| 0:00 |
i'll go ahead and get started here uh welcome to gosh this is the last |
| 0:07 |
presentation slot of the session except for the round table and i hope everybody |
| 0:12 |
has gotten a chance to post a few questions in the round table |
| 0:18 |
and if you haven't please go to the reception area and you'll see a link there where you can fill out |
| 0:25 |
a simple form there to ask any questions of the dnn leadership panel |
| 0:31 |
so i'll go ahead and get started here um for those of you uh that may have |
| 0:37 |
intended to be in a different session well surprise you're now in my session this is a bit about it's it's really a |
| 0:44 |
sponsor slot if you will but i've catered this uh this particular |
| 0:50 |
presentation to help not only those that may be interested in us and our services but also |
| 0:56 |
understanding some of the fundamentals of of our business and how it could us |
| 1:02 |
honestly apply to any any business out there especially those that are building websites because |
| 1:08 |
there's so much more to consider than just a website even if you're just a website developer |
| 1:15 |
and maybe you're in an organization or whatever they can apply some of these principles to that organization |
| 1:22 |
no matter the age of that organization so for those that don't know me i'm david |
| 1:29 |
poindexter also known as dn and dave um so |
| 1:34 |
shameless plug please go out to dnn dave on youtube and please subscribe to that |
| 1:41 |
channel um i need followers i really do need followers um so i'd appreciate that but now i'm a ceo of envisionative we're |
| 1:48 |
located in the uh charlotte north carolina greater area |
| 1:54 |
and i am the strategy lead for the dnn leadership team and on the board of |
| 1:59 |
directors of dating connect and co-president of southern fried dna and yada yada yada yada you can get |
| 2:06 |
in contact with me with any of those uh social platforms and github and all that |
| 2:12 |
below as well as our company um thank you so much for those that |
| 2:18 |
actually went and subscribed that was so fun it's so thoughtful of you so |
| 2:23 |
what makes up envisionative um or any real successful business i would |
| 2:29 |
say we actually start with a real solid foundation |
| 2:35 |
and i'll i'll go into a little bit deeper dive into each of these a bit and you |
| 2:40 |
know any good business needs some some good building blocks to build things with you know be that either websites or |
| 2:48 |
advertising campaigns or whatever it is that your service offers or your business offers or products you got to |
| 2:55 |
have those pieces to put those things together and make them into a nice cohesive |
| 3:01 |
offering there teamwork is vital um as many of us know it's |
| 3:06 |
always better to to have a solid team to work with and bounce ideas off of and |
| 3:13 |
help each other to improve over over time and really kind of give input and offer |
| 3:19 |
different perspectives the abundance principle is something that |
| 3:25 |
is pretty near and dear to my heart and we'll talk a little bit about that and always just having that mentality of |
| 3:32 |
growth you know no matter what obstacles you may face as a business or |
| 3:37 |
with clients that you have or projects that are challenging or whatever there's always opportunity for growth and |
| 3:44 |
refining and owning our craft a bit and then also just continually improving |
| 3:50 |
our processes there's always room for improvement so let's talk a little bit about the |
| 3:56 |
solid foundation this is actually an image of one of our clients here this local |
| 4:02 |
their concrete company and i thought it was fitting to use an image that of one of the buildings |
| 4:09 |
that they were pouring concrete for and you know a strong foundation in a business is |
| 4:15 |
absolutely vital because you know things really start falling apart if you don't |
| 4:20 |
have some core values and and all to really kind of stand on |
| 4:26 |
you know for us some of those core values are integrity um i live and die by integrity if i you |
| 4:33 |
know if there's something that's you know off or anything like that or you know just questioning the way that |
| 4:40 |
we do things or you know our motives behind things it's real important to have that solid |
| 4:47 |
integrity um in business respect for others is very important |
| 4:52 |
respect for our teammates respect for our clients and their ideas |
| 4:58 |
being honest with each other you know um sometimes we need to hear |
| 5:05 |
the truth you know about how we're feeling you know about a |
| 5:10 |
certain situation or a certain direction that a project is going and we need to |
| 5:16 |
be able to have that honest communication throughout a project or |
| 5:21 |
um anything that we're doing together um it just really helps even you know sometimes it |
| 5:26 |
not so fun to hear that honest truth you know but a lot of times it's really enlightening |
| 5:32 |
because you just you know you didn't intend for things to be that way but you know it's good to |
| 5:37 |
hear from the client that oh we came across a little wrong there so it's a two-way street for us you know and being |
| 5:43 |
really transparent in the way that we uh do business um sometimes we leverage the |
| 5:49 |
you know in a dnn space it's a pretty small community in the sense of you know |
| 5:54 |
providers and service providers and in the area and integrators and all that so |
| 6:00 |
we we love working with others if we are not the strongest or the best fit for a |
| 6:06 |
certain thing that we need to do we reach out and we work with somebody in the community or another company in |
| 6:12 |
the community and just being able to be transparent about that so there's no hidden agendas or anything like that we |
| 6:18 |
really like that so to that end we really highly value relationships um be it either a client |
| 6:24 |
relationship or relationships just with each other internally we really value those |
| 6:30 |
so that's really what makes up our solid foundation talked a little bit about building blocks and you know as you're starting |
| 6:38 |
out as a business or a new team within an existing business |
| 6:43 |
you you kind of piecemeal together some blocks that you could possibly build some structures you know and you see a |
| 6:50 |
nice little um this is kind of like jingle blocks or something like that not really building a jingle tower here but you know |
| 6:58 |
you could see how fragile that might look and that may just be the way that we start out |
| 7:03 |
because we're really just learning how these pieces are going to work together to build whatever offering we're going |
| 7:09 |
to do and later you want to kind of see this evolve |
| 7:15 |
to a more solid you know model if you will for our building blocks that |
| 7:21 |
really can be pieced together and they look really nice and clean as well as |
| 7:27 |
working well together so that it's not so easy for them to be knocked over or |
| 7:32 |
you know have some vulnerabilities like you see on the on the left-hand side there |
| 7:41 |
teamwork is vital as well and this one is you know this one's |
| 7:47 |
easier said than done because you know we're we're people we're human and we have |
| 7:52 |
emotions and we have egos sometimes and and all that |
| 7:57 |
but you know really valuing each other goes back to one of those core principles of respect |
| 8:05 |
um if we're respecting each other you know then you're believing going into a conversation that another team member |
| 8:12 |
has something valid to offer and that goes with our clients as well |
| 8:18 |
we like to be a team with our clients so we do a lot of creative marketing and |
| 8:23 |
you know advertising type things so a lot of times we we end up being a marketing extension |
| 8:29 |
for clients you know that may not have a marketing team or maybe they just have a single marketing director you know and |
| 8:37 |
they need a team to bounce ideas off of and bring ideas to the table with so we really |
| 8:43 |
value teamwork here and you know notice there this one's kind of become cliche-ish but there is |
| 8:48 |
no eye in team it was funny we we had an internal conversation just today |
| 8:54 |
of reminding ourselves you know of this how we communicate it's a we thing it's |
| 9:00 |
not an eye thing right you know and it's just something we have to keep top of mind |
| 9:08 |
talk a little bit about the abundance principle and i'll spend a little bit of time on this one because it's so key |
| 9:15 |
in communities like dnn community where it's open source |
| 9:21 |
and there's a lot of extensions out there that are used that are |
| 9:26 |
open source and for many years i mean i've actually been |
| 9:32 |
in the dna community since its inception and i for quite a few years |
| 9:39 |
i mean i would talk with people and things like that and i would interact on some of the forms and |
| 9:44 |
have conversations with people but i was a little more of a consumer and it became apparent to me over over those |
| 9:52 |
early years that this community was a bit different in that |
| 9:57 |
there are people that were just so willing to help others when there were |
| 10:04 |
questions and i was one of those people that need a lot of help and you know |
| 10:10 |
it just kind of became ingrained to me through experience with the dnn community that |
| 10:16 |
there's this principle you know of you give and you get as a result of that |
| 10:22 |
giving you don't give to get so um it's just uh something that's kind of |
| 10:28 |
woven into the fabric of our community and i see it every day and it's just something that is vital to |
| 10:35 |
us as a business too so we allow ourselves the ability to contribute to |
| 10:43 |
open source on the clock so to speak you know for for the company we're paying |
| 10:49 |
people for that time to contribute to open source and it's really great it's a it's a good experience |
| 10:55 |
i know i've valued that years over in um |
| 11:01 |
it's not always something that you can directly attribute a return on you know but |
| 11:08 |
kind of goes back to the principle it's not the reason why you do it to start with |
| 11:14 |
so if that is kind of core to the way you think then it can really change your mind |
| 11:19 |
because you you find out i mean it could really change your perception of it because you find out that you do end up getting |
| 11:26 |
something that's may not maybe like directly attributable to an roi or something but |
| 11:32 |
it comes back you know good karma whatever you want to call it what comes around goes around |
| 11:37 |
that kind of thing so we like to help others we need help sometimes and we are so |
| 11:43 |
appreciative of community members that are able to help us |
| 11:49 |
so um this one's a good one as well because a lot of times when we |
| 11:56 |
run into difficult situations where we may not know the answer to a question |
| 12:03 |
or you know if something is really impacting a client you know in a negative fashion |
| 12:11 |
and we just don't quite know how to solve it there's always that opportunity to just |
| 12:16 |
change that challenge from a challenge to an opportunity and |
| 12:21 |
you know kind of humble ourselves and it goes back to the community is a little bit here as well like a parallel to this |
| 12:28 |
you know i don't want to be afraid of admitting that i don't know the answer |
| 12:34 |
we're not super human right so sometimes we don't know the answer we can't find the answer google doesn't tell us or you |
| 12:41 |
know or we get misled by some post you know somewhere that led us down a path |
| 12:47 |
that just didn't pan out in the end well i want to be able to just keep |
| 12:54 |
going you know i want to find the answer for the client if we don't know the answer we're going to try |
| 12:59 |
to find it we're going to try to reach out to others in the community and see |
| 13:05 |
if we can really get that answer and sometimes the answer is we just couldn't couldn't |
| 13:10 |
figure it out but we try to go into a solution space of okay well |
| 13:16 |
assuming we can't get an answer to this what do we do you know so we just try to shift to that kind of that kind of |
| 13:23 |
mentality there and always just be growing it's always something to learn |
| 13:28 |
and kind of along the same lines is you know our internal processes or our processes |
| 13:34 |
that we have in place to work with our partners or our vendors |
| 13:40 |
and our clients how we communicate you know those kind of things just always |
| 13:46 |
being willing to refine and you know admit that yeah i thought that was going to work |
| 13:51 |
out much better than it did but we need to tweak that a little bit and you know not being so stuck to i |
| 13:58 |
mean we are a boutique agency if you will we're small enough it's where we're able to be a little |
| 14:04 |
more nimble with these kind of things and not be so stiff you know with these but you know as we've grown |
| 14:11 |
we've needed those processes if we have a new hire that comes in or we need to you know educate them on how we do |
| 14:17 |
something whatever it's nice to have it documented we are by no means perfect in |
| 14:22 |
this area but we're always willing to tweak and improve and admit when something's not working |
| 14:28 |
and there's also this aspect of some people operate in different ways |
| 14:34 |
so what works for one client will not necessarily work for another client we |
| 14:40 |
we have some clients that they live and you know die by their email or someone that we have other |
| 14:46 |
clients that you're just not gonna get an email response you're gonna have to pick up the phone and give them a call |
| 14:52 |
and for us to be adaptable in that way so you know our processes are |
| 14:58 |
not so stringent that it doesn't you know allow for those flexibilities and communication and |
| 15:05 |
things like that and use that as a small example but this goes into many different aspects of the business |
| 15:11 |
so let's kind of bring that we've now got the foundation kind of laid and what the core values and the you know of the |
| 15:16 |
business are um and some of the different uh pieces to the puzzle for us |
| 15:22 |
let's kind of bring it a little bit into our world right we've been asked by a client to you build a website |
| 15:29 |
well those requests come in many different ways different new shapes different |
| 15:34 |
forms and it it is beyond the technical bits |
| 15:40 |
right it's not in the end just a bit of code like you see over there on the right and |
| 15:46 |
you have a website now there are plenty of companies out there that will approach it that way |
| 15:52 |
um nothing necessarily wrong with it it's just we know there's so much more to the puzzle so we do like to ask the |
| 15:59 |
questions that are you know sometimes you're constrained by budget or you're constrained by |
| 16:05 |
other factors or timeline or things like that and you're just not able to go into all these different |
| 16:10 |
areas that i'm going to touch on here but those things still exist and they still probably apply in some shape form or |
| 16:17 |
fashion so it's nice to have the conversation a lot of companies will use more of a |
| 16:24 |
cookie cutter kind of approach and it's not a bad business model in the sense of you know |
| 16:31 |
generating revenue for a business but is it what the client actually needs in |
| 16:37 |
the end um we love to build uber |
| 16:44 |
beautiful sites you know just stellar designs but we rarely ever actually get to do it |
| 16:51 |
because it's more about what is needed for the website versus what |
| 16:57 |
could be done or what we enjoy doing so just being willing as a business to recognize the |
| 17:03 |
actual need know the audience and actually deliver that you know rather than something that we |
| 17:10 |
just want to do or the only thing that we know how to do you know kind of in the cookie cutter kind of approach |
| 17:18 |
so one of the things we like to talk about right up front |
| 17:24 |
is establishing a budget early on sometimes this is known |
| 17:30 |
by the client sometimes it's willing to be shared sometimes it's not for various reasons |
| 17:36 |
and that's okay but at the onset of a project we really all need to understand what we're doing |
| 17:43 |
and what our limitations are are we going to be driven by a budget |
| 17:49 |
or we can be driven by a timeline do those two line up |
| 17:54 |
together and sometimes we have to kind of read between the lines you know of what the |
| 18:01 |
actual ask is and we have to think okay well what |
| 18:06 |
what is it that the client really needs or is really asking for even |
| 18:12 |
though they're not directly asking for it and we have to again be honest with |
| 18:17 |
ourselves in some of these situations and know that sometimes we just |
| 18:23 |
have to say no because it may not be the ask is not the right |
| 18:29 |
questions you know coming coming to us in order to be able to deliver what we ultimately know is |
| 18:35 |
needed um i would love to share some specific examples but for obvious reasons i'm not going to do that but it's like |
| 18:42 |
it's just something that it's okay as a business to recognize you know that it's a setup |
| 18:50 |
for disaster or it's you're ultimately not going to be |
| 18:56 |
um delivering what needs to be delivered um in in in the situation sometimes we |
| 19:03 |
get this wrong too sometimes we have taken on a project that we really you |
| 19:08 |
know should have probably not engaged in but we just didn't have the foresight to |
| 19:14 |
know um you know most of our projects go just nice and smoothly you know yes every project has its bumps along |
| 19:21 |
the way and we'll learn from those uh mistakes along the way but |
| 19:26 |
um you know it's it's not a pure science but just being able to read between lines and knowing |
| 19:33 |
what is really being asked for a project if the budget isn't there to |
| 19:38 |
get the project to that level in a way that we do it and what we do |
| 19:43 |
well then it's okay it's okay to say no it's okay for your business to say no as well |
| 19:49 |
with things like that it you'll be happier in the client in the end will |
| 19:55 |
hopefully get what they need you know from a different provider that could potentially do what they're asking |
| 20:01 |
and achieve those goals within that particular budget so really talking about the budget up front is is |
| 20:08 |
really nice for all parties really so let's talk a little bit about branding because for us |
| 20:15 |
when it comes to a website i can't tell you how many requests we get of okay i've got this website client |
| 20:21 |
already has a website or we already have a website and we just want it to look different we're |
| 20:28 |
tired of this design we just need a new design |
| 20:33 |
we look at the website and we go huh well um tell me a little bit about that |
| 20:40 |
logo there like how long has that been in play have you considered |
| 20:46 |
any newer kind of more modern colors for that logo or |
| 20:52 |
have you considered actually making it a logo um a lot of clients actually think that their logo is a |
| 20:58 |
a word mark or a photo with a with their name plastered |
| 21:03 |
across it you know so as a branding company you know we this is kind of where the design |
| 21:09 |
flows from from the very beginning is really understanding if the brand is established |
| 21:16 |
does it need any tweaking as we start looking at the design of a new website |
| 21:23 |
um because if we don't get that right it's kind of like this may sound a little bit harsh but |
| 21:29 |
it's like sometimes putting lipstick on a pig um it's |
| 21:37 |
we can try you know yeah we could probably make it better um but is it gonna be done right so kind |
| 21:45 |
of goes back to that budget thing can we do it right is there the openness there to do it |
| 21:50 |
now that doesn't say that every single project that comes along we're like you should do a rebrand no i mean sometimes |
| 21:56 |
it's just not required sometimes it's a solid brand that's really fine the way it is |
| 22:03 |
no no color tweaks no styling changes needed it's really a logo they really |
| 22:08 |
have an icon they really have a solid name they're not putting ink in their logo or something like that |
| 22:15 |
you know i mean inc and i kind of laugh because a lot of clients believe that their |
| 22:21 |
literal name actually has to be a part of their brand and while it is a part of the bigger brand picture it doesn't necessarily be |
| 22:28 |
the the visual aspect of it so i talked a little about logo but brandon goes way |
| 22:34 |
beyond just logos so um let's talk a little bit about the voice of the website |
| 22:41 |
how many times have we gone to a website and it just feels disconnected you know you go from one |
| 22:47 |
page to another and it's like did the same person |
| 22:53 |
write this content um you can tell it was maybe evolved over time you know it was iterated on |
| 22:59 |
over time but somewhere along the way there's just a disconnect and the voice didn't sound the same |
| 23:07 |
you know across the site so for us voice is really important and that's where our copywriting services |
| 23:13 |
come into play and being able to make sure that there is a |
| 23:18 |
solid and established voice for not only the website but really for the client in general because |
| 23:24 |
for many businesses the website is really kind of the first place you know of that contact with a |
| 23:31 |
with a client so voice is very important same um |
| 23:37 |
same breath there um as i take a breath um |
| 23:43 |
oh wait hold on there we go i had to do that um what is the line here you know |
| 23:52 |
if is it just a straight up e-commerce site are you really trying to lead people to |
| 23:57 |
understand why they may would need that product and kind of funnel them in |
| 24:05 |
you know to that decision um just hitting them with a grid of products |
| 24:10 |
right from the get-go is maybe not the wisest strategy because you're not telling a story you're not really |
| 24:17 |
painting a picture think about some of the major brands you know that |
| 24:22 |
have stellar websites you'll notice that there's a clear |
| 24:27 |
user journey or a path that they're going along and that's that's undergirded by a strong |
| 24:33 |
understanding of what the story is what is the storyline what is the messaging that needs to happen there |
| 24:39 |
what do you want people to take away from that when they go to that page and this applies to every page of the site it |
| 24:45 |
doesn't mean that there has to be a ton of content either |
| 24:52 |
we do believe less is often more in this so |
| 24:58 |
it's very important just how what that voice sounds like and how you're delivering the message |
| 25:06 |
so let's go into strategy a little bit and this is where gosh i'll probably talk a little bit too much uh here |
| 25:12 |
but um when we're thinking about you know this is not obvious to |
| 25:19 |
those that aren't in this world um but you know if you if you're |
| 25:25 |
someone that needs a new website and let's say you're a new business net new business you're just starting |
| 25:30 |
out you haven't thought through really a lot of what your business model is and |
| 25:36 |
but you know you've got this great idea right and you're excited about the business |
| 25:41 |
and you know you need to do it right and your version of write is |
| 25:46 |
a little clouded because you don't know exactly what right is yet and |
| 25:52 |
but you need help you need to get there well here are some of the things that we think about |
| 25:57 |
whether we vocalize that with you or whether you know you're ready for those kind of |
| 26:03 |
things but we do think about these things regardless so one of the things that we think about |
| 26:09 |
with websites is who are the users of that website |
| 26:16 |
and in most cases you know a client may say well i mean that's our clients no |
| 26:21 |
yeah yeah but let's dig a little bit deeper what what are those users like who are they |
| 26:27 |
really who are they and you know that goes into a lot of research about |
| 26:34 |
what is the real persona of the person that you're going you know really understanding your target audience |
| 26:41 |
is it a 20-something um you know |
| 26:46 |
demographic with um i don't know with a certain level of income |
| 26:52 |
or things like that you know and what is their what are they thinking when they get to your website i mean you may think |
| 26:58 |
well gosh that's that's going deep there i don't know what they're thinking well |
| 27:03 |
imagine it like if a person was let's say you're a |
| 27:09 |
real estate company and you focus on a certain |
| 27:14 |
level of you know inventory with your houses or apartments whatever |
| 27:20 |
it is you know what stage of life that person probably needs to be in order to be able |
| 27:27 |
to even afford you know that level so if you're in new york city and |
| 27:33 |
you're trying to sell apartments there well if somebody only has a budget of 200 000 |
| 27:40 |
yeah that's not the right user for your site right because |
| 27:45 |
this is not going to cut it in manhattan so you know that they need to be a |
| 27:51 |
certain level so really we think about user personas in the sense of defining who that those ideal |
| 27:58 |
types of users are for site so that then we can really know what they're thinking when they get there and |
| 28:04 |
we we literally even you know kind of act this out a bit in in actual user personas so it's really |
| 28:11 |
kind of a fun exercise to refine that and this needs to be iterated over time |
| 28:18 |
as you learn more about your clientele and who is succeeding on the site who is |
| 28:23 |
not succeeding who's balancing who's not understanding what you expect their user |
| 28:30 |
journey on the site to actually be so that you can get the desired outcome of their |
| 28:37 |
experience on the site so in the case of the apartment hunter |
| 28:44 |
maybe you want them to fill out a form after they look at a certain property |
| 28:50 |
and contact you to schedule an appointment that could be one of the desired |
| 28:55 |
outcomes so then that impacts our design of it because we want to make sure that the |
| 29:01 |
voice is appealing to that user persona we want to make sure the messaging is |
| 29:07 |
right to lead them to those properties and when they get to a property |
| 29:13 |
having a clear understanding of what they can do once they've seen it or they're starting to get interest |
| 29:20 |
so being able to have that clearly mapped out as a user journey is very important |
| 29:28 |
also knowing kind of how we are going to collectively measure |
| 29:34 |
success is very important as well because |
| 29:39 |
if we don't know what our measures of success are then how in the world are we going to |
| 29:45 |
know if we're succeeding you know you as a client or us as an agency trying to help you out so |
| 29:52 |
for us to all understand what our measures of success are then that's really important so |
| 29:59 |
let's take a um we have a client that's a leader in pool financing |
| 30:06 |
and one of their measures of success is actually getting an application |
| 30:13 |
on their website so by golly we're going to design everything to flow to that application |
| 30:20 |
so they can actually get somebody to apply on the website for |
| 30:25 |
one of our clients that is a a sewage and pumping company a sewer and |
| 30:32 |
pumping company it's a fun business um but you know for |
| 30:37 |
them it's to give them a call and schedule an appointment so that's a little different |
| 30:43 |
than trying to get someone to fill out a complicated application online |
| 30:49 |
versus picking up a call so it's a different strategy that goes into that |
| 30:55 |
so we think about the user experience truly because |
| 31:00 |
it's not just some term ux oh we do ux yeah |
| 31:06 |
maybe we do maybe we don't do we really know what we're talking about with that well |
| 31:11 |
to do user experience you know properly you got to be willing to actually test |
| 31:18 |
with users to see if your hypothetical design is going to |
| 31:23 |
translate to users or is it going to leave them completely confused and not know what to do or not |
| 31:30 |
understand what they're even looking at sometimes we project our you know thoughts about |
| 31:37 |
what's easy and what's not you know as let's just say if we have a developmentality development mentality |
| 31:44 |
we may be just thinking literally about accomplishing that feature that's being put on the website |
| 31:50 |
well that's not really enough sometimes sometimes we need to be able to be honest and say well |
| 31:57 |
you know using a drop down there actually works better because of |
| 32:02 |
x whatever the reason is because we see a drop-off rate when people hit the spot in the application |
| 32:10 |
so you know there's all kinds of things that we can do to improve that and it's not a one and done kind of scenario |
| 32:16 |
either but we can't just use that term loosely thinking about things like sales funnels |
| 32:22 |
or funnels you know you if you hit people right from the beginning here by my |
| 32:28 |
online course that i'm selling it's like yeah but you haven't really told me anything about why i would even be interested in a course from you |
| 32:35 |
well that's not gonna work you're gonna have to explain who you are and |
| 32:40 |
why you're passionate about you know educational material in this particular subject |
| 32:46 |
and then eventually you present them with those courses that you're selling online and they'll already be a little |
| 32:53 |
more interested when they get there you're not just hitting them with the five thousand dollar online course fee |
| 33:00 |
for real estate or whatever it is so funnels are important and i'm going to move on off this slide |
| 33:06 |
in just a minute but some of the other things is when it comes into content |
| 33:11 |
how many times we've been asked to actually design a website when there is no content |
| 33:17 |
for the website from the client so if we're creating that together let's |
| 33:23 |
have a plan to create that together to write it to take photography if it's needed or |
| 33:28 |
design the graphics that are needed whatever rich media that might be needed on the site like a video you know |
| 33:35 |
production needs to be done explainer video or whatever it is or virtual tour if you're a |
| 33:41 |
brick and mortar business with actual product in there maybe you want to do a virtual tour well how in the world can |
| 33:46 |
we effectively design a website when we don't know what that content is going to be |
| 33:52 |
so we do have a content first mentality when it comes to websites and it's |
| 33:58 |
it just in the end you'll you'll have a better product in the end if you |
| 34:03 |
go through the hard exercise of figuring out some of this content beforehand you don't have to figure it all out for |
| 34:10 |
it but it's it's one of those things the more we know the better we can do |
| 34:16 |
then and really only then can we effectively start talking about design |
| 34:22 |
of a website so we've gone through a lot at this point and |
| 34:27 |
you know when we are thinking about design it's not going out and purchasing a |
| 34:33 |
template off of theme forest or any of those kind of sites |
| 34:40 |
and trying to plop the logo in there and put a color palette that matches your branding |
| 34:46 |
can that work yeah it can but again that design was not created |
| 34:51 |
for the content that you have so trying to fit everything into a box |
| 34:57 |
like that is just not the way that we approach design um and we believe to really effectively |
| 35:03 |
design a website you need to be thinking about the various types of pages that you might want to have on a website |
| 35:10 |
because it'll have different functionality it may have different design needs in that particular section |
| 35:16 |
of the site versus another section of the site just because of the features or |
| 35:22 |
what the content really looks like or how it's structured we like to think about color really |
| 35:28 |
think about color because color matters whether you know it or not |
| 35:34 |
um there are certain colors that are harsh or cold you know and not as in warm and |
| 35:41 |
inviting but all of this is not a one size fits all either um what works for one |
| 35:48 |
company will not necessarily work for another company um because it all goes back to what is |
| 35:53 |
the voice what is the message well what do you need to support all that |
| 35:59 |
typography matters design patterns are we going to create our own design patterns or we're going |
| 36:04 |
to leverage some other framework and really get into some of the technical stuff here now a little bit as |
| 36:09 |
it relates to design but are we using bootstrap for css framework or are we |
| 36:15 |
going for more of a kind of a material design approach or are we trying to roll our own |
| 36:23 |
accessibility is a big deal when it comes to design and making sure that |
| 36:28 |
the colors are making it such that the contrast with the |
| 36:34 |
typography and the content that's on the page is it a high enough contrast for |
| 36:39 |
accessible visitors and you know it goes way beyond just that but i'm using that as an example |
| 36:46 |
user testing on design is really important as well oh my goodness let's talk about some |
| 36:53 |
security here i hope everybody knows who bon quiqui is if you don't please search |
| 36:58 |
that on youtube and you've got to look at the skit from mad tv it's hilarious so |
| 37:04 |
um you want to make sure wherever you're hosting your websites |
| 37:09 |
that security is top of mind and it again it's not a pure science |
| 37:16 |
but if the company that you're hosting with is not |
| 37:21 |
talking about some of these cyber attacks that are happening these days |
| 37:26 |
and how serious it is and how easy it is to happen to any of us |
| 37:32 |
um that that's really important it should probably be a flag you know for you |
| 37:37 |
so we just make sure that any clients that we're hosting their websites that this is top of mind |
| 37:43 |
we've unfortunately been bit just like a lot of other people have been bit by these awful attacks |
| 37:51 |
and we learned a lot from it so it goes back to our process improvement things like that we've done a lot |
| 37:57 |
to make sure that sites are as secure as they could possibly be and that we have clear strategy |
| 38:04 |
for backup and recovery and all that should the awful actually happen |
| 38:14 |
so then we get into the development aspects of it and |
| 38:20 |
there's a lot we can talk about here but this can't be where we started we had to establish all that other stuff |
| 38:26 |
before we could even think about developing it because if we would have started developing it |
| 38:32 |
before we designed it we were just going to get our structure in place you know because we like these |
| 38:37 |
development patterns or whatever yeah i mean we could but we would end up you know reworking things |
| 38:44 |
because designers want something different than developers usually and |
| 38:50 |
we like to make sure the left hand is talking to the right hand so development team is usually involved in the process |
| 38:57 |
of design so before we're presenting designs the |
| 39:02 |
developers are looking at it going uh that's gonna be tough you know and it |
| 39:07 |
kind of a lot of times bubbles back up to the budget conversation right so if |
| 39:14 |
budget was our driver and we know that we have a particular mark that we're going for from a budget standpoint well |
| 39:21 |
we can make some decisions along the way that would help reach that budget and not |
| 39:26 |
blow the budget right so if we know we need to do a little tweak in the design to just make sure we |
| 39:31 |
don't end up with that huge can of worms from a development standpoint we're going to do that and try to catch |
| 39:37 |
as much of that as possible early on before we get too far along |
| 39:42 |
so what tooling are we using that's really important for us not reinventing the wheel on some of our |
| 39:48 |
tooling the design can change the code can change but how we're actually interacting with that |
| 39:55 |
is very important to us so we invest a lot into that whether or not we're using a framework |
| 40:00 |
or not sometimes this doesn't matter to the client a lot of times it's a decision that we make |
| 40:06 |
and we do have some preferences in this area but we're always kind of looking at that and looking at tweaking |
| 40:13 |
it sometimes we will use a framework sometimes we won't use a framework to do something what is the architecture of |
| 40:19 |
our code are we integrating with other services are we |
| 40:25 |
structuring our content and some kind of like you know structured content kind of solution and usually that is that answer |
| 40:31 |
is yes for us but there are certain sites especially one that's already established and |
| 40:36 |
already has a certain set of extensions if it's a dnn site that's being leveraged that we really |
| 40:42 |
can't do that or if we're on a wordpress site and they're not using |
| 40:48 |
some kind of structured content sometimes we can and sometimes we can't it just kind of depends on |
| 40:54 |
what the state of the website is but we do try to go down that path as much as possible |
| 41:00 |
we're ever evolving our source control as it relates to any other code that we're creating |
| 41:07 |
be that the theme of the site or the structured content solution of the site or any custom extensions that |
| 41:15 |
we're writing we're making sure that those are in a proper source control environment that the client has access |
| 41:21 |
to as well are we |
| 41:26 |
reinventing the wheel or going through manual steps when we don't have to we're trying to get better and better |
| 41:32 |
about this but continuous integration is important as well as looking into continuous deployment sometimes |
| 41:39 |
for sites where we can do that where from a development standpoint we get finished with a some changes that are |
| 41:45 |
done and essentially clicking a button and everything gets built |
| 41:50 |
automatically and deployed automatically depending on which steps we took during development um that's just |
| 41:57 |
something to smart because if you're repeating the same thing over and over and over again and it's taking you x amount of |
| 42:03 |
hours to do that it makes sense to automate some of that so automating that |
| 42:09 |
build and deployment type environment is very important |
| 42:16 |
uh let's see here so some other things to be thinking about with websites is social media and how |
| 42:22 |
that's going to interact with your website um you know maybe it's just something as |
| 42:28 |
simple as you're going to have people that are sharing |
| 42:34 |
a website a url of your website onto social media |
| 42:39 |
well when they do that have you ever looked to see what that actually looks like is it pulling in |
| 42:45 |
a dnn logo or is it pulling in the image that you want it to pull in the preview |
| 42:51 |
of that social post does it look right on facebook does it look right on twitter does it look like |
| 42:56 |
right on some of these other platforms that's something we need to be thinking about when we're building websites and |
| 43:02 |
that's a fairly small development effort to make sure that those look really great and also gives |
| 43:09 |
you a way to control that as an administrator of the website |
| 43:14 |
or are we doing some more advanced integrations you know with social media sometimes we have uh those |
| 43:22 |
seo this is something that so many think it's just a putting a |
| 43:28 |
description and a title on a page and while titles are incredibly important in seo |
| 43:33 |
there's so much more to seo there's understanding where you live in the marketplace as it |
| 43:40 |
relates to search engines um if you are |
| 43:46 |
running a plumbing business for instance well we know that those are a dime a |
| 43:52 |
dozen out there and it's a very competitive space so really understanding what your key |
| 43:59 |
differentiators are as it relates to searches out there what those are |
| 44:06 |
that ultimately is going to translate to certain keywords and also what geographical area |
| 44:13 |
you are servicing knowing all that is incredibly important because |
| 44:18 |
when it comes to eventually you're going to probably want to do some search engine marketing |
| 44:23 |
well you need to know what you know one your budget is going to be willing to to be for that but also know |
| 44:31 |
what you actually need to to be able to invest in that another in order to succeed or have success |
| 44:37 |
in conversions from that so there's a lot of things that can be done on site |
| 44:44 |
uh you know on the actual physical site that that actually impacts seo |
| 44:49 |
and it kind of comes back up to also some of those things we talked about earlier |
| 44:54 |
having a good voice having a clear message a unique voice by the way you know and unique |
| 45:01 |
content that's going to not be shown up as duplicate content |
| 45:06 |
so let's say you're running a dentist's office and you decide to go and hire a company that |
| 45:12 |
is an expert in your type of business and they build you a website |
| 45:20 |
and you get their whole package of wonderfully written content |
| 45:25 |
and really a lot of is wonderfully written a lot of times what you probably don't realize is that |
| 45:32 |
every other client of the company has some version of that exact same content on their website |
| 45:38 |
well guess what that's going to do for your search engine results |
| 45:43 |
not so good and you know recovering from damage that can be done by |
| 45:49 |
duplicate content like that is a as we would say in the south a tough row to hoe |
| 45:56 |
so a lot of times it ends up being almost a do-over you know on a new domain on a website to really be able to |
| 46:02 |
truly recover from some of that and maybe you've hired a you know a search engine optimization company that |
| 46:09 |
they are experts in search engine optimization but yet they have |
| 46:14 |
putting on their black hat you know instead of the white hat when it comes to seo and they have |
| 46:20 |
stuffed links in all kinds of places that shouldn't be links just to get backlinks and this is |
| 46:25 |
some of the off-site type seo activity that can happen to generate interest in |
| 46:30 |
your website but yet it's damaging because it's low quality backlinks so all of that kind of |
| 46:37 |
comes into play too or they're writing stuff in your gosh we've even seen stuff like |
| 46:43 |
where remember back in the days when in dnn where they we had the vulnerability with |
| 46:49 |
user bots you know our bots that were actually making users well one of the goals of that was to be able to get to |
| 46:55 |
the biography page or the bio piece of information on a user profile page |
| 47:01 |
and stuff links into it for other websites well uh |
| 47:06 |
yeah that caused a lot of us a lot of pain being able to deal with all that but |
| 47:12 |
they were trying to put back links out there so there's so many wrong ways to |
| 47:17 |
approach seo and we would love for our clients not to not to go down that path |
| 47:22 |
or not even have to recover from going down that path without realizing that that was what was |
| 47:28 |
happening because it can do a lot of damage to your domain authority analytics also comes in play in this |
| 47:34 |
area as well and then we get into digital advertising and really if we've done all of these things |
| 47:41 |
right and it's getting to a product that's worth talking about worth referring |
| 47:47 |
people to and you know when that type of user comes to the website |
| 47:53 |
that you've actually made it so that they can convert you know and go to some of those |
| 47:59 |
goals that you've set for their conversions then you can start looking at search engine |
| 48:05 |
optimization you know when it comes to search engine marketing and being able to really drive traffic |
| 48:11 |
there because you're confident that when they get there they're not going to be confused they're not going to bounce because of poor user experience or a |
| 48:19 |
design that's just not appealing to them so having all that strategy in place and |
| 48:24 |
building off of that strategy is super important and then you can look at things like over the top um |
| 48:31 |
advertising on you know connected tv and things like that being able to run uh you know commercial out there in in |
| 48:38 |
that environment really be able to to funnel people there or building landing pages on your site that |
| 48:44 |
already established some of the principles if you you put in the place with the rest of the site that |
| 48:50 |
are key landing page for certain services or offerings that you have or |
| 48:55 |
things that are that you're offering to the public you would be able to do that so much more effectively at this point because |
| 49:01 |
you have established a good foundation to build off of building funnels and |
| 49:07 |
really putting gold conversions when it comes to your analytics and understanding are people actually |
| 49:13 |
converting so if your goal is for them to pick up the phone call you know pick up the phone and schedule you to come out and you |
| 49:20 |
know fix their sewer problems well how did you know they called well you've got to have something in place to |
| 49:27 |
actually measure that click when they are on their mobile device and they click that ad that |
| 49:32 |
you're putting out on google you know for them to be able to call you so we have mechanisms to be able to do |
| 49:39 |
that and actually track the version so that we can actually measure that success |
| 49:45 |
and i hope that you're not feeling like this at this point and that you're feeling much more like |
| 49:51 |
this really nice and happy and you know maybe some of this stuff is a little more than what you would |
| 49:57 |
normally think of when you're thinking of hey can you build me a website or can you design me a website um but |
| 50:05 |
maybe there's some nuggets of information here that can help you in your business or maybe it um maybe it'll |
| 50:11 |
attract you to actually contact us to so that we can help you so we would love to do that what |
| 50:17 |
questions do you have i haven't been monitoring too much of chat over here but i'll take a |
| 50:23 |
gander over here and see if we have any questions |
| 50:30 |
dustin i don't know if you're connected now or not or if you've seen any questions that have come up that i may |
| 50:35 |
have missed ah thank you ed for the uh comment there |
| 50:41 |
um appreciate that let's see |
| 50:48 |
i see some familiar faces in here |
| 50:55 |
is that you dustin yes yeah i wasn't sure if my uh mic was on |
| 51:02 |
i was saying that i've been kind of keeping an eye on the chat i've seen a lot of comments not exactly |
| 51:07 |
questions uh and i just looked at the q and a some people have been putting them in there uh in various sessions but not not here |
| 51:16 |
i know we're getting close to the hour here do you have so questions uh feel free to |
| 51:23 |
you know to ask or come on camera we'll uh chat about it but uh if not i really appreciate |
| 51:30 |
everybody's attendance and i hope you've had a great evening it's been a good one |
| 51:39 |
i see some comments like boom and beans |
| 51:45 |
yeah that that one came in right when you did your uh the prince you know oh |
| 51:51 |
gotcha that one yeah there you go your little sound effect there that's nice you have a board [Laughter] |
| 51:58 |
radio shock jock thank you i'll see it coming let's see 200 dollars |
| 52:04 |
will not cut it from my there's an etsy side business oh yeah i think that was about when you were talking about budgets and things you |
| 52:11 |
know and that's interesting um that you mentioned that alexander because like you know |
| 52:16 |
having the most expensive experience you know in building a website may not be the right place for you to start you |
| 52:23 |
know some sometimes you just don't have that kind of budget and it's okay |
| 52:29 |
it's all right it's okay to start with a a dancy site or a godaddy builder or |
| 52:35 |
your website builder site or whatever maybe that's just all that you can do it's okay |
| 52:40 |
but the the thing that i'll say is you'll eventually you know come to know that |
| 52:46 |
could it be better yeah so i mean just continuous improvement and you may not be at that stage yet it's okay it's |
| 52:53 |
totally okay we actually refer quite a bit of people to you know go to some website builder you |
| 53:01 |
know kind of experience because that's what they can afford it's okay it's not it's not a big deal you can build some |
| 53:07 |
beautiful websites like that by the way will it be the absolute most effective no maybe not you know but who knows |
| 53:14 |
maybe you're really creative with that platform and you can really make a good experience it's there's no shame in it |
| 53:20 |
that's for sure we do try to not waste people's time |
| 53:27 |
when it comes to this type of thing so you know if we find out we have that one of the reasons we want to have that |
| 53:32 |
budget conversation early on is hey if you're looking for a 200 website or a 500 website we're probably not the right |
| 53:38 |
match for you well we're not the right match for you but you know we can we can help point you in |
| 53:44 |
the right direction and maybe that's where you need to start and then come back to us in a couple years or a year from now when you know |
| 53:51 |
when you're at a different level with the business you can actually take it to the next level |
| 54:00 |
okay i'm not seeing anything in the q and a over here at all so either i bored you all to |
| 54:06 |
complete death or i was so incredibly knowledgeable and sharing all this stuff that you're just mesmerized and amazed |
| 54:12 |
at all that you've learned well of course that's it |
| 54:20 |
awesome well thanks a lot everybody |
| 54:31 |
thanks everyone for attending the session uh thank you david for giving a wonderful discussion a lot of |
| 54:37 |
good thoughts to take home and spur some discussions perhaps with clients later on down the road |
| 54:43 |
i want to thank all of our uh sponsors for making all this possible and uh thank you all for attending |
| 55:47 |
bye |