[00:00:09.120] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.480] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.960] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.920] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.730] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. Welcome back to those who've been before and welcome to anyone who's new.
[00:00:27.010] - Taylor
Welcome.
[00:00:28.050] - Gordon
It's been a busy week. I say that every week, but we're always busy. That's why. Anything important news-wise?
[00:00:38.030] - Taylor
Not from me.
[00:00:38.880] - Gordon
No? Good. Shall we get straight into our topics then?
[00:00:41.770] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:00:42.170] - Gordon
Would you like to go first or shall I?
[00:00:44.020] - Taylor
I'll go first this week.
[00:00:45.020] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:00:45.840] - Taylor
So recently, GenerateBlocks brought out their new version, which was eight months worth of work. It was nearly a completely rewritten UI and things like that. And what they did is they added the classes system. So I have been spending the last, about two, three weeks rebuilding my starter site. I built it from scratch and I'm basically pulling in stuff from my previous site. But because of the new update, I had to reorganise, restructure the entire workflow of how I build sites. And it's taken a long time to figure out the best solution, make sure that I'm including everything that I need, but not everything that is specific to a lot of sites, but enough that gets me a good head start when I'm starting a new project.
[00:01:45.130] - Gordon
Do you want to give us an example of that?
[00:01:47.890] - Taylor
So I have a lot of the default templates built out. So things like your search results page, your archive pages, your single blog post, all of the colours, typography, spacing, border radiuses, box shadows. I've just set up as a base, and then every single site I can go in and modify them and tweak them to work for that project.
[00:02:16.120] - Gordon
Okay, and what have you had to change from your previous starter site?
[00:02:22.060] - Taylor
So because of the new classes system, it's now allowed us to essentially add multiple different classes and styles to one element. So before we had the global styles, which they still call it the global styles. However, you could only add one global style to each element. And so you could only add a spacing style, or you could only add one button style. And this meant you had to duplicate a lot of the work you'd previously done. Whereas now we can have a main button class, and then we can have a button primary and a button secondary or a button accent, and basically add on to our main button class. So if you want to change the overall button style, like your border radius, your padding and things, you can do that from the main button. But if you want to change things like the colours or the border colours or the the sizing and things like that, you can override the defaults that you've set up. And we can do this for all of the other different classes, other different styles, so that we don't have to duplicate a lot of the work. It's reduced the amount in my style sheet down a lot, so there's a lot less in there because it's all in the new UI editor. And yeah, overall, it's just a really nice experience. It makes things a lot more scalable, a lot more manageable using proper conventions of styling with classes. And yeah, just overall, really good.
[00:03:50.800] - Gordon
So it's actually going to be a lot easier for you to do what you want to do in the future with all these new changes, but it's taking a couple of weeks just to get it right and set up. And I'm sure once it's up and running, there'll be more tweaks that you find as you start to use it.
[00:04:09.250] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely. And there's a couple of new features I've added which have helped do things automatically. So, I have a function now that will automatically generate me a shade palette based on my primary colour. Which is nice so I don't have to go and figure out what shades to use and things like that. And I don't have to generate them manually, adding in all the colours. So I think that where there's a lot of things done automatically for me that are just set up and then I don't have to configure them after.
[00:04:44.180] - Gordon
And the nice thing about having a on the other side is that if you've got that all set up, whenever you start building a brand new website, you've done all the groundwork already, and it makes it a lot easier to get the site up and running quicker, isn't it?
[00:04:59.830] - Taylor
Yeah, and it's very easy to forget or miss stuff if you don't have them automatically set up. So I have a 404 page, for example, set up. And yes, it's been the same exact 404 page on most of my sites in the last six months or whatever. But it's something I don't have to remember. If there is a specific 404 template that I need to design, then I can obviously override and go in and change it. But it means that if I do forget it, or as in I didn't design something specifically, at least I have a decent default fall back. And that's the idea is that the defaults out of the box are better than the defaults for the theme, the Generate Press theme, but they're not super styled that they will only fit one website, for example.
[00:05:48.460] - Gordon
And this is one of the advantages to coming to a professional like yourself to do a website rather than doing it yourself, because these sort of little things that you're talking about now don't get forgotten and are part of the final website, which most people will not even know about, let alone create and set up. So, yeah, if you're building a one-off website, go to a professional, get them to do it properly, because you'll find that if they create it in a way and you talk to them about it that allows you to then add content in the future, it will be designed in a way that won't break anything. And you'll end up with a much better website for much longer.
[00:06:32.900] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:06:33.580] - Gordon
Anything else you want to say?
[00:06:35.130] - Taylor
I don't think so. It's just been very time consuming, mainly for the fact that I have to think about everything that I'm adding and then also think about stuff that I haven't added or I haven't even thought about. And that's the tricky part because it will always be changing; I'll always be updating it in the future. Once I finish it, it'll still been an ongoing project where, as I discover new ideas, new solutions and stuff, I'll add them in if they're good enough to be in the default starter site. But yeah, it's one of those things that you don't really know what you need until you've started. But because I've already built a starter site before, I have a good idea. But it's a completely new system and what I think works in the workflow maybe doesn't, or there's stuff that I've overlooked and thought, "actually, this is a pain, I need to make this easier."
[00:07:25.830] - Gordon
And I think that's something that everyone should take into account. If there's new features, or if something new comes out, or just if you've got a system that's currently working, just have a look at it again. Is there a better way to do things? Because we need to progress forward. And just because what we've done in the past has always worked doesn't mean it's the best way or should be the only way that we do things.
[00:07:49.990] - Taylor
Yeah, and I was working with one of my friends, Jake, on this, and it's been really helpful because the way that I was thinking about doing something, he's sometimes come along and said, "well, actually, do we need to do it that way or could we do it this way?" And there's been quite a few times where I've been going down this path of "this is how I need to do it?" And then actually him coming in and going, "actually, could we not just do it this way?" And then like, "oh, yeah, that could be a lot easier and simpler." It's always good to bounce off ideas as well, because what you think is the way you have to do it or need to do it, may not be that way.
[00:08:30.900] - Gordon
Very good. So moving on to my topic today. This was an idea that was sent to us by one of our viewers. And she basically said that she had been going to work every day and she puts the radio on in the car and there was an advert that came on every single day and she was listening to this advert and they said that this phone, I think it was, had a brand new UI and she was unaware of what UI meant. The only UI she knew of was urine infection, and she couldn't understand why a phone had a brand new urine infection, which obviously doesn't sound right. She's since found out that it's a 'user interface,' but it prompted her to contact me and say, "this is something that you could talk about." And I agree. The idea of talking to your customers in language that they understand. So for example, this advert was using UI, which it shouldn't have done. It should have said user interface, or even translated that technical term into something that the customers will understand and understand what it means for them. An ease of use would be a better way of talking about it. We've made it easier to use. That's what a UI does, isn't it? But we talk a lot to customers with code words, basically, things like SEO and SMTP. There's lots of acronyms and words that we use that mean everything to us. If I said those two to you, you'd know what I meant. But if I spoke to someone else and said, "What's your SMTP?" They'd be going, "Huh? My what?" So it may be that if you're talking to a user, that user is going to be a consumer. So this is business to consumer, business to customer. And you need to make sure that you aren't using wording that they're just not going to understand. And that includes putting it into quotes or emails or on your website, just making sure that everywhere that you use, potentially use, jargon that is meant for your industry is not being used to people that won't understand it. Now, if you're a business to business business or company, then it may be that the jargon that you use is going to be familiar to them, and they'll understand it because they're in the business. Not necessarily, but quite often that is the case. If I'm talking to other magicians, there are certain words and things that we talk about that most magicians will understand, and therefore it's okay to talk to them using that wording. One of the things that I used to do when I was employing a coder or developer, I would be the go-between. So I would listen to what the customer had in their mind as to what they wanted, and I knew what the developer was going to understand. So I was translating from normal speak to developer speak because I had enough knowledge to know what the developer needed to know, and I had enough knowledge to understand what the customer was requiring, to be able to talk to them. Now, that doesn't always happen because developers are very specific people. They understand specific things, and it does get very complicated if you start using the wrong wording. Now, it might be the right wording in the customer's head, but that will translate to the wrong wording in the developer's head, which is where I came in and managed to make sure that the translation happened okay. And I was doing that a lot. And I found that it was really important to be specific. So especially from the customer's point of view, "tell me specifically what you're looking for and what this needs to do, and then I will be able to tell the developer what they need to do." And it's something that we just take for granted. And because we have certain terminology that we use every day, we forget that there's a huge number of people out there that just will have no idea what we're talking about. So just look at all of the customer-facing websites and emails and literature that you have, and also get into the habit of talking to them in their language. I think this is really important, don't you?
[00:13:47.840] - Taylor
Yeah, and I think it's... When we are explaining stuff, we're sometimes not explaining it at all. In the proposals I write, although I know what 'website care plan' means, I know what that entails, I know what it's included. When I say, you've got 'the design phase,' 'the development stage,' and 'the optimisation phase,' they have no idea what that means. And because obviously we are in the industry and we see it every single day, we know what that includes. And so what I found was when I was writing proposals, I was glossing over some of the top level information and they were getting the same value and the same service, but they didn't realise it or understand. So when I started to explain everything that was included and breaking it down, going, "this is what you get, this is why, this is what it means," it to them then becomes more valuable. So it's less of a translation in terms of a three-letter word, but more of a what does that actually, like word or sentence, mean, and explaining it into terms that they understand and just explaining it in general, what it is so it makes sense.
[00:15:15.960] - Gordon
Yeah. And part of this is also making sure they understand the benefits, which is always the best way to talk to customers. How are they benefiting from something? So whether you're going to use technology X or technology Y, customers don't really care normally. They just want to know what they're going to get out of it, what's in it for them. So talking to them in their language with benefit-laden speech is a much better way of doing it rather than talking with jargon-heavy technology. That was it, really. I thought that was a really important point. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. And if you've got anything that you think we should talk about, then please let us know. You can contact us on the website or leave comments on YouTube or Facebook. That's everything from me.
[00:16:07.540] - Taylor
That's everything from me as well.
[00:16:08.960] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, you can find us on Facebook and on YouTube. Please like, share, and subscribe.
[00:16:15.950] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:16:20.370] - Gordon
And if you prefer to listen to our episodes, we are on all the the popular podcast platforms and you can just listen to us instead of watching us. Until next week, 1pm on Friday, we'll be back with you then. My name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:16:37.710] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:16:40.210] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:16:40.710] - Taylor
Bye.
[00:00:09.120] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:09.480] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:09.960] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:11.920] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:13.730] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses over the last seven days. Welcome back to those who've been before and welcome to anyone who's new.
[00:00:27.010] - Taylor
Welcome.
[00:00:28.050] - Gordon
It's been a busy week. I say that every week, but we're always busy. That's why. Anything important news-wise?
[00:00:38.030] - Taylor
Not from me.
[00:00:38.880] - Gordon
No? Good. Shall we get straight into our topics then?
[00:00:41.770] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:00:42.170] - Gordon
Would you like to go first or shall I?
[00:00:44.020] - Taylor
I'll go first this week.
[00:00:45.020] - Gordon
Okay.
[00:00:45.840] - Taylor
So recently, GenerateBlocks brought out their new version, which was eight months worth of work. It was nearly a completely rewritten UI and things like that. And what they did is they added the classes system. So I have been spending the last, about two, three weeks rebuilding my starter site. I built it from scratch and I'm basically pulling in stuff from my previous site. But because of the new update, I had to reorganise, restructure the entire workflow of how I build sites. And it's taken a long time to figure out the best solution, make sure that I'm including everything that I need, but not everything that is specific to a lot of sites, but enough that gets me a good head start when I'm starting a new project.
[00:01:45.130] - Gordon
Do you want to give us an example of that?
[00:01:47.890] - Taylor
So I have a lot of the default templates built out. So things like your search results page, your archive pages, your single blog post, all of the colours, typography, spacing, border radiuses, box shadows. I've just set up as a base, and then every single site I can go in and modify them and tweak them to work for that project.
[00:02:16.120] - Gordon
Okay, and what have you had to change from your previous starter site?
[00:02:22.060] - Taylor
So because of the new classes system, it's now allowed us to essentially add multiple different classes and styles to one element. So before we had the global styles, which they still call it the global styles. However, you could only add one global style to each element. And so you could only add a spacing style, or you could only add one button style. And this meant you had to duplicate a lot of the work you'd previously done. Whereas now we can have a main button class, and then we can have a button primary and a button secondary or a button accent, and basically add on to our main button class. So if you want to change the overall button style, like your border radius, your padding and things, you can do that from the main button. But if you want to change things like the colours or the border colours or the the sizing and things like that, you can override the defaults that you've set up. And we can do this for all of the other different classes, other different styles, so that we don't have to duplicate a lot of the work. It's reduced the amount in my style sheet down a lot, so there's a lot less in there because it's all in the new UI editor. And yeah, overall, it's just a really nice experience. It makes things a lot more scalable, a lot more manageable using proper conventions of styling with classes. And yeah, just overall, really good.
[00:03:50.800] - Gordon
So it's actually going to be a lot easier for you to do what you want to do in the future with all these new changes, but it's taking a couple of weeks just to get it right and set up. And I'm sure once it's up and running, there'll be more tweaks that you find as you start to use it.
[00:04:09.250] - Taylor
Yeah, definitely. And there's a couple of new features I've added which have helped do things automatically. So, I have a function now that will automatically generate me a shade palette based on my primary colour. Which is nice so I don't have to go and figure out what shades to use and things like that. And I don't have to generate them manually, adding in all the colours. So I think that where there's a lot of things done automatically for me that are just set up and then I don't have to configure them after.
[00:04:44.180] - Gordon
And the nice thing about having a on the other side is that if you've got that all set up, whenever you start building a brand new website, you've done all the groundwork already, and it makes it a lot easier to get the site up and running quicker, isn't it?
[00:04:59.830] - Taylor
Yeah, and it's very easy to forget or miss stuff if you don't have them automatically set up. So I have a 404 page, for example, set up. And yes, it's been the same exact 404 page on most of my sites in the last six months or whatever. But it's something I don't have to remember. If there is a specific 404 template that I need to design, then I can obviously override and go in and change it. But it means that if I do forget it, or as in I didn't design something specifically, at least I have a decent default fall back. And that's the idea is that the defaults out of the box are better than the defaults for the theme, the Generate Press theme, but they're not super styled that they will only fit one website, for example.
[00:05:48.460] - Gordon
And this is one of the advantages to coming to a professional like yourself to do a website rather than doing it yourself, because these sort of little things that you're talking about now don't get forgotten and are part of the final website, which most people will not even know about, let alone create and set up. So, yeah, if you're building a one-off website, go to a professional, get them to do it properly, because you'll find that if they create it in a way and you talk to them about it that allows you to then add content in the future, it will be designed in a way that won't break anything. And you'll end up with a much better website for much longer.
[00:06:32.900] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:06:33.580] - Gordon
Anything else you want to say?
[00:06:35.130] - Taylor
I don't think so. It's just been very time consuming, mainly for the fact that I have to think about everything that I'm adding and then also think about stuff that I haven't added or I haven't even thought about. And that's the tricky part because it will always be changing; I'll always be updating it in the future. Once I finish it, it'll still been an ongoing project where, as I discover new ideas, new solutions and stuff, I'll add them in if they're good enough to be in the default starter site. But yeah, it's one of those things that you don't really know what you need until you've started. But because I've already built a starter site before, I have a good idea. But it's a completely new system and what I think works in the workflow maybe doesn't, or there's stuff that I've overlooked and thought, "actually, this is a pain, I need to make this easier."
[00:07:25.830] - Gordon
And I think that's something that everyone should take into account. If there's new features, or if something new comes out, or just if you've got a system that's currently working, just have a look at it again. Is there a better way to do things? Because we need to progress forward. And just because what we've done in the past has always worked doesn't mean it's the best way or should be the only way that we do things.
[00:07:49.990] - Taylor
Yeah, and I was working with one of my friends, Jake, on this, and it's been really helpful because the way that I was thinking about doing something, he's sometimes come along and said, "well, actually, do we need to do it that way or could we do it this way?" And there's been quite a few times where I've been going down this path of "this is how I need to do it?" And then actually him coming in and going, "actually, could we not just do it this way?" And then like, "oh, yeah, that could be a lot easier and simpler." It's always good to bounce off ideas as well, because what you think is the way you have to do it or need to do it, may not be that way.
[00:08:30.900] - Gordon
Very good. So moving on to my topic today. This was an idea that was sent to us by one of our viewers. And she basically said that she had been going to work every day and she puts the radio on in the car and there was an advert that came on every single day and she was listening to this advert and they said that this phone, I think it was, had a brand new UI and she was unaware of what UI meant. The only UI she knew of was urine infection, and she couldn't understand why a phone had a brand new urine infection, which obviously doesn't sound right. She's since found out that it's a 'user interface,' but it prompted her to contact me and say, "this is something that you could talk about." And I agree. The idea of talking to your customers in language that they understand. So for example, this advert was using UI, which it shouldn't have done. It should have said user interface, or even translated that technical term into something that the customers will understand and understand what it means for them. An ease of use would be a better way of talking about it. We've made it easier to use. That's what a UI does, isn't it? But we talk a lot to customers with code words, basically, things like SEO and SMTP. There's lots of acronyms and words that we use that mean everything to us. If I said those two to you, you'd know what I meant. But if I spoke to someone else and said, "What's your SMTP?" They'd be going, "Huh? My what?" So it may be that if you're talking to a user, that user is going to be a consumer. So this is business to consumer, business to customer. And you need to make sure that you aren't using wording that they're just not going to understand. And that includes putting it into quotes or emails or on your website, just making sure that everywhere that you use, potentially use, jargon that is meant for your industry is not being used to people that won't understand it. Now, if you're a business to business business or company, then it may be that the jargon that you use is going to be familiar to them, and they'll understand it because they're in the business. Not necessarily, but quite often that is the case. If I'm talking to other magicians, there are certain words and things that we talk about that most magicians will understand, and therefore it's okay to talk to them using that wording. One of the things that I used to do when I was employing a coder or developer, I would be the go-between. So I would listen to what the customer had in their mind as to what they wanted, and I knew what the developer was going to understand. So I was translating from normal speak to developer speak because I had enough knowledge to know what the developer needed to know, and I had enough knowledge to understand what the customer was requiring, to be able to talk to them. Now, that doesn't always happen because developers are very specific people. They understand specific things, and it does get very complicated if you start using the wrong wording. Now, it might be the right wording in the customer's head, but that will translate to the wrong wording in the developer's head, which is where I came in and managed to make sure that the translation happened okay. And I was doing that a lot. And I found that it was really important to be specific. So especially from the customer's point of view, "tell me specifically what you're looking for and what this needs to do, and then I will be able to tell the developer what they need to do." And it's something that we just take for granted. And because we have certain terminology that we use every day, we forget that there's a huge number of people out there that just will have no idea what we're talking about. So just look at all of the customer-facing websites and emails and literature that you have, and also get into the habit of talking to them in their language. I think this is really important, don't you?
[00:13:47.840] - Taylor
Yeah, and I think it's... When we are explaining stuff, we're sometimes not explaining it at all. In the proposals I write, although I know what 'website care plan' means, I know what that entails, I know what it's included. When I say, you've got 'the design phase,' 'the development stage,' and 'the optimisation phase,' they have no idea what that means. And because obviously we are in the industry and we see it every single day, we know what that includes. And so what I found was when I was writing proposals, I was glossing over some of the top level information and they were getting the same value and the same service, but they didn't realise it or understand. So when I started to explain everything that was included and breaking it down, going, "this is what you get, this is why, this is what it means," it to them then becomes more valuable. So it's less of a translation in terms of a three-letter word, but more of a what does that actually, like word or sentence, mean, and explaining it into terms that they understand and just explaining it in general, what it is so it makes sense.
[00:15:15.960] - Gordon
Yeah. And part of this is also making sure they understand the benefits, which is always the best way to talk to customers. How are they benefiting from something? So whether you're going to use technology X or technology Y, customers don't really care normally. They just want to know what they're going to get out of it, what's in it for them. So talking to them in their language with benefit-laden speech is a much better way of doing it rather than talking with jargon-heavy technology. That was it, really. I thought that was a really important point. So thank you for bringing that to our attention. And if you've got anything that you think we should talk about, then please let us know. You can contact us on the website or leave comments on YouTube or Facebook. That's everything from me.
[00:16:07.540] - Taylor
That's everything from me as well.
[00:16:08.960] - Gordon
Thank you so much for joining us. As always, you can find us on Facebook and on YouTube. Please like, share, and subscribe.
[00:16:15.950] - Taylor
You can also go to our website thisweekwith.co.uk to find all of our past episodes.
[00:16:20.370] - Gordon
And if you prefer to listen to our episodes, we are on all the the popular podcast platforms and you can just listen to us instead of watching us. Until next week, 1pm on Friday, we'll be back with you then. My name is Gordon and I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:16:37.710] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:16:40.210] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:16:40.710] - Taylor
Bye.
