[00:00:00.690] - Gordon
Hello, welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon." My name is Gordon.
[00:00:05.190] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor.
[00:00:06.330] - Gordon
And thank you for coming back and joining us. This is our third week now, and we've been getting lots of really good feedback. If you haven't already, then please go and subscribe on the YouTube channel, that will then give you a notification when we've got a new video out and also go to the Facebook page, which you may already be on, and make sure you click 'like' on this page as well, and then when a new video starts, you'll be notified.
[00:00:33.960] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:00:34.530] - Gordon
So what have you been up to this week, Taylor?
[00:00:36.840] - Taylor
I've been working on a couple of different websites this week. I've been working on finishing off some projects. One of my clients' websites are going to be going live this week hopefully, once they sign it off. So that's quite exciting, hopefully get a review or so back from them.
[00:00:55.530] - Gordon
It's really nice when you've been working on a website for a while and and the client loves it and then all of a sudden you get to hit that button that puts it all live.
[00:01:03.930] - Taylor
Yep.
[00:01:03.930] - Gordon
And all of a sudden the whole world can see it. It's quite an exciting moment.
[00:01:08.190] - Taylor
It is. And it's quite nice knowing that you know, my work is out there for everyone to see and enjoy. And, you know, quite a lot of time I have my clients come back to me and say, you know, "I've shown it to my friends and family and they've loved it." And, you know, that's quite nice for me because I know that I've designed that, I've built that and they really like it. So that's quite nice to hear.
[00:01:28.890] - Gordon
And sometimes that's where the hard work actually starts, because even though you spent a long time designing a website, you're doing it with the client and you're not doing it with their customers. So after you get a bit of feedback from from the actual people who matter, which are the people who are the visitors, there are little tweaks and changes that need to be made. So that's quite exciting. When's that due to go live?
[00:01:55.140] - Taylor
Any day now really.
[00:01:57.480] - Gordon
Just waiting for the client to sign it off.
[00:01:59.400] - Taylor
Pretty much yeah.
[00:02:01.950] - Gordon
Very good. Anything else important that's happened this week for you?
[00:02:04.950] - Taylor
I don't think so.
[00:02:06.240] - Gordon
OK. I've been working on Drayson Design's website again, and I've also been sending out some emails. So having a mail list is really important. And I had a mail list and it wasn't working particularly well; it was a very difficult mail list to manage with the software I was using. So I've put all of my Drayson Design customers into a new system and I'm sending them emails. I was asking for feedback originally using my new Drayson Design reviews product and earlier this week we sent out another email offering that service to all my customers so they can put it on their website. So this is a new mail list service that I'm testing out and it seems to be working really well so far. And I haven't even touched it really, there's a lot of automation in there, which is great for this sort of thing. So you can trigger emails to go out when people take certain actions. So it could be if they interact with your email or they don't interact with your email, then you can send them a different email. And if they visit a particular page on your website, etc etc. There's an awful lot going on there and I'm just loving all the facilities that are going to be available for me. Automation, as we were saying last week, is really important in your business. And that's taken up most of my week, in fact. But I have managed to come up with a couple of tips and information for you guys. So two things as far as the internet goes. The first thing is GoDaddy had 28,000...
[00:03:50.530] - Taylor
Oh yeah, I just read that.
[00:03:51.630] - Gordon
Yeah, yeah that was, I think Wednesday that came out. 28,000 accounts have been compromised, which is, you know, terrible. It basically means anyone who's hosting with GoDaddy has had their details leaked. So if you are with GoDaddy, go check your passwords, go change your passwords, potentially look at moving your websites to a new host.
[00:04:16.746] - Taylor
Definitely advise that.
[00:04:17.880] - Gordon
Two companies here you can come and talk to. We're more than happy to host your websites. Drayson Design, on my side, I'll even move your website for free.
[00:04:27.830] - Taylor
Yeah, the same, and we can offer emails, custom emails as well with your domain name, so.
[00:04:35.570] - Gordon
Custom emails, what's that?
[00:04:36.890] - Taylor
So if you, instead of having like a Gmail, so you'd have 'yourbusiness@gmail.com,' which doesn't look, you know, very professional. You can have 'info@yourbusiness.com' or, you know, 'hello' or 'support@' whatever. And so it's more professional and you don't have to give away your personal email basically.
[00:04:57.380] - Gordon
Yeah. And you may already have that with GoDaddy or the host you're with, but it's really important to try and segment the email addresses so that you use them for a particular purpose. That way, if one of them does get compromised in any way, you can just shut it down. And you haven't then messed up all of the other emails that you really need, coming to your main email address. So that was the first big news this week. The second big news came, I think it was last week, in fact, Google Shopping. So if you've ever done a search on Google and it's brought up suggestions for products, that is called 'Google Shopping.' And originally a long time ago, it used to be free to be able to put your products into the Google shopping search engine. Then they started having it as a paid for product. So you actually had to pay to have your products shown in all the search results, which is not so good because you don't know if people are actually going to click on your links and actually purchase. So you're spending money without knowing that. But they are now going back to a free listing. So if you have a shop or an e-commerce website and you're selling products, this is going to roll out in the US first and then it will come to other countries. But you can prepare for it now. So make sure you've got a feed that will work with Google's shopping service, so that when it does come out in the UK or wherever you are listening to this, you're ready to be able to just push that feed live and get a load of new customers coming directly from Google, which is great, really, really good.
[00:06:40.190] - Taylor
Does it integrate with Woo Commerce? Does Woo Commerce...
[00:06:43.220] - Gordon
Yes, I believe you can create a feed from... Actually yes, definitely. You can create a feed from Woo Commerce. So anyone using WordPress and Woo Commerce, you can set up a feed that will work with Google Shopping.
[00:06:56.450] - Taylor
Or Shopify, some, quite a lot of people use Shopify these days.
[00:06:59.220] - Gordon
Yeah. Shopify will also work. Pretty much every e-commerce platform will allow you to have a feed that will work with Google Shopping, but now is the time to go and look at that and get it ready so that as soon as it lands in your country, UK for us, we can then just hit the button and it will go live and we'll start getting all those new search result engines and visitors.
[00:07:21.590] - Taylor
That's good, yeah. So what else have you been looking at?
[00:07:27.890] - Gordon
So, anything with you, first of all?
[00:07:29.900] - Taylor
I've been, I started a new website this week, which was for an IT solutions company and I've had this project for a couple of weeks now, and I've not been not wanting to start, but I've been struggling to find inspiration and trying to come up with a nice design that would work and suits the style and branding of the company and the kind of look they want to go for, based on the information I was given.
[00:08:03.990] - Gordon
From the customer?
[00:08:04.830] - Taylor
Yes. So sometimes, I mean, a couple of days ago, I was given, I'll send an email, I just sent off the first draught for a website and he came back with, "can we jazz it up a bit?" And they were his technical terms of what he wanted to do, for me to do on the website so...
[00:08:24.200] - Gordon
But this is why people come to people like us, you see, because they know what they, they know what they want, but they don't know the specifics, which is why they come to us. So when they say, you know, "I don't know quite, there's something wrong, but I don't know what it is, can you just jazz it up?" You know, it's not a great bit of feedback for a designer because it's difficult to know what they actually mean by that. But it gives you gives you an idea of what sort of path you need to go down.
[00:08:55.020] - Taylor
So that was interesting. I'll try and see what I can do with that. But yes, I was stuck on what to do and which direction to go in. So I was looking around. I had the client send me a couple of different websites that they liked and I kind of just kind of mix and matched the bits that he liked and put them together in a way that worked. And one thing I did, I did know this already, but one thing that really can make or break a website is imagery. There was a design style that I liked that, and the client liked, and I've done a mock up of it, but then when I put placeholder images it just looked absolutely terrible. And as soon as I'd found these nice images to go alongside it, it completely transformed the page and just made it look ten, hundred times better and it turned the design that I thought, "actually this isn't going to be, look very good," turned into "actually this looks like something really nice." So imagery is a big important part for a website. So one thing I would say is if you're giving content to a web designer or making your own website, make sure you have high quality images. The text doesn't have to be as good, but imagery will go a long, long way.
[00:10:16.290] - Gordon
The text is easier to tweak than the images.
[00:10:18.600] - Taylor
Yeah, but the images will go a long, long way in making your website look more professional and better if they're high quality, because it's the first thing people look at. They don't look at text, they look at images.
[00:10:27.990] - Gordon
Well it's why people watch television rather than listening to the radio when they're at home.
[00:10:31.770] - Taylor
Or reading.
[00:10:32.520] - Gordon
Yeah. Well, no, people do read, but they have the images in their head. They choose to do that. But as far as, you know, selling a product or getting people's interest, images do grab the interest a lot quicker than text does.
[00:10:50.220] - Taylor
Definitely.
[00:10:51.660] - Gordon
So it's very interesting. You've brought that up, actually, because we had a question from one of our viewers who said, "how do you start a design?" Which is a really, really interesting question. And for me, the start of my design process is to find out what the end goal is. So if I am approached by someone and asked to create a poster, for example, then I need, then the aim of the poster is quite straightforward: it's to get people to buy tickets to go to an event or it's to inform them of something that might be happening or something that's going to affect people. And so the the end goal is quite straightforward. But it's not always. For example, a business card. Now, if someone comes to me for a business card, I need to know who they want to give these business cards to and what they want the customer to think when they get this business card. So for me, the start of a design process starts at the end. I need to find out what the product, what the design that I'm creating has got to do. Now it might be, with a business card, that it's going to create a certain emotion; it might be that it's going to just be informative; it might be that it's just going to send people to a website; it might be that it sends into a form so that they can capture details. There could be loads and loads of different things that a design is going to be used for. And sometimes, now this is really difficult, sometimes a design is going to be used for multiple things, and then that makes it even more difficult because a decision that you would make to push a customer or a visitor or someone viewing the artwork in one direction could push them away from another aim that this card is going to have, so it's it's a really difficult process, but it's really important for the customer to know what it is they want to achieve. So whenever you are thinking of designing something yourself, or having it designed for you, have a think; why am I doing this? What is the aim? What do I want to happen when people see this design?
[00:13:20.750] - Taylor
Yep.
[00:13:20.750] - Gordon
And that will really, really help the designer and you, if you're designing it yourself, to make the decisions you need to push the customer in the direction you need them to go.
[00:13:32.080] - Taylor
Yeah, that's a good point. And then after that, it would be using the content that you get given to decide where things are and how they're laid out as well.
[00:13:43.960] - Gordon
Yeah, and if the, if there's a brand; if there's an image; if there's guidelines you have to already follow because you are doing a design that is part of something bigger, for example, if it's a business they're going to have a logo, they're going to have a colour scheme, they're going to have a typeface that they use. And if you're a company and you don't have those, now's the time to sit down and work out what they are, because to make a cohesive brand, you need to make sure you stick with certain things. For example, Drayson Design, we use blue; we have a light bulb as our logo for coming up with great ideas, that's the aim; and we have a typeface that we use on the logo and on the website as well. It just brings everything together, so the business cards will be the same; any flyers that we design are going to be the same; any adverts that we do online, they're all going to be the same. And it just means that when a customer sees one part of your branding and then they see another part of your branding, they know they're in the right place because it looks similar.
[00:14:55.000] - Taylor
It's like if you go on the Apple website or see any Apple advert it's always white with a lot of negative space. And you can instantly, even if you took the Apple logo away, you could instantly tell that it was an Apple product or something just because of the negative space Apple use or, for example, what's another good company?
[00:15:13.870] - Gordon
And in fact, Apple are in a really good position because their brand awareness is so big now that all they need is that little shape with the little leaf hanging out of it and you've got Apple. That's all you need.
[00:15:26.020] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:15:26.320] - Gordon
It's such a simple design, but so recognisable.
[00:15:29.350] - Taylor
I'm trying to think of another one.
[00:15:30.430] - Gordon
Oh, lots. I mean, so many brands. Looking at big brands is actually a really good way to see what they've done and how you can adapt the ideas that they're using for your business. Nike is a great example, just a swoosh. You know, it's a trademarked symbol, but you see that swoosh anywhere you know it's Nike.
[00:15:54.100] - Taylor
Yep. And Adidas with the slanted...
[00:15:57.190] - Gordon
Yep.
[00:15:57.560] - Taylor
Big blocks.
[00:15:58.510] - Gordon
Yeah, there's just loads. Actually, if you've got a good example of a really good brand that is instantly recognisable, leave us a comment below and let us know because other people can then go and look it up and see what it is you found in that design that you like, and it might inspire them.
[00:16:20.600] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:16:22.300] - Gordon
I think that's it for me.
[00:16:23.230] - Taylor
Yeah, that's it from me this week as well.
[00:16:25.270] - Gordon
So we had two bits of news for you today. One was the Google Shopping and one was the GoDaddy hack. We'll put notes and links for that in the show notes so you can go and read up on those. I am, I can be found at draysondesign.com.
[00:16:43.600] - Taylor
And I can be found at thecreativetinker.com.
[00:16:46.690] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. Don't forget to like and subscribe. We've got our YouTube channel and Facebook. The quicker we get a hundred subscribers on YouTube, the quicker we can, sorry on Facebook, the quicker we can get our own name. I think it's the same on YouTube as well, so go subscribe to both, that just makes life easy.
[00:17:10.450] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:17:10.450] - Gordon
Details are on the screen. Until next week, it's goodbye from Gordon at Drayson Design.
[00:17:15.310] - Taylor
And it's goodbye from Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:17:18.430] - Gordon
Bye everyone.
[00:17:18.850] - Taylor
Goodbye.
[00:17:19.310] - Gordon
Bye.
