Erin Dyer - Current
Chris LaFay: It's. I was losing track of time as well. And so about 45 minutes ago, I set a timer on my watch. I was like, remind me in 45 minutes, please. Thank you. That's. If I don't do that, I'm screwed. I do that all the time now. I used to not be bad at it, but now, like when I hop off of this, I have another meeting, like at one o' clock or something. Like I'm going to set a timer for two and a half hours because I don't know. I don't know what happened with my brain.
Dawn Audano: That's why I do all of my meetings on Mondays so that I kind of keep it flowing. I know where I need to be and what I need to do. But Wednesday, I'm like, I don't. I don't know what a Wednesday call means.
Chris LaFay: What, what is this? Video cameras? What? What? Okay, I'm gonna give her a few minutes because I did just email her.
Dawn Audano: But yeah, I saw.
Chris LaFay: You had a good day. How's your week been overall?
Dawn Audano: It's been fine. I'm just solo parenting this week, so I'm just trying to figure out what that looks like still.
Chris LaFay: Where's Pete?
Dawn Audano: He's in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. So he's not far, but it's too far to drive back and forth. It's like three hours. Yeah, so he. And like he was in conference. He started a conference at like one of the talks started at like 10 o' clock last night. I was like, what are they doing after every. Like everybody had to travel in yesterday. And I was just like, that's dumb. Like the whole thing. I think dinner started at 7 because everyone travels in. And like that makes sense. Yeah, but like starting a talk at 10 is just stupid. And I was like, I don't get that.
Chris LaFay: I don't understand why I don't do a ton of conferences. I've never, I've never once heard science.
Dawn Audano: Is weird because it's like they have like people like have their scheduled talk and then they try to assign them and you usually have like multiple talks going on. So these are usually like the ones that are at like on the first day and are on the last day are usually the ones attended by everybody. And. And then during the week you have all of the like, oh, I'm going to choose to go to this one or that one or there's a poster session going on at the same time, whatever. So like. Yeah, but yeah, I was like, what are said? What did I say? I Was like, he said, two talks left. So that was at 9:48pm And I was like, yeah. I was like, it's 10:00pm who is talking at 10:00pm he said, a guy talking about mitochondrial gene expression. I was like, is the tooth fairy starting her shift with a talk on the unique properties of teeth? He said, tomorrow. I said, you better be using a lot of expression at 10pm I said, she's going to be wiped after out after a night of tooth fairing, which I spelled F E, R R Y I N G because that's funny. And then I said, see what I did there, tooth fairy? Because she's carrying all those teeth fairing, as it were. He's like, oh, fairing teeth. I get it down. I said, I changed the spelling to make it funny. And then I over explained it. It's funnier now. He's like, how am I the mansplainer? And I said, good job correcting that because he spelled mansplain wrong.
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Dawn Audano: And I said, I can't mansplain. I said, no penis. Good night. And then he said, good night. Sleep well. I said, there you go mansplaining again. I know how to sleep, so.
Chris LaFay: Oh my gosh.
Dawn Audano: I'm hilarious.
Chris LaFay: Oh my. That was a roller coaster. Oh yeah.
Dawn Audano: It was just, it wasn't even a roller coaster. It's just a fun ride.
Chris LaFay: Oh my gosh. I, I don't.
Dawn Audano: He's out. In summary.
Chris LaFay: No, I, I. And he's gone. He's doing. Are they doing ten o' clock sessions all week?
Dawn Audano: No, he couldn't find the schedule because he had like, he doesn't know how to organize an inbox, which is something like I, I both blame him for and I blame our public education system for. Because they're not also not teaching my children right now how to manage their inbox. And they're giving them the email address. So, so wait, whatever.
Chris LaFay: Actually have an email address like for the school?
Dawn Audano: Yeah, through, For West Hartford Public School. They do. They get it in third grade and it's like whatever their name is in their graduating year and something else. But yeah, and that's what they use to log in. So it shows like all of their classrooms, like it shows like every classroom they've ever been a part of since like some. From third grade through high school. You can be like Mrs. Heaton's fifth grade class will show up even when she's like in high school.
Chris LaFay: Interesting.
Dawn Audano: Yeah, so, but yeah, so he, he couldn't find all of his, he couldn't find the Schedule. And he was like, well, it's in my inbox somewhere. And like. But we were like, look, I mean, again, why don't they put it online? I was like, searching, like, the name of the conference and the location and pd. I was like. I was like, cold Spring Harbor Biology of Genomes Conference schedule PDF. And like, nothing pulled up. And I was just like, this is stupid. It's like, what if. What is happening? So I was like, it has to link from somewhere. And I guess they just, like, put it in the body of the email. I don't know. They're idiots for, like, a whole bunch of biology humans. I don't know. It should even just say, like, download schedule here so that you, like, get around the accessibility stuff, not link it as if it's a kid's. Whatever, whatever, whatever. I'm not telling them how to do their job. I'm just telling them they're doing their job badly.
Chris LaFay: That drives me nuts. I'm doing another, like, the content day video thing that I did last year in the beginning of this year. And I. The person that is hosting us is. It's at his event. So, like, he came and got video shot for himself. He was like, this is awesome. You should come to do this at our place. I was like, that sounds wonderful. I would love to meet 200 of your friends and I. It is tomorrow and we're not doing it all day. We're doing it, like, very. Like, we're doing it specific times around event things and whatnot. And his assistant emailed me yesterday and was like, what's the likelihood that you could come down tomorrow to set everything up? I'm like, we are 48 hours away.
Dawn Audano: Like, today, Tomorrow.
Chris LaFay: Today. Like, yeah. So she said. I'm sorry. Yeah. So she said to let me use real dates. She sent me an email on Tuesday about an event on Thursday and said, hey, can you come down and do all of your setup on Wednesday today? And I'm like, first off, my setup is literally like, one camera, a chair, and two lights. Like, it's like, it's mobile. It'll take. I've done this before. It takes, like, 20 minutes to do also. No. Like, if you wanted to do that. We have been discussing this for, like, two months now. Like, I can't. I could have done it today. I don't actually have that much planned today, but I was like, I don't have much planned because I have stuff to accomplish today. And so, no, you don't get that. Also, I asked this dude to send Out a blast to all of his people that are attending. Because it wasn't on the, like, attendee registration form that this thing was or the thing that we're doing exists. Hey, a month ago, can you blast out to your email list like, hey, this is a thing we need people to sign up for. It'll be great. It's free. Like, do it. Literally sent an email out yesterday.
Dawn Audano: No.
Chris LaFay: And I'm like, no, we only have 10 slots available and we have five of them filled. I'm like, no, I want to meet 10 to 15 people to do this. Like, come on, man. Like, he's like, yeah, but I posted about it on LinkedIn. I'm like, yeah, nobody saw that, buddy. Like, you post on it from your business account that has 200 followers and they're not the people that are attending. Are you surprised? Nobody's like, oh, well, the time slots are wrong. Maybe like the. They were having people get there too early. I'm like, it's LinkedIn.
Dawn Audano: I have issues with anybody who uses an outside thing as a reason that they're failing at life, like, in general, well, this isn't working or that's not working, or they didn't do this or that, whatever. I'm like, no, take ownership.
Chris LaFay: Maybe if you just sent an email out that said, hi, I think you should sign up for the thing. You know what people would do? They would sign up for the thing. But now, given it was 48 hours in advance, people would have to attend the event because we're doing the shoot kind of at the beginning and the end of the event, logically, not during it. And so now people have plans. They're not, they're. They have planned to get there by 1:00 clock or 1:30 or whatever the time is. And they have stuff going on now. So they can't get there at noon. No, when my thing starts.
Dawn Audano: Nope.
Chris LaFay: People.
Dawn Audano: That's great, people. Do you want to text Aaron, you ever t her phone number?
Chris LaFay: I do, actually. I got on a soap box.
Dawn Audano: We'll go. We'll go down that route and then we'll call it. If she doesn't reply back.
Chris LaFay: Yeah, good call. I do have her number. She does have read receipts turned on. So let's see if she reads it. Reads it. On my list for today is to give you an overview of the state election board stuff. I would start telling you about this right now, but I know as soon as I start talking about it, she would pop in. But I'll give you an overview of the. I have A recording of the first call. I'll give you an overview of that call. And then what the next few weeks looks like we're basically jumping straight into development because their design is done. Done.
Dawn Audano: Do you have those?
Chris LaFay: Yeah. So we're using a design system that is prescribed by the state of Georgia. And so we basically looked at a site that is utilizing the design system and said, I like this one and this one and this one and this one. So we're just going to, rather than do mockups with all these things, we're.
Dawn Audano: Just going to go, I, or who's. Who's all honest.
Chris LaFay: I'm gonna do it because I can do. The design system is already coded out, so I can actually use AI. I did a test run of this a couple of weeks ago of like, can AI go and look at this pro, like this design system that's online and convert it into WordPress. And the small sample I did, it worked out very well. So I'm gonna basically have it go through the design system, import everything over the way the design system, like we think in blocks. The design system are like the, the, the pieces. So it's like what did the header, the actual headings look like, the paragraphs, the buttons, the borders around boxes. It's like the micro pieces of it all. And so it's just a matter of how do you put those micro pieces together into actual like blocks like we have. And so I have all the micro stuff online somewhere that I'm going to pull into WordPress and then we're going to take the other state website that uses all of this and then just copy and paste and build those blocks in WordPress. So she's coming.
Dawn Audano: So how long did we have for this meeting? 30 Minutes, or is it now an hour?
Chris LaFay: It. It was 30 minutes.
Dawn Audano: Okay, so we'll. Do you have a hard stop at 10:30 or.
Chris LaFay: I don't think I do. I don't. I can. I have a, I have a meeting at 11.
Dawn Audano: Okay. So let's aim to cut it by 10:50 just so you have time to prepare and we get our full 30 minutes.
Chris LaFay: That works. I'm basically. I have like six different sites that have collection style like structures on them and I'm just going to kind of go over all the pros and cons and then let her digest all of those and then kind of spew out what she is thinking from a story standpoint, none of them are great, mind you, but there's just not a lot of stuff that's good in this Area.
Dawn Audano: Hello.
Chris LaFay: Good morning.
Erin Dyer: Sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh my God.
Chris LaFay: I don't know, we're just catching up. We're just like, hey, we're just chit chatting and doing this and the other. And Don was like, hey, maybe we should text Aaron.
Erin Dyer: Yeah. I would never be late. So if I don't show up to something, just be like, oh, she must have forgotten. It's so weird because whenever I accept a meeting from. What is this Google Meet?
Chris LaFay: Yeah.
Erin Dyer: Like go into my calendar, like, are.
Dawn Audano: You, are you on Microsoft?
Erin Dyer: Yeah, we're on Microsoft.
Dawn Audano: Yeah. ATS has the same issue, Chris.
Chris LaFay: Oh, really?
Dawn Audano: Yeah. So that's why they send the invites.
Erin Dyer: Yeah, I don't know, it's so weird because like I'll accept them but they don't like pop up. You know what I mean?
Chris LaFay: So I was like, it doesn't have a teams link. So like I know there's a view that I have like with Google, if you're just on the like Google Meet home screen, it'll show you a list of all of your meetings. But if it doesn't have a Google Meet link in the calendar, then it doesn't show up in the list because it's not a Google Meet. So I bet Microsoft at its core has something similar to where if it's not a team's meeting, it doesn't register something.
Erin Dyer: So yeah, I'm so sorry about that. Well, hopefully you guys had a good catch up.
Chris LaFay: We did. So I, we still both have about 30 minutes. I have a meeting that starts at 11 that I need to do prep for for. So I need to hop off at 10:50.
Erin Dyer: Okay.
Chris LaFay: Does that work for you?
Erin Dyer: Yeah, it's fine.
Chris LaFay: Awesome. So the way that I'm thinking about structuring this chat is so the goal is to figure out to kind of have a similar conversation that we had on Monday about Homepage, or actually the preceding Monday about Homepage, about collections. And the way I'm thinking about going through this is that I found about six different types of websites that have a, a vertic that. That have a vertical specific landing page because that, and in reality that's what these are. Right. It's people that have a certain type of house and they need this specific type of board if they're at the beach or in the mountains, whatever it is. So it's about verticals. And so I found a couple of very different websites that I pulled up their like vertical page. And the wonderful thing about these things is none of them are fantastic. And so because in reality, it's just spewing a lot of information. So what I want to do is I want to go through all of them or as many of them as we can and walk through some of the pros and cons that I see. And all of them have different aesthetics as well too. And my goal, by showing all these and talking through them, there's no one of them that's like, that's the one.
Erin Dyer: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: My goal is to just kind of cherry pick your comments on like, the things that you notice that are good and the things that you notice that are bad and then just kind of put those all together mentally. That's my plan for this. Does that sound good?
Erin Dyer: Yeah, I love that. I mean, that's totally how I, how I like to operate as well. You know, find the best of everything and put it together.
Chris LaFay: Perfect. Okay, so I'm gonna share my screen and I restarted my computer before this, so I shouldn't crash out. Fantastic. So I'm gonna basically, I'm gonna basically start talking. Feel more than free to interrupt me because I'm just gonna kind of go on, you know, unfortunately I will.
Erin Dyer: So.
Chris LaFay: Yeah, exactly. So first off, we have the Trek site. I'm starting out with the most simple, the most basic. Everything else is non deck related. This here, both from a, A, a general story perspective and also structure perspective, pretty much hits the midline of everything. They have imagery that matches, you know, they're what they're talking about specifically here, I forget this is the decks from Arenas, so they have more waterfront imagery here. The, the text here is fine. It's all waterfront related. They have good, they have the testimonial that gets shoved in there. There's nothing inherently bad about this other than the fact that it's just kind of plain and simple. That's a through line that we're going to see through. All of these is that it's. A lot of these are plain and simple, but there's nothing here that necessarily stands out from a design or aesthetic standpoint. So this, this is kind of the starting ground. This is the starting point with kind of the most basic look.
Erin Dyer: This is also the standard. Right. So that's what's interesting is this is the brand standard across the board. This is what people are emulating.
Chris LaFay: Exactly. So I think in sort of general, like overall structure of things, I think the overall length of the page is fine. I think how, like the types of content that they have here are not, isn't bad either. And I think just the core aesthetic that Lumber Rock has. Is going to immediately. Like if you were to say this is the. We're emulating this from a wireframe perspective and we're just going to use what we have from an aesthetic perspective for Lumber Rock. Lumber Rock is already above at that point. The next one I went to was a marketing company's website. This is a company called Scorpion. They literally do every marketing for every industry everywhere. They're a huge mammoth company, which means they have a lot of landing pages and sub pages for industries and stuff.
Dawn Audano: Okay.
Chris LaFay: So one thing that I do like is they're very. This is. I went to the H Vac one, the specific agent. Why? I don't know, I just did. And so what I not going to focus as much on content here. But one of the things that I do like, if we're kind of comparing Trex and Scorpion together, this is how that aesthetic. Scorpion has a better aesthetic overall and they have a very similar structure to Tracks at its core. Just. It's a lot of two column layouts kind of flipped and flopped back and forth. But this is what that could look like with that slightly more elevated aesthetic. I think that they have a really good hierarchy of font sizes as well. Where they go header, bold. Not bold, but big paragraph. And then here's the details. You kind of focus on which one's most interesting to you. I do like their use of imagery. It's not the best, but it's a marketing company website so of course it's going to feel like stock imagery at the end of the day.
Erin Dyer: I like the. I like what they have. I mean, I do. I think it is like you said, it's elevated, it captures your attention more. I find that I am getting so lazy with reading anything and I think that that is AI's fault because I just, I. I'm not gonna even sit and ponder words at this point. So I think imagery is so important and I like how they do. I'll do that a lot in my graphics is like. What would you call that in the background? Like just like a color bait, a color block, you know, like, like where.
Chris LaFay: It's like where we're doing like we're doing contrasting sections like light to dark, light to dark.
Erin Dyer: Or like if you go down a little bit, down a little bit more there, where it's like more jobs. I like that out all the time. I don't know why, but you know, just things like, okay, I'm not really big. Oh, more jobs. That's what we're talking about in this Section, you know what I mean? To kind of like roll your eyes right away. Yeah. I like the way that they're using their fonts a lot here. I like how they're breaking stuff up. I like. It's definitely much more captivating, for sure.
Chris LaFay: Awesome. Okay, let's actually go back over here to the Trek site because the rest of these are going to be more on the aesthetic side. I know that you haven't had a chance to, like, read through this, but I also know that you know Trex well in terms of overall content, structure, the wireframe of this, if you will. Is this a pretty good starting point from a. If we're thinking that each of, like, if we're thinking that this is one singular story that we're telling top to bottom from a chapters perspective. Do you feel like these are good chapters within the story of how they arrange this?
Erin Dyer: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think that it is perfectly appropriate for what Trex does. Trex is like a very safe feeling brand. Right. So they don't like, rock the boat at all as far as, like, marketing goes. It's very traditional. They spend, I would say, tons of money on marketing. Millions, if not a billion. Right. They spend a ton of money focused on it, but none of it is very. There's no wow factor to me at all with Trex. I think that what it's doing, it gets the point across. Right. And I understand it too, because you see a deck on a marshy environment with a dog, it says so much psychologically to you, it's tough. You know, that's what they're really getting across here is this durability piece I've created about a bazillion images like this. I kind of think the let's talk about feet thing is funny because it is. It's awkward, but it's worth it. The heat of the boards is a really important thing that comes up often. People ask about what it is all the time. So these little kids with their little books, with their little feet, I mean, I think it's working very well. The story that they're trying to tell here. And Trex to me is always about that kind of midline comfort environment. I think that's where Lumber Rock is a little riskier because we don't just do the midline. Right. We really like to show waves on the boards. We like to show more of an adventure story. Whereas this is very like coastal lifestyle. Super cute. I mean, this. This wave piece here, I get it. Because they are trying to like, instinctively tell you what the difference is now Trex actually isn't made for the water, which is why it's pretty interesting they started actually using some of our taglines.
Chris LaFay: Yeah, yeah.
Erin Dyer: But what it's doing is fine, right? What it's doing is none of it would stand out and pull me in as much as what I think we're trying to do with Lumber Rock. We may not be achieving it at all times, but I think we're trying to get there. They're always going to be this neutral lifestyle story.
Chris LaFay: Okay, so my, my overall takeaway from that from a. Designing out the new collections page layout is from a general wireframe perspective. This is good to emulate from a. Like these are kind of the, the chapter headings, if you will. But we're altering the story to be a little bit more overall more adventurous.
Erin Dyer: I mean, I think this is the wireframe you see with like almost everyone, right? At least people who have made a website within the past five years. It's going to be a lot of. Okay, you got a picture, you got some text, you got some text, you got a picture, Maybe a full.
Chris LaFay: Let me, let me refresh and have used the word wireframe. The, the. The general beats of the story. So not the actual layout of the different blocks and whatnot, but the general beats the story about actually like figuring out ways like what I see here. Let me actually describe the general that, that rather than trying to make assumptions here at the top, some sort of a tiny story that draws you in, then talking about various different features, features that are specific to that collection. So obviously things for like, you know, the coastal collection will be things about water and being in the sun all day and stuff along those lines. So little stories about, about their features, but they're going to be storytelling about those features with imagery that then connects to it.
Erin Dyer: Can we pull up the current Limburo site real quick? Because I don't. You know, we only made this a year ago, so there are things to fix. But like. Yeah, let's go into here. So I think that that is kind of. I haven't even looked at it for a minute. So, you know, we are trying to get across very quickly that coastal is for the shoreline. So you can use our other plate, our other products on the coast, but we want people to know as soon as they come here. Okay, this is what you're getting into. You are living by the sea, are you? Lumber, rock, coastal? That kind of tells the story. We didn't go far enough though, right? We have some imagery here and Then we kind of go into this discover the coastal collection and I think this was probably inappropriate. We have all this blocked off. Hey, here's all these specifications. But we're not getting as deep into the story like Trex is with it. But I do think that showing more visuals, getting across the point that it's marine grade, all of that is important. So I think some of the information is here. We might want to like go further and if you will actually go to go to. Why no, no, up on the, on the header. I'm sorry. Yeah, let's go to marine grade. So if you start to look into these, I think that these actually kind of spell it out a little bit better in some ways because this talks about why it's important. I think that we kind of like have just broken these up into too many different sections and not put enough of this in the forefront, if that makes sense. We have it more like spilled out into these pages. And then weirdly, let's see, go to Docs and Waterfront down there. Do you see that under products? Yeah, so see, we just have, it's like, I don't know, it's almost like we kind of say it again and again like in different places. I like, I like the kind of showing people the difference right between like the coast and, and other places that you can do it. But I feel like we have some of this information in here. It's just, it's almost like more of a brochure and not like a true website.
Chris LaFay: Okay, so was that helpful? Yeah, let me. Okay, so. So my takeaway from that is I'm kind of thinking about this kind of live action here is storytelling over here is in the right general direction but isn't necessarily deep enough. And then the details of the pay of the. Of the actual like collection page aren't really the right details. So like what, what I heard when we went over to like Marine grade, like we're actually talking about stuff that, that matters to people like this over here. Like you know, no maintenance, no staining, 50 year warranty, blah, blah. Whereas here, who cares about the dimensions of a board? Like it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. Like the, if you're in, if you're somebody that owns a. And I, we're obvious and all of this we're. I'm. We're focusing in on beaches right now. But this all applies to all collections of it story plus the right details at the end of the day. So nobody cares. Maybe you could say somebody might care about the Colors. But definitely nobody cares about the 24 inch span. 24 Foot span rating.
Erin Dyer: So actually that's like the most important thing to our people for some reason.
Dawn Audano: So.
Chris LaFay: And this is why it's important thing to pick on. Interesting.
Erin Dyer: No, no, it's okay. Because like. Right. Why would you give a. It's such a good question. Why would you care? It's the only thing they tell me to put on there all the time. Because the reason it's important is because that's what you need for a doc. So we're trying to compete in the space.
Chris LaFay: Okay. So that's a known number by consumers. Is 24ft.
Erin Dyer: It's gonna be. It's 24 inch on. Is it 24ft? Is that what that.
Chris LaFay: That's what I was wondering because that's the foot marker right there. Like one. It. One mark is a foot.
Erin Dyer: 24 Inch on center. Is that what it is? Yeah, because then it would be 4ft per board. I don't know. I'm sorry, I get so confused with this and I need somebody to actually.
Chris LaFay: Get that says 24 inch span rating over here. This. Yeah, like all of these say 24.
Erin Dyer: Probably wrong. So this is the stuff that we need to fix. Right? We have like some wrong stuff on here that's wrong. It's 24 inch on center. Because 24 foot on center wouldn't make sense, I don't think. But it's specifically important because like we are taking over market share for wear deck everywhere we can. And that was one of their big differentiators. And so when we come in and Trex doesn't have that. Trex doesn't even have anything close to that. So when we come in we say, hey, we are the people who are the most marine grade capable, you know, producers and you can get 24 inch on center. That's the thing that the contractors go crazy about. So I think that this is where it gets interesting like when we include Matt kind of in the conversation because he's like talking to the contractors or the consumers. And I think that our, our pages do have to be very consumer oriented. We need to speak to the things that the customer is asking and then we need to just kind of feed in here and there the things that the contractors are going to be like. Okay, but, but the way we have it laid out, because this is how it used to be laid out is oh, contractor information, contractor information, a little bit of consumer information. And I think you're right. We got to swap that a little bit.
Chris LaFay: Okay, what. From a, from a storytelling standpoint, what elements are missing from the collection pages right now, in your opinion?
Erin Dyer: So let's foreign look at timber tech too for a second. Let's see what timber tech is doing in this regard. And I'm sorry, I'm not trying to take over your.
Chris LaFay: No, no, no, this is perfect. Like my, this is. My goal is to get you to talk because if I, if you talk, I can then organize. So we're right.
Erin Dyer: I get it. I know. And I think a lot of people like here don't understand that. Like people are like, what, what do you. I'm like, just tell me. Just talk to me and tell me what you're thinking and then I can formulate. So let's go to. It's interesting the way that they have this. How about. It's really interesting how they have it that way. Let's go to decking overview. I guess that first one. Let's see what they do because this is also. They. They have a great website. Timber check versus wood. Okay. Interesting. Two engineered materials. See, I think it's weird because I do feel like these are so like dry in their information. Like with this information that they're providing. Like this is not very consumer oriented to me. You know what I mean?
Chris LaFay: Like, this doesn't actually tell me anything.
Erin Dyer: I know.
Chris LaFay: It's like, by the way, your upfront cost is going to be expensive no matter what.
Erin Dyer: I know.
Chris LaFay: Which I mean it's kind of the point. Like I. So it is kind of coming through. Don't get me wrong. But.
Erin Dyer: Yeah, this is interesting. How about maybe decking collections over here? You see that up at the top of the end?
Chris LaFay: Oh yeah, there we go.
Erin Dyer: One of those.
Dawn Audano: I don't know.
Erin Dyer: Like it's, it's weird because it, they have so much like technical information that it's almost confusing. And I feel like the way that I'm trying to describe lumber rock is completely different than this. I'm not trying to like overwhelm you with all this information. I think there are plenty of pages for that. I'd much more like you're saying, describe the lifestyle and use of, of what these are important for. So like if you're in the coastal collection, the most important thing to you is that these are durable. They're not going to rot. They're not going to, you know, be ruined by the waves of the ocean and the salt of the ocean and all these other things. We're going to reduce expansion and contraction so that, you know, when it gets really hot. Outside, your deck's not going to get bigger. And then when it gets colder, it's going to shrink and, like, really throw everything off. The color is going to last forever. It's going to look the same in 20 years as it does today. Like, to me, those are the important things that we're trying to get across. And you can see here, like, oh, here's a comparison. Here's a comparison. Here's some more information. Here's some colors, here's this, here's that. It just seems like a lot to throw at somewhere in. Whereas I'd rather just be like, hey, here all your problems here, all the things we solve, and this is the right board for you. If you live on the coast line,.
Chris LaFay: That makes sense.
Erin Dyer: And then also the same thing with, like, Genesis. Hey, you got kids, you got dogs, you.
Chris LaFay: It's all the same. Yeah. It's the same storytelling. It's the same chapters in the book. Yeah, but we're right. We're writing the same book over and over and over again. Just the. With the same chapters. It's just the content of the chapter chapters are going to be different at the end of the day. So. Okay.
Erin Dyer: I don't know. When you guys look at this as a consumer, how are you feeling? Are you feeling like it's overwhelmingly engineered focused, or are you feeling like, okay, I'm getting a lot of information. I want to learn more about it.
Chris LaFay: Dawn, I'd love your opinion on that because we have both our. My. My thinking through this stuff is very much different.
Dawn Audano: Say it one more time.
Chris LaFay: What. When you're looking at these pages, like, on timber tech and whatnot are. As a consumer, how helpful are these from a. Knowing what you're getting, perspective, storytelling perspective, and, like, confidence perspective?
Dawn Audano: I mean, if I'm the one buying it, I'm. I know how picky my husband is, and he likes things that are wood. So that, like, knowing how much it's going to look like wood but how it will be better than wood would be helpful. Information planning, order free samples, get to know, find a contractor is helpful. Scrolling quick, I'm.
Erin Dyer: I know, but it's.
Chris LaFay: Oh, sorry. My bad, my bad.
Dawn Audano: Sorry.
Erin Dyer: It's. It's a lot, right? Like, it's.
Dawn Audano: Yes.
Erin Dyer: And I think the lot part is, in part helpful from an SEO perspective. But if you're just a customer and you're so. Okay. Because I know you got five minutes. That was my bad.
Chris LaFay: You're good.
Erin Dyer: I'm gonna. I'm gonna think for a minute. All right, so If I'm a customer and I'm like Susie homemaker and, and I'm someone who needs a deck, I want to be able to come to this site and immediately be like, oh my God. Okay, it looks like wood. It's not wood, but it's going to last forever. And even I'll talk, I'll speak for me. I have a really nice house, but I can't ever use my deck even though I have a gorgeous backyard because an entire section of my deck is rotting. And I hate that. It's like an eyesore to me. And you're telling me that's never going to happen again. Even though I live in a very moisture rich environment. Oh. And insects aren't going to get in it. Insects aren't going to get on it. It's not going to mold. It's going to be safe for my kids, it's going to be safe for my animals. It's going to be color consistent. It's going to look amazing. Like I want all of these things out in front.
Dawn Audano: And I also, I will also say like you don't want to focus. You want to focus enough on the durability but also you want people to feel like they're buying a high end product. Like vinyl siding is, is a durable thing but it looks awful and everybody knows it. So like how do you, how do you give it the. How do you tell people that what they're buying isn't, isn't. It's not that you're buying a wood alternative because it's like it's more durable. You're buying it not only because it also had like the, like how it feels on your feet versus wood and how it feels and other like I do think speaking to some of those, how it will be the use cases like yeah, yeah, yeah, that's important.
Erin Dyer: I'm sorry, I'm so bad about talking over people. I'm trying really hard not to do that. It's ADD unmedicated. I really need to get on some drugs. My husband will do that every day. I think so. And I think also one thing we're not seeing in a lot of these because manufacturing is like way behind on marketing. I think they don't really focus on the customer experience. This is really pretty. And I like to go to these pages too. Right. Because I, I think what's so important and missing from a lot of this and it's what I was seeking to do but did not, it didn't come across as well. I want to see people Living in it. Right, Right. I can do a better job now than I could have done before.
Dawn Audano: Out. Like, I'm gonna throw out one of those things, like the what it looks like in my backyard type situation. Like. Like this. I don't know if. I don't know if how beneficial those, like, 3D things are where you can, like, take a picture of your backyard and then it transposes it on to it. I don't know how, like, helpful that is, But, like, it too. What?
Erin Dyer: We'd have to, like, make that or.
Dawn Audano: Yeah, but I'm even thinking, like, I don't know. I don't want to make anything too difficult. I don't want to brainstorm anything too difficult. But you. You're looking at a website and I'm like, oh, yeah, it would be nice to be able to say, like, this is what this looks like with this, like, the same space looks like with these two different colors. And.
Erin Dyer: I do. I do love that. But I think that one thing we can do without overcomplicating it is if we like. Like what I was trying to do with the Star for Lady. I tried the AI wasn't there last year, but I tried really hard to show people in the environments that they want to be in with our product. Product. So, like someone resting a surfboard. I'm much better at it now. Like someone resting a surfboard on a deck or I made a postcard the other day and it was like a sun hat sitting on the end of a dock with the sunset in the background and the. In the. Not wood, but you know, the coastal look great. You know, I want to see. We have this picture of everybody loved. We got like 7000 likes on Facebook with this ad of just a dog sitting on top of some boards, which is really important because dogs ruin decks, they ruin spaces. So it sells a lot in that. That's why they use dogs and stuff. Because you're like, oh, by the way, adorable. People are drawn to this. We've even named our Sandy. But. But at. On the other side, your kids can play and it's not going to ruin your stuff. That's so important. Right. You're not gonna have to replace something because of your kids. That's my entire life story. You're not gonna have to replace stuff because of your animals. Also part of my life story. Like, your jet ski is perfect for right here, your sailing boat. Like, I wanna lean into the psychology of that. And I know that it's my fault that we don't have as much Time as we should. So I'm happy to kind of dig into this a little bit more and send you some thoughts on it, if you guys would like.
Chris LaFay: What I think would be. What I think would be helpful is. Hold on, I'm putting some thoughts together in my head right now is if we had small write ups.
Erin Dyer: Uhhuh.
Chris LaFay: 2 To 4 sentences per problem that each of these lines solves. Okay, so the coastal. What are the four core human problems? And then what are. What's the. The single paragraph underneath each of those. And then from a. And then secondarily, what are the. What are the features of the board that matter to that. That line? And why does that feature matter? And how. And so these could just be in a, like Google Doc for all I care. So basically if each, if each of the collections had. I'm gonna, I'm gonna repeat a little bit what I just said. A header that basically said here's the human problem. And then a paragraph of how this collection solves that problem in a storytelling format. Then features is the next section. And then a subhead underneath each of them of one or two or three of the. The features of the product. And then a couple of sentences on why, how that feature ties into that. That storytelling and solves that problem. Does that make sense? Yeah, because I think with your, with your brain and the, all the stuff that your AI instance knows that's probably fairly. That's simple to pull together and that would give us. That would give us the beats for the page.
Erin Dyer: And you're asking all the right questions. You're at, you're absolutely on the ball with everything that you're asking. I hope that I'm not slowing you guys down too much, but I think that what you're doing is the most important thing we can do right now, which is, hey, okay, we have this thing. It's a little different. It's a little quirky compared to the other stuff. Let's, let's pull it all together and make it this great feature forward story that we can tell everybody.
Chris LaFay: We're definitely taking a little bit more time than normal in this. So the, the overall timeline is going to be a little bit more elongated than we originally planned. But I think we're not wasting, we're not wasting time. We're just able to get it right the first time a lot faster. And so that's the, that's the point. And so the. My thought was at the very beginning was I think we knew enough about, we knew enough about the design, design aesthetic, and the building blocks from the existing site, so we could kind of jump ahead a little bit.
Erin Dyer: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: But then once we did that, I realized that we didn't have the story piece of the story pieces that we kind of glazed over at the very beginning, thinking that design might solve some of those things. We're kind of backtracking a smidge back towards discovery, but then we're going to be able to leapfrog again because we also have a lot of the design elements already kind of locked and loaded. So we're kind of actually. We're taking the first, like, four weeks of what we normally spend, and we're actually kind of like, hopping around the process a little bit rather than going through it linearly. But it also feels natural. And so the last thing that I'll add into the. Your. The write up here is at the top. So when you have that big headline at the very top of the page, it's like, coastal collection. What are the two or three sentences of the human that is going to buy the coastal collection? Who is that person? Is it the. The filthy rich millionaire that this is their third house on the beach? Or is it the mom and pop that live in the suburbs for a different collection?
Erin Dyer: Yeah. So, yeah, I need to give you more of, like, a couple of customer Personas. I think that'll help fill in some details here.
Chris LaFay: And I think if we use this, if we use the collect, I think there. I think in general, every collection has its Persona, and so I think this is a good area. You know, we don't need a ton of detail here now, because I'm gonna. I would ra. I would rather you if you gave us a small paragraph at the top of each of these collections of who the Persona is, like four or five sentences max, and then filled the rest of these out as we just described, that's going to give us enough design direction to go off on. And then from there, I'm not going to be as worried on this initial draft with words, because I know that you'll be able to take the structure that we put and then shove words in. And I'd rather you not spend time now trying to get those words correct. I'd rather you see the design output and then use that to fuel your creativity with words and images, mind you.
Erin Dyer: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: So does that sound good?
Erin Dyer: I love it. I love it. I love the way that you guys are working. Everybody's super pleased with you guys, by the way. Yeah. They think you're very smart and on the ball. And we're gonna move forward with Sophie. Matt is out. So Matt was in Jamaica all last week and his. And he's doing, he's got some emergency kind of family stuff going on this week that got pushed back. So I'm guessing he'll be back next week week and we'll be able to plan that time with Sophie. So I'm gonna let her know that.
Chris LaFay: Awesome. That sounds good. In terms of timeline, do you think that when do you think that you could have this write up done by in Google Doc or Doc by Friday? Okay. So.
Erin Dyer: But I don't like, I don't want to not deliver, you know.
Chris LaFay: So we have our normal weekly meeting on Monday. Yes, I, what I would like to deliver is a mock or for our next meeting is a mock up of these things. But I don't want submit my designer if I, if he gets this information from you on Friday to have something deliverable by Monday. So we might. You can get to me today. Okay. And I also will, I need to check with him to make sure that he has the flexibility both Thursday and Friday to knock this out. So if you can get it done by today, I'll talk with my designer to see if he has the ability to work on this Thursday, Friday. If for whatever reason his schedule does not allow, I'll let you know and we can figure out where we can possibly move our meeting to from Monday to a different day next week.
Dawn Audano: Okay.
Chris LaFay: So that sound good?
Erin Dyer: Yeah, that's great. I know you have a meeting. I appreciate it. I appreciate you guys. I'm so excited. I know we're going to do this for all the divisions of our company and that makes me really excited because I think we're, we're just moving in a good direction. And if I'm not performing on my end, just let me know what you. What we're missing or what needs to happen.
Chris LaFay: You're giving us all the information that we need and the pretty much the right amount of time. So. So far so good. And then we'll take all the things that we learned from working together on this one and then apply them.
Erin Dyer: Yeah,.
Chris LaFay: Exactly.
Erin Dyer: Many complaints about our websites.
Chris LaFay: Yes. And I like working with people that actually have a head on their shoulders and know how this stuff works. So thank you. Thank you for making this easier. I just got off a call yesterday with somebody who sent me, I kid you not, 12 emails and text messages. So 20. No, it was about 15 in total. So seven of each that said the exact same things individualized. And he created flyers with PDFs that had walls of text and said, I think this should go on the website as is. I want you to copy and paste it. And I'm like, dear God, shoot me in the head. This is not.
Erin Dyer: Yeah. Getting into. I know.
Chris LaFay: And I had a chat with him after. This is not. Flyers do not connect to websites.
Dawn Audano: Yeah.
Chris LaFay: And these don't match your aesthetic. And he was like, I understand, but. But hear me now. I, I. This is the way. I was like, you got it, buddy. I will. I will copy. We will copy and paste for you like the best little monkeys in the world.
Erin Dyer: Listen, I learned a long time ago the. The smartest you can be sometimes when you're. When money's on the line is okay. That's what you like. I got it. It may not be the best, but I got it not going in the portfolio. So be real with me, because I want it to be the best. So that's why.
Chris LaFay: No, this is. This is all good. This is fantastic. Thank you for the time today. I appreciate it. And we'll chat either on Monday or at some point a little bit later next week.
Erin Dyer: All right, thanks so much, guys. Take care.
Chris LaFay: Bye.