[00:00:10.870] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:11.320] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:11.710] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:13.510] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:15.640] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast, where we talk about things that have been affecting our businesses in the last seven days. So Happy New Year to everybody.
[00:00:28.810] - Taylor
It's been a bit longer than seven days.
[00:00:30.420] - Gordon
It has been a bit longer. We did something on Christmas Day just to say hello to everybody. And then we missed out on New Year's Eve. And we also, was it was it New Year's Eve or New Year's Day? New Year's Day, wasn't it?
[00:00:43.470] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:00:43.950] - Gordon
We missed out on New Year's Day and we missed out last week as well. But we're back. We're back. We had a week off last week just to get our heads around all the things that happen in the new year when you have a break, with lots of emails to catch up on.
[00:00:59.010] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely.
[00:01:00.600] - Gordon
Lots of work mounting up. And we didn't really get a chance to say hello to everyone. So we apologise if you were waiting for last week's podcast and it didn't happen. Sorry about that. But we are back now. It's been a busy old time, as it always is. We've had a few changes going on around here. We invested in a new stand for our microphone, which is up here. If you watched one of our previous episodes, you'd have seen the microphone stand just falling. It just got to the point where...
[00:01:40.400] - Taylor
Overused.
[00:01:41.220] - Gordon
We couldn't use it anymore. That's right. So it's gone to the microphone stands in the sky.
[00:01:46.830] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:01:48.270] - Gordon
We had a little ceremony, a minute's silence.
[00:01:51.450] - Taylor
And then into the trash it went.
[00:01:52.740] - Gordon
And then into the trash it went. Yes. In fact, we've got a brand new one now. And the issue that we had when we were setting this up, is we were looking just to check to see how it looked, and this is a much bigger stand. It's a lighting stand, isn't it?
[00:02:06.360] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:02:07.050] - Gordon
And we're using it with a microphone and it comes with a sandbag, although we don't have any sand yet, so we have just another bag on it. And we've moved it to the different position, and we realised...
[00:02:18.150] - Taylor
That it caused shadows because it was a completely different location and because we only have kind of ceiling lights, lighting us, they were coming down and casting a shadow of the microphone.
[00:02:31.470] - Gordon
Yeah. And we had these sort of, these lines going across our faces when we were just doing sort of a check to see how it looks. So hopefully we've moved it forward, further forward than we normally do. And it's the stand is on my side now, whereas before it was on Taylor's side. So hopefully there's no horrible shadows here.
[00:02:51.600] - Taylor
And the audio is still good.
[00:02:52.740] - Gordon
And the audio is still good, hopefully. Please let us know in the comments, and let us know how it looks and sounds for you. Is there anything else that happened over the Christmas and New Year period Taylor that's affected your business?
[00:03:07.010] - Taylor
I don't think so.
[00:03:08.730] - Gordon
There's been I mean, this is the time of year now that we have self-employed tax returns. So that's something I've been dealing with.
[00:03:19.950] - Taylor
Yes, so I have my tax return, but because of, I'd only started last year, I hadn't earned over the threshold.
[00:03:25.980] - Gordon
Year before.
[00:03:26.700] - Taylor
Yeah. Sorry, year before, 2019, year and a half ago about.
[00:03:30.660] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:03:31.830] - Taylor
I didn't earn over the tax threshold. So I, I still had to submit one, but I didn't get taxed or anything.
[00:03:38.100] - Gordon
Yeah but you still have to submit your accounts.
[00:03:39.890] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:03:40.230] - Gordon
And I had to submit my accounts. And even though magic has been very quiet for me during 2020, this is the 2019-2020 accounts, so I still have a tax bill to pay. But for those who are in self-employment and watch this in time, have a look and see if your 2020-2021 accounts are likely to be lower than before, because if so, you can reduce your payments on account which will save you a potential amount of money. It did for me at least. But my accounts are all in, the accountant has done the job and next year is going to be a lot quicker. I can do it in April so that I can sort out my July payment on account and hopefully we'll get that to be exactly right, and I won't be paying the tax office more than I need to. Which is always a good thing.
[00:04:34.710] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:04:35.100] - Gordon
Always a good thing. Anyway, onto our topics for the day. Would you like to start Taylor?
[00:04:41.190] - Taylor
So, this isn't a topic, but I just kind of wanted to talk about the new year, the new projects I'm working on. So kind of on the run up to Christmas and kind of in the Christmas period, I took on a lot of projects and I was in talks with a lot of people and scheduling them for like January, February time. So kind of hit the ground running with lots of new clients and people wanting to kind of get their website ready and done in the New Year, so you know, they can do it. And so we've been working on that, talking to clients. The TV has just turned on.
[00:05:16.440] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:05:18.600] - Taylor
Just turn that off quickly.
[00:05:19.800] - Gordon
Yeah, we can do that from here.
[00:05:21.180] - Taylor
There we go.
[00:05:21.180] - Gordon
I wonder why that was.
[00:05:24.510] - Taylor
Did it turn off?
[00:05:24.510] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:05:26.430] - Taylor
So yeah, I've been working with clients and talking with them in regards to kind of what they're looking for and making plans of action, so the first thing that I needed to do, was kind of have an 'onboarding session.' So, this is where I kind of learn about the client, learning about their company, what they're looking for and just kind of get to know them, so I can kind of get an idea of what the style and theme that they're trying to go for on their website.
[00:05:54.840] - Gordon
And not a lot of people do that.
[00:05:56.850] - Taylor
No.
[00:05:57.550] - Gordon
Not a lot of companies do that, so it's a really good thing to do, though, because otherwise, how do you know what sort, what will suit that particular company? It's not one style fits everybody is it?
[00:06:06.290] - Taylor
Yeah so, I mean, there are companies out there which will install like a base theme and just use it on every website and just change the content and colours. But I like to kind of make every website different and...
[00:06:18.150] - Gordon
Taylor it.
[00:06:18.690] - Taylor
Yeah. And make it bespoke to each client. So, you know, it is relevant to their company, and it's not just a general theme that has just been installed. And, you know, I actually learn a lot about the industry that I'm doing. So I mean, I've been doing, I've done a job listing recruitment website and I learnt a lot about recruitment and how the industry works. I'm currently building a window cleaning website, and I've learnt quite a lot of information about kind of, how window cleaners work, the kind of trade secrets and things like that. But, you know, obviously I can't say that because it's their secrets. But I learn a lot about lots of different types of businesses, which is, for me, really interesting.
[00:06:59.700] - Gordon
Yeah, it is, because it's not your business. And therefore, as an entrepreneur and someone who works for themselves, you're always wanting to learn more and you've got that sort of hunger for information.
[00:07:12.540] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely.
[00:07:13.890] - Gordon
Which I think is the difference between a company owner that enjoys what they do and someone who just plods along and get on with it and never really changes or wants to update anything. And I think there's a big difference there. Um, so yeah, I'm always wanting to learn as well, and I find learning about things that maybe I have no ability in, but I like to learn how things work. I've been watching some videos on on YouTube about construction and, you know, people building things out of wood and, you know, things that I just don't have the patience or knowledge for, or the skills, in fact. But I just love watching someone who does know what they're doing and who does it really well and sort of learn the sort of techniques they're using, just for my own knowledge, really.
[00:08:04.200] - Taylor
Yeah. So what about you, what about this week, what are you?
[00:08:06.900] - Gordon
So this week. So there's a couple of things. Let me just mention one thing that's been a breakthrough for me this week. And this is something you figured out, in fact. So on my new "Pip Kennedy" website, which again, hasn't been released yet, hasn't been launched. It's mainly because, oh, I should talk about my big rebuild. I'll talk about my rebuild next week. We'll do that next week. But one of the things with "Pip Kennedy" is I've got a 'wedding magic' page. And on this page I've got three different packages and the packages have different prices. And there's a 'contact me' or 'make an enquiry,' 'check availability,' in fact, button on each of them, and they go to the same form. So it basically pops up a form and says, tell me about your event. And what I wanted to do, is when that form was filled in and sent to me, I wanted to know which package they'd clicked on, so that I knew which one they were interested in. And I didn't want to ask the customer because they've already clicked on a button and chosen a package. And I wanted to be able to do it without them having to enter anything. And you figured out a really great little system which allows me to have a parameter that's attached to the button that launches the form. And that will send some information to the form in a hidden field, which then sends it to me as part of the email. And that is a revelation to me. It's going to just open so many doors for things that we can do. And you've found a use for it already.
[00:09:51.140] - Taylor
Yeah, so there's a couple of things that I thought of. The first one was for, if you're doing any advertisements or any sort of marketing where you're doing either split testing and things like that, where you want to be able to track the conversions that you're having. And so, you know, you have a landing page which, you know, you're trying to get them to click on the call to action, but you have these dotted about down the page. You know, if you could target that and give each button a reference about what the button is, or where it is, so that you know, which button they've clicked on. If you are popping up the call to action in a pop up, for example, then you have great information about, ok so how far are they scrolling down. Do I need this rest of the content, if everyone is clicking on the second one and not reading the rest of the content? And you can use it for real insights in terms of being able to find out more information. A bit like "Hot Jar," which is a, it tracks, how far people scrolled, and where they use their mouse and stuff like that. And yes, so it could be really useful for that.
[00:10:54.530] - Gordon
Allows you to optimise your pages.
[00:10:56.390] - Taylor
Yeah, exactly. For kind of conversion.
[00:10:58.100] - Gordon
Conversions yeah.
[00:10:59.240] - Taylor
And then the other one was, creating an events website. So with WordPress, there are lots of people that have created events plug-ins and things like that, and they're fine. However, they lack one thing, which is customisation, and it's very difficult to add flexibility and customisation in, because there's so many different parameters whenever you build a website of, "what features do they need?" "What features don't they need?" And so with not like built plug-ins - they have kind of everything, but they don't always have some stuff that you do want and they have stuff that you don't want. So, I kind of took this idea of being able to pass a parameter into a form, to create an events website in which people can sign up and have forms, have pay as well. So because we can pass data into a form, you could pass the price of a ticket, for example, into that form. However, the one issue I had was the kind of validation. Because anyone could go into the HTML and change the price, for example. And that's obviously not good because people can then pay zero for a £50 ticket.
[00:12:11.750] - Gordon
So this is basically sending your price through to a payment gateway, so that people actually end up having to pay that amount.
[00:12:18.940] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:12:19.260] - Gordon
And if they can hack it just by changing some of the code, that's not going to be helpful to...
[00:12:25.610] - Taylor
No and it's not secure either.
[00:12:26.750] - Gordon
The website owner.
[00:12:27.590] - Taylor
And the issue was kind of being able to pass that into it so that it didn't. Oh my alarm's going off. Lots of distractions today. But yeah, so being able to pass that kind of information in, but making sure it's secure and not having to create multiple forms, for example, for each different.
[00:12:46.160] - Gordon
You don't want to do that, because you could have hundreds of forms.
[00:12:49.010] - Taylor
Because if you have hundreds of events. And so what I did is I used something called 'validation.' And this basically is just before you press the submit button and it goes through, it does a check and so it does a check to say, get the current page on and get the input for the price or whatever the input field and do a check for the current page's actual input field or data value. And if they match, then fine, that's great. It means it hasn't been changed. However, if it doesn't, then throw back a warning to say you've changed some of the HTML, you can't submit it.
[00:13:27.290] - Gordon
Or I guess you could you could just change it back again and just send them straight through. So even if they have changed it, it just takes them straight through to the correct price.
[00:13:35.760] - Taylor
Yeah, that could also be another...
[00:13:38.390] - Gordon
Just one less step, isn't it?
[00:13:40.220] - Taylor
And then the last thing was being able to track tickets, which is another important thing for people that want to sell a certain number of tickets. And so, again, I did this by validation. And once the submission had actually gone through and it was successful, I took one away from the total value of the tickets.
[00:13:59.630] - Gordon
Or the number of tickets that were purchased away from the number of available tickets, so if they bought four you want to take four away.
[00:14:06.320] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:14:07.130] - Gordon
That's great.
[00:14:07.650] - Taylor
So, yeah that's what I was working on.
[00:14:09.050] - Gordon
Really useful. And that was a real revelation for how we could do it ourselves rather than having to go out and find a plug-in to do it, which was, you know, making life a lot easier.
[00:14:19.220] - Taylor
Yeah, because...
[00:14:19.940] - Gordon
And more flexible.
[00:14:20.850] - Taylor
Yeah, because there's nothing wrong with these plug-ins. They do the job. However, sometimes, you know, like I said, you get things that are unneeded, unwanted.
[00:14:28.310] - Gordon
Well, they do them the way that the plug-in creator has decided it needs to be done. And that may not suit your use case.
[00:14:35.600] - Taylor
Yeah. And it comes with kind of limitations of what can be done. And then you end up having to add onto it, which you might as well just do it yourself in the first place.
[00:14:45.230] - Gordon
It's true. So something I want to talk about this week, today I was going to say, is "Product Hunt," OK, now this is something you use?
[00:14:54.110] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:14:54.560] - Gordon
This is something I use. "Product Hunt" is a website that has product owners who submit their products to Product Hunt. And you have the product of the day, which is sort of like the most upvoted product that day. And it basically is a way of announcing new products. And as a as a user of it, I can see what has been launched and what's new and something that maybe I'm looking for. And it will come up and I'll be the first to know about it.
[00:15:30.740] - Taylor
Doesn't always have to be you publish them or submit them, you can be hunted. So...
[00:15:35.690] - Gordon
That's true.
[00:15:36.230] - Taylor
So people can find one of your...
[00:15:38.720] - Gordon
Someone has to submit it.
[00:15:39.960] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:15:40.280] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:15:40.700] - Taylor
But it's either by the owner or someone has hunted it where they found it and gone, OK, I want to publish this or submit it. And then normally the owner will get a notification and they'll write a bit of a description about, you know.
[00:15:52.760] - Gordon
And it's quite a well respected website as well. So people are quite proud to be on there. If their products are on there. They're really proud, if they become sort of a well loved product and become product of the day. And users can go in and they can say, "yeah, I use this, this is great" if it's an existing product and they can upvote it, which then sort of brings it to the attention of more people.
[00:16:20.870] - Taylor
It's good for exposure, isn't it?
[00:16:22.820] - Gordon
It's great for exposure.
[00:16:23.930] - Taylor
For smaller...
[00:16:24.410] - Gordon
And for discussion.
[00:16:25.430] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:16:25.910] - Gordon
So you can write comments underneath the product to say why you think this is going to be of use to you, or if you were to use it, why it has been of use to you. And all of a sudden other people who sort of are looking at it, "go, oh yeah, I hadn't thought of that." And it's a bit like a social proof for products. So instead of just going to a product's website and looking at what their sales blurb is all about, you can actually see what other people think of it and how they use it.
[00:16:54.980] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely.
[00:16:55.820] - Gordon
And especially if you follow other people and you sort of you have a similar like an interest to to what they like. If they come back and say, "this is a great product, go check it out," then you're more likely to go and look at it. So we'll put the link for this in the show notes. It's a free website to join. You can just go along and, I believe I haven't used this feature, but I think you can sort of give it an idea of what you like, and it'll email you when the new product comes along that sort of fits your criteria. So, again, it's a good way to be on the cutting edge and be sort of at the forefront of technology and get to use these things first.
[00:17:39.420] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:17:40.590] - Gordon
Plus, of course, if you're looking for a lifetime deal, they quite often have lifetime deals at the beginning of their cycle when they're launched. So that's another way of finding out about these new products.
[00:17:51.570] - Taylor
Yeah, I think that's everything then.
[00:17:53.070] - Gordon
That's happening from me. So thank you for watching. As always, if you've, if you've enjoyed our show, please like, subscribe and share from below.
[00:18:03.840] - Taylor
And you can also find all of our past episodes, the audio and video versions, on the website. Still hoping to add the search functionality however, I'm going to be re-doing it to make it more intuitive and also make it easier, the whole user experience, easier to watch, play. And hopefully we might be turning some of them into kind of blog posts so that we can get a bit of SEO traffic. And also, if you don't want to, you don't have time to hear or listen, watch or listen, you can obviously read it because I know some people do prefer to read.
[00:18:36.360] - Gordon
Yeah. So we're on Facebook, we're on YouTube and of course, the website. Please go and leave comments, like and share it with someone you think might be of interest. Make that your New Year's resolution. Share the content with someone who might benefit from what we have to say, in our...
[00:18:54.610] - Taylor
Episodes.
[00:18:55.060] - Gordon
Episodes. Thank you for joining us. We'll see you next week, Friday at 1 o'clock. Until then, my name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:19:03.630] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:19:05.880] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:19:06.300] - Taylor
Goodbye.
