IHG - Current

Chris LaFay: It's. Sa. Sam. Good afternoon.

Lauren Huh: Good afternoon. Thanks for moving the meeting. We had a team meeting normally today.

Chris LaFay: And so I was like, thank God. Yes. So I. I did a decent job. I put like 15 minutes between most of my meetings today.

Lauren Huh: But most meetings run late, so it doesn't. You never get the full 15, so.

Chris LaFay: Exactly. And so I was able to go sit outside for about 10 minutes or so while my dog baked in the sun for a little.

Lauren Huh: Nice. I know. The weather is so nice today. I'm very excited.

Chris LaFay: I love it. In my meeting after this just got canceled. So I'm going to. We're gonna meet, I'm gonna eat lunch and then I'm gonna sit outside while eating lunch and actually enjoy it. So.

Lauren Huh: Sounds wonderful.

Chris LaFay: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Awesome. So is Celebrate Service like actually like officially kicked off launch, signed, the whole nine yards.

Lauren Huh: Yes.

Chris LaFay: Fantastic. That's why I figured or else why would we be talking but at least wanted to make sure.

Lauren Huh: Yes. And I'm surprised that they brought me in this late. I appreciate it. But the reason they brought me in is because it got signed and so we're. We're moving forward.

Chris LaFay: Got it. Awesome. When is the. Hold on. Let me actually, I gotta make a new Note for this. Sorrel 26. When is launch day for this? Because I also realized that now they don't do like a Celebrate service massive event. They kind of just like they roll it out and they kind of just run for a while.

Lauren Huh: So Celebrate Service week this year is going to be the week of June 8th. But I would like us to be buttoned up and ready to go by June 1st.

Chris LaFay: Oh well, I would like to get buttoned up way before that. Yeah. This is not. This is not a time intensive project. Unlike some things that we've done before in the past together where there is a plethora of content. This is just copy things in. Hopefully it's a quick refresh.

Lauren Huh: Right?

Chris LaFay: Exactly.

Lauren Huh: There were some things that I did have a few questions about. They did ask about the firewall again because it's going to be used globally. That includes offices in China. I recall that we had talked about this once before and I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, the answer was because this lives on IHGs like it's a celebrateservice.ihg.com if you can access ihg.com you can access this site.

Chris LaFay: Let me. I. I know what you're referring to. I need to. Let me get a. I need to refresh my memory on something. I'm logging into our like website hosting.

Lauren Huh: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: Account right now because it's lived in a lot of places over the years.

Lauren Huh: Yes.

Chris LaFay: Let me. What is the domain like when you to access it? What is it? Is it celebrate?

Lauren Huh: Celebrateservice.ihg.com okay.

Chris LaFay: Okay, perfect. That will help me find this Celebrate service. Celebrate service. Click on this. Okay, so we own the hosting of this. Okay, that makes sense. So all of that being said is. Actually make sure users. That's not rewards trivia challenge. Wait a second. Wit's end. Okay. Okay, cool. Yes. All right. Sorry. There was something that said wit's end on here and then something else that said Classic City. I was like trying to figure out who owned the hosting of it. So it is on a Classic City server. There's no problem with that. I don't care. And if it worked over the last year or so, I think we've been hosting. I don't remember how long we've been hosting. So I want to say it's been at least a year. Oh, created in 22.

Lauren Huh: It's definitely more than a year.

Chris LaFay: Perfect. So all this being said is if it's worked over the last 18 months under the same like people accessing it, nothing will change.

Lauren Huh: Okay. So the unfortunate part is we don't have a ton of information on who's accessed it. So I don't know if like people in the Asia region have been using it. I know we've done a few projects that have spanned multiple countries like the quiz that we did and we didn't have any trouble with those. So I want to say it's a non issue. But I did want to bring it up because the client did ask about it.

Chris LaFay: I will connect with the questions. Wp. Okay, so I'm chatting with our hosting company is like AI Chatbot.

Lauren Huh: Right. Okay.

Chris LaFay: Just to get a quick answer because talking about Chinese topics are simple to find answers for. So WP Engine is our hosting provider. WP Engine cannot 100% guarantee websites hosted on our platform will be accessible in China. That's because China's Internet regulations may block your site or increase the speed of its site. So Chinese own basically saying coming from a computer in China accessing a United States server, China might say, oh, you're accessing US Content. China Block might block that.

Lauren Huh: Right.

Chris LaFay: There is the ability to have the server hosted in China. But then you also, you also deal with the same problem if you have a server hosted in China. America is like, I don't know if we want you Going over there.

Lauren Huh: Right.

Chris LaFay: So this is my best educated guess with what I know. If it hasn't been a problem, it probably won't be a problem.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: And I don't feel like this is the type of problem to where we should spend. This is a four to five thousand dollar project. If we were to try to solve this problem, it would drastically increase the budget.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: So as long as we're okay and understanding kind of that caveat there.

Lauren Huh: Right.

Chris LaFay: I wouldn't worry much about it until it becomes a problem and then they can decide if they want to invest in solving it.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: Yeah.

Lauren Huh: Because we honestly don't know if it's a problem and I don't. I don't think it is yet. The other thing that I wanted to talk through was like the, the idea of a refresh. I think in. In our client's mind might be a little different from what, what you all have in mind. So I want to know exactly the parameters on like what we can refresh. So I'm going to pull up. I have the site up here now.

Chris LaFay: Yes.

Lauren Huh: The task that we have been given is to kind of make this look a little bit more vanilla because their branding has gone a little bit more vanilla like most companies. So. So they don't like this gray at the bottom. And we're probably going to get rid of the confetti and make it look more master Brandy. This Celebrate service logo with the orange and the Celebrate service will not be changing. So this is the logo that we're going to be using. But when we give the parameters for redesign, can I like move this button higher up? Can I put. Can we get rid of this bar at the bottom? Like what? Exactly.

Chris LaFay: So think about. Let me actually share my screen with you so that I can point at things. Okay. Cool. Can you see my screen? Yes. Awesome. So think about it like this. This right here, other than this text, this image is actually like the Celebrate service actually floats on top of the confetti. Okay. This text floats on top. This text floats on top.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: That logo also floats on top.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: So think about it in different elements. So you have a background image of confetti with logo text, icon text.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: Keep that general structure. So if you want a background image that may be like a solid color or a gradient, that's fine. Can we move things around within. Like can we swap the. This isn't. We're not going to do this. But move the Celebrate. Swap the logo placement of ISG with Celebrate service. Sure.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: Keep the boxes the same if that makes sense. Like if you were like, let's, can we move. Let's thank our hotels with these buttons to the right. And then so far we've thanked so many hotels and move that to the left. Sure. It's like, let's keep the general structure of it about the same.

Lauren Huh: Okay, can I move the two buttons where it says in partnership with IHG owners association and move them up into that area?

Chris LaFay: Yeah, that's probably fine. Yeah, that's fine. Yep. So as long as we're not. I know that it's. It's hard to. It's bridging from development to design is hard to explain because we're, we're dealing with very. This is a very simple design. At the end of the day, this is not programmatically complex at all. And 99 of the time, designs that wit sends over, no matter who's doing them, is more kind of print design oriented, which typically is block boxier. It's not as webby, which makes everything a lot simpler on my side of things. So yes, you can move them around. Basic. This is what I would recommend is before you design, pencil sketch out the layout.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: You could literally pencil sketch it for all I care and say, does this work? And I give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down? Okay. If I give you a thumbs down, I'll give you feedback on it. No, it's gonna be like, nope, try again. Nope. We can't talk until you get it right. But keep the same, if you keep the same elements and keep the same level of design complexity, we're fine.

Lauren Huh: Okay, that makes sense. And that bar at the bottom, is that just a color bar? What is it? Okay.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, that's like this is a background image. This is a color bar. This is a color little border down here is a color bar. And then the whole thing has a programmatic drop shadow behind it. So this whole container just has programming that says add a drop shadow with a little bit of, you know, a little bit of blurry fuzz.

Lauren Huh: Oh, interesting. Okay.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, it's hard to see on a screen. Share. Yeah, so. And you could take the exact same ID ideas and apply that here as well. This is a background image of confetti with an image and an image and text.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: So if you wanted to move, choose your hotel up top. The one thing I would say that is like locked and loaded is like we are going to have a stack of three drop down menus that are dynamic like this. This like, that's not, that's not going to change if you wanted to round the edges of them and stuff like that. Sure. But really, drop downs, styling drop downs, because they're a core HTML component, are harder. It's harder to do. So keeping things very basic with this is the best.

Lauren Huh: The area where it says message and it has a gray background.

Chris LaFay: Can we change that? Yep. And I would recommend keeping this general structure. Like, I don't think changing that would make sense. Obviously, once you've selected everything, the send button turns orange and all that jazz so that you can show that you can actually click on it now.

Lauren Huh: But if we wanted to move the send message button under the message box, that's, that's. We could do something like that.

Chris LaFay: Okay, so now that turns. Yeah, we're just not gonna. Like, an example of something would be like, when all of this is deselected, notice how, like, you know, the. The button goes gray. Like, the thing that we wouldn't want to do is when you select, when you finally get done with the selections, the two things that change are the text box changes to white and then the button changes to orange. We wouldn't want to change, like, the whole layout and design of things. Like when everything becomes active, like, we're just going to keep the text box and the button switching their colors based on whether or not it's active or disabled. Does that make sense?

Lauren Huh: I think so. I think I'm okay with the box being gray. I think they want the background white.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Okay. We would just want to have like some sort of disabledness to it. So whether that's like faded, like the opacity is 50% of the text box. Like, we just want there to be some visual indication that.

Lauren Huh: That you can't send anything until you select the hotel stuff at the top. Okay. We're adding a few fields on this, I think namingly, like a sender, like from field. So allowing the person to add their name and email address, I think is what they wanted to collect.

Chris LaFay: Yeah. That's all. Yep. And I remember you saying that in your thing and I forgot. Let me. Let me pull up my email with Chris. 29 emails dating back to October 23rd, aka normal IHG. Oh, no, this is all the. The cool stuff that we were going to do, but they decided they didn't want to do the cool stuff, So. Yeah. Okay. That. Yeah. Does she actually say what they wanted to do? Users, quantity, heat, maps. Okay, cool. Yeah, we never finalized the list, but I'm assuming it's just gonna be name and email address.

Lauren Huh: Let me double check. That was what I understood. They want to be able to see who sent like the from portion.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, okay, that sounds good. Those things will not be validated. So it's not like we're going to then validate the email address, make sure it's real and then add it in. So if they type in blah blah, blah blah blah at you know, gmail.com, it is what it is. One thing that they mentioned and I realized this was not in scope, but I, Christine asked about it a handful of times over the course of like two months because IHG asked about it. So that's why I'm bringing it up with you specifically. Sure. From an analytics perspective, something that they were asking was like can we track open rates, open rates and open rates. We decided to not do this because a first off it would add, it would add scope and it wouldn't. I don't feel it would be super accurate. Now if you add in, if you were to send emails through like an actual email sending platform like mailchimp or Constant Contact and all those, they have all that baked in. But mailchimp and mailchimp and things like Constant Contact don't really work from like an automated platform. Like you actually go into Constant Contact, you create a newsletter and send it.

Lauren Huh: Right. And they're not really for one off emails.

Chris LaFay: Bingo. And so in order to do like open tracking and you would have to basically build in like a little like little pixel that gets viewed and stuff like that and that increases the complexity quite a bit. And so I push back with Chris on that a lot just because I don't think it really adds to the ROI for them. I think knowing more who is doing the sending doesn't really matter if it gets, I mean it matters if it gets open. But the key, like I feel like what key metric is going to be like seeing like who actually is doing the sending, what's popular, what's not. So that was one thing that they, I actually talked a lot about and I just want to make sure that we talked a little bit about that. That was not in scope, but they might bring it as well. Sorry, I derailed your question.

Lauren Huh: No, sorry, no worries. That's, that's good history for me to know because I know they've asked for a lot of things and have kind of gone around on whether or not to upgrade the full site because I know we kind of keep putting band aids on it from year to year.

Chris LaFay: But that was the idea that Christine and I had was like if the Goal is to celebrate excellence in service. We were talking about, like, how we build like this whole, like, almost blogging platform for them to where they would. GMS would actually use it to give thanks to their team members and almost use it like a dashboard of like, attitude rather than kind of the opposite way of. And I don't mean this literally, but like the underling sending thanks to their big bosses kind of flip it on its head to show gratitude. And that was the bigger idea that we had kind of back in October and that's the one that they said no thank you on, which I think is a better roi. So just that's kind of the mindset, like that's. We were also talking with them about that as well too. Okay, now that that's going to happen, but that at least kind of gives you again a little bit of background context. So. Yeah. Anyway, back to this.

Lauren Huh: Yes.

Chris LaFay: What other questions do you have here?

Lauren Huh: So I think. So the addition of these fields, the refresh on like, whatever the look and feel is obviously within reason. We will send you a pencil sketch ahead of time. You'll be adding the heat maps. That has nothing to do with, like, design. On our end, putting together kind of a production timeline of like when you need stuff from us and like what the milestones are for our client as well. I know generally we send the date or the. The list to update the hot and the emails and all of that stuff later because their portfolio is constantly changing. So I basically need to put together a timeline for the client to be like, by this date, you get to review three different versions of what the site could look like by this date. You need to make a selection by this date. I need the full Excel of your portfolio so we can upload it in from this date to this date. We're going to do testing, like.

Chris LaFay: So.

Lauren Huh: Key production timeline stuff.

Chris LaFay: Yes. So this is what I'm thinking. I'm in the process of kind of like typing these things out right now. I'm not looking at a calendar when I'm doing these. So some of these dates might fall on Saturdays or Sundays. But just know that, like, I'm looking for the general structure. Yep. 1, 2, 3, 7, 9. What else? All right, this is what I'm thinking. I would love for the designs to be finalized by April 1st. So it's about a month and a half, two months is the list of updated hotels by April 15th. Testing. The way that I like to do testing is these are. And by the way, those are again, those 1st and 15th. I don't know. Those are Saturday Sundays. You can round those to whatever the logical Monday or Friday is for testing. I love to open it up for testing twice in May and give them a like 48 hour window to test. Because in reality testing this is going to take 15 minutes. Click the buttons, push the send, see if it goes through. Done. It's not gonna be that hard. So whatever the first and the second Monday in May are, and I would love to have them test it on those two dates. Oops, I clicked the wrong buttons because Google's acting weird. So that would be May 5th and May 12th. Okay. So they would test it May 5th and 6th, May 12th and 13th. And then edits would be done that. I'm sorry, I'm reading my calendar wrong. May 4th is a Monday. So they would do testing May 4th and 5th and they would edit it. We would edit the rest of the week and then they would do round two of testing on 5-11-12 and we would edit the rest of the week. Okay. So that would give us. That means we would be done with two or three weeks to spare.

Lauren Huh: Right.

Chris LaFay: So then on June 1, which actually is on Monday, look at that. I guess.

Lauren Huh: Right.

Chris LaFay: We would go ahead and turn Heat Maps live, Google Analytics live, and also the email sending platform live.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: And so with analytics, and this is another thing because they were talking about like, can we know exactly the human that's visiting the site? And we're like, that's not gonna happen. And so do you know what Heat Maps look like?

Lauren Huh: Not exactly, but I think it gives you an idea of who's accessing based on IP address. Right?

Chris LaFay: Yeah, not necessarily by IP address. This was one. Okay. This is. When I say a concession, I don't mean this in a negative way. I don't think it's going to give them that much information, but I feel like it mentally checked the box for them. So even though this isn't going to be the most beneficial thing, it's like, okay, we're solving a problem in their heads. This is what Heat Maps are. So we will have. It'll basically take screenshots of the. The three different. There's three pages overall. There's the, the home page, the send a message page, and then the thing.

Lauren Huh: Oh, okay. So like where they're looking on the page itself.

Chris LaFay: Yes. And this is kind of where the mouse moves and where they. And also where they click on as well.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: So you get an idea of how each of the. The three different page templates are being utilized. There's not much going on with these pages. Normally you use heat maps, like when you have like a long scrolling page and you want to see where people are like moving their mouse to and clicking on and stuff like that.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: Which is why I don't think this is the most beneficial. But when Chris told him about it, they were like yes. I was like all right, cool, whatever. The other is just going to be Google Analytics and with Google Analytics they will see. I'm more thinking of this kind of like a funnel is it doesn't really matter where these people are coming from. I'm more interested. There's three total pages, right? It's homepage, send a message and then thank you. How many people are hitting the home page and then how many people are getting down to the thank you page. So almost like viewing it like the analytics that we're pulling from that are primarily going to be you had 10,000 people hit it but only five people sent a message.

Lauren Huh: Right.

Chris LaFay: So does this tool, do people care about this tool? That's the, that's the like that's the analytics that we're going to be getting back from that.

Lauren Huh: Does Google Analytics also provide you with region information?

Chris LaFay: It. It does. Google Analytics has changed a lot over the last couple of years. I am, I used to be really smart in it and they basically made rather than Google Analytics being a drop in thing, it still is a drop in thing but you have to program it well. And so the short answer is yes, it does show you general regions that it does. We'll want to make sure that that is all turned on and whatnot as a part of testing.

Lauren Huh: Okay.

Chris LaFay: So looking at my Google Analytics for my. Okay here this actually is actually. This actually really good. So I pulled up Google Analytics for Classic City Consulting and my website is hosted on the same hosting provider that Celebrate service is hosted on. And right now I am sad to find out that a vast majority of classic cities traffic comes from China. Oh. So with that being said, Chinese people have no issue with getting over to my website.

Lauren Huh: Okay. So not the demographic you're targeting.

Chris LaFay: Not my demographic I'm targeting. Really. And that might be the reason why I get spam emails, but that's neither here nor there. So yes, Chinese people can access my website. They should be able to access IHGs.

Lauren Huh: Okay, so sounds good.

Chris LaFay: Any other questions for you?

Lauren Huh: No, I think this gives me a good starting point. We will work towards having finalized designs to you by April 1st with a pencil sketch way before that and then we'll go from there.

Chris LaFay: Perfect. Wonderful. Well, if you have any questions between now and then, let me know.

Lauren Huh: Sounds good. Enjoy your afternoon.

Chris LaFay: We'll do lunchtime and outside. I'll catch you later.

Lauren Huh: Sounds good. Thanks, Chris.

Chris LaFay: Bye. Bye.