 I can't know. I mean, I can't see it there. So I'm gonna have to kind of watch this to guide me because we're not in sync technologically. So hey, let's start over. Thanks for your patience and thanks for being here. And again, we're talking about how to make more of an impact on your homepage with design tips. And your homepage has an important purpose. It needs to quickly and clearly make a connection with your viewer and encourage them to keep clicking because we want them to stay on your website, right? And our home pages need to make a great first impression within the first five to seven minutes. Can you hear me? Okay. Seconds. Did I say minutes? I'm so not a multitasker. No way. I think that seven is actually more than what most people are willing to do. So we really need to make those seconds count. And to do that, we need to declutter our page and keep only the most important elements to make sure that we use those seconds wisely. And this idea came to me last year when I hauled over 10 full bags of clothes out of my closet. I kid you not. That is not my closet. I wasn't smart enough to take the picture before I did it. And it took a lot of sessions to do it. I had old stuff in there, jeans that didn't fit that I thought, oh, maybe one day. Styles waiting for them to be rotated. No, didn't happen. Things I was holding on to waiting for the perfect occasion that never came. And so I went ahead and got rid of that stuff. And I have to admit that I was taken by the minimalism movement that is very huge right now. And it's a global trend. People are decluttering, downsizing, and basically living with less. And a good example of that is the tiny houses and capsule wardrobes. I haven't been in a tiny home yet, but I'm sure we've all been a part of them. I think there was one at Ponce City Market for a little while that you could tour, but I didn't get a chance to. But it's all about decluttering and keeping the things that are very important and not fooling with and maintaining what really isn't useful for you. And that's got, that's what inspired this talk. What are the minimal things that we need on our homepage to be effective? Because there's a lot we can put there, but it's not necessarily going to serve you, your business, your nonprofit, or the person that's using it. And that's the most important person. And by doing that, you don't have decision fatigue, which is a real thing. So back to this closet. So like me getting rid of all those shoes and handbags, think about your site the same way. And like our overflowing closets or digital worlds are overloaded and it's not just us. Those who visit your home pages are also feeling burdened by too much stuff and too much content. And by decluttering your homepage and focusing on clean, clear communications, your site will be more powerful and it will be easier to use. So maybe you have a favorite dress or a pair of pants that you're holding on to for no sensible reason. Think about your site in the same way and get rid of the items that you may have once loved but may not be serving you anymore. They could be in fact obscuring your message and leading your users into confusion. My name is Allison Chandler and I work with purpose driven brands to achieve clarity through visual brand identities and websites. I've worked in design and I want to call for I say this because I don't know I'm getting close to 40. For over 15 years the first 10 were mainly in print. And I fell in love with website design and I mean this honestly not to be cheesy it's because of this freaking community all great community. I love you guys and so it is a privilege to speak to you today and I am from Atlanta and I love the Atlanta WordPress community. So this site is for you if your website is beautiful but something's off. It's not working. You could have even paid $10,000 but if there's no strategy behind it it's not working. Maybe it's cluttered and you have too much information maybe you wrote it yourself and may not be trained to know what needs to stay and what needs to go. And people are challenged if people are challenged to think on your website they're probably going to move on because there are others that have clean websites and you could be you could have the better product but if someone in your competition has an easier to use website you're losing business. Perhaps there's no call to action or you have a call to action that people aren't using. So hopefully today you're going to learn how to make those more effective and maybe you're embarrassed to send people to your site because it's not where you want it to be you might be here to learn how to get your site to look better. I know there's a lot of people this is where I learned to work with WordPress sites and maybe you're just getting started out. Perhaps your messaging and your images are vague so if you take action on what you learned today you're going to be able to grow your list and nurture leads that convert. You'll be able to increase sales and grow your business with more of a strategic home page and oops you'll be able to speak to your audience in a way that draws them in and keeps them engaged and you'll be confident in your choices about what to keep on your home page and more equally or more importantly what to toss. These are the topics we're going to cover. Excuse me got warm in here. The tips I'm going to share with you to help with your home page help it to stand out and make more of an impact. We'll cover these topics. We're going to talk about the minimal design elements for your home page. We're going to go over my process that I used to fully immerse myself into my clients businesses and a case study example to show you how this process works and the results it brings and then it's going to be your opportunity to review your home page considering what you learn here today and you'll be prepared prepared to make changes. So let's make it easy for others to know who you are and why they should care. So the first topic is the minimal design elements. Remember the story about the closet. So that inspired me to identify what we should declutter and what we should keep and once all the noise is gone here's what's left. A user focused design. Your design needs to speak to what your audience thinks is important not necessarily what you think is important. If you have a shiny new mission statement or a new award that would be better on your about page and the first image on your home page the hero image should make an emotional connection and grab the attention of your user and you need room to breathe prioritize clarity and white space over clutter and keep it simple and then last but not least you're going to motivate your home page viewers to take the next step by doing the first three things that's going to guide them to get there. So you need to know what it is you want your viewers to do. Do you want them to make an appointment with you buy something volunteer by knowing what you want them to do you can think about who your user is and that's going to inform the rest of your decisions. Studies show that 90 percent of information transmitted to the brain is visual and they are processed 60,000 times faster than text. So let's choose those images wisely watch out for cheesy images like this which even Vince Vaughn knows is cheesy. So who is your target market and I may say target market or dream client I use a lot of those phrases but they all kind of mean the same thing who's on the other end of these beautiful magical websites that we design. A lot of my clients sometimes tell me it's everyone and I cringe a little bit but I understand it's my job to help them understand how narrowing it can make them more effective and achieve their success. So I have a little little exercise those of you sitting on the floor just you know if you feel compelled to please stand up and this is an invitation for everyone in the room please stand up if you answer yes to the following question you are here to learn about WordPress. Getting ready for launch a little tired maybe okay so do you build websites for people other than yourself all right okay it seems about the same as that would y'all say no is that less I can't see I mean I can't tell because I just can't um so let me ask you this do you build websites for online courses one hand two three four there's about four or five hands you can see how those qualifying questions narrowed this room down to four people this is the power of what narrowing in on who it is that you serve is going to make for you so the clearer you can identify your audience the more they will be attracted to you and ultimately want to work with you so we're going to go a little bit into my process these are kind of the four phases the first is discovery which of course is me immersing myself into their brand learning all about them and that's going to inform my design and there's a lot that goes into discovery um it was really hard for me to narrow it into these four topics um and then there's design of course and that you know all of these can be their own presentations themselves and then the development which is once the look and feel is approved it's time to build the website and then delivery you get the designs out there and get the results within my discovery phase there are several things I do there but today we're going to talk about the result of my discovery phase which is the brand story and these are the these are the things that I'm looking to get answered from my clients sometimes I send a worksheet sometimes I meet with them on the phone um it's a little uh time consuming but those that are willing to do it love it and love the results and the first person is the hero of the story this is the main character and what it is that they're what is it that they're looking for this is your dream client or target audience what obstacles are getting in their way of getting that result that they want we need to know what their pain is what's getting in their way and then you position yourself as the guide because you have the services and products that is going to help them get to where they want to go and then let them know that you have a plan to get them there and give them an idea of what it's like to work with you which is what I'm doing right now and then you are going to have results and by knowing what the transformation looks like you can design around that and so I'm going to go into some questions but this is kind of the main framework that I'm looking to fill I don't ask these questions people don't know how to answer these questions right off the bat so I have to be more descriptive and more direct um with some questions so yes when you mentioned the hero yeah you talking about the hero of this fictitious story yeah who the client is are you talking about the hero is your client the abc company what that's a great question and when I learned this framework um I got tripped up by the same thing um because one we have a client right or you know whoever we're working with it could be we could be designing for ourselves we're not the hero in this framework we're the guide because we are offering our services to someone else and in that situation it's the hero the hero that needs the products or services that the website is for no clients clients to remove the client's audience yes that's where I was confused think about the person that's using the site yeah it's the end user but that's a great question and others could be confused so thank you for asking okay so we're going to go into a case study and show how this works it's um it really is a easy framework and it is more simple than um maybe I make it sound so uh Janine yep she's the business owner of the case study we're going to walk through and she says that the website came out beautiful way beyond what I thought it could be my favorite part was working with Allison and seeing how all the steps and elements came together for the final result and then Judy Knight whom I've nicknamed WordPress godmother of Atlanta um it says that I love her client design process and the beautiful detailed work that comes from it she gives her clients exactly what they didn't know they wanted but it's perfect now I don't know about that but I appreciate it Judy so the case study is back to Janine yep's website she's amazing she has this business in San Francisco um that's geared towards uh taking dogs on great adventures during the day and her hero is people that are working what she offered was special and more than any other dog walkers in her area were offering she saw where people would take the dogs maybe to like the beginning of a trail and turn around and go back she would take the trail and find out where it goes and she found amazing exclusive locations that she could use to build um packs dog packs they become family like packs but we'll get more into that but she went the extra mile this was her website when she came to me she had been using it for a little while um and she was ready to step it up her her website was blending in with a competition she said that one of her competitors used the exact same theme she could look at it until um and there's no headline her services are not clearly described you have to you have to really work to figure it out so people are going to move on quickly and her expertise her passion and her personality doesn't come through and she has it she's a one woman show and people need to know her because you know what for someone to come into your home and pick up your dog like they need to be like a family member not some stranger and her logo was misleading she found that people that had small dogs thought she only worked with big dogs from her logo so who is her audience um i'm going to take you through uh some questions now screw the notes i'm gonna have to look at them so here here's some questions that i asked her because i have the question that answers right now janine describe your typical customer what they do for a living and what are their values these look like boring generic questions but guess what we're going to get some fun results um her answers are they are a fluent well educated professionals who work in the tech or finance industries and they love their dogs and spoil them like children they appreciate that's actually i know them and i did get permission um they appreciate reliability honesty and professionalism and they are willing to pay a premium for good service how do people find you because she did already have a great following and people found her through yelp she'd already won awards in her area um but she was losing business because of that site um and people found her through yelp and then she would talk to others who are looking for people like her um but they got lost in the sea of choices in the sea of bad design what are the struggles they are facing that you can help them with they feel guilty about working long hours and leaving their pet at home they get distracted at work thinking about what he might be tearing up in the house that day they feel confused about hiring someone because there's so many to choose from and they're not sure who they can trust what would their ideal outcome look like what do they want remember the hero is her client they want their dog to have a great day without them they can be at work and the dog gets to go outside have fun and get plenty of exercise and the pet owner is happy because she can go out now after work have some drinks and get her social life back because previously she had to run home after work to take her dog out take him on a dog walk and y'all you know you get tired at the end of the day that's a big task so the outcome is that they get a piece of mind knowing they found someone trustworthy who feels like family to help them give their dog what is needed so this is what failure looks like and the dog is lonely and depressed barking all day and annoying the neighbors maybe embarrassed to go outside of the house having to deal with them ugly looks and they feel trapped by their work duties with no time to take care of their dog and they feel inadequate because they can't give the dog what he needs in craves what solutions does canine fitness offer these two pictures on the right are from janine um so she offers off-leash dog walks to amazing exclusive locations with transportation included and the dogs get a chance to bond with other dogs and they become a family like pack and if she if she interviews a family and takes their dog out with the pack and they don't get along she doesn't take that client they're to get they're together for a lot of hours and she offers the relief for them to get their life back because they know their pet is well cared for they can come home from a long day of work and cuddle yay i know that's a lot of questions but it yields great results and i'm ready to show you the results that it comes to they drive the look and feel so um okay again we have maybe five seconds to make a great first impression so the content really needs to be strong and remove a lot of unnecessary words so by using the brand story that i wrote from getting all those questions this is the copy that was written for the hero section dog walking in san francisco we go the extra miles seeking off-leash dog adventures in san francisco filled with exercise socialization and fun you're in the right place this is the copy without even being with an image so you can see that this is user focus it answers to what the client is looking for and the problems that they're facing does this sound like you you didn't expect your dog to be so energetic sometimes you feel guilty because your dog is it alone a lot you worry that your dog doesn't get enough socialization and you wish you could go out after work but your dog needs a walk trust us after your dog spends a day with canine fitness you won't have to rush home after work so the idea is that when the end user is reading this they're resonating with this and realizing wow she really knows me and i can't wait to see what she offers and coming from an image perspective this was her old logo it looks like a um just clip art that could have been bought anywhere this might be a fiverr logo i don't know um but it's kind of masculine and janine's concern was that it could be excluding small dog owners so i had the chance to redesign a new logo for her that had more of a genuine um hand feel that just had more personality and was more of scale and this is what we ended up with um i worked with an illustrator to do a scratch board it's not showing up very clear but i mean you can see it but you can't see the detail and i know we talked about detail earlier i'm not going to get into that but there are options of this for different sizes that it was used in but you have the large dog and the small dog and she does have a german shepherd that's what inspired this business so we kept the german shepherd and we used pictures of her dog for this illustration so canine fitness dog walking reinvented it's got the same stuff but it looks and feels totally different and creates a different atmosphere that is going to really draw in her ideal client this is what i chose for the hero image on her website she took this image as well she takes like she used to post 20 images a day on instagram for the the owners of the dogs and in san francisco they may be called prep for a pet providers i don't know i think that was a thing about 10 years ago um rather than pet owners um so this is the trail i was talking about she takes them down the trail into the beach where other dog i mean other dog walkers her competition would just come here and stop and putting it all together this is what her hero section looks like we put all the pieces together um the dog's facing the headline we've got the logo and you can see how the copy and the image worked together and she's letting you know we go the extra mile not showing it but you know you feel it and it's not cluttered and it's very clear what to do um and and then learn more that goes to the about page and the about page is the second most visited page on a website and that's where she wanted people to go because she wanted people to contact her that was her preferred call to action and then this is um the next portion of the website we're not going to go all the way down i'm just kind of showing you the top portion of the homepage because this is where you really need to make the biggest impact the footer is very important but that could be a session into itself as well um so this next session section shows the content that i just um read for you and and where the blue is that's like the answer to all of those questions if you feel this way well trust me they're not going to feel that way at the end of the day after working with us um so we have an earthy color palette without it feeling too crunchy um there's a good feminine and masculine feel as whereas before it was very masculine um that is an icon i created custom icons for different sections of her website that had the same look and feel as her logo um let's see and then the next section goes into more about um addressing the benefits of working with her and then that call to action goes to the page that's that talks more about that adventure she takes them on so we've got wide space it's easy to look at it's a fun atmosphere very user focused and her calls to action are very um hi last year i spoke about typography i agree there's a lot of typefaces here i don't mean just now okay what's the question then i just wanted to know why you're trying to use it her audience can read it and it's different it stands apart from the other copy so it's just a different mood for me it was a nice juxtaposition of the mood that the viewer is feeling as they're going through it but it's a great question i haven't had to face that yet is this the homepage or the about page this is the homepage okay this is the hero section this is the one the first section and then you go further down this is still the homepage oh i see that's the top oh sorry so i guess i should have kept the same image my bad same page where is the curse of writing she is the blue okay i'm already read it okay yeah so that's where it says trust test after a day with k9 oh yeah you get to go home and cuddle so does learn more go to another page or yes the learn more goes to her about page okay which is what where they can contact her directly and that's what she wants there's a question okay yes hi are you using web fonts for that cursive are you using a graphic it's a web font okay yes because seo is important and we've got k9 fitness in there again okay ready to move on okay so oh yeah sure um is there a menu yeah yeah there's a menu when you scroll down i can see next time i give this presentation i should just show what happens when you scroll down because that's when the menu pops up and you've got another version of that logo coming up on the top left section mm-hmm yeah yeah because we're not going to show this big logo all the way through um so there's another version that comes up that's smaller but it just basically drops out the bottom half um so i will do that next time i can clearly see that was confusing and i apologize thank you for the feedback um we're always learning so you can see how the information i gathered the discovery phase informed the creative choices this ensures that the results are user focused with clears calls cost action that lead to working working directly with k9 fitness so this is your opportunity to take what you've learned today and apply this stuff to your site section um this you really can't see it very clear um in the blues okay let's go up one learn more is a call to action and also that arrow bounces which is encourages them to move down and then here the call to action is in the um teal section it says off leash dog adventures and it clearly looks like a button because it hasn't outlined on it yet i'll make that more obvious next time you know i totally redid this on wednesday what's that oh thank you that is important what did he say that the mobile he complimented the mobile site it's a little different oh okay what about the about page what would be on the about page we're not gonna go there i appreciate the question um but this is about your home page oh sorry sorry that's okay this live site we can actually look at yeah yeah it's right it's right here what's the uh k9 fitness s f for san francisco yes i was just gonna say y'all check out the what just just check out the website and it all makes sense okay thank you the website just go to the website thanks oh thank you yes hi you made the comment on the mobile did you pick a theme that was responsive and so it did the mobile because you made a comment there or could you do a separate version well i i design offline because i have a print background and then i take it and build it so i'm not really using a theme per se i'm using beaver builder you should learn it yeah i love beaver builder you can take stuff and make it happen yeah and there's there's easy user friendly ways to do that within beaver builder yeah it's a great program yes imagery yes i was fortunate that she had photography in this case i do use a lot of stock um there's a lot of stock out there now that's affordable and not cheesy so um it's good to keep an eye on what the visuals look like and how they work together sometimes i'll have a um photographer take stock images and edit them to make them look and feel like they're all taken by the same person so it's not jarring as someone's viewing it so they can be a great resource so when people come to me saying i hate stock images i'm like hey it's a big word let's talk about this um so i was gonna have a handout for you guys tonight but i literally finished this right before we started um i i did change it on wednesday but i i the intention is for it to be understood um so i just wanted to make it a little clear that's uh so make an impact with your homepage by implementing what you've learned by doing this you'll have a user focused homepage that's easy for others to understand what you provide who can benefit most from what you offer and how they can begin to work with you and if you text me here um i'm i've got something set up with mailchimp to where i'm going to know exactly who you are and um by the end of the day i'll send you the pdf that i use that you can actually go into and type um that has a lot of the questions that i use and if you're working on your site or somebody else's site um or even somebody else doing your site they're great questions to consider so that you know who your user is oh yeah yeah yeah thanks y'all i know that we had some technical difficulties but we made it thank you thank you the questions i know we have already had some i don't know what time it is how we doing we good okay i do have a question so your six six eight six six is the same as soon now it's her six six eight six six six oh okay oh it's the message yeah so you'll put in homepage impact and that makes it mean got it yeah we both learned about this tool this week okay thank you yeah it's very efficient so it's amazing that was the quickest part of getting ready for this and it was through the survey month no i don't remember even who this is but it hooks up to my male chin okay yeah i don't even remember the app that i used um but i got the first three 30 day trial yeah so i could get this stuff to you yep any more questions is there a font um i guess site or that you would recommend um i use adobe products and they've made an incredible um site that is called i can't remember i have a hard time remembering technical stuff like on the spot but i did give like a whole presentation just about typography last year um google fonts is great uh google fonts is a great place to start thank you yes i want to have business cards too if you want one