12 – Web Design Worries That Don’t Deserve the Hype

[00:00:00] What’s up y’all? Welcome to the Web Design Empire where we share stories and strategies to help you build your web design empire. From that little side gig to multiple six figs. I’m John. I’m joined by Kelly. We’re full-time freelance web designers who escaped the real world, broke up with our jobs, our bosses, our cubicles, and our commutes over 15 years ago, and we haven’t looked back.
We’re also course creators, web design, business coaches, web design store owners. Kelly owns some Airbnbs. I’m a touring professional musician. All that to say, we are building our multiple empires. Today, we’re talking about web design worries that don’t deserve the hype. Those web design worries that clients or even other web designers and developers have that just don’t.
Deserve the attention that they’re getting. But first, Kelly, how’s it going? How was your week? Well, we just started. How was your [00:01:00] Monday? It did, that’s right, it’s Monday. It’s a weird week. We have a bunch of kids activities that got jumbled. There’s like a d another dance comp. I feel like I talk about that every episode.
There’s only been three this season. The last dance comp before nationals is also this week. So yeah, it’s, uh, it’s just busy. I feel like the springtime just gets super chaotic with kid stuff that you’ll learn about someday. How far are these dance competitions from you? They’re, they’re usually within like 45 minutes to an hour, that makes it a little bit better, but it’s not like you can just pop home for a nap. Yeah. And, and, and if they, if they go to nationals, where’s that at? Well, John, you don’t have to make it to nationals, you just gotta pay to go to nationals. Oh, I see. Okay. Okay. It’s like a web design award.
You know, you ever get those? You just pay for the web design award. As long as you pay for it, it’s yours. , It’s in Myrtle Beach. We’re going smart because of this. That’s smart. The only reason we’re going is because it’s [00:02:00] in Myrtle Beach and that’s exactly, it’s actually over the 4th of July, so.
That’ll be, that’ll be fun. Yeah. Nice. Nice job. Dance people way to, way to not pick Detroit or something, you know? Exactly. Yeah. Sorry for they knew what they were doing for you in Detroit, but, or Omaha or, how about that? I’ll make it Omaha, Lincoln. Yeah. Probably wouldn’t have gone to that. Oh, you just disappeared. I gotta kill time. Oh, I’m back. Hi. Sorry. My one of my kids opened the, they they can open doors now. Oh, no, no. My youngest can open doors now and my oldest can open them even with a little tricky thing on the handle. Oh, she figured out like the child lock.
Yep. She’s got it down. So new child lock. Brilliant. I’m heading to Nashville this week, Wednesday. Oh, nice. I fly out and then Thursday, like recording or a show or what? Well, uh, Brian and I, Brian’s my band mate.
We have a couple meetings out there with our. For our tech startup Oh. With Funl Funl, which is a VIP event, ticketing auction platform. So we have a few meetings out there, and then we actually play, with [00:03:00] this guy named Peter Furler. We actually play with him on Saturday in, Huntsville, Alabama, which is like an hour and a half from Nashville.
Gotcha. And then, Brian’s daughter who is on the Voice right now, she’s coming with us. I think we’re gonna, she’s got a book day in the studio book with our producer to work on Okay. Just to come up with a song.
Okay. I’ve, I’ve written a few ideas for her musically. That I just sent the producer last night. But they might just scrap all that and start with their own thing. It just depends on, well, it just depends on like vibe, the vibe, vibe and what the artist is feeling. That’s so cool. But she’s never recorded her anything before, so I think she’s might be a little nervous.
Oh wow. Yeah. Uh, and so. So I don’t know if Brian Brian’s her dad and yeah, for those that don’t know. And so he’s like, Hey, I want to give her her space and let her be, have freedom. So I don’t know if he’ll be in the studio. I might be for a little bit as a comfort thing. ’cause I know her. Or I might not be at all.
We’ll see what happens, our producer’s really great and [00:04:00] he just makes your voice sound way better than they, they have tricks. And just like we can take a photo, autotune punch, punch up well beyond, beyond, beyond autotune, like Sure, sure, sure.
Adding body and, and, and just making it sound like. Really great. It’s definitely a, because you could, you could have someone that can sing perfect pitch wise, but still that’s not enough. Like you need to add some compression and some other things to help some eq to really help it cut through the mix add some sizzle, some sparkle to it, some magical dust. So it’ll be fun. So that’ll be, that’ll be exciting. That’s exciting for her. And then come home on Sunday. Yeah. Let’s dive in.
So let’s do it. I feel like, I feel like our podcast is official now because, oh, we finally had to rerecord an episode. Oh yeah. I forgot to hit record. So this is actually the second time we’ve already had this conversation, but we’re gonna do it even better this time’s, right? That’s right. First time we walk walkthrough.
Let’s dive in. So web design worries [00:05:00] that don’t deserve. The hype. Let’s go number one. What do you got? I think we agree, number one. Well, we know we agree because we know we agree. We’ve already done this. But yeah, the number one. What’d you call it? Web design worry that doesn’t deserve the hype. Is site speed, it’s gotta be site speed.
This is something that comes up a lot. I, I feel like, especially with when SEO companies are in the mix, no offense to SEO companies. Mm-hmm. But in my experience, once they’ve run all their little tricks and set up, the meta stuff and the titles and the image tags, whatever, they just start blaming site speed and it gets really obnoxious because that’s something that they just get to point their finger at and then the client comes to you and says, Hey, fix my site speed.
And it’s like, your site speed is fine. Granted, there is of course, like a, a spectrum here, right? Obviously if you’re sitting waiting for a website to open up and you can consciously tell, like it’s been a, it’s been a few seconds, [00:06:00] like, this isn’t cool. There is a problem. I get that. But when we’re talking about making it, , from one sec, 1.2 seconds to one second, like, come on, that’s not worth any kind of effort at all.
The amount, amount of hoops we would have to jump through as designers to get this very minuscule improvement for, again, what I believe would be zero effect, on SEO. It’s just not worth it. And I feel like that’s kind of what I have rubbed up against quite bit, but. What has your experience with Site speeded been?
John? Yeah. I’m always like, who are these people? You know? Uh, so, so back in the day, I remember like, if your website takes longer than three seconds to load, X amount of traffic is leaving. And it’s like, that might be true for, let’s say, you know, let’s, for Easter, okay, I’m gonna personalize this.
For Easter, we were told five days before, my wife and I play on the music team and we were told, okay. Black, white, green, and yellow. That’s the colors we’re doing. [00:07:00] Which kind of, you know, what are, are you talking about like outfits, like colors we can wear on stage? Yeah. Got, we’re gonna get pictures taken and they want everyone to be a uniform deal.
Gotcha. But I had some of the pink shoes, some Jordan five pink ones that I wanted to wear. Mm-hmm. Like light, light, light, pale pink. I was like, Ooh, I’m excited to wear these. Well, can’t wear ’em because whatever, feels Easter-y. So my wife, it wasn’t in the, it wasn’t in the code.
So my wife was gonna wear this pink pastel shirt, but now she can’t because, you know, and she’s like, oh, I have this one yellow shirt, but I’m gonna hop on Amazon just to see what else is there. Which I’m like, don’t, don’t shop for clothes on Amazon. Anyway, um, so, so she gets on Amazon now in that case. So in that specific case, she gets on Amazon.
Yes. If Amazon in that case took longer than three to five seconds to load, I bet she would’ve closed it out. Like, you know what, I already have a yellow shirt. What am I doing? You know? Yeah. Now, on the other hand, if, someone said something to her like, she’s complaining about her hair to someone, they’re like, Hey, you need to go see this person.
Here’s their website. Okay, you’re gonna wait. You’re gonna, you’re gonna be fine waiting three to five seconds for that. That’s, so [00:08:00] that’s, yeah. I say, who are these folks who are like, enter in, break into web.com, enter 1, 2, 3. I’m outta here. Like, that’s , my thing. The other thing I thought about and I didn’t recommend in the first time we recorded this Ooh, is sometimes clients will give you.
This, like, here’s what Google recommends that we do to speed up our site. Oh God. And it’s like, , JavaScript, ification, Uhhuh, css, ification, Uhhuh, Uhhuh. And it’s like, uh, don’t have multiple sources. Well, that’s impossible because we use WordPress, it’s impossible and, and we use a framework, a builder.
Yes. You know, so it’s like these things, which brings me to. Let’s hear the analogy. I know what’s coming. Car analogy. Yes. Which is like, okay, I used to tell folks when I was dealing with this issue that, alright, so you got this Google Page speed score, right? And it’s the same score that everyone’s trying to get to regardless of what your situation is.
So if you’re just throwing up a quick landing page for someone that you don’t even use WordPress for, you just do the old fashioned. HTML [00:09:00] page with a logo. It says coming soon, which no one does by the way, but go on. No one does. No one does anymore. When you just need a coming soon page, that could be HTML, that’s like driving the fastest Formula One car.
You know how many people can fit in a Formula one car. One person. One. That’s it. That’s all I need. Barely One little person. One, like one little person. Tiny human. But if tiny. But if you’re a family of five. And two kids under four. And now you need a third row.
You need two car seats. Okay, so let’s just pretend that every kid, that’s a website feature. Oh, you want a content management system? Here’s kids number one. Oh, you want a store on your website? Here’s kid number two. Oh, you want a. Uh, a bunch of forms, here’s another, plugins that you gotta add.
You all get it. And so that minivan now that you have, or big, super large SUV that has a third row, with an extender on the back. It’s holding three bicycles and who knows what else. That’s gonna be slower than the Formula One car. [00:10:00] Little bit. Little bit. And it’s not fair to put those both on the same track, but that’s the Google page speed score track.
Yes. You know, I wish they had separate scores, like, Hey, if you have WordPress and e-commerce. Here’s probably a decent score to get. Because I looked, I went on Google Page speed score and I thought, okay, who are some companies that would really benefit from having the site that loads in like under three seconds so no one leaves?
And I thought, Hmm, maybe a news website like CNN wonder what page speed score they get. They got a 28 out of 100, 28 per, that’s an f that’s a big fat f That’s like a G. That’s a. That’s pretty bad. And then, Amazon, my example, I talked earlier with shopping on Amazon. They a little bit, they get better. They got a 62 still failing.
Hey, was that, is that a DI can’t remember. Uh, no, that’s failing. And then a site. If you want to use like gorgeous images like we love to use and media heavy websites, apple will be an example. Yes. Trillion, trillion dollar company. But yeah.
Yeah, not bad. 50 50, 56 [00:11:00] out of a hundred. Still a fail. That’s my analogy. It’s a, it’s a really good argument. I mean, I feel like that would shut clients up if you’re like, Hey, check, check out these, and that’s what we wanna do. We wanna shut, just give us your money. My bad.
Shut up. Shut the SEO people up. I agree. Agree. No, I agree. I agree. I agree. We’re not trying to shut up clients. Pretend I didn’t say that. We love our clients. So on Facebook, I’m a part of like the, the framework we use to build websites is called Divi. It’s the drag and drop builder. Yes. And I’m part of like 10 Divi groups on Facebook. And the most of the time I, I call it page speed score porn. It’s like when a developer will say, Hey, I use Divi and here’s my a hundred percent page speed score.
And then you go to the website and it’s like. Atrocious looking text module. Yeah. Or the images are all grainy because they went with like the lowest optimized setting they could possibly do. They’re all pixelated. But I feel like it’s a developer thing that they’re really [00:12:00] like, it’s more function than form at that point.
Yes. And we, we take pride in that. It’s a hundred and it’s like, guys, it’s a, it’s a moving target, number one. And no one cares. Nobody cares in the grand scheme. No one cares in the, in the grand scheme. And so then they’ll say, well. What, what are some solutions for site speed? Well, obviously optimizing your images in your video.
Yes. You know? Yes. Uh, Kelly and I have some rules that we follow for that. Yes. I, I’ve noticed that sometimes our junior designers at artillery, they don’t follow those rules. They’ll throw in , a image straight from Unsplash, no. Optimizing it. It’s like four megs. I’m like, whoa, we can’t do that.
That’s not cool. Right. Or they’ll say, it’s fine because we’ll just throw a caching plugin on there. Uh.
That’s the devil? Caching plugins are just the devil. They are, they are. They’ve gotten better. ’cause I, but I remember back in the day when they first came out, how if you made an update on a website, you had to clear the cache you’ll, every time You’ll never it. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. Or any site that needed any kind of real time, like weather [00:13:00] or real time.
Something like, oh yeah. Oh, bank rates. That was one we had, we had a website that needed, oh, a daily bank rate. And it’s like, we can’t use caching, so that’s. That’s my whole rant on speed. It’s good. If you actually have a site speed problem, you will know it. It’s extremely obvious if you have a site speed problem, or if your client is saying, Hey, this site is loading really slow for me, then, obviously look into it, then there is a problem. It probably has something to do with either I.
Images that are way too big, or a video that’s way too big, like a background video or something. Mm-hmm. Or you might have some kind of plugin conflict that’s sending things into a loop or whatever. Like there are other things that can cause those site speed problems if it’s actually a problem.
But yeah, nine times outta 10 when an SEO company says, Hey, get the site speed better, it’s like, dude, it’s fine. Yeah. Yeah. I would say problem territory would be after five, six seconds. Okay, let’s figure this out.
Obviously if it’s longer than 10 seconds, you’ve got something wrong. If it bothers me or it bothers the client, that’s my [00:14:00] cutoff. How about this for a solution? Why don’t you just be so good at what you do? Client that folks will wait. Okay. That’s a stretch.
That’s a stretch. Alright, next. I think another big one that has come up, repeatedly along with site speed and like with our students, asking questions in our group and stuff is ADA compliance and this one, somewhat controversial and there are people that are really passionate about it and there are people who completely ignore it.
I probably land somewhere in between, but long story short, unless you are, legally obligated to have your site perfectly ADA compliant, which would be , public entities, government facing stuff. I believe those are the ones that are , legally bound to have ADA compliant websites.
Unless you’re in that situation, obviously comply. Otherwise it’s. I think it’s kind of a gray area where, you know, think about the clientele. Like for example, I have a [00:15:00] client who is an eyecare center, and so obviously a lot of people coming to their website have eyesight problems, and so to have a solution for them for that kind of compliance so that they can easily make the text bigger or whatever, that makes sense.
If you have a one pager website for, some simple service, if it’s not like a, an obvious we need a solution for the specific clientele coming to the site, then it’s probably not something you really need to worry about. But the good news is there is a very easy solution for this.
There are plugins that handle this. The one that John and I have used is called User Way. I actually got in on the free version way back in the day, but now , it’s actually kind of pricey. But it does a fantastic job and it checks all the boxes. And if ADA compliance changes in the future, they’re gonna change their plugin to accommodate that.
So , it’s a good solution. I’m sure there are other plugins as well, but that is the one that, that we have used with success. And so that’s [00:16:00] what’s on my Eyecare center site. I do have a public. Power District website that uses that as well. The only two ways that I’ve heard about, it’s important to have the site be ADA compliant is, number one, we do a lot of medical websites who, yeah, they’re medical practitioners that are starting their own cash based business or they’re going solo, so they obviously need to be a compliant.
, Well, three also , the public sites that you mentioned. Yeah. But then I’m sure if you’ve been in web design any longer than five years, or maybe even three years, you’ve probably heard or seen stories online of, hey, this law firm has some blind guy in Georgia and they’re suing, they’re suing companies, , not even in Georgia and other parts of the country ’cause their website’s not accessible.
This guy whoever it is, can’t visit the website. And that scares a lot of designers. Right? Yeah, that sounds scary. And you have experience with this. Yeah, that happened, to, my one public, company, the Public Power District. They actually did get a letter from a law firm, and this was, well over a decade [00:17:00] ago.
And I remember freaking out about it. They were freaking out about it. I was freaking out about it. ’cause I’m like, if I have to make all a hundred whatever sites that I manage ADA compliant overnight, like this will be an absolute nightmare. But luckily we found that the plugin solution, which again fixes it quite quick.
But yeah, they looked into this legal letter, and realized that this was a scam , it’s kind of the equivalent of an ambulance chaser situation where, this wasn’t really, a legal thing and they were just. Out to get money, so that kind of went away.
But , it certainly opened my eyes. It opened their eyes and it put it on the map as far as something to pay attention to. But again, fortunately there is very simple solutions. I guess you just plug in the plugin. You just plug in the plugin. That’s one of those where you just eat it and plug it in.
And there are designers who like take pride in actually, going the extra mile to, make all of those [00:18:00] ADA options, themselves. But holy moly, it’s a gigantic undertaking. And like, they used to say there’s an app for that. There’s a plugin for that.
So just use that. And there’s some basic rules, right? There’s some readability rules to follow. There’s some. For sure. Like I see some designers will put texts on an image background with no color overlay. And it’s like, what are you doing? You know, if you happen to use Divi, we have a solution for that at our web design store, besuperfly .com.
But you also had a client that was, , like partially colorblind, right? Oh yeah. Yeah. That was a really interesting experience for me because even the branding guide that they gave me, I was trying to use this, the gray color from the branding guide with the green color from the branding guide.
And when I put ’em together, I mean, I had no problem, like it wouldn’t have hit my radar as far as readability. And my contact with the company, the marketing guy, was colorblind and he was like, well, where’s this text? What’s going on here? And I was like, um. It’s right there and he [00:19:00] absolutely could not see it.
So that was another kind of eyeopening experience. But again, the ADA compliant plugins, take care of that as well. Same with the site speed stuff.
Like there are best practice things we can do as web designers to help like John’s alluding to with, making sure. There’s read readability. Don’t make text too small, don’t make it too big, just kind of obvious best practice thing, or maybe not so obvious best practice things.
But yeah, again, when push comes to shove and it’s something that it’s a big deal for your client, then. Plugin. Yeah. It’s not that we’re saying don’t consider site speed at all. Don’t consider ADA compliance at all. It’s just that the things that we do naturally, the best practices that we do, that we’ve learned through studying will solve this for 98%, right? Of the websites you build for clients, every now and then. Maybe you have to take that extra step, get the plugin or whatever, but there’s a bunch of regular steps. Okay. Let’s head into some more designy ones here. Designy? Yeah, designy. [00:20:00] Uh, the first one. I’d like to talk about is above the fold.
That’s in quotes, air quotes above the fold, air quotes the fold. Now. Now, above the fold comes from way back in the day when newspapers were folded in half and left in like those newspaper stands. Remember, newspapers stands? Oh gosh. Remember newspapers?
Yeah. And so when you grabbed the newspaper, you were seeing half of the front page. And where the halfway fold was. So any for everything above that point was called above the fold. It was the most visible part of the newspaper. And so for web design clients, they think, and this kind of rose to popularity probably, I don’t know, maybe 10, 15 years ago.
Yeah. But now with all the screen sizes, I feel like it’s going away. But for a while or just constant scrolling, yeah. People are conditioned to scroll now. Yes. But before that, it was like, we really want this certain feature that we offer to be visible the fold when the website first loads, you know?
Yeah. And so people need to see, and that first screen essentially is what became first view. Yeah. The first screen [00:21:00] above the fold. . Which integrates several other, issues, that come up with this kind of same category. So, content sliders were at some point a solution for above the fold problems where, well, it’s okay, we’ll just do a slider up here and people can rotate through, five, six slides and that’ll get all your important information above the fold, however, that is now.
No longer a good practice because we know, especially with mobile, that people are just instantly scrolling down. Ain’t no one staying up there hanging out. Nope. Scrolling sideways. Looking at all your sliders. It’s just not happening. Just you client, you’re the only one doing that. Yes. Another issue with above the fold is, just too many calls to action.
I tell clients this all the time, if you’re trying to make 10 things stand out on your homepage. Zero will stand out or even above the fold, if you’re trying to make, more than one or two things, stand out, nothing will stand out because it’ll be this kind of overwhelming experience and it just defeats the purpose.
So make [00:22:00] sure you have that, one to two calls to action that are the standouts and everything else, supports that and, tell the story, as opposed to just trying to. Get just a bunch of words and check boxes and buttons, as close to the top as you can.
So the overarching principle that , we talked about before, StoryBrand talks about when someone gets on your homepage, every time you ask them to do something or check out a feature of your company, you’re giving them a bowling ball. And most people can hold.
One, two ball balls. Easy. Three. Okay. Four. Ah, nope. Too much work. They’re gonna start dropping them. Yeah. And so that’s the concept to keep in mind here about above the fold. And you know what, we’ll put this in the show notes on our website. So if you wanna see these two images, check out our website.
Break into web.com and go to the podcast area to this episode, and you’ll see on that page there, in 2020, I was talking with someone about this issue. And so I went to google.com and I took a screenshot of the homepage, which is just [00:23:00] the search bar, right? There’s a couple tiny links in the corners, but search bar.
So I took that screenshot and I was like, but wait, I’m a marketing executive, Google. And I want people to know about all the stuff that we do. Number one, I added a header bar that had a phone number, and then it had like really ginormous six big social media icons because that’s what we want to do right away.
As soon as someone lands on our website, we wanna put a Facebook, we wanna send them away, link up there so they can Now they’re telling their friend Marjorie on Facebook. Happy birthday. Yeah. Like, there’s nothing distracting about that. Yeah. No. Right. And then under the search bar, I added a two by two grid of like four call outs.
One was like, attend Google Fi. Another one was like, work at Google. Uh, another one was like, stay connected or something. There, there are a couple other ones on there. Yeah. And then the finishing touch , was a, which we’ll get into here. Popup was a, was a popup. And this popup would, I imagine, you know, maybe, maybe after like.
Three seconds. Like you, you haven’t quite taken the website in, [00:24:00] you don’t even really know what you’re looking at. Then bam, here’s a popup ba, right. And it, and it was like a popup and then boom, an announcement bar, and then bam, a slide in and like all kinds of stuff. There’s something worse than that.
Yeah. All kinds. And go to our website to see the exact image. But it was like. Get the top 10 tips on searching better. Yeah. And then to close it out, it was like, I’m in, but to close it out, you had to click this link that said, no thanks. I don’t like getting smarter or something like that.
Some degrading, which we’ve all done. Right? You didn’t, you close out a one last week That was like, something I like saving money or something like that. Yeah. I don’t like saving money. I’m, I’m an idiot today. I mean, it’s just like they, they. They get so mean and it’s like, oh man, I don’t wanna click that button, but I’m gonna, yeah.
What really killed sliders was there was a bunch of research that came out years back that were like, Hey, 98% of folks are not seeing past your first slide. And my ar my argument has always been, and the 2% that do, they like load your website and then like, you know, something fell off a shelf or [00:25:00] their toddler came over and got their attention.
Yeah, they looked away for three seconds. And they look back up and now they’re on slide two. Like, that was my, yep, exactly. You’re, that was my whole, you’re that is accurate. What else you got to say about hero sliders? Popups above the fold? I guess this one kind of fits in above the fold as well.
This, tactic that comes up quite a bit with clients and I don’t have my mug today. I had it for original non rerecording, but it was, uh, my mug says. The logo size is fine. So the problem is, when clients ask for the logo to be bigger, it’s a very typical request. I feel like it’s not as bad as it used to be now, but even a week ago, I had that request and it’s like, no.
No. And then we went on this rant about how, the DIY logos are always so poorly sized. Like they have a big icon, typically on top centered, and then they’ll have like smaller texts underneath. So in order to even make it readable, you have to make it [00:26:00] huge. So a lot of times we’re like. Redoing logos to, put the image off to the side so that you can actually, manipulate a little bit and make it more legible.
But yeah, the whole, the logo has to be giant size thing. Is just so obnoxious. And I know clients like sometimes in some cases they pay a lot for it, and so they want it to stand out, but, mm, come on. It does not need to take up a third of the. Above the fold space.
Well, and the first time we recorded this, , during the recording I had an epiphany. I was like, you know, the one telltale sign of an amateur logo.
Is when they have LLC or inc in them. Oh, you know, or, and what I added was papyrus font. It’s on every DIY logo. I, not every, but like a lot. Nine outta 10. , It’s always there. Got a hot tea shop, papyrus. Yep. Wanna sell Shakira merch, papyrus, papyrus, outdoor solutions, obviously papyrus, home, boutique place. Also papyrus. Just everyone thinks it was made. [00:27:00] Indian cuisine. Really weird. Indian papyrus. Listeners, if you haven’t checked out the Saturday Night Live, SNL Papyrus? Yes. With Ryan, well, it be Avatar. It’d be Avatar.
Avatar. There’s part one and part two. Which mentions papyrus, and I would argue that Avatar logo doesn’t even look like it’s truly papyrus, but whatever, they probably modified it. I’m sure they modified, they modified it a little bit, but i’m working on a site right now. My chiropractor is, opening an MA gym slash , it’s a warehouse and half the warehouse is lifting and there’s a turf strip for sled.
And then the other half is, there’s an actual octagon in there. It’s the only one in the state. I love it, that has an octagon, igon in it. It’s called the training compound, and his girlfriend made the logo and it’s like the training compound. It was a good, simple, clean font. I liked it. And then in a different font, italicized was a comma, LLC period.
And I’m like, I don’t think you need that period. Number one for the LL C’s for ink. Ink. You also also don’t even need the LLC, don’t need, if you got LLC, your ink in your logo just. [00:28:00] Just get rid of it. Nobody cares. Just get rid of it. You care because you’re like, it doesn’t need to be there. People are gonna take it.
Sure. I think, I think some people truly believe it has to be there because that’s the official name of my business with it. Could be. I mean, they could think that like legally put it in the footer. It’s put in the footer, then it’s fine. Put that thing and you know what? Put your social media icons in the footer.
Okay. And the footer. That’s where they belong. People. We do not want to send people away from the website. First thing that should not be. And the top bar. Yeah. And some other solutions. This is a solution that I’ve used for. The big ass logo request, is Divi. The, the builder we use has an option to hide the nav until scroll.
Mm-hmm. , I always tell my clients like, I will give you feedback, but I will not be offended if you don’t use it. So there are some things that I will push back on more than once. A giant logo is one of those things, but if I still lose that battle, then one, it’s.
No longer going on my portfolio and two, here’s my suggestion. Yeah. Been there. Is [00:29:00] doing a big ass logo, over typically in the hero over a, an image or whatever. , And just make it centered, , with a headline below it and a subhead, but then on scroll, then the nice size logo shows up in the fixed header.
That is my one solution I’ve come up with for the silly Giant logo thing. Yeah, content sliders have just simply gone away. It’s been a while since I’ve had a client actually request one, thank goodness. And it’s pretty easy to talk ’em out of it when that happens, because yeah, once you just explain, hey.
Everyone scrolls straight down. Oh man, I remember the worst experience I had with a content slider was this client, it was a makeup, skincare client. And they wanted their content slider to always take a hundred percent , of the height of the window.
No matter what. No matter what. And. Then they wanted, for each slide, they wanted the call to action button to be in a different spot. And so for each slide I had to hack CSS [00:30:00] to move things where I wanted. Not only want, that’s just bad user interface. Why would they want that? But then I know, but then again, on like tablet and again on mobile to get all these, oh boy, all I was doing, slide content gymnastics to coding gymnastics to make this thing I spent, I spent probably four hours on that.
It was just like, and you know what? I should have pushed back. I should have been like guys. Let’s put things where folks expect them. Yes. You know, which in another episode, I won’t go through here, but I have a whole car rant on getting a get, getting a rental car when you’re in a hurry and having things where you expect them because folks are in a hurry, you know?
So, yeah, check out our episodes to hear that. I do have a band story that fits in well with this idea of , above the fold. Content sliders, all that stuff. But first we’re gonna hear from today’s sponsor, which is break into web mentoring, [00:31:00] feeling stuck in your web design business.
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Yeah, we’re both two-on-one mentors. I tell people you get two sharks, like in Shark Tank, you get two sharks coming in on the deal. I’ve really enjoyed the mentoring process. It’s been a, it’s been a blast. Yeah, definitely. Alright, so my story, my music story here was I went out the other night and watched a friend of mine’s band play and they were.
They’ve been playing for a long time. They’re always trying to take it to the next level. And, I think , they just focused on , some of the wrong things. Like, Hey, , we’re a tight band. And so we’ve worked on all these specific hits in our songs like.
And it’s like, okay, cool. It’s like Uptown Funk, right? Everyone knows that. Okay, cool. Everybody knows that. But if they would’ve done other versions of that seven times through the song, nobody would remember the one. And what I told them was. , Because they would do these syncopated hits in all their songs.
To the point of it was like, okay, [00:33:00] we get it. Like we understand, you know? And I told ’em, Hey, the more you do of something, the less important it less special it is. So, hey client, the more times we shove features at people, the less likely they’re gonna be able to.
Pick out what you really want them to do. Right. You know, this is why strategy is so important. Like everything has to fit around the strategy for that website as a whole. Yes. But what about that specific page? What do you want them to do? Right. Then let’s steer ’em to do that. You know, my dad’s a pastor, been a pastor for a super long time, and I tell ’em, the purpose of our church website.
Should be to get people to the door to experience a Sunday morning, you know, so we don’t need to put on the website whether or not we believe Jesus had long hair or short hair. Like we, we don’t need to put that on there. Wait, did he argue for that? No, I was just thinking of an example.
‘ ’cause the purpose of the website, it’s a marketing website to get them in the door. Now once they come to [00:34:00] church and they become a member and they get the app, the church app, well that’s where we can put all our, is it church app? Oh yeah. Guys are fancy. It’s a big business. There’s a company that has a down, like they of course, of course.
It’s like church app. There’s tithing integrated, there’s groups, membership groups, gosh, there’s home groups and everything you could ever want is in there. They, they nailed it outta the park. But once, once they’re in committed. Now you can tell them, oh, here’s our detailed beliefs. And that’s my view on any website.
It’s like, Hey, the homepage should be all about getting ’em. Take the next step. Now, once they click on a button on the homepage, that takes ’em to an interior page. Okay. They’ve asked for more info. Now they’ve asked for more bowling balls. Give them more bowling balls. Yeah. But until then, really be focused on those key objectives.
What say you? Yeah. Oh, what I said, what say you,
that was a really quick fling over there. Yeah, I completely agree. I I think, as we’re wrapping up this episode, [00:35:00] the way to deal with these kind of overhyped, not really. Issues, things that either clients will think are important or their third party vendors will think are important is to first of all, educate.
If pushback is necessary in your mind, , and they’re asking you to do something that’s just poor practice, certainly educate and give them your opinion. But again, that doesn’t always work. And in the case that, they want to move forward with a bad practice anyway. We just don’t put it on the portfolio.
That’s okay. That’s okay. Mm-hmm. And don’t try not to be offended by that. It’s gonna happen. But then I think also as John was alluding to, remind them of. Their goals. We always do a strategy questionnaire before we get started, and that’s part of that strategy questionnaire is what are your goals?
And so if something that they’re requesting is pretty far out of alignment with their goal, that’s what John was just talking about, then, point that out and say, is this really something you want , to push if it’s not in alignment with your goals? , And then [00:36:00] also always offer.
An alternative that’s more reasonable. It might be something that, they hadn’t even thought of. And a lot of times that will be a nice, happy medium or a better solution altogether.
Boom. Well, folks, thanks for tuning in and joining us today on the Web Design Empire. Also, check out break into web.com and learn how you can break away from your daily grind. Become a freelance web designer like us, and create the empire you’ve been dreaming of. Cheers y’all. We’ll see you in the next one.