WDD LIVE 066: “tbh” Website Critique (Great Site!) + Webflow Warning + Etch Waiting List + Q&A

Let’s go to Test Test Test.

Okay, Sound.

Output.

Test Test Test Test Test.

Are we back?

Golly.

All right, let me see if it’ll fix.

Are we back?

I had to go listen to myself because I was like, well, they must, they’re doing, they’re either doing a really bad job of describing what I sound like, or they actually can’t understand anything I’m saying.

And so I actually had to pull up myself and listen to the stream.

And then it clued me in.

It clued me in.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Six minutes in and this is one of the best starts that we’ve ever been off to, honestly.

Okay.

D123 says, “Good morning.”

It is good to be, can I turn processing back on now?

Okay.

Test 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

Should be all right now.

Okay.

All right.

Let’s just get right into it.

So first things first, just to get this out of the way, let’s see what our numbers are.

All right.

We got good numbers.

Yeah.

Just get this out of the way.

Let me go ahead and share screen.

And we, I will show you just, you know, last, last week, what we did is we took a look at the new digital gravy site.

And I’m going to go ahead and share this with you.

Okay.

Let’s make sure that I’m actually able to screen share.

Good.

Okay.

We took a look at this, right?

Uh, but the waiting list for etch was not up.

So nobody was able to, you know, do anything with, with what they were looking at as far as etch goes.

Uh, but if you click on etch now, very simple.

You can just put in your email address, join the waiting list.

I would encourage you to do that.

Um, there will be little things dropping.

Uh, as we lead up to the launch of etch.

And, um, if you’re on the waiting list, you know, once you join it, you’re going to see, you’re going to get the welcome email.

I would encourage you to read the welcome email after you get on the waiting list.

Uh, and you will, you know, it alludes to being on the waiting list is very important.

Okay.

Uh, as far as timing goes, as far as opportunity goes.

Okay.

So I wouldn’t, I would heavily encourage you to get on the waiting list and then don’t ignore the first email that comes in.

Read the first email that comes in.

And, uh, so you’re, you’re going to want to know.

You’re going to want to know.

Okay.

Um, all right, let’s go ahead and get on to the next thing.

Uh, I mean, they might, I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Good luck to them.

Uh, let’s see.

Peter is in the house.

Oh, I see some, some people obviously putting questions into the chat like Peter here.

Uh, what are your thoughts on quickly come back?

Should we believe it?

Great, great topic.

Actually.

Uh, when we get to the Q and a phase, I would say maybe let’s ask that, but here’s the thing.

Here’s the problem with Peter’s question.

It doesn’t have a hashtag on the queue, uh, which means it’s going to get lost.

I am never going to find that question ever again in this live stream because when I get to, the questions, I search for the hashtag.

I search for hashtag Q or hashtag question.

And that’s how I find the questions.

So if you’re asking questions, perfectly fine.

Uh, you don’t want your question to get lost.

So put the hashtag on the queue and we will find it when we get to the Q and a phase.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Let’s go ahead and dive into the first website.

Now, not a lot of people have been submitting websites for critique.

And honestly, uh, a lot of the websites that were being submitted were just very similar in terms of like all the things that we constantly talk about over and over and over again on this needs to be fixed.

This needs to be fixed.

This isn’t that great.

This is, you know, very amateur, whatever, whatever, whatever.

So I think that, and we don’t always do web design critiques, but when we do, we should mix it up with websites that are legitimately great so that people can see, oh, oh, this is what a website that’s great looks like and sounds like and dissect why it’s great.

Why it’s great.

Like, you know, we can learn a lot from why this thing isn’t great.

We can also learn a lot from why this thing is great.

We got to look at both sides of it.

So today what we’re going to do is we are going to look at a, uh, a website that I just randomly came across.

I think I was, it was, you know, listed on a portfolio inspiration site or whatever, but it stood out to me as like, you know, from top to bottom, there’s just a lot of things done really, really, really well with this website.

So that’s what we are going to look at.

And the website is called TBH.

I’m going to go ahead and close my sidebar down here.

Uh, okay.

So we’re just going to go through kind of everything first, the no scroll test that we always start with.

So we’ve got a logo up top.

We’ve got, um, very, very simple navigation.

As you can see, we’re not inundated with mega menus and everything else.

I will say, let me refresh this and see if we can see it.

Okay.

So there is some animation, right?

So the, uh, things animate in, which I don’t like.

And I’ve, I’ve said many times, I don’t think it’s a good idea to do that.

It’s, it’s a little bit distracting.

It forces the user to wait.

Like, you know, that’s not a, you got to kind of wait.

You got to kind of wait.

You got to sit around and wait for like the page to kind of appear before you.

And I, and I’ve always just constantly asked like, where’s the value in that to the user?

What is the user getting out of that?

Not much, right?

Not much.

Um, if anything, it’s just a bit of a distraction.

And, um, for some people, they do not actually do not have the patience.

Some people do not have the patience.

And when, when that happens too much, as they continue to go through the website, they just kind of get fed up with it and then, and they leave.

So it can absolutely have negative effects.

It can have additional negative effects on the performance of the website in terms of load speed and all of that as well.

So it’s just like, what is it doing?

What is it doing?

It’s not really doing much of anything.

So that’s one criticism that I have.

But I want to start with just the no scroll test of like, all right, do we know where we’re at and what this website offers?

Well, it says right here, mental health reimagined for students, helping your students succeed and thrive with the help of licensed therapists and a community of peers when and where they need it most.

Okay.

So we can obviously see that this is a therapy site aimed at kids, students in particular.

Okay.

One thing I will say about the headline, I think it would be a little bit stronger if it was mental health for students reimagined.

Okay.

Like mental health for students comma reimagined.

I think it, it reads a little bit weird.

Mental health reimagined for students.

To me, that just reads a little bit weird, but it is a strong headline.

Okay.

And then this obviously is a textbook lead paragraph that, that lets people know what’s going on here.

The graphics over to the side are that, that kind of animation doesn’t bother me.

Um, and it obviously is the target market that they’re going for.

It uses kind of like MTV kind of cartoony little cutout type things, um, to, to decorate, to decorate the design, which I think is good because it’s on, it’s on market.

Right.

Okay.

So as far as the no scroll test goes, we’ve got a clear, um, header.

We’ve got a clear hero area.

We’ve got clear messaging.

We’ve got clear media.

Off to a good start, obviously.

Right.

Let’s pause for a second before we go any further.

And let’s talk about branding.

Let’s talk about, uh, the, the, just the name, the name of the thing.

TBH.

I think, I think this is, this shows you where, you know, people with a marketing mind are at the, at the core of the business in general.

Right.

Not just like, um, not just, oh, here’s a company and they hired a good web design team and the, and the web design team did a good job.

It’s like from the name of the brand, right?

From the name of the brand to the logo.

Uh, it’s just, it’s a hundred percent cohesive for those of you who are, have no idea what’s going on with the word TBH.

Obviously it’s, it means to be honest.

Okay.

And it’s an abbreviation that the kids use.

Okay.

Like TBH, right.

They’ll say, they’ll say TBH after they put their opinion.

And so you’re creating a mental health company for that demographic.

You literally name it after something that they use in text all the time that obviously that connects with them.

Okay.

So really, really, really good.

Um, let me see if I can pull up.

I need my, I would like to see chat while we go through this as well.

I wish it would stay on top.

Okay.

Uh, and everybody can, can see, is the audio still weird for anyone out now?

Everybody, everybody’s saying the, uh, it’s, it’s good to go.

Um, all right.

And I think everybody can see the page, so we’ll keep going.

Fantastic.

Okay.

So brand on point, name on point, design on point.

Um, it’s, you know, I, I like this, this little angle divider, you know, dividers are hard to do these days because people have, they’ve overdone dividers so much, um, that they all start to look a little bit cheesy, but this is still well done.

It’s kind of like an off balance divider.

It’s not just an angle.

It’s an angle with another angle coming off of it.

Um, yeah.

So it’s well done.

It’s well done.

We’ve got the overlap here.

Uh, they’ve got trusted by students at over a hundred schools.

So a little bit of social proof.

I want you to pay attention to the overall outline of the narrative.

As we go through the page, you know, what are they talking about?

How are they talking about it?

What order are they choosing to talk about things in?

So the hero section kind of defines what this is all about.

They immediately go into social proof right here.

Like, Hey, look, all these universities that we’re partnered with or that we work with or whatever.

And then you come down here and it starts to outline how the thing works, which is important because when you’re dealing with something like this, it’s kind of a newer concept.

It’s like, all right, but what are the logistics here?

How does, how do I actually get the support?

How does this all work?

Okay.

Well, they’re going to answer that question for you right off the bat.

We support students no matter what they’re dealing with.

Uh, one platform, multiple touch points, really good combination of like an accent heading and then a real heading.

And then they’re choosing to use like a tabs component here, personalized therapist led support groups.

Okay.

So they’re telling you first things first is therapist led support groups, weekly virtual groups consisting of five to 10 students and a licensed clinician custom tailored to each student’s needs lived experiences and personality type.

Our program rooted in the latest evidence-based principles help students build an inclusive community that understands complexity of their experiences and supports them as they move forward.

Okay.

So that’s like piece number one component.

Number one, then they have one-on-one check-ins with culturally competent therapists live one, uh, live one-on-one counseling sessions with like with a licensed therapist providing students with the help that they need from the privacy and comfort of their own devices, which is, which is good.

So we’ve got a group component.

We’ve got a one-on-one, uh, component real-time SMS support.

I think this is important because of the demographic, right?

The ability to, uh, just text message.

We leverage text messages, automated reminders, interactive nudges to drive ongoing student engagement and accountability.

Okay.

Uh, and then interactive mental health resource library.

So they’ve kind of put this formula together where it’s like our platform is going to be based on four components.

We’ve got the group thing, the one-on-one check-ins, the real-time texting support, and then this resources library really, really well thought through of like, all right, how can we hit all these different angles that are very important to deliver a service like this?

And then they have this, I like, you know, I like how they use copy here as a divider.

It’s a content divider, but they used copy as the divider.

So up to 10 students meet once per week for 60 minutes.

And they’re reiterating the group aspect of it all, the main component.

But they’re again, look at, look at what they’re doing.

They’re using that reiteration of how this all works as the visual UI divider of the content, which is nice.

That’s a good concept.

Really, really good concept.

Okay.

So then we scroll down.

What do they go to next again?

Back to social proof.

So look at what they’re kind of sandwiching in here.

Hey, here’s, here’s what this is.

Here’s what this platform is.

Okay.

Here’s some social proof.

Here’s how it works.

Here’s how it works again in a little snippet soundbite.

And then we’re going right back to social proof.

Here, here, what our students have to say.

Nice little accent heading.

And then a testimonial.

Right.

Okay.

And again, a visual, a smiling face of the demographic connection, connection, connection.

Let’s connect with the visitor, connect with the visitor.

Now who we help, which is calling out.

You got to call out your audience.

Who, who is this for?

Who is this for?

Answer that question.

Don’t make them figure it out.

Okay.

Don’t make them guess.

Who do we help?

Well, K through 12, they’re back to a tab concept again.

And you don’t have to use tabs to do this kind of stuff, but it, it, it conserves space.

Okay.

So K through 12 or K.

Yeah, I guess that’s K through 12.

So we provide the most comprehensive approach to MTSS, helping schools quickly and proactively identify students in need and offer them personalized targeted interventions through our platform.

Districts can implement data-driven decision-making progress monitoring and evidence-based supports.

Um, this is a little bit, um, the one thing I would say here, the one piece of criticism, I would say is if you’ve noticed, they’ve gone from talking to the demographic and maybe the parents of the demographic to a more enterprise level thing.

They’re now talking to like organizations and there’s a little bit of a disconnect there.

And this is where you want to bucket people because obviously you can sell to individuals and families.

You can sell to school districts and, um, universities.

Okay.

And those are obviously two very different groups and you want to talk to them about different things for different reasons.

And so it really helps to know which one is actually looking at the, at the website.

So if we go back to the top and we look at the navigation, you can see enterprise, you can see higher ed maybe, but the higher ed would be to me, it would be K through 12.

I’m actually talking to the parents of that demographic or that demographic.

And that’s, that’s actually kind of very important here.

I don’t, I think K through 12 is too big of a bucket.

Okay.

And I’m going to do, I’m, I’ve got a training in the works, uh, in the inner circle on bucketing, right.

And how bucketing relates to both marketing and product development and copywriting.

Uh, you have to know your buckets and you have to have well-defined buckets.

Uh, K through 12 is too big of a bucket in my opinion, because if you think about it, like the needs of a junior in high school, somebody in 11th grade are very different from the needs of somebody in third grade or second grade.

And they’re, and they’re facing very different challenges.

Okay.

So to lump them all in K through 12 seems to be not a great thing to do.

Um, and then you have higher ed, which would be university level students.

And in that, that bucket, I would be talking directly to them.

Obviously I’m not talking to their parents anymore.

Just, just like with high school students, like the, the nine through 12, I’m probably talking mostly to the students, but kind of half and half.

Like you’re talking to the students, but also you, you’re, you’re talking to the parents.

Okay.

Cause parents still heavily involved at that age.

In the, in the K through five group.

And maybe even six, seven, eight.

You’re mainly talking to the parent.

The parents are the ones who are, who are seek actively seeking the thing.

Right.

Um, so you see how the different buckets cause you to talk differently depending on the actual, the specifics of the bucket.

Okay.

So then higher ed, we’re, we’re literally talking like the college kids.

We’re talking directly to them.

Uh, then you’ve got a families page.

Then you’ve got an enterprise page.

This is where we should be talking to the actual universities and schools and counselors and things like that.

Okay.

Okay.

Um, so the fact that on the homepage, we kind of went from plain language, plain language, plain language, plain language to MTT, MTS.

I don’t even know what MTSS is.

Um, like, you know, platforms, districts, uh, like, you know, we’re starting to lose a little bit of the connection there.

Okay.

Higher education, uh, families enterprise, but at least they are calling out kind of the people that they, that they serve.

But I think there’s room for improvement in how this area is done and what’s actually being communicated.

Now, what do they go to next?

We’ve done, we’ve done about us, like the, the concept.

So about the concept, social proof, how it works, social proof, who we serve.

Now what’s left to talk about?

What else haven’t we covered?

Well, we haven’t talked about our experts.

We haven’t talked about the people behind the platform, who is going to be interacting with the kids.

We’ve alluded to them.

We’ve alluded to them.

We’ve said they’re experts.

We’ve said they’re clinicians.

We’ve said they’re evidence-based.

We’ve said, we’ve said these things about them, but we haven’t actually introduced them.

And so now they’re in the process of introducing them.

A proprietary program built by expert therapists who understand students.

All TBH groups are facilitated by licensed, culturally competent therapists who have experience working with youth, adolescents, and college-age students.

Our proprietary program, rooted in the latest evidence-based therapeutic practices, provides students with the kids.

And we’re getting some glimpses of actual people with names.

Okay?

And I think that once they get a little bit further, if you notice, I’m not a big fan of this.

This would be something I’m critical of, again.

You know, and it’s why, like, I raced to, you know, have something for the Etch page, a waiting list, at least something.

But, like, about us company, I can’t click on it.

I can’t, I can’t, careers, press kit, blah, I can’t do anything.

Everything’s kind of coming soon.

I would just rather not list these things yet.

You know, like, just have the homepage, like this, and join now, all of this.

We don’t have to tell people that these empty things are coming soon.

But I think when you get to the about us, maybe they’re going to have a whole directory of here’s our actual experts.

You can click on them, read their bio, read their profile, whatever.

We’ll see if that eventually comes.

That’s probably the route that I would go.

Because that is important.

You know, parents are like, who’s my kid going to be talking to again?

Like, I want to know more about them.

I don’t want to be, I don’t want them to be a nameless, faceless person on the internet.

I want to actually know who this person is.

So that’s the way that I would go with a directory.

And in WordPress, obviously, custom post type.

And every person has their own page and their own profile and details and yada, yada, yada.

Okay?

All right.

Now, calls to action.

Calls to action.

I think this is another area that could be improved.

It’s a little bit lifeless.

Login is very direct, which is fine.

That’s good.

I’m not sure I like the white button on the very, very, very light backgrounds, though.

There’s not enough contrast there, in my opinion.

Maybe just do an outline button, an outline version of the primary color.

I don’t know.

Or do something.

Something to help it stand out just a little bit.

But mainly the join now is just the very boring kind of, hmm.

Eh.

It doesn’t really, it’s not very inspirational.

It’s not cute.

It’s not, it’s not, they didn’t do anything with the brand.

They didn’t do anything with the smiley face, the little character here.

I mean, they could have at least integrated that somehow.

There’s just room for improvement.

Join now is very boring.

And the brand, obviously, and the platform have personality.

So it’s got all this personality going, but then it’s kind of very boring with its call to action.

I just think that there’s a little bit extra that could be done there.

And if you see it, you know, it’s like, what am I joining?

Like, you’re not, you put in your student info.

You put in the parent info, which I don’t even know.

I’m a little bit confused as I don’t think this is a step system.

This isn’t like step one and step two.

I think they’re relying on you to realize that there are two options here.

And if you’re a parent, they want you to fill this out.

And if you’re a student, they want you to fill this out.

I don’t think that’s the best way to segment people.

Because usually when you see tabs like this at the top of a form, it’s indicating like steps in the form process.

It’s not indicating that there are two different forms.

So I would find a way to make that a little bit more clear.

And then this is, yeah, okay.

I don’t know.

Like, I didn’t see them mention any therapy for parents, but it’s like, I’m interested in programs.

And that suddenly all, you know, when I’m in the process of joining, I can choose like myself as the option.

I don’t know.

That part’s a little bit confusing.

So, you know, when are you going to ask me to pay?

How much does it all cost?

Let’s go back and see if we can find any information on this stuff.

Let’s go to families, children.

Okay.

Let’s just look at how they’re architecting these pages right here.

So here’s what we offer for your child.

Here’s what we offer for you.

Parent dashboard with actionable insights about your child’s well-being.

Expert-led webinars on timely topics related to wellness and parenting.

Automatic alerts for crisis situations.

Okay.

Back to more social proof.

All right.

Here’s some process steps.

It’s all very, you notice how it’s all very simple to figure out.

Like when you have questions, you’re like, all right, what does it offer?

How does it work?

It’s just, it’s not, it’s not an award.

I wouldn’t say this is, you’re not going to see this in like an awards thing, right?

Like a, because it’s not super flashy.

And that’s actually been my point for so long is that you shouldn’t be.

That’s not, the goal is not to win design awards.

The goal is to communicate the product or service and get people to sign up for it.

Right?

Designers get in the way because their ego and, and they care about, oh, let me put all my talents on display.

How much art can I turn this website into?

And they use it as their own little art canvas instead of keeping in mind that the objective here is not to win an art contest.

The objective here is to communicate a product or service to the people who need it and get them to sign up.

Okay.

Limited spots now available on our wait list secure for your child today, $150 a month, less than 25% of the price of an average.

Okay.

I like, I like this.

So they’re going to tell you the price $150 per month and immediately create juxtaposition, immediately create an anchoring effect where they say, by the way, if you think that’s a lot, it’s less than a quarter of the price of the average month of one-on-one therapy.

Um, so right there, they’re making sure that you’re not just looking at a number on a page.

They’re making sure that you’re understanding.

Well, if you go the traditional route, you’re going to pay four times as much on average.

Uh, that’s a really, really good strategy.

Um, when, for when they’re listing their pricing.

Okay.

Let’s go back and let’s just see.

And then I’m going to go back to chat and just check on everybody.

Um, let’s go to, I want to see what they say with higher ed.

So let’s look at this headline right here.

Most students don’t seek help.

Make sure no one is left behind.

Interesting.

Okay.

We provide on demand, personalized mental health support for students, helping schools improve retention, diversity, inclusion, overall student access.

Cause I’m not a hundred percent clear exactly who they’re talking to right now.

We help you provide quality evidence-based virtual mental health services that work as an extension to your current resources and integrate seamlessly with your existing systems.

Okay.

So they’re, they’re obviously talking to the institutions.

Um, all right.

Student sign up.

Okay.

They’re going back very, very, it’s, this is like a templated, you know, approach, which is fine.

No issues there.

Um, I just need to know that the, obviously the first thing we ask clients when we’re getting ready to do a website is who is the primary user of the site?

Who is the primary target audience and target visitor?

So if you tell me, well, it’s mainly, uh, let’s say for, for higher ed for, for university level, what’s mainly the college kids seeking out help and support.

Okay.

Well then we can’t talk to their institutions.

Can we?

Right.

If you tell me, well, it’s mainly institutions looking to supplement their systems and support, then, then I would create a page like this.

Okay.

And obviously you have both.

And, and the job of the website is to, is to redirect people.

Help people to their bucket, right?

Help people find the page that speaks to them.

That’s a big part of the UI and the UX process, uh, in design.

So I, I think that there’s a little bit to be desired on this particular website with regard to that, because they seem to flip back and forth a lot between speaking at a student level and speaking at an enterprise level.

And I think we can get some extra clarification going to improve things in that regard.

Okay.

But overall, I wanted you to notice, I wanted you to take a look at a, uh, a website and a brand and a platform that kind of has a, just a ton of cohesiveness from the naming to the actual branding, to the color scheme, to the copy, to the visuals and the media and the social proof and the narrative all coming together and just being really, really well done.

It’s just really, really, really well done compared to what we normally look at, um, you know, on WDD live and the stuff that is typically submitted.

Right.

Let’s go check the chat.

Um, let’s see.

We haven’t looked at any of the accessibility yet.

We haven’t looked at any of the, uh, underlying, you know, DOM structure.

We haven’t looked at any of the technical side of things.

We’re just looking at it from a marketing, a design, a branding, a naming, all of that kind of standpoint.

Um, so D one 23 says misuse of headings, H one verse H two verse H three, et cetera.

Uh, let me see if that came up on the screen.

Okay.

Good.

All right.

So yeah, let’s go.

We can, we can go ahead and take a look at some things like this.

And a lot of people ask, they ask, where does the technical side of this come in?

Where does that, why, why does that kind of stuff matter?

Right.

If you nail the marketing, if you nail the copywriting, if you nail the design and the branding and all of that, where does it actually come into play?

Uh, well, let’s just start with accessibility off the bat.

So, um, not great there.

Okay.

So if you notice there’s a violation right here, I’m on families.

And when I hit tab, we lose where we’re at.

Uh, there’s no indication of where we’re at visually.

It’s actually highlighting.

It’s focusing on the first element in the families dropdown, but there’s no way to know that this is, it didn’t open the dropdown automatically.

Uh, it should have actually skipped the dropdown because I didn’t activate the dropdown.

So for an accessible for menu to be accessible, it needs to allow you to skip the dropdown.

It can’t force you into the dropdown options.

This forces you into the dropdown options, but even worse than that, it doesn’t even visually cue you in that you’re in the dropdown.

Um, other than down in the bottom left-hand corner down here, I can see the URL because of ARC.

It’s what the URL is that that’s being focused on.

Right.

And so then magically I pop out of there and I’m on to enterprise.

So there’s already an accessible accessibility violation there.

Um, and of course, accessibility violations like this, that make it very difficult for, uh, people to use your website.

That’s going to limit the number of conversions you can get.

That’s going to limit the, and again, we’re talking about not just disconnected numbers.

We’re talking about in this case, students who could get help or not get help for what they need.

Right.

You always have to have the mission in mind.

Like what is the mission of the, of the company or of the product or of the service?

We have to relate things like accessibility and SEO and PPC and all of that to that mission.

A lot of times we get disconnected.

We’re just looking at raw numbers and we’re looking at percentages and we’re looking at, okay, that’s just a bug or a whatever.

But at the end of the day, it could be preventing the company or the product or the services mission from being realized by a certain percentage of people.

And that’s obviously, we, we need to see that as having a big impact.

Um, okay.

So the rest of it.

Okay.

There you see again, right?

Like I skip right by the tabs.

Uh, I cannot interact with the tabs.

I’m using my arrow keys.

Uh, when I tab, it just, it skips them.

There’s nothing I can do.

I cannot interact with the tabs.

So once again, people who have to use a keyboard for this, people who are unsighted users, probably having severe issues using this website.

And that is going to limit the number of people that can ultimately sign up and get help.

Okay.

Um, so you see there’s accessibility issues that do in fact come into play and have a real impact on these kinds of things.

It is something that should be thought about something that should be considered something that should be implemented.

Um, let’s look at the actual underlying code here.

Let’s get out of responsive mode.

Um, okay.

We have an H1.

This is using tailwind.

Um, and let’s see, let’s just zoom out of here and just see where we’re at.

So we have a main and inside of our main, we have a div and inside of the div, we have a div and inside the div, we have a div and inside the div, we finally get to our header.

Uh, and then we have a hero section, just a div.

Okay.

There is a use of sections.

It’s very interesting that, you know, you, you’re seeing a mix of sections and divs, the hero, which is, you know, arguably the most important section on the page wasn’t, doesn’t use a section tag.

And then we get in and we see it does have a heading.

I mean, so it, it, it should definitely be a section.

There’s no reason it shouldn’t be a section.

Uh, but, and just a little bit of randomness in the decisions being made here, but you do have, uh, the H1 being used appropriately.

Let’s see where we’re at.

Wow.

Look at this.

Every word is a div in the heading, probably because of the use of tailwind, honestly, because look at what they’re trying to do.

I mean, this is just, to me, this is a nightmare.

This is just an absolute nightmare in my estimation.

Uh, it’s probably the, I tell you, I tell you, I don’t know.

I’ll tell you exactly what it’s for.

Uh, if we refresh the page, it’s for the animation.

It’s for animating every word of the headline, right?

That’s why that’s done.

Um, it’s a, it’s a, it’s annoying.

It’s very annoying.

Now they could have maybe done that programmatically with, with JavaScript.

Um, you know, there’s, there’s probably ways that they’ve, that I don’t think they manually did that.

Um, but it’s still, to me, it’s a, it’s a bit of a nightmare.

Uh, okay.

Let’s look at what these are.

These paragraphs, spans, what do they throw in here?

Okay.

Paragraphs.

Good.

Uh, they’ve got logos in here.

What kind of, what kind of heading do we have here?

So we’re seeing H2s.

Uh, that’s an H2.

Is this going to be a paragraph?

That just a link.

Okay.

They’re just using links there.

Um, they do have it in a list.

Okay.

They do have it in a list.

Um, but again, uh, okay.

So you see no ARIA tags at all.

That’s, that’s going to fail accessibility for sure.

None that I see just at a glance anyway.

Um, and the fact that these are, you know, links and it’s just not, you can’t use the keyboard.

I mean, that’s a whole, that whole sections of fail.

What do they got going on here with this kind of stuff?

Just some spans.

Okay.

Big deal here.

See, this is an area where this, if this was sectioned content, like this should not be a section, right?

It would be appropriate for that to be a div.

And it is, it is a div, right?

There’s no heading in there.

There’s no, it’s just, it’s just content.

It’s not really a topical section.

Um, okay.

What do we got?

What do we got going on here?

Just a div.

Just, they’ve just thrown text in a div here.

You know, no, uh, no quote.

No, no, nothing there.

Uh, they use paragraphs everywhere else, but here just a div.

There’s a lot of randomness going on.

It’s not, it’s not a lot of consistency or cohesiveness in the decisions that are being made.

It doesn’t appear.

Um, okay.

Back down to here.

And we see once again, okay, let’s, you can always look for, for ARIA because you will see them move.

You’ll see them change.

You see that the JavaScript is changing certain things, but again, no ARIA, um, to, to speak of at all.

Like none, none, none, zero, nada.

Uh, so yeah, this is going to fail a bunch of accessibility checks.

Okay.

Um, so overall, I mean, that, does that have an impact on who can use the website?

Yes.

Does it have an impact on it?

The website’s ability to rank?

Maybe it does one day, right?

If Google starts to heavily grade sites on accessibility, then these kinds of things are going to matter in terms of ranking as well.

Not just in terms of converting a certain percentage of the audience.

Page speed.web.dev.

Let’s just take a quick peek.

I know a lot of people ask about performance.

We can also go look at the mobile version of the website as well before we move on today.

Um, let’s see, let’s see what comes up here.

While we’re waiting on this report, let’s hop back into the chat.

Um, Oh, somebody already talking about performance.

Okay.

So we’ll see what comes up in just a minute.

Uh, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Okay.

Ever since Kevin said in one of his trainings that a lot of top websites still develop things in a chaotic way and the structure is bad.

I’ve been checking a lot of sites and he’s right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there’s really no reason for the chaos.

There’s really no reason for the chaos.

Hey, Jack, do you code the hero?

Okay.

Got to be multiple people developing the site.

Yeah.

This is a challenge when, when multiple people. multiple people.

Oh, oof.

Oh, oof.

Oh, oof.

Oh, oof.

Okay.

All right.

Check that out.

The LCP.

Almost 20 seconds.

LCP.

Um, huge blocking time. huge blocking time.

Uh, man.

Yeah.

Not great.

Now I will say these accessibility scores.

This is very surface level accessibility check.

Okay.

Do not rely on this score right here.

It’s obviously not a good score.

Um, but don’t rely on this score either.

I’ve seen, uh, sites get 98, 99, whatever, when they actually fail a bunch of accessibility checks.

Um, so it’s a good start.

It’s a good start.

Images do not have alt attributes.

That’s like an easy one to fix.

Um, buttons do not have an accessible.

This will give you the easy low hanging fruit stuff.

This is not going to give you the deep dive accessibility stuff.

Um, it’s, it’s already marking some contrast ratio issues on the website.

But again, those things are very easy fixes.

Okay.

There’s, there’s some stuff like the tabs, the accordions that are not accessible.

Those are not so easy.

Those are not so easy to fix.

Um, so keep that stuff in mind.

Desktop, man, to score a 64 on desktop, you know how bad performance wise a website has to be to be like desktop is the easiest to nail.

Okay.

Like you should easily be in the nineties on desktop.

Uh, again, we’re not looking for perfect hundreds.

We’re not, I actually think like on mobile, I’m fine with eighties and up.

I’m fine with eighties and up.

I know a lot of people are obsessed with hundreds, 98s, 99s, all of that.

Um, a lot of the stuff that gets flagged is not even real to most users.

Like most users see if they’re on a modern device, especially they’re going to, they’re, they’re going to feel like the experience is a 98, even if it scores an 80, you know?

Um, so just keep that in mind.

We don’t have to, uh, the, the, the hundred chasing the hundred out of a hundred chasing that a lot of people do is none of that is making your client any more money.

Once you’re in the eighties and nineties, uh, especially if you pull up the website on different devices in different scenarios and it just feels fast and responsive and it’s, and it’s doing what you wanted to do and expected to do.

That’s the experience users are having.

Um, and so you don’t have to be at a hundred out of a hundred for this kind of stuff, but this is bad.

This is poor.

This is very bad.

Um, SEO.

SEO.

What’s it flagging on SEO document design, meta description, again, low hanging fruit being missed.

Like that is, is a little bit of a, an alarm.

Uh, links did not have descriptive text.

Okay.

Images did not have alt attributes where he looked at that.

That’s both an accessibility violation and an SEO violation.

Um, okay.

Yeah.

So a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff performance wise to improve there.

Of course, keep in mind, we’re told constantly tailwind is so high performance, right?

What’s a tailwind site you’re looking at scoring a 35.

Is it tailwind’s fault?

No, it’s not.

But as you can see, like these miracle cures that everybody talks about, like, well, you’re using tailwind, you get better performance.

Well, you can trash any site.

You could trash any site.

And, and if you look at, you know, when people point out, oh, ACSS did, did, did, did, did, did this to my site.

Like, no, I mean, you’re eight, you’re eight different JavaScript add ons.

You’re unoptimized images.

Like the, like you’ve got a lot going on here.

You’ve got a lot going on here.

Uh, that has nothing to do with the framework being used.

Uh, and that’s the case here, right?

They’ve got a lot of stuff going on that has nothing to do with the framework or tailwind.

Um, they they’ve, they’ve just got a lot of issues and those lots of issues are adding up to a lot of, uh, different flags here and a generally low score.

Okay.

Let’s go ahead and do one quick look on mobile and just see what they’re rocking with as far as far as mobile goes.

Well, that’s a problem right off the bat, isn’t it?

That is a problem.

And this is the problem with like, now we’ve got everything in its own div and like, we’re trying to, and see, they try to get cute with the animation on stuff and they’ve got other general layout issues happening because of that.

Because somebody wasn’t like, nah, why don’t we just make the H1 and H1 and not animate it?

Like they wouldn’t have this problem.

You create more headaches for yourself.

The cuter you try to get, the more headaches you create for yourself.

And so if you want to talk about reducing headaches, quit being so fucking cute all the time.

Quit being so cute all the time.

Look at this, the little scrunchiness up here with their navigation.

Join now button, not looking so hot anymore.

Is it?

Um, okay.

We come down here.

That’s weird.

I’m not, I’m not a big fan of the logo, like not being centered.

Um, where is our inspector?

Let’s bring this.

Let’s get to the actual element.

So hard because the element is actually a thousand elements in one.

Um, okay.

So yeah.

Tailwind unable to handle proper alignment here.

The elements in the header.

Uh, okay.

Got a little, oh, all right.

Hold on.

We just went somewhere.

Let’s go back.

Uh, see, I never know if the arrows over here, we’ve got to my brain.

This looks like a little accordion situation.

Doesn’t it?

Like this could be an accordion.

Maybe it’s an accordion.

Maybe it’s not an accordion.

We don’t really know until we click on it.

And that’s kind of a bad thing, right?

Cause I didn’t know if something was going to drop down or if we’re actually going to be taken somewhere.

And we actually got taken somewhere and I wasn’t quite ready for it.

Uh, because then we have links down here that don’t look like these links up here.

You see how users can get confused.

This is how users get confused.

You have to look at it as kind of like a beginner user is like, what, what is most people going to think about this kind of layout situation right here?

Uh, then they’ve got a button still in here.

I don’t know.

Not, that’s not fantastic.

This could be, this could use some improvement.

Um, okay.

Let’s get down to, let’s actually choose a device.

Let’s go iPad.

Uh, no, let’s go iPhone 14.

So let’s do 12 pro iPhone 12 pro.

All right.

Uh, see, this is where I’m a fan.

A lot of people have asked me this before.

I just think it’s cleaner when you left align content on mobile, right?

The fact that this is centered, it doesn’t look all that bad here, but as you scroll down, it kind of does because then when you see stuff left aligned, the stuff that’s centered looks a little bit off.

It’s like, hmm, not great.

Okay.

Like if this was all left aligned here, this would look so much cleaner, but you can’t just left align this stuff and then leave this stuff centered.

Like to me, you just on mobile, it’s super clean to kind of just left align everything.

Okay.

We go down stuff like this can kind of be centered because it just floats, uh, in the middle, but any like long form content just kind of needs to be left aligned in my estimation.

Okay.

I it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s typical.

Well, this, see, this just looks, that looks janky.

How do we go from left aligned heading where you were previously center, center aligning the headings?

Okay.

Center, center, center right here.

And then suddenly in the footer, somebody was like, nah, this is definitely where we should start left aligning things.

But you know what we should do, even though we’re just going to randomly start left aligning the headings, we should definitely center the links and their headings.

That would be a good thing.

Like, no, this is just, um, this looks super janky.

This looks super janky right here.

Do we agree?

Am I, am I off the rails?

Right.

Let me go down in the chat.

Uh, text alignment problems.

When every word is a div, who would have expected it says a two door.

A two door.

Yes, exactly.

Um, okay.

It’s more the case of what they did not do.

Pixel M rim at ID colors off shading, padding margins.

You name it.

They got it so wrong.

I’m a left align addict.

Honestly.

Yeah.

I mean, it’s not when in doubt left align it, you know?

Okay.

Everybody seems to be pretty much on the same page.

Digital, digital, digital algorithms.

Uh, says probation time.

Jeff, just FYI.

This does not appear to be a WP site.

Yeah, probably.

It’s probably not a WordPress site.

Uh, you would, you rarely will see a tailwind used on a WordPress site unless the person, like if they’re using a page builder and tail window, they’re an absolute lunatic in my estimation.

Um, okay.

When you a hundred percent, the lighthouse accessibility and SEO, you usually complying on 80% for us or EU laws to make that 20% client needs to.

A hundred percent client needs to pay to take, uh, more development.

Uh, not necessarily like you fail.

Uh, well, if, if you introduce the minute you introduce accordions and tabs, you have introduced lots of, lots of additional accessibility complexity.

Okay.

And you just have to know that.

And, uh, I don’t think that that, uh, lights, that lighthouse test is going to flag that, um, that kind of accessibility issue.

I, maybe it’s advanced more, um, since the last time I used it and cared about it, but, uh, I, I don’t think that those things are going to get flagged properly.

And those are going to be clear violations of, of double A.

So you are going to get a lawsuit.

Like if, if someone’s going to sue you, like you’re the accordion tab situation that they are, that’s, you’re getting that lawsuit filed.

Right.

Lighthouse may be like, dog, you got a 90% on accessibility.

Good job.

Right.

But you still got a lawsuit.

Uh, okay.

Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

You can score a hundred percent on lighthouse and have a website that isn’t accessible to anyone, including sighted users.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s kind of the point that I was getting at.

So just use that to clean up some surface level stuff, but don’t use that grade as like a, Oh, I passed.

I’m good to go.

I don’t have to do anything else.

Uh, that’s not where, yeah, that’s, that’s not where you want to be.

Okay.

All right.

I think we’re done with this.

We’re ready to move on to the next segment, uh, which is, we got to talk.

I added this at the last minute.

We got to talk about some web flow stuff.

Okay.

Um, so what we’re going to do is I am going to pull up a couple of little screenshots here.

Okay.

We talked a lot last week about data ownership.

Let me, let me zoom in on this here.

Okay, good.

So data ownership, there’s a few things related to data ownership, right?

One thing we talked about that I ranted about was the ability of a company to just turn off your website, to just say, they don’t like you anymore.

They don’t like your opinions.

They don’t like the way you think.

They don’t like the way you look.

They don’t like the way you whatever.

And they just shut off your business overnight.

Web flow has that ability.

Shopify has that ability.

These companies can do that.

Okay.

Okay.

They, and they’ve shown they will Facebook, uh, YouTube, these platforms, you can’t rely on them.

You cannot rely on them.

And because a website is the central marketing hub for most businesses online, you can’t put your website in somebody else’s hands.

That is why open source is so powerful.

Um, and, and that’s why open source is the like, that’s the linchpin.

That’s the thing they can’t fuck with.

So web flow, like these other platforms, they can do whatever they want with their features and all this other stuff.

But the one thing they can’t say is that you own your data.

You own your business, your businesses, um, presence on our platform, because you don’t, you don’t, you’re leasing it.

And you’re leasing it from somebody who could wake up one morning with a bug up their ass and just essentially erase you.

Okay.

Now the other side of data ownership is that you are locked into a, a walled garden.

You are locked into a platform again, where you are leasing the land and you have not really signed a contract.

Like if I go to an apartment complex and I sign a lease and they’re like, this is going to be your rate for the next 12 months.

I can be okay with that.

And I can be prepared.

I just know in the back of my mind, hey, at the end of the 12 months, when it’s time to sign another lease, they could say it’s more expensive now.

But these SAS companies, you haven’t signed any agreements like that, right?

Right.

It’s just kind of a, well, that was the rate at the time, but you could get an email tomorrow that, um, your rate is increased.

You could get an email tomorrow that your features have been decreased.

Okay.

Shrinkflation, as they say, right?

You know, your fucking Cheez-Its box is a little bit smaller.

That’s a form of inflation.

That’s a form of price increase.

They’re giving you less product for the same price.

That’s a price increase.

Okay.

And so Webflow has recently done this.

It just came across my radar.

Everybody started sending it to me and tagging me in stuff like this.

Um, there’s a, there’s a lot of mutiny, a little bit of mutiny happening in a Webflow right now.

So here is a Webflow designers global.

Uh, this post says Webflow just decreased bandwidth on site plans by 75%.

Respectfully.

What the fuck?

Uh, basic site plan, 10 gigabyte bandwidth limit decreased from 50 gigabytes.

CMS site plan, 60 fields per collection was increased from 30.

So they, you get a little bit more fields here.

Uh, you get more references per collection.

Uh, but the 50 gigabyte bandwidth limit was, it was decreased from 200 down to 50.

Business site plan, 300 static page limit was increased, but again, a big decrease in the bandwidth limit.

New bandwidth add-ons ranging from 50 gigabytes to 400 gigabytes.

So you can kind of tailor your, you know, instead of picking a plan, that’s just, it doesn’t fit everybody, but it’s kind of like a one size fits all thing.

You can now just, you have these add-ons where you can kind of tailor it to, which, which is, you know, that’s a good thing.

Um, but people are very, very upset about the other things, right?

Uh, let me pull up another, another instance of this that we need to look at.

Niko says, what the fuck is wrong with Webflow?

They’re forcing me to pay $15,000 a year up from $468, a 32X price increase overnight.

And they gave me one week to decide if I want to upgrade or move the whole site to another CMS.

Okay.

I want to read the Webflow message.

Okay.

I love these terms that they use.

Uh, Nico, I’m part of the team supporting Failery here at Webflow.

I guess that’s this guy’s company.

I don’t know.

Uh, yeah.

Failery.com.

Um, reaching out as our internal auditors flagged your website for being, that’s how, you know, a company is super fucking successful when they have internal auditors, um, flagged your website for being over the bandwidth limits allotted on the self-service site plan.

You’re on today.

Uh, I had reached out to Achilles and he let me know that you are the decision maker for the site.

Your current website built on Webflow is on the business plan, which allots a 400 gigabyte of bandwidth monthly.

Uh, your bandwidth usage has increased, uh, or has exceeded maximums by three to five times over the past few months.

This usage is against our terms of service here.

Here’s my favorite part.

So we will need to right size the account and upgrade to an enterprise plan.

Do you have availability to connect to discuss further tomorrow or next week?

Okay.

Um, this is the, uh, this is, this is one of those things.

This is one of those things that’s, um, you know, probably not going to happen on WordPress.

And I will say, you know, if you’re with a hosting provider, cause WordPress, obviously you have to choose a hosting provider and you start out on some entry level plan.

Um, and you become super successful and you need more bandwidth.

Um, and, and they try to, you know, they, they, they, they’re not like Nazis with it.

So they, this kind of lets you ride on that lower plan for a while.

Um, but then they get around to informing you that, Hey dog, you’ve been kind of exceeding limits here for a while now.

Um, so we, we want you to, you know, upgrade essentially.

Right.

Um, you’re probably going to do that and you’re probably going to pay more money to do that.

Right.

But you have with web flow, you know, this, this problem, the real problem, the biggest problem is that let’s say a hosting company on WordPress.

I feel they’ve unfairly done that or they’re just, they’ve raised their prices and, and they’ve changed their limits.

And now things are just getting a little bit outrageous.

Switching hosting companies is not a difficult thing to do, but switching from web flow to WordPress is not an inconsequential shift.

I mean, this is this, depending on how things are built and what we’re going to want to move to.

This could be a really, really, really, really big problem.

Really, really, really big hassle because with web flow, again, you don’t have any other options.

You don’t, it’s not an open source platform that could just be hosted anywhere.

It’s whatever you decide to do at this point is going to come with a lot of headaches, right?

That those headaches don’t really exist when you’re on WordPress.

Okay.

So in, I will take web flow aside in one degree that this guy probably spent way too much time on this lower plan, knowing he was exceeding limits, maybe even getting warnings from web flow that he was exceeding limits.

And then just kind of comes out of nowhere with this, oh, woe is me.

Like they’re, you know, they’re actually making me pay for what I’ve been taking this entire time.

I don’t know if that’s the case.

I don’t know.

I, I could see a path to where that has happened.

Okay.

So I don’t want to just bag on web flow here, but at the same time, I got to look at this guy’s actual stats and we could all compare to a typical WordPress hosting plan and say, is he dramatically, are they asking him to dramatically overpay for what he’s getting?

And based on what I know about web flow, the conclusion is probably he’s, he’s overpaying, uh, for, for what he’s actually getting.

So, but that is neither here nor there.

That’s not really the, the whole point of the discussion.

The point of the discussion is because you’ve chosen web flow, when this happens to you, you are, uh, up a Creek without a paddle, as they say, or shit out of luck.

As they say, uh, you, you have to completely change platforms, which could mean rebuilding your website.

Which could mean a lot greater expense now.

Okay.

And, and, and potentially even, uh, you know, data being lost to some degree in the transition or just lots, just lots of headaches, lots of hassles, depending on the type of website.

This is things that you don’t want to have to deal with and shame on all of the agencies out there and freelancers who put their clients on web flow, not letting their clients know that this is a possibility ahead of time, not letting their clients know the downsides of being on a platform like web flow.

The fact that it’s not open source, the fact that you don’t own your data.

Okay.

They like web flow personally, the agency or the freelancer, they like web flow personally.

And because they like web flow personally, and that’s their, their wheelhouse and they want the contracts, they get the clients to sign on and they don’t really disclose all of this stuff.

And there is a success tax on web flow.

There’s a success tax on Shopify.

The bigger you get, the more they’re going to milk you.

And, and they are, they are less incentivized to be fully honest and transparent in their milking of you because they know about the lock-in factor.

They know it’s kind of hard to leave.

It’s a big headache to leave.

And a lot of people are just going to take the hit versus all of the work that’s required to actually pack your fucking bags and move out.

Right.

Um, so you’re, you’re kind of in a not great situation there.

Uh, let me head over and see what chat is saying about this.

Um, okay.

Okay.

The cookie crumbles.

Excellent points.

Sadly, I saw that interview and decided to search YouTube.

Okay.

Da, da, da, da, da, da.

Man, you guys are talking about something else.

Uh, this man is definitely getting fleeced for the hosting.

Yeah.

I mean, I can’t imagine like, you know, $15,000 a year up from four 60.

It seems like a fairly significant, uh, jump.

I, I really want to see the numbers behind it though.

Um, your data ownership rant with, uh, Matt was brilliant.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it, Grant.

Um, okay.

We’ve done the Webflow thing.

I was just something I wanted to add because it came up and people tagged me in it and then people had a lot to say about it.

They wanted to hear what I thought about it.

And it’s not the first time this has happened by the way.

And this has happened multiple times with Webflow.

You’ll see this every now and then, uh, I do think this stuff needs to be disclosed to clients for sure.

Like let them know up, up ahead.

Like you are, there is a success penalty with these companies that the more successful you get, the more they will milk you.

Okay.

So just be ready for it.

And, and the harder it’s going to be to divorce from that situation.

Okay.

They like Webflow because of the healthy affiliate income.

Yeah.

It’s an example of putting, uh, yourself, your own.

You’re going to be in interests ahead of the interests of the clients that you are doing work for.

Um, and, and it’s one of the things I tell people, cause some clients will object to WordPress.

They’ll be like, I don’t know if I want to stay on WordPress or I don’t know if I want our site to be on WordPress.

And I bring out the data ownership argument.

I make sure that they fully understand like, Hey, if like, I will build your site on Webflow.

If you really want me to, it’s close enough to the workflow.

The, the actual builder is close enough to bricks that it’s not going to be like, Oh, we got to learn this.

Like it speaks the language of web design.

Uh, so if they wanted to choose it, I would probably do the work there, but I will absolutely make the case for them not doing that.

I, and I, and I, and I’ve never done it for a client.

I’ve always, every single time I’ve been able to convince them not to build on webflow and to build on WordPress instead.

I’ve been able to successfully make that argument every single time.

And I’ve never had a client come back and say that they regretted that decision.

So it’s just, it’s too big of a deal.

Data ownership and, and, and, and flexibility in like, don’t put yourself in a situation where this person is going to just, uh, you know, they’ve already shown their willingness to do it in the past to milk you like this.

And to come out overnight with this, like this one right here and just, you know, completely change bandwidth limits on you and essentially force you to bump up to a higher tier plan.

Uh, because you’re now exceeding bandwidth limits that you didn’t previously exceed.

And I think it’s why when I do, when I do products, uh, automatic CSS people know this frames, people know this.

I am very careful with our promotions with, first of all, we don’t ever do like discounts.

This is why I’ve been against bundling by the way, because people have begged and begged and begged for product bundles.

And so here’s the, here’s, let’s just talk about this for a minute before we move on to our, our final segment.

Uh, I think Q and a is next.

So get your questions locked and loaded.

Hashtag Q hashtag question.

If you have noticed from the beginning, automatic CSS has never been offered at a price lower than a previous price ever.

It’s never happened.

Frames has never been offered.

At a lower price than a previous price ever.

I want customers, clients, whatever to know that when you buy into the ecosystem, that is the best deal.

Anyone will ever get at that time.

There will not be a better deal in the future.

When we, when we switched from the, or when we brought back the LTD, right?

We brought it back at a higher price, but it was also brought back with plan limits attached to them for those, for the people buying at that time.

So that the people who got the LTD previously, even if you paid the same amount for the LTD previously, you didn’t have the limits on yours.

Right?

So you still got a better deal.

There was always a time, like the next promotion is always going to be a worse deal than the people who bought in previously.

That’s just as a principle, what I’ve tried to follow and design in how we do the pricings and promotions.

Right?

And so people come along and they, you know, we, we raise the price.

I frames is still underpriced.

In my opinion, we raise the price of these products only on new people, never on old people.

There’s people on, there’s tons of people on subscriptions.

Okay.

There’s tons of people who said, I don’t want the LTD.

I want to pay the yearly amount for automatic CSS.

I want to pay the yearly amount for frames.

Okay.

When we raise the price of the yearly, those people don’t pay more.

They’re, they’re grandfathered in, they’re locked in.

They are paying according to the deal that we made at the time.

That’s been the principle from the beginning.

Then people say, please bundle, create a bundle.

Well, what is the bundle going to, what is the bundle going to do?

Okay.

The reason you would bundle is to get some sort of a deal, right?

So we put the automatic CSS and frames bundle together.

I can’t do that without raising the price again.

I have to raise the price to create the bundle, which doesn’t really help.

Does it right?

Why do I have to do that?

Because the minute I bundle them, that means the people buying the bundle that did not exist before are now getting a better deal than people who bought previously.

Potentially.

We have to do some math and work it out and see what are the exact numbers.

And I think I did that at one point and I was like, it’s not, it’s not enough of a discount like in the bundle to make the bundle even worth it.

But to not, to not essentially sell these people out that bought previously.

That’s why I’ve declined having, it would be easier logistically for us to have an offer the bundle.

But it just doesn’t make sense from a pricing standpoint at the current time.

Now, the next price increase may come with a bundle deal, but it’s going to have to ensure that the people who already bought both products previously don’t get sold out on that.

That’s been the principle the entire time.

Other companies, especially SaaS companies, are not willing to make that deal.

Now, we have the benefit of this is not SaaS.

We don’t have to host the product for you, right?

Webflow has direct costs in their relationship with Webflow users.

We don’t really have those direct costs because we’re not hosting the product for you.

We just give you the product and you use the product.

But we still, I mean, I could easily make the argument.

I could come out and say, guys, we all wanted the 3.0 rebuild, right?

And we all can acknowledge that the 3.0 rebuild, I mean, it’s obviously you’re never going to be unanimous.

Like, there’s one or two stragglers out there who are like, I’d rather dick around in the back end and change my settings that have live preview and an instantly accessible dashboard and yada, yada, yada, right?

But the vast majority of people are, they love 3.0 and they acknowledge the insane jump in productivity and user experience and yada, yada.

And yes, we’re still working through some hiccups and bugs and things like that, which I’ll probably do a stream on at some point talking about beta, beta testing, how beta, you know, some of the problems and downsides with beta runs.

I think that that’s important to talk about at some point.

We don’t have to, we don’t have to get into it now.

Point is, consensus is that 3.0 is a light years better.

It’s not even measurably.

Like it’s just, it’s, we’ve left the 2.x era behind clearly and nobody wants anything to do with it anymore.

3.0 is the path forward.

I could come out and say, some companies would come out and say, guys, we invested tens of thousands of dollars into doing that.

And so we need people who are on, that was a benefit to people on subscription plans.

Those people should probably pay a higher amount now.

Right.

And also to help fund ongoing development.

Some companies could say that, would say that, will say that.

We’re not willing to say that.

You just, you just get the benefits of that investment.

That’s it.

Because you got in.

Okay.

And it says something for like my allegiance to early adopters, my allegiance to current customers, my allegiance to even past customers.

Like there’s people who said, fuck you left and then came crawling back, crawling back a year and a half later going, I’m so sorry.

I really, really, really, really, really, really, really want my license back.

I really, really, really, really, really want that deal that I was on.

And I’ll say, fine.

It’s fine.

Water under the bridge.

Here you go.

Have it.

Okay.

I could say, nope.

Sign back up.

New price.

Go for it.

You learned your lesson, right?

Nope.

I just, I just give it to them.

Whatever.

It’s fine.

Welcome back.

Okay.

This is, these are the, cause, cause we, and this is like as a company, uh, just insanely value the user base.

You have to, you have to, um, we, we can’t, the, the folks is not, it’s not about us.

It’s not about the next customer at all times.

I also know that when you prioritize the current customer, you will get the next customer.

It’s just, that’s the thing that leads to the next thing.

So we don’t even have to worry all that much about the next customer.

If we just keep worrying about the customers we already have, it, it should work out in theory, it should work out.

And that’s how it’s playing out in practice.

So, uh, that, that’s how we think.

But again, SAS companies, companies that aren’t necessarily in our shoes that do have direct costs for providing their services.

They do have to make maybe tougher decisions.

Okay.

There may be some, some tougher decisions that they have to make.

Um, as you can see with web flow, they are not afraid of just slashing, slashing, features that you previously had, and then dramatically increasing the price over what you previously agreed to or thought you were going to be paying.

That’s just something to consider.

Okay.

Um, Shopify has done that in the past.

I don’t think they do it as much as web flow does or as aggressively as web flow does, but it is always a risk.

It is always a risk.

Okay.

Let’s hop back to the chat.

And then we are going to do some Q and A.

Okay.

Um, I really appreciate that method.

It feels like every product out there benefits new users till the end.

Uh, loyalty is disregarded.

Yeah.

Uh, I think, I think that’s super important.

There are some popular plugins out there that offer $199 license on Black Friday, but charge existing users $6.99 plus a year.

Even at my full hourly rate, it’s a better call to cancel and update all keys.

Yeah.

Um, that, that doesn’t make sense to, to, to me.

Um, okay.

I think it’s time for questions.

We’ll go in and, uh, let’s do a little question search here and let’s get to it.

Sarasota office today.

Yes, sir.

Yes, sir.

Um, I have not received the welcome email from etch.

Is it because I’m also on some of your lists with that email?

ACSS frames inner circle.

No, that should not be the case.

Uh, definitely check spam.

Um, it, it could be a deliverability issue because we’re sending from the new, uh, it’s sending from etch at digital gravy.co, which is a brand new email address.

It’s also an alias.

Uh, so some ISPs might not be so friendly to it.

It could be a deliverability thing.

Um, maybe, maybe message us and let’s, we can investigate it a little bit.

What was wrong with the audio says Paradis.

I’ll tell you what was wrong with the audio.

Uh, you guys see the settings panel right here.

Uh, it’s just, it’s, it’s, um, you know, when you’re traveling, right.

Cause I’m traveling down here and I’m on my laptop.

This is not, I don’t have a computer that’s just stays down here.

So I’m on my laptop.

The output audio was set to, um, where are we at?

Broadcaster to this?

This should be where the audio is.

Are we still good?

Are we still good?

We sound good.

It was on MacBook pro speakers, uh, for, oh, it was the, the, uh, input, uh, was MacBook pro microphone was what the input was set to.

So obviously the MacBook pro microphone, which is, uh, in clamshell mode over here, it was like all folded up off to the side was not doing a very good job of broadcasting audio.

So I had to switch it to the roadcaster here and then all was well on the world.

What do you think about the new bricks?

1.10 update.

Uh, haven’t had enough time to look at it yet.

Uh, and Sam had the same question here.

So same answer, Sam.

Uh, are you still planning on releasing your cards API framework, uh, in a future version of ACSS?

Yes.

It’s something so major and something that nobody has ever done or tried before that.

I think we have to go very slow with it.

We’re probably going to put it behind a feature flag.

Uh, I will say this though.

Like if we want to prepare ourselves for some upcoming changes, uh, let’s get in, let’s get in here.

Okay.

Let’s bring this to this side and pin it.

Okay.

Um, cause this is one of those things where it seemed like a good idea in the very beginning.

Uh, but then just turned out like it.

So there’s a little, there’s been a little bit of it in frames, right?

With the card styles and all of that.

Um, this is likely just going to get, start to get, get removed systematically and replaced.

Um, same thing with like hero padding lead with avatar.

Like it’s, it’s just a little bit of, um, and it really only applies to frames users.

Uh, there’s a little bit of too fast engineering, right?

Too fast engineering where the whole kind of 30,000 foot view wasn’t, uh, thought about enough yet.

And so same thing with the card API.

We want to make sure that everything fits, uh, perfectly together and makes total sense because you have some improvements.

Like, for example, if we go to borders and dividers borders, having a new global border radius, because the conclusion that we’ve obviously like, you know, come to is the framework in some degrees is better.

When it just hyper focuses on the main things that happen.

Um, that sounded like, like, like Kamala Harris, like the today is tomorrow.

And then yesterday is today.

Uh, okay.

So not a knock.

Don’t worry about it.

Uh, but it just, that’s popped into my mind.

That was funny.

Okay.

So think about border radius.

You’ve got all these different radius sizes available in almost every framework.

Like tailwind has got 40 different radiuses you could choose from.

Um, all the other frameworks have like five or six or whatever.

Automatic CSS has, has, has had the t-shirt sizes since the beginning of time.

But we were the first framework to be like, well, hold on, hold on.

I mean, how many on a given project, how many of these border radiuses does somebody actually use?

And the answer is one.

Uh, there’s actually two, but one of them is not even a real option in any, in any other framework.

So you have what essentially is a global border radius.

Like first thing a designer typically does is are the elements on this site going to have a radius or not have a radius?

So you’ll see that they’re either square or they have a radius of some sort.

So what is the value of that radius?

What you’ll also notice is the radius doesn’t just willy nilly up and change from like page to page to page or element to element to element.

The radius stays fairly consistent across the website, right?

Okay.

So that’s like one radius.

Now in the times where there is a second radius, it’s almost always a concentric radius based on the real radius.

Okay.

So you end up having an element inside of an element and the radius inside the element is different from the radius of the parent element.

That is because visually it looks good when the radius of the parent element is bigger than the radius of the child element.

And not just bigger willy nilly, but bigger based on a calculation, a formula that creates what is, what is called a concentric radius.

And I believe off the top of my head, it is half the padding value added to the normal radius.

So the radius of the child element, if you take that radius and then add half the padding value of the element itself, that computes to what the parent radius should be.

Okay.

So we’re dealing with two radiuses mainly.

One is a set radius and the other is relative to the padding of the elements.

That’s not even a utility class programmable radius, really.

It’s like the decision has to be made on a case by case basis because it’s dependent on knowing the padding value of the elements that you’re working with.

Great.

The reason why Tailwind and the reason why these other frameworks have had so many different options is because they don’t have a dashboard.

We have to remember that, right?

They don’t have a dashboard really.

So it’s, it’s much harder.

And now, now they’re catching on.

But in the past, it wasn’t like, well, I could just set the radius I want.

It was like, I had to have all these different options to choose from because there was no dashboard management for it.

Well, automatic CSS doesn’t have that limitation.

So we have, we have a way to just say, this is the border radius of the website.

And then we can create concentric radiuses off of that.

What is the need for all the other options?

There’s almost never a need for all the other options.

So we refactored it to basically say, guys, why are we doing all this extra thinking and extra work and extra options when they’re not even needed and used in the vast majority of cases?

And so you see additional radius options.

And so you see additional radius options generate extra radius sizes is now off by default.

It’s not on a brand new install.

We’re not going to generate the other radius sizes.

We’re not going to worry about a radius scale, a mathematical radius scale.

We don’t have to worry about that stuff.

All we have to do is set a radius, which means when we’re doing cards, we call the radius or we create a concentric radius.

When we’re doing buttons, we call the radius.

When we, it’s just a radius now.

That’s all it is.

And if you want your website to have no radius, it’s as simple as putting a zero in the box.

You can go from a site having a radius to not having a radius in a split second or vice versa.

Right.

But you now manage a radius for the website.

And we don’t have to.

Is it.

Are we using M?

Are we using L?

Are we using XL?

Are we using XS?

Which radius are we using, guys?

And we’re all like the Spider-Man comic pointing at each other.

What?

You use which radius?

Right.

We don’t have to go through that.

Guys, the website uses a radius.

That’s it.

That’s all you need to know.

And in fact, you can build and put a radius on everything.

Because if you don’t want the radius, the value of the radius can just be zero.

And the minute somebody changes their mind, like Bev, like Fred.

Okay.

And they’re just, oh, we want a radius all of a sudden.

Great.

What do you want it to be?

Okay.

Here we go.

Now everything has a radius of that value.

Right.

It’s way better.

It’s way better.

So these are the kinds of changes that we’re making based on real user experience.

Monitoring user behavior, designer behavior.

Right.

And just questioning norms.

Saying, yeah, we know it’s been done like this for a very long time.

But it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

And there’s actually some benefits to doing it this new way.

Same thing with a border style.

Same thing with dividers.

Having a global divider style.

Having a global border style.

Okay.

Reduces thinking.

Increases flexibility.

Okay.

There’s a lot of benefits that come from this.

I could keep going on and on and on and on and on.

A global transition style.

Right.

What were we using for the duration again?

What were we using?

Don’t worry about any of that stuff.

Just call up the global transition style of the website.

That’s the transition we’re using.

Okay.

So can we deviate from that when we want to?

Sure.

Sure.

But if you want the one we’ve been using everywhere else.

Well, you can just ask for transition.

This is var transition.

Right.

Or just slap a transition class on it.

And it’ll transition now.

The things that we wanted to do.

Yada, yada, yada.

Okay.

So things like that are very important.

I don’t even know, honestly, what question was asked.

But hopefully that was the answer to it.

Okay.

Let’s see.

Oh, yeah.

You were asking about the cards API.

So we just want to make sure that it’s all very cohesive.

And that it all makes perfect sense.

And it all is super efficient.

And that we’re approaching it the best possible way.

So I think there’s going to be some, you know, it’s going to be behind a feature flag.

And we’re going to encourage people to use it and experiment with it.

And we’re going to do that ourselves as well.

And we’re going to see if we like it.

We’re going to see how well it improves things.

And then we’ll eventually work around to either putting it in and saying, we’re greenlighting this.

It’s a great idea.

It’s had great, you know, in our experiments, it’s had tremendous improvements and things.

Or we will just cut it out and say, you know what?

That was, it was an idea.

It was something that we put the time and energy into it.

But we determined that it’s not actually the best direction to go.

And we cut it out.

And we’ve done that many, many, many, many, many times.

People see automatic CSS in its current form.

What they don’t see are the hours and thousands and thousands of dollars that just got left on the scrap table.

Like where it was like, nope, that’s not, we’re not there yet.

Or it was a good idea.

It was a good theory, but it didn’t play out in real life.

It’s not a framework where an idea just pops in our head and gets baked into the thing.

It’s like, it’s, it’s been thought about considerably.

It’s been, it’s been played with.

It’s been experimented with.

It’s been tested.

It’s been put in different situations and it made it in.

Okay.

And a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff doesn’t make it.

Okay.

Will etch live streams be limited to inner circle members?

Do we just need to be subscribed to the list in order to get notified?

No, it’s not going to be, no, it’s not going to be limited to inner circle members.

It’s, it’s going to be for anyone and everyone.

There likely will not be any limits placed on the amount of people that can, that can participate in the initial launch.

But it will, once the initial launch is done, just to give you a little bit of like, you know, a little bit of a heads up.

Once that initial launch phase, which I think is going to be three separate live streams.

The reason we’re doing three separate live streams is because I do believe we have to cap the live streams at a thousand people.

Just from like a technical considerations thing.

But we also need to spread out over time zones.

Okay.

So we can’t just do one because we’re going to leave a bunch of people out.

So each of the three are going to be done at completely opposite time zones.

Right.

We’re going to do some triangulation to try to hit as much as we can.

And then there’ll be some instructions based on those, those live streams.

But then once that series is done, okay, uh, it’s done and that batch is closed and it’s closed up.

Okay.

For, for, for a good while.

Uh, and that’s likely, that’s likely what’s going to have, uh, going to happen.

So you just want to be paying attention.

You just want to have your eyes and your ears open, uh, during that period of time.

And if that’s the case, I know, I know there’s going to be a bunch of people that miss it and there’s going to be a bunch of people crying and it’s going to look sad.

It’s going to look very sad.

Uh, it always happens.

It always, no matter how much heads up you give, no matter how much opportunity you give, somebody’s always crying after it closes up.

Okay.

It’s going to happen.

There’s no way to, I don’t think there’s any way to avoid it, but the vast majority of you will be, uh, easily, easily able to participate.

Okay.

Uh, let’s see here.

Is the rounded corner rectangle for Kevin’s head new?

I remember a circle.

Yeah, it’s, it’s new.

It’s, um, I love Derek.

Derek, he worries about all of the things that nobody else worries about.

Like, yes, I guess it’s, yeah.

It’s because I’m on a different computer.

I’m on a different computer.

So it looks a little different.

Um, okay.

Where is it we could submit sites to be critiqued?

I’ve forgotten.

It’s geary.co. geary.co.

Website critique request.

Something like that.

The description down below every video has the exact link.

How would you go about transitioning one’s WFH product design full-time job and replacing that six-figure income, generally speaking, given so much time is involved at the job?

Positioning ones.

Product design job, replacing that.

I mean, this is – and replacing that.

You mean like starting your own agency?

I don’t know.

I feel like I need additional insight and information, especially given the magnitude of that kind of decision.

So maybe you can give me additional insights.

And that’s really – every month in the Inner Circle we do an office hours where we just do business.

It’s just if you want to talk business, because – and the reason we do it there is because it’s not me just talking to a bunch of people on a stream.

People have the ability to actually come on camera, microphone, audio, all of that, and answer my questions.

Because a lot of these bigger questions, like I have to ask more questions.

In order to answer properly, I have to have more insight, background information, context, et cetera.

It actually requires a conversation.

We have the ability to have those kind of conversations in the Inner Circle.

It’s the perfect place to do that.

So every month in the Inner Circle office hours, we do a live stream, but it’s an interactive live stream.

People come on, video mic if they want to, and we do this kind of stuff there.

So that’s kind of best, I guess, reserved for that.

Going to have to catch the replay, but just wanted to say thanks for all you do.

These streams and your videos are always fire.

Well, you are very welcome, Copy Samurai.

I do like that name, by the way, Copy Samurai.

Grant says, how would you style build the form?

I think this was from the site we were looking at earlier.

That would be a lot of, we’d have, I mean, I can’t even answer off the top of my head.

I got to sit down and think about it.

I got to think about their target market.

I got to think about, I got to ask, what information do we need?

What’s the sign-up flow?

How are we going to market to them after?

Because it wasn’t asking them to pay anything.

They weren’t actually signing up.

It looked to me like it was an application of some sort.

So that’s one of those things.

There’s way more things we have to start considering and mapping and planning out.

Do you care that the ARC browser does not show your focus when tabbing around?

I do.

It drives me nuts.

It does show focus on things.

See, I’m focusing on things.

Where are you not seeing focus indication in ARC?

I don’t think I’ve ever run into any issues with that.

On the subject of heading, what is the best practice for websites with plenty of item titles like shops, headings like H3, H4, or something else?

If it’s a product, it would definitely be a heading in my estimation.

And so you just follow proper hierarchy.

If you’re in a section and there’s an H2 in that section, as there should be, that’s the heading, the topic of the section.

And then you have cards, product cards in that section.

Those would naturally be H3s.

Now, if somehow you have a section heading and then you’re using H3s to show categories of products and then the cards are already put into categories.

So you have H3 as the category heading.

Now you’re going to have to move to H4 as the card heading.

So you just follow proper hierarchy.

The Boulder.

Talking about accessibility.

Your knowledge on this is so deep and you build with accessibility in mind.

But how do you sell this to clients?

How do you present accessibility to them?

I don’t, actually.

I don’t.

We try to build every site with AA accessibility in mind.

Obviously, tools can present limitations, can present non-perfection in those areas.

But we try to cross as many T’s as we can, dot as many I’s as we can, check as many boxes as we can.

We never commit to perfection.

We never commit to fully accessible, right?

Because, by the way, the target is always changing.

The docs, the standards do change and adjust, okay?

So it’s an ongoing effort.

Accessibility is an ongoing effort.

I thought about how to sell accessibility to people.

And I came to the conclusion that it’s a big distraction in the sales process.

It is something the client needs to be educated on.

And anytime you have to educate the client, you’re now no longer really in the actual act of selling them.

Like, you know, on the project, you’re spending your time educating.

We’re no longer in decision-making mode.

And we’re just giving them more things to consider and think about.

And from a sales standpoint, I did not like any of that.

I did not appreciate having to do that.

And so I stopped.

I stopped doing it all together.

And I said, as an agency, we respect accessibility.

And we’ve baked accessibility into our practices and protocols.

Therefore, the work that we do is worth more.

And because our work is worth more in this regard, we will simply charge more.

And then we will let clients know.

We will simply inform them, just like we do with responsiveness, for example.

And people expect responsiveness now, right?

Back in the day, they didn’t expect, they wanted to check.

Will you guys do a responsive website for us?

Well, well, if you want it to be responsive, then where it’s going to be more expensive, you know?

So that was the same conversation that was had with responsiveness years and years and years and years ago.

Same conversation we’re having now.

Whereas back then, as an agency, what I would have said was, guys, we build responsive websites.

That’s what we do.

We don’t build non-responsive websites.

It’s not even an option.

So let’s make them all responsive and charge accordingly.

And then we’ll just tell clients, yes, your website is going to be responsive.

We don’t have to have a big conversation about, well, do you want responsive?

Do you not want responsive?

Well, check this box right here.

Sign that you want responsive.

You’re going to pay extra to make it.

What are we doing?

What are we doing?

If we’re the experts and we’re the professionals, we know what the website is supposed to entail.

So let’s make it entail that and then just charge accordingly.

Okay?

And if you are good at sales and you know how to talk to people, then it’s not going to be a problem.

And they’re going to appreciate that these boxes are checked.

And when they ask the competition and the competition starts going, well, well, well, if you want that, then I mean, now, and see, now this is too much conflict.

This is too much decision making.

Okay?

This company seems to suggest that this is how the websites need to be done these days.

You’re telling me that, oh, it’s so complicated.

It’s going to cost so much extra.

You seem to be bickering about it.

Okay?

Maybe I should just go with them.

Right?

That’s the conclusion a lot of them come to.

And they don’t want the headaches.

They just want it to be done.

And they just want it to be done right.

Okay?

And so that’s, you decide this is how we do things.

And this is the price that it costs.

And if we go back to the number one, we could do the pop quiz, but I’m not going to bother with the pop quiz.

But what is the number one feature, number one quality you have to have, mentality you have to have as a salesperson?

Positive indifference.

You have to be indifferent to the outcome.

Positively indifferent to the outcome.

So what does that look like?

We build responsive, accessible websites for this much money.

If you feel that’s too much, if you feel that that’s not important, if you feel however you want to feel, antithetical to that, you don’t have to do business with us.

Go do business with somebody else.

That’s perfectly fine.

We’re okay with that.

We’re not hurting.

We’re not starving.

We don’t need you.

Okay?

We got our own thing going on and we got plenty of it.

So this is how we do things.

And if you’re on board, you’re on board.

If you can get out a checkbook and write that check, get out the checkbook and write the check.

Let’s get to work.

Okay?

But no, we don’t have to beg for work.

We’re not going to lower our standards to work with you as a client.

We’re not.

See?

It’s just positive indifference.

This is what we do.

This is how we do it.

This is how much it costs.

If a check shows up from you, I guess we’re working on your project.

If it doesn’t, on to the next one.

Okay?

Positive indifference.

The minute you get all like, oh my God, I need you so much.

I need your project so much.

Oh, we just love to work with you.

Please, please, please.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

That’s not how this works.

You’ve lost all leverage.

You are not, you’re no longer speaking as a professional.

Right?

We’ll push whatever pixels you want wherever you want them.

Just please, please sign on this dotted line.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

It’s not how a professional operates.

It’s just not.

It’s not how they think.

It’s not how they act.

It’s not how they talk.

So that’s the number one sign that there’s a problem in that model.

So that’s a long answer.

To build it in and charge accordingly and move on with your life.

Okay.

For accessible tabbing order, if you have a top header and a primary header, should it tab through the top header first or the primary menu?

Oh, I don’t know.

You’re using the words headers, headers, header, heading, heading.

What are we?

There’s a little bit of a lack of clarity in the question.

Hard to know exactly what we’re talking about.

Hard for me to visualize.

So I need an actual example maybe.

Okay.

Can I submit a site I did not design but have made a lot of recommendations recommendations for improvements?

If they’re okay with it.

I mean, you need to talk to whoever did it and see if they’re okay with it.

It would be great if you could go through your performance tweaks, plug-in setup.

I can do that.

I think actually there’s one planned.

That’ll be in the inner circle.

There’ll be an inner circle video for that.

What did you do to Kevin Hart and why are you keeping him from us?

He’s not on this board right here.

He’s at the other board back in Atlanta.

I also needed some new audio clips to use.

Okay.

I’m looking for it.

Some of these questions are the same.

What’s your preferred accessibility checking tool site?

Kevin.

Okay.

Really good question.

So there’s a couple browsers that you can use.

Polypane is probably one of the best.

And these tools help you.

Okay.

They help you.

But a lot of accessibility testing is manual testing.

It requires that you understand the requirements.

Like with an accordion.

Okay.

There’s a lot that the tools cannot test for you.

So you have to manually test these things.

And if you’re going to be doing accessibility audits, that needs to be explained.

We’re not just running this thing through a tool.

We have to put eyes and hands on every page of the website.

Accessibility auditing is very extensive and expensive.

So, and if you want a new service to offer people, you know, accessibility audits is one area that is high dollar, high dollar.

But it’s also very annoying work.

It’s very annoying work.

It’s not fun in my opinion.

So I, I, I avoid it.

Okay.

Question regarding data ownership.

If DG is wildly successful and becomes mainstream, would you even, would you ever, ever consider?

I think that’s Ev.

Would you ever consider doing an open source web flow alternative?

Web flow got what we yearn for, except for that.

Uh, no, I, I, no, no, not at this time.

Not at this time.

Um, I’m, I’m more interested in saving WordPress than I am competing with WordPress.

Okay.

Let’s see.

Um, what is your suggested approach for creating a boxed icon style?

Would you add padding, uh, and background color to the icon element itself or do that on a parent icon wrapper?

Uh, typically what I’ve done in the past is I have put a wrapper on the icon and then you don’t actually have to use padding.

A lot of times you’re defining a height of the icon.

A lot of times you’re defining a height of the icon and a width of the icon because you also want, you don’t want, some icon libraries don’t have uniform icons as we probably all know.

So one icon might be taller than another icon.

And so if you just let them be at their native height or try to define one or the other, um, like typically you want to define a height in most cases.

Now it depends on the layout, but like imagine these cards right here that we’re looking at.

If there’s an icon above them, you would want to define the icons height because it will ensure that these headings always align.

Whereas if you define the width of the icon and icons happen to have different heights, it will actually create problems with the hierarchy of the layout.

Right.

Um, so with that said, if you’re going to wrap the icon, you can wrap the icon and set a height on the wrapper instead of relying on padding.

If you set a height and a width on the wrapper that is greater than the height and width of the icon, you have free space inside of the wrapper.

And then you could just use the wrapper, flex box, grid, whatever you want to use to align the icon to the center of the wrapper and then style the wrapper.

However you want to style the wrapper.

So you, you probably don’t even need padding in that regard.

You can just use explicit sizes.

Um, probably, uh, probably the approach that I would typically take.

Okay.

Let’s see.

Regarding accessibility.

If the header has rows like header Bravo should tab.

Oh, okay.

So you’re clarifying the question from earlier.

Should tab order be primary menu than top menu or top nav than primary nav.

Um, in my estimation, the order should be the visual order that they come in.

So if the top menu comes first in the visual order, uh, it should probably go through that.

Um, well, let’s, let’s look at it.

It’s kind of a case by case basis situation.

Uh, let’s go.

Here’s where we want to be.

Let’s go edit header.

And let’s get rid of this one.

And let’s go in and add, let’s go to frames header.

And let’s choose Bravo.

It’s the one you asked about.

Okay.

Well, in this case, there’s only one navigation, right?

This is secondary, uh, data, secondary information.

Um, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a really good question.

I, it’s, I don’t think, I actually don’t think it has one solid answer.

And here’s why every user is different in what they want and what they prioritize.

If this is a local business, which is probably the case, considering we have an address and a phone number up here, right?

Um, some users that come, especially on mobile are, they’re prioritizing, like, where’s the phone number for this business or where’s the address of this?

That’s what they want to see and interact with first.

Other users might want to act with the main navigation.

So I don’t think it matters what comes first or second, like, because you’re going to alienate the other part of the cohort.

So, um, now there could be some obscure accessibility expert.

That’s like, no, always have the main menu.

Okay.

Well, we can have that debate.

If somebody is around to make that argument, then make that argument.

And then let’s talk about it.

And I, I’m not married to either one.

Um, not married to either one.

So what I would probably go with in this case, it’s just Dom order.

These come first in the Dom.

So they should be focused on first after the skip link, the skip link always comes first.

Uh, and then we can probably just respect Dom order after that.

Okay.

But again, I’m not married to that, uh, answer either.

Somebody is very, has a very convincing argument for what to do.

Then make it.

Do you have any comments about the quickly going free on the WP plugin directory?

I do.

I do.

I do.

Thank you for asking.

For those of you who wanted a rant, it’s very possible that one is incoming.

Um, I will say this, there hasn’t been a single decision that the quickly leadership has made.

That makes any sense whatsoever since they made the initial one, uh, to shut quickly down.

Every literally every decision after that is a head scratcher.

And is this a WTF?

This makes no sense whatsoever.

And again, I, you know, there, here we go again.

They’re going to, what are they going to there?

They may get their feelings hurt and take their ball and go home again after this live stream.

I don’t know.

Um, I would say that anybody who uses quickly at this point, based on all the stuff that’s happened.

Okay.

Um, probably is very low on self-respect probably is negative on client respect.

The idea that we just talked about keeping your clients safe.

Okay.

Making sure that you’re making decisions that are in the best interest of your clients.

Anybody who puts a client project on quickly at this point, it has lost their, they’re not qualified to do work in this industry.

They’re just, that is a horrific decision to make at this point.

Knowing what we know to put a client in that situation again, again.

Okay.

Knowing what we know, um, that you are disqualified from, from working in that.

This is not, uh, that, that is just too much, um, too much of a bad thing.

Much of a bad decision.

Just really, really, really bad thinking.

Okay.

Um, negligence.

It’s just negligence.

That’s what it is.

Legally.

That’s, that’s negligence at this point.

Okay.

And then let’s talk about self-respect.

There’s a lot of people that are going to run back to quickly, uh, because it’s free.

And that benefits them as a, as a human being, you know, that screw everything that happened.

I want to get mine.

That’s kind of like, you know, the, not everybody, not all of them, but that’s, that’s the approach.

Some will have.

That’s the feeling some will have.

Well, it’s a great tool.

And now it’s free.

That benefits me.

So I’m going back to it.

Well, that person has no self-respect, um, to make the decision based on that.

That’s, that’s, you have a lack.

You don’t respect yourself enough to have a principle of any kind.

You only care about the fact that it’s free now and that benefits you, but you have no other principles regarding this matter that I look down on that.

I look down on that.

Um, there are people who are maybe going to watch quickly from the outside and say, all right, maybe I’m going to give them a second chance.

That wouldn’t actually be a second chance.

It’d be more like a fourth or fifth chance, uh, at this point.

But, you know, they, they might say, well, you know, everybody deserves more chances.

And so, uh, I’m just going to wait around and I’m going to see what happens.

And maybe after a few years, it looks super stable.

I’ll dabble in it.

I’ll come back to it, whatever.

Or, you know, I just wish the best for everybody and it’s all rainbows and unicorns and whatever, whatever they’re thinking in their head.

Okay.

Um, I could, I could see an opening for doing that where you’re like, all right, well, just let them do their thing.

All right.

I’m not going to personally use it at least not anytime soon, but let them do their thing.

Let them cook.

Whatever, whatever, like whatever excuse these people want to come up with in their brain.

Um, fine, whatever.

That’s not me.

That’s not me.

Uh, once you pull the rug out from under people, once you pull the plug on them, once you give them a big middle finger, let’s, let’s also remember they’re giving a big middle finger to every single user that paid.

We just had a conversation a while back about automatic CSS and frames and our philosophy of how we treat our current user base and how decisions we make about pricing and think to just, to just throw up a middle finger to everybody who actually gave you money and be like now it’s free bitches.

That doesn’t, this is like the, the, the disrespect that that shows to all the people who did fund the, unless you’re going to, what are you going to, you’re going to, you’re not going to refund all those people.

You’re not going to refund all those people.

They paid for something that is now apparently free.

Is this a scaled down version of quickly that’s free?

I don’t think so.

I don’t know.

I mean, I haven’t looked at all the details.

Hopefully it is.

Hopefully it is.

If I’m wrong, correct me.

If I’m wrong, I would hope I’m wrong.

If it’s not, what does that mean?

It means a whole bunch of people paid a whole bunch of money and then you took your ball and went home.

And then you came back and said, by the way, everybody can have it for free now.

Screw all those people that paid.

And, you know, please come back and use a product that you probably shouldn’t have any trust in whatsoever because this could all happen again tomorrow.

We don’t know.

And, and no apologies really.

No, no, no.

I mean, we still don’t even know why it went away the first time.

We just, all we got was, you know, claims, nameless, faceless accusations.

We still don’t even know what happened the first time.

And now to come back and be like, yeah, come on back guys.

Come on back.

We, we were back with our ball for now.

Uh, I don’t know, man.

This is as it leaves a bad taste, doesn’t it?

I just don’t feel like it’s a good, it’s a good situation.

Let me hop back over to the chat.

Pretty sure the, it’s the full version that’s free now.

Yeah.

I mean, that’s just, man, man.

I just, that doesn’t make any sense to my brain.

And the, and the idea that people would flock back to that, you got to have no principles.

You got to have, you have just no self-respect.

Cause remember there’s the people that are, that, that also look at free products and say, I’d actually rather pay.

I feel more comfortable paying, uh, than I do using this thing for free.

Um, and there’s people that absolutely do not think like that.

I’ll tell you that right now.

They will take every advantage they can personally.

Uh, and they’ll sell their clients out to do it.

They’ll, they’re just, it’s not a good situation guys.

It’s not a good look.

And it’s just another head scratching makes no sense.

It makes, maybe it, maybe it makes sense for them as personal people, but, but as a company, it doesn’t make sense.

And for their user base, it doesn’t make sense.

And for anybody who uses it for client work, it doesn’t make sense.

And it’s, and it’s still is lacking a lot of clarity and details.

We still don’t know our new features coming or not coming.

Are, are what, what, what about the bug update promises that were made?

Are there, how long are those going to go on?

There’s still so much.

It’s not just bad decision making.

It’s bad communication.

It’s just not good all around.

There’s nothing good about it.

There’s nothing good about it.

Um, people saying like, well, it’s so much work.

They work so hard.

It’s such a great thing.

It should, it should live on.

Okay.

If that’s how you feel, it should live on under different leadership.

It should live on as a paid product, considering people already paid for it.

It should live on in a lot of different ways other than what’s happening right now.

So you got to acknowledge that to some degree, right?

Okay.

Um, we don’t need to rant any further.

That’s how I feel.

Hope I wasn’t unclear.

All right.

Uh, let’s go back to where we were in the questions.

And then we got to, we got seven minutes and then I got to get out of here.

Um, do you have any comments?

Okay.

That was another one about that.

What is your stance on marketing agency bundling products with various price points, basic silver, gold, or offer all as a la carte and support prospects to select what is best for them?

Um, I will tell you, I will answer the question from a standpoint of pricing strategy.

So when you study pricing, what you’ll often learn or be told or be taught is that if you create product tiers, you can on average get people to spend more money because you can juxtapose tiers against each other.

You can use different price anchoring techniques to steer people’s behavior in certain directions.

And you can sell features that they maybe would not opt into, but that you want them to have by bundling them in certain plans or excluding features that you know, they really, really, really, really want or need.

Um, and, but, but isolating those to higher tiers.

That’s how you get people to spend more money than they otherwise would.

Now that’s not to say that.

So in a way, what I’m getting at there is having pricing tiers to some degree is, has, um, a degree of manipulation.

Okay.

Um, it’s, it, there’s a psychological tactic being used.

However, however, uh, the degree to which the psychology is used or the manipulation is used is still dependent on the person doing the pricing.

Okay.

Designing the pricing options.

It could have no manipulation.

You could have a B gives you double what a gives you and it’s double the price.

C gives you triple what they gave you and it’s triple the price.

You could have things like that because there is a component to deliverability of the products and services where it’s easier for you as a company to manage packages.

It’s easier as a company to deliver packages.

Okay.

So it’s not all bad, but it’s also not all good.

Right.

So you could, you could use it heavily to manipulate, or you could not manipulate people at all.

But by its nature, what I think is you end up, you end up people opting into things they don’t actually need.

Okay.

Um, which means maybe that they’re spending more than they otherwise should be paying.

But then of course there’s the future to think about and maybe people do have, I mean, let’s just pull up.

Let’s, let’s just do this.

Let’s go to, let’s go to the pricing here.

It does help if you don’t type in pricing wrong.

Okay.

So you have freelancer at $79 a year.

This gets you automatic CSS on three live websites.

Now, all of these things, uh, are the same, right?

You get the same things with every tier.

The only decision you’re making is on how many active websites and whether you want to pay yearly or you want to pay lifetime.

Okay.

You can see that this is 79.

So 80 times two, 160.

You get a little bit of a deal going to the agency plan.

You obviously get a lot more websites.

Okay.

So there’s more value in the agency plan.

Now, could you say, well, this pricing is a little bit manipulative?

No, because if you think about support, okay, we, you get support community access here, right?

So we’re going to, what we found is we provide essentially the same level of support to a user, whether they’re on this plan or this plan.

Okay.

So even though there’s way more websites, the support to the actual user is roughly the same.

Okay.

So this can’t be an ultra low price because you’re going to, you get in an ultra low price for an ultra low amount of sites, but you’re still going to use the same amount of support as all these people over here.

So there has to be some sort of baseline for just getting into the ecosystem because the minute you’re into the ecosystem, you’re using support.

Okay.

So that’s the reasoning behind why this wouldn’t just be insanely cheaper relative to what this is.

Like if you started dividing these numbers by the number of sites, it would seem like, wow, this is so much more expensive over here, but it’s not based on that alone.

Right.

It’s not based on that alone.

So then we give the, the LTD, which is always a multiple of the top plan.

Right.

Some people use three X, some people use four X, whatever you want to do there.

It’s not really manipulation.

It’s just guesswork.

It’s just like, okay.

Playing with lifetime value of, of customers and things like that.

Now let’s look at both of these plans here.

What percentage of users use all 100 licenses?

Probably not a lot.

So you could say, well, they’re buying into a lot of access they don’t actually need, but then the argument is, but they don’t actually need it right now.

That doesn’t mean they’re not going to need it later in the future.

Right.

Um, and you always have to put arbitrary numbers on things.

Now you could go to all a cart.

You could be like, well, it’s every 15 websites.

It bumps up in cost or whatever.

Now that’s obviously very technical to manage the logistics of delivering that.

Okay.

So all of this is pros and cons.

I am screen sharing still, right?

Yes.

Good.

I just had another PTSD episode thinking that we weren’t screen sharing.

Um, okay.

So you guys see like, like the, it’s never just one thing to decide.

So you have to sit down as a company and say, all right, here’s what delivering this stuff a la carte looks like.

Uh, there’s also with the user three options versus the minute you go a la carte, they’ve got a lot of different things to decide.

If this is an area of life, like an industry where the user is, they highly, highly know what they need.

Then a la carte can make perfect sense because they’re able to piecemeal their thing together.

But in an industry that may be technical where they don’t actually know what they need yet, or they don’t even know the scope of their problem or the scope of the solution.

They can’t actually choose from an a la carte menu because they’re not qualified to choose.

They’re not, and they don’t have enough.

Maybe there’s unknowable information.

And so it’s very difficult for them to make an a la carte choice.

Plans now present a much better option for them.

So all this stuff has to be weighed.

It’s all pros and cons.

It’s all lots of factors to consider.

There’s never a, it’s, it’s this or it’s that in this situation.

Um, and you can make multiple ways work.

So the gap between the two options in terms of pros and cons may end up being very minuscule.

And so you could literally go either way.

Um, okay.

Hopefully that answers that question.

As everybody else says, new bricks video, uh, 1.1 sounds very interesting.

Should we talk about it?

We, maybe we could do that as next week’s stream.

I don’t know if it’s exciting enough.

Uh, do you have suggestions for building accessibility into the design process?

Yeah, that’s a big, it’s a big factor for sure.

Um, so the designer and developer need to be on the same page.

Like at all times, right?

Even when you’re pricing projects out, we had this discussion the other day in the inner circle that like, you can’t just price per page.

You can’t just be like, well, you know, it’s going to be this much for a one page site.

And then it’s, it’s $399 per page after that, or something like that.

Unless you’re just going to bake in a lot of extra wiggle room.

Okay.

Because a page can have things on it based on what the designer comes up with that are very technically challenging to implement.

And suddenly you go from, well, $399 for that about page was great, but we’re way upside down on this other page over here because they added this fancy carousel thing that we added that we had to build and figure out how to do and yada, yada, yada.

I mean now, right.

That can easily happen.

So you and the designer have to be on the same page with regarding that and regarding, uh, accessibility, because if they’re doing things and making decisions, color contrast, stuff like that, uh, that’s not accessible.

Um, you know, it causes problems and then obviously problems in projects get expensive.

So we want to limit them.

But yeah, I think, I think it’s, I think designers in the modern area, if you were going to be a web designer, like you’re designing for the web, not a brochure designer, not a billboard designer.

Okay.

There’s a lot of different designers.

If you’re going to be a web designer designing websites, you should know about accessibility.

You should know what the standards are.

You should know what the practices are.

Um, by the way, the etch mail confirmation link in mail is broken.

Uh, it shouldn’t be, I tested it a bunch and then a bunch of people have used it.

So maybe there’s a temporary issue with it.

I guess I will check it out.

I, it’s not even a link I generate.

So unless you’re talking about it, going to the thank you page or something like that.

Um, I can, I can check it out though.

It was, it was tested a bunch.

Uh, let’s see.

You go, they check 10 page builders for accessibility.

Uh, did you check the equalized digital webinar yesterday where they check 10 page builders for accessibility?

Any thoughts?

Yeah, I think it’s kind of a surface level thing.

I’ve considered doing videos like this.

I’ve actually, um, I have an element.

Let me show you guys this.

Uh, because it’s when you, do it right.

Like it’s an insane amount of work.

You, you have to either decide that you’re going to do the insane amount of work.

Uh, let me, let me get into this.

Cause what, what is, thanks for just shaking, uh, one password, but shaking doesn’t actually help me.

Okay.

Let’s type this in manually.

Let’s type this in manually.

See if we can get in here.

You have to either just say, I’m going to do an insane amount of work and buckle down and get it done.

Or I’m going to do kind of a surface level overview of stuff.

Um, I just want to show you guys this just to let you know, let’s, let’s search for Elementor.

I had this going for a while and, um, the work just kept growing and growing.

And then, and obviously Elementor, uh, releases like, you know, more updates that fundamentally change things.

It’s like, fuck, I’m not even published the first version yet.

You already changed some shit.

Now I gotta, and I, and I don’t like being an Elementor.

I just don’t like being in there.

Uh, so it’s like, it’s very painful.

It’s a painful process to do this kind of stuff, but it says Elementor review, honest notes from a professional front end web, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Okay.

Okay.

Let’s go down.

We got TLDR.

We go into reputation.

We go into the fundamentals.

We go into basic elements.

We go into prebuilt elements.

We go into inputs and controls.

We go into code quality and access.

We go into maintainability and custom CSS and grading elementors workflow and on and on and on and on.

And the thing goes on and on and it just keeps going.

And it’s just so detailed.

And look at all these sections that I want to hit on that I haven’t even gotten to them yet.

And just on and on.

Look at all this stuff that still has to be done and on and on and on and on and on.

It’s like, if you really, really, really want to do it right and you want to do it as fair as possible and you want to do it and you want to bring receipts.

Okay.

It’s a lot of work.

I think I’ve already spent nine to 10 hours on this and it’s not even halfway done.

And by the time I’m done, it’s all going to have to be looked at again, which is why I essentially just gave up on it and why I just rant about it on live streams.

Because if you want to bring the receipts and you want to do the details and you want to it’s an insane amount of work.

Would it be worth publishing?

I think so.

But then the idea was that I was going to do this for like, you know, Beaver and the next one and the next one.

Right.

And bricks.

Okay.

I basically realized I would have to resign my life to just doing these blog posts and I would be able to get nothing else done.

And it just wasn’t worth it at the end of the day.

And I was like, you know what?

People are just gonna have to fucking take my word for it.

Um, and, and I can give them an example here or there, or I could do some surface level overviews on a live stream.

Like I’ve done, uh, in the past with, with certain things, but to actually do it documented like this is the, the it’s astronomical level work that I, that by the way, ain’t nobody going to pay me to do that.

Nobody going to write me a check.

All right.

What’s going to happen.

They’re going to share it in the, the element or group is going to go into a frenzy.

It’s going to whip the element or people into a frenzy.

It would probably be great for exposure.

It would probably be great to, um, for spotlight, right?

Cause, cause everybody’s going to get their panties in a wad about it.

And, and, you know, from that perspective, it’s like, okay, fine.

Uh, there’s a benefit there.

But at the end of the day, it’s like, it’s going to be out of date soon.

Cause element is already, they’re already realizing they’re already fixing stuff.

They’re working really hard to fix some stuff.

Um, I don’t know.

It just, I started weighing pros and cons.

It was like the cons list is getting pretty long here and the pros list, you know, not, not that great.

Cause what would also happen with the, with an actual reader is they would, they would get about a quarter in maybe.

And they’d be like, there’s so much detail here.

There’s so many receipts.

There’s so much like examples.

They would just take my word for it on the rest of it.

They wouldn’t even read the rest of it.

They would probably just end up just being like, man, this is a, and then they would go share it.

And so I don’t know.

I don’t know.

I never got around to fit.

I didn’t have the heart to keep going on it.

It’s one of those things where I was like, my time is probably better spent elsewhere.

People pretty much know that it’s not that great.

That element is not that great.

They pretty much know beaver is not that great.

Um, and all these tools have, have massive issues.

So that’s kind of where I just wanted to show you.

It was started.

It was, I even built a custom ACF block for it.

I built this custom ACF block.

Uh, never got to use it and never got to use it.

So that was more time wasted.

Uh, not wasted because I did an inner circle tutorial on building the ACF block.

So people got to see how that was done and learn how it was done.

But, uh, man, there’s a lot of stuff that just never sees the light of day.

Okay.

I think we got to head out.

I’m going to go back to chat real quick just to see, just to say bye to people and see what people are saying.

Uh, okay.

Grade two out of 10.

Damn, a whole, a whole two.

Yeah.

It wasn’t, it wasn’t going well for, for elements are on the grading scale.

Um, it wasn’t, and the grade wasn’t relative to other page builders.

The grade was relative to what a page builder should be.

Uh, so if you, if you wanted to grade it against like a beaver or a divvy, it would probably be like a six, you know, and throw a bricks in there.

It’d probably be more like a six, but I was grading and I’m like, what a page builder should be, should do.

That’s like a two.

That’s like a two.

Uh, Lizzie says, I just barely signed up in the etch link email sequence worked fine.

Okay.

And Yasser says, I got an email confirmation from etch.

No problem with me.

I just signed up for it today and it worked.

Okay.

So there you go.

Uh, somebody saying, what is etch?

So for those of you who are a little late to the stream, just go to digital gravy.co, not .com.co.

And on the homepage right here, you’ll see etch is coming soon.

Click on that, drop your email in here, hit join waiting list.

And then you’re, you’ve done everything that you need to do at this stage of the game.

You won’t miss anything.

Uh, you will be included.

You’ll be good to go.

Uh, I am in Sarasota, which means it is probably about to be beach time, which means I got to get out of here.

I do love you guys.

Uh, thank you for your support.

I hope you found this stream helpful and entertaining.

I’ll be back next Tuesday and we will do all of this yet again.

Uh, I love you guys.

I am out.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Peace.

Thank you.