ASP Global - Current
Chris LaFay: It. Bye. Yes and no. It first started off by directly using the API endpoint and when that got blasted and it got turned off because WordPress engine's firewall, I logged into a tab. And because it was actively logged into a tab, it could then use the API again without getting rate. Limited foreign.
Parker: Hey, what's up, Chris?
Chris LaFay: Good afternoon. Are you, are you back or are you kind of not back?
Parker: I'm, I'm back. I got back around midnight last night. Oh, shoot. So I'm, I'm playing catch up today, but it's all good.
Chris LaFay: Very nice.
Bella Tuo: Well, hi.
Chris LaFay: Hey. Good afternoon. Well, we can keep this very concise for you so that you can. I was going to say rest, but if you're working, then I'm sure you're just tackling a mountain of things. So today we have the homepage. So what I want to talk, I want to kind of lay a little bit of some of the ground rules here for looking at the homepage together. We're not really looking for specific content, so you're going to see some words on the page. Not really going to care too much about that. We tried to use redacted text where it's like a little squiggly line so that we don't focus on that. But there's some areas where just having a little bit of extra content just helps, I feel like, tell the story a bit better. But again, don't worry too much about the specific words.
Parker: Yep.
Chris LaFay: What you'll also see are a lot of headlines that basically just point you in a direction. It's like, now we're going to talk about this, now we're talking about that. Obviously that's not final. It's just a kind of a way to kind of get over the hump of this is the way we want to go. Are we in the same line with the direction that we want to go? Yeah. Part two, outside of the words is I want to focus a lot on art style here. So one of the things that I like to do when we do website design is how, how do we take the logo and then implement different pieces of the logo across the site? Because that's how things feel more custom. And so there's a lot of little uses of the logo kind of across the board on this design. And I want to see if we're kind of heading in the right direction with those because typically speaking, if we are, we're 80% of the way there. Because really every, I mean every, every website needs a two column layout with you Know, content on one side, an image or an asset on the other, image columns that have an image, text and, you know, whatnot in a column layout. These are all common things. And so if we're in the right direction on the art style, we're typically in the right direction for the whole esthetic. So that is the plan for today is to go over that, because if that's nice and if we actually are pretty in alignment there, we can actually go ahead and get development moving, which is why I want to go ahead and have this conversation today. So does that all sound good?
Parker: Wonderful.
Chris LaFay: Fantastic. Last ground rule, because I forgot to add point number three. The way that I do these is I will screen share with you and I'm going to just scroll through the site silently first, just because everybody wants to kind of see how everything kind of connects together. I'll then go back up to the top and then I'll explain kind of the why behind everything, and then after that one, well then have a conversation. Does that sound good?
Parker: Wonderful.
Chris LaFay: Lovely. Let's get the ball rolling here, shall we? Here we go. So that is our homepage. So let me kind of explain a couple of the whys behind things here as we go down. So the overarching why behind a lot of these things is we want to make these, the design elements flexible because we have to put these on two different brands with color swaps here. So one of the things that we wanted to do with the Hero section is we want there. It's going to probably be hard to tell on screen share, but we put a little bit of that, that triangular slash over here on the side because we wanted to immediately kind of pull in the logo element. We liked the subtle gradients of the Athena website. And so we took the primary purple, we darkened it a little bit, and. And we wanted to use gradient specifically on the primary call to action so that your eyes were drawn to it in a sea of purple. So that's why you see, kind of the rest of the elements on the site are more solid colors and light colors. Because we wanted it whenever things were darker, we wanted that to be more of an emphasis point. So that's why we did the. The. The main CTA is here kind of with that gradient style. So now thinking a little bit around kind of the story brand methodology, we want to start with a little bit of that empathy statement here. And also with the story brand methodology, you also want to showcase some what. What are called, like, successes. But I like kind of pairing the. Here's the Empathy with a couple of very quick bullet points of like, how do we showcase quickly that we know what we're talking about? Now, they're not going to necessarily be stats and percentages and dollar bills. They don't have to be that. I just want them to be a bold, quick statement that doesn't take a lot of mental energy to be like, check, check. They kind of know what they're doing here. So you kind of pair both of those together in the background. And again, this is nothing that nobody would directly notice. But these are actually your triangles blasted out and very much blurred out as well. And then here as attached to these, what are called eyebrow text, which is text that goes right above the header. We also pulled in the primo triangle there as well. Then going from empathy, we want to then dive into solution. And so here is where we actually just go ahead and showcase products. Now here we obviously have very clinical descriptions of these. Whether these are going to be clinical descriptions, whether they're going to be a little bit more storytelling, that's up for discussion. But we wanted to go ahead and get people to dive in fairly quickly to a particular product if they wanted to get there fast. We didn't want to bury it down the page. And then also a quick, easy way to get and actually view all of them as well too. That'll be my slider. And then we kind of bring it back into kind of the story piece as well too. Because the farther down you go down the page, I like to get a little bit more detail and I feel like you have a little bit more time to tell the story. So this is where I want to kind of talk about something along the lines of values or outcomes. It doesn't. I'm open to either. I would want it to be customer focused and guide oriented. So whether we decide to go the value way or whether we decide to go to like, what are some wins that actual people have had? Either way I think is fine. But there's a very simple way to put a couple of sentences tied to a header and an icon. If you're familiar with anything on the the website of things. We plan on using font awesome icons here so that you'll have like a library of like thousands of icons to choose from. Keep it simple. Then we have a place for a testimonial. Whether we go one here or whether we go multiple doesn't matter. Whether we have a video here, whether we have an image here does not matter. But the idea here is just to be able to pull in an actual human and saying this is what they said, then we dive even more in depth. So this is where you can start getting a little bit more technical if you want to, because again, the farther down the page you go, the more and more technical you can get. And so this is kind of where I think we kind of dive into. This is why we built this, this is why people like it, this is the technical detail of it.
Parker: And.
Chris LaFay: And then they can then dive in and learn more. I don't like using the words learn more in final calls to action very much against that. But it works well for not really think too hard about it. These could also over time be subpages. So if there were like two or three or four different concepts that you wanted people to be able to dive in deeper on, this would be a good place to do that. Also over here did a custom. We're going to have a custom drop shadow that you can apply to image assets that'll be automatic. It'll all be done in code, which this is also your triangle busted out into a purple drop shadow. We add that there. And then in terms of resources, this could be where the blog is. And if you have a. Whether it's video, whether it's blog posts, whatever it happens to be, this is where that's going to live. And then we also tacked on the triangle here again in the background. And all these different background textures and things can be applied to a lot of different areas. So again, try to. The goal here is to go for flexibility in brand alignment. That's the goal. The goal is not to go crazy custom and unique to where it's hard to edit, but to give you different tools to play with. And then just kind of closing out on a very simple call to action, which background image, color, overlay, that can all change. And then we again use kind of the triangle repeated background here for the footer. And this, this footer is probably not going to be nearly as thorough as it's showing in the mock up because we're going to launch with five pages, but you'll have the ability to add more columns and stuff as time goes on. So at least want to show what that looked like blown out a little bit. So that is the homepage design and the why behind all the pieces. Questions? Comments?
Parker: Yeah, well, it looks great, first of all. Yeah, it looks great. You did a really nice job. And I was just thinking as you were going through, I know you haven't seen all of this yet, but we have been kind of concurrently work Shopping the Primo brand itself. I think I may have sent you a quick screenshot of, like, you know, here's, like, kind of tone we want to write with. Here's, you know, this sort of stuff. So I was just brainstorming some of the specifics that can go in some of these areas that you've created. And we do have some specific things that we like to call out, like, big problems that exist in healthcare that we to solve, which is, like, perfect for this area we're looking at now. So I really like that.
Chris LaFay: Love it.
Parker: We also have kind of. In this section, too, we will probably end up wanting to go with, like, we've got three specific categories of how we want to talk about the products now. So this is, like, a perfect spot for that. And then here we have. I can't remember if I've shown this to you or not yet, but actually, I do think. Can you go. Can you scroll down some? Yeah, one more. Yeah, this. This seems to be kind of a spin on what I've sent you before, which is like, we've got the three group, like, the patient, the staff, and then the institution as a whole, and kind of the benefits for those. So definitely can imagine how that comes to life with these sections. So, yeah, I think it looks really good. The logo, I would say. I think Bella actually has a meeting on the books. Is that for this afternoon? Bella?
Bella Tuo: Yeah, it's gonna be this afternoon. So we're still trying to brainstorming, like, a new logo for Primo.
Chris LaFay: Okay.
Bella Tuo: But I really like the look and feel for now for the homepage. So once I guess we decide on the direction for the new Primo logo.
Parker: Yeah, we. We have a few options that have been tossed out to our chief product officer. Ultimately, he is the one who says yes or no. This is one of them.
Chris LaFay: Do the ones have triangles in them?
Parker: Do the other ones.
Chris LaFay: Do the other ones have triangles in them?
Parker: Some do, some don't. If it doesn't. Is that a. Is that a.
Chris LaFay: It isn't. So basically, what. Do you actually have the other options available? Can I kind of take a look at them really quick? I promise I will not post about them on LinkedIn and be like, oh, my gosh, look at all these amazing things. They're about to undergo a rebrand. Spoiled. Spoiled the surprise to my network of agency owners who would not care when I owed him. Just kidding.
Parker: Yeah, no. No problem at all.
Chris LaFay: Because what we can do. So is there Welsh? Well, Bella, while you're pulling that up, is there anything you wanted to change or do you like the direction enough? Because what I'm thinking is that a lot of the, the texture pieces are kind of in the subtlety. Like the subtle pieces of like, you know, like the triangle next to the eyebrow text, the blown out gauze and blurred stuff on layer.
Parker: Blurred stuff.
Chris LaFay: Those can all just get swapped for different shapes. And so if you're good with the direction and you're okay with simply swapping the shapes of the different overlays and textures, like, let's say you go with circles instead of triangles, then we could move forward and get development moving and then just swap the textures later. Not trying to, like, pigeonhole you. Like, that's not my goal here. But I also know that we do have to work with speed.
Parker: So I, I. Bella, speak up if you disagree. I think that it's absolutely headed in the right direction.
Chris LaFay: Okay, sweet. Okay, so a lot more rounded then. Okay, gotcha. Which honestly makes sense because as we were designing, I was going back through, I was talking with my designer. We're like, they talked all about wanting, like, rounded edges and they hated all the sharp edges of things, but their logo is a freaking triangle. It has sharp edges. So, like, how do you, how do you balance these two? Which is, which is part of the reason why we, we put them in like small places and then blurred them out was so that it appeared softer.
Parker: Yeah, we, we, we had been leaning toward. I, I, for, I forgot that the triangle one was even in there, but we had kind of been leaning towards this one that's up on the screen. Some version of this, because it
Chris LaFay: sort
Parker: of gives, like, we offload heels a lot. So if you can imagine, the circle is like the end of it. That's kind of the direction we were headed with that. But we, there's some, of course, like, you know, everyone has an opinion on logos, right? So we got, we're trying to solve that this afternoon, I believe.
Chris LaFay: And then that's why I don't do logo design, because the last time I did it, it got my, the. We, we designed like three or four different types of logos. This was like five years ago. And the person sent it to a committee of 15 humans, and I received a 20 page word doc with all 15 people's opinions, which shockingly, were contradictory of one another. And when I asked which ones are the right opinions, she was like, I don't know. I was like,
Parker: bella, Bella. As you get further in your career, you'll find that for things like logos, oftentimes it's best to come and say, here's our new logo.
Bella Tuo: Yeah, I've been realizing that because we've been working on this logo for almost like a month or so.
Chris LaFay: Something I have told when I did do logo design, so I am personally, I took a little side project with a friend of mine who wanted a logo, and I trusted him to not be stupid. And so I told him at the very beginning, I was like, something that one of my former creative directors used to say when we did logo or branding and even sometimes like, website design was like, first meeting right out the gate. Everybody thinks that when you see X logo design, whatever it is, that you have to feel this, like, spiritual alignment with the thing. You're not. Yeah, you're not. No matter what it is, you're not going to be like, this is what was in my head the whole time. Because you have no idea what's in your head. So, like, he just led with, like, don't wait for that aha moment, because it's never gonna come.
Parker: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: Find something that has good bones to it that you can then basically build on top of and be okay. I don't like my logo. I don't know why I have a lightning bolt as a logo. It means nothing to me. But you know what? It works. It doesn't matter. So, anyway, I digress. We weren't here to talk about logos. But anyway, so with that being said, so basically what I'm. My takeaway from what you just showed me is that there's a strong likelihood because most of those logos were very rounded in general. Like, I saw a couple that had, like, arrows, but all of it was rounded. None of them had sharp points to them. So overall, what my takeaway is going to be things like, let's take this box here. Let's round the edges off, like, the rest of them. These little tidbits, like, this might change to probably not the logo, because that little heel logo. We don't want to just slap the logo everywhere. But basically, what a lot of these triangles might turn into are just either circles or overlapping circles because we just don't want to. Also don't want to take the logo and then rotate it and do weird stuff. The next thing I was going to possibly do with this is kind of make these triangles like a little star. So, like, if you put them in, like, rotated them around, that was going to be another option with these. But my thinking is either taking that heel divot that you have or just the circle and kind of breaking them apart and using those as Kind of the accent pieces. And obviously you have a couple of different options that you might go with, but that's kind of the idea is what are the core elements of the logo? Break them apart and then use them. So.
Bella Tuo: And Chris, since we're still brainstorming the logo and it's also helping to develop the website, do you think if you could give us some, like, feedback or thoughts on the logos options that we have that might help you to develop the site? Like, I can send you the file the PDF in the email, and then maybe if you find a shape or an icon from our local options that, you know, can be expanding into part of the elements for the website, I think that could also help us to figure out which logo we can use.
Chris LaFay: We have about 10 minutes. Can you actually pull it back up again? Because this, this stuff is actually fairly. This is very easy for me. I don't mean to, like, that's not like a. I don't mean that like in a cocky statement, but like, I can probably tell you now verbally what I'm. What I'm thinking.
Bella Tuo: So the first group is this two. One has the indented.
Chris LaFay: So here with this one. So. And I'm going to. So the, the angle that I'm speaking from is not a. Not a brand and messaging. And how does it tie back to your business perspective? I'm purely. My, My opinions that I'm showcasing are mostly from a design perspective. So I like. Out of these, I like the top one better because that bottom part is almost like an infinity symbol without the crisscross in the middle. And so if you broke those apart from an element perspective, you could do circles, but you could also do this like, squishy infinity symbol with it. So the other one with it flat with just the indentation. If you separated that out, that bottom part might look like breasts from the top. And so that wouldn't be as good. So. So I would go with the top one from a design perspective.
Bella Tuo: Okay.
Parker: On that topic, actually, and I'm not saying this to be funny, this is something that I have heard. Do you think penis when you look at the first one?
Chris LaFay: No. You gotta, you gotta ask the question. I mean, I see it, but I don't. And this is not. So when you did the quick scroll, this one was not my favorite one. I don't remember offhand which one was my favorite. I'll recognize it when I see it. I don't see it. So I actually, I kind of like this top one here. So the one that looks like A flower in the middle. Like, this is definitely like, a. A down view of, like, one of the pads that you guys have.
Bella Tuo: Yeah,
Chris LaFay: I think you could do, like. I think you could do some, like. Like, we won't be able to do animation with this, but I think there's a lot of different things you could pull from this. It almost looks like a splat as well. And so I think you could actually. So I'm not a big fan of taking the logo and just copy and paste it across, like, a website, because, you saw we just took, like, the one triangle or we took the two triangles. We didn't just put the quadrant of triangles and slapped it everywhere. This is a logo that you actually. The icon. You actually could kind of slap it everywhere. Like, it's simple enough that you could. You could even rotate it 45 degrees to make it more like a plus sign. And I don't think that would break brand consistency. I realize you don't want to, like, morph logos all the time. That's not the point. But I think you could rotate it 45 degrees, too, and use it in a different way. That. This one was one of my favorite ones for that reason.
Bella Tuo: And then the third group, which is the last group, are those two.
Chris LaFay: I feel that bottom one. I feel like I've seen that type of icon a lot before, and I'm sure with a lot of these, you pulled design inspiration from a lot of stuff. I feel like the bottom one is too. I don't know. It almost kind of like. I feel like it's like two, like, snakes wrapping up against each other. I feel like that's what I've seen it before. But again, that's just a random opinion from a random guy from Georgia. I don't get the arrows as much. I know they're kind of like an above view of product offerings, but, like, they kind of look like arrows, but I know they're also not arrows. My brain doesn't know how to process that. It's also not a plus sign. It's also not a circle. So, like, from an aesthetic per standpoint, could you pull one of those quadrants out and use it? Yes, but I don't think it gives you the design flexibility.
Bella Tuo: Yeah. So maybe something like this one or,
Chris LaFay: like, the first one can be, like, a penis. I really don't. Like. Now that you say it now I. I can. I. I know what you're saying, but it was not. The first boobs for the bottom one were the first thing that came to my mind of like, if you were to separate the elements out, which I realize you're not going to do that often, but these are the questions you gotta ask. Yeah.
Parker: Yeah, I don't think it does either. I. I have heard that feedback, but I. That also is my. Well, the very first one is my favorite. I was just also thinking, Bella and Chris, you know, if. If our sort of new messaging style is, like, we're a team, we're competitive. Like, we're, you know, sort of even teetering on sports themed, like, you know, how do you. Is it. Should we worry about bringing that into the logo? I don't want to redesign logos, but,
Chris LaFay: like, scroll back up to the top to the one that you like, the one that we were questioning. I'm gonna. I have one of my guys on my team that does logo stuff a little bit, and I'm gonna ask him, what do you see when you look at this?
Parker: The reason that that top one is so good for us specifically is that new product that we referenced sometimes as, like, one that we're trying to acquire right now.
Chris LaFay: Oh, the pillow. Right, the pillow. The pillow, too.
Parker: Yeah. Yeah. A really good, like, representation of, like, how dynamic that product is, because you could also look at this as someone's head on specific head. Same head position or whatever. So that's why I like this one so much. It doesn't, obviously pull in, like, the team or we're the best theme, but it does pull in the theme of, like, that's what our products do.
Chris LaFay: So one thing that I would. And I don't think this is up. I don't think this is on the table at all. And I'm not trying to throw something. Not trying to throw something extra in. I personally don't feel like the font of Primo matches the curvy feel. And so I think there's a little bit of a juxtaposition there. I think you could. I think you could have some fun with the text if that is.
Bella Tuo: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: That would then mesh all of this together better. That's my. That is purely my design opinion.
Parker: I agree. Bella, did you. Did we inherit that Primo, like, font, like, logo, or is that something new we came up with? I can't remember.
Bella Tuo: That's the original logo that we have, which was from the brand guideline that I received before I. Yeah. In work.
Parker: Chris, I agree with you completely. I really can't decide. Is the right decision to remake it or is the right decision to leave it alone for now?
Chris LaFay: There are. There are a couple of. Hold on a Second. Hold on one second.
Bella Tuo: And Chris, what's the font that you guys are using for the new site?
Chris LaFay: Yeah, and see, that's the like, part of. Part of what The. The one thing that I don't actually like about the design that we did is Inter. Is such a commonly used font. It just looks. Font in and of itself just is. It's just boring. And you can use a boring like body copy font. Like, that's fine. I. I always like to try to pull in a. A slightly different header font because you're always using it in large context. So like, if it's a little bit unique and it's a little bit hard to read, that's okay. Not hard to read in terms of. It actually is legitimately hard. But there are some fonts that. This is a app. This is not what I'm recommending at all, but it showcases what I'm talking about. So like this font here, when large Monkey Treasure is easy to read large, but if it were small. Yeah, that. That ain't happening. Right. And so I like to. I always like to try to figure out is there like a. A bold font that is slightly different, like almost something like this. Ah, don't zoom in. Apparently. Learn that one.
Bella Tuo: Like a display font.
Chris LaFay: Like a display. Yeah. So like with something like this for like primo. Like, see, that doesn't. I'm not. I'm not a real big fan of how that actually ended up being. But like, do you f. Like, how do you find a font that is basic enough but just has a little bit of a difference to it to where something. It feels more custom and fonts are the thing that you could spend hours and hours on. Like they. There is no right answer. Like that almost has like a little bit of like an 80s vibe to it. And so there. There's always. Not always. What. What am I trying to say? What I don't want you to do is spend 15 hours trying to figure out a font that's not my goal by. By prompting this discussion. But it might be interesting to. Yeah, it's too. That one might. That might be something like that might be like that. That it looks it. You know, the rounded edges of the M and stuff, which would line up really well with the. The curviness of the logo right now. Like, that's actually not too bad.
Bella Tuo: So are we allowed to change the logo?
Parker: Let's. Let's. I would say let's. Let's bring it up in our meeting this afternoon. If you want me to. Do you want me to handle pitching that idea or do you want to do that?
Bella Tuo: Yeah, I think you can.
Parker: Yeah. Okay. I don't mind doing that. The only concern is we're currently being. We're currently getting trademarked for Primo and I know that like display in use is part of that and I. That might be a hang up. Got it.
Chris LaFay: Okay, I will. I really like that font. I'm going to attach it and as a zip, because I have the ability, I subscribe to that, that site. And so by no means do you have to use it, but given that we all just looked at and we're like, that's not bad, both of your inboxes right now. And it's also usable on the web, which, I mean, we could use it for header fonts and stuff like that. And I feel like what I don't like doing is I don't like taking a site design and slapping a new logo on it because, I mean, you see all the different design elements there, right? It would be juxtapositioned, but this would not be. This would not change things very much. So.
Parker: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: And if you're using Figma to design, there's. If you download the Figma app on your computer, you can then take locally installed fonts and then use them in Figma. So. But you have to have the Figma app installed in order to do it. So don't mean to tell you that as if you didn't know it. I have been in Figma for like five years and just found out about this like six months ago. And so I felt like a whole new person when I was like, I can do whatever I want. I promise I'm not 85 years old. Wonderful. So in summary, what I'm hearing is that design aesthetic is good. The building blocks that we have at our disposal here are good. We might change the textures. So we're going to hold back on starting to code out the textures right now and we're going to go ahead and start designing a few more different building blocks that will be flexible for you guys. I don't know what those are going to be, but as you can tell with the stuff that we did already design, there's a lot of flexibility inside of that, that. And so we're probably going to design a handful of more calls to action. Maybe another smaller testimonial. Is there any particular layout that you guys are like, we, I need this layout for what's in my head.
Parker: There's a couple things I'll call out. So as I mentioned, we're going to be leaning more and more on these three buckets of products. You can call them like level one categories or whatever. And that's going to be for now, heel offloading, pressure injury prevention and safe patient handling. Right.
Chris LaFay: So each one of those really quick. So it is 12:30 and I know, Parker, you have a lot of stuff on your plate today. I just want to make sure that you weren't missing anything just launched.
Parker: But that's fine. If you guys are good. I have a couple more minutes.
Chris LaFay: That's been my. That's been my week. Lunch.
Parker: Yeah. Yeah. So with those, it would be nice, I think, for. If someone's like, yeah, we're having like a huge heel problem, like they could click on that button and they could see a page that isn't necessarily just like a listing, a listing of our boots, but maybe like something specific to heel offloading that does display the heel offloading category from a high level, but also maybe has like a little bit more depth to it. I'm maybe not putting that in the best words, but basically I'm just thinking of a pressure, pressure injury prevention, a heel offloading and a safe patient handling like page of some sort that may have a little bit more information than just our product listing, if that makes sense.
Chris LaFay: So what. What I'm hearing is. Let me go back to the. Let me go back to the FIGMA file really quick. See, Divided this out yet? No, he has not divided this out yet. That's okay. So ignore the. The mess of a FIGMA file here, but I promise there is purpose to what I'm sharing. So the way that we're thinking about this next phase and all this stuff on the right hand side you can ignore. You can actually see the triangles a little bit better now over there and what they actually look like. The way we think about this next phase is what elements do we want to have at our disposal? And everything I just heard you say is basically standard building blocks. So like right now we have like these like, basically like what I'm going to call them probably like stat cards. They don't have to actually be stats, but just like emphasis cards. Yeah, we have. This is the problem in web design, by the way. Everything is a card. There's no way to differentiate them. This is a product card. This is an icon pod card. If you're talking about like showcasing like how your heel, like all these different injuries, all these different types here or you know, specifically in products, how, how that's going to be utilized and how you Actually relieve pressure and how this helps. I. What I don't hear you say is there is no specific design element that will help tell that story that is outside the normal. So, meaning if you have two column layouts at your disposal, if you have cards to showcase images and text at your disposal, that works. If you have these cards that have, like, an icon that allow you to put, like, a sentence or two inside of them. Like, I'm not hearing you say we have a podcast, so we need an element that has, like an audio embed player and stuff like that built in. Like, that's a really bad example because obviously that's not what you have, but based on everything that I'm hearing is that you just need a trove of basic elements that have a lot of flexibility within them. So, like, maybe like the background colors of these can get swapped from white to dark to primary.
Parker: These.
Chris LaFay: You might not necessarily have to utilize the scroller on them. They might just have three products there. These pods right here. These cards, instead of going stacked vertically, you might want them stacked horizontally. Like, if you actually had a lot of. Basically a lot of these basics covered, that actually will give you guys more options later down the road. You don't really need any of these, like, custom, like. Yeah, about like. Like some people. And I really don't like these, like an About Us timeline. So we want to showcase the timeline of how this all worked out. Developing those things are a bear. And you know what? They are good for one single page. They're never used anywhere else. And there's not a good. There's, typically speaking, not a good reason, because nobody cares about those pages. They're not converting customers. So I just preached a little bit at you about design and aesthetics and all that jazz. Does that make sense, what I'm saying? Does that sound like we're in alignment there?
Parker: Yeah. No, that makes total sense. Yeah, you're right. I can't think of anything like any specific other tool that we would need that would. We couldn't necessarily slice and dice from
Chris LaFay: this existing stuff so perfect that that's. And I know that that's hard. And I live in this world, and I. I understand it very well, and I know that that's. It's one of the hardest concepts for me to. To edge. I normally really good at finding metaphors and stuff, but for whatever reason, the extrapolation of a block library is something that I just haven't. I just haven't quite figured out in 20 years how to describe it.
Parker: I hear you.
Chris LaFay: Awesome.
Parker: No, I can't think of anything specific. I mean I don't need to call out like the fact that we might want to put like a video on those pages either because that also is just a block.
Chris LaFay: It's a video embed.
Parker: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: Like so like here you would just have a two column block with a YouTube video and it would, it would look like a YouTube video or a video.
Parker: So yeah, other thing would just be. Oh yeah. That reminded me of a second question I'll circle back to. But if we wanted to, and we don't want to do this yet, but at some point, if we wanted to have people be able to download our like a downloadable category, like a sell sheet or whatever for each product page, we don't need to worry about that now do we?
Chris LaFay: You just upload a PDF and the, the button here will just say download and you copy and paste the PDF. Once you upload it, you'll grab the URL and copy and paste into the button.
Parker: Okay, that's good. And then circling back to one of the questions I got from dawn was about like how on the back end do we want to manage forms? And I think like on our existing site we had like some gravity forms and stuff, but we wanted to rethink those. Is it the right phase to worry about that right now or should we worry about that later?
Chris LaFay: So given the short timeline, you want to figure it out now. Now normally when we're starting development, I say we typically have a month and a half to two months and you don't have to decide now, but we need to know and it would be a good thing for you to go ahead and either build out and plan for if you want them in your CRM, whether that's Salesforce, HubSpot, whatever it is you have, build the forms that you want so that we can then just embed them. Now do keep in mind with embedded forms, we do not control the style of that they are embedded in the style that is controlled by whatever your CRM is. Now that CRM does have style. Like you can edit the style in most of them, but you typically don't have a ton of options. You can change the button color, you can change the font, but in some of them you can write custom like CSS and styling code on. But it's just, it's a, it's a pain. But I will say don't make your decision on how to collect data from your potential customers based on aesthetics. That doesn't matter. What matters most is getting them into the System the most consistent way possible. And I always prefer people to use the forms tied directly to your CRM because then the website has nothing to do with sending you a reminder email that somebody submitted a form.
Parker: Yeah, yeah.
Chris LaFay: Because there are, there, there are issues with that because website servers are not built to send out emails.
Parker: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: And some. And when you're on a small server, it's kind of like living in an apartment complex. If, if the fire starts in, you know, one. One room, the whole apartment complex has to evacuate. So if one person on your server starts sending out spam emails and that server where all these emails are coming out from gets marked as a spam server and you live there as well too. Those little emails that Gravity form sends you as a. Hey, somebody just sent you an email. Or you send us a contact form submission.
Parker: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: That might not get sent.
Parker: So we, we use Salesforce as a CRM and unfortunately no one at our company is a Salesforce expert. I've had to learn much more than I ever wanted to on it. Is there anyone on your team or do you have any like, just like quick offhand recommendations for how we would go about doing that?
Chris LaFay: Like how to build out forms in Salesforce?
Parker: Yeah. Like I don't even know if we have Salesforce themselves. I don't know if you've experienced this as a nightmare to work with. And every time I'm like, hey, I want to do this one tiny thing, they bring eight people to the meeting and try to sell us like eighty thousand dollar software. So I, I'm just thinking of what's the fastest way for me to understand. Do we even purchase what we need to today from Salesforce to be able to build out a form? Surely. Right.
Chris LaFay: I, I would. So I, I know. I personally know HubSpot better than I know Salesforce. I would assume that every CRM that I've ever played with before, core functionality on cheapest plans includes forms of some.
Parker: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: So I would. I am very confident that you have the ability to build them. Now. Do I have a Salesforce expert on my team? I don't. I do have a, A lead. Let me. Hold on. Give me one second. He around. One second. Great. My buddy, one of the guys I work with who works him for a long time, when I showed him the logo and he sees things and logos, the first thing he thought was a pacifier. So not a penis. So there's that. Take that for what it is. A random dude. You have no idea who it is. So foreign to give him about 10 to 15 seconds to respond because one of my lead devs has experience in a ton of different things and so I'm going to see if he has done it before.
Parker: Okay. And if not, I, I can, I can fso or whatever. I'll figure it out what's on the Salesforce stuff
Chris LaFay: before you spend. Before you spend hours on it. Wait till next week on Monday when you meet up with Don. And the guy that I'm asking, his name is Andrew. Andrew's one of those guys that even if he doesn't know it, he can pretty much figure it out in an hour. And if he can't figure it out an hour, then it's difficult. So I would rather, I would rather you not spend five hours. If you could then talk with Andrew and do a screen share and spend one hour, that would be my preference. So. Actually, yeah, he just went offline so he's not around. I would love if you've. I would love it if your forms were in Salesforce. So.
Parker: Okay, no problem. And I thank you for. For pulling him in. Hopefully we can get it figured out pretty quick.
Chris LaFay: Yeah, that sounds good. So just start thinking about. At a minimum, go ahead and start just writing out what is the one or two contact forms that you want and just start putting together like what do you want the fields to be so that when you do figure out how to build out a form in Salesforce, then you can just run with it. Basically. Shouldn't take more than 15 minutes to actually.
Parker: Yeah, yeah, that sounds good. Okay, what else do you guys need from me right now? I know one thing that I have outstanding is downloading and organizing all of our images from our current website.
Chris LaFay: Is that the only thing Testimonials as well too? If you have photos, testimonial content, that would be great. I can send you over a spreadsheet that would help you organize that. Do you have that right now?
Parker: To be honest, in between now and website launch date, I don't think that that will happen.
Chris LaFay: Okay, so we'll just remove that section from that. So we're going to build out all these tools. That doesn't mean you have to launch with all of them.
Parker: Yeah, right.
Chris LaFay: So like that's the one thing that I try to get, I try to nail home to people is your website doesn't have to be perfect. Perfect. And literally anything we put live for you right now on your site is going to be better than what you have now. Even if we launch with just a homepage in the middle of April, like we could launch with this design. And that's all we have in the navigation bar just says contact us and it just goes to the bottom of the page. It would be a win. And so I would, yeah, so like getting the other product images, product descriptions. I want to talk with you a little bit about. We don't do this now is what story do you want to tell in general on each product page? Because my, my, my, what my hope is is I want to give you the ability, I want to create a singular organization of building blocks that tells the majority of the story for every single product. So you just go in and rather than thinking about layouts, it's just like here's the product, like here's the layout of blocks for a product and then you just go in and edit it. You might, you might remove a section, you might add a section in, that's okay. But you have a starting point that gets you 80% of the way there. Yeah, that's, I, I, I don't know your product super well, but I also know how to tell story well. So if you think through over the next couple days, give me a starting point for what, what is that story that you think is fairly generic across all products. I can then take your generic story and then give you something tangible. Yeah, but I can't work with a blank whiteboard basically.
Parker: That sounds good. What's the best. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Do you prefer to do that live like me walk you through it or do you want me to write, write you down kind of high level like bullet point style story.
Chris LaFay: So from a speed perspective this would be my preference is if you wrote up something in like a Google Doc or a Word Doc, I don't care what. And then if you did a loom video or a screen share of you kind of talking through each of those things, the combination of those bullet points and then your texture that you then apply as you kind of think through it verbally. Yep, A lot of times that gets me 80% of the way there because I'm really good at taking scraps and turning them into something that works. If we need to talk about it, great, that's fine, I don't care. But I think that would get us moving faster.
Parker: Yeah, that sounds good. I've already like pre written lots of scripts for all of our corporate presentations and stuff which will give you sort of the high level like what our fancy account execs are supposed to say now. But then also I'll do the loom and bullet points for kind of the product specifics. So you'll have both.
Chris LaFay: Awesome.
Parker: And you can. Yeah. Make whatever recommendations you want based on that. Yeah, that's no problem. I'll get that done as soon as I can. It won't be today, of course, but we'll be soon.
Chris LaFay: If you could. If we could have that by middle of the week, that would be great. Middle of the week, next week.
Parker: Yeah, Prioritize it. No problem.
Chris LaFay: Because we're going to go ahead and get. We're going to go ahead and get development started either today or on Monday. So thank you for doing this meeting today. This was. I. This was. This is always my hope is when we showcase a homepage design, it's like, yeah, this is like 80% of the way there. Just start going. And a lot of times that's the case. And so I like getting a running start. So we'll get development started, get all that documented. We will not have any new development nor designs to showcase on Monday. And so we will. I'm gonna basically talk with my designer. So next steps here is we're gonna probably design out three or four more building blocks that are flexible. What. What those are going to be, I don't know. I'm basically going to let my designer look at this conversation and figure out what are those three or four more blocks that we need. That will help. Probably a. We'll need to design out, like an alternate Hero section as well, too. So that'll probably be one of them. So that not every Hero section is exactly the same. Probably something else with icons attached to it and stuff like that. But anyway, we'll design out a few more blocks that have some flexibility attached to them. Two is we will start development on all of this because the core of this is what's going to take the longest amount of time. And so I wanted to get that started. So we'll begin that either today or on Monday. So then by next, middle of next week, if you can send over kind of the story points or products, by the time we have the basics of these blocks developed out, we can go ahead and build out those templates within WordPress, you'll have a better idea of the words that need to go in those sections. And so then kind of we'll take all of your stuff, more, some actual content and words out of it, go ahead and build the pages. And what we're probably going to be missing are two things, is one, just more specific photography. Because we're probably not going to have all the right photography put everywhere across the site. And then your edits to the words themselves. Because there are going to be very technical things that I know that we're just not going to get right, and that's okay. My goal, when I think about content, is to try to get it as close to 80% there as possible for you, and then you edit. There's no way that we're ever going to get content 100% right, and so that's just not going to happen. And typically, that delta of 20% is where the longest amount of time is taken. So my goal is to get it quickly to 80 and then let you guys help get it over the ledge from 80 to 100, and then we go make those changes. So that makes sense. That was a lot of words again.
Parker: Nope. That's perfect.
Chris LaFay: Fantastic.
Parker: So in that, did you imply that we were going to cancel Monday's meeting?
Chris LaFay: I. I did, didn't I? Do I. Hold on. Do I? Hold on. Let me. Let me think about that for one second. Let me do this. Let me talk with my designer, because sometimes he likes working on the weekends. Let me give him this information, and let me see if he wants to go ahead and bust out a couple of new design elements that this weekend. Because if so, then meeting on Monday would be a good thing. We can go ahead and get approval on the rest of the blocks, and then we could. We could go 100% full steam into development. Let me ask him about that.
Parker: Okay, no worries. If we even need to cancel last minute, it's not. I'm. That won't bother me, so just let me know.
Chris LaFay: Wonderful. Thank you guys for moving quickly. I very much appreciate it. Because a lot of people like moving quickly, and then they say, give me 48 hours to go back and, like, figure stuff out. And then they come back with a bazillion things. That's not to say that you can't ever have recommendations and things that you want to change. That's not what I'm saying. But thank you for being decisive and a very short turnaround time for this. I thank you to you. Awesome. Wonderful. Well, I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend and we maybe will chat on Monday. Okay, cool.
Parker: Just let us know.
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Parker: Thanks for all the hard work. It looks really, really good.
Chris LaFay: So thank you very much. I'll catch you later. All right, good one.
Parker: Bye.
Bella Tuo: Bye.