 Hi, everybody. I'm so glad that you are back after lunch. Is everyone fed? Caffeinated? We'll wait for a couple of people to settle down. So my presentation today is about client-driven creation, aligning design priorities. So how many of you here are designers? You make WordPress sites? And how many of you here would consider yourself clients? And how many would consider yourself both? And how many of you here are just learning WordPress and are new to WordPress? All right, so I have a good understanding of where you guys are coming from in the room. And so some people, when they hear this, if they consider themselves a client, they sort of think of, wow, I'm the client. I'm going to drive creation. It's going to look like this, right? Everything will be faster. Everything will be way more efficient. I'll get exactly what I want. But sometimes there's a bit of a disconnect. And when developers hear this, they think something more like this. They're like, oh, great. I'm going to be driven in 18 different directions at once. There's going to be a lack of understanding as to what could be actually done technically. And it'll be a essentially frustrating process. And I'd like to get to what with the source of that disconnectives and how that disconnect doesn't have to happen, especially when you're using all of the appropriate tools, when you're using WordPress, and when you're using a proper process of design and integrating client feedback all along the way, not just right here in the beginning and right here in the end. So once upon a time, there were a bunch of engineers. And they came up with an amazing process for design. And that was standard engineering design. And that standard engineering design became the basis for generally what most web designers use for their design process. It looks so neat and simple and uncomplicated. We should be done with this in two weeks, right? Three weeks tops. You've got your define. You're going to ideate. You're going to have a prototype. Then you're going to do your build. Your testing's in there somewhere. Testing always gets kind of off to the side. Then you're going to analyze. Then you're going to redefine the problem. And you're going to loop back to the beginning, if need be. And so you see in this wonderful neat process, you have possibly in the blue areas for client input. And the way that most people do design is that the clients get shut out of all of that middle process. So they talk to you right in the beginning, and everyone's excited and happy. And then they talk to you at the end. And there's like Oregon music playing. People are not so happy. But how is it that this process usually looks like this? This is what actually ends up happening. And I think that a lot of the reason that that ends up happening is because the only place for client input are those blue areas right in the beginning and right at the end. And that doesn't necessarily make sense because we're making a product for the client, even if the client essentially is ourselves. We're making this product to fulfill the goals of the client. So how is it that we can create a story that works for both the designer and for the client? And I have a few narratives for you about situations that worked really well for the designer and for the client. And a couple of situations where the designer and the client were the exact same person. OK, so here's your typical client, right? And you say, hey, client, we're going to create an app. We're going to create a website for you. What is it that you want? And they usually have a few major things that they want out of a web presence. They want to be able to manage the data. And this could be data that they receive and have on the back end from viewers of their site, or it could be data that they want to be able to display in an organized fashion. There needs to be a way that they can manage this in a digital, three-decimal system, so to speak. They want to be able to make money, all right? I think that websites are somewhat seen as a little bit of a golden ticket. So sometimes when a client comes to you and says, I'd like to make money off of an idea, they're not necessarily clear of the way in which they want to convert their website into a way to make money. But we'll get to that later. They want to monetize. They want to find and attract their audience. Sometimes you're dealing with a business that exists already. Sometimes you're dealing with a startup where the web presence is the initial presence. But in both cases, they want to be able to find these people online that will connect with what they have and keep their attention and keep their attention by engaging them, right? So engage the viewers. So have it so that the viewers then become part of their marketing plan. They're recommending the website to other people. So these are four of the major motivations. I mean, there are others in there. But these are the four of the major motivations of most clients and most people that build a website. And so I'll get started on my first narrative. This site was designed by Darren Stevens. And it's for a luxury cottage site called forevercornwell.co.uk. And the idea was, how do I establish myself in this kind of luxury retreat environment? So there's a quote that says, 46% of people say that a website's design is the number one criteria for discerning the credibility of a company. So in this case, the visual aesthetics of the website were extremely important. So one of the things that I'd like to underscore with this narrative is that Darren, in this case, had to be very, very clear about the audience and the potential audience for this website. And what would draw them in and make this website have any kind of credibility for them. And in this case, it had to be that it gave them a preview of the experience or the luxury experience that they would have if they used this cottage site. So when a client comes to you, the clients came to Darren. And my understanding is they had sketches and they had photos. And then they were like, make it happen. So sometimes you're not working with a tremendous amount of initial assets, but you still have to turn that into something that is usable for not just the client, but for the people that will be viewing the site. So in this site, first he had to market and promote it. Then he had to integrate the site with the current system. And particularly, this site is integrated with a booking system that allows viewers to be able to go to the site and book a cottage. And then he had to present relevant information. There are several cottages that this business offers. And basically, this website is an app. You can book your site. You can pay for everything on the site. You could find out which cottages are in which regions. And so how is it that he was able to have all of this on a WordPress backend? He had to be able to organize a lot of information on the backend that wouldn't just be able to work for him, but for the business owners and for anyone that would come after him. So when we build sites, we have to make sure that everything is clear so that when we walk away, we don't need a manualistic for the next person coming in to be able to understand the site. The next person coming in is more than likely the client that you're handing the site off to. So what tools did he use to be able to do all of the things that he needed to do with the site? So for the first thing, one of the things that you can use is WordPress SEO. Who's here for the SEO discussion today? Awesome. So you can use WordPress SEO Yoast. And you can use social integration to make sure that your website is growing in a similar fashion as your social communities, your Twitter feeds, your Facebooks. And on the backend, he used types and views. Who here is familiar with types? Anyone? OK, good. Who's familiar with advanced custom fields? Good. So types in advanced custom fields do similar things. Basically, it creates custom post types. It creates custom taxonomies and custom fields. And that's extremely helpful because each cottage, or cottages in general in this case, are all part of a custom post type. So they're not on the same list as your posts. And it helps you to organize data on the front and back end in a really seamless way so that all of the information is not all kind of in one batch. And once you have the information organized in that way, then you can display it to the clients in a way that makes sense for them. He has a taxonomy with region. And it makes it possible for basically you to have an experience that is exactly what you want when you go to this website. And then if you look at the front page, you can see that basically you're seeing everything that you need to know in one screenshot. You have all of the relevant details. And then you can look further depending on your desires. Another thing that was really important here is a complex search. So a complex parameter search. Has anyone heard that term before? Oh, good. But for those of you who may not be familiar with it, a parameter search is when you have not just one parameter, but several parameters. So I can search on a keyword and a region and a number of bedrooms. And a good idea of that would be like your Airbnb search, where you can look in your zip code. You can look on whether you want a house or a room. You can look on how many people will be staying there. And you can search all of these things all at once. And that could be done with views, a plugin named Views. And then the other key thing that made this into a usable app is a form that integrated it with an external looking agency. So a form that basically would then, after you fill it in and say, I want all of these things, would be able to receive payment from you and send notification to a booking agency that would then be able to book you that particular room. So at the end of the day, he was able to take a couple of sketches and a picture and turn it into a usable app that was mobile ready and that the clients could then use to reduce their workload. That's my first narrative. Let's go to my second one. OK, so my second narrative comes from San Francisco, a startup in San Francisco named Popupsters. And Popupsters had an idea that they wanted to be able to connect events to vendors. So what they wanted to do is, if you were going to have an event, let's say a block party, and you wanted to have different food trucks there, that you could go to them and vendors could then register through the site, pay through the site, organize booking through the site. And so it would be like one stop shopping for both the event manager and the vendor that wanted to be at the event. So this has to do with engaging the viewers because this would be a membership site, but a membership site that was relatively complex because it wouldn't have just one type of member. It had your event members, your event manager members, and then it had your vendor members. So it was really important that they had social integration so that people could promote, we're having this event. Please sign up here, sort of thing. And it was really important that they had different abilities for different kind of members. And so they had to map through what the experience would be for each kind of member. And they did that using a workflow and a flow chart. And they had to incentivize participation. So basically, the way that they incentivized participation was that for some of their members, this is actually a way that they earn money. So for the event managers, they're extremely invested and participating because it's a way for them to clearly organize their event and to receive money from vendors that are going to be at their event. And of course, they had to meet and eat. So pop-up stores did all of that really seemingly by finding the tools that they needed. Now, if you look at this screen right here, in this defining process and in this analyzing process, we talked about that's where the client comes in. But if you can find ways to integrate the client in all of these processes, then it'll actually make your life a lot easier at the end. So what they were able to do was find a way to integrate clients throughout the entire lifecycle of the design. Let's talk about what they needed and what they were clear about what they needed before they got started. They wanted to enable registration with specific roles. We talked about that. They wanted to be able to add and edit information on the front end. They wanted to access certain data for only for privileged users. And they wanted integration with e-commerce. So sometimes when you see a site as complex as this, you're very, very tempted to reinvent the wheel. Do we have any advanced users here or some coders? Right. So how many of you would look at this as an issue and say, OK, I'll code it all? You're going to code a plugin for this. Who's going to do that? Right. So there may be existing solutions that already do what you want them to do. And perhaps with just a little bit of tweaking, you could get it to do exactly what you want them to do. So let's see what Jacob, who designed the site, what he decided to do. So the idea about different membership levels for different users and different access for different users, he was able to do that with a plugin called Access. Is anyone familiar with that? Right. There are other plugins that do something similar. I believe that WordPress Roles does something similar. So but he was able to do this in this case with Access. And then he was able to build all of the registration and login forms with Formidable. Is anyone familiar with Formidable? No? OK. But this is actually a good thing that you guys are not familiar with Formidable. That's kind of a huge key component in this, is that as you start to research what's available, you'll find that the thing that you wanted to code, the thing that you wanted to do, 9 times out of 10 exists. So Gravity Forms is another idea that you could use your forms and create your forms with that. He built the custom post types with Types. You could also do it with Advanced Custom Fields. And he built all of the pages and layouts with Views. And then he used a variety of WooCommerce plugins to handle the checkout process and then made the checkout process really seamless. But the point of the matter is that he was able to find the majority of the things that he needed to build a super complex site by doing a lot of research and using sort of a cocktail of paid and free plugins. So now he has users that are completely invested. They have memberships. And when your users have memberships to your site, that means that there's a higher likelihood that they'll return again. So let's move on to the next site. The next site was actually built by David Das. And in this case, David Das is not just a designer of the site, but he's also the client. So he's a composer. He's not a computer. He's a composer. And he has an amazing large catalog of music. And he wanted to find a way to have a portfolio site that was able to show us his large catalog of music for a variety of end users. So he had some users that may just want to use one of his scores for a YouTube video or something like that. Or he may have someone that just wants to download it for personal use. Or he might have someone that needs sheet music. Or he may have someone that needs to use it in a film score. So it's just a large variety of people that need to use his stuff. So for him, his portfolio was so vast that he needed to basically create a virtual library. And so we're looking at his primary motivation as one where he needed to manage data. So the advanced search was extremely important, the organized layout, and the media integration. Because you need to be able to preview everything that he's able to offer you. So how was he able to get from this idea of, OK, I want a library for everything that I've ever created musically to what he then created. OK, so he already had an Excel spreadsheet. And his Excel spreadsheet had all of his musical scores and a skew number and basically relevant information about all of the music. And he needed to somehow convert that data into WordPress. So he used a CSV importer called the WP Ultimate CSV Importer. And the moral of that story is that if you yourself or you're dealing with a client that has a large volume of data and they have it in a way that, of course, isn't in a previous WordPress site, you don't have to give up on that data. You don't have to then reenter that data. There are ways to convert data from one format to another format. So he was able to import all of his data from Excel. And then he was able to use easy digital downloads to allow his potential clients, his viewers, to download different scores from his site. So one of the things that's important about all of the sites that I've shown thus far is that they do require some level of coding. But the coding that's required isn't to do the broad strokes. The coding that's required is usually about doing the finer details, getting it to do exactly what you want it to do. In essence, yes, you could find a solution that will do most of the larger things that you want it to do. But if you want to edit it, then that's also possible for you to do if you're able to. OK. So my last story that I want to show you is about this turbo bike trainer site. And it was created by Neil Curtis. And I absolutely love this site, because basically, Neil wanted to create a site, and he created it for himself. He also administers the site. So you also have a situation where he's the client and he is the designer. He wanted to create a site that he was able to make money. And he knew that in order to create a site that would make money, he would have to add value to the viewer's lives. So he basically created a community. He created a magazine that was giving them relevant information at every turn. And then he makes money with affiliate marketing. So if you want to monetize a site, you have to make sure that you're giving away value, you're creating a community, you're simplifying the sale. So it's extremely easy for you to buy anything on this site using WooCommerce and that you invest in the efficiency. So yes, you could code something, but maybe it would have 14 steps, and that's not the best thing for your end viewer. So he invested in the plugins that would make his life a ton easier. OK, so now if we think back to our client-driven creation idea, I'd like you to see it as maybe a combination of the two ideas. Maybe the cat is driving the car, but really, really fast and efficiently. That's the dream, at least. And it's really important that you turn a design process into a process that is fun all the way through and where everyone feels engaged and involved. And so it's really important to be able to get towards what the motivations for making the site are and let brainstorming be an absolutely free-form process. Do not try to interrupt that process with technical limitations. That'll come later, much later. So your job is to interpret those motivations and to clarify them. And then you need to figure out what the needs are and always integrate that feedback. So if clients give you some objectives, then that should always be directly related to a certain outcome. And clarify what the goals of the projects are so that you know who your target audience is, what are your benchmarks, and how are you going to get there. And be very clear about how important vision is. Vision is extremely important. What are your examples? What have you seen that has worked? If everything was perfect and there were no technical limitations, what happens? And then you take this information and use it as the template for your design process. And you can then talk to the client about technical limitations and whatever, but always keeping in mind that the limitations are usually you, right? They're not necessarily the technology. Sometimes we get in our own ways because we're not willing to use other solutions, be creative, use a cocktail of solutions, edit solutions that currently exist. All right, thank you so much. That's it. OK, so questions for Denise. So are there any questions? You had coffee. I know there is like, oh, we have one. During client-driven processes, how do you achieve the price for the customer, the final price? Because then it's usually a problem. So I'm just going to restate it because it's hard for me to hear you. I don't know if it's hard for everyone else to hear. Is this my con? OK, question is, in these client-driven processes, how do you achieve the fixed price or F fixed price for the whole project? OK, so with most software development, the way that that works is that there's an estimate. So you give an initial estimate based on a general idea of what the client wants. And you then have a rate that is based on the time that you have to invest in that project. And you keep the client very, very aware of how much time you are spending on the project. So the reason why I would suggest doing it that way, instead of just saying, OK, I'm going to build you that for like $5 or $10 or whatever the fixed price is, is that it keeps the client invested in using your time efficiently. So you're both somewhat invested in making sure that you're not spending time on things that are superfluous. OK. Any other questions? I have two premium plugins that I would love to give away. And I wanted to ask questions. Who's been here all day? OK, great. All right, now keep your hands up. Keep your hands up. Who of you that have been here all day have been to all of the sessions? OK. Who has been to a WordPress meetup? Just keep your hands up if it's still true, OK? Who has been to a WordPress meetup? How many people are we down to? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. OK. Who has built more than five WordPress sites? So don't raise it now, but just keep it up if it's still true. So what are we at? One, two, three, four, five, six. OK. So all of you that still have your hands up, I counted six. Is that right? Just high, because I have to count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13. All of you, please come see me and give me your emails. And then you can choose between WPML, which is a software that builds multilingual sites, and toolset, which is a software that helps you to use views and cred and all that stuff that I talked about. So. Thank you very much.