Glow – Website Support & Maintenance as a Competitive Advantage

In this episode of the Bear Business Vodcast, Chris Barnard interviews Phil Storey, founder of Glow, about the critical role of website support and maintenance in business success. Phil shares his journey from running a web design agency to creating Glow, a platform that integrates support and maintenance services. They discuss the challenges agencies face in selling maintenance packages and the importance of proactive website management to mitigate security risks and drive business growth. Phil emphasizes the value of effective communication between agencies and clients, and he highlights Glow’s unique features, including white labeling and reporting capabilities. Looking ahead, both Chris and Phil acknowledge the evolving landscape of web development, particularly with the rise of AI, while affirming the continued importance of websites for businesses.

Highlights

Introduction to the Episode

Chris Barnard introduces the episode of the Bear Business Vodcast, featuring Phil Story, founder of Glow. They discuss the significance of website support and maintenance as a competitive advantage for businesses.

Phil’s Journey to Founding Glow

Phil shares his background, detailing his experience running a web design agency in Leeds for ten years. He explains how the need for better support and maintenance systems led him to create Glow, a product that integrates these services into one platform.

The Importance of Support and Maintenance

Chris and Phil discuss how effective support and maintenance can enhance client retention. Phil emphasizes that many agencies overlook selling maintenance packages, which can lead to significant revenue loss.

Client and Agency Perspectives

Phil explores the challenges agencies face in selling maintenance services, noting that clients often lack technical knowledge. He uses a car maintenance metaphor to illustrate the necessity of ongoing website care.

Security Risks and the Need for Proactive Maintenance

The conversation shifts to the security risks associated with poorly maintained websites. Phil highlights the frequency of hacking attempts and the importance of having a reliable agency partner to mitigate these risks.

The Business Value of Active Website Management

Chris and Phil discuss how actively managed websites can drive business growth. They stress the importance of ongoing improvements and the role of agencies in helping clients maximize their website’s potential.

The Role of Agencies in Client Relationships

Phil encourages business owners to engage with their agencies about website improvements. He emphasizes that proactive communication can lead to better website performance and client satisfaction.

Glow’s Unique Selling Proposition

Phil explains Glow’s features, including its ability to streamline support and maintenance processes for agencies. He highlights the platform’s reporting capabilities, which help agencies demonstrate value to clients.

White Labeling and Customisation

Phil discusses Glow’s white label options, allowing agencies to brand the platform as their own. This feature enhances client continuity and strengthens agency branding.

Future of Websites and AI Integration

The conversation turns to the future of websites, with Phil acknowledging the impact of AI on web development. He believes that while changes are coming, websites will remain essential for businesses in the near future.

Conclusion and Call to Action

Chris wraps up the episode, encouraging listeners to explore Glow and its offerings. Phil invites listeners to connect with him on LinkedIn and visit the Glow website for more information.

Transcript

Chris Barnard: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Bear Business Vodcast with me, Chris Barnard from FeedbackFans.com. Today my guest is Phil Storey, founder of the Software Business, Glow. Phil and I talk about the importance of support and maintenance for your website and how you can make it a competitive advantage for your business or agency.

Chris Barnard: Phil. Hi. Would you like to share for our listeners on Bear Business, a bit of the story behind you and your founding of the Business Glow please?

Phil Storey: Happily. Uh, good to be here Chris. Thanks for having me, mate. Um, yep. So I, uh, founded a company called Glow after about, about 10 years running a web design agency, uh, in Leeds. Uh, and as you might have guessed, web design agency, we built a lot of websites. Um, but a, a big part of what we did was, uh, offering this kind of ongoing support and maintenance service to those, uh, to those clients as well. As um, and of course, as of as you know, uh, listeners, as the number of clients, uh, you have that grow, that uh, the, your team generally grows and the, the sort of processes you’ve got in place needs to, needs to change and, and adapt with that growth. Um, and that’s what we did. You know, we started out, you know, with only a handful of sites that we were managing very manual processes. Uh, we were using email to handle, you know, support requests from clients. Um. And as we grew, we um, yeah, started putting some different systems and systems in place. So we had a support ticket system, for example, that we brought in. I think it was Freshdesk that we used. You’ve probably heard of that yourself. ‘Cause I think, uh, at some, some points, uh, along the line. And it was very good. You know, going, going from email to Freshdesk was an amazing difference. Um. And in a similar nature, nature, with the technical aspects of looking after those websites, we kind of went from a, you know, a very manual process to, uh, using like a WordPress management dashboard. Um, that it was quite new at the time when it came out. And that was good. You know, that saved us a lot of time as well. Um, you know, we continued to grow, continued to add more websites. Um, but we were looking at it and we were, you know, you know, in our assessments we were sort of we were realizing that. That the reasons that clients were staying with us, you know, over those years, and they continued to sort of pay us every month, every year was because the quality of our support were really, really good. So whenever a client needed us, you know, with some. Some issue on the website that needed fixing or something changing. We were really quick to apply, really empathetic, really understanding. We did a great job of that support and that’s why the client stuck with us for a long time, no matter, you know, what we had in place for the, for the, for the maintenance stuff. Um, but we had these, you know, these systems and they all just felt a bit disjointed. And we had, you know, we had teammates logging into one, you know, one system, teammates logging into another one. And we wanted to try and bring it all together and, and that was the sort of the moment for me. Moment for uh, where I was like, well, like, there’s got to be a product out there that sort of combines this entire thing into one place. ‘Cause if there was, that would be absolutely amazing for my team. For, uh, and of course ultimately there wasn’t, right? Wasn’t, uh, but there was, there was no sort of WordPress specific, uh, management dashboard that brought sort of support and maintenance and reporting all into one place, uh, for my team to kind of align around. Around um, and I thought, really, well, there should be. Um, so, so that was the catalyst for me then starting Glow and going down this whole journey of moving out of agency life and into, into product life really. So yeah, that’s my, uh, kind of journey to date, I guess. Chris.

Chris Barnard: I think it’s amazing you’ve found such a sort of unique selling point. ’cause often people would just persevere with that kind of inconvenience. Right. And you’d see yeah. Sure a lot of the listeners have this inconvenience in terms of having a, a ticketing system and the maintenance is dealt with over there. So I love that you’ve, you’ve brought it all in and, and, and kept it all under one roof. And finally moved it there. I’m amazed there isn’t more competitors in the space, actually. ’cause I think the product is one that serves a great purpose. And actually it’s a product that, I’m sure you get this in your feedback, that once people come to you, yeah. Wonder how they ever existed without it. Right? They’d be like, oh, yeah be managing their support tickets in the email and using this system over here, unintegrated and probably copying, pasting and manual processes that they must relieve themselves of when they come to you and get glow. Phil, right.

Phil Storey: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. I mean, I mean, we do have competitors, um. I think any, any sort of SaaS product these days is, is very unlikely to kind of be on its own really, you know, and it’s in, its in its its own niche. Niche. There’s always, uh, similar sorts of tools out there. Um, however, there aren’t any that sort of do exactly what we do in terms of bringing, you know, bringing all of those, those things into, into one place. So yeah, you, you, you’re absolutely right in the way that we sort of alleviate that pain, you know, or, or various pains that agencies might be experiencing in Yeah. That support and maintenance side of the, the business. Yeah.

Chris Barnard: I think often when agencies, obviously agencies at this sort of stage are taking on a variety of tools, tools for their SEO, they’ll be using probably tools for the paid search yeah. Cetera, so it’s quite natural for them. But I suppose a lot of the tools that an agencies take on board these days are more of a cost center, whereas your tool kind of gives them an opportunity, particularly if they’ve not been explicitly selling maintenance and support, gives them an opportunity to create a, a new revenue stream. Yeah. I just wanted, wondered if you could talk, talk to us a little bit about that, about why you think, ’cause I’ve certainly got a view on this in terms of the websites we’ve built. The websites that some of our customers have, um, had built by agencies we work with, where there might not be an explicit clause around maintenance and support or, um, the importance of maintenance and support. Sometimes it gets wrapped up under sort of, uh, you know, managed hosting. And I’m sure you’ve got these sort of agreements where certain agencies are, are just, uh, assuming to take on the, the maintenance and hosting. So I just wondered if what your thoughts on and why maybe. This has not been an explicit charge before maintenance and support and, and, and why it might be overlooked by businesses who may not be having a, a regular maintenance and support agreement with their web developers or their agencies.

Phil Storey: Yeah, it’s a, it’s a good question and a topic that’s, that’s often discussed in the, with the people that I talk to on like LinkedIn and stuff, I, they’re very active on there, like, you know, posting content about website support and maintenance all the time. Um, I think there’s a couple of sides of the coin, Chris, really.

So you’ve got, you obviously you’ve got, you obviously got the client, you’ve got the agency, agency. Oftentimes it gets cited as, um, the client’s problem, right? In the sense that they’re not very technical, they don’t understand it, and that’s why it’s hard to sell it to them. I think there’s probably an element of truth to that. Um, um, but I also know that a lot of, a lot of agencies don’t actually sell it to them either, right? So they, they could be well sat there thinking. There. Ah, this is, you know, this is such an important service that, you know, we need to make sure clients, but they don’t do a great job of selling it. Of uh, you and I have spoken in the past about, you know, proposals that agencies put together that just don’t include any kind of aftercare, um, you know, support policies or anything. They always include hosting. They always include hosting, and that’s kind of, you know, of of course, imperative, right? Is a, is a, is a, uh, hosting and a server for a website to sit on in order for it to be live. But many agencies, and I’m talking, talking you know, established agencies, agencies, uh, you know, that may have built hundreds of sites over the years, I’ve talking, talked to plenty of them, and they haven’t sold, you know, support and, and maintenance to those clients. And literally leaving 10, 15, 20 grand a month of revenue on the table for having not, uh, done that. A very good friend of mine is actually an example of one of those agencies not naming, naming no names. Um, but then you, yes, of course you do have the, the, the, the client side as well and that, you know. And that, um, I guess expectance upon them to understand, you know, the, the technical nature of websites is, is probably, uh, uh, a little bit unfair.

So that’s, um, you know, on, on occasion maybe why, um, you know, uptake of support and maintenance packages possibly isn’t as high as it, um. As, as high as it could be. I always used to use a metaphor. So when I was running my agency and selling, uh, these, uh, care plans to pack, uh, care plans to clients, co clients, um, I would try and use some kind of real world examples. So, you know, a car, a car is quite a good one. Yeah. So everybody knows that when they buy a car for the next five years of them having that car, they need to do things like. Put fuel in it and wash it and M.O.T it, clean it, whatever. Whatever because they know if they don’t do that, at some point the car’s probably gonna stop, stop working. Albeit they’re a little bit more reliable these days than they might have been in the past. But you get the idea. Right? Idea a website is quite similar, right? So if you are, I dunno, even if you’re listening to this podcast and you’ve got a business, you’ve got a website, it’s very important to make sure that it’s, it’s looked after and maintained. Just like, just like your car is. I think the last statistic that I saw on this was. Every 35 to 40 seconds, seconds, uh, there’s a hack attempt on small business websites in, in, in the uk. So, um, it’s, you know, just in the time that you and me have been speaking here, eight minutes, there will have been thousands of, of hack attempts on, on, you know, on, on all of our websites.

So it’s a big thing. It’s a big thing, and agencies can be there to provide a really valuable service here, right? It’s not something that they’re just trying to sell to the client just to increase their recurring revenue. It’s a very important service. Whether you just, whether you’re looking at the maintenance angle angle the site secure, secure. You’ve only gotta look at something like m and s recently, right? In the uk I know that’s a huge company, but company, but same principles apply, so you’ve got the, the maintenance aspect, you’ve only got the support aspect. You know, if, if you are running a business, you might well know, you might be technically, and if you might, well know how to log into your website and make a change to your site. But at some point you might also just not wanna do that. You might not have the time to do that. You might have the, not have the inclination to do that. Whereas if you’ve got a really good support agency partner, web design agency partner, you can lean on them, you know, and send a message to them, Hey Phil, can you help us with X? Or whatever, and they’ll sort out your site for you. So, yeah, I think, um, it’s obviously, it’s, it’s good on both sides, right? The client gets that benefit of. A protected, well looked after, well-managed site that continues to run smoothly, load fast, and generate leads for them. And the agency has that, you know, um, ability to obviously increase their, um, increase their recurring revenue, but also be able to, you know, show to future clients. Look, this is how well we look after our clients. We don’t just build the website for them and then leave them to it. We build it and we protect it o over time and, and make sure that we look after them for the long term.

Chris Barnard: And these are real risks, aren’t they? I, I suppose that’s always been where I’ve come from as I’ve observed this and, um, observed kind of WordPress grow and the maintenance aspect Grow and people wanting to move to things like WordPress is, I think, open source sometimes as people are building websites on, on these fabulous licenses where they get to use such great software for free. I mean, it’s not for free. We’ll probably go into bits of that, right? It’s not for free. There’s always. Uh, some conditions attached, but WordPress being so popular, being used by so many, uh, websites, I think around 40% is it that we talked yeah, just over 40% of the entire internet. Yeah. Yeah. Entire internet of WordPress, right? So it’s a, um, something that will be attacked because if Are a hacking group and there are more and more hacking groups, I suppose that an issue we do have is that as people don’t see these people, they don’t find these hackers. It’s very much seen as an ethereal problem. I suppose even for m and s and those big companies who have mentioned who’ve had cyber attacks recently, is everyone gets into a model of, oh, I don’t think it will be me. You know how, if I run this small business, but I think what’s forgotten in that is that actually with a lot of the changes in the data laws we’ve had over the last few years, it’s super important that you are, uh, maintaining a secure system, an updated system. I mean, that must be one of the big, big sides on the maintenance, right? And In terms of lots of these WordPress websites have third party software that we know as plugins. They’ll know as plugins. They feel that, you know, often business owners will add as many plugins as they want for different functionalities, but it comes with new security risks, new security vulnerabilities, and really they should be going to a technical partner, if they’re technical minded in that aspect, Phil shouldn’t they, and asking for support on these things to keep it updated to ensure that they are at least protecting, particularly if you have customer data, very sensitive data. I mentioned this as someone who’s had to help clean up after websites, it’s much easier paying your 10 pound a month and maintaining it, uh, supporting it properly, then the risks and the costs. And actually if you have to go out to your client base and say, you know, we have been compromised, um. The reason without you having a care plan in place or support in place will probably be something that would’ve been fixed if you had someone sorting these issues For you, Phil, is the reality, isn’t it?

Phil Storey: It is, not only would it have. Only been fixed. It may not have even happened in the first place actually, if it was being very well looked after by the agency. So yeah, I would encourage any business owners listening who are unsure as to whether their agency is actively, you know, proactively managing and maintaining their site. So just pop the question over to them at the moment. I mean, you probably should know because because paying them anything, it’s very likely that they won’t be doing anything. Right. Um, and if that is the case, ask them about their support and care packages because, um, as you were just saying there, Chris. It is far more cost effective for you to be paying this, you know, fairly notional monthly fee to your agency to make sure that your site does stay well protected and secure and fast and reliable than risking that situation. And I have seen this on many occasions in my career. Where, you know, you sit down with your coffee on your morning, uh, you check your emails, have a look at your website, and it’s redirecting to something extremely unsavory. Um, and that’s all because it’s not being looked after. It does happen and it will happen to you, uh, if, if you, if you don’t get your site properly, uh, properly protected. It’s just matter of fact, really. Um, but yeah, the, the, the, the good thing is, uh, not to be scathing anybody too much with that information. If you’ve got a good, reliable web agency partner, partner, should be issues that you know. Be issues that don’t occur, don’t occur to you. Now, tech is tech, right? Something will go wrong at some point. Always, no matter what the best intentions you might have in place and support things you’ve got in place with your agency, but but. You stand a much better chance of those things being resolved very quickly with minimal to no damage to your brand reputation online. If you’ve got a good agency in place looking after it for you.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, and there’s definitely, so there’s that data security angle isn’t there? The yeah brand reputation angle, you’re absolutely right. I mean, the damage there could be catastrophic be. Yeah. Properly. Yeah. Also the other angle isn’t there, which is that an actively managed website is probably a healthy website. It’s probably a revenue profit generating website. Yep. Because actually the, the websites don’t live in a vacuum and, and time moves on quite quickly. As you and I have spoken about recently, our sort of ages, right? Time moves by very quickly. And as yeah business, you should be looking to. Get the most competitive advantage, I believe, out of your website as possible. ‘Cause I think there is loads of ways you can have a competitive advantage with a website. Uh, and one of those ways is gonna have an actively managed relationship with your web provider, whether that is, whether it’s an agency, freelance, or whatever, using tools such as yours to be able to identify, okay. What should we do with the website this month? I mean, if you are not actively looking to build, you know, whether it’s your SEO positions or whether it’s to create new landing pages for personas, journeys, analysing your market research I’ve never seen in my lifetime, Phil, a website that I don’t think could be better. I. Yeah. Me neither. Right. So there, there’s an angle as well isn’t there, of, of, of having more active management of your website and, and yeah. In support and taking more care in your website yeah. Come with lots of benefits for your business, isn’t it?

Phil Storey: Yeah. And you, and you as the, you know, the owner of the website, the business owner can absolutely drive that, right? So, um, I, I do think it, of course should be the agency leaning, uh, sorry, uh, leading on the technical side of it and the monitoring the maintenance and making sure things are kept secured. They should be leading on that because that. But typically that won’t be your skillset as the business owner, right? Owner. Be focused on whatever your business might be, but what you can lead on and really kind of encourage your agency to support you with is all the stuff you just talked about there. And really making sure that that website is an, an active living, breathing thing that’s helping you drive your business forward. It’s generating leads, you know, regularly. Um, I’ve said it before, it should be the best sales person in, in your business, really. I mean, there are so many ways to drive traffic to your website and, and generate, you know, very, very good quality leads. Um, for, for the business. Um, so make it a priority. Make if, if it isn’t for you at the moment, make it one and really start thinking about ways to improve the site, um, so that it helps you drive the business forward.

Chris Barnard: And if you, again, if you’ve got a good reliable web agency partner, they’ll be able to help you do that. And often they will do that through some kind of ongoing, you know, support or, or, or care plan. Every agency’s different, right? I’ve seen agencies just include the technical stuff. I mean, typically it grows as you pay them more, right? For on the, you know, on the lower priced plans, typically they’ll just make sure that the general security and maintenance stuff is, is, uh, or, you know, all the boxes are ticked there, move up the plans, they’ll give you more support time. They may include some kind of marketing related stuff. You’ve touched on SEO and, and other things, and paid advertising and stuff. So, yeah. Um, I would just encourage you to talk to the agency that you work with, or the site, at least the one that built the website for you in the first place, and start having these conversations.

Phil Storey: Yeah, I think it’s a great point. I love that you say sort of the, the web agency leading it as well, because I think that is right. I think it has to be. I think sometimes we all get into those kind of, when you have these partnerships and these relationships, you can start to think, oh, well surely it’s their responsibility to tell me this. And it is in a way they are, they should be leading, but you are still the business owner, right? You should still be, uh, as an active business owner, hopefully as a business owner is growing your business and not in terminal decline, you will be looking for ways to improve your site. And actually I think a question that is forgotten to get asked to agencies sometimes and to freelancers is how can we, we make this website better now. Right? I think often it will come into these points you mentioned, right? Could be better way of doing support, could be better maintenance, better uh, analysis of software evaluation, for example, or feature evaluation of things we could add to yeah. That really bring great value. Yeah. Um, and I think that’s kind of, sometimes we forget. So that would kind of be the, the thing that I, I say to the business owners who are listening on our podcast today would be, don’t forget to ask your partners, you know, have we got any ideas? How can we be better than this? Yeah. In the, in the run of day to day, Phil, we forget to ask the, those simple questions sometimes, don’t we?

Phil Storey: Yeah. I, I, I think so. I think it’s, it’s a really good point, and I think just bringing it back to maintenance for a second and sort of tying that in with what, what you just said there, Chris, about the, you know, pushing it forward and, and, and stuff for the benefit of the business I. The business. They go hand in hand. In yeah. Yeah, the, the, as in the maintenance and kind of, let’s just call it marketing, you know, for just trying to use a, a simple one word term, word go in hand, hand in hand really nicely. Because if you think about, if they didn’t and you had no maintenance in place, but you were spending 500 quid or a grand or two grand a month on grab your marketing, on SEO, on paid ads, on email, marketing, social, whatever. Whatever. And, um, um, sending those people to a website that was poorly maintained, that was slow to load, that crashed every now and then, now and or, and we’ve seen it this week alone. The site’s been hacked. Yeah. And you don’t know about it. Yeah, because your agency’s not looking after the maintenance side of it for you, but you’re spending loads of money on marketing marketing. Few days later, after you’ve just spent another few hundred quids, somebody tells you, oh, your site’s gone down. For example. So that’s why they go hand in hand. And it’s an important point to make because I do understand it from the client’s point of view sometimes, particularly if the agency hasn’t done a great job of selling the benefits of maintenance to the clients in the first place, it can feel a bit like a, like a, almost like a bit of an annoying spend sometimes for clients. Oh, I’ve gotta spend 50 quid a month on just to make sure the site, you know. But but look at it more of really just an investment in the long-term health of the website, just frame it more in that sense. Mm, I think it’s a better way of looking at it and then understanding that they really do go hand. It really does go hand in hand with the, uh, the, the marketing stuff. Um, I think you’ll soon realize the benefits of it then for sure. I.

Chris Barnard: Maybe this is it. Maybe it’s part of the way IT has always been treated. I, but we probably do have a few IT managers who list of the podcast, right? So they’ll be there, they’ll know, they’ll know these moments where, um, when I worked in London for a variety of businesses, something that was always notable, and this was usually me on the marketing team, uh, working hand in hand with an IT team, but something that is noticeable in businesses once you get to, uh, maybe over 50 employees, kind of, um. I think we can have companies also say we have that problem as well, Chris, but particularly when you’re over 200 employees for example, um, is that IT is chronically underfunded. It’s underfunded everywhere. I don’t understand why that has always been the case. I suppose it, it’s always been an, an area for businesses where, and maybe it’s because it is still relatively young in its advancement. Right? IT in systems in business only been around. 50 years arguably. But obviously going back, people have used systems, but IT has always had this problem of always try to justify itself. Right? Always try to get more budget. Um, particularly getting budget to be proactive, which is what you mentioned there. Right? Which is sort of identifying issues before they happen, which you can do if you have active maintenance and support those kind of proactive systems, monitoring your website, monitoring the uptime, uh, monitoring people’s experiences on your website, which is very important. Right. I think everyone accepts it’s very important, so the fact that it doesn’t get funded enough. I wonder if you’ve got any experiences, where you’ve seen sort of IT teams struggling to get funding from your background before Glow. Is that, is that a an opinion you share. Do you think it is often underfunded in these aspects and needs more investment?

Phil Storey: Po possibly the, what, what you made me start thinking about there is actually c creatives as well. And because a lot of this falls into the, the creative, a lot of stuff I’m talking about, sorry, falls into the, you know, the creative side of life, doesn’t it? So web design, graphic design, marketing stuff, but particularly from my own experiences of web designer, uh, by trade and, and some very good friends of mine that are, you know, branding consultants, graphic designers. That is a great example of one that’s underfunded and clients often expect to get, you know, um, cheap, I guess services for, for, for that sort of creative sector. Copy, copy copywriting’s, another, another good example of that, example, and I’m sure it is, is similar, you know, um, in, uh, in Vari in various, uh, in various quarters. But, um, yeah, it’s not something I come across too often these days. Uh, I, I suppose I, I think think bringing it back to, you know, support and maintenance and WordPress sites again, to be honest with you, I think. A lot of the time it’s, it’s not that it’s kind of underfunded. Um, I mean, don’t get me wrong, you do get clients that sort of bulk at having to pay.

You know, a monthly fee after having just paid a fee for the, the site to be built in the first place. I think a lot of the time it’s the agency not doing a great job of actually selling the service in the first place. So it’s not that the client doesn’t have the money and doesn’t wanna pay for it, it’s that it. It’s either not been mentioned at all in the proposal stage, stage, or it’s just, it’s been mentioned, but it’s not been, it’s not been sold very well.

You know, the, the, the benefits, the long term benefits to the client and their business and their website. It hasn’t been solved very well, so I think that’s probably, in my experience at least, Chris, that’s probably more the case. I would, I would, uh, I would say.

Chris Barnard: Yeah, I agree. But let’s pretend I’m not an underfunded agency or an underfunded IT team. I’m an agency going great guns. We’re doing really well. Uh, we’ve brought on a variety of website clients. Um, I’ve seen one of your LinkedIn posts and thought, oh, crikey, I’m not charging support maintenance. Maybe I need to look at this platform glow, see how it’s gonna help me. At what point. In my agency’s development and my freelance business development, uh, starting to get sort of issues with clients with support and maintenance. At what stage should I approach you, uh, to help you, to help grow my business using your platform and system? What sort of stage of agency do I need to be, uh, to come and, and get the most benefits from your systems?

Phil Storey: Uh, that’s a good question. I think you, you’ve probably referenced a situation there that we do get occasionally, and funnily enough, it’s usually from bigger agencies that we have this conversation with, where they come to us us. You know, they’ve built hundreds of websites over the years and they’re hosting all of them, or but they’re not maintaining any of them. Or they are, but they’re kind of doing it for free, you know, and the client isn’t like sort of paying them any money for that. So they sort of sat there thinking, well. Thinking, well, we could have another sort of 10 grand a month coming in here if we’d have just sold these clients’ maintenance and, and care packages over the years. So we do get some of those coming to glow. Um, and what really what they’re trying to understand is how Glow as a, as a platform could help them, you know, start to start, start to sell those care plans and, and increase their, increase their recurring revenue. Now Glow isn’t really built as a tool to help agencies sell more care plans. It’s built as a tool for agencies who are already doing that. They just want a more efficient way of doing it for their team. So there’s, there’s those two sides to it, really. Um, don’t get me wrong, we do, we do have agencies that started with us who are now sort of starting to introduce those care packages to clients that they’ve already got.

And I think the ways that they are doing that in Glow is firstly showing them the dashboard, which is, um, not blowing my own trumpet, but it’s very smart, very clean, very slick, very modern, very nice to look at, which, you know, is, does your brand proud effectively? Um, and the reporting is, is a big side of it, and this is the part of it that really helps the client to understand the value of it. And that’s the bit that you need them to understand in order for them to start paying for it. So that those agencies that have taken on Glow who didn’t first already have care plans in place started adding their clients’ websites to the dashboard monitoring processes, maintaining things, you know, doing various proactive support related activity, and then producing a lovely report and showing it to the client and saying, look, by the way, here’s all the stuff we’re doing for you and making sure that your client, you know, your website’s kept secure and kept running smoothly. We are now gonna introduce, you know, a minimum price plan of 50 pounds a month or whatever it might be for us to continue doing this for you, for example. So there’s those agencies that come to us, and they’re probably 5% of our customer base. The other 95 are agencies of differing sizes who are already Managing various, a various number of WordPress sites. We’ve got, we’ve got agencies managing about 10 sites, and we’ve got agencies managing four, 500 sites. So there’s quite a, a, a range there, of course. But really, they all have the same, pretty much the same set of requirements from a system like Glow, which is. Team alignment. Yeah. So if there’s a, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6 people in this web development team within the agency, alignment is really important for them to come around one dashboard, one source of truth, one place to see all of those sites that they’re managing, all the different processes that are happening, the monitoring processes, any maintenance work that needs carrying out Glow’s gonna tell you what needs doing and when it needs doing, and when it’s being done, and who did it. So there’s a nice sort of audit trail of everything as well. And not to mention, it’ll then actually automate some of those processes for you so you don’t have to do them at all. Which is kind of one of the, sort of the second benefit of the product really, which is that sort of team efficiency, productivity side of it. So that, you know, we have agencies going from spending literally hours and hours every month producing reports for their clients to spending like a few minutes, you know, just checking that the reports will look okay or whatever. ’cause Glows done it all for them. Um, and you know, there will be some fancy studies and loads of studies, I’m sure somewhere that will tell you the value of that to an agency on a monthly basis. I mean, it, it really will run into the thousands of pounds a month and tens of thousands of pounds a year. The time savings that you, you can get, uh, from using something, something like Glow. And then really the third thing is something we’ve touched on before about that kind of agency growth, like the recurring revenue growth. If you are using something like Glow, that ultimately helps you do a more efficient, better, more impressive job of looking after your client’s sites, those clients are gonna stick around with you around for longer. Yeah, you’re doing a great job of looking after them whenever they need you, you are there instantly to help them through the support ticket system. You know what client is gonna leave off the back of that level of support, right? They’re gonna stay with you for longer. So it’s something that also sort of helps you drive that, uh, drive that forward. And like I said, we do have some clients that kind of then use it in their sales process. So they show the screenshots of the dashboard in proposals on their website and it can help with that sales process as well. But we certainly don’t sort of pitch it as a product that, you know, helps you do sales kind of thing. It’s just a, a nice little byproduct. I think Chris really, uh, more, more than anything else. Yeah.

Chris Barnard: And last time we spoke you were working on um, white label proposition I believe that’s all now completed. Do you just wanna talk about that a little bit? Because I know we have some listeners who, uh, love to use white label software and brand it as their own. Do you want just tell us a little bit more about that? So,

Phil Storey: so Glow has always been, um, a, a dashboard that you can sort of c customize, right? So you can, you know, let’s take, let’s take you as an example, Chris. Feedback Fans Of course, when you open a Glow account, it’s full of glows branding, right? Logo and, and all sorts of stuff. Um, so, um, you could, you know, add your logo, add your color scheme, and that all feeds through really nicely into things like the report. So when you create a report for your client, um. Um, looks like it’s your reporting system. Yeah. So it’s very, very on brand, which, I think is key for like client, you know, continuity with your clients and stuff. ’cause if you sent a report and it was report in Glow branding, the clients are gonna be asking you who, you know, who’s glow, who’s right? Uh, so it would be a little bit weird. So it’s a nice little thing that you can do there for the customisation and that, you know, feeds its way down into emails that get sent out from the system, they look like they’ve come from your agency, not from Glow. You know, even though it’s us, that’s sending them for you in the background. And a lot of that is all, you know, cus customizable as well. Um, I guess the final point on the sort of the white labeling side of it is that we have a feature that allows agencies, or freelancers, to be honest, anyone that’s providing some kind of white labeled support for other agencies. You can kind of fully run that through Glow. Um, a, a a as well. So this is something we used to do as an agency. So although we had our own clients whose websites we would manage, we also managed the websites of other agencies. Um, and we really wished at the time that we had, we had something like Glow in place that. You know, each agency would then have their sort of own area, their own dashboard branded as them. Their reports that went to their clients had their branding on instead of our branding and that sort of stuff. So, um, I always find when I’m talking about this particular aspect of Glow, it can sound a bit complicated sometimes when I’m talking about it. So try and keep it as simple as possible. But yeah, white label is the best way to sum it up. Um, and it’s a, it’s a really neat way to kind of, yeah. Like I said, keep that kind of continuity with the clients, um, in, in place.

Chris Barnard: And if someone listening’s clients have not heard of Glow, they can obviously direct them to this podcast, podcast now, and they

Phil Storey: Very true. CL yeah.

Chris Barnard: find out very much from that. So let’s, let’s look, let’s gaze into the crystal ball a bit for the future. In terms of websites. There’s obviously a lot of noise at the moment around, uh, quantum computing, not go into that, but there’s a lot of noise around AI as well and how Um, I suppose from A builder perspective. People use WordPress or use, um, other site builders and things like that. There’s kind of, there’s some excitement about how AI is gonna help build these websites, make them better. I suppose AI has a place in maintenance and support as well. Phil, what do you see the future of websites being for businesses? Will we ever get to a point where you don’t need a website or will it be a always a case where a website is a, a good investment for a business?

Phil Storey: Um, I think it would be foolish of me to say that, you know, things aren’t changing or they’re, you know, they’re not gonna change, uh, in a, in a few years time. Uh, we, we’ve all, we’re already seen the impact of AI as, as you mentioned, in every sector. And, and of course of web and marketing is absolutely no different. In fact, if anything, it’s probably one of the most, most impacted I, I would argue. Um, having said that, I think, uh, for the next a few years at least. Um, I think your website as a business is still gonna be extremely important. Still gonna be one of the main, um, you know, the, the, the main aspects of your, your brand online. Right? Of course, we now all all have social media profiles as businesses as well, and, and I’m sure they’re gonna continue to be very important as well. Um, but yeah, um, i’m, i’m, i’m actually quite sure that some point in the future, you know, a, a website will be something else, right? There’ll be something else that’ll be important for our business to have, but. Yeah, I can’t think that far ahead. And then like, obviously like to focus as much as possible on the, on the here and now. But of course things are changing. I think what, what what we’ve been trying to do at least is use AI to our advantage. Like how can it help us in our business, how can it help us grow and, grow you know, improve our processes and save us some time and do a better job of this or that? So. That’s the way we, we’ve certainly tried, tried, tried to approach it at least. Um, um, think we could probably bring AI into Glow in, in some regard as well, you know, just to make things easier for agencies that are managing WordPress sites. Um, I’ve no doubt that that will be on our roadmap at some point as a way to improve things. I. Um, so yeah, look, we, we all know where things are changing rapidly, uh, with, with, with ai. Um, so I’m sure down the line it will be a very different picture. But yeah, I think for the, for the very immediate future, I think, uh, continuing to have a strong focus on your website as a business owner is a very wise thing, uh, to, to do Chris. Um, you know, and, um, yeah, if, if you’ve got the right things in place, it should still be driving a lot of your, you know, a lot of your new business. I think, business. Um, generally.

Chris Barnard: And I’d echo those sentiments. And, uh, just to add on what Phil says there, I would say you’ve gotta remember the importance of owned assets again. I mean, we still see, uh, moments where people lose access to their, uh, Facebook account, their Instagram account. You know, you really need to be building your own assets on a on ground that you own so that you can direct people there and there will never be a, a situation where, you know, a social media company goes down or, um, they leak some details and get shut down or their TikTok and they get sold to someone else, right? You never gonna be in a position where you lose, um, your customer data, the, uh, ability to speak to your customers direct. I think we’re seeing a great resurgence in things like, um. Direct mail. We’re seeing a resurgence in things like email communication and things like newsletters, which used to be very old hat and frowned upon, are all coming back Phil, right? People want to have that one-on-one direct communication. And by having your website, uh, a website that is well maintained or well supported, uh, your clients know to come there. It’s gonna be a secure experience. They can trust it, they can put their card details in and uh, be comfortable. Mm. Know, on places like Facebook and if you’re filling in lead forms on Google, things like that, you know, how safe really is your data in these, uh, situations these days. But what you mention about Glow is interesting as well in terms of how you see Glow developing. So obviously there’s gonna be, uh, AI developing websites developing I think you make an interesting point that actually you’ll be looking at ways that AI can help your business. I think there’s gonna be ways that AI can help all business. So I just wondered if you could give us a bit of an insight into your roadmap from here. Um. Where you intend to take Glow as a business? Is it a case of, uh, building up more clients on the existing system and making the system even better from here? Or are there other desires for the business at this stage, Phil,

Phil Storey: Um, the, the, the former that you just mentioned there. So kind of improving on what we, what we’ve already built. That’s, that’s our, our big focus. Um, I think we’re now in a nice position where we’ve got some good traction. We’ve got lots of good agencies on board on who clearly like the concept and are getting benefit from it, getting value from it. So it’s really just pushing down on the accelerator pedal on the stuff that we’ve already got really Chris, and refining what we can refine, making things faster, where we can, making things more stable, where we can. Um, and the kind of the big USP of Glow really in the market is the fact that it does bring it all into one place. Okay? So, uh, whilst our competitors products, some of them are very, very good, um, on the maintenance side of things, none of them have any kind of support aspects. Uh, which of course Glow does. Uh, so leaning on that big USP of ours is something that we’re gonna be doing and we know already from talking to existing customers and ones that are looking to sign up, that they love that support aspect because they understand, um, the value of support in terms of them supporting support, providing support, sorry, to to, to their clients. So. Yeah, always looking at ways to improve the products. Um, I’m sure we’ll add some new things to the, to the products in the future. Um, but it’s not a game of just adding new features, you know, month after month. It’s, um, it’s making sure that, you know, the agencies that we’ve got on board are genuinely getting value from it. Um, and if we can improve that in any way for them, then that’s what we’ll be, uh, what we’ll be looking to do. Um, so yeah, watch this space. We’ve got a big, uh, event coming up next month in Basel, in Switzerland. This big WordPress, uh, Europe event. Which we’re, which we’re one of the sponsors of, so that’d be exciting. Few thousand agencies heading down there next, uh, next month. So it’d be good to be, good to be there and meet a few people. So, yeah.

Chris Barnard: And one question I must ask you. The question we ask everybody on the Bear Business Podcast. I’ve not seen any Reason to change it for season two because I actually love it and listeners Will know that’s my favorite go for it. Is, is to ask you to sort of cast your mind back to when you probably have time to play games, which is probably not at the time, you get the moment now nope. A product, a SaaS product as well, which must take up all your time. But if I was to ask you about your favorite game, the game you like to play the most, uh, either now or in the past, the game that got you most excited, what game could uh, game, card game, board game. What game

Phil Storey: easy, easy answer, mate. Would be golden. Golden eye on the, uh, NN 64.

Chris Barnard: four.

Phil Storey: It was amazing.

Chris Barnard: Amazing.

Phil Storey: If I could play it now, mate, I would do, but I can’t find my N 64. I’d probably not had it for about 15, 20 years or something, but, something. Oh mate, many, uh, many, many happy memories playing, uh, quite literally hours a day of that, uh, of that game. But we must be talking talking I mean, that must be 30 years ago, I would say. by by now, which is a bit of a frightening thought.

Chris Barnard: an elite choice of game.

Phil Storey: Ah, thank you.

Chris Barnard: so far, Phil, which is a good way for us to start season two. What did you like most when you played multiplayer? I presume you’re oh playing at multiplier. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. What settings did you have? One shot kills all throwing knives. Yeah. Here we go. I’ve got you.

Phil Storey: Throwing knives. Oh my God, this is bringing it back now. Yeah, I think we used to do power weapons quite a lot ’cause obviously they were, you know, um. Made the game a bit easier. But yeah, we used, we used to play a lot of multiplayer. We used to do the, um, we used to get the ch we used to try and do the cheats. Yeah. So like do infinity level on, uh, double Oh agent in less than two minutes or whatever it was. Yeah. We used to do that quite a lot, me and my mates. Um, I used to like playing the individual game, like the levels myself as well. I like, I really enjoyed that and, you know, trying to just sort of enjoy the game really. But the multiplayer was amazing wasn’t it? ’cause I mean, I obviously. Being the age that I am, I didn’t, I don’t think, I think that was our first console, the N 64 for me and my, my brothers. My so I believe Gold Eye was out. Quite revolutionary in the multiplayer sense, wasn’t it? Um, and yeah, I mean, when I say I playing it for hours, I’m not exaggerated. We would sit there for a long, long time playing multiplayer on Friday night after school and stuff, and yeah, it was amazing.

Chris Barnard: Four person co-op, four person yes. There, um, having a, you know, if you were lucky enough if your mother had bought you some, uh, beers, some 3% beers or whatever it was, having a cold filtered Heineken whilst, uh, throwing knives at each other. Yeah. Amazing. Time trial’s an interesting one actually. ‘Cause I actually, I remember giving my, giving my golden eye cartridge to a lad school who was like, oh yeah, I can do all these time trials. And because I’d never had the patience for it, for the, you know, complete this level in a minute 30 and, uh, get, you know, unlimited power weapons or whatever it would be. Yeah. My cartridge to him and he did it for me. And then I had all those cheats as well. So then you could have, yeah, big heads and

Phil Storey: Yeah. DK mode.

Chris Barnard: people would pick odd jobs. So you had to direct down a bit. I mean, this

Phil Storey: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, mate.

Chris Barnard: the uh, listeners who don’t know Golden Eye, but the listeners who do know Golden Eye will be having a moment here.

Phil Storey: Yeah. Yeah. I hope so.

Chris Barnard: those people.

Phil Storey: making me, uh, want to go and find my N64, to be honest. Get get it, get it out again.

Chris Barnard: Absolutely. Right. So let’s go. Everyone’s off now. Let’s go and have a whiskey. It’s been amazing to, um, speak to Phil. I wanted you on the, the second season ’cause we love your product. Uh, we think there’s probably, uh, partnerships down the line between feedback fans and Glow. And certainly our, our, the businesses we work with at feedback fans would benefit from, uh, listening to what you have to say about wordPress maintenance and support. And so thank you ever so much for coming and speaking about your care packages and your product. If people want to come and find out more about Glow, uh, come and purchase the product, what’s the best way for them to come and approach you

Phil Storey: The best way would be to go to our website. So our, our website is getglow.io, uh, which maybe you can put in the notes somewhere. Chris, uh, I suppose, um, we have a free plan. Yep. You can manage, manage up to three websites on our free plan, uh, which a lot of people like to do, just to kind of, you know, give it a test out, see if the, see if the, um, you know, they, they think they’re gonna get some, some use out of it, and obviously they can upgrade from there. And I’m on LinkedIn. I’m very active on LinkedIn. On um, I’m on there pretty much every, every weekday. Um, so you can just search Phil Storey on there. Hopefully I’ll come up fairly high and you’ll see that my company’s called Glow. And just drop me a message there if you’ve got any questions about it. You know, love to, love to talk to you, talk about WordPress support and maintenance all day, every day. So yeah, don’t be shy to, uh, send me a message

Chris Barnard: Even if it’s a golden eye question.

Phil Storey: if

Chris Barnard: very much, Phil.

Phil Storey: I encourage that. Cheers, Chris.

Chris Barnard: Excellent. Thank you. Take care now.

Phil Storey: Bye.