WDD LIVE 049- Detailed Website Critique + Q&A

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Happy Tuesday, everybody. See who’s here. We have another edition of WDD live. John, welcome Mike. Tony, Jamie is in the house. Derek, Andrea, Kareem, good to see you Kareem. Mike, Casey, remember, RE member. That’s interesting.

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Okay. Ruben, Yadira, Steve, Marcel, Pavel, Pavel, Pavel. Is that how you say it? D123. Good to see you.

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Okay.

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Let’s do this. I see a lot of people talking about questions, questions, questions, questions. So the new, the new format, hashtag Q or hashtag question. Doesn’t matter. Q is shorter. It’s easier to write, allows you to write more in

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your question. So I would just say hashtag Q and that allows me to search for them and find our questions. And then that also allows you by the way to ask questions at any point in time. If you’re new here what we do on WDD Live typically I mean it is a variety show so we could be doing something you know, different every week. But for the most part, what we do are in-depth web design critiques. We talk about everything that makes a website successful, from copy to SEO to UI to UX to the DOM,

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which is why it’s called Web Design for Domies. We look at accessibility, we look at code quality, we look at everything, everything, everything. Now, we do look at things in a certain order. We tend to look at the most important areas first. And if those most important areas are taken care of, and are checking the boxes, then we keep going deeper and deeper and deeper. So we find more things to look at. So that is the

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typical approach. And then we do q&a. And q&a means you can ask anything on pretty much any topic, it doesn’t have to be on the WDD stuff. We also can do live kind of like show me quickly how to do XYZ in bricks or you know any anything that’s a little mini type tutorial we can do that. We can do ACSS and frames questions kind of like open season. You can you can ask whatever you would like. All right let’s see. Good to see you again. We have Dave in the house, Derek, Gigi.

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If you’re new here, put I’m new or this is my first time or something like that. Just drop a comment, let us know that you are watching. It could be WDD Live for the first time. Maybe you’ve seen other videos on the channel, but maybe this is your first WDD Live. All right, we are going to go ahead and jump right into our first critique. We have one website that we are critiquing today and then we are going straight into Q&A. I have an inner circle office hours, private, basically for the inner circle, all business

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related stuff. That’s this evening at 8 p.m. I still need to have a voice for that. So we’ll see how this goes. We might be around the 90 minute mark today instead of two hours. We’ll just see. I don’t know. I always sometimes I change my mind as we go. But that’s kind of the plan. So let’s go ahead and share screen. Tyree you’re not new. You’re not new. Okay. is the website we’re looking at. And that we always start with a no scroll test,

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which means we have to figure out what’s going on here without scrolling around. Now the video, the background video in this case does help with this. But the, I will say the name, the brand, right off the bat, Old Coach. I don’t know if this has some sort of meaning that we’re not in on, but it doesn’t really scream like what is this vegetation management

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that sounds like a very technical term we’ll see what’s going on here I without the video I think I would be lost the video thankfully gives some good context here the logo is a little hard to see on the overlay of the video like definitely the OCC part of the logo is hard to see when it’s light. I don’t know that that matters all that much, but we’ll see how that continues to play out. Got a little icon here for sending people down to the next section. So let’s talk about this heading. We are old coach contracting. Now, I talk a lot about wasted opportunity in copywriting, wasted space, wasted real estate. This would be an example of wasted real estate, right?

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We are Old Coach Contracting. And the reason is because, I mean, we already know this, right? Like we’re here. Here we are at oldcoach.com. So I’m, yeah, that’s you. So you don’t have to tell us, right? We already know this. So it begs the question, is there something else more important we could say here?

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And I think there always is. The answer to that is always yes. Your partners in vegetation management. I don’t know what vegetation management is. I don’t know if this is an industry-wide term. So this allows me to go here to like Ahrefs, vegetation management, let’s make sure that we spell this correctly. We also want to go maybe this is an Australia thing, right? Let’s go into Australia here. So vegetation management, I think that that’s spelled correctly. All right,

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let’s do a little search here. And let’s see what we get. Oh, look at that. No data. There’s a vegetation management act, a vegetation management report, a vegetation management plan, but in terms of the service of vegetation management, it does not look like this is a searched service. We could use the word near and see, yeah, very low. There are vegetation management companies near me, but I mean, traffic potential, volume, basically non-existent. Basically non-existent. Justin says land management is more a thing in Australia.

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I get it. Yeah, I mean I get that. You guys have like, it’s the wild, wild west out there, right? Like look at this. And there’s just dangerous animals behind every leaf, apparently. Okay, so let’s do land management as an alternative. Land management and see what we get. And there is in fact just this the root keyword by itself, which also is mapped to land clearing, by the way. I don’t know what NSW is. That’s probably an area maybe in Australia. Land management, we could add near and see if we get anything, not really anything relevant there. But I would definitely say that it

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appears land management is the better keyword to go with, like vegetation management not so much. Land management would be a good thing to do. Let’s see, in my experience, land management is more related to the GIS industry. I don’t know what the GIS industry is, but these are all relevant things to consider when we’re talking about SEO and copy. And this is really how SEO and copy both need to tie together, right, if you’re hoping to be found for these types of things. Okay, all in all I think that this is a basic heading. It’s a placeholder heading more or less.

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It doesn’t really check an important SEO box. It doesn’t really check an important copywriting box. It’s more or less a waste of real estate. So we have to do better with this H1 heading. I think this would also benefit from a little lead paragraph below the heading. Because right now you’re forcing us to come down here to continue to get more context for what’s going on.

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Which, you know, if you’re gonna say something super relevant here, maybe that would be a good way to go, but we’re starting out again, like, we’re literally just saying the exact same thing. So old coach contracting is your comprehensive solution, and there’s the word solution. You guys see why I harp on the word solution? You’re gonna find the word solution.

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Bad copy and the word solution always go hand in hand. They are always just frolicking together in the fields. This is just, all right, it’s uninspired. It’s uninspired terms. For vegetation management and land care. So this is just another way, it’s like, all right, if we had to rewrite this and say the exact same thing, what would we do?

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Well, we would do this right here. Providing exceptional vegetation management services in Queensland, services Queensland wide, Old Coach Contracting is dedicated to enhancing and preserving your natural landscapes with our expert solutions. So we’ve also talked very heavily in past WDD Lives about you-focused copy and me focused copy. This is very heavy on the me focused copy side of things. There’s an obsession with the brand name, old coach contracting, old coach contracting,

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old coach contracting. It’s almost like sites are trying to optimize for their own name, which you don’t need to optimize for because you’re already gonna own your own name in terms of SEO. So once again, that’s a waste of real estate and space and opportunity. Right, take all of these references we can see the brand right here. We have more important things to say than the name over and over and over again. So and

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this is just common, this is a very very, it’s not just this website, this is one of the most common mistakes in web design. It’s dedicated to enhancing and preserving your natural landscapes with our expert solutions. Hey, look at that, a word again, again. People use the word solutions when they don’t know what else to say, when they don’t know how to describe the thing that they do in better terms, they just use the word solutions. Solutions when you see it in copy is a signal, it’s a flag to tell your brain, oh, we need to replace that, almost like text expansion. You need to replace that with meaningful copy.

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Okay, so anytime you are considering using the word solution in your copy, use that as a flag to remind you that you need to say something specific and meaningful there and not use the word solution. Okay, so all of this has to be rewritten because we really haven’t talked about pain points. We haven’t talked about a single feature or a single benefit. We haven’t talked about an objection. We haven’t talked about anything relevant to the visitor.

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We’ve only talked about, hey, did we mention we are old coach contracting? Maybe we forgot, but we’ll mention that a couple more times, and that we have solutions for you here. And to the visitor, none of that is relevant, right? That doesn’t help them on their journey to conversion. And we can get a quote, we can learn about us. I wouldn’t get a quote yet because I don’t even know what I’m signing up for.

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So that, see the copy kind of renders the call to action useless, right? I can only act if I’m called to act. So far I haven’t been called to act. It’s not a call to action simply because it looks like one. You actually have to call the user to act. And so none of this copy is helping us do that, unfortunately. I do like the general design and obviously Obviously the layout, the spacing is all good. There’s good hierarchy in terms of the actual text. So we’ve checked some important boxes on one side of things

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like the actual web design, the UI, the UX, right? Video, okay? So we’ve included good visuals, which by the way, these are high quality visuals. This is a high quality video playing in the background here. This is a high quality or looks by the thumbnail to be a high quality video. Let’s go ahead and take a look at this video and see if it provides us with any meaningful

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context or content.

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Welcome to old coach contracting where the health of your land is our priority. Our hands-on approach to vegetation management delivers not only services but solutions to protect and help your environment.

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Damn it that word is that word is infecting everything. This site has solution cancer it’s in every organ. Okay here we go.

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Land is our priority. Our hands-on approach to vegetation management delivers not only services but solutions to protect and help your environment thrive. Our slashing and mowing service keeps your landscape in top condition.

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All right, we’ve made it to our first service, which is good, right? It took us too long to get here though. Like the number one thing people want to know pretty much is like, what the hell do you do? What does your business actually do? And it took us down here inside of a video. Now, if I kept scrolling, I could obviously, there you go. So we’re gonna see it down here. But again, we wanna encounter these things probably earlier on in the experience.

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Latest four by four tractors with heavy duty slashes and industrial strength zero turn mowers. We control grass growth, lower fire risks and improve your lands appearance. Our team operates heavy duty slashes in top condition. Our slashing and mowing…

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Okay, let’s think about this from the perspective of a… I don’t know who the target market is, maybe like farmers. I don’t know. I don’t know what the target market… I would think that farmers maybe have all this, their own equipment, or is this a government service? Like, I don’t know. But what does the end user care about?

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Let’s listen here.

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…service keeps your landscape in top condition, equipped with the latest four by four tractors with heavy duty slashes and industrial strength zero turn mowers.

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So we’re it’s a it’s a focus on the technical features of this equipment, rather than the outcomes of the service, right? What are the outcomes of the service? That’s probably what they care about more than the technical features of the equipment used during the service. Now, again, I don’t even know who the client is, okay? I don’t know who this is for, but if I had to guess, when it comes to land management, to me, it’s like I want the outcome of land management. I actually don’t really care what equipment you use, right? If you have a fucking magic wand, I maybe we would prefer that. I just

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care like can you do the thing that I want you to do right? So if the video focuses too much on technical aspects of the equipment, it’s probably not serving the the visitor all that much.

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We control grass growth, lower fire risks and improve your lands appearance. Our team operates effectively, guaranteeing thorough and high quality work across your property. Weeds can threaten the balance of your ecosystem. So weed control and spraying, second service. Our weed control and spraying experts use precise methods to manage invasive species, weeds and weed infestations. Detailed maps and reports guide us and effective trails are free from contaminants is no barrier. Our mobile fleet is equipped for remote projects, allowing us to stay on site for your land to critical infrastructure and be

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confident that protect your landscape.

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Okay. So overall, like the, the quality of the video is fantastic, right? It was obviously shot by somebody who knows video production and the voiceover is very high quality and it’s a good pace and there’s good action in the video and so has kind of all of the the things that that you would want it to have. You know I mentioned a couple things about the technical focus but you know we’ll let that slide. Overall it’s a good video I mean there’s many ways you can go with a video right. This would be a safe like conservative approach to video production for a service like this you could also get you know Like a little bit outlandish with it if you wanted to like this is not going to grab anybody’s attention

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Really, but it communicates the things that you want to communicate Okay This word vegetation management I’m wondering like was this just brainstormed or did they have some data that I don’t have in terms of like why vegetation management because I can see it the pattern of we are going to use this term vegetation management that is the term we’re not even going to use alternative terms like that mean the same thing we are just going to use that one term over and over and over again I would like to know why that decision was made old coach contract and there we go again gotta make sure we know what you know what the brand name is provide specialized vegetation

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Specialized vegetation management services, including slashing and mowing, weed control and spraying, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, are tailored solutions are designed to maintain and enhance the health and appearance of your land. So here’s another word right here, and you see, right, solutions. But this time, this time,

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we made sure you know they’re tailored solutions, okay? They’re not just solutions, guys, they’re tailored solutions. But a lot of people say this, like we tailor the service to you, right? And like saying that is one thing, but it’s actually better to just tell them how that’s done. Like what does a tailored land management service look like

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versus an untailored land management service, right? With no context there, it doesn’t really mean anything. So we see these words that they allude to something, but because we can’t actually visualize any sort of difference or really contextually understand any difference just off the top of our heads, we almost have to dismiss it. It’s like, alright, whatever, I guess that sounds good, but I don’t really know what it means. So they just move on, right? There’s no, the visitor can’t have any real connection to that talking point because there’s no details like what does that actually mean?

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So this is another flag when you’re like we tailor it we specialize it we do custom We do what like what does that look like don’t just say that that’s how it’s done You actually have to explain what that looks like Okay, slashing and mowing weed control and spraying so experience efficient and precise landscape maintenance with our slashing and mowing services. I do like the backgrounds here. I like how this is white and then into a background image that has a very light sky. It’s kind of, it’s like almost a gradient effect.

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Creates a little seamless transition, which I like. Slashing and mowing service is tailored to keep your property in pristine condition, combat invasive weeds. The one thing, the reason I don’t know who this is for is because the copy fails to call them out. Like, it is a very good idea in your copy to call out the person that the service is for

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or the product is for. So you’ll see like if a product is for busy moms, well, it’s gonna say the word busy moms in the copy somewhere, right? And so this is just kind of talking to like a nebulous abstract, like, we don’t know who you are, but maybe you want some land management in your life.

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So, you know, did we mention our name and that we have solutions? That’s kind of what’s going on here. It’s very nebulous, very abstract, very, it doesn’t really target any one person in particular, it seems. So it’s, again, it’s a little bit makes it hard to understand who this is for and exactly what’s going on.

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Because like mowing, mowing my yard versus mowing this fucking swamp that’s back here, those are obviously two completely different things, right? And like who owns this back here, who is this for? We need a little bit more detail on that. So the person also knows that they’re in the right place. I mean, I guess if you had that much land, you might feel you’re in the right place here.

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But again, it helps to just be explicit with it. Make even if you feel like it’s obvious, stating the obvious is not a bad thing in copywriting. Okay, let’s see. Have a project we can assist you on, get a quote. There’s an interesting like, okay, it’s this color that I’m, I guess it’s like an accent color, but then it’s used for the button right here. But then these buttons are back to blue here. Back to this accent color here.

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I guess it’s this color from the logo. Okay. I guess that makes a little bit of sense. It’s used right here as well. Though I don’t really know if it works all that well right there. Okay. In terms of general order of content, right? We have like the about kind of services,

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and then we go down, and we’re offering to get a quote. We’re gonna talk about industries we service, which this kind of answers my question here. So, once again, gotta mention the name. We serve a wide array of industries. Well, that doesn’t help. That doesn’t help nail things down. Okay, each with unique environmental needs, from vast agricultural lands to government projects.

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Okay, so I had some guesses. Those seem to be coming true. Our specialized services are tailored to, again, specialized services, again, flowery words that don’t really mean anything, are tailored to address the specific requirements of each sector, ensuring landscapes are not only maintained, but also enhanced for future resilience and productivity.

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Woo.

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That is a mouthful.

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That is a mouthful. Uh, this is. If we’re grading the copy, this is typical corporate placeholder copy. It’s like, let’s, we have to fill space. So we need a lot of words. And, um, you know, it’s like, I don’t, those words don’t even necessarily need to really say anything. I just need, I need to check the box of

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does this website have copy? Because it’d be super awkward if it didn’t have copy. So we need it to have copy. What copy do you have for? Well, we’ve got this copy. All right, well that copy I guess we’ll have to do and that you end up with this. That’s kind of the process, right?

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It’s not really a honed in, like we really know the thoughts and feelings of the target market and we’re dialed in and we’re really speaking to those things. This is just basic corporate placeholder copy. You’ll see this on 80% of corporate websites. That’s what we have to try to move beyond, right? And I’ve said this before in terms of process. I feel like a lot of web design agencies, a lot of web designers and freelancers,

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copy is the last thing on their mind. A lot of people get copy from clients, which we’ve already talked about, is the worst place you can probably get copy from. And it’s just an afterthought, and it’s a box that people wanna check as quickly as possible, when it’s actually the most important part of the website.

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Which is why we always look at it first. Okay, equipment and insurances, our commitment at Old Coach Contracting is backed by top-tier equipment. See, it’s always like flowery language with no specifics. And comprehensive insurances, like for, let me give you an example. If every land management company in Australia has this equipment right here, I guess that’s what we’re looking at. So if everybody has that equipment, you don’t need to say jack shit about your equipment. Don’t say anything about your equipment because everybody has it. Okay. It’s not a thing we need to talk about because it’s not important. They could go to the competitor B, C, D, E, and F and they’re going to get the exact same thing. Certainly don’t

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say it’s like top tier or you know whatever other words were used up top, you just don’t even need to talk about it. Now, if you have equipment that nobody else has, and it allows you to do tasks that they’re not capable of doing. Now you talk about your equipment and you don’t just say top tier equipment at that point. What do you say? You say, well, we have X, Y, Z, and it allows you to do ABC. And by the way, nobody else has this. Okay. So if you have this problem,

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this specific X problem, we have this specific Y thing that solves that, this makes sense to just do business with us. Because you can’t go anywhere else to get this problem solved. That’s when you talk about it. But if you have the same thing as everybody else, you don’t need to talk about it

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because you’re not saying anything that anybody else can’t say. And so we have talked about that before on WDD Live as well is like, you need to make sure that things that are similar between you and your competitors,

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it’s a waste of an opportunity.

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Now, I think one problem people run into is, they’re like, well, we actually don’t, there’s nothing we do that’s really unique. I mean, yeah, there’s all competitors do stuff like we do it. Okay, that’s a business problem, right? So if you’re and I tell my clients this all the time, when we’re in copywriting, brainstorming sessions, and I’m like trying to draw it out of my clients.

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I’m like, guys, what do you do different? What do you do different? What is the unique selling proposition? This is marketing 101. You have to have a unique selling proposition. What is unique about what you do? And they’re like, well, you know, we kind of do this. I’m like, that’s not unique enough. That’s like a little slight difference between you and them, right? And so what sometimes it boils down to

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is the hard reality that guys, you’re not doing anything meaningful that other people aren’t doing. So we need to shift like your business focus. Your process needs to change or your tooling needs to change or something needs to change or your personality. You need more personality in what you guys are doing. Something’s got to be different. If you don’t have anything to say that’s different from other people, you have a failing business model. You can’t market that thing. So that’s and it sometimes unveils that quite large problem. But then guess what you become? You went from web designer to business consultant. You

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you are highlighting a very large issue that could very well end their company at some point because a company that really can’t stand out and can’t do anything differently is not a company that’s going to be around for for very long. So it’s very valuable to bring this kind of stuff up. Now a lot of times they are doing stuff different but they obfuscate that, they hide that behind words like solutions and top tier and custom and this and that and they just have a problem articulating it. If that’s the case that’s why we need to avoid those words and those descriptions and help them articulate their differences. So yeah, this is number one problem with this website right here.

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0:28:32
Because like I said, there’s not a UI problem. There’s not a UX problem. I mean, look at, look, this is a very, look how clean and easy the navigation is. It’s not like they have a giant mega menu that I’m lost in and I’m like, all right, that’s an obvious UX problem. There’s no UX problems, there’s no UI problems here. The colors are

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0:28:53
all fine, the design is all fine. The biggest problem with the website is the copy. The copy is going to make or break this website. Now, can you get conversions with bad copy? For sure. I mean, if all your competitors suck too, then they’re choosing between some and go with whatever one resonates with them. But the first person in that industry that stands out with really, really good copy, strong copy, they’re gonna start getting the lion’s share of the conversions, okay?

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0:29:25
So you see this as an opportunity. It’s like, I don’t wanna be in a pool where everybody’s awful. I just wanna be great, okay? And you continue to make it better and better and better. So the number one focus on this website right now should be revamping all the copy. You got to deep dive into what are the, like I want specific details of problems that land management has.

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0:29:46
And I think I remember back, let’s talk about maybe one specific thing. I don’t know anything about land management, but I do remember not too long ago that like Australia was on fire or something. So there was a bunch of wildfires. I don’t know if that has anything to do with this, but if it does, okay, that’s an area of specificity that we can actually hone in on, right? And you can put into your copy. Now there could be other similarly related problems. Irrigation problems. I don’t know. I don’t know. There are specific things that we can start to hone in on and use those specifics in the copy because right now the copy is just generic it doesn’t have any specificity then we have to look at

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0:30:34
things like capabilities okay is this company able to go into places okay the bush as they say right the other companies may not be able to access I don’t know this is why you have to have workshops with your clients and you have to go through all this stuff and pull this out of them. Because a lot of times you know they might be doing unique creative great stuff but they’ve just never bothered to articulate it or even attempt to articulate it and that’s your job. Okay let’s go ahead we looked at the SEO side of it let’s let’s look at some DOM stuff okay like I see these cards and

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0:31:11
immediately my brain is like all right that’s a repeating element. That’s a thing that we could theoretically use on many, many pages of the website. This doesn’t look like a giant website or anything. But we can just go and see how these were created. So we’ll inspect these. Oh, and I see right off the bat.

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Hold on.

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All right.

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0:31:31
What do we what do we let’s just do a pop quiz. I won’t I won’t go into any other detail. What do we see here? Jump in the chat, jump in the chat. What do we see is the problem right here? We are using automatic CSS it seems. And if this is from frames that was just renamed, something else had to have happened

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0:31:54
because this is probably not a frames issue. Yeah, there you go. The no li. So you have a ul with divs inside of it, which is a HTML violation. So those need to be li elements inside of that ul. But we do have global classes. Okay, feature card head, body. Okay, so these are, we’re using BIM, all correct there. Okay, so everything else looks to be in proper order. Let’s see how these are tabbed through.

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0:32:33
Because one thing I’m seeing, okay, there you go. So, oh, oh, oh, oh, see? Uh-oh, uh-oh. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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Okay, hold on.

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0:32:43
Do we have two links going to the same place? So we have a link on the heading, and then we have, ah, yeah, slashing and mowing. So this is an accessibility violation. You can’t have two links going to the same location in the same element. So this learn more really needs to be like a dummy. Probably make the entire card clickable

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0:33:06
with clickable parent. You can use focus parent on that if you want to, or just leave this heading as the real link, but remove the link here. At that point, just remove the learn more. If you’re not gonna make the entire card clickable, just remove the learn more. You can put this little arrow indicator

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0:33:22
after the heading if you want to. That helps indicate that this is actually a clickable link. There’s a bunch of different ways to tackle this, but what you can’t do is you can’t put two links in the same card, to the same place. So that, because in accessibility land, right, you’re forcing people to go through what should be four links,

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0:33:41
you’re forcing them to go through eight links. And they’re all going to the same place, so it doesn’t really help them whatsoever. Now we can see how this is announced, so we’re gonna see an announcement issue most likely as well.

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0:33:54
VoiceOver on Chrome, old coach contracting, main toolbar, leaving DevTools, entering old coach contracting web content, visited, link, play, toggle, visited, level two, link, slashing and mowing, list four items, visited, link, learn more, level two, link, weed control and spraying, link, learn more, you are, level two, link, weed GPS mapping and voiceover off.

1
0:34:14
So you see how it announces this as the link to slashing and mowing, which gives me context of what I’m about to click on. But the next time I hit tab, it says, link, learn more, and doesn’t tell me what I’m about to learn more about or where I’m about to go and so this again we talk about flags like the word solution is a flag when you see the words learn more or generic anchor text that should be an accessibility flag like was there an aria label added where it where is

1
0:34:44
the additional context is there hidden accessibility text that we can’t see. That should be a flag to check that area for accessibility because that’s going to be most often a violation right and we see here that it is a violation. Okay so let’s go down here industries. Let’s go to a different page see what’s going on here services. So what a service page looks like. Okay slashing and mowing, clean hero. I’m assuming this is your h1 up here and this would be your h2. Okay good. Are there cards on this? Is this all one section? Let’s check on that. Okay we have our hero up here. Okay that’s correct. We have a section for slashing and mowing services with service details, maintenance plans, our difference.

1
0:35:45
Is this an H2? Yep. Okay. Good, good. Is this a section with an H2? It is. What about this down here? This looks a little suspect. We’ve got a Div Bricks template section right into a list. Okay, I don’t know what’s going on here,

4
0:36:07
but this is a violation because,

1
0:36:09
so when you have a section element like this, you have to have a heading, right? And so we’re not seeing a heading H2 level except for what’s in here. But this now, see, that’s a paragraph. What is this? Also a paragraph. So the things that look like headings are actually paragraphs.

1
0:36:33
So we need a heading in this section, because I actually don’t know what this section is for. I guess that’s like a testimonial kind of thing, but it doesn’t even look like a testimonial. This section, I would re-map that. Re-imagine this, okay? Re-imagine this section. All right we got a little strip of images down here that pop up in oh

1
0:36:59
gosh oh dear oh boy oh dear okay where am I where am I I am I’m literally, we’ve been taken to the image. I thought it was going to open in a modal. No, sir, we are visiting the image.

6
0:37:20
And I will tell you right now,

1
0:37:22
we talk about accessibility, right? Definitely an accessibility violation here. But this is also just a my mom violation. Like, I always think of my mom as a typical user of a website. And it’s like, dude, my mom would be so lost right now. She would have no idea what happened. Oh, the tab, we’re on a page. She’s lost. This is a week of her life gone. She’ll never make her way back

1
0:37:48
to your website. Okay. Now I know that we have a back button that we can hit, but not everybody does. You know, not everybody. I would be getting a tech support call right now. Thanks to you. Thanks to you. Not a call that I want to get. So I don’t know what’s going on here or whether this this is like maybe a Bricks gallery something or I think there’s opens in a modal by default though but this is a definite problem right here that needs to be resolved. Okay what else do we need to look at here services are all going to be the same template I guess let’s meet the team the old coach team. Okay. Good photography, good photography.

1
0:38:30
I, I, this is probably the best, the best part of this site, you know, aside from clean UI UX is just a videography and photography work. And the fact that let’s, let’s, we’re going to hit on probably the most important D like we have deal breakers and we have deal makers, right? The deal maker of this website that you won’t see on many agricultural websites is the focus on people. I can see people, smiling, friendly looking people. And that makes a big difference.

1
0:39:08
If there are four land management companies, let’s put the copy aside, right? Let’s say they all have kind of generic corporate filler copy, right? But one of them has photography like this, where I’m like, Oh my God, those are the people that I’m going to be working with. Those look like some fine people I’d like to do business with. That’s it. That could be the whole decision point right there. It’s like, they just, I went to these other sites. I didn’t see who they were. They just seem like some faceless company, but this site, I see people,

1
0:39:37
they’re smiling. They’re, they’re in red shirts, there’s like a brand color thing going on here, I like their hats, I like these people. There are so many people that just make decisions based on that kind of emotion and you can win a lot of people just from having photography and video like this. That’s it, that’s it, that can be the difference maker right there. So in terms of something that this site really has going for it, that’s one of those things right there. Okay, let’s see.

1
0:40:06
I don’t feel like I have to read any more of the copy because I feel like it’s all just going to be more of the same. Which again, that should be a lesson in itself. When a site has really good copy, people read a lot of it, right? And when it has generic copy that’s not really telling them much, they start to skip it and just skim. You like literally turn people into skimmers when you don’t give them really good copies. So just put that in your mind again

1
0:40:36
as something else to consider. Okay, let’s go here. Yep, yep, okay.

5
0:40:42
This is probably a weaker part of the site

1
0:40:44
in terms of layout. This kind of feels like, honestly this feels a little like Bev got her hands on this, right? Like we had some icon cards with probably some manageable text. You know, it was probably like this long right here. Okay, maybe a little tidbit of text

1
0:41:04
and then Bev came along and was like, no, we gotta say more about each of these things. And you end up with like these giant paragraphs that obviously don’t fit this icon card layout. This is again, something you will see very commonly. And it’s all centered, which is definitely a Bev thing to do, right? Where it’s like, no, we gotta,

1
0:41:30
not only does there need to be more text here, but we have to center it as well. This needs to be left aligned, it needs to be way shorter. These need to be just little scannable chunk like tidbit things.

4
0:41:42
Ok.

1
0:41:45
Everything I mean once again like and the variety of photography and the fact that it’s like out in the land that they actually you know work on. To me the photography the video is the A plus here. This is the the best part of the website really makes the website and then along with the you know generally clean layout and and just it’s all it that’s all really really good I’m telling you if this if this site had kick-ass copy it would be locked and loaded right it was like you would be ready to convert like crazy okay I think I think we can wrap this up here let’s go into the chat to see what the chat is saying. Let’s see.

1
0:42:27
If you see happy smiling farmers out on the road in Europe, it’s usually because they’re protesting.

4
0:42:32
That’s funny.

1
0:42:32
The text is too long for center alignment for sure. Any other comments? Any other comments in the chat? Before we get rid of this website right here and put this one in the books. If anybody has any comments about it, reputable equipment might be good. It shows you don’t just carry any brands. Yeah. I mean, I don’t even know how, how much all that matters. I just feel like, you know, if I hire a professional, um,

1
0:43:06
and this is why I talk about the professionalism of, of tools, right? If it’s like an industry wide problem that people show up with terrible equipment then you want to talk about the equipment right but if everybody shows up with good quality equipment that gets the job done consistently it’s not really something you have to talk about it’s just something that the person will expect now in web design it’s an epidemic that people show up with fucking Elementor and Divi and and like not great page builders. So you want to talk about the tools.

1
0:43:41
But I feel like in an industry like land management, that’s probably not the case. I mean, a great lawnmower is a great lawnmower, a tractor is a tractor. It’s like, you know, so you don’t really have to talk about it. There’s basically other things you could be talking about, but you’re spending time talking about something

1
0:44:01
that’s not all that meaningful. Okay let’s see here. Does it use iframes? I didn’t see any iframes. The video is ten times better than the site. Really it’s not the site that’s a problem it’s just the copy. I really feel like that’s the thing that’s that’s failing here. Everything else is like I mean, that’s what I it’s in terms of an agricultural website. If you were going to say Kevin, I’m going to take you to a random agricultural website.

1
0:44:38
I would expect an unmitigated disaster. Almost all of them are terrible, right? This is a great website. Aside from the copy. This is a this is a great website for this industry. Yes, drop the likes on the stream everybody. Okay, I don’t see a lot of other comments on this. Don’t know the speed score, but I like the website. Okay, I mean we can check that. People do often ask to check that. Let’s just go and do a little quick check on that.

1
0:45:08
I don’t know how long that’ll take to come up, but we’ll let it run while I stare at the chat here and see if anybody else has anything. Menu on top, low contrast, I think, yeah, that’s gonna be an issue anytime you have video overlays like that. Same thing with navs that overlay on images, you definitely have to make sure that you watch out for that issue.

1
0:45:30
Okay, so there’s your performance on mobile. Ooh, odd that desktop is a little lower, you almost never see that. Desktop’s a very low rating for desktop. There’s definitely something going on that we want to look at there. Mobile is higher than I expected it to be. By the way, these accessibility ratings are,

1
0:45:48
though they’re flagging the issue that I saw earlier, but in general, these accessibility scores are absolutely useless. Don’t believe like, oh my gosh, my site is almost fully accessible. No, it’s probably not. Same thing with SEO. It’s looking at a very limited markers,

1
0:46:06
most of which don’t really matter all that much at all. And it’s looking at very technical things also. So really the performance score is what you’re gonna be looking at here. And I’d be curious to know, you know, what kind of hosting are we on? Are we using perfmatters? Like what kind of optimization steps have been taken? I would assume that steps were already taken, if I had to guess. But maybe there’s a couple more things that we could take a look at.

1
0:46:42
Did they do, did GTmetrix do us dirty? I heard that they they went are they only doing they still do free stuff? I don’t want that I want the actual URL. Okay there we go. I really like the waterfall report in GTmetrix that’s what I typically use when I’m looking at you know how the page is is loading. You can also look at the network tab here. I hate this layout. Okay, there we go. So a lot of times this can give you an idea and you could sort it, but it just depends.

1
0:47:24
I really like the GTmetrix waterfall. A little bit easier to work with, I feel like. Let’s see, the reason you don’t want to specify the equipment is you’re not selling equipment, you’re selling a service.

4
0:47:32
Exactly, yeah.

1
0:47:33
I mean, like I said, I don’t, yeah, look at that.

4
0:47:35
They did us dirty.

1
0:47:36
They did us dirty. They make you sign up. I think I already have an account. The question is, do I know my login? Because it’s not in one password. So yeah, great. Fantastic. password so yeah great fantastic no okay well we won’t be using GT metrics for

1
0:48:04
right now I was going to do the waterfall report and see if there’s anything obvious but yeah okay the gallery issue looks like a perf matters delay JavaScript problem exclude photo swipe from delay and you should get the lightbox back there you go thank you to ruin okay let’s go to questions.

5
0:48:28
We’re going to go to Q&A.

1
0:48:29
Q&A can be on anything. This is an open season kind of thing. Ask me anything. And we’re good on time. We’re at 11.50. I like to keep the reviews to basically 45 minutes max. It needs to have a hashtag. So hashtag Q is what I’m going to be searching for.

4
0:48:37
Okay.

1
0:48:38
Hello, everyone. I’m going to be doing a Q&A.

7
0:48:40
I’m going to be answering questions.

1
0:48:41
I’m going to be answering questions. I’m going to be answering questions. Okay, hello there basic question, how do I set the sites width to full width 100 VW in oxygen hmm I Don’t know what that means honestly So sites are full width by default That you know content is gonna go edge to edge So I need more

1
0:49:17
context as to what you’re asking. Do you have any recommendations for outsourcing design? Yeah, I mean find designers that you trust. They’re all over the place. There’s lots of them. So find a designer that does quality work that you trust. You can find them in Facebook groups. You can find them in Figma groups. You can find them in the inner circle. You can find them lots of places. But you need to have like two or three designers,

1
0:49:46
you know, because if one’s sick or super busy or whatever, you can hop to another one. But two or three designers that you really trust, or maybe you just have a bunch of projects, and you should be good to go. It’s probably one of the easiest positions to hire, honestly, because there’s just the talent pool is very, very large. But you want to find a designer, obviously, that uses the tools that you use,

1
0:50:08
right? If you are a Figma person, you don’t want to find a Adobe XD designer, right? That would kind of be a disqualification. Like I want to find somebody who’s going to consistently work in Figma. And when they work in Figma, I want them to do things like using auto layouts and tokens and yada yada yada. Okay, so you might have those kinds of standards and that might make it a little bit harder to find the person, the right person, but they’re still out there. Trust me. My nose is all stuffy today. Hate it. What’s best practice

1
0:50:47
YouTube how to prevent showing other videos when the one on the site has played. Oh you mean like recommended videos and such? You can get third-party players and you basically map the URL into the third-party player and it’ll turn off a lot of the features and functionality like that. You can also take videos and upload them to private hosting sites, you can use Vimeo, you can use you know services that don’t have those kinds of features. It just depends on if you need the views Like in your YouTube account or not You’re using a video in some form or fashion

1
0:51:23
But if you don’t if it doesn’t have to be a YouTube embed my question would be why are you using YouTube for embedding? All right Like for example, you know Gary dot co We have a videos area.

5
0:51:40
And so, you know, I use the YouTube embed.

1
0:51:45
Now, why do I use the YouTube embed? Well, it’s already there. And I don’t care if there’s recommended videos at the end. And I want the view counts to apply. So there are reasons why I use the YouTube embed here, but there are other times, not the dashboard. I don’t wanna be on the dashboard, thank you. There are other times where I use Vimeo.

4
0:52:12
This is a Vimeo video, right?

1
0:52:15
Because this is not a YouTube thing. It’s not, I don’t care about YouTube views and I don’t want recommendations at the end and I want other features that Vimeo gives me right so It’s about choosing the the proper host for the videos a lot of times that will solve, you know a lot of the immediate problems

4
0:52:38
How far

1
0:52:39
3.0 beta team is any chance one can be added or sign up for it. We’ll keep looking in the IC So we’re doing a private alpha team and then we’re gonna do a public beta. So when the beta is actually available, that will be available to everybody. And I think the alpha team is just gonna basically be kind of a handpicked team based on certain factors. It might only be eight to 10 people, we’ll see, but yeah. Okay, when you check accessibility, are you using an extension or a built-in feature of Chrome?

1
0:53:17
There’s a couple ways that that I start out doing it One is SiteBulb So SiteBulb has an accessibility part of their of their crawler So I’ll usually use that I will use some web assistant either extensions or apps. I used to use PolyPane to help with various things. It depends on what I’m checking.

1
0:53:39
But then, honestly, a lot of it just has to be checked manually, too. Like, for example, keyboard functionality. I mean, there’s no tool I really know of that’s gonna alert you to like, hey, this element is not keyboard accessible. That’s kind of like you have to go to the page and you have to try to use the keyboard to navigate it,

1
0:54:03
and you want to also use a screen reader and see how things are announced. There’s many, many, many parts of accessibility that are not going to show up on a scanning device, right? So a device that scans for certain accessibility issues, there’s just a lot of stuff that’s not ever going to show up on those things. This is why accessibility audits are expensive, because it requires hands-on, eyes-on, ears-on analysis

1
0:54:29
of pretty much every page of the website. Is using the same design template

4
0:54:33
for individual service pages bad? No.

1
0:54:36
You can do it either way. You can use a template, you can not use a template. You can design them all individually

6
0:54:41
and make them all unique,

1
0:54:42
or you can create them all with the same template. It really depends on what you’re trying to accomplish what you’re trying to say, what kinds of services they are, what kinds of products that they are. So there’s there’s obviously things to consider. But no, there’s no like, oh, that’s bad. Don’t do that, right? You could absolutely template service pages for sure. When should we use center alignment? I avoid it like the plague, but are there specific use cases where you recommend it? Well

1
0:55:18
Like you know here. Okay, when you have Generally short copy. Okay, and you’re keeping things in the center now on mobile. I Think if we check why am I not able to command shift command I Where did where did the inspector go? Okay, let’s do that. All right, and oh, something is definitely wrong with, uh-oh, we could have a technical malfunction here. What is going on? Okay, hold on, let me, let’s go off of, because I don’t know what’s behind my Google Chrome. And the minute I closed Chrome, y’all would have seen it. Okay, let’s go.

1
0:56:08
Let’s get at, oh God, one password. The one password app is causing issues. Okay. Let me, I’m going to close. I got to quit Chrome altogether. Nothing in the inspector was working. Okay. Let’s bring this back up.

1
0:56:20
Now we can, we can go back to screen sharing and we can go to get frames. Oh God, come on. Stop doing that. Okay, now shift command I. There we go. Now we’re back. Ah, look. Look, I can’t. Oh, that’s the wrong thing. Okay. God, that’s bad UX, isn’t it? Hey, here’s a draggable handle that appears to do nothing. Oh, it’s dragging this up.

1
0:56:48
Oh, why would I want to drag that up? I don’t really know. Ah, geez, Louise. Okay, that’s bad. That’s bad UX. All right, let’s drag these handles in. See how it goes from center alignment to left alignment? That’s one thing I would highly recommend, right?

1
0:57:03
It’s like if you’re going to use centered stuff somewhere, on mobile, it’s to me, it’s a better experience when everything is left aligned. So see how my icon cards went from center to left as they get down to mobile. I would definitely make sure you kind of cross those T’s and dot those I’s. But this is all fine right because it’s short it’s digestible. You want to avoid multi paragraph layouts that are centered for sure. Just long text don’t that stuff. Okay. How can you assign a single class to all elements in a blog? For instance, if you want all images to utilize the breakout class from ACSS, a demonstration would be appreciated. How can you assign a single class to all

1
0:57:53
elements in a blog? Well, so SK for this, you actually need to stop using breakout, okay? Because you’re right, there’s no programmatic way to apply breakout unless you know the CSS for breakout. Now there will be a way to programmatically apply breakout in automatic CSS 3.0 with a feature that we’re adding, but I still wouldn’t go that approach because now you have content grid, right?

1
0:58:27
So maybe it’s in here.

5
0:58:31
Okay, that obviously does nothing.

1
0:58:32
Let’s try, this is my February install. Let’s try my January install. See if there’s a blog post template in that. I know one of them has a blog post template. I just don’t know which one. Okay, so BricsTemplates, blog post. Okay, well, let’s go to posts. View, view.

1
0:58:57
Hey, okay, there’s a blog post. All right, so let’s say I wanted to programmatically break out, because I believe this is using Content Grid. So let’s go to this template, BricsTemplates, templates, templates, click, click, ah, blog, blog, blog post, blog post, edit. Okay, here we go. Something weird’s still going on with my mouse, I don’t know.

1
0:59:25
Blog body alpha, post content, using content grid, right there, okay? So now that I know that this is using content grid, if I edit this post, I’m not getting the hand indicator on certain things it’s weird now I’m getting it when it’s look I don’t why is that pointer there I’m not clicking there’s nothing clickable there what has happened to my mouse okay let’s say I want to take this image right here and I

1
0:59:54
want to say content feature like I want to break it out okay let’s update this and let’s go to the front end and that clearly did not do that. Okay what is what is this whole situation is crazy. Let’s inspect this what’s going on. Wow it put that class on that paragraph when I clearly clicked the image. Something is absolutely going on with my okay let’s go to the image is breaking out. Now if I do feature max, okay let’s update that, it’s gonna break out even further right? Now let’s say you wanted to programmatically break things out like figure tags. So let’s say every figure that we add and every block quote. So here’s a block quote right here. So let’s look at,

1
1:00:53
let’s inspect this block quote. Okay, so we want block quotes to programmatically break out into the first feature zone and we want figures to programmatically break out into the feature max zone. So let’s take a look at how we might approach this. So inside of our template, because remember this controls the template right, so this is where you would do programmatic styling. Here’s FR post content right here.

5
1:01:18
So I can come down here,

1
1:01:19
see how I’ve styled a block quote, okay? And what I can do is say grid column, and I even kind of get a preview down here, and I could say feature max, and this one I just want feature. So the grid column name is feature. Now what I can do is I can come down here and say, okay, and my figures, I want a grid column of feature max.

1
1:01:48
And then I’m gonna save, and then I’m gonna go into this post, I’m gonna take off the feature max class, because remember we’re programmatically doing this now, and I’m gonna refresh. And look how every block quote that I add is automatically gonna inherit the feature section and every figure that I add is automatically going to inherit the feature max section and

1
1:02:08
look so now down here what this gallery has done because that’s a figure all right so yeah now this is not a figure so that’s not breaking out that’s just a div with figures inside of it and those figures can’t bust out of the div that they’re in. So you could come down here on to the this gallery kind of thing. I was just playing around with stacks and rows and stuff like that just to see what limitations were here. But you could just do this one so content, content feature max like that if you wanted to break it out. But yeah I would stop using breakouts. You want to use content grid, you want to start using these assignments of feature or feature max or full width.

1
1:02:52
That’s another thing you can do, full width. You can even do starts and ends with these. I’ve shown a lot of stuff with content grid, but that was an example of programmatically doing it with like targeting an element and then assigning it to its grid column of wherever you want it to be. What you can’t do with the breakout classes, unless you know how the breakout classes are done, because then you have to write the custom CSS for them. Okay, hopefully that answers your question. How is BJJ going sore muscles yet? I’m

1
1:03:29
pretty much back in action. It’s the cardio is coming back. Not too sore. It’s good. How did you accomplish the images lightbox inside ACSS docs? Okay. Okay. I don’t even know what you’re talking about, but we’re going to go find out. There’s so many things I just cannot keep track. Images lightbox inside ACSS docs. Is there a doc that this is in? Do you have a specific doc, Kareem. Because I don’t know what you’re talking about. And

1
1:04:08
I’m having a hard time. Where would there be images in a light box? I don’t even know.

5
1:04:19
I mean, your guess is as good as mine.

6
1:04:28
I mean, is it a plugin?

1
1:04:30
I don’t know. I don’t remember doing this specifically. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t remember doing that specifically. So I’m not sure. Sorry, I can’t answer that one. How do I get started on Bricks just from Elementor?

1
1:05:03
That’s it. You just, you just get started for sure. You do page building 101. So go to YouTube page building 101. Watch that. Do some of those tutorials alongside me, you will get the hang of it in no time. What are your thoughts on high level? I don’t like all in one apps. And it’s from what I’ve gathered from people who use it,

1
1:05:25
it’s kind of a lot of like, you know, 80% features where it’s like the last 20% that’s rather important. It’s kind of missing or not there or buggy or whatever. And so I just, I just don’t like the concept of all in one apps. And I feel like if that app ever goes down, like your entire business has gone down, like literally everything there, there’s pros and cons to compartmentalization, right? Where I have like convert kit is my email list and my websites on WordPress.

1
1:05:55
And I have this over here. Well, with high level, it’s like my website’s on high level. My email is on high level. My CRM is on high level, my everything’s on high level. And so when high level goes down, it’s like, fuck, I can’t there’s goes my entire business. Right? If my website goes down, I can still email people with convert kit, I can still I sell the CRM over here, I have a

1
1:06:15
billing system over here. It’s like, you know, only a piece is down. But with like, your all your eggs are in one basket with something like high level, it’s very uncomfortable. So I just, I don’t like it from that perspective.

5
1:06:29
Best hosting for brick sites? I’m on GridPane.

6
1:06:32
I recommend GridPane.

1
1:06:33
I really like GridPane. Which is not hosting per se, but it’s a, you know, it’s the centralized management for all the things that are going on with your hosting. Will there be a second chance to buy frames for Figma LTD? I don’t know. I got to talk to Tommy about that, but it should be back fairly soon. We’re working on all the, you know, the website for it, the infrastructure, all of that.

1
1:06:55
There’s a lot of things to do. Question explanation about the 100 VW question. In Oxygen you have general page settings where you can define page width but I can put only pixel values I’d like to be VW or percentage should I solve this with CSS um well we really need to go there and see what you’re what you’re talking

5
1:07:32
Plugins, plugins, plugins, where are we? Okay.

1
1:07:35
Man, it’s been so long since I’ve been in oxygen.

5
1:07:38
Okay. I think you’re talking about settings, global styles,

1
1:07:43
width and breakpoints right here? Yeah, I mean, so let’s compare and contrast, right? Let me go back to BRX January. Okay. Because people ask this all the time, you know, like, oh, is BRX and oxygen really that different? I mean, it’s literally nothing but differences at this point. So if I go to settings and I go to and it’s not like a minor thing, you know, theme styles, container, so this website wasn’t even set up properly. What this should say is VAR content width, right? So this, oh look, it’s a training that I’m gonna be doing soon. 10 Brics elements to never use and what to do instead.

1
1:08:51
Okay, look at all these elements you should never use. Look at all of them. Man, you should never use any of these elements. Well, we’ll be doing a video on this very soon. I should be able to put, this is 2024. I mean, I should be able to use variables anywhere in a page builder, right? So the fact that I can map the theme style

1
1:09:10
that I’m using here on Bricks to automatic CSS’s content width so that everything has a single source of truth is fantastic and actually very very useful and valuable and we use the content with variable for lots of different things. But in Oxygen, this is not 2024 in Oxygen, this is 2017. I don’t know the idea that I have to use a pixel value here for my page width, and I can’t use a variable, and it’s just, I can’t tie it to anything. You’re right.

1
1:09:45
So my question for you is, why are you still using oxygen? I mean, this is, oxygen has to be reimagined at this point. It has to be reimagined and re-released if it’s going to survive, right? It’s not, there’s just too many major things that it’s behind on and then too many minor things like this This is a it’s a minor thing, but that’s a huge headache. It’s a big annoyance, right?

1
1:10:10
I don’t know if there’s a setting in oxygen these days where you can change that like I Wouldn’t imagine that you would have to like let me go back here for a minute Oxygen settings Yeah, it looks all like it used to look I don’t see any Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s like I don’t know it needs to be reimagined and re-released in my opinion Okay, building a site now for a service provider I can use a CPT for services, but they currently have them as child pages of the service page, is there an SEO benefit of one approach over the other?

4
1:10:57
So SEO benefit, I mean off the top,

1
1:11:02
it’s a huge architecture issue. It’s scalability, maintainability, like just queryability, it’s a pain in the ass, honestly. And it’s messy, right? You’re putting everything in a junk drawer. You’re not using WordPress as a content management system. But SEO wise, if we take a look at how this might play out.

1
1:11:21
So you say they have a page called services, and then what they do is they add a new page, and this is like service number one and you come over here and under parent you choose services and you publish and then you get a URL that looks like this services service one if you did a CPT called services and then a service called service one you would have the exact same URL so in terms of SEO Google like anything crawling the page, would have no idea that that’s either a CPT or not a CPT, right? There’s no indication. So no, in terms of

1
1:12:12
SEO, it’s the same thing. But in terms of content management, they’re very, very different things. And so in that, I would say it needs to be a CPT. Plus, I mean bi-directional relationships, for example. How are you going to relate, let’s say, services to locations or services to people who perform those services, team members that perform those services, in those kinds of contexts, you’re now losing the ability to do relationships

1
1:12:41
and easy querying and things like that. That’s why it needs to be a CPT.

4
1:12:47
There’s a lot of buzz going on about a plugin called Guten Bricks. Have you tried it?

1
1:12:49
It brings Bricks elements to Gutenberg. I haven’t tried it yet. I’m a little busy, but I will probably try it, you know, sooner rather than later. Is it possible to organize folders for plugins that are not initially supported in Happy Files? I don’t know. If it’s not supported by happy files, then I would probably say no. But also, I mean, is there a reason to organize plugins? Plugins are plugins. How many do you have? You have like 70 plugins. My stack, I’m, my stack is getting very small. My stack is getting very, very small. I’m going to,

1
1:13:32
I’m going to be redoing my blueprint video. And yeah, it’s it’s getting it’s getting very small WP code boxes might not be in it soon WP grid builder might not be in it soon bricks can get their fastening to the next level Yeah, yeah, maybe Yeah, this is getting very it’s getting very thin which is good. Really, really, really good. Okay, dude, that blog is running Bricks 1.96. Better pause this session and update immediately.

1
1:14:10
Thankfully, it’s a local install, so I don’t think anybody’s gonna be getting at it. How do you set up a blog that a user is able to manage without accessing Bricks? Should this be in the general user management? I don’t know. I just tell my clients to stay out of those areas and they just listen to me. Yeah, I don’t know. Somebody else can probably answer you though. If you ask that kind of question in the inner circle, you’ll get like 10 responses in like 10 minutes. What would be your three main takeaways from the recent BRICS security

1
1:14:40
security vulnerability kerfuffle. I don’t even know that I have three. The main one would be like, you know, somebody, a few other people asked me what my general thoughts were. I was like, you know, I don’t know why people are surprised. I mean, this kind of stuff happens all the time. You know how many major security issues Elementor has had over the years, as an example? So it’s not a new thing, it’s not anything that surprised me when I heard about it. It’s just a, hey, you gotta be paying attention,

1
1:15:29
and you gotta update your shit ASAP, you gotta be on the ball, in the know, when it comes to notices that come out about that kind of stuff. Now, when it comes to like how it’s announced, I think there’s a debate over whether it should be quietly implemented or loudly implemented. But in this particular case, I don’t know that it matters all that much because according to the timeline, it was exploited two days before it was already in the process of which I also I mean, I don’t, to me, it’s a little suspect. Now, I don’t

1
1:16:11
know all the technical details, okay. But if I had to guess, that vulnerability has been there since the code block was implemented in bricks. And I don’t know what version that was in. But it was a long ass time ago. So the idea that it was revealed plus both exploited within 48 hours when it’s literally been sitting there for months and months and months if not years seems a little I you know that I I feel like the timeline might be off a little bit okay if we were going to investigate that and let me switch over to because I’m in I’m in search,

1
1:16:50
so I don’t know what the comments are even saying right now.

4
1:16:53
Okay.

1
1:16:54
Yeah, okay, nobody’s really talking about it in the comments.

4
1:16:58
So yeah, you know,

1
1:17:00
maybe it’s better to release quietly, but then you’re in a situation where it’s like, but how do you really get people to update? Which I jokingly said, just put it in the back to top button update. Because it’s got like a gazillion votes for that feature. So many people would be like, that’s the thing I’ve been waiting for. They would update immediately for sure. You know, can’t get enough back to top buttons, I guess.

1
1:17:35
So yeah, I don’t know. Chella says it seems that the infection in Bricks was due to the use of the eval function. Dave says that’s a bit harsh. I don’t know what Dave is referring to though. The blueprint video will be released in 2025. It actually hasn’t, I don’t even know if it’s been a year since the last one. I was going to record another one but then I was like it hasn’t even been a year since the other one. So I don’t want to do, yeah you can’t do too many of them.

4
1:18:10
Uh let’s see.

5
1:18:10
And quickly was affected potentially some WP related stuff affected. Yeah I don’t think we’ve

1
1:18:15
seen the extent of it. I think there’s other builders out there that it will be revealed that they have the same vulnerabilities. Now whether they update those quietly, here’s the thing too about the you know the reaction people had to the issue in BRICS. People saying like I’m never using BRICS again, I can’t trust BRICS, amateur hour, yada yada yada. Okay well guess what other builders who identify a similar issue, you know what they’re going to not do? They’re not going to fucking announce it. They’re going to probably try their best to quietly patch it up and just hope it doesn’t become a problem.

1
1:19:04
And so to me, it’s almost like, do you want to know there’s a problem or do you want to not know there’s a problem brewing? And if you have those kind of reactions to the BRICS announcement, you’re going to force other page builders, or you’re going to encourage them, I guess, to not really make public announcements because they don’t want the backlash. So I think we should all acknowledge that this is just a thing. Security and security breaches is just a thing that happens in this industry with tools like this. And we just have to hope that the developer communicates effectively, patches quickly, and that we all are around to update our shit. And then put any other security measures in place that we can possibly put in place. That’s the best you can ask for. Yeah I

1
1:19:53
mean if you are, if security vulnerabilities give you the heebie jeebies, okay, or cause you to lose sleep at night, you should be as far away from the WordPress ecosystem as you can possibly get, right? I mean, this is the wild, wild west. I mean, there’s a whole plugin directory of half-vetted plugins, right? That people are just willy-nilly installing on all these websites. These things all have security vulnerabilities in them. So yeah, I mean, this is not, you don’t want to be in the wild, wild west if you don’t want to ride the horse and buggy and shit, you know?

1
1:20:35
It’s not the place for you. So all we can ask for is the proper response. And we got, I think we got the proper response from BRICS. And as Justin says, right, always trust the business that isn’t afraid to publicly eat shit for the safety of its customers. Okay, let me hop back into, we got about 10 more minutes and then we’re going to hop back into questions here. Or I should say four questions, we have about 10 more minutes.

1
1:21:09
All right, let’s find them, find where I was in the list. How, hey, are you thinking about creating a new pricing table for frames? I remember you mentioned how tricky it can be and that it’s not exactly your favorite

5
1:21:25
thing to work on.

1
1:21:26
Oh, we just released them. We just released some. Two of them, in fact. Let’s go to get frames IO. I’ll just go to the front end here. So here’s one of them, pricing grid mic, pricing section mic, which is a very intricate one. It doesn’t look intricate, but it is intricate because that little indicator back there is a sliding indicator.

1
1:22:02
And then we released this one, pricing tabs kilo, which is a tabs based pricing section, tables. Okay. Let’s see, were your sites impacted by BRIC security issue? We had one old client site that was impacted, no other sites impacted. Let’s see here, I’m looking into getting Metabox LTD which is a little pricey. I know you’re back to ACF. Do you think Metabox is still a good investment? I mean I wrote an article on why I switched. I think people can use either one. Is there a way to style the top section of the frame UI style guide? Mine is currently dark blue. Yeah, you should be able to just change the the color. And quickly was affected potentially some WP okay we already saw that one. I’ve not found your video on tutorial on filtering

1
1:23:10
bidirectional relationships using pods and bricks. Do you have one? I’ve never used pods in my life so there will highly unlikely that there will be a pods filtering video but that’s something to ask probably in the inner circle or the pods group or wherever. Will there be a way to manage multiple color palettes with ACSS in v3? I like the consistency for one color palette. ACSS provides out of the box, but I’d like to have more color palettes with ACSS. I don’t know what you mean by palettes, like combinations of colors, imports, exports, presets. I think there’s a lot of ways to interpret that. In terms of willy-nilly adding a gazillion colors, no. It’s not really, and you know, I’ve written about this casually, but I’ll probably do an official write-up.

1
1:24:06
Anybody who’s really used a framework, like uses, uses a framework in a framework sense, it’s not, you lose the benefits of the framework when the framework stops being a framework, when it’s like a completely open-ended, unlimited thing, unlimited flexibility, it stops being a framework. And it causes tremendous problems

1
1:24:30
project to project to project. And it causes tremendous problems from an ecosystem standpoint. When you’re talking about third party design sets or creating layouts even for your own local library. You can’t even share those across different projects if things change from project to project. And it violates the concept of new things

1
1:24:50
that we’re talking about in ACSS like contextual utilities, right? So, you know, there’s a lot to talk about and a lot to break down, but I think that what seems good in terms of lots of flexibility, when people get further down the road with it and actually experience the downsides,

1
1:25:10
it’s one of those things where you’ll get 90% of the way before you realize that was a bad idea. And then once you realize a bad idea, it’s like, ah, shit, it’s too late. And then you’re like, but we need to not do that bad idea going forwards. And so you have to rework everything that you thought was working previously, it’s one of those situations. great idea to have unlimited open-ended fully flexible utilities colors all of that stuff. This is a case where it is actually far better to create a construct that does in a way seemingly confine you but that confinement actually is what creates all of the consistency and maintainability and the going between project to project and things like that. So what seems like maybe a downside

1
1:25:58
is actually a huge benefit. Okay, let’s see.

5
1:26:02
Thoughts on offering affiliate portal

4
1:26:03
to boost our web design sales.

1
1:26:05
If so, recommended affiliate software. Thinking of SureCart has one, I think. Yeah, I’m very big on the SureCart ecosystem. All right, we got like three questions left and then we gotta get out of here. In the pricing examples for online marketing plans, you mentioned content outlines. What does content outline mean? This doesn’t include full articles, right?

1
1:26:37
How much would you charge for an article? Good question. I’m going to do a video, actually it’s slated for this month, on on-page optimization for article-based content. And that’s going to start with the SEO research for the article. It’s going to show the outlining process of the article, and then it will show the written article and the formatting and the rest of the on-page stuff, title, tag, meta description, links, formatting of text, internal, external, yada, yada, yadas.

1
1:27:05
That’s slated for this month in the inner circle. So that should answer that exact question for you. We have a potential client in a very specific niche, search volumes of 10, also know near me, how to set up a market plan, seems SEO and SEA don’t make sense, advertise based on demographics. Yeah, if SEO is not playing out in terms of like good potential,

1
1:27:27
then absolutely you’ve got to divert those funds to a different channel. SEO is not for every website. So I can’t really answer because there’s so many potential avenues to go down that I would just need to know about the client. Like I need what is their industry? What do they do? Who do they serve? And then the answers will reveal themselves at that point. Do you have a physical office for your agency? Hell no. No. It’s fully remote. Yes. How do you

1
1:28:02
manage it? I want to know the possibilities, difficulties of being fully remote. Well, I did a Basecamp walkthrough in the Inner Circle, so I would recommend watching that first. But no, I see no reason to… I don’t know why really any agency has a physical location in this day and age. I don’t know. There’s some local agencies in my area who have physical locations, and they’re in retail shopping centers, and I’m like, what are you doing in there exactly? You’re not getting foot traffic.

1
1:28:34
It’s not like a random person, a couple is in for fucking ice cream next door, and then they see you, and they’re like, you know what we need? We need a website. When does that ever happen? Probably never. If you’re an actual retail shop,

1
1:28:47
it makes sense to be in a retail location because then people that do go to the ice cream shop might wanna come over here and buy your clothes or shoes or whatever else that you sell, right? Why is a web design agency in a retail shopping center? That’s never made sense to me. If you need to meet with clients physically, I mean, go to them, right?

1
1:29:11
I’ll hop on a plane and go meet a client, but they might not even be in my city, first of all. So that’s a thing. Or, you know, how many clients do need to meet in person these days? For my local clients, I’ve got a variety of co-working spaces that we can go to, coffee shops that we can go to.

1
1:29:29
I’ve got, in the co-working spaces, I can rent conference rooms if it’s more than one person. Very often when I’m meeting with a bunch of people at a company it’s in their boardroom. It’s not in a third-party location. I just have never found a need for it. It’s tremendous overhead that’s not needed. And then, I mean, you’re asking, you’re having a team, then your whole team has to be local to even use it.

1
1:29:58
So that’s another limitation. I just see it as like a giant weight around your ankle that you would have to drag around everywhere. Like being remote is so freeing in terms of who I can hire, where they can be situated, where I can meet my clients, where my clients can meet me, you know, and then I don’t have the costs. I can invest that in other areas. The other day you did working with Kevin pretty late. It was around 1 a.m. here. Are you planning on having another working with Kevin session a little bit earlier if possible, of course? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1
1:30:39
We need to do another co-working with Kevin session. Maybe not this week because I’m absolutely slammed, but next week I do look a little bit more open. I’ve got a brand-new artist I’ve been listening to. You know, we listen to music and co-working with Kevin and so excited to put put him on uh let’s let’s maybe I can put one on the uh schedule right now uh let’s do so Tuesdays is maybe next Wednesday the 28th I have jujitsu I’ll be back around 2 p.m. so what time zone are you in? Let’s see if we can make it work for you. If it was around like 3 p.m. Eastern Would that work?

1
1:31:20
So calisthenics Ireland, I guess that means you’re in Ireland World time buddy, I like I like a little world time buddy So let’s go with Ireland. I don’t know. I’m just gonna choose Dublin and then let’s do Atlanta. Okay, there you go 3 p.m. Would be 10 a.m. No 3 p.m. Here would be 8 p.m. For you. Mmm could be getting a little late Would that be a problem or would that be? Okay, maybe that maybe you like that. Maybe you got your wine, you know You’re like hey, there’s a perfect time for co-working with Kevin Maybe we’ll do that. I’ll just assume that that’s the case. Let me put this on my calendar. So we’ll do 3pm. Co working with Kevin, I’ll go ahead and post that. Yes, continue adding add anyway. Good. Okay, I will post that in the inner circle. And we’ll get that we’ll get that on the schedule. All right, last question. Let’s do a final call. Final call. Final call. Yeah, he says he can do 8pm for sure. Okay, good.

1
1:32:28
That’ll, that’ll be a good matchup then.

4
1:32:30
Events page question.

1
1:32:31
Is it possible to have an events CPT and also a webinars CPT and a tours CPT and then populate one single events calendar pulling from multiple CPTs with date fields?

4
1:32:43
Yes.

1
1:32:43
So what you would want to do in that case, this is actually a good question. So off the top, what I would probably recommend doing is a post type called events. That is the overarching, because a webinar and a tour, well, is a tour an event? That depends on what you’re considering to be a tour and maybe some details to discuss there. But if I was gonna try to do this, I would try to make everything an event and then use a taxonomy for, this is a webinar type of event,

1
1:33:23
this is a tour type of event, this is a, what was the other thing that you said? Yeah, I guess webinars and tours. Maybe those are the only two categories. And then you just have one loop that loops through all events. And then you can have facets that control whether you’re looking at webinar events or tour events. And they could absolutely populate the same calendar at that point.

1
1:33:46
That’s how I would approach it first. Now if you tell me, oh, well, you know, tours are not really events. But you have webinars and tours, if those are the only two things, I would say, why do you need an event CPT you have a webinar CPT you have a tour CPT you can query both of those things for sure and then you could probably facetize them as well so I think you could do it either way but if you’re gonna go the events route I would do taxonomies okay and if you have more details on that that need to be

1
1:34:24
considered that is a great thing to ask in the inner circle and list out all the details and requirements and then we can all brainstorm and probably figure out the best approach for you. All right, I’m going to call it a day. That’s going to be it for this stream. Again, I have to save my voice for the inner circle office hours that are happening this evening. Thank you guys for being here.

1
1:34:43
I hope you got a lot of value out of this one. I hope you got a lot of value out of this one. We’ll be back again very soon, every single Tuesday at 11 a.m. Eastern. Love you guys. I’m out. Peace.