CMILC - Lumberock Weekly Sync

Erin Dyer: Morning.

Matt Nelson: Good morning.

Erin Dyer: How are you?

Chris LaFay: I am doing well. I just got back from my two weeks of just utter insanity, so first thing Monday morning. Here we go. That's actually not been too bad, needless to say, so I'm very thankful for that.

Erin Dyer: How are your trips?

Chris LaFay: They were all fantastic. The beach two weeks ago was delightful. And then I was at a conference this past week and. So. Say again.

Erin Dyer: I said nice. Yes.

Chris LaFay: So it was fun. I got to practice being a little more extroverted than I normally am. So that, that was tiring. But it was good though. It was very good.

Erin Dyer: What beach did you guys go to?

Chris LaFay: We went to New Smyrna beach, so a little south of Daytona, which is our go to spot.

Erin Dyer: Okay. We're very familiar with that. I think that our sheep pile is all over that place.

Chris LaFay: So I love it down there. It's quiet. It's. Honestly, it's not the spot that high schoolers and college kids go, which it's where mostly like older families are. And so all the beaches are pretty much private, so. So a lot of times you're one of maybe two tents on the beach. Do you like all the space? It is so nice. So yes.

Erin Dyer: The older I get, the more I like a private beach.

Chris LaFay: Yes. I honestly, that's the only type of beach I ever knew. Like, it sounds really like pretentious, but I never went to the beach growing up. But my in laws, they always go and get like a condo on the beach for a week in the summer. Like that is like the one thing that they do. And so I only ever knew that you basically just go down to the beach, you set up your tent wherever you want, it doesn't matter. And then I went to a friend's place at one point a few years ago. Like, we're on the public beach. I'm like, okay, cool, whatever. And then I saw what a public beach actually looked like. I'm like, wait a minute, this is not. This is not what I had envisioned.

Erin Dyer: Peaceful beach trip I was looking for.

Chris LaFay: Right, Exactly. Yes. So, well, dawn is not going to be here today. They had a death in the family a couple weeks back. And so she is at a funeral right now. All is well and good. And so they had to hop on a plane this morning because the funeral got scheduled very early. Quickly. I have some notes before she was able to hop on her plane this morning. Not all of them, but I think we can make some pretty good progress here today.

The primary topics for today are talking about the sample picker and the Other topic conversation was going to be content, which I now have pulled up on this screen. A laundry list of folders and Dropbox so we can table that entire discussion completely. I can take a look at all this later and see if it works as well as Round One's test did a week and a half ago.

Erin Dyer: You want me to share for just a minute and walk through a little bit of what this is for everybody?

Chris LaFay: That sounds great. Yes. Go for it.

Erin Dyer: All right. Are you guys seeing the website deliverables?

Matt Nelson: Yep.

Erin Dyer: Okay, so as you'll see, we have a very long list of folders in here. It should be 34 pages. I think it's 34 or 38. This should follow the list that you. Sent to me exactly, Chris. And when you go into these folders, you'll see that we have a word doc that goes over everything based on the outline that you sent to me. Some of these are quite long then to accompany this. I don't know, I keep calling this a JSON. I don't know.

Chris LaFay: JSON. JSON 100%. That's it.

Erin Dyer: A JSON file. Each of these has both of those in it. Those should be done. The only thing I'm still kind of working on is the image deliverables. So what I have done in here so far is broken them up by. We're actually missing two of our folders, so. By the type of board that they are, and we can go in and break them down further. So what I have been doing a lot of is actually taking actual lumber rock images that we have from over the years and just revamping them. So these are actually true images that we have gotten from some of our partners or that I found on the web in different places. And I'm just updating them so they look good for the website. This is actually like, you know, somewhere that actually went on location and just kind of revamped them all so they kind of fit the same color scheme and they all work together. But I like this because I know that we had a lot of fears about using a lot of AI. So these are all true lumber rock photos, and they look just fabulous now that they've been revamped a little bit. So I think these should all be super usable and ready to go. I'm going to go in and further categorize these for you. So put like coastal bridge or I'm sorry, classic steps, classic backyard so that it's easier when the designer is going through to figure out what is what. Of course, when we get to some of these other images. So when we get into the coastal ones, not all of them are going to be as authentic, but I'm still going to break them down for you and we'll do the best we can with these since we don't have as many board pictures with that. So I'm just working right now on filling up that library. I'm going to stop here sharing. Did I stop sharing?

Chris LaFay: You did already. Yeah, but you're good.

Erin Dyer: Sorry. I don't know why I'm so bad at. So I'm just working on filling up the library completely so that it's super easy for you to find. Here's veranda, here's porch. I was trying to do all the found footage I could find to begin with before I really dig into making a lot of them because it was becoming very time consuming to do that. Just going to keep filling that kitty over the next two or three days, if that's okay with you.

Chris LaFay: Nope, that's all fantastic. My one recommendation is as you're creating them, so the, the document output. And I'm sure you probably saw this for blocks that have images attached to them. Yeah, like an actual image name. So my recommendation would be one of two things. As you're creating or editing these images, go ahead and give that image the name. Or if you're creating a library of images, give your AI basically all these Word document files that say, hey, here's an organized full sub folders and subfolders of various different images. Go through and look at all these documents that have all these image gaps and map them together so that you have a. You have a better idea of what images are going to go where.

Erin Dyer: So let me play devil's advocate for a minute with that because I was doing that and I was like, hey, export for me a Word doc with all the images I need for this page. I wasn't able to map what it was doing as well into Leonardo as I normally can because it was getting much more generic descriptions instead of how detailed I need to get to get a really good one. And I also almost wanted to leave. Room open a little bit for the designer to choose he wanted. Okay, how do you feel about that? Because I, I wanted to give a big library and then because I know there's so many needed on some pages, I kind of thought maybe him decide. What he thinks looks good and I'm. Going to just give a whole bunch, but that's up to you.

Chris LaFay: So that also we can definitely do that. What I would recommend is as you're putting them together and you're probably already doing this anyway. You okay? Give me one second. My dog is freaking out. One second.

Erin Dyer: Yeah. Hey, Matt.

Matt Nelson: Hello.

Erin Dyer: Hey.

Matt Nelson: I started reading your, your output here. This Lumber Rock website refresh. Best decking for Salt Water.

Erin Dyer: Boy. Me and Chachi bt, we just knocked it out of the park this time.

Matt Nelson: You know what I mean? This is a lot of, a lot of stuff to pull together. I don't care how you do it. Yeah, they started reading some of the copy in this, you know, everything. It looks really well done.

Erin Dyer: So your dog okay?

Chris LaFay: I think so. She's a little, she's stressed. I was gone. I mean, obviously I was gone a lot. And so she's not back in the regular reaction routine of things yet. So I think she is just. She actually ate all of her breakfast, which is fantastic. But I also. She doesn't normally eat all of her breakfast, so I think she's just a little, A little stressed that my wife is not home. She ate all of her breakfast and we're not back into the regular routine of me being home again.

Erin Dyer: So, yes, I'm like, way too like conscious of my dog. Like my husband thinks I'm ridiculous. So I totally get it.

Chris LaFay: I, I do not. I don't mess. I don't mess around at all. We're like, oh, she had sniffles. She like stubbed her toe. We're taking her to the bed.

Erin Dyer: So, yeah, so I was, I was spilling mad. And so the way that basically all this got pulled together is Chris created a document for me that needed to be followed exactly. It took until last Thursday for me. To get the keywords from. I'm sorry, the Thursday before from Studio Hawk to take all of that. And basically it's like the working of all the robots. So it's kind of the recommend, the format that Chris asked for. It's the work that Chad, GPT and I have done in the past to really create the brand and all the stuff I've been feeding, you know, that program over the past two years because I've even, I even went back and I was like, hey, let's make the overriding principle, the branding that we believe in and then use the keywords and funnel them in the right way to make it SEO friendly. So it was, It's a very in depth process. It's very interesting to go through. It's been a really cool learning experience.

Chris LaFay: Because I needed in order to. Because we have so many pages, I'm definitely going to do content updates more of them. But in order to make that time efficient, they need to be done in a certain way. And so this was actually the first time on our side. We've done a lot of AI content and things like that, but I've never. We have never actually publicized a guide to then send to a client that says, this is how your robot should set this all up. So it was definitely a new process. And we did a test run of it last week when Aaron sent over a couple and it knocked it out of the dagum park. And so. Yeah, which is great. So now we get to test it out in mass over the next week or so. Sorry. I'm gonna move my microphone over here. I promise I'm looking at things. I'm just petting my dog to make sure that she doesn't freak out as much. So that all sounds good. I have all of this. I'll be taking a look at this content this week. I'll probably send over. I'm probably not going to do it all in one fell swoop. I'll probably send over a couple at a time to make sure that everything is looking good. And then once we probably get about five or six of them in and we think that that all looks fine, that's when we'll probably push the. The bulk button and get all of them done in one fell swoop. And then going back to the image discussion. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead.

Erin Dyer: Sorry. My only question was, I noticed in doing this, we did keep. All the. Content from the original pages the same. Not the main ones while we're scoping it with the way that the people are going to funnel through the page, but actually the pages like classic and Genesis and Porch, we kept all that the same. That was intentional, right?

Chris LaFay: I didn't. I didn't catch the last part that you just said. My dog coughed, as you said. So we kept the. For the Verdana and the, like, the collection pages. We kept a lot of that content the same.

Erin Dyer: We kept that the same. It wasn't on the list. So I'm just making sure that was intentional because I can go back and. Do them if it wasn't.

Chris LaFay: So my recommendation, given that this process of updating content is working fairly easily, if you want to go through and make updates and changes to things, that's not going to take us any extra time. So if there's stuff that you would. If you want to do a pass, do a pass.

Erin Dyer: Yeah, I think so.

Chris LaFay: Like, that's not. That's not really a problem anymore.

Erin Dyer: Yeah, it was because it wasn't on the list.

Chris LaFay: But yeah, so yeah, go, go for it. And the reason it probably wasn't on the list was probably because it was marked in that site mapping tool as an as is page or a brand new page. I forget which one. But yeah, because you're with all the stuff that I sent over to you ahead of time or before with all the scripts and stuff, you have the liberty to move those blocks around. I realize it's not a visual thing, but all of those building blocks have a certain like set of data to them. So hypothetically, if you needed a different layout, you could prompt chat GPT and be like, hey, you know what all these different building blocks are and what their purposes are. This is the page I'm trying to create with the content. I'm trying to write recommend blocks. I will say at that point what I, what I have seen a lot internally when I do something akin to that is I do see a very poor mishmash of block usage. But this is just like limitations of AI at this point. But then editing it is rather simple. So it's good about to get your ideas down and a structure that you think probably is going to be okay. Just know that it'll probably need some tweaking. It's probably not going to be right the first time.

Erin Dyer: So that's fine, that's fine. But I do think you're right. I think that with all the changes we've made, it is worth going in and doing a new pass on those main pages because we want it to map with everything else that we've changed. Plus the structure is different. So I will go ahead and do that.

Chris LaFay: Okay, just shoot us an email when those are done. And therefore, so we know that the Dropbox is updated with everything at that point. Also let me know which of the folders are new that you've added in because I've, I've already. I went ahead and downloaded the whole thing. So I just need to know which ones I need to go and bring.

Erin Dyer: Over, make a new folder, put them in that.

Chris LaFay: Yeah, that's fine. Awesome. That all sounds good.

Erin Dyer: Perfect.

Chris LaFay: So that is the content side of things. The, the request, a sample. I did a, a little bit of research this past week. It was more at the beginning of the week and my general. I wanted to find something that's a little bit different than what you guys have.

Erin Dyer: Yeah.

Chris LaFay: But at the end of the day, most of the sites that I found that do samples, whether that's for, you know, wood paint samples, fabric Samples, what have you. A lot of them are E Commerce itized. So it's like actually going through like a listing of products, adding it to the cart and then checking out. Yeah, that's actually kind of what looks like to be the standard. And I don't like that at all. I think that's way too complicated. I understand why these bigger companies did it is because they already have an E commerce system put into place. These are just free samples. Go through the same workflow. They didn't have to introduce anything brand new. It goes through all their processing centers and blah, blah, blah. I get it. I probably went through about five or ten sites and they were all exactly the same from their UX perspective. So where I was hoping to get some ideas of things to do differently, I got all of the same things. So your current user experience right now in general is actually better than most people's Now. I will. I looked at about 10 and I'm sure there's 10 million out there. Did y' all have any directions or things that you have seen in the past for ordering samples that were of interest to you guys?

Erin Dyer: So we did this exercise last week on the call as well. We went through and we looked at.

Chris LaFay: I'm sorry about that. I haven't had a chance to talk with dawn today since she had to leave so early.

Erin Dyer: So I apologize about that. It's fine. I'm just commenting on like what you're saying. So we kind of saw the same thing. Right. Tracks had this like checkout area. Timber Tech. You clicked on it and you could check out. You could order the sample kit.

Matt Nelson: Yeah.

Erin Dyer: I think the way that we do it is interesting. I think that the way it looks visually is not as clean and nice as it could be, but I almost think just a revamped version of what we have wouldn't be a bad idea. Do you know what I mean?

Chris LaFay: So let me. Did I push this up? Give me one second. You gonna be okay?

Erin Dyer: Okay.

Chris LaFay: Let's look at my dog nicely and hopefully she'll be okay for.

*(Transcript ends — recording cut off mid-conversation at ~19 min.)*