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This Meeting Could've Been a Podcast drops you smack dab in the middle of the closed-door sessions where Jess Cook (Head of Marketing) and Joshua Perk (CEO) are working to turn their company, Vector, into B2B marketing’s next big thing.
In each episode, they tackle a real, strategic decision together—"Should we hire an agency?", "Should we push free trials or demos?", "What are we going to do with all the swag Josh bought?!"—dishing out pros, cons, knowns, unknowns, wins, challenges, and stories along the way.
Come for the big picture strategy and day-to-day tactics, stay for the jokes that make HR nervous.
[00:00:00] Josh: Hey, Jess, do you have a second?
[00:00:01] Jess: I sure do. Jess,
[00:00:02] Josh: our current website
[00:00:03] Jess: mm-hmm.
[00:00:04] Josh: Is atrocious.
[00:00:06] Jess: Okay. You built that.
[00:00:09] Josh: I, that, that's not what we're talking about right now. Okay? Mm-hmm. But I know in the past we've talked about redesigning it. I, let's actually do it this time for real, for real, for real.
[00:00:17] Jess: Let's do it.
[00:00:17] Jess: Let's go.
[00:00:24] Jess: Hey, Josh. Remember last season when you wanted to redesign the site? And I said, no.
[00:00:28] Josh: Yeah, I remember that.
[00:00:30] Jess: And then we're doing this repositioning and I came to you and I was like, I think we need to redesign the site,
[00:00:35] Josh: which was like my idea, but you just regurgitated it back to me like six months ago. Yeah.
[00:00:39] Jess: I mansplained your man idea back
[00:00:40] Josh: to you. I bet.
[00:00:42] Jess: Uno, reverse. Uno. Reverse. I'm a good one.
[00:00:48] Josh: Yeah, I do remember that. Uhhuh. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 'cause you're just so much wiser than me. Well, hey,
[00:00:53] Jess: it was actually time, this time.
[00:00:54] Josh: Why this time versus when I said it?
[00:00:58] Jess: Well, when you said [00:01:00] it, you said it
[00:01:02] Josh: weird. My wife says the same thing.
[00:01:05] Jess: No. This time around, like we are actually going through this repositioning.
[00:01:09] Josh: Yeah.
[00:01:10] Jess: And is a really good opportunity. We have to change the copy on the site anyway, like the whole narrative is changing. And so with that, it felt like the design system, what we were reflecting on, the website needed to evolve as well. So it just felt like. This is the right time. This is when we actually need to do it.
[00:01:28] Jess: It feels like a
[00:01:28] Josh: really fancy way of saying like the new marketing leader came in and like the first thing she does is reads on the website. Mm. Is that what actually happened?
[00:01:35] Jess: No, I'm a good like six, eight months in now. Thanks. No one's the first thing.
[00:01:39] Josh: Okay. So I'm excited to talk about this because there was like the messaging Yeah.
[00:01:42] Josh: And like all that things that kind of like spurred it. Yeah. But there was also some like brand and design things that we were like, Ooh, this gives us the opportunity to fix like X, Y, and Z.
[00:01:51] Jess: Yeah.
[00:01:53] Josh: We were also known for like the brand. Yes. And I, I remember that being something [00:02:00] you and I spoke about a lot.
[00:02:01] Josh: It was like, okay, when we go through this process, like what do we wanna lose and what do we want to keep? So let's start there with design. Right? Yeah. There were things in the brand that we liked and didn't like. Like where, how did design process sort of roll out for us?
[00:02:13] Jess: Yeah. So, yeah, there's things that make us, us.
[00:02:17] Jess: Mm-hmm. Um, we have a lot of bright colors. The ghost obviously love our little ghostie. We killed
[00:02:22] Josh: him as part of the brand though. Right. The redesign.
[00:02:25] Jess: We will get to that cliffhanger.
[00:02:28] Josh: No, we can't leave him. No, we did not. We was the ghost
[00:02:32] Jess: man. Sorry. Little patience Josh. Sorry. That was like a really good, like that was gonna hook 'em and keep 'em.
[00:02:37] Jess: They would stop listening.
[00:02:38] Josh: That's why they listened,
[00:02:39] Jess: Josh. Okay, fine. We didn't kill Ghostie. God. Steal my thunder. Um,
[00:02:45] Josh: we're sitting in a set themed around Ghost right now, jet. I know you're right. Yeah.
[00:02:49] Jess: That's like when somebody like you think in the first episode of like a hot new show dies and you're like, well, what's the restless season gonna be like?
[00:02:56] Jess: Clearly they're coming back. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yeah. So no, we didn't kill Ghost. Good. [00:03:00] Um, so yeah, there's things that make us, us. Bright colors, ghosty. Mm-hmm. Um, I think our bold kind of tone voice. Yeah. Um, we use ghosty in a lot of like different scenarios as kind of shorthand for what the product does or what marketers do.
[00:03:17] Jess: Um, and so there was just a lot that we, we had going for us.
[00:03:21] Josh: Yeah.
[00:03:22] Jess: But at the same time, design is someone's first impression of your product. Yeah. What your website looks like. People assume that the same level of polish and thought is put into your product. Yes. And so we were at a point in the company's journey where it was like, we need to evolve that a bit.
[00:03:41] Jess: Yep. So the current site design, which as I say this, this episode is gonna come out and it's gonna actually be the old site design, so follow me here, but, um, was really brand heavy, which was great for the early, early stage of the company. Um, but there wasn't, it wasn't very product forward. Yeah. Like [00:04:00] it, we had a handful of kind of, uh, UI screenshots or abstractions.
[00:04:05] Jess: Yeah. But there wasn't any like story being told with product. Yes. In terms of like, this is kind of what this screen looks like where you do this and here's a screen that does this for you. Like those kinds of things. Connect the dots for people in terms of this product is a reality.
[00:04:21] Josh: Do you remember in season one you had like a clip go viral about how like, yeah.
[00:04:27] Josh: Some CEOs are dumb and they don't, they like bucket hats. So they don't like bucket hats. Do you remember that? Yes. And I was just like, yeah, they're so dumb. Like, imagine being so one track minded that like, that's all you think about when you approach me with the redesign. The only thing I cared about in the entire redesign was we have these gradients.
[00:04:47] Josh: Mm-hmm. Um. And I don't know if you know this, I named them like in our design systems, I don't think we reference them. So we have one that's called, uh, pink Limited. Okay. Which is like a pink to yellow gradient. Mm-hmm. It is currently, it won't be by the time this is out [00:05:00] anymore, but is currently the background of our site ID product page.
[00:05:03] Josh: Yep. Um. And then we have one called Blue Horizon, which is blue to yellow, which is the background of our intent page. And the only thing, when you said we're redesigning the website, I gave you all of the budget approval because the one thing I wanted fixed is those gradients don't look good with text on them.
[00:05:17] Josh: Mm-hmm. Everything else you're saying about like mature in the product forward, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Whatever those gradients to read them grads look awful with text on them.
[00:05:27] Jess: Well, okay. That's a great point. So there are things about our brand that we love.
[00:05:31] Josh: Yeah.
[00:05:31] Jess: There are things about our brand that don't give us a lot of flexibility.
[00:05:36] Jess: Yeah. But still people associate them with us. Yeah. Like the bright colors and the gradients. Yeah. But again, like you said, like they, they're tough to read Yeah. With text on them. And then there are things that like hold us back that maybe make us look a little bit. Less sophisticated than we actually are as a marketing team.
[00:05:54] Jess: Yep. Or, um, we will kind of hurt the perception of the product because it makes us look a little less [00:06:00] sophisticated. Yeah. And so to me, when you're doing a site redesign, those are the three things you really have to take a look at, which are. The things we wanna, we love and wanna keep the things that maybe don't give us enough flexibility, but feel still part of the brand.
[00:06:13] Jess: Yeah. And then the things that like, just have to go. Yeah. Like they're really painting us into a corner.
[00:06:17] Josh: I liked that you, you basically had, uh, before we kicked off the project, we kinda have these like, I dunno if you call it core value or at least this like statement where we're like, what we wanna achieve out of this is, is like one glow up the brand.
[00:06:29] Josh: Yep. I think that was the way you phrased it, which is like, keep the funness, like make it still very recognizably us. Yeah. Make it feel like a, like a fine glass of wine. Kind of was poured over it. Yeah. Yeah. So there was like just an
[00:06:40] Jess: AOL sprint, if you will. A little pitch on top. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:06:43] Josh: Um, so there was that, and then there was the, the storytelling element.
[00:06:47] Josh: Yeah. Which is like what, how does the copy and the messaging need to change for it? Um, and so yeah, you set these sort of guiding principles and then what happened?
[00:06:54] Jess: So we brought on a design agency
[00:06:57] Josh: Yep.
[00:06:57] Jess: Who they obviously specialize in [00:07:00] B2B websites.
[00:07:00] Josh: We used Oratory for this week. Oratory. Yeah.
[00:07:03] Jess: They're fantastic.
[00:07:05] Jess: Riley at Oratory is amazing, incredible designer. Um, and we like went for the whole like kitten caboodle, like Yes. Homepage. Yeah. But we also needed, obviously the rest of the site to kind of reflect this new design system. Yeah. So, uh, kind of the part of the, the project was. Homepage redesign plus, you know, kind of the internal core pages, all the product pages.
[00:07:29] Jess: New about us page, um, new demo and newsletter signup form, new blog landing, new blog article, uh, template. Right? Like all of the really critical pages. Yeah. Would get this really beautiful glow up and all kind of come up to the next level. Yeah. In the design system.
[00:07:46] Josh: Question. Yes. Answer honestly, I'm curious.
[00:07:49] Josh: Am I difficult to work with when it comes to brand?
[00:07:52] Jess: No,
[00:07:53] Josh: no.
[00:07:54] Jess: You, no, I, here's what I love. You have an opinion.
[00:07:57] Josh: Yeah.
[00:07:58] Jess: You care about [00:08:00] it.
[00:08:00] Josh: Yeah. A lot.
[00:08:01] Jess: A lot. Yeah. And that's important. Mm-hmm. Um, so no, you're not difficult at all. Okay. I actually think it's more difficult to work with people who. Don't care. Don't wanna invest in it.
[00:08:11] Jess: Yeah. But then have very strong opinions about what it should be.
[00:08:15] Josh: Mm, yeah. Yeah. That's fair. That
[00:08:17] Jess: is really hard.
[00:08:18] Josh: Yeah.
[00:08:18] Jess: Um, because typically what happens is it's their personal
[00:08:22] Josh: Yes.
[00:08:22] Jess: Opinions and preferences that come into play.
[00:08:25] Josh: Yeah. Um,
[00:08:26] Jess: they're not really thinking about. The brand itself or the people that we're trying to build an audience of?
[00:08:33] Josh: I was just fishing for compliments. I just curious. You were, yeah. Oh. Uh, no. 'cause sometimes I think I can be difficult. I feel like the, uh. We've talked about this before, a lot of people are like, oh my gosh, Josh gets marketing. On the flip side, I also feel like there's particular parts of marketing that I'm very anal about and like our brand and heck yes, and like how it feels and like I will annoy people.
[00:08:55] Josh: Like Allie will send me a slide deck and be like, Hey, can you review this? And like she means the [00:09:00] content, the content.
[00:09:02] Jess: And you're over here like, this color is not in our palette. This
[00:09:05] Josh: is not in our palette, and there's not 20 pixels of padding on your header. And, and she's like, no, thank you, but did
[00:09:12] Jess: you read it?
[00:09:12] Jess: But did you
[00:09:13] Josh: read it? I'm like, no, actually I didn't get that far. I was too distracted by how horrible it looked.
[00:09:19] Jess: Yeah, no, I don't think, I'd rather you have an opinion
[00:09:23] Josh: good
[00:09:23] Jess: than not, and then also try to change things.
[00:09:26] Josh: Yeah, that's fair.
[00:09:27] Jess: Yeah.
[00:09:27] Josh: Okay. So I was great to work with. Yeah, amazing. Who worked with Oratory saying Amazing.
[00:09:31] Josh: Okay. How did that,
[00:09:32] Jess: so, so the, the process with Oratory is, um. Really, uh, like fascinating and, and super helpful. So first it was kind of intake, right? So it was like we, uh, sit down and find the, the sites we really admire. Yeah. Um, and it could even just be, I love this one button. Yeah. On this. Site. Yeah. I really like their pricing page.
[00:09:55] Jess: Mm-hmm. Um, I love everything about this, their whole vibe, like anything in [00:10:00] between. Yeah. Those kind of three reference points and we pass those off to them as like, this is, this is kind of our vibe. This is what we like.
[00:10:06] Josh: Yeah.
[00:10:07] Jess: Um, and then we also sat down with them and just kind of like went through those to talk about like why we really liked them.
[00:10:15] Jess: Like what about it?
[00:10:16] Josh: I feel like that's the critical piece where you and I were talking about this yesterday where it's like the most important piece of feedback or like how to give feedback is being able to describe what you do or don't like about something or like having a preference of why, what you would like to see instead.
[00:10:29] Josh: And I think that. That you are particularly good at that, where you say, I like this page because of this animation on this thing. Yeah. And I think, um, for the design services or consultants, like, I think that's huge for them. Yeah. They can really start to get a sense of what you do and don't like.
[00:10:45] Jess: I think that's a great point.
[00:10:46] Jess: I think giving feedback on design can be really hard for non-designers. Mm-hmm. And not, you know, like, I'm not a designer, but I'm, I've worked very closely with a lot of designers as a copywriter. Yeah. And so learning to give feedback that's [00:11:00] helpful for a designer is a skill. Mm-hmm. Um, and so a lot of times you, yeah.
[00:11:04] Jess: It's like you'll look at something and be like, I don't know. I just don't like it. And you have to really figure out what it is about it. Yeah. It's, it's, the font just doesn't feel like. Us because it's maybe, you know, um, it's really blocky and I think of us as less, uh, kind of strict like that. Yeah. That feels really, you know, so I think it's, it, it's finding the words to kind of talk through.
[00:11:24] Jess: Yeah. Um, design feedback like that is really important. Yeah. So, yeah, I think when you're giving inspiration, it's the same thing. It's like, I love how they. Used color here, but subtly it's not overt. Mm-hmm. Right. It's like I get a sense of fun, but they're also, they know how to edit themselves, right? Yeah.
[00:11:40] Jess: So sometimes it can be verbose, like that design feedback doesn't have to be like, what's the exact way I need to say this? Like sometimes kind of telling Yeah. A little bit of word vomits. Okay.
[00:11:49] Josh: Yeah. And they did a great job sort of capturing all of that and, and boiling it down to like what our vibe was.
[00:11:54] Josh: Yes. Um, interesting enough, one of the things they ended up changing was some of our typography based off of that, [00:12:00] that feedback. Yeah.
[00:12:00] Jess: Well, so the next step was they took all that feedback back and, and we had a session with them, probably same session where we sat down and we did talk about the things about our brand we love.
[00:12:10] Jess: Mm-hmm. The things about our brand we're not so sure about, or kind of like holding us back, not giving us enough flexibility and the things about our brand where we're like, get rid of it. Mm-hmm. Uh, and so we kind of listed off what those few things were in each of those buckets, and so the next step was they came back with.
[00:12:25] Jess: Three, like they called them mood boards. Yeah. They were essentially like, this is a look and feel you could go with. Mm-hmm. It was complete with kind of typography, um, different ways to use color. Mm-hmm. Um, different, uh, elements of style. So, you know, like, uh, different shadowings on text or like maybe how a gradient might work in a certain panel.
[00:12:49] Jess: Yep. Um. And they had three of those. So, uh, and they kind of were in a range. So the one, the first one was as close to what we currently had [00:13:00] as possible. Yep. But like a step up. Yeah. A little bit more sophisticated in terms of design. A lot of gradient with the big blocky text on it again, but kind of this cool like, um, graffiti shadow behind it.
[00:13:13] Jess: Yeah. A lot of black. Yeah. Really kind of like heavy ness to it. Yeah. Still a cool look. The second one was, um, more of a more white space. Mm-hmm. Still a lot of color, but used, uh, more sparingly. Yeah. Um. Making sure that we were using like actual product image instead of like leaning too much on the, on the ghost as a crutch.
[00:13:35] Jess: Yep. When we should have been using product imagery. Yep. Um, a very different font. Mm-hmm. Maybe closer to what our, uh, logo font kind of looks like. Yeah. But not so matchy matchy. Just like a nice compliment to that. Yep. Um. We really loved in this one, the use of their gradient. Yes. They found a really clean way to use that gradient so it didn't feel so heavy.
[00:13:56] Jess: And so text didn't sit on it. Yes. That was kinda nice. [00:14:00] And then we had a third option that was like a lot of white space. Yes. Very sparingly. Used in color.
[00:14:06] Josh: That one was just like really simple, like you said white. Yeah. I don't know how to describe it any better than you already did. Yeah. Which is just like no color.
[00:14:13] Josh: Very basic, very clean, very modern. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:14:15] Jess: Yeah. Yeah, this third one almost took it too far, right? Yeah. Where it was just like, it was so stark. Um, it just didn't feel like us anymore. It
[00:14:23] Josh: lost the spirit of the brand. It did, yeah. A little bit.
[00:14:26] Jess: Um, and so where we landed was that middle space. Yeah. Like we immediately gravitated toward that.
[00:14:31] Josh: And what was cool is when you brought it to me, you, you always do this whenever we have to make like collective feedback. You have an opinion. Mm-hmm. You've already made up your mind. And then you bring it to me and you say like, you tell me what you think. Right. And that way we can kinda do like the 1, 2, 3, like what do we think kind of thing.
[00:14:47] Josh: Um, and we both agreed Yeah. That the middle one was like, just hit all the marks for us.
[00:14:52] Jess: Yes. Yeah. It, it like. Forced us to, um, go a little further than we would have ourselves, but not [00:15:00] so far that it kind of stripped away like the things that we loved.
[00:15:02] Josh: Yeah, it was very clean, very
[00:15:03] Jess: modern. Yeah.
[00:15:04] Josh: Yeah. So if
[00:15:04] Jess: you go to our website today, that's the design that you'll see.
[00:15:07] Jess: Um, but the next step after those mood boards, those concepts was. To take that look and apply it to all of the wire frames. Mm. So kind of ahead of this, like in tandem, while we were looking at these mood boards and, and trying to decide which design system we wanted to move forward with, there were also wire frame templates, uh, kind of being built in the background.
[00:15:30] Jess: And we, you know, Alex and I would go through and kind of comment on like, love this. Don't probably need this at launch, but would like to build it. We can hide it. Yep. Um, on the blog article page, for example, I wanted like a sticky, um, table of contents that when you clicked on, uh, one of the H twos, it would actually drop you to that section in the blog post.
[00:15:52] Jess: Just get people to the things they wanna see faster. Yep. There were UI elements inside of the wire frames that we wanted to add on. So once [00:16:00] we kind of got through that. Then the design was applied.
[00:16:02] Josh: Cool. And
[00:16:03] Jess: it was so fun to like see that all come to life. Like these black and white wire frames now have all of this color applied and the ghosts in there.
[00:16:10] Jess: So cool. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:16:11] Josh: There's these like, um, uh, like aha moments in marketing and I think every department of marketing has different aha moments. Yeah. Whether it's like hitting go on a campaign or a blog or whatever, that aha moment just never gets old of like, and here it is. Here's what it's gonna look like.
[00:16:26] Josh: It's the best.
[00:16:27] Jess: I know, like, yeah, like, ooh, I do like the, yeah, like the Mr. Burns. Like, ugh, the finger clicking together, it makes me so happy. Yep. Um, so yeah, so then it's really, from there, it's a lot of just. Are all of these things, right? Like are, it's this design coming together the way we want it to, spacing, we're starting to flow in content.
[00:16:49] Jess: Um, as Oratory is working on, you know, actually like creating the designs, Alex and I in the background, like actually writing the content that's gonna go into them. 'cause this was another piece of it was. [00:17:00] This new repositioning, like we kind of built a new site map. Yeah. We had new pricing and packaging.
[00:17:07] Jess: We had two new product pages we didn't have before. One for. Reveal, which is the kind of lower tier pricing package. Yeah. And one for Target, which is the higher, uh, pricing package. Um,
[00:17:20] Josh: can we tangent here for a second on this? Yeah. Yes. 'cause I think this was one of those like, um, things I didn't understand of like, yeah.
[00:17:27] Josh: Build a new website, get a Wix template, throw it up. Right. Yeah. The, the, one of the largest parts of figuring out what this website should look like was. Actually hidden inside of our pricing and packaging research. Yes. Right. Alex spent a bunch of time and she worked with this incredible guy named Keith that was, uh, I think he runs pricing and packaging for LinkedIn.
[00:17:45] Josh: Yeah. And he had run 'em at a couple other places as well, and he, he really helped us and, and Alex helped us figure out. One, what kind of pricing should we have? Right? Yeah. Do we have like Goldilocks pricing where it's like, it's all the same offering, but it's like good, better, [00:18:00] best sort of thing? Yeah. Um, or for us, what we landed on was more like storybook pricing.
[00:18:04] Josh: Yeah. Where we have like these two products, but they, um, they go well to together. Or you mature from one to the other. Yeah. If you wanna. Start with de anonymizing who's clicking your ads? You can start in this smaller plan for Reveal
[00:18:15] Jess: Yeah. Kind of chapters of a book. Exactly.
[00:18:17] Josh: Yeah. And then furthermore, it was like, okay, if you have chapters of the book, like how do you capture different levels of value inside of that?
[00:18:23] Josh: And so what is, you know, what is the pricing um, lever that's going to allow 80% of your customers to get value in each of the plans? And then how do you expand from there? Yeah. Like in usage based or value based pricing. And so she was able to go figure out all of that stuff. We're able to bring that back to the website exercise to say, Ooh, we now need to have the website tell the story.
[00:18:44] Josh: Yes. That the pricing and packaging is going to, which led you going from, if I remember correctly, the, the. Current website, which is the old website when this comes out, was sort of, um, feature based, right? Yes. You had the homepage and you click into features.
[00:18:56] Jess: Yep.
[00:18:57] Josh: But you needed it to be what [00:19:00] products based.
[00:19:00] Josh: Yeah.
[00:19:01] Jess: So we then, now currently the new site has like a product kind of header with two product pages. One for each of those pricing packages. And then we also do have, still have feature pages, but we just evolved them. Yeah. So, um, we worked with our SEO agency to make sure that like, do the URLs we currently have, should we keep those?
[00:19:20] Jess: Mm-hmm. Is there enough SEO like power in them to keep them? Yeah. Or is it, should we change them because this new key word with, because of this new positioning actually makes sense. Right. Yeah. This is like, and it's mind boggling. Like, when we started the design, I was in the same, the redesign, I was in the same boat where I'm like.
[00:19:38] Jess: Well, we'll just like apply it and we'll be good. Right. Success, you kind of, you kind of forget all of the little things if you're telling the full, cohesive story that has to happen. Yeah. To make the site do what it needs to do to tell that story. How
[00:19:50] Josh: do marketers educate their leadership team on that?
[00:19:54] Josh: Because it's so easy for me to to be like. It's a website, right? Yeah. Just get the [00:20:00] website up, move on to all the other things you're working on, right? And you're like, dude, SEO, like what pages we already have. Uh, we don't have product pages today. We need to figure out pricing and packaging. How can a marketing leader, like help their leadership team understand that these things are much harder than they appear on the surface?
[00:20:17] Jess: Yeah. I mean, I think for me it was like I wanted to bring you along on the journey, right? Yeah. So to show my work every step of the way. So when I had a site map figured out, I brought that to you. Yeah. And I was like, this is how I'm thinking of this. Yeah. And I walked you through the whole thing of like, okay, how it is today is this, and this is why it's gonna look different.
[00:20:36] Jess: Instead of five feature pages, we're now going to have. Two product pages.
[00:20:40] Josh: Yeah.
[00:20:40] Jess: We'll have five feature pages, but they're gonna be slightly different because these are, we're focused on this one use case.
[00:20:46] Josh: Yeah.
[00:20:46] Jess: So I, I, you know, and then the next step was like, okay, now that we have that, here's like the actual wire frames with the content.
[00:20:53] Jess: Mm-hmm. I even think, I was like, Hey, do you wanna review this or are you just like, no, go do it. Yeah. Um, and of course. [00:21:00] Thankfully, you're like, no, just go do it. Yeah. Um, which is amazing. Some CEOs are like, no, I wanna see everything. Yeah.
[00:21:06] Josh: I think communicating your work and showing the work along the way is so, um, helpful to, to, to like justify the value of a team.
[00:21:15] Josh: Yeah. As a total aside, do you know this is, this is fun. Fact is gonna come out of like left field for you. Do you know where most choking victims die?
[00:21:23] Jess: What? Oh, home?
[00:21:25] Josh: No, in the bathroom.
[00:21:26] Jess: What? So
[00:21:27] Josh: like in the bathroom, like when someone chokes at a restaurant. Okay, this just bear with me. This is a good one.
[00:21:31] Josh: Okay. This is like weird and like, sorry that we're like segway segwaying here. But really interesting like lesson here for like work when people start to choke in a restaurant, most people are embarrassed,
[00:21:41] Jess: okay?
[00:21:41] Josh: That they're choking. Okay? They go into the bathroom, okay? Where they can't get help.
[00:21:45] Jess: Yeah.
[00:21:45] Josh: So they don't tell anybody about it.
[00:21:46] Josh: Okay. The reality is if like you tell people along the way, like, I'm struggling with this or I'm doing this. Yeah. Or like, show your work along the way. Often more people are there to recognize that something is happening, both good or bad. Yeah. So just don't choke in the bathroom. Don't
[00:21:58] Jess: choke in the bathroom
[00:21:59] Josh: for a fact.[00:22:00]
[00:22:00] Jess: Life lesson.
[00:22:02] Josh: Yeah, don't take that out. Don't take that out. You need to know that one. Stay
[00:22:04] Jess: in the restaurant. Stay with your friends. Wow, okay.
[00:22:08] Josh: Maybe that was a reach, but
[00:22:09] Jess: I get it that you brought, you, you, you closed the loop. No, I think it's helpful for you to understand like, I mean, did you think I was gonna have to like rearrange the whole site map?
[00:22:21] Jess: Probably not. No. No. And so, yeah, I think it's like you start to show someone your thinking. They realize how much goes into it. That they themselves probably had not thought of or aren't sure how to process or aren't sure how to do. Right. So I think that's a helpful step is just like bring that person along as much as you can.
[00:22:41] Jess: Yeah. Love that. So I talked about something that we were lacking in the old site.
[00:22:45] Josh: Yeah.
[00:22:45] Jess: Which is like the current site today. But when this podcast comes out, it will be the old site,
[00:22:50] Josh: the matrix. Yeah. I was like,
[00:22:52] Jess: ah, time space continuum blowing my mind. Um, but we didn't have a lot of product [00:23:00] imagery. Yeah.
[00:23:00] Jess: And something we wanted to make sure we had this time around was like, really solid product imagery that helped tell that story. Mm-hmm. So a really helpful meeting. Uh, we had was between myself, Alex, and our, uh, product designer Mira. Oh. And the three of us sat down and we went through the content of the product pages.
[00:23:19] Jess: And so we were able to really figure out like, which exact moment in the product is gonna help us tell this story? Right. Because that's cool. Each of those pages has a hero image.
[00:23:30] Josh: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:31] Jess: Has some kind of story of kind of the back and forth of like, here's this step and then this step, here's another thing you can do with it.
[00:23:38] Jess: Yeah. It was really helpful to have that content already written. Yeah. And let the content dictate the imagery and the product UI that would be reflected there.
[00:23:47] Josh: And this is something Oratory in particular is really good at. Right? Yeah. Like kind of like synthesize like those stories and say like, we're gonna take your actual ui, but sort of like mock it up into the simplified way where you're just like, aha, I get it.
[00:23:59] Jess: [00:24:00] Ama. Yes, exactly. They're really good at that. That's cool. And they're handling that for the homepage, for interior pages. Like that was on us. So we sat down and really figured out like, what are the things that we're gonna need? And then the really beautiful thing was Mira set up her own Figma file where she like basically mapped everything out.
[00:24:17] Jess: So I can hand that off to, to Oratory and they can just kind of fill in the the spaces on each product page. So cool. I know. Amazing. We have the best team.
[00:24:25] Josh: Yeah. Mira crushes.
[00:24:25] Jess: She does.
[00:24:31] Josh: Dear marketer, your brand voice is so distinct. Your customers can identify you in a blind taste test.
[00:24:37] Jess: So yummy.
[00:24:38] Josh: Like that's vector. I can tell
[00:24:40] Jess: it's, yeah. Has a slight, uh, tone of vector, real bits of ghost in it. Real
[00:24:46] Josh: hits, hits, hits you on the, the tongue, some ASMR that nobody wanted.
[00:24:52] Jess: Dear marketer, when you test ad creative the losing version questions, its life choices for disappointing you.
[00:24:59] Josh: I'm not mad, [00:25:00] I'm just disappointed
[00:25:02] Jess: in that ad variant I made you.
[00:25:05] Josh: Shouldn't have dropped outta cosmetology school.
[00:25:09] Jess: So we're actually still like a week and a half away from the thing launching. Yeah. As we record. Um, so we're right down to like the nitty gritty. We're like, we've looped in developers at this point.
[00:25:20] Jess: Yeah. Uh, so we have a contract developer who really helps us like make sure everything's buttoned up. Yeah. We've looped in rev ops. Uh, so Sarah knows that like these new pages are coming, we're not gonna. Do anything to change the forms per se, but like they still have to work, so Yeah. Uh, we're bringing in our SEO and content agency Air Q so that they can make sure everything is like, buttoned up from like g you know, uh, Google Tag Manager and like events are getting triggered in the right way.
[00:25:46] Jess: Yep. When someone clicks a button, like we know about it. Mm-hmm. And HubSpot, you know, things like that. So all these parts of a website redesign that actually aren't part of the design, but have to get baked into the process for everything to work correctly. [00:26:00] It's crazy. It's a huge undertaking. So
[00:26:01] Josh: many moving pieces
[00:26:02] Jess: too.
[00:26:02] Jess: Yeah.
[00:26:03] Josh: Yeah.
[00:26:03] Jess: The nice thing is a website is. Pretty living and breathing. Yeah. Like once it goes live, you, there are things that we've already talked about. There are things that like, we're gonna design that in the template. We're gonna hide it. Yeah. Because we're not gonna have either the content to fill it or maybe we don't even know.
[00:26:21] Jess: Like there, there's a product page. And it's gonna need some FAQs, but like, we're not actually sure what the FAQs are going to be Yeah. On this particular product yet. So like, let's wait till later and fill it in with the right stuff.
[00:26:33] Josh: Let's talk about that content quickly. Like what, how did you staff up the different, the pages?
[00:26:38] Josh: Right. I that, that's the part that always throws me off by the website. I'm like, build this beautiful design, get the template CSS in place, and then it's like, oh shit. Now we gotta actually like, put stuff on it. Have to do it. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, did we already have the website with all the content or how did you
[00:26:51] Jess: We had some of it, yeah.
[00:26:52] Jess: So obviously like all the blog posts will stay the same. Yeah. Um, we've been working on actually the homepage copy with Fletch. Yeah. If you go back [00:27:00] to the, uh, repositioning episode, you can hear about that. Yeah. Um, so that was all underway. Um, what we didn't have was these two new product pages. Yeah. We needed to overhaul the copy on kind of the features pages.
[00:27:14] Jess: Mm-hmm. Because it was, uh, it needed to now be in this new template one, and we wanted to make sure that we were. Really talking about it in a way that helped lift this narrative up. Yeah. Of ads use cases. Yeah. And then, um, we had a couple new pages, like a really beautiful About us page that was gonna help tell the story of like you and Nick and your backgrounds in the military and like how you built Vector.
[00:27:39] Jess: Um, we were gonna have a new, um, demo booking page, a new newsletter signup page. Like there were a handful of things that were net new.
[00:27:46] Josh: Yeah.
[00:27:47] Jess: Um, and so when I built the site map, part of the site map was to understand who is owning the content on which of those pages. Smart. So I divvied it up between myself, Alex, and we actually had, um, our [00:28:00] writer, uh, Shazia at acu.
[00:28:02] Jess: Yeah, she's incredible. Yeah. She writes all of our like con blog content. Mm-hmm. She's amazing. And I was like, Shazia, if you could take a. Break from blog content. Mm-hmm. And spend a couple weeks on these couple of net new pages for us. Yeah. So she took the About us page. I had her interview you and Nick.
[00:28:18] Josh: It was so fun. It was so fun to work with her. Yeah. On that one. She's so great. But another great example of just like the detail you don't know goes Yeah. Into things until you're actually in the project, right? Yeah. Like that about Us page like in my mind was a checkbox, like we need to have about us page.
[00:28:32] Josh: It needs to get done. The reality was, is like. You had to set up time for Shazia to Yeah. Go interview Nick and I and I'm sure she's putting a bunch of work into synthesizing all those notes. Yes. And turning it into a timeline and something beautiful like Yeah. Just so much more goes into it than people appreciate.
[00:28:47] Jess: Totally. Yeah. Each little page has something on it that has to get done right. And so you have to kind of plan accordingly. Um, she also is taking our newsletter sign up and our demo. Signup pages. And so that was something where [00:29:00] I had to supply her the information of like, okay, I want this demo page to be something where someone can self-qualify, understand if they actually should be booking a demo.
[00:29:08] Jess: That's cool. So I to give her kind of the, the input for that. Yeah. Same thing with the newsletter. Like what is someone gonna get when they sign up for this? I want someone to understand that before they hit submit. So these are just, I think a really helpful thing for me was the site map and kind of laying everything out and what.
[00:29:24] Jess: Where pages would be, what was net new, who needed to own what. Mm-hmm. Um, was like a really helpful tool. I just built it in Moreau, wasn't anything fancy. Yeah, that's
[00:29:34] Josh: a good like organizational tip though, right? Yeah. Just like visually represent, like use the flow of the website. As the project management system, right?
[00:29:43] Josh: Yes. 'cause now you've got all the pages, you have how they're connected. I know who's doing what. I can kind of check 'em off as they're done. Yeah. We're doing something similar where Sarah, on our ops team, we've, we've got a big launch coming up where we're gonna communicate with customers changes to pricing and packaging.
[00:29:56] Josh: Right? Yeah. And she. We have all these emails and all these lists and [00:30:00] all these segmentations that need to occur. And the best way for us to visually represent that is she's like, she's like mirroring like all the different flows and then next to each email she's like, here's the list that needs to be created.
[00:30:10] Josh: Here's the assets I need, all this sort stuff. Amazing. Yeah, that's a great point.
[00:30:14] Jess: Mm-hmm. Last thing I wanna talk about is just like the logistics of a website redesign launch. Mm.
[00:30:20] Josh: Yeah.
[00:30:21] Jess: There's so many. Little moving parts, um, and a lot of people that have to be involved. So, um, we are, we were targeting, like I.
[00:30:31] Jess: October 20th is like the date. Yeah. We were kind of targeting from the beginning mm-hmm.
[00:30:35] Josh: Of
[00:30:35] Jess: when we wanted this launch to go live. And I kind of knew in the back of my mind that like, it probably wasn't gonna happen on that date, but maybe that week, like somewhere in there. Right? Yeah. And so, um, I would say first just pick a day that you want to make it happen, but like, be flexible.
[00:30:51] Jess: Know that like there's gonna need. You're gonna have 48 hours for QA at least. Yeah. And like making sure every, all of the little, you know, [00:31:00] padding and spacing and all of the actual images are in place. Right. Yeah. All of that. So you'll wanna bake some time in for that. Um, Alex also built for us like a, uh, launch day kind of checklist.
[00:31:12] Jess: Mm-hmm. Which has been really helpful. Just as kind of our, our last couple of weeks as we're wrapping this project up, really understanding. Who is actually going to flip what switches? Mm. Yeah. Um, so you know, which is Air Q actually gonna be the one to make sure everything's in. Tag Manager? Yep. Who's gonna QA the forms?
[00:31:32] Jess: Like before we go live, what time are we actually going to go live so we can then time, social announcements. Well,
[00:31:39] Josh: especially because with our launch, as with most website launches, it's tied to something else. Yes. Right? Like it's a product launch. Yeah. Or a announcement or something. Right. So there's typically more than just like, hit the button in Webflow Uhhuh.
[00:31:51] Josh: Right. There's like, we've got social banners that are going up. You have some like, uh, spooky ghost Halloween themed ads that are going up around it. Right. We have all this [00:32:00] other stuff that's happening, and so yeah, you're right. It. When you told me Alex had made this checklist, I was like, oh, there's probably like one or two things on it.
[00:32:08] Josh: Like hit the big green button. It's like 37 lines long in itself. Yeah, it's,
[00:32:11] Jess: it's long. And we, we have product things built in, like ungating things in the product so that all of that is ready so that all of the messaging is the same. Our customers see the site and that is reflected in the product as well.
[00:32:22] Jess: So, yeah. So
[00:32:23] Josh: getting
[00:32:23] Jess: it down on paper and not just kind of like, yeah, on this day we'll hit the button. Yeah. Like make sure you have a plan.
[00:32:29] Josh: Yeah. A hundred percent. One more fun thing before we wrap here. You. Have built on our new website a way to generate your own ghostie.
[00:32:39] Jess: So this was like a nice to have.
[00:32:41] Jess: Yeah. That we were very excited about. Yeah. Um, so our customers and I, I mean just people in general love the Ghostie. Um, every new employee that joins Vector gets their own ghost. We have a little tool that we use called Play.
[00:32:56] Josh: Yeah.
[00:32:57] Jess: To help us generate those. And we thought, [00:33:00] wouldn't it be fun with this new site launch to actually build in a ghost generator that people could use on their own?
[00:33:07] Jess: Yeah. And go in and like put a couple things that they, you know, like their hobbies, their favorite food, whatever, and it would kind of spit out this image of them as a ghost.
[00:33:14] Josh: Yeah.
[00:33:14] Jess: So you actually built that?
[00:33:16] Josh: Yeah. Uh,
[00:33:17] Jess: well, we, we both built it, I guess. Like I used play tour to actually build the agent. Yeah.
[00:33:21] Jess: And then handed that off to you and you built it so that it would actually live on the site, like
[00:33:25] Josh: I frame into the site. Yeah. Super cool. Super cool. Yeah. So
[00:33:28] Jess: fun.
[00:33:28] Josh: Awesome. Well, before we go, while you're here, do you mind pulling up the Figma file really quick? I just wanna make some last minute changes to the typography on the website.
[00:33:35] Jess: I do mind, I think we're just gonna need to end this meeting now.
[00:33:39] Josh: Oh, okay. Well, it was a good meeting. It was
[00:33:41] Jess: a really good meeting. This
[00:33:42] Josh: meeting could have been a podcast.
[00:33:43] Jess: It could have.
[00:33:44] Josh: And it was, it was,
[00:33:46] Jess: this meeting could have been a podcast is a Vector Production. Vector lets you build ad audiences from real people that visit your site, click your ads and research your competitors.
[00:33:56] Jess: Imagine seeing exactly who will see your ads by name before you [00:34:00] spend a dime. It's a great time to be alive, marketers. Go give it a whirl at vector.co. See you next time.