (03:25.304)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (03:36.704)
Yes. So when you started your business, were you working as an employee somewhere else?

Philippa Gamse (03:46.155)
So I mean, when I first came here, obviously I was employed actually at a major national nonprofit organization until I got my green card. And once I got my green card, you know, I'm, hate to say this, I'm not a very good employee. Right. You know, I like, I like working on my path, on my day, my sort of bio rhythms and my, the way I want my day to be.

Christian Brim (03:53.422)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (04:03.778)
Yeah, no, most entrepreneurs aren't.

Philippa Gamse (04:15.986)
I hate politics, the politics in the workplace, right? And I like, one of my primary motivations was to say to myself, if I'm a consultant, people are gonna hire me, hopefully for my expertise. And my evaluations, you know, these performance review things that you have to do in a corporate world, my evaluations are gonna be A, do they come back and ask for more? And B, do they tell their friends and colleagues about me?

Christian Brim (04:19.361)
Yes.

Christian Brim (04:39.672)
Mm-hmm.

Philippa Gamse (04:44.201)
And if the answer to both of those is yes, I'm doing all right, you know, it's so, yes.

Christian Brim (04:44.43)
So you have.

Christian Brim (04:48.224)
Instant real fit feedback as opposed to the contrived bureaucratic one So did you start out doing website? analytics

Philippa Gamse (05:00.491)
pretty much. So, not to date myself, but analytics was, was pretty young. and you know, it's not the sexiest of subjects. I have to be honest. And I know that one of the things that I'm very aware of, and in fact, I'm writing a book right now is that most business owners, many business owners, you know, you look at a load of data and charts and graphs and stuff like that, and you glaze over. And especially if you're a creative type, right. and yet.

Christian Brim (05:24.674)
Hmm. Yes.

Philippa Gamse (05:29.725)
in those numbers and charts and graphs and stuff is some very helpful information. So what I'm trying to do is to make that accessible. You don't have to get involved with the charts and graphs, but the kind of client I really enjoy is the one who comes and says, Philippa, what do I need to know to make my business better? I think it's a great question. What do I need to know to make my business better? Nobody has ever said to me,

Christian Brim (05:50.307)
Yes.

Philippa Gamse (05:56.877)
I want to hire you to produce 50 pages of graphs and charts, right?

Christian Brim (05:59.678)
Lord, no. I, I've had that conversation with multiple agencies over the years that I've hired in as like, nobody cares about the customer. Nobody cares about the, the metrics. Like you, you can produce all the metrics that you want, but if it's not producing something valuable to me on my end,

I, you know, don't, don't just produce numbers to show you're busy. I don't care about that.

Philippa Gamse (06:29.055)
Right, right, right. And that's the point because yes, at the same time, in those numbers can be some really, really helpful insights. And that's, that's what I want to kind of persuade people of so that, you know, their eyes don't glaze over so quickly, because, you know, if we can communicate this in the right way, analytics is actually really important, because the truth is, if you're not intelligent, if you have a website, and it's, and it's somewhat critical to your business, if it has an important role in your business,

Christian Brim (06:32.13)
So.

Christian Brim (06:37.453)
yeah, no.

Philippa Gamse (06:58.451)
If you're not looking at how it's performing, then you're honestly shooting in the dark with everything that you're doing with it. And it's still amazing to me how many businesses are really not looking at how their website is performing. So, you know, that's the key.

Christian Brim (07:10.54)
Yes. Yes. And what do you want that website to do? What is the outcome that you're looking for? I think I know, and I think you kind of answered this, but what was your motivation to go into business for yourself?

Philippa Gamse (07:16.468)
Right.

Philippa Gamse (07:31.191)
as I said, independence and I was just fed up of playing the corporate game, you know, I'm not good at it. I'm not good at commuting. I like working from home. I'm not honestly, as you can see, particularly interested in dressing in corporate suit every day. do I have pants on? Yeah. Yes.

Christian Brim (07:34.114)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (07:37.997)
Yes.

Christian Brim (07:43.298)
Yes?

Christian Brim (07:51.298)
Yes. Do you have pants on?

Christian Brim (07:55.796)
Okay, all right. I mean, I've heard that some people show up to these and they're not wearing anything below the waist, so...

Philippa Gamse (08:02.163)
I'm assuming you're talking about what I would call trousers, hopefully. Yes. You're not asking a very intimate question. Good. No, and you know, I mean, I have a dog, right? I like to walk my dog when I feel like it or when the dog feels like it. I like working in a way that says here are the deliverables that I need to get done. Here's the deadline for when that has to happen. How and when I do it is up to me.

Christian Brim (08:05.568)
Yes, trousers, skirts, yeah, whatever. No, no, no, no.

Christian Brim (08:30.702)
Yes, yes, yes. Which is interesting because when you apply that thought process to regular old employees, it's fascinating what happens. We had implemented a process called row, which is results only work environment. It was a...

Philippa Gamse (08:30.826)
Right.

Christian Brim (08:58.518)
outlined in a book called Work Sucks and How to Fix It. A brilliant book, but it's essentially this idea that you don't control how and when and where your employees do their work. You have clear expectations of the outcomes and you manage the outcomes. And then COVID happened and we were very thankful that we had that in place.

Philippa Gamse (09:02.218)
Right.

Christian Brim (09:28.268)
And it really just kind of pushed it into its maturity. you know, it's, it's fascinating. I, most of our workers are remote now, spread out across the country and, it's, you know, as, as a, as an owner or a manager, it could feel like you just don't have any control. Like, I don't know what anybody's doing or, know, but

As long as there's good communication and trust and you're managing to the outcomes, you definitely have to have accountability in that situation. It's remarkable how things get done and you don't have to worry about when and where everybody is. mean, this idea that people are having their keystrokes and mouse movements monitored by their company, I'm like, what?

Philippa Gamse (10:15.925)
Right.

Philippa Gamse (10:28.227)
You know, I mean, I will confess there are times during the day when I play computer games or I do a jigsaw on my computer because it's actually helps me to think, not to be staring directly at the problem that I'm thinking about, but just to walk away, look at something else and think about it. And so, you know, if you were logging my mouse strokes, you'd be horrified. But you know,

Christian Brim (10:39.566)
Sure.

Christian Brim (10:49.166)
Yes.

Philippa Gamse (10:52.009)
that's that's why and the other thing that I also do because of this philosophy is as a consultant, I don't I will not charge by the hour people say you know, can I borrow it? I you know, you charge by the again by the deliverable by the here's what here's what you want me to do. I'm going to do it. This is how much it's going to cost right.

Christian Brim (11:00.852)
Thank God.

Christian Brim (11:10.338)
Yeah, I'm kind of on a crusade to stamp out the hourly concept. I was having an online discussion on LinkedIn with a lawyer and she, she had, she's a tax attorney and she had resolved this issue for her client and her post was about how she had returned part of the retainer and how surprised the client was and how virtuous.

Philippa Gamse (11:19.634)
Yeah, right.

Christian Brim (11:38.05)
She was because she was ethically giving money back. And I'm like, okay, great. You're ethical, but did you ever stop to think that you might've been leaving money on the table? you, your client was surprised, meaning they had paid you what they thought it was worth. And then you come back and say, I did my job quicker. didn't take as long. So here's your money back. I'm like, that just doesn't make sense.

Philippa Gamse (11:55.305)
Mm-hmm.

Philippa Gamse (12:02.891)
Right. I always remember getting a legal bill for photocopying hours and I just like... Please.

Christian Brim (12:12.962)
The machine has to get paid too, Philippa. I mean, you know.

Philippa Gamse (12:15.179)
Yeah, you know, can I do my own photocopying then? know, save. Yeah.

Christian Brim (12:19.102)
Yeah, send it to me. I'll my own copies. So, okay, now I'm going to pivot back to your area of expertise. And one of the things that's intriguing me in the current landscape around SEO and content is the advent of AI in search results and zero click. So what do you see and how are you approaching that problem?

Philippa Gamse (12:41.771)
Mm.

Christian Brim (12:48.366)
for businesses.

Philippa Gamse (12:51.443)
Yeah, I guess it depends on what you're trying to sell. mean, to some extent, zero click could still get you a visitor in the sense that if you're selling products and you've got the shopping carousel, people can still click on the product and that's your product. I mean, yeah, it's one of those where, I mean, I personally sometimes quite like the AI search results because it gives me the answer I'm looking for as a user. It's very helpful.

Christian Brim (13:16.494)
Sure.

Philippa Gamse (13:20.997)
now I, and again, I think it depends what, what, what, area you're in. Like this podcast hopefully will be found in search results at some point, maybe. but if somebody actually wants to listen to the podcast, they're to have to come to your site and listen to it. Right. So I mean, where AI is really helpful in, in searches is for providing information. So if I have a question. Right.

Christian Brim (13:32.579)
Right?

Christian Brim (13:37.806)
Correct.

Philippa Gamse (13:49.963)
it's going to give me good answers if I'm looking for a resource.

then it's limited because it gives me snippets. And I tend to still look and sort of, okay, but where can I learn more about this?

Christian Brim (14:00.749)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (14:06.55)
Yeah. And I guess one of the things, and this is not different than pre-AI, but it is the veracity of the information, especially when you're talking about technical things like accounting and finance or marketing even. it's, how much do you trust the search results that you're getting, right? And how accurate are they? Because the

Philippa Gamse (14:16.0)
You're right.

Christian Brim (14:35.138)
the AI that existed before the one that we're seeing presented you results based upon how people interacted with that content. But that doesn't mean that that is necessarily good content or accurate content. So I don't think in that way it's really changed.

Philippa Gamse (14:54.547)
Right. Right.

Philippa Gamse (15:01.225)
Yeah, I should say, I mean, I'm not, wouldn't definitely not call myself an expert on AI. And, you know, the whole kind of how do you know what to believe these days is a rabbit hole that I'm sure we could go down extremely deeply and, because it's very scary. And I mean, just looking at what AI can do now is pretty scary in some ways, you know, I mean, in terms of misinformation.

Christian Brim (15:15.682)
Yes.

Christian Brim (15:26.51)
well, and, and, you know, I made this comment a decade ago was, you know, the idea that, that the internet and Google allowed us the ability to not remember things. Like you don't need to know what the capital of Zimbabwe is. You don't have to retain that in your head. You can just search it. But the thing that really always scared me about that was that what happens

when the tech overlords start feeding us information that's not accurate, either intentionally or not intentionally, is there going to be a baseline knowledge to say, you know what, that's not actually the capital of Zimbabwe, right?

Philippa Gamse (16:11.659)
You mean there are the facts and there are the alternative facts. Well, I tell you what is, I mean, I saw an extremely well produced video of President Trump speaking. Okay, I'm not going to get political about whether I agree with what he was saying, but the fact of the matter was it looked really, really good. It was very convincing and apparently absolutely none of it was true because all of it had been pieced together by an AI tool. So he had never actually said,

Christian Brim (16:15.178)
Right. It's frightening. It's frightening.

Christian Brim (16:24.834)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (16:38.125)
Yes.

Philippa Gamse (16:40.179)
the words that were in this video in that order, right? He'd said all the words, but, and once you start doing that, that's really worrying.

Christian Brim (16:42.723)
Yes.

But not, yeah. Yeah, and.

Christian Brim (16:51.272)
Yeah. Well, and I think I was actually just talking to my marketing director this morning. I think that what all of this is driving towards is this need for authentic connection. Like people are already craving it and I think it's going to become more of a necessity as these tools get better.

and the disinformation, the manipulation, you know, is more and more. There's an accounting firm, I don't even know their name, I wouldn't say if I did, but I found them because one of our clients left us for them and said, you know, they're going to do all these great things for us. And as I researched them, I'm like, these guys,

are going to get arrested. they're doing some very shady shit. But the problem is that if someone wants something and someone tells them what they want to hear, they're going to buy. Whether that's marketing or accounting or a fat loss gummy. mean, it doesn't matter. people will be sold if they want to.

Philippa Gamse (18:05.854)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (18:17.004)
want the outcome.

Philippa Gamse (18:18.111)
Yes, and on the other hand, we have social media and if people buy it and then they find it's a load of rubbish, they're going to say so loudly and that product isn't going to stand for very long, right? I mean, you can't just lie about what you can do because ultimately you will be found out, I think.

Christian Brim (18:23.256)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (18:26.69)
Yes.

Christian Brim (18:31.906)
Yes, which-

Christian Brim (18:38.08)
Yes, yes. But I guess it seems to me that the current environment allows people to be more, I won't say fraudulent like they're intending to be fraudulent, but that they can be misleading even more amplified than they could before.

Philippa Gamse (19:00.032)
Right.

I mean, I also saw an amazing video recently. So now there's an AI tool, which you can record a little video and it will translate that you're using your voice, your mannerisms, your face. It will automatically translate into something like 40 languages. And I recorded a little snippet and I listened to myself speaking another language that I can understand.

Christian Brim (19:16.28)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (19:22.242)
Mm-hmm.

Philippa Gamse (19:29.328)
And it was extremely convincing. But there I am then speaking Japanese or you know Mandarin or something which which I did well But apparently, you know, it's pretty convincing. The accent is pretty good. And then what do do with that because on the one hand it's great. You can communicate suddenly with bazillions of people but on the same time if somebody was to call me up in Japanese and say whatever they say I am now with a clue what they're saying, so

Christian Brim (19:36.054)
Allegedly. You don't know.

Christian Brim (19:48.376)
Yes?

Philippa Gamse (19:58.439)
Is it, I don't know, is it really helpful? Who knows?

Christian Brim (20:01.848)
Yeah, we're in a place, I kind of equate it to the late 1990s when the internet boom was going on. And there's a lot of people doing things just because they can, as opposed to really knowing how they're going to make money at it. And should you do it? So I think there's an AI bubble coming.

Philippa Gamse (20:16.767)
Mm-hmm.

Philippa Gamse (20:21.418)
Right.

Christian Brim (20:29.436)
probably not mature yet, but this, this idea that people are pouring all this money into this technology, but not having a real clear idea of what it is that they're trying to accomplish.

Philippa Gamse (20:40.585)
And at the same time, of course, we should say that there are some applications for AI where it's incredibly helpful. I mean, you know, if you, again, on my side of things, if you have to crunch tons and tons of data, and you're looking, for example, for patterns or trends in what type of people buy what kind of products from you, AI is extremely useful in that, right? And it can do it. Yeah, right. And much faster.

Christian Brim (20:46.113)
yeah.

Christian Brim (21:00.972)
Right. It can see things that you and I can't see.

Yes. Yes.

Philippa Gamse (21:08.308)
I've used it a little bit when I'm writing. I mean, as I said, I'm writing a book, not to write the book I hasten to add, but, you know, give me some starting ideas. You know, I want a paragraph on such and such, you know, give me a what do you think should be in the paragraph kind of thing. And then I can take it from there. And sometimes that is very helpful.

Christian Brim (21:17.934)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (21:23.63)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (21:28.002)
I'm gonna pivot again. So when you work with clients, what is the most common thing that you see that they get wrong regarding what you do?

Philippa Gamse (21:29.35)
Ha!

Philippa Gamse (21:44.811)
I would absolutely say jumping into marketing tactics, something like, for example, social media. Because they've heard that social media is very powerful, which it certainly is, but without a clear strategy for what they want to achieve, without maybe a clear definition of the audience they want to reach, the message that they want to give to that audience.

And it can be very tempting. You talked about agencies that give people lots of numbers just to show that they've been busy. some of those metrics we call vanity metrics. Like for example, the number of visitors that you have. So the agency can come along and say, look, look, you've got more visitors this week than you did last week. We're doing a great job for you. And that's absolutely not necessarily a true statement. mean, yes, you may be getting more visitors, but.

Christian Brim (22:21.559)
Right.

Christian Brim (22:28.92)
Right.

Philippa Gamse (22:42.387)
are they the right types of visitors? Before we say great, you know, if we get millions more visitors, but none of them buy anything, it doesn't really make any difference to the business.

Christian Brim (22:50.958)
No, as a matter of fact, it can be counterproductive. My previous agency was doing a MISCO and writing some blog content. And the guy gave me the content and I'm like, this is not our target market. Like this is not anything that anybody we want to talk to a question they're asking. And he was like, no, no, no, don't worry about it. This will generate a lot of traffic and it'll help your, your, your

website authority and your overall ranking with Google. And I'm like, okay, well, you're the expert. And then two years on, it's generating, it's still generating 70 to 80 % of the new organic search to our website. But I actually have to filter it out, which Google doesn't make easy, so that I can see what is actually happening because I don't care about that. And then we get

Philippa Gamse (23:41.931)
Okay.

Christian Brim (23:50.134)
we get people inquiring from that on our chat of our website. And I'm like, I don't want to talk to these people.

Philippa Gamse (23:58.101)
You know, what's interesting about that though, is that I do have some stories and this may be completely irrelevant to you. But as I said, I'm writing a book and I also have an ebook on my website, which is, it's got some stories in it that are designed just to inspire people who haven't looked at analytics much to sort of say, these are some of the sorts of things you can learn and what you can do. And I do have stories, my clients and I have sometimes taken a group of visitors,

that absolutely don't match our business model, our current business model, but we have identified like a side business or a new product that we do want to get into where those people are perfect. And we've made money on that. So the question is, and at the same time, I also have examples where, you know, the extra visitors are obviously completely not what you want. You never will go away, right?

Christian Brim (24:37.71)
Sure.

Christian Brim (24:56.984)
So what you're proposing is more like a research and like if you generate the traffic, then you can deliver the solution.

Philippa Gamse (24:57.193)
So sometimes it's, yeah.

Philippa Gamse (25:04.949)
Well, so you can say, what is the actual reason those people are coming? I mean, what content is it? What's, you know, what's, and is there any part of that that you would like to, that you could or would like to capitalize on? And if so, how would you do that? And if not, you know, the problem is if they, do they all leave very quickly from your site?

Christian Brim (25:24.65)
On that, it's just one article, yes.

Philippa Gamse (25:27.363)
So, you know, actually that's not necessarily good for you because if you have, you know, a lot of visitors who take one look at your site and walk away that I think I mean, I'm not an SEO expert, I know enough to be dangerous, but I'm not sure that that isn't detrimental in the end to your kind of to your rankings.

Christian Brim (25:45.856)
Yeah, I've thought about taking it down. So, exactly.

Philippa Gamse (25:48.745)
Well, if you're just filtering them out anyway, mean, you know, like, would, I would look at it first. And I would say, is there anything we can do with them? Is there anything that we can do with the page that this content is on to direct these people to something that they might find more interesting on our site? Or are they literally, absolutely literally not? I mean, I'll give you an example. So my name is games. And we say games, we spell it G-A-M-S-E, right? Don't ask it's an old

Christian Brim (26:16.684)
Right?

Philippa Gamse (26:18.493)
It's from another language and it's anglicized and there's a long story to it. But anyway, I cannot believe this. I still find this very difficult to understand, but there are people who come to my website and the search term that they use is computer games and they actually spell games G-A-M-S-E. And since there aren't that many people in the world with our name and since I'm the web person in that group anyway,

Christian Brim (26:38.285)
Interesting.

Christian Brim (26:44.268)
Right?

Philippa Gamse (26:45.557)
You know, if you do search for GAMSE, you're likely to find me. And so, you know, they put in GAMSE, computer games GAMSE, and my site comes up and they, I mean, I have no idea why they make that typo, because it doesn't feel intuitive. It doesn't feel like the sort of typo you would naturally make. But there they are. And I don't make computer games. I play computer games, but you know, I have absolutely no interest in those people.

Christian Brim (26:49.164)
Right.

Christian Brim (27:04.397)
Right.

Christian Brim (27:11.576)
Maybe you should.

Philippa Gamse (27:14.259)
No, I don't want to. It's not my thing. And so, you know, to your point, those people, yes, I filter them out too, because they're not useful to me.

Christian Brim (27:15.308)
No, Well, it's.

Christian Brim (27:24.718)
I have a similar thing with my name, Christian Brim. And I show up in the first of the results, but very quickly down at the bottom, it starts showing Christian hats. know, like hats with Christian slogans. OK. What? Sometimes. Maybe I should start a product line. I don't know.

Philippa Gamse (27:38.939)
Right. Yeah. Right. And do those people come to your website?

Philippa Gamse (27:49.012)
you

Christian Brim (27:50.394)
But it seems well covered out there. It's not like I have anything special to bring to the market. What are the key metrics that every business owner, doesn't matter what you're doing, what are they? What do we have to be looking at?

Philippa Gamse (28:10.859)
See, I don't think that's the right question.

Christian Brim (28:14.038)
Okay. Give me the right one then.

Philippa Gamse (28:16.341)
because I mean, and a lot of people ask that, you know, and then a lot of people real awful, all introduced of metrics. you know, we're going back to the little earlier, you said, what's, what's are the biggest mistakes people make? And I said, sort of jumping in without a strategy. And, you know, I still find that I, somebody comes to me and I'll say, what do want your website to do? Yes, you want your website to make you money, but what else do you want it to do? Is there content that you want people to look at? Is there a,

Christian Brim (28:30.827)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Philippa Gamse (28:45.963)
Do you have something you want people to sign up for? Do you have product specs you want people to download or free trial or what's going on here? Because there's usually more than one call to action. And the truth is you can't measure a ton of things at once because the point of measurement is to take action. I mean, there's no point knowing numbers if you're not gonna do something about them. Right.

Christian Brim (28:57.528)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (29:05.23)
Mm.

Christian Brim (29:08.994)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (29:14.638)
You're right.

Philippa Gamse (29:15.899)
If you're measuring a bazillion different things at once and you say, okay, well, we need to try doing this. It's very difficult to figure out from the numbers, you know, if you change something, what causes numbers to change? Because you're measuring so many different things. So it actually makes much more sense. And this is the way I approach things, to sit down and have a...

Christian Brim (29:34.264)
Yes.

Philippa Gamse (29:41.675)
you know, get really clear about what are we trying to do? What are the goals and outcomes in our specific case, your specific business? And then say, right, what are some of the key metrics that we want to measure today because we know what we want to know today that we can take action on. And once we've done that, then those metrics might change because we'll figure something out and then we'll move on to a different

Christian Brim (30:00.814)
Mm-hmm.

Philippa Gamse (30:11.307)
a different priority. So you know, yeah, we can start out and we can say, I mean, obviously, if you're getting no traffic, that's a problem, because there's not much to measure, right? So that would be an initial problem. But in general, once your website is moving along a bit, and you're getting some traffic, I think it makes much more sense to to sort of dig into the real what are people supposed to do here. And to also think across the spectrum of visitor behavior, because

Christian Brim (30:13.953)
Right.

Christian Brim (30:19.821)
Right?

Christian Brim (30:35.021)
Mm-hmm.

Philippa Gamse (30:41.515)
Most times people focus on the big hairy girl, which is usually to sell something, which is understandable because that's how you make money. But the truth is that very few people buy something from you on their first visit, typically. And so you want to know, well, but are they interested in me? Did they take a good look around? Was I able to get their email address, you know, so that I can come back to them?

Christian Brim (30:47.116)
Right?

Philippa Gamse (31:09.76)
Where did they come from in the first place? What are my most profitable or effective marketing channels? Because social media may be very effective, but maybe it's Instagram and not Facebook that's working for me. So I really need to do less of Facebook and more of Instagram, right? So looking at the whole spectrum of how do I get my best visitors? How do I get them engaged in my content, even if they're not going to buy something immediately?

Obviously, how do I make sure that if they're thinking about buying something they do and then if your business is the sort of business that wants repeat customers, how do I keep them coming back? How do I keep them happy? How do I let them know other products and services that I have that they might be interested in and so on. so really, you've got to think about and really be in touch with your business all the way along what we call the customer journey.

And then we can start figuring out what are the most important things to measure to improve specific parts of that today or tomorrow, but not just making loads of lists of metrics for the sake of the metrics.

Christian Brim (32:20.896)
Or changing a bunch of things at once. That's often, to your point, it can confuse the data. Like, you changed all these variables, you don't know what actually drove the difference.

Philippa Gamse (32:25.322)
Right.

Philippa Gamse (32:32.233)
Right. And if nothing happens, you know, because something made made made things better, but then something else ruined it again. You don't know that you can't see that. Yeah, yeah. Right.

Christian Brim (32:40.64)
Right. It's only showing the net. It's not showing the gross changes. Yes. Yes. That's, know, anything else as a business owner that you, well, let me phrase the question this way.

Is there anything that you would tell yourself, you're 20, 20 years ago, to do differently? Like, Phillipa don't do this or do this quicker.

Philippa Gamse (33:17.563)
Philippa Gamse (33:23.275)
I don't know. I'm not the best salesperson for my own stuff. I have to admit that. I maybe should have hired somebody to do more selling for me. I'm really good once you get talking to me, but I have to. Yeah. Yeah.

Christian Brim (33:44.078)
Sales is a skill, right? And a lot of people, I mean, I think a lot of entrepreneurs have some basic, but I think what really drives it is their passion for what they're doing and that makes selling easier. the, you know, like being comfortable with it, having those conversations, which a lot of times are exploratory and open-ended and you don't really know.

Philippa Gamse (33:58.271)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (34:12.909)
what direction they're going to go, is the active listening. Those are all skills that are a different set of tools.

Christian Brim (34:26.19)
So, Philippa, how do people find you if they want to learn more about your service?

Philippa Gamse (34:34.069)
So my website, as we said at beginning, is Websites That Win International. So it's websites.win.com, which is easy.

Christian Brim (34:43.575)
Perfect.

Philippa Gamse (34:46.327)
And on that website, like I said, I have a free ebook, which has got five stories about things that people, clients, real life stories of things that clients have done that have really made a difference to their business based on something that we found in the analytics that they couldn't otherwise have known.

Christian Brim (35:09.762)
I love it. Well, you and you.

Philippa Gamse (35:10.763)
And that's something that people can download and it's free. And then my, also, actually I just sent you a connection request on LinkedIn. I really like connecting with people on LinkedIn. So that's my favorite.

Christian Brim (35:21.294)
Nice.

Christian Brim (35:25.056)
And there's only a few games out there.

Philippa Gamse (35:27.849)
Yes, especially if you spell it right.

Christian Brim (35:30.35)
Correct. Well, yeah, you and I are in a kind of an equally yoked situation in that people don't want to really understand accounting and they don't want to understand the numbers, but they do want to have something that they can use. And so I think you and I, in a lot of ways, provide the same service. We're interpreting the information and telling the story that that data is showing.

Philippa Gamse (36:02.345)
Yep. Yes. And I think the key is to be able to translate it for people who aren't excited by the numbers themselves, but in a way that really helps them and makes sense to them.

Christian Brim (36:11.074)
Well...

Christian Brim (36:15.95)
I look forward to your book. When is it coming out?

Philippa Gamse (36:19.62)
Well, I'm in the middle of editing the manuscript, hopefully in a few months I will certainly let you know. Hopefully. I'm not sure yet, but yeah.

Christian Brim (36:26.976)
March, April, something like that. Perfect.

Very good. Well, thank you very much for your time and your experience here. It has been lovely, as they say.

Philippa Gamse (36:39.436)
Thank you. Good chat.

Christian Brim (36:41.518)
Listeners, if you like what you hear, follow the podcast or subscribe, whichever it is. Rate the podcast, share the podcast. If you don't like what you're hearing, shoot us a message back and tell us what you would like to hear. Until then, ta-ta for now.

Philippa Gamse (37:00.127)
You