Ron:

Hello. Hello there. Welcome to another episode of Automation Unplugged. Today we are going to be recording one of our special marketing episodes where we're going to be talking to a member of the team here at One Firefly. And today I have the pleasure to bring you all Romi Kiriadre. She is a Senior Web Designer here at One Firefly, and she has been in the world, in the space of creativity and design for 18 years plus. And she's very thankfully been here at One Firefly for more than three years. And she has prepared some thoughts and teachings, and opportunities to share with all of you on all things web design and branding. So let me go ahead and bring in Romi and let's have some fun. Hi Romi, how are you?

Romi:

Doing good. Really thankful to be here and happy to share this stage with you.

Ron:

Awesome. Today we are going to be talking about web design and we're going to jump in, but maybe give us a little bit of your background and your approach to how you think about web design and maybe why you enjoy it. What do you love about designing websites?

Romi:

I think I love the most about web design because it's just a show of what you are as a person, as a company, as a coach, as a integrator. So it's a way of showing dynamically who you are. And it's fun and you can do whatever you want with the small graphics limitations that we've had today. Showcasing what you are and who you want to be in the future as well.

Ron:

A good example of your demonstrating creativity is, again, I always allow, when I bring on members of my team here for these podcasts, I let you guys drive in terms of talking about the subject matter that's near and dear to your heart that you think our audience would benefit from. But also, in this case, you also created the slides. So you've created some slides in advance. Normally, Rebecca on our team is, coordinating with a member of our team. And then she's creating those slides for you. But you said, no, I got this. And, and it actually looks really pretty. It's a very simple slide deck. Don't worry, folks watching or listening. We're not going to overwhelm you, but they do look very pretty. So I guess that is a demonstration, a little demonstration of your design and creativity coming through.

Romi:

Yeah, thank you. I think having the opportunity of doing all the presentations, it's a fun part of my job. So I enjoy it.

Ron:

Now you were telling me, actually in the previous few days when we were talking about recording the show that you used to do presentations for one of the executives when you worked at, what was it? IBM?

Romi:

Yes. Yes. I was doing most of the presentations. I learned how to summarize, but show and show it to guide people within the presentation and what the topics are. But without making the user and the viewer of those presentations just stare at the presentation and read it through so they don't get distracted from the presenter. So those kind of things are implemented and in these kind of decks.

Ron:

I love it. All right. That is you know what? I think I can do it. I'll do it in this format. So I'm gonna go ahead and read this for the folks that are listening only. Again, some people are watching this on YouTube or on LinkedIn or Facebook. But for our audio folks, from credibility to conversion, building trust, brand awareness, and business growth with your website. And, just to kick this off, there's a slide here and the words say your website is a dynamic digital asset, not a static brochure. So Romi, does it make you cringe a little bit when you talk to one of our clients and they talk about a website as an online brochure?

Romi:

Yes. I've heard this so many times and, it may have been true. I don't know, 20, 30 years ago, where just doing an update on your website was really hard, was really time and cost consuming. But nowadays you need to have a dynamic website. You need to refresh your brand. You need to refresh whatever is happening in your world, because we are doing so many things with each of our companies, we are evolving. So we need to showcase that. And just having a static thing, it's not just boring, but it's just not a reflection of the truth of any company.

Ron:

So why does a business, why should a business think about updating their website more frequently? And I would say more frequently than what? What is the right cadence for updates on a website?

Romi:

Ideally, it would be monthly, but at least quarterly, you need to do something. Just staying current and relevant on what you are sharing, because you want to showcase to your users who you are. What you are doing and that you are staying current with solutions, you are staying current with the market, you want to showcase that you know what you are doing, that people should trust you, and the way of doing it in your website is just showing what you know best. What are the solutions, explanations of what you are doing and how you are doing it. And of course, that boosts your visibility. Google nowadays wants you to be, currently wants you to be, updating your website. When we talk about Google signals, we want them to just peer you out, you know? It's just knowing that you are doing new things every now and now once every month or once every quarter. And that helps Google understand that you are doing new things and they are crawling your website. So they are trying to show what you are doing to the customers that are looking for the key phrases of the solutions that you are selling. And in the end. Sorry, go ahead.

Ron:

No. I was just going to ask a clarifying question there. When people think about a page on their website and there's, there's different points of view. I've heard people talk about wanting, quote, minimalist websites. I think they want imagery, typically imagery, but maybe video. And they say, I want the minimal amount of words. No one is going to read what's on my website. That's their point of view. I respectfully disagree. You probably would as well. And then the other point of view is of putting a website that's more educational or informational. Can you just maybe give your point of view on is one good and one bad? Or what should folks that are listening, what should they think about? An image intense or image or video intense, copy light website versus something that's more educational or informational.

Romi:

I think finding the right balance is an art and that's part of the web designer's role to just find that balance. Showcasing beautiful imagery or videos is really important, of course, because everything here is visual most of the time. However, not many people are visually impaired or visually able. Text is really important and especially Google is valuing a lot of accessibility so anybody can understand what is happening on the website. For example, for every image that we add on a website, we add a description of the image in case somebody is having a tool reading them the whole website.

Ron:

Like for the visually impaired, you're referencing. So if they can't see the site, there's software that could read and tell them what's on the site.

Romi:

Correct. And as well, Google doesn't, it is checking out the images, but it's mostly checking out text. And even though people may not read word by word, they are scanning headings, they are scanning bullet points, they are scanning the graphics that go attached to those texts. And they are informing and may not read every single word, but they are going to read whatever is interesting to them. So if we present it in a way that it's attractive, but it's not like a long text, really boring, it is easier for them to read it. So finding that balance, I think that it's the key for a good and effective website.

Ron:

I love it. And, I'm, I want to jump into the next topic that you've prepared for all of us. And I'll just read what it says on the slide. It says, ensuring your branding is always current. and then there's a graphic which says, reflect evolution, maintain credibility and build trust. Talk us through this.

Romi:

Yeah. So I think the best way to, to talk about this is just with an example. One of our clients had a very beautiful video at the top of their homepage. It was actually current. They had their van coming in and it was really fun. But it was not showing exactly what they were doing. So this client came to us, trying to say, Hey, I'm not sure this is communicating my brand. So we just iterate and we just went to the board and brainstorm. And we realized we wanted to showcase the four main areas of solutions that they were selling and that's when we went back. And he was having a reflection, we were having a reflection, how to showcase the solutions that they are selling in the best way. And that's what we did. So at the top of the homepage, you have the four main lines of services that they are doing for their customers. And it just shows what the brand is evolving. We are constantly doing new things. Companies are constantly evolving, growing, and doing new things. Even if you haven't changed your solutions, you may have a new approach. You may have a more interesting way of showing something. So it's really important. And the other thing is we are doing projects all the time. Integrators are doing projects all the time. Fortunately, it's a very growing business and market. So why don't you showcase that? Your brand is changing. You're doing new stuff. Products are coming out all the time. So we want to showcase that on your website and that builds credibility on your users because they are seeing that you have done beautiful projects. So we want that.

Ron:

I'll use an example. I was in a chat with a customer of ours, an integrator, and, this was last week, and he was talking. I was with one of our account executives, one of our sales folks, and we were interacting with the other party and learning about his big goals for next year. And he was telling us one of his big objectives were two big objectives. And I'll, say them. He said he wanted to promote his new electrical business. And he wanted to grow more into the light commercial space. So he's historically been a residential, a luxury residential focused integrator. And we had previously in the conversation asked him if he wanted to make any updates to his websites. And he made it very clear. No, not at all. We don't need to touch the website. Let's do these other things. And at the same time, we then learned what he wanted to focus on and I couldn't help myself. I went back to his website. There was no mention of electrical services. There was no, it was in fact, a branded electrical division that does not have a website and had no brand representation on his website. And there was no mention of commercial AV or integration work on his website. So anybody that might hear of him, maybe his sales team goes and does a sales call. They go to his website, check it out. They're going to think they're on the wrong website. And is that what you're referring to? That's the fact that in this case, this business evolved and yet their website didn't stay up to date.

Romi:

Yeah, absolutely. Imagine that that company did a job for somebody and that somebody is referring that company to somebody else. And that somebody else is coming into the website and they come and say, but they are not doing that. What they told me that they were doing. So it just, they go out and may not hire you. So that it's really important to really reflect what you are doing on your website, especially if you want to target a specific market.

Ron:

No, that makes a lot of sense. I know you've got a lot more good stuff here, Romi. I'm going to click into the next slide you've prepared. This says the power of dedicated solution pages for SEO. By the way we have, for those that are regular listeners, you'll know that we've had Jordan on the show a few times. Jordan from our SEO team, and we've talked, we've done some deep dives into SEO, but you're hitting a very particular granular subject of dedicated solution pages. And you even have a couple of bubbles here on the slide and it says focused content, local advantage, and improved rankings. What are we talking about here, Romi?

Romi:

So any integrator will have a dedicated solution page or not. So one of the things is if you have an aggregated service page that it's very generic with a long list of services, people may not be interested. And on the other hand, if you have a dedicated solution page, you are showcasing first that you know what you're talking about. So it's very focused content. You have a lot of opportunity for key phrases to be there. You have a lot of opportunities to show imagery that is very particular to that specific solution page. And these are all opportunities to show your users that you know what you're talking about. You know your business, you have done work related to that specific solution. Let's say a home theater. So we want to show that home theater is not just one thing. You have star ceilings, you have seating, you have high end sound. We want to showcase that. So in all of that page, you're going to fill it with key phrases. So when people are going to look for you, for some company that does home theater, or maybe just high end sound in home theaters. People are going to find you easier because Google will say, Oh, this person knows what they are talking about because that page is filled with all of those key phrases. And the last part, which is one of the biggest things that we are actively working on in One Firefly with our SEO service is local, the local advantage. So there you are only working on a specific market location. You are not working in an entire country. It may, if you have multiple locations, but the way of targeting specific places is just having dedicated solution pages to a specific place.

Ron:

So I want to get a little bit more specific. Let's pretend that I want to focus on lighting and shading in my business. And I service, I'm just going to pick on a territory. That's pretty robust, let's say like a Dallas or a Houston and a Dallas or a Houston. It's, a way of oversimplification to say that Dallas is the city. The reality is there's all of these neighborhoods and areas of Dallas, Dallas, Fort Worth, it's a very large marketplace. And for those of you listening, there are analogs to this in Los Angeles or Seattle or New York or Boston or South Florida, there's all these examples. And so the reality is from a SEO, search engine optimization, standpoint, it could be argued that dedicated lighting and shading pages that are more finely tuned to all of the different sub cities or regions, in this case I said Dallas, would probably deliver more SEO goodness. And I'm going to say in the eyes of Google, remember Google's crawling and indexing a site. How do I keep that, if I were to go make 10 lighting and shading pages, how do I keep that from making my website ugly? Or putting too much stuff into my menu and making my website overwhelming? Is that, is there a way to get through that? And of course I'm leading the witness. I know the know, but I teach like what tell our audience, how would one accomplish that?

Romi:

Yeah. So there are two key topics in here to just pinpoint. The first one is about keyword density. And the second one is relevance. When we're talking about key phrase densities, we want Google to understand within the copy that you have on that page, where are you serving? If you put different locations in one page, Google is going to say, I'm not sure where exactly you are doing it, but if we are just targeting a specific location or group of locations that are nearby, Google is going to identify that. That is one thing. And the relevance is the other part. We cannot keep putting key phrases just because, it doesn't sound natural. So we have to be very mindful of that. And how do you do that? If you have multiple locations, you can have multiple pages on your website and they don't have exactly to be in your navigation. You can just lead a navigation to a general page that show shows the solution. And then when you have specific solution pages for a specific location, you have it, but you have it hidden from the natural navigation of your website.

Ron:

Published, Google can crawl it and index it, but my website visitor doesn't have to see it.

Romi:

Yeah, and you are using internal linking strategy to link from somewhere else. Let's say you have a service area page for South Florida. So within that service area page, you're talking about doing lighting integration. So you're, you can link there. To that specific solution page for Florida that is lighting control. And that is something that we are doing with many of our clients.

Ron:

If our clients, or whether they're our client or not, if the folks tuned in did this on their website and put a more robust approach to location specific service pages. What might be the outcome? What, how might it benefit their business?

Romi:

So SEO, it's a long term strategy. So in the long run, it will start to grow your visibility. It will start to grow your organic visibility to your users and you will start to see more impressions in each of the pages, more clicks within the page, and hopefully and eventually more leads.

Ron:

Got it. Makes sense. Well, we recommend this strategy folks. I think it's worth considering if you haven't pursued this and it's a way, at the end of the day, we're playing, we're all playing the long game here. This is a business is a marathon. It's not a hundred yard dash. So you're, if you're playing the long game, building your online presence is a really good idea. All right. Our last big topic here is making content accessible and actionable. And then you've got a further graphic and it says modern design and communication plus clear and easy to find next steps earn loyalty and leads. So talk us through this, Romi.

Romi:

So you want to have a website that reflects the company that you are leading. You want to showcase a modern design, especially if you are an integrator. You want to show that you are using the most up to date solutions and products and the way that you are communicating, it's very important. For example, if you are just giving just a bunch of text without any images, the communication fails a little bit because you are not showing the entirety of what you can communicate. So communication, it's not always written communication. You can communicate with many things, as we know, colors and of course, imagery. And the next part is make it easier to your users to know where to find you. What to do when they are like, Oh, I'm convinced about the solution page that you show me. I'm convinced that I should get this home theater for my house. What do I do next? So if you make it clear to them that, oh, at the end of the page, I have a call to action, like we have in, there is an example in the presentation where there is a few solutions in there. And at the bottom, there is a call to action button saying, Oh, if you click in here, you're going to be driven to the contact page where you can send me a message or you can call me, or you can even follow me on social media to just get in touch with me. So you are making things easier to your users. That's the main goal. And that in the end leads to more leads, more opportunities for you to talk to potential clients and try to sell what you know to do best.

Ron:

I've engaged with many people over the years, Romi, that they're, they will tell me, with their utmost confidence, that they have never received a lead from their website and they do not view their website as having a purpose to help drive business. If you had that person in front of you and they said, I've never received the lead from my website, what do you think the reason might be or reasons might be they've never received the lead?

Romi:

So first, the first question that I will ask them is how do you know? How do you know it's not coming from your website? Because people may have seen your website but they don't tell you. So that is one thing. The second thing is it's not only about the website, it's just the mix of communication that you're having. The website is really important because it's the first card of presentation that you are giving to any client. Let's say most of our clients actually say to me, oh, most of my clientele comes from referrals. And those referrals, the first thing that they are going to do is look for you on your website, even though they may already have called you and made an appointment. Because if they cannot find you on the internet, they are going to say, Are you real? Do you really exist? So that is one of the things. And the other thing is, it may be a failure of communication within the website. Maybe there needs to be a different approach on branding. Maybe you're not telling the exact story that who exactly you are. Maybe you're just telling something very generic. For example, I was investigating a little bit more about home theaters. That's why I have home theaters in my mind all the time. And I found that a lot of integrators out there didn't have enough information. They were just saying, we do home theaters. And how do you do it? What do you do? And they were not showcasing any, projects.

Ron:

There's levels to the game in home theaters. There's the five thousand dollar theater in a box and there's the million dollar room that'll knock your socks off. And yeah, that information, I could imagine, should be on your website and authentically represent what type of work you do. And that theoretically would attract, help attract the right type of people to your site.

Romi:

Yeah. Absolutely. So that's why it's important to have also the contact information very near. Some people are not really, do not really know how to contact you. So that's why one of the tips that we have in the next slide is about your contact information.

Ron:

Let's do that. So you, very kindly, this is our last slide, folks is, Romi's presented or is presenting six tips to improve your website. And so this is a, this is like the lightning round. So Romi, I'm going to give you the floor and, take us through all six recommendations. And this is, these would be actionable ideas that folks watching or listening could ultimately, immediately implement into their web presence right now.

Romi:

Yeah. So the first thing is go to your homepage and see what is the first thing that you're telling your clients. So improve your homepage header. If it's a clever tagline, but it doesn't say anything about who you are or what you sell and what you're doing, just strip that out and just think something easier. Like we do lighting control, we do smart home automation, we do home theaters, whatever you are doing, just make it easier for the user that is navigating to understand. The second thing is avoid long paragraphs. They are not going to be read. One of the things that we were saying, if you have structured pages with different headings, with smaller paragraphs, with some graphics, you can make your clients scan your website and go directly to the meat of the information. So that is one of the things. Split paragraphs into smaller sections, with clear headings and maybe some graphical element if you can do that. The third thing is make it accessible on mobile phones. Just grab your phone and navigate your website. Sometimes we don't do that. We do the website and we forget that we have done it and we don't even check it on our phone. So just check it and make sure that everything is visible, that the texts are readable, that the images are the right size so people can see it. The third one is, the fourth one, sorry, add trust elements. People are looking for reviews, for testimonials of people who have worked with you and the projects that you have done. Even if they are like very unstyled pictures, you have not done professional imagery, that's all right.

Ron:

The iPhone is okay, iPhone imagery, if that's all you got that's okay?

Romi:

Yeah. If that's all you got, do it. There are a lot of apps that you can correct the colors and the brightness and the contrast of the image to make it look a little bit better. But just trust a little bit, try to make it straight so it looks better. But just add those elements because it builds a lot of trust with your customers. The fifth one is make sure that you have a call to action in the pages, especially the solution pages. Make sure that at least at the end, if not also at the top, have at least a way to go to your contact page or a phone number or something that makes the client easier to contact you. And the last one, the contact info sometimes it's very hidden. So make sure that on your menu is there is a link to your contact information in the footer. Meaning the end of each of the pages, you have your contact information, a phone number, or a way to contact you, a form or something similar.

Ron:

I love it. I am going to flip us back. There we go. Romi, it's back. You and me, we pulled the graphics off the slide. I want to thank you, Romi, for coming on to Automation Unplugged to share a lot of your wisdom and creativity regarding web design. And so thank you for doing that. I also want to tell folks to go check out our Amp People website that actually just launched here in 2025 and Romi was our principal designer, in house principal designer on that website. So Amp People is our new, we actually launched the business in 2023, but the website is brand new and we're helping integrators across the country with their hiring for all roles. And it's a beautiful site. And I want to say congrats on that work as well, Romi.

Romi:

Thank you. It was a pleasure working with you and Sam and making that website come alive. It's a reflection of our collective minds and working on design and copy. I'm very proud of that work with us together and very proud of being working for One Firefly.

Ron:

We got to give Rebecca a shout out too. Cause Rebecca was our wordsmith extraordinaire on that website. So not a word on that site did not go through Rebecca's fine tuning and editing. So thank you, Rebecca. Romi, thanks again. And again, folks, thanks. I hope you're appreciating this new format with our marketing sessions. Let us know what you think. Drop me a line personally. And if you feel so compelled, drop us a review. Whether that is in your podcast app, drop a review, that helps get the show out to more folks. As well as drop a like or a comment if you're watching this on one of the socials. So we'll see y'all soon. See you next time.