Website Evolution Blueprint: Strategies for Prolonged Website Success

Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

Yeah. All right. Thanks. I started CannaSiteCo. with a friend from college back in early 2018. We’re just shy of six years, and I’m very proud of our journey so far. We started this to answer all of those items that marketers have a bad reputation for. We tried to address all of those issues in our business model. People say that marketers are slow, they’re unresponsive, charge way too much money, hold websites hostage, ghost you, and so on. We tried to create a business model that answered and addressed all of those. Why cannabis? Karen and I have, as our website says, bonded in college over a bong and a beer. But really, we’ve been advocates, patients, and recreational consumers for quite a while. We saw a huge need for better marketing in cannabis. For a lot of these people, at least in 2018, it was a different game when there weren’t as many recreationally legal states. But they’re farmers, not marketers. They need a lot of help. Also, every single person we encounter has such a passionate, unique story and background as to why they’re in the industry, whether it’s something they face personally or a best friend or a family member.

It is inspiring. Another factor is the ingenuity that goes into cannabis. There are so many cool solutions coming around, whether it’s payment or some other integration for a website to make the user experience experience better or equipment in cannabis. It’s an exciting industry. No matter how tough it is, I love it, and so we’ve stuck to it.

Initially, it was pricing, finding a good price point for cannabis. When you’re starting and you don’t have a big book of business or portfolio, you got to start low. In the beginning, we were only charging $500 for a website, still promising it in a week. But we didn’t have our portfolio to back us up. We didn’t have a lot of referrals or word of mouth to back us up. We also didn’t have the well-oiled machine and process that we have now, so no SOPs in existence. That was a challenge. Also, when you tell somebody you’re going to build a website for 500 bucks, if they’re not jumping on it, that price probably scares them away. It took a couple of years, I would say, to get into the groove of it, get our confidence up, get our name, referrals, and reputation up, and our pricing Now, I think we’ve placed ourselves in a position where we have a very good reputation, a proven process where we build a website in five days, start on Monday and launch on Friday. Great referrals and word of mouth and a price point that is affordable, but also you’re working with a legitimate company that produces beautiful websites in a short time frame.

There’s a little premium for that, but still extremely competitive for the cannabis industry. Those were some of the hurdles that we faced in the beginning. Now we have all the SOPs in place and a very precise, proven method that we take our clients through.

Yeah, good question. I think the first one that I would bring up is the thorn in the side of the cannabis industry and that’s payment processing. It’s not federally legal. Banking is an issue, and so is online payment processing or even in-store because it’s a high-risk industry. It’s very common for people to come to us needing a website, say they’re brand new to the business or they haven’t been to the industry. Or they haven’t been in it very long and they don’t know the hurdles that they’re facing. Maybe they think they’re going to use Stripe to process payments, or they’re going to use Square and don’t realize that that’s a separate program with higher fees, or they don’t realize they need to look for a high-risk payment processor. I have that conversation every week, sometimes daily with people to walk them through and educate them about their options and what happens if you launch a website with a payment processor that’s not cannabis friendly. Another one would be that we see so many brands invest time and money in a brand-new website and then just sit back and wait for Google to discover it.

It’s not optimized. There’s where they haven’t submitted a site map to Google or Bing or set up Google Analytics or Bing webmasters tools. They just think that traffic and people are going to come. The customers are going to come. That’s just not realistic. And not the way it works.

Honesty. I’m brutally honest, maybe to a fault. But that’s also why we include the initial optimization in all of our websites to give these companies a fighting chance. A lot of them don’t come to us with a giant marketing budget. Maybe an ongoing SEO campaign, or even if it’s for local SEO optimization if they don’t have that in their plan initially, at least they can be found online with some basic searches. Then as far as recommending an ongoing campaign post-launch. It depends on their target market. Do they have a brick and mortar? Or are they just selling regionally? Is it an E-commerce or not? There’s a lot of variables involved in that. But try to be honest that you have to have quite a large budget if you’re going to compete. This industry is extremely competitive. There have been some great companies with really large budgets that didn’t make it because the strategy wasn’t there.

Yeah, love that question. Branded content is huge, and I feel like it’s not a very hot topic, and it should be. CBD is a great example. Everybody, not everybody, it seems like everybody and their cousin thought, Let’s start a CBD brand. We’re going to make lots of money. Then they go to the trouble to maybe build a beautiful website on a great platform. It’s fast, and it has everything it needs, but its content falls flat. You can’t tell the difference between them and their competitor down the road or their competitor across the country. It’s just a very generic and vanilla feeling. It’s not going to create any brand loyalty or give the visitor an idea or a sense of who they are, and why they should buy from them. We put a strong emphasis on that branded copy to set you apart from your competitors because this is a brutal industry and there are tons of competitors out there that are selling the same product in very similar packaging with a different label. How is a visitor going to know that they should buy from you and not your competitor unless you tell them with a very unique tone on your website?

We love AI. It’s so fun to play with and interesting. Sometimes when you’re creative, you go through ruts where it’s hard to come up with ideas. I think AI is a great place to turn for that. I advise clients if they’re going to start doing their blogs to use AI. Personally or as a business, we’re not relying on AI-generated content for website copy or blogs, but there is a time and place to use all technology, especially AI. I love the use of it. It’s not going anywhere. I feel like our industry needs to lean in, learn how to use it, and make it your friend. But also, it’s a double-edged sword because the cannabis industry is hurting, and there are a lot of great content producers out there in it. We also need to hire within and show this industry that we’re doubling down and we believe in it and we’re not going anywhere. You need to hire out. I can’t recommend hiring a professional copywriter enough. It will make a huge difference in the conversion of your website. But yes, ChatGPT, I’m all there for it. Use it all the time, and I encourage my clients to do it.

If you’re more of a DIY, it’s going to be your best friend. It’s going to save you loads of time.

Yeah, I’m game. Let’s do it.

Either watching some live music, preferably outside, or on the couch with my family watching a movie.

For a washable rug for my kitchen.

Johnny Depp.

Argentina.

Yeah. Thanks so much, Ranmay. This was a blast. You can find me online at @routesrockReagan on Instagram, and Reagan McRoyhatch on LinkedIn. The best place to get in touch with us is on our website www.CannaSite.com.

Thank you, I was blessed. Have a great week.