I noticed in your book that you originally were gonna open up practice in San Diego. That's where I'm originally from is it okay? Yeah, no, I made the mistake. I joke about that, but I went in January. I'm from Wisconsin and that was my T 8 so almost like the last year of school and I fell in love with it because obviously it was gorgeous out there And I'm like alright. I have to go there So I went back forth probably six times set up my last externship and then didn't go So it's all you know how it's supposed to work out But it was one of those things it was kind of hard on me for a little bit because I was like man I thought I was gonna be done with winter Yeah, San Diego is gorgeous. Yeah, it is but it's it's tough to get in there. It's pretty pretty crowded and Yeah, it seems like everyone's kind of a transplant there. That's yeah Yeah, I was born and raised my dad was born and raised there and okay.  I don't know. I mean it's Every time I visit I just remember how beautiful it is and how warm and everything but Yeah, I don't just to just to move in and get a house or get a you know, get an apartment. It's incredibly expensive Yeah, for sure. So but that's that's cool, but glad things are working out for you Yeah, you know, I was one of the things where I Had a mentor who said this to me that when life gets rocky it's because you're not paying attention to where you're supposed to be, you know You're like banging your head against the wall kind of thing and that would have been that area of my life at that point Like I kept thinking that I needed to be out there and tried to set this all up and the problem I mean more than one problem kept flying in my face and it got down to the last week before I was supposed to move Out there. This is you know at your school. Are you guys in trimesters? We're in quarters quarters Okay, so this is my last, you know quarter, but it was a trimester The week before this woman that I was gonna rent from kept calling and changing everything about my lease And I remember like driving down the highway back to my parents house because I got rid of my apartment moved all my stuff back They're thinking I'm gonna fly out to San Diego that weekend and I'm like, oh my god What am I doing?  I was just not ready to hear and I think I Got down to the Friday and I'm supposed to leave on Saturday and I went to bed My mom's like, are we leaving in the morning? I'm like, you know, I'm gonna wake up and make that decision Oh, wow, and I didn't go and everything fell into place then but you know, that's testimony to like I really think Everyone has this purpose right and you can veer off from it at times But you'll end up back where you're supposed to be one way or the other it just has to get rocky for a while Yeah And you went to Northwestern I did so right I'm I haven't yet interviewed anyone from that school and I always confuse it with national But it is they're similar probably. Yeah, is it is Northwestern? Do they they claim to be more of a evidence-informed evidence-based school? Is that right? They're definitely like a many practice school. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, the reason I went to Northwestern, you know, I grew up in a chiropractic family We you know since I can remember we've gone I don't know we wouldn't we didn't go weekly by any means my dad probably did but you know as kids We probably went several times a year and I thought everyone went to the chiropractor I had no clue that other people I thought it was like dentistry, you know you have a chiropractor and your family goes and that's normal and I remember sitting day one in Northwestern and they said oh, this is gonna be a rough profession for you guys You always have to tell people why they have to come back and I was like literally perplexed sitting there Like what are they talking about? Why wouldn't someone come back? You know because it just didn't it wasn't part of my field of awareness at that point that you know what we were even up against sometimes and the reason I chose Northwestern is my chiropractor growing up had gone to Palmer and that was So I left and went to chiropractic school in 2006 And that was when the school had had a lot of changes and she used to be big pro go-to-homecoming every year You know pro Palmer person and she was like, you know in good faith. I don't know what's happening with that school right now So yeah, she's like, you know, you go to life maybe or and that was right when life I think had just gotten their accreditation back probably Life Georgia or West life Georgia Yeah, and then so she also said or if you go to Northwestern you got to go to a lot of stuff on the weekend So I looked at it. All right, Minneapolis is cooler than Palmer in Iowa That's why I chose it and you know, I really again didn't do my homework So I was lucky that I just ran into some people that really steered me in the right direction. That's awesome Yeah, I remember in fourth grade. I gave a like a sharing time presentation on chiropractic because I had already been going and Yeah, I was a bit surprised how many people in the class. I mean, they're all kids But they didn't know what it was Yeah, that's fun.  Well, you know, it takes discipline. That's for sure. It wasn't like it just happened kind of thing So I think that's the biggest thing for people that want to do similarly. I would assume most people do You know, it it's nice because if you get yourself right and you start to realize that, you know the development of your practice and the income that it makes and You know that type of relationship between the growth and the practice and the growth financially is directly related You know, it's easier to think about serving more people and being excited about that than it is to probably really think about the money and I would encourage people to think about the growth of Getting yourself out there serving chiropractic to people That's why, you know, having a deep philosophy is really important because that's directly related to your success in practice So those two things together were what really drove me it was like I knew I needed to learn a lot and I had some great coaches and Through, you know, self-development and really knowing that I wanted to be successful That's when I could kind of start to see like alright My loan is coming due for the first time in June of 2010 and I said I'm gonna pay $1,000 and then in July I'm like alright. I'm gonna pay $2,000 and I just kept incrementally stepping it up every month Because it just seemed like while the practice is growing. I'm used to not living like a baller so I can just keep doing that You know, I for the first five months of my practice. I lived at home with my parents So talk about pride for the first few months, but it was great My parents are wonderful, but you know, there came a point when to where I was like and now it's time to move out but At the same time, you know, I got to the end of that year and and I had Substantially made a dent in the the loans already and so I really looked at it like alright I can get to the point where you know, I'm paying such a hefty sum every month after that And you know that was the focus for me It wasn't like I was doing that as well as saving a ton of money as well as like buying a Range Rover or anything like that like it was like I was focused on those student loans, right? So paying out the loans was the number one goal Yeah at the expense a little bit of saving You know that three months expenses that you want to save something So I always kept like my business bank account at a comfortable level so that I never felt real worried about that But I do think saving weekly even if it was like 20 bucks right then and then the rest of it is going towards Your student loan is a good habit It just gives you a different sense of power when you don't have to worry, you know what I mean And and that's where I think the synergy happens where you're really excited about what you're doing in your business and talking chiropractic And if you can get your financial house in order You you don't have that feeling or that icky feeling of like this person That's getting on the table has to pay for the you know the lights to be on next week kind of thing So if you can check yourself first and really look at what's important that person and serving that person The best that you can in this moment is the important thing right now But by the way on the side you've done your work to know like alright This is what I need to accomplish this month This is a goal I have for how much I want to pay on my student loan It almost becomes like a game and that game then drives the practice higher And so then when the student loans are gone you have you know So for me it was like I got to where there was probably about $10,000 a month I was paying on a student loan and that you know plummets it really fast and so You know all of a sudden it's like one day.   I'll tell you about that in a second But basically that I switched it then you have to do something with the money because money is energy, right? It's just energy flowing in energy flowing out And if you think about it that way as soon as that loan is gone You've got to divert that energy into a different stream Otherwise it's gone and it's weird to think about it that way and most people don't look at money that way but So so I had a mentor Tori Robeson who was very influential for me on business strategies And so he was like you know divert this into a profit chair or you know whole life insurance that type of thing So you're starting to save that $10,000 now or you know up the ante from there, whatever it is So that's what I did then and you know it almost is like when you lose that focus Because that focus was on the student loan was so easy to have because I really wanted it gone It's like if this guttural thing like you don't want it right and and then Saving for me doesn't have quite the same like guttural thing to I like doing it Don't get me wrong, but it's it's nice to like choose So some people might not feel so called to like pay off their loan then maybe they should work on savings first I don't know you know yeah, that's interesting. I'm curious why you weren't content to just do the normal thing and Pay them off in 10 years Well, I think the book that was really influential on me was Dave Ramsey's total money makeover And he just you know really hammers home that debt is bad Like it doesn't matter if you can write right off part of it It doesn't matter if it's a low interest rate like get rid of it And I like simplicity like I am not the person that wants things that are like really complex or difficult to think about So to think about that's why when I talk to people is like they want to know like should I consolidate? That's if I'm like I'm not a financial advisor. I don't know any of that stuff I didn't because it just didn't make sense to me I was like I can see what they are there was like five of them five loans And I just want to pay them down like I want to go on immediately and the way Dave Ramsey explains it in the book Is you pick the low the lowest amount and you pay that one first? And then you just make the minimum payments on the rest So you attack one of them and when that when that one's gone Then you go on the next one and it's a bit of psychological warfare because once that first loan is paid off There's a feeling of victory of accomplishment and then it kind of adds to that desire to keep the energy. Yeah. Yeah, 100% That's awesome What do you think students should do right now to prepare for paying off loans and opening their practice? Sure Saving in in chiropractic school would be huge. So I always worked. I worked in undergrad and I worked during chiropractic school And so I can't remember the exact amount It was probably somewhere around 12 to 15,000 that I had to go to the bank to get my business on the first one and They want that, you know, they want to see that you're gonna invest in what you're asking them to invest in So if you have a desire to open your own practice You know, you got to have your financial house pretty set as far as like good credit And then some money that you're coming with unless you have an angel lender or something like that But the habit is really the big thing, right? So the habit of You know having the discipline to put some money aside when you especially may be doing it when you get your tuition check And some people would say but yeah, it's just it's my loan money. Anyways, what's you know, what's the difference? But if you're saving some of that, you know, they used to give us like $7,000 every Four months or whatever it was three months And so, you know, I would try and take a chunk of that plus than whatever I made from working I would take some of that and save it I think I usually would save like 75 bucks a month for sure and then anything else I could do on top of it I would and that's pretty doable. I've been I've been battling with myself with this idea of do I take the full amount of loans and Save some or do I take the minimum that I can get by on and and I do work I have a couple jobs on campus And then use that cash as savings or even to start paying off the loans now so that the interest doesn't accumulate and it's a tough decision I Know and I don't think there's a right answer But I think it depends on what you're trying to do afterwards because you are gonna need a Substantial chunk probably if you are going for a loan and so and if that was not something you had I would suggest just saving it until you know like what you know What your scenario is going to look like after you graduate? I don't read it or to get money when you don't have any Yeah, I've been in some meetings with bankers lately and And that's their deal is you know, we want to see some income We want to see that you have some Collateral or some money in the bank and I'm like well, I How am I doing that? I'm living on loans. They want to see that you're willing to sacrifice some You know what I mean? Whether I even the banker said to me the fact that you're willing to live at home for the first However long shows me that you're serious about this because most 25-year-olds don't want to do that But the reality was I didn't have income at that point, you know And my dad actually said something to me that I thought was really good too And he's been a small business owner too But you know, I was like do I bartend for a while while I'm first starting that practice, you know I was thinking then I'd have an income stream and he said one of the sooner you get serious about this business and the sooner You get those doors open and you're seeing people That's months ahead of the time of when you would start making money Basically, like you're moving your income stream forward then because you're getting more serious about it at an earlier stage And he was right, you know, so I think The the people that don't commit are the people that struggle Yeah, I was just about to read this section from your book where you talk about that and you Thing I have highlighted is putting my energy and time into getting the clinic together and open in record time with all things in Order was the best decision. So it was about six months. I think that you were full-time opening your practice nope, I graduated November 2009 and I opened January 2010. Okay, so a lot less. Yeah. Yeah, but with that said my t10 Because I didn't go to San Diego was in St. Paul, which was only about an hour and 15 minutes away from where I opened So three or four days a week. I was in St. Paul three or four days a week I was in Chippew Falls looking around looking at, you know options for rent Going into banks, you know, just getting a feel for like would this actually work here? So, you know, and no one can give you like all the final answers That's the hard part too is I think sometimes especially when we're about to do something We've never done before we just want someone to like push us over the edge And you kind of got to give yourself that push so I Was thinking about that because I'm on two weeks break right now in between quarters And I'm almost just imprisoned in my apartment because I have no no spending money And so I was a bit curious about how you were able to get around and and work in a way When you weren't getting any income Are you talking about when I first opened up the practice? Yeah, for those first couple months. All right, so Because I had like the 15,000 or whatever that I invested in I took I think there was five of that that I took as personal expense that was that was gonna get me through until You know, we were starting to actually see income So I didn't you know, you live at home with your parents. It's pretty much free rent free food for the most part So it wasn't like it it wasn't glamorous, but it wasn't that big of a struggle. Do you know what I mean? and I think like that There's a degree of like if you can just get your mind at ease with some of it Like this is just what I have to do right now and like live in that It's like the money will be there Maybe not loads of it but enough for like today or tomorrow so that you can like keep your energy up and and Just keep moving ahead. I don't know if that makes sense But it's kind of like if you stare at what's not there you get more of what's not there And if you just realize like I'm doing this for a reason and more is gonna come to me and it's all all right That's exactly what you get as well And you've got a wonderful practice Growing strong You're seeing in the book you mentioned seeing up to about three to four hundred Patients a week yep is is your success and is is a success of future students paying off loans dependent on having a high-volume Practice that's really philosophy driven. I personally think so I mean Okay, it depends on how you look at it. I mean there's different business models that probably work right but I look at like what we offer as chiropractors and the really amazing part of chiropractic is its philosophy really and Teaching people vitalism teaching them that their body is meant to be a healthy and that so much every second is happening Right with your body. That's a message. They don't hear, you know, we turn on the TV and it's all disease and sickness and you know You're degrading every day kind of thing when that's not that's just a different picture of it and so when I look at subluxation based chiropractic where we're teaching people that by Maintaining or ensuring that connection between brain and body. They're able to live like a more alive Day or like their life is more turned on It's just so much more rewarding to me and I think that's what grows the Volume practice or the practice that sees lots of kids not everyone needs to see, you know 200 300 400 500 a week kind of thing to be happy I don't think or to be successful in a financial sense either because you know if you keep your overhead low You can do pretty well at you know a lower stage than that but Yeah, I think it really is about our philosophy and what do we offer that no one else offers? You know correction of subluxation and teaching people vitalism That's what sets us apart and if we lose that you know, we really aren't We aren't doing chiropractic So there's other models that work within our field that are called chiropractic and are deemed Underneath the umbrella of what chiropractic especially with our education calls chiropractic But I think the more that we can like invite people in to understand why Infants need to be checked why kids need to come in for routine chiropractic all that stuff Then the more we like spread this message of you know Focusing on the good that's happening in your body and uplifting that versus letting people sink into all the other stuff That's happening out there in in the medical world What's next for you do you have any big plans big ideas new books? That's a great question. I feel like I'm gonna take a little break from I've been doing a ton of traveling and and Doing some speaking so this summer. I'm looking forward to not traveling quite as much but I have started doing a four-week course with other new chiropractors and It's a workbook really that goes along with four modules And then you can take it as a self-study or you can take it where we speak one-on-one Each week for about a half hour and my goal with that is to just help people open up some of the principles that growth Circles around you know, so the four four modules are based around these four principles The first one is awareness. The second one is simplicity congruency and energy and Those seem kind of nebulous if you just hear the words But it's really what we come back to each time we look at where we're at and where we're trying to go is like alright You got to know specifics about what got you to this point right now So that you have a jumping off point to go to something different Otherwise if we just keep repeating the same patterns, we do you know, we get what we got And then so if we can streamline plus make yourself more congruent with our vision and you know Sometimes it's just a little tweak in our head space that creates all the difference And so I feel like these are the things that I've constantly gone to over the last four and a half years and It's just amazing to see how much can change in a short time And so I want to help other people not not to be me I don't need them to like do what I did but to open that up in themselves so that they create their vision and Can learn how to like teach themself how to elevate each year or every month towards a different direction That's awesome. And I think I noticed that book starting the tick is the the workbook. That's the workbook awesome Where can students find more about you? If they just go to our website, it's just dr. Lonokook calm All right, and are you on Facebook and Twitter where they can follow you? Yep, it's just my name. All right. I'm gonna cook. Yep, friend me up Great. So looks like you got a patient waiting. I do. Okay, so I'll let you go. Thanks a lot, dr. Cook. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Yeah, you too All right, bye


All right. We'll welcome everyone to this session by Learn WordPress. This is best design practices to create engagement presented by Legally Today. And yeah, just to introduce ourselves. My name is Courtney. I am a contributor to the WordPress training team, which brings you all the learning resources on learn.wordpress.org, including sessions. And presenting today is Lee Levy, and she's with Next Graphics, and she will introduce herself in her presentation very shortly. So I will make this brief. So if you haven't attended a WordPress, Learn WordPress online workshop today before, this is a space where everyone can learn together. So you can ask questions in the chat at any time. And if you know the answer to someone's question or have anything to add to the conversation, you can chime in in the chat. We will be saving questions for after the main presentation. So it would be really helpful if you can preface your question with a question in all caps that would help me locate the questions to save for after the presentation. And so as I mentioned, this and other online workshops are recorded and uploaded to wordpress.tv. Usually within the 24 hours of a session happening, we'll have it uploaded for you with captions. And speaking of captioning, we do that have the live captioning available here in the Zoom if you'd like to turn that on. And lastly, so I just lost my screen. Lastly, online workshops like these are hosted by folks that enjoy WordPress and giving back to the community. So this is a community run efforts to to bring topics that are of interest to WordPress users to the rest of the community and these are free resources that are brought to you by by volunteers. Alrighty. And that is it for that my introduction portion. Again, if you have any questions during the presentation, please put them in the chat and we will will address them at the end. And with that, I will stop my screen share and hand this over to Lee. Thank you for joining us today, Lee. It's good to see you and take it away. Thank you so much for having me and hello to everybody Sylvia I hope you're safe there but please I this is great that you came to to see this but nothing is worth tornado so please be safe. Keep an eye on the watch out there I see a couple people from California. I'm from all over the world so this is absolutely amazing. And I'm so happy to be here today this is the actual presentation that I did at the WordPress conference which was a pretty big hit. And so thank you for having me here to share it with with more people I'm very happy to do this. Okay, so let me share my screen and we'll get started. Just let me know that everybody is seeing the title. And the home screen. Okay, so my presentation is best design practices to create website engagement and I'm going to be sharing a lot of tips and tricks to get clients to actually stay on your website. So, with that being said, the very first thing that I wanted to kind of ask you guys is, while I am presenting, just kind of keep in mind. A couple things to keep in mind actually, how many of you actually know about the traffic you're getting do you know how much traffic you're getting. Have you given any thought to why you might or may not be getting the traffic. And if they're staying on your website so there's a good couple of things that you need to keep in mind here. I'm going to get started. So give me one moment and Courtney for some reason my next slide is not working so I'm going to stop this for one second and restart it again because I it's kind of stuck on the on the home screen here I'm not sure why. Oh, okay, can you guys see it now did it move. Okay, perfect. My controls actually flew off the screen. Okay, so a little bit about me. I'm the founder of next graphics I like to call myself the web design queen. I have 25 years of experience in web design, mom of two teenagers and I'm a cancer survivor from 2019. So happy to be alive and kicking and building many more websites. So this is my personal when I'm not geeking out. I do Zumba, I do belly dance and photography and I absolutely love to travel so those are just kind of things I'm doing when I am not in my geek mode. So this is a famous quote from deep jobs that I absolutely live by which is design is not just what it looks like and feels like design is how it works, and that is 100% true when it comes to web design. Okay, going back to the original question that I asked which is traffic on your website. Basically, the rule of thumb is that the human attention span is only eight seconds a lot of people do not know that, but we only have the attention span of eight seconds for our brain to decide if we are going to do something move on stay on something. So it's very important to know that the average user will spend no more than 10 to 20 seconds on a website. So, while they're using that 10 to 20 seconds on a website, you have to grab their attention in the best way possible. So, the picture on the left the picture on the right.  So what we're going to talk about today is the use of proper design and elements to keep your clients engaged. Okay, so here is what your site needs to actually do in those four to five seconds so the first thing is, who am I, which means a logo and a tagline that's clearly visible. What do I do, which is a clear, clear understanding of what your company does whether it's a service or a product they have to be able to tell right away what it is that you do. What can somebody do on my website, which means to clearly state your objective objectives your goals and what you expect someone to accomplish from your website.  So, the number one rule is your website speed. How many of you, obviously you get to a website and it just, you get that scrolling screen of death, and it either doesn't load it takes too long to load or sometimes you even may get an error message which is really an awful thing to happen on a website. But you have to make sure that your website loads fast. So, technically the rule is your website should load in four seconds or less 50% of visitors will actually abandon websites that take too long to load. And for any of you that know about analytics and we'll talk about that a little bit later. That will cause a huge what's called a bounce rate I don't know how many of you know what a bounce rate is or not but technically the majority people will leave a website because of it taking too long to load. So that's something definitely to keep in the back of your head. There's a lot of reasons of why a website would be slow. There's a number of reasons and when I get a client that asks me about why their website is so slow we really have to look into a number of different things it's not always just one thing. And the number one reason is usually a slow hosting server. So we'll talk about that a little bit later on but this is one of those things where don't go with the cheapest hosting I know there's a lot of websites out there that and I can't name names but there's $2.95 a month or $3.95 a month all these really cheap hosting because they're loading thousands of websites on the same server, but that's not doing good for anybody's website, especially if you have a very large website. So slow hosting server try to get a decent hosting package. There's lots of them out there but that's definitely one of the main reasons for a slow website. The second reason would be, if you haven't optimized your images a lot of people will don't know how to optimize their images so they take like their original images and they just upload them as is and they let WordPress size them down, but that can also cause the page to load very very slowly and so you have to be very mindful about the images that you're using on your website make sure they've been optimized makes make sure they have been sized down. The reason would be too many plugins or plugins that are outdated or not updated I see this all the time. Sometimes I log into a client's website and I will see 30 or 40 plugins in the back of that website so there is some serious clean up needing there because the more plugins you put in plugins are a great thing but you have to understand that the more plugins that you add into the back of the website. And that adds to the loading time because all these things have to work together with each other the server the plugins the large images etc so make sure go through your plugins disable and delete anyone's that you're not using. Make sure that you update them because if a bunch of plugins are also not updated that could cause many other issues that we'll talk about later. Another thing that I see is too many elements on one page especially if you have third party elements like pulling from other websites. So that could definitely be a cause of websites slowing down. It could be a poor quality theme. So be careful when you're using themes especially like the free themes because once again of companies not making money on a theme and they're putting out a free theme. So be a lot of quality to it so be really really careful when choosing your themes and also malware or virus and I see that a lot sometimes your website was going pretty fast and then all of a sudden it's not and it could be that you have malware or a virus on it so all these things put together be very very careful and make sure that you're mindful that your websites are loading quickly. So let's talk next about how do you know if your website is slow. Well some of this is going to be pretty obvious. Okay. So let's talk about your websites loading time. These are three tools that we can use and this is a snapshot. This is not 100% but it gives you a really good idea of your website speed and you should test it whichever one you use a couple of times because again there can be a lot of questions as to why a website is loading quickly or slowly. So if you try it three times and you get four or five seconds or six seconds five seconds you kind of have an idea of how fast or slow your website is so this is a really really three good tools. My personal favorite is GT metrics and the reason I like it is because it's a very it's a pretty graphical situation where you see colors and numbers and you can actually kind of get a good idea but I'm also going to tell you once again that they're not 100% accurate with the numbers and you kind of have to know what it is that you're looking for. So here's a sample and what I really really want to call your attention to is the GT metrics will give a letter code and a whole bunch of percentages and milliseconds and I'm focusing on what I circled here in the red. So if you want to go to the page details and look at the fully loaded time that is the important number because you can have an a score and you'll have 12 seconds to load and that is not a good thing so the a score and 100% performance that's a whole bunch of numbers which you'll see a whole list of things and you may or may not depending on your technical level understand what all those things are, but as far as page speed you definitely want to look at this circled fully loaded time. I've seen people with a D score for other things but they have a fast loading website so again as far as speed is concerned that's the number that you absolutely want to look at. So going back to what we were discussing before about I'm stressing this that's why I made another slide about it so once again make sure that you delete unused older inactive plugins. It's also a very good idea to check the read the reputability and rating for plugins before installing I have some clients that are so click happy with their plugins. They're so cool and I want this and they install that one they install that one. There's also a little warning that should tell you if it is compatible with your version of WordPress or whatever it is that you're using just be careful and check the ratings check the reputability of anything before installing because once again especially some of those free plugins they're they're a doozy and they can actually cause issues with other plugins as well. I definitely wanted to stress a little bit about that. So on the next slide we're going to talk about speeding up the website. My preference is not to have to use a caching plugin, because if you did a website correctly and you used very few plugins only what you needed you used a good theme you're using a good server and you're not overloading heavy pictures on the website. You don't have to use a caching plugin but if you must and you need to make it faster. These are the four that I recommend I've worked with all of them they're pretty good. They're all free and they all have paid versions as well. So those are three to definitely keep an eye on. Once again though, that's only if you need it. Let's talk a little bit about keeping the websites clean and simple. So I kind of like to compare this to a really messy garage so me personally I have OCD but when I look at a messy website or messy garage it just it just drives me insane where it's all over the place and it's it's so busy and it's cluttered and trust me when a person potential client comes to your website and sees a big cluttery mess and their eye does not know where to go or the menu is not visible. They will not stay on your website so it's super super important to not have a messy website and it should be configured. Nice and organized. So, again, I love this slide because that's how a website should look to me nice organized clean just like I love that garage everything's organized in its own little space, and your clients I should be moving left to right and down in an organized manner on the website. So the next thing I want to talk about and this is really really overlooked is choosing your colors wisely. There's a lot of science and advertising behind the colors for the website so I'm going to spend a couple of minutes on that one, because I have this really really awesome chart and I use this when clients come to me. And sometimes they don't have their logos already they don't have their colors picked out they're not sure what color should I go for and then the first thing that I asked them is, what mood are you trying to set. Basically, right here what you see is what do these colors invoke in our emotions so as you can see when you're staying in the, you know, red, yellow and orange it's more of the optimism friendly excitement. So it's funny because when you look at almost all the fast food chains the majority of them do use those three colors so that's again once they're trying to invoke the happy and optimistic and excitement feeling with with their logos. And that's why the technology companies they tend to go a little bit more with like the blues for trust and dependability and strength, whereas a lot of the toy companies will go with pink and purple which is more of the creative imaginative type of colors and then the blacks the whites the silvers as you could tell like some of the higher end companies because it's sophisticated it's timeless it's classic. So once again use this as a good color guide as far as choosing colors for your website. And it's funny after this people always ask me about their logos. So yeah I'd be happy to do that if you know anybody has any questions about that. So in saying that when you're choosing your color palettes I put a couple of color palettes together here. And the general rules for the color palettes are make sure that if you're going to use some bold colors, you have to use them wisely so in combination with your neutrals. I want to draw attention to the areas that you specifically want to stand out like with your call to action buttons sometimes try not to make the backgrounds too bright because it's very painful on the eyes. Make sure if you're going to do dark text on light background, you reverse it on the other light text on a dark background all too often I see colors fading in and that causes a problem for the whole ADA compliance as well. So don't use too many colors together that are of the same hues. And again just don't make it harsh on the eyes make it pleasant on the eyes that's that's the goal here to keep people on the website. The same thing with your fonts fonts absolutely have meanings behind them so it's a really good idea to choose good combination of fonts. So a couple of examples over here. Keep the number of fonts used to a minimum normally you like to try to use to know more than three one would be for the headings, and one would be for the body. And as you can see in the samples it's just really nice when the heading stand out and then all the text is one color and one color and one type font. Use the colors on the fonts very sparingly when you're using titles and headlines, especially if you have a lot of color in the background, minimizing the use of the script fonts because as beautiful as they are they are hard to read, especially if somebody, let's say doesn't read English very well or has a problem again with the visual some some fonts are just very very hard to read so be very very mindful when using script fonts. Don't overuse all uppercase text. Sometimes here and there it's great for titles if you want to highlight something but some people just get so text happy with all the caps. It really shouldn't be used, and then ensure that the proper text is size is used because most websites should use at least a minimum font of 16 point text for your, for your body and then larger for the headings. So as far as what the fonts mean again I put together a little chart over here so this kind of breaks apart the different kinds of the fonts. So you've got your fair your serif fonts which are the more old and traditional. Sans serifs which are more for the stability. You've got your display fonts which are more friendly and expressive and they're more fun. Your script fonts once again that would be something for a little more creativity, a little bit more elegance and then your modern fonts which are a little bit more progressive and stylish and bold. So once again all this with your colors to tie into what you are trying to communicate on your website. Okay, now we're going to talk a little bit about your menu navigation. This is something I come across all the time and I'm sure you know it when you get to a website and you're on that menu and you cannot find something. I don't know about you but that makes me crazy I like it to be nice and organized so you have to be very very mindful when you're designing websites whether it's for your for yourself for your company or for a client to make sure that you condense everything into a good menu navigation with the right dropdowns not too many dropdowns not going off the sides of the page or having people scrolling all over the place so we're going to talk about that little bit here. So the whole idea is to make sure that the content is easy to get to because once again when you go to a place with a lot of signage all over the place and you're confused and you don't know where to go. In this image, for example, they have their top menu, they have little circular menus underneath which open more menus and then they have things just all over the place so this was an old client that we redid their website because literally people were bouncing all over the page and did not know where to go. So this is an example of some tips for good navigation. Place the important pages at the very top level of the menu and once again use the colors that you choose wisely so that you know when you hover over them they either highlight or the color changes or some way to understand what page the client is on because if you use the same color for everything they won't know where they're on. Try to use one color for the top level, second color for the drop down level and if you must have a third level which on some larger websites is important. Try to use maybe a variant of one of those two colors because you have too many colors all over the place it's very confusing. Also keep the wording short and to the point try not too much more than two to three words because some people almost put sentences on these things and then that'll cause especially for mobile that'll cause a major issue. So try to keep the menus very concise. So now let's talk about something a little bit more fun. So for those of you who don't know what the hero image is that is the top first large image with the call to action that people see when they come to a website. So this is prime real estate so it is very important that your hero image is very very in line with what you do and getting your message across with the right call to action. So I'm going to give you a couple of examples right here of what your hero image must do. So a couple of things. Tell your story, and it has to be able to do so without anybody reading the text so when they see that image they already have to have a clear idea of what it is that you do. You have to have a clear call to action, and please make sure that you include a good quality photo because I have so many clients that give me sell images or images that have been retouched and they're blurry or they just don't really make sense. I just saw the wording didn't pop up so sorry about that. There's the wording for you if anybody's taking pictures. Just, you know blurry and not good images again that that's just a turn off to to a client so make sure that your hero image is absolutely telling your story. Get to the next one here. So I'd like to invite you guys to take the challenge on the next couple of slides that I'm going to show you because this was a really fun activity that I did at an in person conference and it was quite funny to watch the results. So this is actually a client that we redid their website but before we redid their website. Look at this image for a couple of seconds and try to think what it is that this client does because all it said is Lake Tahoe, Nevada and California. So we went around the room and we asked everybody what does this client do so we heard a lot of things we heard, oh, they're a hotel. They're a real estate company. They are how what else did we hear in the room we heard a travel agent that yet works in this area we heard quite a few things. The truth of the matter is those were all completely wrong. So basically this client, their photographer, and no one could tell that from the front image and that's all they had up there. So a couple of little changes which again made make or break your website is now we changed it to say Nevada and California photography, and we gave three clear call to actions that would take them to the right places and navigate the client to see what it is that they do. So this was a very interesting experiment, and we had a second one which I'll show you right now and this one actually drew quite a laugh from the crowd. So this picture right here I asked them, what does this company do and of course 99.9% said it's a cleaning company, but it's not. It was not a cleaning company and we couldn't figure out why they had a huge bounce rate on their website. So here's what she does burn calories while cleaning your home this woman came up with this amazing concept of putting fitness and cleaning together, and she was completely sending the wrong message by putting this image. So we went over it and I said, you're not going to get people staying on this website and even buying into your fitness program if we don't change this up a little bit so we got on her website. We changed the images. And now we changed it to say burn calories while cleaning your home with these images with a perfect call to action and once again we went from a huge bounce rate into people actually converting on her website. So I'm going to say this throughout the whole slide show, simple changes, simple changes testing what works and what doesn't can make a huge difference because now you have this fun image of people doing exercise while they're cleaning or singing or pretending it's a mic but they're obviously having fun while they're cleaning so this definitely sent a much better message than the original picture. I'm going to talk a little bit now about your call to actions which we just mentioned in the hero image because this is a very, very important part of any website. So a call to action. What is a call to action. It's an invitation for a user to take a desired action on your website. They should be used throughout your website in multiple areas and they should be attractive and tempting with the right offer. I'm going to spend a few minutes now. I've got two slides here that are going to show all the different types of call to actions you can use. So depending on your business. These are all amazing. There's no right or wrong just what works for your business so the free effect which is, you know, try something for free free download 30 free 30 day trial sign up for free. This is our direct call to action, which is your sign up now. Join us today by now add to cart become a member. You have your visual call to action which is watch the tour, see it in action, browse our plans view portfolio. Number two, there are your detailed call to actions which are like have a live preview try our demo, view our features more information, something that's asking for more your contact call to actions which are simply and probably the most widely used contact quote, stay connected, send us an email, keep in touch. And then probably the most effective that a lot of places will use is the limited offer call to action which is the classic TV commercial limited time offer ends in 24 hours offer expires tomorrow. 50% sale for the first 50 buyers or order now receive a gift. So these are the most effective for a lot of companies. You'll see it a lot of times even when you're booking a hotel you'll get a little pop up that says 50 people book this hotel or something like that. So the limited offer call to actions are by far the most popular so be thinking about what works best for your business. So the next thing we're going to talk about is the use of videos on your website.  So as far as videos are concerned.  So why include videos on your website. There's a lot of reasons to include videos on your website so basically it increases your engagement by at least 10 to 20%. It is way more interesting than people reading long long areas of text on your website because as we all know there's that attention span and nobody likes to read a lot. It's a really good picture of your product or service it appeals to people senses and it creates that certain mood. Many times it can quickly deliver a message within 30 seconds a short commercial can tell people exactly what it is that you do. You can drive traffic to your website because if your video is also on YouTube you can actually attract people to your website. It gives your company more of a personality. It makes you stand out from your competitors who have not done it yet and it just it's more memorable so absolutely use videos on your website. As far as the types of videos on the website. We'll get to that in a second. I broke this down by type of industry. I'll spend a couple of minutes on this one because different businesses use the videos in different unique ways so if you are a consulting business service. You would probably want to create a video that would show staff in action with your clients show how you would create solutions for your clients if you sell physical or digital products. The way you do it is to show people using your products obviously show how great life is when they're using your product so they can experience it for themselves. Show your product in action for your experiences videos for all you travel people events out there. This is amazing because you have like the world at your fingertips to create that sense of excitement if somebody participates in what it is you're offering. You can create an entire storyline or experience by showing people having a great time. That's what that's all about. And then for the restaurant people which I have a lot of those types of clients. You want to create a desire to want to visit your physical location focus heavily on your location what it has to offer create that sense of enjoyment. And if you are a restaurant you just need to show your food because we all know that food is amazing and quick selling if it looks yummy and good.  Okay, now, next thing we will discuss is getting social. And for those of you who are still scared of social media it is going if it's it is a thing you really need to be out there. As far as using social media because that's called cross promoting so we'll talk about that in a second. So as far as cross promoting. Don't underestimate the power of social media. You want to have your social buttons on your website, which leads to your social medias. So as far as social media you also want to be putting your website so that people can come from the social media to your website. So it's really important those are your social media icons but I'm also going to discuss about social media sharing and this is something that's very very under looked on websites, many times. So they shouldn't overpower your website, you should keep them in an easy to spot location but keep it simple. So let's take a look at the header with a question mark. This was years ago everybody put their social media up in their headers but then the new rules are do you really want people to come to your website and then go right off your website so now they are saying it's the best place to put it in the footer. So that depends because if you have a huge social media following maybe you do want it in your header so that depends but whatever you do just make sure that they do have an easy way to get back to your website. Sometimes you can use those floating sidebars as well but it's really really good and make sure that you are cross promoting from both ways back and forth. Okay. Next. Okay, so oh and by the way make sure that when you do open them you open them in a new page you know by using the target equals blank. That way if they ever do close out of the social media they are back on your website. Okay, so social media sharing icons. When you're selling a product or a service you may have seen or even for you bloggers you may have seen the social media share icon so sometimes that will entail a little envelope or you can just email it or if you want to share it on your social media. This is huge because if somebody saw something on your website that they liked and they want to share it. That's incredible I mean by not having these share tools on your products or your blogs or whatever it is you could be losing out on somebody sharing it to their hundreds or thousands of followers and and potentially a lot of people seeing it so it's really really really important for improving customer experience for increasing brand exposure and just improving the reach to your target market. Okay, now as far as I get asked this a lot social media sharing plugins for WordPress. Here's a couple that I recommend summer free summer paid. If you install these plugins you will be able to generate those share buttons that I just showed you it's super easy to follow. I can't really say one is better than the other they all have different features and again some of them are are paid or or you have to pay for the upgraded version so try these out and see what works for you there. Another thing we're going to discuss is chat boxes another really great way to get people to engage on your website. So four things that live chat will actually do for your business so number one answering questions, it will help clients convert faster. You can absolutely outshine your competition because not everybody is using them, and it enables you to work from anywhere pretty much. It's a really really nice thought nowadays. Little picture just to back it up because I actually do that when I'm on vacation. Okay, so now we're going to talk about some rules for using some chat boxes on your website. A couple things that are overlooked I know it sounds some of these sound pretty obvious but they're not always so make sure it's automated when you're away, because if you leave a chat box open and somebody does come on your website there's nobody is there to answer it so make sure that you do have one of those messages that pops up or you turn it off and it's on autopilot whatever you do. Sometimes it helps to have some of the frequently asked questions in autopilot some chat boxes will actually do that. So like if somebody pops a question like where are you located. Sometimes it just automatically pops up or if it asks about something that's standard information hours of operation anything like that make sure that that's populated in there as well. And then try also to use a real photo, instead of, you know, an annoying bots because they like to know that they are talking to a human and it also personalizes it a little bit more when they know who they are talking to. So for those of you who still don't know what mobile responsive is, you have to make sure that today's websites are all mobile responsive. That should have been done years ago but it's there's a lot of reasons today why it has to be mobile responsive. So first of all, here's an image of a non responsive versus a responsive and the general rule is if you, if your clients still have to use their fingers to read into it to enlarge it. Basically it's not responsive. So, in other words, I'll give you a couple of really good reasons here. So responsive has to adapt to any screen size it gives your users the best seamless experience. It absolutely will help improve the SEO because Google gives preference, obviously to the responsive websites and it'll improve your bounce rate because once again we talked about that bounce rate. So if the clients have to start using all these fingers to go each page and start zooming in, they will more than likely leave the website. And just to throw in a little bit of humor, if that's not enough reason. We say, let's give them a better experience because in 2022, the survey showed that 75% of the Americans do bring their phones to the restroom so you may as well give them a positive experience. On a serious note though, Google will flag the website with that message that's marked in red saying right there your page is not mobile friendly and then a lot of people will immediately bounce off it so you really should take care of that as quickly as you can for your clients websites. Now we're going to talk a little bit about testimonials because testimonials can work really really well for you. Okay, just a little statistic there that one happy customer will tell an average of nine people about their experience with you. And then on the flip side, which we all know there's always these people out there that love to do that is for one complaint will actually spread to 26 people. So we definitely want to take reviews. Very, very seriously. Okay, and there's a couple of ways that I recommend displaying reviews on your website. You want to highlight one per week in a prominent area of your website whether it's the homepage whether it's on a testimonials page. What we need to do nowadays we talked about video before is that people give special attention to video reviews so even if it's with your phone you don't need any expensive video equipment. If you have a client that's really happy with you always ask them would you be willing to do a 30 second testimonial and post that on your website because that is absolute authentication and it's real and it's not just a bunch of words so I do love to see video testimonials have maybe a scrolling carousel of the testimonials and update them so you keep it interesting. And never use too many I have a client that puts 30 testimonials on a scroll or no one is going to get past the fourth or fifth one so make sure that, again, you're mindful of how many people are going to be staying on the website and how long. We're going to talk about cross promoting the reviews. There are some plugins out there that will actually embed some Google and Yelp reviews on your website. There's a plus and a minus side to using that so just be very careful with that. You can manually pick your top reviews and then just you know make sure that you put a few of them on your website and then you can always say see the rest of our reviews and send them out there to Yelp or Google. Make sure that you encourage and ask for reviews from your clients today Google reviews absolutely help drive traffic to your website. Because Google is coming up with a new logarithm now where you have to have a minimum of 20 reviews to be relevant. So very, very important make sure that you try to get to at least 20 Google reviews it's very important for your website. And as far as reviews go, always thank them with a response on your review so when you do get a review. It's a really really nice thing to go back and say, thank you so much. It was a pleasure working with you. Believe it or not a public review will thank you for a client who just did that for you it really does go a long way and they do get a notification that you responded so it's really important that you do that as well. And on the flip side because this is just as important, especially, especially respond to negative reviews. First of all don't take it personally I know that when you get a bad review, you know, sometimes people just want to vent respond with a kind statement, because it shows a potential to other clients how you handle that situation so even if it's something we're sorry you had this experience will contact you let's see how we can make this right.  And believe me that does go a long way. Okay. Next we're going to talk about offering rewards and incentives for referrals. This is something that maybe 10% of the entire population does but it's another thing that does go a long way for offering things for your website, because who likes free stuff. Everybody likes free stuff right chances are that you're already getting referrals from your clients so why not show some kind of appreciation and then boost your chances, even higher. So I'm going to show you guys a couple of reward incentives here, there's tons of referral programs out there. They can skyrocket your business fast with the right incentive. So some of the best benefits in offering rewards and incentives. You can offer new clients for a really low pay for performance cost. You can also bring in high quality clients because referred clients will spend about 25% more with your products and services. And it's a proven track record of success that all the large companies are doing so you definitely want to jump on board with that. The question is what kinds of incentives or rewards should I offer. So the answer to that question is, you need to think about who your client is and what type of reward would they enjoy so thinking about something that you can do for your clients. That's the best way to come up with a decision about what type of offers and incentives to reward. I have a couple of ideas. I separated into the physical and non physical rewards because again everybody likes something different but physical reward examples would be gift cards like a store visa card it would be maybe a branded swag item. It could be a free product or service it could be, we get back to food again people love food especially brownies cookies or something like that. So on physical side, you can do a discount or coupons for a product or service. You can do, maybe a free upgrade to a product or service, possibly offer a free subscription. And some people just want a simple donation in their name to your clients favorite charity so all of these are different ways that you can absolutely make a statement with your clients or let them see that you are offering something amazing. I'm going to give a quick little bonus tip here because this is something that I just see all the time. We're all sending emails out, all of us. I can't tell you how many times I get these kinds of emails. So take a look for this really, really quick second and best regards with a name. Thank you with a name I see these types of emails all the time and this is once again such a wasted real estate because so many times when you send an email people still want to know okay who's sending me this email what what is it that they do. So use your signature the best way that you possibly can. This is super super important. I'll give you guys a classic example we had a huge conference at one of my children schools, and nobody really knew what everybody did because we were all new to the school. So I had a similar setup like this, where I had my, my picture and my name and my title and my social and everything on there. And it's incredible because somebody actually contacted me that I didn't even know from my child's class saying I didn't know that you do web design, I'm actually looking for a website and it was just really, really cool. So, you know, make sure that all your emails are branded the same way that your website is make sure that you put all that on there outlook, whether you use outlet outlook or Gmail, I'm not quite sure how it works on Gmail because I use outlook but outlook definitely has some softwares that can connect to that and do this for you. Unless you know how to do it yourself which some people do so that's a lot easier. So, as far as the email signatures. Yes, can increase user interest by 25%. Here's the words if you want to Google it it's called email signature generator, or create email signature and you will get a slew of options on how to do this on all the different platforms but if you're not doing it and you just have your name absolutely make sure that you do that. So, these are my final closing thoughts. Just think about how many of you picked up a couple of tips here I know I threw a lot at you and I have so many different presentations that I do so I kind of took a little bit out of all of them and just combine them into one. And how many of these have you thought about but you just haven't applied yet but hopefully you will now. That's a really good thing that's my ultimate satisfaction for doing these. These presentations I get a lot of emails that say I, I took your advice and I did this and now I have this so I absolutely love to hear that I love feedback. So here is my final information if you have any questions, comments, feedback, please go to my website or just go ahead and scan that barcode and I would be happy to respond ASAP with any questions or comments that you guys have. So that's it for me. Thank you. Thanks Lee. You are welcome. So scanning the chat here for some questions. I'm not recalling the context here. So Jean asked a question of if you can give examples of third party elements. This was pretty early on. Jean if you want to provide a little bit more context around that question. Yes. I'll give you a minute there. I have a question from Valerie what if my website video had a 56% increase in viewers. The video is about local design services. I'm not sure. Fantastic. Oh, maybe that's what she's asking is like is that a good amount. Absolutely. Absolutely. So it was design services you said. Yeah, the video is about local design services. Okay, so especially if it's informational and it's educational and people can learn out of it but that's an amazing number so congrats and kudos on that video. Oh, I think we have a couple more questions in here. What are your thoughts about Gutenberg. No comment.  And again, I won't say something is bad or good because I know a lot of people using a lot of people love it, not my cup of tea, but I'll be happy to discuss that. Are there any particular WordPress themes that you recommend. There are quite a few good ones out there and again, I would love to do a brain picking session so please do contact me who was it that asked that. Daniel Daniel FD. Okay, so yeah Daniel please feel free to contact me. I will tell you what I use personally I love Elementor and Elementor comes with a free theme that is called. Oh, it's called Hello. It's actually called Hello and it's one of the first ones that will pop up when you're searching for themes. It's very lightweight. It's definitely a safe theme because they work hand in hand with with the software so I like the Hello theme that's what I use in 99% of my projects but again, there's a lot of other good ones out there and my other fellow web designers may or may not agree with that but contact me and I'll give you the ups and downs of quite a few of them. Thank you. A little bit more from Valerie. She was wondering, she wasn't getting seeing any clients still with that 56% increase in viewers. And so she was wondering how she could have such a positive video reaction without clients. And this video is on your website. I just want to clarify that or is it strictly on YouTube. And she does refer to what if my website video had a 56% increase in viewers videos. Yeah, still no clients. Okay. Yeah, it's on the contact page of the website. So, there could once again could be a lot of reasons for that. And again, I'll be happy to take a look at your actual website if you want to just contact me and then we'll do like a little brain picking session I could probably look at other things on your website. It's hard to say without seeing your website there could be some suggestions I could make for you. Thank you. What else do we have here. Oh, Jean mentioned for site speed number four was too many elements on the page, especially third party elements. What was that. So that was the question that she was asking about giving examples of third party elements. So, you know, a lot of times I will see things like just for example, a video being pulled from YouTube which obviously that's what you want to do but then they have 10 more videos, all pulling from YouTube and then they have a chat box which is pulling from another place and sometimes people just have third party elements that they embed or they're doing iFrames which that's really old school, for the most part but you know pulling things from other websites or other locations and constantly sharing and things like that so again all those elements together can cause a website to really go slow. Gotcha. Did I miss any other questions. So there was a question of about your your content if this will be if this is shared in any way online. I do have some some feedback that some of a lot of the slides weren't accessible and there were were some issues seeing the content on there so curious if there's a way to get the, like the the text or the content. Yeah, I can probably get you something right after this so absolutely. And we're at time, but there's just one last question here from Daniel, any tool that helps do testing, or just do it live and see how it goes. Testing of what we discussed a lot of things. Yeah, or. What way do you like to test for Daniel testing, see what works on the site. Oh, you're talking about plugins. Testing. Oh, well, if you're talking about compatibility which I think that's what you're talking about. It's a lot of trial and error, a lot, because different. And sometimes this is that I love designing websites but when it comes to the technical stuff. Big changes to the site. Okay. Oh, well somebody did give a suggestion there. I would love to talk to you about that too because again there's certain ways that I can take this. There's no 100% foolproof tool. I found that a lot of times you just have to be mindful from the very beginning, what you're installing what you're using and how these plugins interact with each other, as far as the speed as far as your content as far as everything it's it's a little bit of all these components working together it's like one big machine with a lot of gears so if something goes wrong when something does go wrong we really have to start disabling this plug in or enabling that plug in and we just have to check and see what's causing whatever it is to go wrong and then sometimes it's like it was this all along so Yeah, I see Mark Andrews sharing a couple of resources in the chat. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you Mark Andrew. I missed one question from Ray so thank you Misty for surfacing that Ray mentioned that he's only been able to share his blog post recently to Twitter. Are you aware that Facebook and LinkedIn no longer allow WordPress to share directly from WordPress. No, no, because just last night I was recommending some websites to people as well so as soon as I put the links in it was taking them right to the website is there something I'm missing. Yeah, I'm not sure. More context here. She mentions a site that she reviewed just had 14 Facebook trackers it was a plugin to show Facebook feeds. Okay. God I love it how everybody just and this is great I want to save this chat to. Oh yeah folks want to save the chat. You can click on the three dots in the chat window to open up a menu to save the chat and text file locally. It's all one big learning environment and we all learn from each other constantly it's amazing at the WordPress conference it was the same we were all learning from each other and sharing feedback it was incredible. It's great. Yeah I know that there are some plugins that are losing, like, especially like Twitter plugins that are losing like access to like to the API, basically so I think that's. Or that's why like some of that content hasn't been able to be brought in from Twitter, and or sharing to Twitter. Yeah, that's unfortunate but um, all right so we were over time but I hope we addressed every question if we did not. You can reach out, you know through the meetup group or through the contact information that we shared earlier. Again, we'll be sharing the recording within the next 24 hours on WordPress dot TV. And that's it from us. So yeah thank you everyone, and we'll see you next time. Thanks everyone.


The study examined seasonal and spatial relationships between land surface phenology and atmospheric components of five teleconnection patterns over three oceans to assess predictability of North American vegetation activity based on knowledge of atmospheric teleconnection indices. Autumn to winter composites of the Southern Oscillation Index, SOI, were strongly correlated with start-up growing season timing, especially in the Pacific Northwest. The two leading modes of North Pacific variability were significantly correlated with start-up growing season timing across much of Southern Canada and the upper Great Lakes. Regression models based on these Pacific teleconnections were skillful predictors of spring phenology across an east-west swath of temperate and boreal North America, between 40°N and 60°N. The study suggests that knowledge of atmospheric conditions over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans increases the predictability of North American spring phenology and a more robust consideration of the complexity of the atmospheric circulation system is an important step towards accurate forecasts of vegetation activity. This article was offered by Matthew P. Dannenberg, Erica K. Wise, Mark Janko, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


Hi, my name is Viljica. If you don't know me, I make acting related videos all of the time. I have so many videos on my channel that you can go check out. I would really appreciate it if you subscribed. If you're not subscribed yet and like this video and at the end of every video, I do feature another channel. So if you're interested in me featuring your channel, leave me a comment, like this video, subscribe, and I will do so. Today, I want to make a voiceover demo reel, specifically a commercial voiceover demo reel in English. A few years ago, I made this video and I made a reel in English and in Spanish for voiceovers because I was getting a few jobs and I thought, well, let me make a reel so I can get more jobs. And since then, I haven't done very much voiceover. I mostly do on camera acting, but I'm noticing that my agency in San Francisco sends me a lot of voiceover auditions for commercials specifically. So I thought I should make a commercial voiceover demo reel and send it over to them and update all of my casting websites with this new voiceover so maybe I can book some jobs. And specifically, I am basing these off of jobs that casting calls that my agents have sent me recently or in the past. So I'm going to show you how I made my scripts, how I'm recording it, and then I'm going to upload it and show you guys. And of course, I'm going to upload the audio only to my casting websites and send them to my agents. First, let's go over the scripts that I made up. So I did write these myself and I got inspiration from auditions that I have had in the past or commercials in general that I have heard. And I went to YouTube and just searched old radio commercials, radio commercials in general and listened to a bunch of commercials because a lot of them do have a voiceover on top of whatever image they're showing you. And I wanted to hear different ones to see which ones I usually get the auditions request from my agents for. And then I wanted to mimic those. So for mine, I got three main categories within the commercial voiceovers. The first one is presentational. They're trying to sell you something. They're trying to show you how great their product is. The second one is friendly. This one I get all of the time for audition. So it's as if you were talking to a friend. And then the third one is something that I know I need coaching on for a voiceover and acting in general. But that dry sarcasm that you hear all of the time, if you guys have ever seen the purple commercials, they do a lot of dry sarcastic commercials. So I'm going to try and do those three and I did, I did write up a script for all three of them. For this one, I want it to be around 30 seconds. So I wrote one line for each of my commercial categories. And then I'm going to send it over to my agent, see what they think and see if it's usable for them. And if they think it's fine, then I will leave it as is. If they want me to change it or make it longer, I will of course make those edits. But for now, I wrote one line for each one for the presentational one. I did want it to be like those commercials that you always heard on the radio back in before the early before 2010, I would say is when a lot of us actually listened to the radio and not just podcast. So for the first one, I said, so come and visit us today in store or choose curbside pickup and have the best sleep you've ever had. So that's a mattress commercial, a commercial. And of course, right now, I'm not doing the voices. I'll show you guys the voices once I'm actually recording it. But that's the line I came up for it. For this presentational one, I did want it to be something, a commercial that you could hear on the radio or you might hear it as a voiceover for some kind of mattress company. I remember growing up, I used to hear a lot of sleep train mattress commercial. I think it was this sleep train mattress. And you'll notice in all of these, I'm not saying any brand names because I don't want to make a commercial about Doritos or Best Buy or something like that because I didn't actually get hired by them. And I don't want to confuse anybody that's listening to my reel to think, oh, she already did a voiceover for Best Buy. So we don't want to hire her for fries. So for my made up scripts, I did not put any names and I did get inspiration, like have the best sleep you've ever had from other mattress commercials because that's pretty much what they always say in those mattress commercials. And then for the friendly one, I want it to be somebody very sympathetic. It's like a friend that is telling you, giving you advice or really listening to you. So for that one, I put your small business, it can be hard to ask for help when everyone else needs it. That's where we come in. That's where we come in. We're here to help. And then for the comedic dry one, I was having a lot of trouble writing these because I don't see myself as a writer that much for this comedic dry one. This is the one that I really want to get good at because I get this type of audition for on camera and voiceover all of the time. I really want to book one soon because it seems like so much fun. And this is definitely one of the things I'm going to work on when I get a voiceover coach and an acting coach right now. I'm in an acting class. So right now I have to wait until this acting class is done and then see when I have money to allocate to the next course. But I would love for my next course to be voiceover related. For the comedic dry one, my script is avoid the anti-maskers and download our app now and have dinner on the table before they can say make America great again. These you can see I'm trying to make them very now. So putting in the curbside pickup, putting MAGA, it's very now because I'm making this. I can change it if my agents tell me, Hey, can you make an updated one? Or can you change it? We don't like it. I can change it because I'm making this myself. And of course the best thing you could do is actually have a professional team making your demo reels, your voiceover reels. But I'm doing this because I need to update my voiceover reel and I don't have the money right now to hire a whole team to record it and to edit it and to direct it and to just help me out with the whole process.  I'm hoping to develop the quality of recordings that I can do at home soon. So I can do more voiceover work at home and of course get some training. So let's let's go record this. Something I used to do when I lived in a tiny, tiny studio was simply put this blanket over me when I was doing voiceover auditions and because my computer is right here and I no longer have a laptop so that I can take into the closet with me. I'm going to surround myself with this blanket while I record this. The computer's right there. But let's try it and let's see how it sounds. I'm just going to put this all over all around the um the table because the table I have the desk I have is a glass. So I'm going to put the blanket around everything and then click record and um see if this works. Oh my goodness it is getting hot. It's I recorded my audio so now I'm going to edit it and um I'll go ahead and show it to you guys. I didn't use much to record this. I used the blanket to make sure that it was all around and no sound was bouncing off of anything that made it sound it weird. It made it sound weird. It didn't sound perfect but it was also pretty good. So I'm happy with the way it came out and what I used was this GXL 2400 USB mic and this small tripod that I've had for a long time. I just went ahead and attached it and this pop filter just in case and I recorded it on QuickTime Player. I just searched QuickTime Player on my Mac computer. If you guys have Apple you can just search it and click file and then new audio recording and you will be able to record some audio. So come and visit us today in store or choose curbside pickup and have the best sleep you've ever had.  It can be hard to ask for help when everyone else needs it too. That's where we come in. We're here to help avoid the anti-maskers. Download our app now and have dinner on the table before they can say make America great again. And it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun recording it and it was even more fun writing it coming up with those ideas. But thank you so much for watching and I will see you guys tomorrow at the end of every video I feature another channel. This is today's feature. If you would like to be featured on my next video make sure you're subscribed like this video and leave me a comment.


One of the heroes Chris sale joining us now and Chris first of all you gotta your your kids are adorable You tell us who's with you right now if you can hold the mic Oldest son Rylan and my youngest son bracing. What's up guys? How y'all doing? Well, he's working on he's gonna get there.  It's unreal if I would probably be able to tell you more if I had a voice But I've been yelling a lot the last couple days So it's just you work your entire life and You know your parents driving you around when you're a kid my dad throwing endless amounts of baseballs at me and You know my wife with me, you know through the thick and thin and be sitting here with my two boys right now Is there's not a better feeling on the planet? Talk about Brianna.  How good does that feel right there? It was the best, you know, I was I was talking to one of my buddies That was in that Chicago bullpen with me Sergio Santos and I was scheduled I was gonna start this game and everyone thought that DP got the nod. He's like go get him. I said, we're going old school tonight I'm going back to the pen and he loved it So it was it's just a surreal moment. This is you know, there's a lot of blood sweat and tears from Every player on the bench every player on that roster coaches medical staff Everybody everybody put their heart and soul into this and here we are. That's great, Chris I'm I want to emphasize on a few things and then I'm gonna end up asking you a question I remember walking in through into the clubhouse and spring training And watching you guys the way you guys new guys coming in guys that were there already and That good chemistry going on since spring training. I saw that in the spring training I was a guy that I love Having a team that was together and the minute I walk in the spring training this year for first time I saw that walking in I saw the relationship with you and the rest of the pitching staff and the bullpen I saw how you guys get along. I saw you guys I sit down in a in a bench during the spring training game and I saw the communication in between all of you now I would like you to tell me about their conversation between you and David Price That one far along during the playoff I mean he stepped up big and that's like what you said. It's it's chemistry. It's it's focus. It's it's hard work It's determination Every single person every single player coach put everything they had into this and like you said, you know We spring training rolls around. We're playing golf together. We we go on the road.  I saw you start so many great games in Chicago I just want to know how good does it feel right now because this maturation of you has been amazing And I was really sad when you left Chicago because I knew you were true ace and I knew eventually you would be the champion How is it all going right now? You taking all this in? It's it's hard to there you go It's hard to you know, I mean I like I was telling you earlier at I threw the last pitch And the next thing I know Vasquez in my arms and it's like we just won the World Series, you know it's it's hard to process all of that, you know in a couple minutes, but It's it's all worth it all the all the blood sweat and the tears the hard work the flights the travel everything It's this moment right there's amazing. You have earned it. Hey Chris. I have one for Rylan. Can I ask you one? How cool was your dad right now? Hey Chris one quick thing you made before really you go you talked about your voice and we have you know What's in video?  Hey, you know the last thing I want to tell you is I'm so happy that you start the season in the month and you finish the worst series in the month Congratulations, but congrats Chris very nice. Congratulations Chris Chris sale Boy listen a couple young reporters are young pitchers there. We're not sure. We'll see


So in the most recent breakdown that glitch happens and a lot of people were saying matrix moment, matrix moment, whoa glitch. And when I say a lot of people, a lot of people were wondering what the hell did I just see? Why did the background change? What was that? What was it? This guy went on a whole scavenger hunt and trying to figure it out and Bob says, what happened at 213? This is the second John Boy video where I've seen the entire background change while the foreground stays the same. I'll tell you, I use all the broadcasts and I stitch them together. So this was the socks broadcast. It's this angle, then that angle. The rays broadcast is this angle the whole time. I like the socks broadcast better because it's more zoomed in, but I don't like this shot because I can't see his lips. So what I do is I take the socks broadcast where I can start. I punch in so his lips are easier. I find an object, I square it up. I used his ear. Then I go to the rays. I find that same object. I put it in line like a puzzle piece and then you have your stitch so the foreground stays the same. You guys can follow along but the background changes. That's all I added all the break.