- Good morning, welcome to a new vlog everybody.
I wanna set off this blog by saying a big thank you
to everyone who left such a nice comment on my last vlog,
where I was talking about just not feeling great.
My day started off good
in the blog that I put up last week
but then it went downhill
and a lot of you were very kind about that
and saying that you've been experiencing
that roller coaster during this pandemic time too.
Yeah, this week, it's Tuesday right now
and it's turning out to be kind of a good week so far.
I mean we're one day
and then a few hours of another day into it
and so I can't really judge that yet, can I?
But yesterday was a really good day
and I'm hoping today, it's gonna be a good one also.
Went for a walk this morning on the river-bed as per usual.
It's just nice about it, you've gotta do that again.
Nice to have that as part of a routine to get outside,
go for a walk, listen to some podcasts.
Oh, I hear the doorbell.
Wonder what online shopping we've ordered.
It was just an Amazon order, nothing too exciting.
I didn't know what I thought it would be though
'cause it's not like I've ordered anything exciting online.
Anyway, I can't remember what I was saying
before I got distracted by that.
Nope, it's gone, let's just move on.
Today, like the day's Tuesday,
I have two meetings later this afternoon,
one to talk about the calls to action on our blog.
I wanna come up with a system
where we can personalize it.
So we have like a flow
we want people to go through
when they're reading our content.
The first thing I'm thinking,
being, get them to sign up to our email list
by offering some sort of opt in that sort of thing.
The next thing being to encourage them to create an account
and so we move people through this
using some personalization software.
I've been working on some designs
of how these calls to actions should look
and yeah, I'm gonna meet today
and talk with some of the people on our content team
about what they, like what function do they actually want
and what they wanna be promoting to people
and then what else?
Then we have our marketing team meeting,
which is kind of like a all-hands for the marketing team
where once we have the slot
where it's gonna be a dedicated topic that we talk about.
So it's not a meeting with updates,
we try really hard not to do that.
I can book it 'cause when you're a remote company,
you can do that sort of thing,
asynchronously, drop some notes into a channel.
But what we do really value is brainstorming sessions
and sessions to discuss ideas and make plans
and so that's what this meeting is gonna be about,
about some upcoming features,
planning what we're gonna do on the marketing side,
which we're good.
In the last blog, I talked about the training page as well.
That was what I was starting to wireframe.
It's been a little harder
than I perhaps would have expected
to get that project moving along
and I think what I'm gonna mostly talk about in this vlog
is questions to ask of people on your team
when you're an in house designer
and you're creating anything like this
and how you can anticipate needs and plan for the future,
because this is a project where I could design
for what we have and what we need right now
but it wouldn't be very future-proof
and we will probably end up needing to make changes to it
in the not too distant future
and so I'm trynna like,
yeah, capture all those needs now
and build a system that's gonna be robust.
By build, I mean, design
because Corey is actually gonna do the building of it
as per the usual.
But yeah, that's what I'm gonna spend some time
working on today because I went for a walk this morning.
I've already done my workout for the day
and I'm now sitting, drinking my coffee,
just have breakfast and ready to crack on into it.
(upbeat music)
Okay, that's it, now a focus block
and I managed to get to a really good place within that time
with this wireframe.
Further along than I thought it would making some decisions.
So that feels good.
I feel like what I've got now
is a really good starting point
to have a conversation with the team
and to hopefully move forward to the design phase.
So let me show you what I've worked on
and tell you about a few of the questions
that I asked for the team in order to get this point.
So first lemme start by showing you
the current training page.
So this is what we have right now.
It is like just a super basic solution.
We have, it's just a WordPress page
and all this content is added manually.
So yeah, it's just a lot of text and buttons
and information and obviously not super enticing to click on
with some links at the bottom there.
This is my wireframe for what I'm thinking of doing.
So we're gonna have the next upcoming workshop
in the header here, links up here
to the different sections on the page.
We have live workshops, pre-recorded ones
and then more like technical tutorials,
the workshops are more strategy-focused.
That's something that we wanna try to get across.
So this is like in page navigation
but also it kind of acts as a summary
of what we have available
in terms of our video training.
Then we have our live strategy workshops
and I've got the tags here.
I thought about doing it in a dropdown,
but then I thought actually having them out in the open
lets people see what the options are
and so, it'll encourage them all to click on
the one that fits the stage they're at in their journey.
So yeah, I've got all of these laid out on the page,
so there might be a lot of them.
I think they're probably no more than 10 at once though.
So, I'm okay with this
to have a big list of the live workshops
'cause this is the main thing we won't be able to do
is attend the live one
'cause they're truly something special.
Angel, our workshop host, our credit educator
is amazing and really good at connecting live.
So yeah, that's the best opportunity for learning.
Then in the next section,
so this is kind of like grouped together.
We have two recorded, pre-record workshops
where if someone just wants
to get started watching straight away
and then there'll be technical stuff.
So these are more strategy-focused
about you could really apply the strategies taught in them,
both these and the live workshops
to any email marketing software that you use, really.
It's all about the strategy of using email
and building your audience as a creator
whereas these videos are specifically about ConvertKit.
so that's why they're sort of grouped here
and they're more technical about how to use the software,
whereas these are more about business strategy like I said.
So yeah, we've got that.
Then we've got a search bar,
for if someone couldn't find a video
on what they're looking for to do with Convertkit.
This will take them to our knowledge base
with more information
and then we end the page with a link to our guides
and a link to a podcast
for if they wanna learn in a different way.
It was confusing to get to this point
mostly because of, first of all,
there's a difference between the recorded workshops
and the live ones and the strategy
and the technical and all that stuff to start with.
And I think I actually edited it all so,
it's not here anymore
but yeah, I used to have a carousel
for the recorded workshops
and then I even was starting to think about
having the recorded workshops
mixed in with live ones
and splitting the page up by category
instead of by live or recorded, if that makes sense.
So within this getting started category,
you'd see whatever the live ones were that were coming up
but also all the pre-recorded ones.
But, it turned out in talking to the team
that there is actually not that many pre-record ones
they're finding on habit.
That's why I decided to go with this option instead.
They're planning on only to,
if they have a third, we can just have a column of three,
just like these have columns for three
and maybe even if they did four,
we could have one, two, three, four.
And I think once we got to five,
then I would start to think
about turning it into a carousel instead.
But yeah, because that's not the plan for a while,
then I feel safe going with this.
It was really important with this page
to think about what it really needed to be
and what the workshop team were doing
rather than just looking at what we have now
and doing a designed version of it, if that makes sense.
Like for example, these three workshops here are older,
streaming on demand ones
that the team are planning on retiring
and if I hadn't asked the question
and if I had just designed to what we have right here,
then that wouldn't have been very future-proof
to be considering these.
Also the page has this section
of helpful articles and tips,
which is helpful, admittedly
but it's just not the direction
that we're going in the page.
It's gonna be focused on video training.
So if I hadn't thought through that
and asked the question about our focus
and what they wanna do,
they've said they wanna bring in the quick tips videos
instead of this stuff.
Well, they didn't say instead of this stuff,
they just said they wanted to bring that in
and so to me that meant
this was becoming a video training page
and so I've decided to remove these links
because the search bar to a knowledge base
will help people if they were looking for any of that stuff.
What else do they ask about?
Okay, so yeah, what I heard from the team.
Wait, I wrote a thing up here
so that I can talk to you about it.
So these four things where the types of content
that the teams said they were gonna have,
live workshops recorded,
some were pre-recorded ConvertKit overviews
that they felt were different from these recorded workshops
because they were more technical focused
on the software rather than strategy,
so there is a different audience for them
and then those quick tips videos.
So what I've done is group these two together
in the same carousel
because even though they're technically different content,
Angel, the credit educator makes these videos
whereas there's a team on our customer success team
who create the quick tips videos.
So it's like different people creating them
but the audience for them is the same, if that makes sense.
Both types of content are going to be
about using ConvertKit giving you in-depth instructions.
This one's gonna be an overview
of the two different types of accounts
and this one is more
tips for various pieces of the software.
But yeah, the audience for them is the same.
So I've decided to group them,
instead of having this in a separate section on the page.
It's really important to ask questions
and fully understand what it is you're laying out.
That's why you just absolutely cannot design a webpage
until you have the content for it.
I've talked before, I think it was in my office,
it was a live stream actually,
about the difference between content and copy.
So as you can see in mine,
there is placeholder copy throughout this,
that means you have success, et cetera.
Obviously that's not what we're gonna write on the page.
I haven't gotten our copywriters to take a look at this yet.
You don't need the exact copy
in order to start laying out a page
but you do need to know exactly what's going on it
and that's what I call the content.
And you have to understand what that content is too
'cause if I had just,
blindly gone in and laid out,
okay, there's these four different types of content
and so I'm just gonna lay out these four different sections
for these four different types of content,
it's much better for me as the designer
or you as the designer
to do the thinking about
what the purpose is of that content
and what its role is on the page,
why it's there, why it's important to someone,
how they're gonna interact with it
to decide actually how to group it together.
That also helps you decide the order
that it should go on the page as well.
Like I said, with the one idea
I had of mixing the recordings
in with the live workshops
turned out to not be the right way to do it
because it was gonna be so few recordings,
it would have been kinda weird
to just every now and then see a pre-recorded one,
in amongst all the live content.
Anyway, I hope that was interesting
to see this little overview of this project.
Like I said, got further with it, then I thought I would.
So I feel pretty good about that now
and now it's in a stage of just
waiting for a bit of feedback,
really just looking for our workshops team
to call out anything that I might've missed
or gotten wrong in my understanding of the content
before I move on to the next stage
and actually start to design it.
Yeah, so now, I guess I'm gonna go have lunch.
Actually before lunch,
I think that it is turnip checking time.
So, let's do that.
Check it out, I match my little character.
I made her bring me the horizon umbrella T-shirt.
Marching mine, what a nerd.
Okay, okay, okay.
Turnips, turnips, turnips.
One day, maybe we'll do a separate blog
where I just give you a tour around my island
'cause I know not everyone is interested in that
but I find it very fun.
I've been playing this game
literally every single day since it came out.
Didn't think I would.
I've never been one to really,
get really into video games before.
Only (mumbles).
I think I've explained before
but turnips is kind of like the stock market
inside this game.
Yeah, it's just been such a nice game
to have during the pandemic,
to have something to do
that you can really switch your mind off
but also be quite creative with it
'cause you're coming up with ideas
of what to do on your island
and planning things out, making them happen.
And there's a lot of mundane things to do too
like chopping wood from trees
and I don't know.
It's just really nice.
If you've been thinking about getting Animal Crossing
but be holding back for whatever reason,
then let this be,
your (mumbles) that you should go and get it.
Okay, but I'm not gonna play anything more
because I do have work to do,
so, we're gonna turn this off for now
and I'll come back to that.
Now, let's go and have lunch.
(upbeat music)
All right, lunch done, a few chores done.
I'm now getting to work for the afternoon.
So for that meeting
that I said to talk about the calls to action
on our blog coming up in about an hour.
So I'm gonna make sure that I have
all of my thoughts in order before that meeting.
I hate turning up to a meeting,
especially when there's one set for a particular project
and not taking the time beforehand
to come up with what I wanted to present
or what opinion I want to present
and discuss in the meeting.
And sometimes if the purpose of a meeting is to brainstorm,
then it's fine to turn up
without having thought of things ahead of time
'cause you're gonna be doing that together on the call
but yeah, in this one,
I really need to use it to get everyone onto the same page
and instead of starting from scratch and being like,
what should we do for our blog?
It's gonna be much more useful if I say,
"Hey, I've thought about this.
"This is what I've laid out.
"What do you think?"
And obviously they don't have to go with what I'm thinking
but it'll help to have it as a starting point,
if that makes sense.
So yes, that's what I'm gonna go take a look at now.
(upbeat music)
- Well, that was a really great meeting,
got a lot of clarity and made some decisions, which is good.
Sometimes it's just good to talk things through with people.
Yeah, I'm excited.
We all started dreaming really big with this system
that I wanna have in place
and yet it's all gonna be very complex
to actually bring to life.
But we have a starting point
that's gonna be small enough, so that's good.
I've got like, about half an hour now
before rolling into meeting number two for the day,
our all marketing team one.
So I don't know what I'm gonna try
and get done in between then.
I've had a strangely productive day.
I guess it shouldn't be that strange
'cause I feel like I have worked hard
on trying to have a productive day
but I kinda have gotten done everything
that I had on my to-do list already.
So perhaps I didn't like dream big enough
when I wrote my to-do list this morning.
I'm gonna find something fun to work on
in the meantime.
Well, I found something fun to work on,
it's a (mumbles)
and I've got a new print.
If you saw in previous vlogs,
I've been getting prints in
to prepare to hang on this wall over here
and to extend this gallery wall around
which is gonna be exciting.
None of my friends have arrived yet
but (mumbles) showing up.
Ooh, I know what this one is.
I probably shouldn't be unraveling it.
Ooh, this is very cold, this (mumbles) stretching out.
Let's see if I can show you this
without touching it too much.
This is a new print.
Here we go, sort of.
New optimist friend, from my friend, Eric.
He created a thing called the "Optimist Project".
I'm gonna leave a link actually to a video-like documentary,
short film thing that
we made about his story
as part of this creative project
that we do at ConvertKit.
Some amazing story and yeah, he's an amazing artist.
He designed this,
he drew this one here for me,
which everyone always asks about.
He drew it by hand at a conference,
made a custom for me, which is very special.
And this little one here, "Optimist"
is part of the "Optimist Project".
You have to go and listen to that story.
So I'm gonna link that in the description.
Promise me you're gonna go do that.
Yeah, I'm excited to have this...
Oops, sorry, you're on lean.
This (mumbles).
I'm gonna wrap it back up in it's tissue.
And put it with the rest of my prints
that are awaiting frame.
(upbeat music)
All right, meeting's done.
The marketing meeting ended up being...
We have Nathan joined who's our CEO, by the way.
I filmed a video with him
that I feel like that would have started this year,
was it this year?
I don't know.
This quarantine is just like time, what is it?
Words, what are they?
Anyway, he joined our marketing meeting
and we talked all about a new feature
that we're working on
so that was really exciting.
Yes, exciting stuff ahead
but yeah, that is it,
that is the end of my workday
and so this will also be the end of this vlog.
It started raining here
which is kind of disappointing
'cause sometimes it's nice to go sit outside
in the evenings once I finish work.
I'm off to go cook dinner
and probably play some Animal Crossing, let's be honest.
Yeah, thank you for watching this vlog,
if you enjoyed seeing where I've gotten to on some projects
and it was definitely, I don't know.
I definitely feel a lot more positive in this
than I did perhaps near the end of the last vlog.
It continued to be a good day
whereas in the last one, the day started out good
and then it got kind of shitty.
So yeah, that's good, that is a win.
I feel like hopefully I'm running the corner
on this roller coaster of quarantine,
motivation, focus, emotions, all that stuff,
that I'm on the up now so that's good.
Hope you're doing well,
hope you're staying safe and healthy still
and hope you have a good week ahead and a good weekend.
Get some stuff done, do some relaxing,
all that good stuff
and I will see you in the next vlog, bye.
(upbeat music)