Digital Hospitality
Every Business Needs a Website with a Heartbeat | Dawn Verbrigghe (Jottful) | DH122
Jottful is the solution to the problem of website creation and management for small business owners.
Business owners are busy. It pays to find a sustainable path to having a living, breathing e-commerce website. We all know websites are hard to make and hard to keep alive. They are expensive and difficult.
That's why Digital Hospitality podcast guest Dawn Verbrigghe founded Jottful. To make websites easy and affordable.
https://youtu.be/5iugoqK3R7g
➤ Jottful Online: https://jottful.com
3 Takeaways from Interview:
1. Invest in Your Marketing the Right Way –
If you buy a sports car, be prepared to pay for the premium fuel. If you buy a clunker, be prepared to pay for the ongoing maintenance. In business, investing in marketing can cause the same conundrum. When building a website or working with an agency, make sure the money invested doesn’t just mean spending more money down the road.
2. Always Research and Add Value –
When hopping on a call, learn as much as you can about who you’re talking to before you take their time. In doing so, not only do you bring a level of respect, you have the ability to form a relationship that isn’t merely transactional. Just the same, there’s nothing wrong with adding value through knowledge, ideas or advice before a deal is done. This mini investment can make all the difference in actually doing business and building a relationship.
3. Make Your Website Punctual –
When a potential customer visits your website make sure it’s clear to them that they have a reason to be there. In big bold text, have an obvious call to action on your homepage to guide your visitor and create value for both parties.
Founding Jottful To Help Small Businesses —
Dawn Verbrigghe knows the hurdles of running a small business from the inside out.
Raised in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Dawn’s parents ran a bridal shop in which she often assisted. In college, she would go on to study graphic design and marketing, eventually completing her MBA.
As Dawn evolved, so did the world. Because of this, her new-age business and tech skills were of even more need to her parents and their small business. They needed a website and luckily Dawn was capable of making them one.
“For small business owners like my mother, there just weren't great solutions out there for her to get a website,” Dawn Verbrigghe recalls on the Digital Hospitality podcast.
“Because not everybody has a kid who is a graphic designer and can take care of this for them.”
Seeing her family in need and her skillset of service, Dawn grew curious as to just how other small business owners afforded to get a website built and have it maintained.
Surprisingly, the answers were costly and common.
“It’s always $5000 across the board,” laughs Dawn. “For a little bridal shop like this, spending $5000 on a website is unaffordable. And then once the website is launched, you have to go back to the agency all the time to get changes made and you're paying on an hourly basis after that. It doesn't make any sense.”
That gap in the market inspired Dawn to start Jottful. With Dawn serving as CEO, Jottful builds websites for small businesses by simplifying the process and making maintaining the website intuitive.
In an era where every business must operate and tell their story online, Jottful’s timing couldn’t be better.
What is Jottful?
Jottful makes and manages "do it together" websites for small businesses and ot...