Lessons

Lesson Info

Your Website & Online Presence

Let's talk about your website your online presence producers like I said they're going to be assessing that online presence that's what they're looking at first that is your face teo that's like blind date first impression style and when you're thinking about evaluating your online presence, you want to look at your website, your online shop, your social media, your block any any anything that's online that's you and for our purposes we're not going to be going super deep weren't you a little workshop appear on somebody's face you can see uh means an ounce of what of what we're looking for it if I were a show well, I am a show producer, but if I were if I were looking at this web site from a jury's perspective, so you were really going to be looking at the design, you know, kind of like the layout and then assessing engagement so here's some tips for a strong website don't go it alone so if you can't do it yourself get help if you can't afford that help you trade for it you baby sit so...

meone's kids for it you paint someone's bathroom for it you do whatever it is that you need to dio to have a professional looking website that reflects your business and you also want to keep it simple you know your cousin joe wants to build your website and he's really into making animated gifs right now and he wants to make an animated gift with your sugar skull necklace dancing around and singing a song and it has some like really loud music in the background yeah just keep it simple we don't need bells and whistles your products are what we want or what we want to see and you want to think about space like whites white space on your website we're going to get kind of deeper into these when we uh look when we do our workshop our website workshop asking people's opinions so we are often so close to our own stuff that we can't see it objectively you know we're too involved it's kind of like when I was saying our partners think everything we do is the best thing since sliced bread uh whenever I design a website I sent that's like five people you know and then I get their opinions and then I wait a week and then I think about what I'm going to dio uh and staying true to your brand so this you don't want you know cousin cousin joe really likes this color and really wants to do it in this color you just stick to your guns this counts for everything website at sea social media log whatever else you have on there yes if we don't have a standalone website we're just say on out seeing instagram and stuff does that mean will be out of jury selection? No absolutely not no you don't need to have your actual own website having an etsy shop is fine um I suggest having I suggest having having a website yeah, perhaps some shows I mean I can't say for every single you know I don't know every single shows rules but it just shows a serious serious in the senate professionalism it's a lot though I understand this is this is all a lot yeah think about pinterest and instagram and facebook and and all and a website all these items where you are what do you find important in those orders and is it all of them or some and can you speak to about blog's it's like the one thing I don't do because I just you don't have to block so long what I'm gonna talk about next is choosing the right plat platform for your brand so I think website number one on that if you make something that's a product that's going to be sold which chances are if you're watching this show you d'oh um having some sort of shop on your website is great even if that shop button from your website links to your etsy shop totally totally fine there are so many resource is to make your own website now what just popped in my a square square space uh yeah yes wait so it's, so easy there again like the credit card thing, there are no excuses at all like we don't have excuses anymore of well, I don't know how I don't know how to do that. So it's just like it's it's at your fingertips, but you want to choose and then after that, I would look so what did I say? I said website shopping your shop and then I would look at social media so I don't care if you have a blawg or not that's part of your branding for your business if you think it's important for your customers, if they want, if that's something that is important for your business, do it it's not then don't same thing with social media you don't need to be on facebook, twitter, pinterest instagram, snapchat chaps flat black send whatever the new social media is and I don't know about yet you don't need to be on it pick out the ones that are a good fit for your brand in your business. We're all visual, you know? We're all these kind of people, so chances are instagram your customers, you know, might be there that might be something you're interested in, you're not confident, comfortable taking pictures, maybe pinterest that's another visual medium facebook tends to be like an older crowd or at least it is in my world so if that's your customer that we keep our facebook we keep our instant cause we have like a big variety of ages in our in our demographic so it's it's really finding which one's right for you and then keeping up with it you know there is absolutely no reason to have a facebook page that you never update get rid of it who cares nobody's going toe not let you into a show or not by your earrings because you don't have a facebook page so what I'm finding and this might be more of a comment but I would appreciate hearing for anybody else if they find the same thing that um you know through facebook you khun busta post so you can gather more likes and people to visit your your sights instagram it doesn't have that same boost capabilities that I've found so that you can mark it yourselves but also finding with a phone is so much easier to take pictures and upload to facebook and instagram and then I'm finding that I'm getting delayed with upgrading my website because the quality of the photographs on my phone are not maybe webb ready you need to prioritize I'm sorry interrupt you know you need to prioritize you need to figure out what is your priority right now so you need to sit sit down and figure out what is your priority right now maybe it's your website and pick a frequency that you you khun stick teo you know if that's you know they say post on instagram and facebook one today I can't do that I'm not the hugest uh it was hard enough for me to post once on our instagram instagram last night and it took me like a half an hour to do it you know I didn't take the picture set it up take another picture v s ceo or whatever it write the thing and you it's yeah but you should not be letting your website suffer for your social media in my opinion so my favorite platform is instagram because it's visual and I like saying things that are visual so what I do even into my web site which I'm sure it can be improved a lot is that I have all of my instagram post and my twitter feed which I'm not into much and my face but all feed into my website so if somebody prefers one of those social media methods they can see it all my website page and then click on which everyone they wantto look at so yes agreed okay uh what else do I want to say about this oh put links everywhere so why are you having social media there's no link on your website too it there's no link like on every on every page you're missing out um think about why you have this social media account what are you giving to your customers with it? What are they getting that they can't get from you at a craft show or on your website? Why why are they going there? If all you're posting is pictures of your products over and over and over again, can't they just get that from your website? They can but it's the difference of a push and pull if you're if you're instagramming and you're facebooking, you're pushing if you're on leon web, your customers have to go to you and pull from, you know, off, of course, but I think people are going to be more engaged with your social media when it's more than just selling, you know, look at this hearing look at this hearing it's like look at this hearing oh my gosh, look, I'm in the studio, this is my this is my process, you're selling your your lifestyle, you're selling the lifestyle of your brand, you're showing your studio, you're showing your process, you're showing your inspiration uh, yeah taylor's making it personal and thinking about process because I do laser cut jewelry a lot a lot of people don't really understand what it is and a lot of people still ask me, so does somebody else do it for, you know might know I do it for myself so how'd the time lapse videos or do videos and place post into my instagram so people can see the laser cutter working and and what, what, what it does, I just wanted to mention that show it in a couple of weeks ago somebody my husband was in the booth, I was away, and he said that these ladies came in and they guess, follow me on instagram and they were like, talking about my process found so like, honor I was like, so honored about it, they were like, oh, she does this and she's in her studio in her cat on bullet blind, yeah, it just made me so happy that, like, whatever I was throwing out to the world like they figured it out and got the message and they came to my booth to buy something, you know from me because they knew my story and that's I mean, we're talking a lot about preparation, but like with the storytelling that's, what we're talking about with with our branding that we were talking about that's, what we're gonna be talking about with the customer experience tomorrow that we're gonna be talking about about merchandising, your display that's, what we're talking about about your application is telling that story I totally forgot to talk about this picture, but the last thing is keep it professional s so that's actually I was told that I had to use a picture of me so that nobody else would be embarrassed or get in trouble so that's me I don't drinking that beer it's totally a prop just kidding wearing bunny ears anyway the point of this picture is this is not a picture I would post on my social media okay however if why was a crafter and I made beer cozies and those beer cozies had kind of sassy sayings on them like I can't even think of one right now anybody online have any sassy beer cozies so and why sassy sassy beer cozies and my beer because he was on there yeah guess what that would be something I would post on my social media so it's not my no no is not necessarily your no no you make pet stuff post bunch of pictures of your dog you make aprons show the stuff you cooked last night figure out what's going to engage your customer ok we're going to go online right now here we go ok come on up this is lisa of paper stems high we'll go up here I feel like we were already besties I am been in technology is my primary background for twenty plus years but I have always had kind of a do it yourself background and as my website will say as a kid I always was into gardening and flowers and paper anything and I started collecting vintage postcards and I saved every birthday card I got as a child and then it was the event of a couple of wedding showers and weddings that kind of got me started with making flowers you could find lisa on instagram dot com forward slash paper stands and chris will put that in the chat room for everyone out of you lisa was actually one of our patchwork oakland vendors yeah, right. First experience for may I was so excited to see her booth she had a really lovely display and so so let's see let's talk about let's talk about your website first so the first thing when I saw this website is I thought, wow this looks great right? And I was like, okay, what are we going to say about this? So it took me a minute a minute to get to get deeper into it but one of the things that I love about it is, uh can you see that little highlighted thing on there? Okay, awesome. So one of the things I love about is I really, really love her logo it tells its already telling me a story it's fun and it's feminine its flowers but it's it's all those things but I also feel like it's modern it doesn't feel like outdated feminine, you know, it feels a bit modern, so I just yeah so I just I really liked it and immediately fell paper felt yeah I felt drawn to it it fell very on brand to me having since I do know her brand of it I liked I liked that she had I like that she had these pictures really nice and big on there and I actually like that they were floating by some people don't like that that's just that's just personal choice um so let's talk about what I think could be improved here it's a little bit hard to see on here but this where it says paper stems here is gray this is brown and I was trying to figure out that color I felt like that there was a kind of a lack of cohesiveness and then with this you know all upper case font to this lower case and I can't tell if that's the same font or not it doesn't feel like it but they're both sand sarah fonts which sans serif means it doesn't have a little good you do there so mixing two sand sarah fonts is kind of like a no no design wise having said that obviously you got into patchwork show so you know what we're getting into like a a deep a deep level of critique here so just this is a weak sight and there are some limitations with color and font so I know my pantone colors on my logo but I can't I can't train translate that so it was just a trade off with getting a website that I could maintain up quickly versus uh you know the consistency of the colors and the in the font and that makes sense and like I said, you got into patchwork so obviously like this this is professional enough but we're talking about like that deeper deeper level level of critique and you have to trade off what you have to trade off um so let's go to the about paige so the first one other thing I really like is some simple you know? She's got a lot of white space on their designs just like classic simple, clean great good to go awesome er I would love to see a picture of you in your studio here I've seen enough pictures of flowers and your flowers are gorgeous I obviously love them but that's for the other stuff um this I mean, you guys know I do design and illustration it's like really coming out now but this was like unnecessary to me they're just like kind of like a font color and then this is a light grey or logo's a dark ray we just kind of covered why that happened but when you're doing like lower case uppercase fonts and needs to be a choice and I need to feel like a choice um and there's my little guy there I also wanted when you say thanks for visiting my side I hope to speak to you soon I really wanted a link there you know to your to your contact or yeah just kind of more of like a call to action I guess and then this quote I love that you put it quote there design wise I'm like now we have beige on here like what's going on but I want that to be your kuo I want to hear what you have to say about flowers I want to hear you say what you just what you just said leg ever since I was a kid what do flowers do for you? Okay, I want more for you I guess uh let's come up too. So this's yeah services okay again, this is this is a design thing but this this might be your website limitation but that having this box in the middle that has like a drop shadow drop shadows when was like a fake shadow on on here is just kind of its outdated I guess I don't know how else to describe it so just like getting rid of this of this box here and getting that gray bar out capitalising that s making all the fonts the same font all the words seem fun you do wonders yeah that's very doing yeah that's and not just like it's like when you look at something it's like it feels balanced it feels cohesive it feels a professional all these little things like I seem like a total nit picker right now but these were just you know, little things like your second it'll just bump it up I I love that you have these pictures and then the pictures are underneath here yeah, the pictures and the pictures are awesome just you know, you have some close ups and some faraway ones you have ah lifestyle shot of lifestyle shot we're gonna talk a little bit more more about that but it's your product in action being used uh so yeah, my other thing is the contact page I was trying to figure out why you had a map there and you're right it's meaning if there's no correlation I should get rid of it. Okay? There needs to be something more relatable or something that's you know, maybe it's my workshop where I actually have a picture of all the tulle shops now okay, but I have a picture of all the tools. Yeah. Um yeah, that that's awesome. I don't for all of you it's a personal choice. If you want to have your phone number on there and on I wouldn't but if you don't mind if people call you and then you don't need that little phone thing people know that's a phone number, okay uh great that you're on your face you uh it was but I I think I might be able to eliminate it I'm not sure it's great that you have your facebook in your instagram here but I want to see it on every page and I want to see that branded I want to see that in your great color or your pink color or your red color okay on dh then same thing with like this box I want everything to your b in your colors and branded or not there you know what I mean? So the facebook and the instagram logo's those are like little widgets so I can't go and those color wise but I definitely can put him on every page yeah, great, yeah I would love to see that you know, we're even if it's another yeah, I would just I really want to see that every page so like so contacts last and I could even put social yeah, I like just having the them on every page so you don't have to go to a place to get them it's much easier for people just now uh okay, so let's go to your facebook uh let me check on okay, so let's go to your facebook um first of all, I love your cover photo picture so this is the cover photo and I love that it's an installation you know of your stuff I'm kind of like bum that that person on a ladder there but like you know obviously we can't go back in time on like redo that shot um but yeah I absolutely I absolutely love that on then I love that this your profile picture is like a close up so you're like oh my gosh that's pretty well now I see that's actually like this gigantic things you really get an idea of the scope of the size and everything so it was just great um so you haven't posted since me that is a top so that was posted last night but that top posting stationary because it links to a tahoe wedding website I positioned it there but um so that's kind of station I can move it but then frequent post come below that okay, okay. Um yeah, I just I want more of those pictures. What do you guys think that installation? Yeah. Yeah, I'll be honest when I was looking for your patchwork application when I saw that boat like that photo and I saw them like actually I was just like oh yeah, you know that's awesome um I don't see what else was I thinking oh yeah, there was some picture that you put on here that was like I like your workshop you did your workshop so there was something you found here that was like, hey, I'm thinking about doing this new process, I think that is the new sam, and I thought that was great, like, thatjust goes back, teo, you know, really giving people a reason to go to your social media and to engage with your social media, you know, like, what are they getting there that they're not getting from your other stuff? Uh, and then let's go teo, your instagram. So my biggest criticism of your instagram was that it was private, so when I was trying to go on there so your business instagram should never be private, we don't know lots of things, you know, that's, why we're all here, that rumor like, hey, trying the craft itself, you know, I don't even know how to fix it, so somebody is the techie will fix your instagram for you so your business instagram should should always yes, t c can do it should always be public. I I liked it. I mean, I was looking at and I like that I like that you had that you had your displays and stuff, but again, this goes back to my other thing, like, why do you have both of these pictures, these pictures look similar like justified to the room okay, so to me I can't I can't tell that so like I want to see like maybe this one's like a close up or you know, maybe this this is this something so I wanted to ask too I tend to post alike the same picture on both locations because some people don't do everything doesn't have to be a variety with all of the different I I like to vary my my post so it gives people a a reason to go to the different things so yeah, I think that that's important to keep to keep things varied and think about what different you know, when we talked about like facebook being kind of like an older crowd instagrams kind of a younger crowd like what are these people going to be interested in as opposed to those ones? And then the only other thing I want to save my instagram is hashtags people love people flowers like even a hashtag that was like paper flowers, paper flowers, bay area wedding paper flowers I mean you have to research your hashtags that's another thing I don't know how todo do the hash tag part not public if you hash tag on a private account way to do it just hashtag every picture so it's just a thing I wouldn't use for me I don't recommend using more than five hashtag okay I found a good way to do hashtags. If you're always kind of writing a description, if in your description you can hash tag it, like, for example, um, you can say new installation hashtag giant flower all one word hashtag, um favorite yellow, and then you can say where it was media installed, but you can incorporate it into a description. It makes more sense if you then posted on facebook, and it makes it a lot easier. The comment section to you, thank you, thank you, thank you.