New Site Structure!

[00:00] Hey Fiona, hope you're doing well. Happy Friday. Sorry I didn't get this over to you yesterday. I kind of went down a little bit of a webflow rabbit hole on your site, so it happens.

[00:10] But I'm ready to give you an update on it. So just kind of stepping back, at a high level I did sort of two things.

[00:20] I was doing some work on the actual website itself, some kind of like bug fixes and cleanups. I haven't published the site yet, just because there's a lot of stuff that's kind of a little wonky.

[00:30] And so as I continue to edit things, I don't want to make the current site worse, while we're aiming for this kind of launch of an improvement anyway.

[00:40] So you might not see them on the website live, but if you go into your webflow, you'll start to see like the footer's fixed, and some button stuff is fixed, and alignment and things like that. So that's kind of the first thing. I'll go into a little bit more of that,

[00:50] because there's a little more of that wormhole rabbit hole stuff I talked about, or mentioned. But most principally is the updated sitemap.

[01:00] So I went through kind of like all of the collective thoughts that we had over the past couple weeks about how to organize the site, how to make it easier for people to kind of find and understand

[01:10] the difference between ReflectPath as a company and a framework, versus you as the founder. And then try to help kind of like repurpose some of the content that we have on the site.

[01:20] One of the big things I think is coming out of this is a need to actually generate some new content, kind of come up with some new images, and make some decisions about how much real estate we want to give each thing.

[01:30] So I'll just go through each of the pages real quick, and then I'll kind of like hover on some of the things that I have as notes. You'll see I have some of these lavender cards. Some are getting a little sizable.

[01:40] And there'll be some of those more will be added over the coming days. As things kind of come up, I'm like, oh yeah, we've got to figure this out. I'll sort of put stuff in here.

[01:50] Yeah, I decided it doesn't make sense to do like high def things in Figma for all this,

[02:00] because there's so much built already in Webflow that we can just kind of be like, this is the layout we like, let's get it made kind of thing. So, okay, really just like zooming out, we have the homepage, which we're going to be keeping,

[02:10] obviously modifying. We're going to be introducing a services page. This is a page that may or may not be in the nav. I think that's an open question.

[02:20] And more or less like presents what the two sets of services are, and becomes a place for kind of like the framework as well, potentially.

[02:30] Big potentially there. Then there's actually two sets of service pages, right?

[02:40] One's for speaking and one's for workshops. So I'm offering kind of two different versions of what those could look like. These could also be directly in the nav. You could go, you know, skip services entirely and go directly to workshops or directly to speaking.

[02:50] And then moving over, we have the blog and then about and get started. So blog and get started, I haven't touched, but about I'm kind of reorganizing at a high level.

[03:00] I think I need a little bit more input here. And I think some of the decisions that we get from all of this stuff will have a big impact on that.

[03:10] So let's just kind of get started here. So at the top, obviously, there'll be some cleanups or whatever, thinking that there might be good to get some logos in here.

[03:20] This could be of events, of companies, of organizations, really anyone, any org that has trusted you, that you either are associated with or a part of, work with, whatever.

[03:30] I think we can kind of do a little bit of a catch-all just to kind of give a breath of, like, recognizable organizations. Then getting into right below the fold there is where I'm presenting the services.

[03:40] So I'm leaving these as kind of, you know, open-ended kind of cards. My thinking is that they could go in a bunch of different directions.

[03:50] It could be that there's some sort of text, you know, on the side, and then like a kind of larger image perhaps of you speaking somewhere.

[04:00] It could be something where we do more of like a context setting kind of thing, where we sort of show an auditorium or whatever, and then have some, you know, cards over it for perhaps the topics.

[04:10] Like there's a couple different, I think, avenues that we could go in. Workshops is treated similarly, but a little bit smaller. And leaving room here for, not nine future, open parentheses future, for cohorts.

[04:20] That if, you know, by the time we decide you want to launch that or some other version of it, I think you had called it like async workshops or something as well,

[04:30] or recordings or whatever, there's some space there. Then giving these a little bit more purpose, just calling them, you know, the method and approach here, and then scrolling into that is the testimonials.

[04:40] So thinking these are video testimonials that sort of move across the screen, and when you hover on them, they would pause,

[04:50] and the actual testimonial text would be revealed. If we don't have a video for everyone, that's okay. I think we can mix in a still.

[05:00] Of the person with the text over top of it, such that some of them are animated and some of them are not. That's not a big deal. We could also make it where they're all paused until you hover, so that it wouldn't seem odd, like some of them are Harry Potter images and other them are

[05:10] or Harry Potter paintings and other are just sort of like stills. Anyway, then values down here, I'm not sure really across the site how these fit in. I think you'll have to give me some insight

[05:20] there. And then taking some of the piece that was on the about page, basically putting them meet the founder at the bottom, a big CTA section. We had a kind of CTA section at the bottom of the

[05:30] last one, but I think it was more like a congrats you made it to the bottom of the page, here's where to go. So the CTA section I think can be a little more targeted at those two services that

[05:40] we don't have. And then of course the blog. So that's kind of my new proposed structure for the homepage. It's not terribly different than the current one, but there is enough

[05:50] noticeable kind of push for more of a menu of services. So then looking at the two services pages, we can look at these side by side. You know, I'm more or less thinking about the hero

[06:00] on these is a little bit more neutral for this page. Currently on this on Webflow, I just have

[06:10] one of the photos of you in here and sort of like one of the blobs. Again, the values could be up at the top there. I said side by side, but let's just zoom in. The values could be at the top there,

[06:20] then kind of a large speaking card. So this is sort of like a larger version, expanded version of what you would have clicked on on the homepage that you'd be kind of seeing this

[06:30] here. So again, this is a page that might really have the most impact for SEO. I wouldn't necessarily consider that the journey of someone is going to be like, I'm going from homepage to the services page, then to the speaking page, right? If you're on

[06:40] the homepage, you click speaking, you're going to speaking. This is the page in between. This is the services catch all page. Probably a better page for SEO usage because we could probably anticipate

[06:50] less people coming to it. Again, depending on the nav, but we can deal with that later. So anyway, speaking, this whole section here would be, you know, showing a similar thing,

[07:00] right? That larger card, but now it has some maybe previous engagements, previous speaking, whatever you want to call those. These could be recordings, they could be just mentions. I'm

[07:10] thinking that they would, if they're recording or have any more to them, that they would link out to a page that we would be hosting. Workshops could be very similar. These could be treated

[07:20] almost identical, right? You could have previous workshops if you wanted. We could have this be a grid of four. There's some flexibility there, but fundamentally it's kind of two pieces.

[07:30] And then the video testimonials, again, literally repeat of those pieces from the homepage. All right. Then a second version of that sort of puts it more in the forefront. So kind of like

[07:40] right at the top, here's the services speaking or workshops. That's kind of like, which direction do we want to go here? It almost begs people to not even bother having to move down. And then positions

[07:50] this page, the services overview page is more of like the framework page. Sort of like, what is this thing that you're going to be engaging with the, you know, either some speak, you know,

[08:00] some, do you call it a speech, a lecture? I don't know. Presentation versus a workshop.

[08:10] So kind of like whatever the steps are and then result. I don't think it's worth doing the sort of whimsical thing we did originally. I think just for the sake of editability and not getting locked

[08:20] on just this one model, we should make it in a simpler, more repeatable fashion. I also would like this to be tight enough that people can steal it off of your website and talk about it on social

[08:30] media. And we can kind of hopefully give them like a copy clip kind of little function there for that, which would be really fun. So if we can keep that in a square or sort of tall rectangle,

[08:40] that would be ideal. Just kind of note for content. And then again, you're studying the same pieces again at the bottom here. Moving over to the speaking pages. So they, you know,

[08:50] this is sort of like there's a yin and a yang for these. We have the speaking ones and the workshop pages treated separately, but of the same flavor and hierarchy, right? So speaking page, similar

[09:00] kind of, I'm not sure how exactly how we treat the background. I'm thinking that it would either be like, you know, a couple of images of you speaking in sort of small tiles, or maybe it's

[09:10] one larger background. It really depends on the imagery that we have. Again, those video testimonials would go up there. I'm thinking these would pull from some sort of library

[09:20] and could be filtered, you know, so that maybe for now we only have enough to cover the screen. If in two years you have tons, then we can sort of say, these are all the ones about speaking,

[09:30] and these are the ones about speaking recently or whatever versus workshops. Then getting into topics right away. So speaking, basically validation, what are we talking about?

[09:40] So these are, you know, some basically the suggested topic ideas and kind of like the pillars effectively. And then I added these CTAs here. You might be like, why would you put CTAs

[09:50] here? There's a trend recently that some people are getting some traction from about putting CTA or sorry, not CTAs, FAQs.

[10:00] FAQs appear at the top of the page above 50% because it ends up getting ingested pretty easily, but more regularly than FAQs hidden in accordions at the bottom of pages.

[10:10] So it's a good opportunity to basically use these headings as questions that someone might ask a GPT.

[10:20] So they could be like, you know, who would be great to, or who's a good person to have speak on,

[10:30] you know, agile development or whatever and blah blah blah, right? So that's kind of the idea is that they're not necessarily like a question about engaging with you, it's a question about

[10:40] from someone in the universe that you could answer with content that promotes you. Kind of a weird thing, but who knows, maybe in six months that won't be working anymore, but for now it seems

[10:50] to be working. Previous appearances can go in here, thinking kind of a fun large tile has the ability to expand because these can kind of just start churning down. So you have a kind of large

[11:00] one that takes up four grid, then the next two recent ones, and then after that they kind of keep going. And then playing around with this idea that like there's a how do you engage with,

[11:10] what does an engagement look like sort of thing, whether it's steps, it could just be three steps, it could be two steps and a success, it could be, you know, that these are all the different things. Also doesn't have to be something that happens in order, it could be like this is what you're

[11:20] getting, this is what you can expect, like, you know, audience size stuff, we could make it less about a process and more about SLA kind of feeling things. And then pricing. So having the pricing

[11:30] down here towards the bottom with the values and then the CTA close by. So going back up to

[11:40] another version of the speaking. So similar, similar take here of having the topics right at

[11:50] the top, except instead of it being above or below the testimonials, it's I'm saying this is like the first thing you see, and then immediately see pricing, which will bring you

[12:00] down. Then the previous experiences, this treats it more like a list, less of a kind of like gallery of things. So, you know, a little bit less overhead on you as far as having to kind of

[12:10] generate images, get photography, approval, all that fun stuff. So this can be kind of more of a list of like location, you know, maybe size, date, venue, topic, whatever other guests that you spoke

[12:20] with, steal some SEO from that. And then pricing right underneath that, FAQs right next to the

[12:30] pricing, and then base CTA. So this one really cuts out a lot of fluff, right? Like the values are gone, this whole thing is gone. The big gallery piece there is gone. So it really tries

[12:40] to say like, this is the meat of it. Now getting over to the workshop pages. So again, two different

[12:50] approaches here. Start with this one. So workshops, my intuition is that you will feel the ReflectPath

[13:00] framework more often through a workshop, because you're being forced to engage with your own material and sort of apply this thing as opposed to kind of trying to ingest it all at a busy

[13:10] conference or whatever, right? So I think it might be worth putting that in here in some capacity. And then kind of get into like, what are the actual workshops? And again, maybe this is where

[13:20] the cohorts thing sneaks back in. And then some validation, right? Ideally, these would be all people who completed a workshop and like went to a speaking engagement. And then the FAQs, base CTA,

[13:30] okay? Second version of the workshops is closer to the speaker setup, where it's sort of validation

[13:40] right away. And then kind of puts those three as less sort of large cards. And they're not like big gallery things or like full width pieces, but more, here's some kind of ideas of what it could

[13:50] be. Much smaller amount of copy, much smaller kind of promises. And then the ReflectPath framework is

[14:00] underneath. And then pricing, this could be flipped, right? You could have pricing associated with an individual workshop. I think maybe I did that over there. Yeah. So, you know, there's like

[14:10] a couple of ways of going about it that you could use these as more like suggested topics and then have pricing that's based on some other metric, you know, number of people, travel distance,

[14:20] whatever it is, time. And then the, or, right, there are more like off the shelf packages. And these are like starting at prices kind of thing, because everything's going to be custom quoted,

[14:30] whatever. So two different versions there. You can see why I'm like, we need some thinking about what version of this kind of engagement feels right. And then we can really get into the

[14:40] piecemaking of it. So blog, that's the same for now about, you can see why, or maybe not, but I'll explain why. This I'm keeping intentionally minimal for now. I just don't

[14:50] know how much stuff is going to end up in the other pages that will leave this either being repetitive or not as relevant.

[15:00] And it still begs the big old question in my head, which is somewhat noted here. Workshops feel like ReflectPath, speaking feels like Fiona. So I'm still not sure how that is

[15:10] woven. My best understanding of it is, not that you haven't explained it, it's just like I think it's sort of a little bit of an amoeba at the moment. So right now I kind of understand it as

[15:20] ReflectPath is the framework by which you are applying and thinking about all of these things and gives you something to reference back to during any presentation and obviously during

[15:30] workshops. So to that end, I'm not sure if about should actually be about the framework or if it is more about you or if we get back into that relationship of like here's the company and

[15:40] then here's the founder. So TBA and TBD, I'm really all over the place with my acronyms, so TBD on that, as we'll kind of figure that stuff out. Okay, that was kind of a lot,

[15:50] but you can obviously see that there's a lot of pieces in here where I'm trying to kind of keep

[16:00] the amount of copy and content needed to a minimum, but also enough that there's, you know, checking the boxes of like what is this, how much does it cost, what's the validation, what am I

[16:10] getting, all of those pieces. So more things may, you know, if I were to say where would we end up with like more stuff that might show up, probably on these two pages. Right now these two pages just

[16:20] high level kind of lack explanation type stuff, and I feel like as you're working through copy, you might end up with like, hey, I need a couple paragraphs here, there, we just talk about things

[16:30] like whether it's travel, formats, presentations, like any of these different things that might come up. My plan is basically that once we sort of have a solid working sort of copy

[16:40] draft rough of this, that we can use that to use some of my AI tooling to go find some better

[16:50] competitors to compare this to and see what stuff they have on their sites, and then help maybe build a framework around that. So anyway, okay, review this when you can. Obviously, we can touch

[17:00] base soon on it regardless, but that's that. All right, so jumping over to your site. So I've done

[17:10] a couple of things on the site. Like I said, some of the stuff you might not, you know, necessarily notice, but one thing that I did is I kind of just went through and cleaned stuff up, like the

[17:20] buttons were sort of all over. This thing was like over there, like there was just something like little styling things that I went through and fixed. But there's also like fundamental pieces

[17:30] here that are just still broken. And I'm more inclined to remove these instead of go style them again, because you can see they're used on multiple pages. And I don't know, since we've last really

[17:40] worked on this together, what impact that might have elsewhere. So my intuition is to kind of leave it as is and get the new stuff up as fast as we can. If you're like, that's crazy, we need to

[17:50] fix this stuff too, that's fine as well. Just let me know. The new piece is I'm keeping in this dev

[18:00] folder. So I have a new homepage in here, and you can see I'm starting to kind of build out the parts that I showed in the FigJam, right? So there's the kind of cards for speaking,

[18:10] and this should be workshops, but obviously I copy and pasted. And to try to start to build out what that would look like, starting to kind of get the

[18:20] testimonial scroller there, you know, rebuilding these pieces, the new CTA at the bottom. So one thing to note is that I don't think I've done it on this one yet.

[18:30] No. So a good example though. So one thing to note is that since I last built this site for you,

[18:40] I have updated my like operating system, for lack of a better term, that I sort of use when I build the site. So when I built yours, I just didn't have as much of these

[18:50] pieces, partially due to AI tooling getting better and just also having done more and more sites and

[19:00] stuff over time, I've kind of built up a better system. So yours is similar. I mean, this is really like the pilot telling you how I'm going to fly the plane, but yours is similar, but I've

[19:10] basically installed a new version that is a little bit cleaner. So it uses this BZ everything and restructure some of the pieces to make it a little bit easier to move things around. So some of it's

[19:20] based on some client feedback where they're like, it's really, it's kind of difficult to edit some of these areas. I was like, all right, so I can kind of restructure some of this stuff to make it

[19:30] a little bit easier to use. But that basically means that each section has a hero wrap at the top, which helps deal with some of the spacing. This was some of the stuff that was a little

[19:40] finicky before. And then now it more or less is a kind of repeat system where it's a little bit easier to kind of quickly rearrange the entire page. For example, if you want to quickly try

[19:50] stuff without breaking the background and where the shapes move and stuff. So I'm kind of in the process of adding that every page that I'm working on.

[20:00] I'm just putting that system in place and you can see it's starting to make a cleaner look and feel overall. So all the pages wind up kind of being moved to that, again not something

[20:10] that you can sort of see right by the naked eye necessarily, but something that will make it easier to kind of continue to develop the site as we go. So okay that is that. I am going to do

[20:20] another, actually we can touch base on it next week. That's plenty of stuff to chew on for now. So I think the thing to really look into is look at that FigJam, look at how I'm suggesting

[20:30] laying out the content, and then let's see what stuff we have. If you've already shared stuff with

[20:40] me, I haven't looked through like a Google Drive or anything for images and stuff yet, so I'm not sure what stuff necessarily exists. Some of the stuff might be in those Cloud documents that you

[20:50] shared, but otherwise this could give you some framework to add that stuff to Cloud. Cool, okay.

[21:00] Happy to hop on a call of course if you want to chat through any stuff, but otherwise we could wait till our next meeting. That's another two weeks, so maybe we just schedule something early next week. So I'll send you a suggestion for that as well. Cool, happy Friday.