[00:00:46.640] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:47.150] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:47.630] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:49.640] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:51.620] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon" Episode 12. Can't believe how quickly the time's going. And before you say anything, before you say, Taylor, have you noticed any change?
[00:01:04.730] - Taylor
You've shaved.
[00:01:06.290] - Gordon
Ah, no, no. I've got a jumper on because it's summer. British summer, you need jumpers you see, it's got cold all of a sudden. And yes, you're right, I have also shaved. I put it on to Facebook to see what people thought, whether I should keep the beard and the moustache or if I should shave it all off. And it was really split, actually.
[00:01:26.810] - Taylor
Yeah?
[00:01:26.810] - Gordon
Yeah. Lots of people saying it suited me. Lots of people saying keep it. Two comments, though, made me decide to get rid of it. The first was that someone said, in fact my sister said, that I would need brand new publicity photos for everything I do, which is exactly right and a lot of work. And the second thing is someone said that, or several people said that I looked really grown up now and I don't want that to happen. I don't want to be known as a grown up. Honestly.
[00:01:58.760] - Taylor
I guess you could say it was a close shave.
[00:02:00.440] - Gordon
It was a cl... It was. Thank you for that.
[00:02:04.100] - Taylor
Can I also just apologise for last week. You decided to say goodnight at the end. If you didn't see that, or you don't know what we're talking about, go and have a look at our last episode. I found it funny. I was laughing for ages after. But yeah, can I just apologise for that. So yeah.
[00:02:21.170] - Gordon
Yeah. So if you didn't see it, go and watch the end. For some reason I thought it was the evening time when in fact it was about twenty past one in the afternoon. So yeah. I don't know why, it must have been darker than it should be. Maybe that's what it is. Anyway, welcome to our new viewers and welcome to our existing viewers. This is the show where we talk about things that have been happening to us over the last seven days in our businesses, or things that are of interest that are happening in the world, or things that we just want to tell you about.
[00:02:56.870] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:02:57.440] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:02:57.920] - Taylor
So what've you been up to this week. Anything interesting before we get started?
[00:03:00.670] - Gordon
Yes. So this week I want to discuss the use of videos on your website and for your business. We touched upon this a little bit in a previous episode, but I thought I would leave it 'til now to elaborate a bit more. So first of all, video on a website. Now, a few years ago, sort of six or seven years ago, having a video on your website was a momentous task. You had to go and get yourself a camera crew to come and film whatever it is you wanted, whether that be a piece to camera, where you're talking, like a documentary style video.
[00:03:49.190] - Taylor
Trailer.
[00:03:49.190] - Gordon
Trailer. Yeah. All these, or any video you wanted to have on your website required you to go out and get a crew of people to come and film it for you. Then they'd edit it. And then they would attempt to compress it to the point where it was small enough to then go onto a website and be downloaded by people, using a lot slower internet at the time, so that they could actually watch it and wouldn't give up watching it halfway through because it was buffering. Well, those days are well and truly gone. We have access to an awful lot of tools now that allow us to do video very quickly, very easily, and in some cases, live, like we are with you. We have been asked by a couple of people what we're using to video ourselves. And we've got a couple of things. I'll just explain our little set up here. We have our camera, which is on an iPhone X. So we're filming in 4K, even though the resulting video, when it's streamed is only 1080P. We also have a microphone just above us, just here, which is going into a laptop and then the laptop is what's streaming it for us. So it's very simple set up. We don't have any lights set up; we're just using the lights in our lounge. We actually have two sets of lights and we've got both of them on; one overhead of us and one that's further down into the room, which we're using to sort of reflect onto our, the front of us, so we don't get lots of shadows and things. We haven't actually added any lighting apart from that. We could do. I have lighting we could use, but every time we have to put this up for Friday afternoon, it takes time to do and we want to try and make sure that the videos we do for you have good content and look reasonable rather than spending an awful long time on it and getting a brilliant image, and not actually having any time left to figure out what the content is or what we're going to say to you, what we're going to impart or discuss. So back to how videos work for you. Depending on what you use the internet for, will depend very much on what you can use video to do for you. Now, if we look at me as an entertainer, there are several ways that I use video. I use video when I'm out at a venue, at a gig, and maybe I'm all set up, ready to go. And people haven't arrived yet. And so I do a little video, which I normally will do into my phone. So I'll actually record it into my phone rather than going live. Because sometimes you don't know where you're going to be. You're going to be in a place that maybe has really bad signal, and what you don't want is to stream something and then find that halfway through the stream it cut out and it didn't work. Sadly, I had this exact problem when I was in Dallas. In Texas. I was live streaming on YouTube, on Facebook. And I was talking about the place I was at, which was right outside the book repository where JFK was shot. And I was sort of giving a little bit of information as to where I was, showing people around and finished my live stream. And when I got back to the hotel and reviewed it, most of it hadn't gone through because the signal was so bad. And it's not something I could go back and do again. It was a one off. If I had recorded it into my phone and then uploaded it at a later date, that would have been great because then I would have had everything and I'd have been able to review it there and then just to make sure it was recording. So, gigs is a good place. Anything with a story. Videos are great for telling a story. So, at a gig I could tell a story about why I'm there or what the event is; whether I've been to work for these people before; anything funny that might have happened previously; an unusual situation maybe I find myself in. We're in lockdown, we're not, we're coming out of lockdown. The rules are relaxing, but it is still advised to stay at home. And as a children's entertainer, I'm allowed to do garden parties for up to six people, including myself, with a social distance. And last weekend, I got to do an event at somebody's house. And their garden was a front garden. They had a path that led up to their front door with a bit of grass on the right hand side, a lot more glass on the left hand side and flower beds all the way down the side of the path. So I decided that with that situation, I would set myself up on the right hand side where the smaller bit of grass was, and I would set up my speaker and my microphone. Really important, so I didn't have to shout. I could just use the microphone and amplify that so that I wasn't having to raise my voice, which also helps with the social distancing. And all of my audience, the five people I was entertaining, were on the other side of the path on the grassy section. We played games, we did a magic show, I did a two hour party for them, for five people. And it's the first time I can honestly say I've done a show with a path and two flower beds between me and the audience. It was quite an unusual situation and I took advantage of that by doing some video on my Facebook group, on my Facebook page I should say. And I did exactly what I just said before, I videoed it. I recorded it into the phone and then I uploaded it while the phone was not being used, during the show and the party. And so it was up there ready for anyone who wanted to go and view it. And it's nice that that video was done, so that I could inform people that garden parties were possible. Now, you could have lots of reasons for wanting video. It could just be a quick tip, you know, it could be something you've just found, or you've come across and you think, "do you know what my customers, my friends, the people I do business with, they might find this of interest." So just get on your phone, do a 30 second, one minute video, upload it and you'll find that there's some content that is going to be of use to some people. And because it's on the internet, it's going to help with driving traffic to your website. And more importantly, it will show that you are the expert in your field. So people like to know that the people they're dealing with, know what they're talking about. And if you've got lots and lots of videos, even if they're only 30 seconds long, with tips and hints and 'this is how you do things,' then people are going to say, "this guy knows what they're talking about," he or her are talking about. "We want them to do work for us."
[00:12:01.340] - Taylor
So there's another type of video you can have on your website, which a lot of people that sell software, so they've got a product or something they will use, which is, are like 'explainer videos,' which are more like animations, and they're really good for providing information to your customers about, and explaining what your product is, what you do, and they're becoming really popular, actually.
[00:12:25.850] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:12:26.210] - Taylor
I know quite a few companies that do it and they do drive conversions in a way.
[00:12:32.060] - Gordon
And normally that is done with, if it's a software, it's done with a screen capture. So you're not using your phone for this, you're just using the screen on your computer and you're capturing that while you're talking about things and a voice-over that goes over the top, which could be recorded at the same time.
[00:12:50.000] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:12:50.690] - Gordon
A few years ago, it was quite common to have explainer videos with these sort of whiteboard animations. You know what I mean by that?
[00:12:58.820] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:12:59.090] - Gordon
So you would have sort of cartoony type graphics appear and a hand that looked like it was drawing them, and then writing text. And then that would all be wiped clean and you'd talk about the next bit of your video. They seem to have, those don't seem to be as popular at the moment anymore. But they are still available. Another use for video would be as a trailer for something. So if you've got an event coming up; or you've got a product launch; or you've got a new product, which is not being launched, but it's just something you've got in stock; or you've got a gig; or you've got a show... Um, what else would you need a trailer for Taylor?
[00:13:46.040] - Taylor
Movie?
[00:13:46.890] - Gordon
Movie. Yeah. I mean, movies do it. I mean, that's a prime example. They use trailers to advertise their films. And I can guarantee the majority of people who go to watch a film are going for one of two reasons. One is that they like the actor or the director or somebody who's involved in the film, and they trust that person that the film will be a good film. Or, more commonly, they will have seen the trailer or read the book. More often than not, it's going to be the trailer. Quite often people who've read the book don't go and see films because they don't like the adaptation. The interpretation. That's a good word. But yeah, the trailer is what most people will see that will convince them, or sell them on the idea, of going to the cinema to watch that film. And that is why you see trailers before the main feature of the film you're going to see, so that they can sell you on other films and get you to come back and watch those as well. So yeah, trailers is another really good use of video.
[00:15:03.420] - Taylor
Ok, yeah.
[00:15:04.790] - Gordon
So just very quickly, because I realize this section is, is quite a big section, I mean video on, for your business, not just on websites but for your business, is a huge subject and we may actually come back and talk about it again. But these days, uploading your video, to either YouTube or Vimeo, is definitely the way to go. Or Facebook. So the three different places you can do it. Facebook used to like YouTube videos and it used to play YouTube videos in a feed, but now it will link to the YouTube video and take you away from Facebook, and it will show it to you on the YouTube website. I don't believe you can actually see YouTube videos on Facebook anymore.
[00:16:01.040] - Taylor
I'm not sure either.
[00:16:02.010] - Gordon
Ok, not entirely sure, but I think that is the case. The reason they did that, is because they want you to upload the video directly to Facebook, because then it's a native video and it's a video that Facebook have control of. They have all the data, they're not linking out to another site. So native YouTube videos is one way you can do it, another way to put it onto YouTube. If you want it to be a public video, that means that anybody can see it. You have the rights to allow it to be embedded or not. So if you don't want your video to be seen anywhere other than YouTube, then you can turn off embedding, which means that people can't post it on their website; they can't post it on Facebook; they can't post it anywhere. If it's public, they can. So they can take the link, they can take the embed code, they can put it onto their website, they can put it on Facebook, they can put it anywhere they like. So your content may be shown on other people's websites, which may or may not be what you want. You can also specify whether that video on YouTube is 'public' or 'hidden' or 'private.' So public we've already discussed, hidden is the same, what's the, what's the wording. It's not called hidden, it's called...
[00:17:29.780] - Taylor
'Unlisted.'
[00:17:31.040] - Gordon
Unlisted. Thank you, Taylor. It's an unlisted video, which basically means it won't show in any results on YouTube. But if anyone has the link, they will be able to see that video, view that video, and you can also embed that video somewhere else as long as you've given the rights for embedding. The last one is Vimeo. Oh, sorry, let's just finish off with YouTube. The last one is 'private,' only you can see those, no one else can see those videos. Not so useful, but that is an option for you. Another option is Vimeo. Vimeo is a paid for service where as YouTube is free, and Vimeo you need to be a business account, I think if it's a business use. So you can have personal account for personal videos, which you can put on a personal website. If there's any way of you making money from your website, you have to have a business account. The advantage with Vimeo, is that you can specify which domains a video can be shown on, so you can put your website address in and have it only allowed to be viewed on your website, so that your competitors or anyone else can't just come and take that video, plonk it onto their own website as content for them. So that's a really, really important point, and there's a really good use case for that, especially if you're doing video courses, which is something we haven't even touched on and something that I will come back to. That is something you want to keep on your website, probably behind a paywall of some sort so people have to pay to be able to view the video. Oh, my goodness there's a lot, and I haven't even talked about subtitling. That we will come to later. So I'm going to make a note for myself here. We've got subtitling, we've got video courses. And there was something else that just came to mind then. Oh, voiceovers. Those three things I will talk about in another video. Phew. That was a lot of content for you there. I hope you got something out of that. Taylor, what have you got to talk about today?
[00:19:45.410] - Taylor
So this week I've just mainly been putting websites live, and trying to find a new workflow to improve my quality of work and also the speed which I do things but without compromising on quality. So I've been looking at kind of using mock up applications like 'Adobe XD,' 'Figma' and things like that, to design the websites first, and design them first before I go to build them, which... There are lots of different ways people build websites, so you can kind of either use, build and design as you go; or you have two separate teams, the design team and a development team; or you kind of, you can do both where you design it first and then develop it, but on your own. And I've been kind of playing around with these different tools and yeah, starting to design websites before building them purely...
[00:20:47.380] - Gordon
And in actual fact, I owe you an apology. For those who were watching a previous video, I said, and this is true, this is the recommended way of doing it, and that is to design for mobile first. And I said that this is what you should do. And this is the advice that we're all given. However, I've been building a new website just this last week, and I looked at it and decided I would do desktop first, make sure the customer was happy with the desktop version, and then optimize it for mobile devices. And when we spoke before, I actually chastised you.
[00:21:29.980] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:21:29.980] - Gordon
By saying, "no! You should be doing mobile first." And I realized on this particular occasion that doing desktop first was going to be easier for me. And so therefore, I apologize to you, because I just went completely against the advice that I gave. Although, that is the advice that people are being pushed towards, and that is to design for mobile first.
[00:21:56.080] - Taylor
What I would say is, not specifically designing straight for mobile first, because it does limit you in terms of when you try an upscale a mobile version, you will struggle a lot more.
[00:22:07.420] - Gordon
It's true. And that's the problem I was having, which is why I designed for desktop first.
[00:22:11.110] - Taylor
Because when you have, if you have three columns, if you're building on mobile first you only have one column most of the time. And so upscaling you'll mostly only have one column and it will look samey.
[00:22:21.730] - Gordon
And you want to see what it looks like as a three column, just to make sure that's going to look right before you then optimize it to show one column on a mobile device.
[00:22:30.970] - Taylor
So, what I would say in regards to that would be, design the desktop first, but don't skimp out on mobile. Make sure you spend a good amount of time to make sure mobile looks good. And you're not just, it's not just like a 5, 10 minute task at the end really, making sure you're, you spend that.
[00:22:50.480] - Gordon
Oh, it's definitely not 5, 10 minutes.
[00:22:52.120] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:22:52.360] - Gordon
I mean we spent a good two hours, I would say getting a menu to work on all devices. And I mean that was, there was a lot of custom coding going on there just to get it to work properly. But now it works, it's amazing. It looks great. Really, really good. And what I would say is that when you when you start building as many websites as we build, you will very quickly be able to design something on a desktop and know in the back of your head that moving that into a mobile situation, responsive design, is going to be pretty straightforward. And you already know in the back of your head exactly what it's going to look like.
[00:23:36.860] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:23:37.210] - Gordon
So you are actually building for mobile in your head as you're building the rest of the site for desktop.
[00:23:44.230] - Taylor
Yeah, I'd say that a lot of, when you're building for desktop or anything really, you're always thinking about, "how will this look on mobile?" And you're making sure that, you know, what you build isn't going to be a pain to, not replicate, but adjust to make sure it looks good on mobile.
[00:24:02.110] - Gordon
For example, a long table is going to look great on a desktop, but on a mobile, you have to make sure you've got a plan as to how that's going to look when you do a mobile. And that's something else that we looked at just recently as well, finding a way to do that. And I think the solution we came up with works really well, actually.
[00:24:18.700] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:24:19.180] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:24:20.260] - Taylor
So yeah, that's that's pretty much it. And just touching back on...
[00:24:23.860] - Gordon
Just go back on the sort of the sketch and Adobe XD, just a little bit more. So these aren't working websites, this is just what it looks like. And how does it work? Because I've never used them. Do you have sort of blocks that you put in?
[00:24:39.100] - Taylor
You can, it's a bit like using Photoshop basically, but it's more geared towards building websites. So you've got a bit more limited number of tools, but they're more specialized. And what it allows you to do is, it allows you to kind of add spacing per se, which you can do in, which you would do in web development, rather than adding a gap in which would be Photoshop, which is kind of how it differentiates and things.
[00:25:05.560] - Gordon
OK.
[00:25:06.160] - Taylor
But the advantage it has is you're not doing the work twice because a lot of times I'll build a website, you know, obviously there's always going to be tweaks and stuff, but a lot of the tweaks can be done within the design stage rather than the development stage, which for me it's a lot easier to have a mock up of the website and just build it straight from the design, rather than kind of having to build it and playing around with it as I go.
[00:25:33.610] - Gordon
And are you showing the mock-ups to the client and making sure they're happy with it...
[00:25:38.530] - Taylor
Yes.
[00:25:38.530] - Gordon
Before you then build the site?
[00:25:40.030] - Taylor
So that's the reason for it is, they can then say, "hang on, I don't want it to be there. Can you move it, you know, into the centre, maybe." And I'll go "yeah," I can just, and just click and then dragging, rather than having to go into the code and, you know, mess around with it, that way.
[00:25:52.860] - Gordon
Which takes a lot longer than just dragging something that's drag and drop.
[00:25:56.770] - Taylor
So, yeah, that's, that was my reason for moving over to this new workflow. And it's been working well, so we'll see how it goes and see if I can improve the quality of my work as well.
[00:26:08.440] - Gordon
Ok.
[00:26:08.730] - Taylor
Because I'm thinking a lot more about the design, in terms of where things are and like customer conversion and things, which we should talk about in another episode.
[00:26:18.840] - Gordon
And I think there's several different tools that are out there, isn't there? There's Adobe XD, which I believe is free, but I'm not entirely sure.
[00:26:27.590] - Taylor
They have a free version.
[00:26:28.590] - Gordon
Free version, ok. There's Sketch Up, is that right?
[00:26:32.010] - Taylor
Just "Sketch," Sketch Up's a 3D tool.
[00:26:34.020] - Gordon
Right.
[00:26:34.020] - Taylor
So you've got "Sketch," "Figma." I think there's another one, but I can't think what it is off the top of my head.
[00:26:40.630] - Gordon
And what we'll do is, we'll find the links and put them in the show notes, so that if you're interested in looking up these various different softwares, you can do so. What would you recommend as a starter one for people?
[00:26:56.880] - Taylor
I mean, if you've got Photoshop, that's a good starter. Or I know some of them are, you get up to two projects at a time before you have to start paying. So Adobe XD is free so you can use that pretty much as long as you want.
[00:27:09.970] - Gordon
OK, so Adobe XD sounds like a good place to start, to see if this is a sort of workflow that would work for you.
[00:27:17.220] - Taylor
Yeah, I think that's everything then.
[00:27:18.630] - Gordon
That's everything for you?
[00:27:19.500] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:27:19.890] - Gordon
Well, that's everything from me. I think we've got an awful lot of content in this video. Hopefully you've found something of interest. I've got some notes for things that we're going to talk about in future episodes. But if you have something that you want us to talk about, maybe you have a question, or a problem, or you're just interested in our views on something, then please leave comments on the video. You can do that on Facebook or YouTube. We will look at those. As always, you can find us on YouTube, Facebook and of course, our own website now, which is thisweekwith.co.uk, where all of our episodes are available to you. You can also click on the link to find us on Stitcher Radio, Apple podcasts, so you can listen to the audio of this instead of having to look at us, which some people have found is a better option, especially for this side of the screen. So until next week, thank you for joining us. My name's Gordon, I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:28:32.490] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:28:35.280] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:28:36.120] - Taylor
Goodbye.
