[13] Case Study: Sacha Greif on His Redesign of Folyo.me
Okay. Let's do this. Hello, bootstrappers. Welcome to Bootstrap Web episode 13. It's the show for business owners like you and me who believe that to get to where we're going, we have to learn by doing.
Brian Casel:I'm Brian Castle. You can follow me on Twitter at castjam or on my blog, castjam.com. I've got a special treat for you guys today. You're going to hear my interview with the talented designer and entrepreneur, Sasha Greif. But this isn't a typical interview for this podcast.
Brian Casel:In fact, this interview originally wasn't supposed to be available here for free at at all. This is actually one of a series of video case studies that will come as part of one of the packages sold with my upcoming book, Design for Conversions. So in in these case studies, I invited a number of of designers and founders to kind of walk me through their design of of their product's marketing site. So each of these videos are about thirty minutes in length. Some are actually a bit longer than that.
Brian Casel:And I asked the designer to kinda share their screen and and walk me through their site, and and they talk in detail about their strategies, their their design process, also their kind of marketing strategy and process, and just all of the design decisions that they made as they went about creating their site to market their product or service. And so this case study with Sasha Grief was so good that I decided that I wanted to make this one available for for free and, and and, you know, just give it to you guys here on the podcast. So here on on this podcast, you're going to hear the audio from that interview. But I do highly recommend that you watch the video as as well, and I'm gonna post that on castjam.com on on the post for this episode. So, again, Sasha shares his screen, and and he points through the site as we talk about it.
Brian Casel:So it's really best if you kinda follow along with the video if you get a chance. But if you're just listening in, I'm sure you can grab a few interesting takeaways as well. Finally, a, a quick update on the book before we, head into that interview. This weekend, I actually officially completed, writing all of the chapters of the book. So, there are 13 chapters in total.
Brian Casel:I believe it's over, 35,000 words, which is, way more than I've ever written in in the past. So, I'm happy to have have that kind of milestone behind me at this point. Being a book about design, of course, there are actually a ton of images as as well. A lot of screenshots and a few diagrams and things. So, it it feels really great to have that have that chunk of the project behind me.
Brian Casel:But the work is not over yet. It's not even close. So with less than four weeks to go, actually, we're really looking at about two or three weeks until the release date, here's what's left on my to do list. First, I I need to go back and edit all the all the chapters of the book. That's definitely gonna take some time.
Brian Casel:I'm gonna, lay out the book, and I'm probably gonna be using iBooks Author for this. This is actually something new for me. I haven't used that before, but, everybody else tells me that's that's the one to use. Makes it easy. As soon as the books, as soon as the chapters are edited and they're all laid out, that's when I'll be sending out the free chapter to all of you who entered your email address for that.
Brian Casel:And if you haven't already, you can do that at castjam dot com slash book. I am gonna edit the rest of these case study videos. Today, you're gonna hear and see one of them, but I've got about six or seven other ones that I'll be including that package. I also need to update the landing page for the book, which is currently available at castjam.com/book. You can check it out, but I do need to add the pricing information and update a lot of the content and a lot of the copy to kind of reflect the how how the book has actually shaped up.
Brian Casel:Because the the current version of the landing page I created early on in the process, really before I even wrote, most of the book. So, the other thing I I also will need to set up is the system for actually selling, the digital downloads of of the book and and the packages. So for that, I'm thinking I'm either going to use, Gumroad. That seems to be a pretty popular service for this type of thing. Or I might kinda just, go the self hosted route, using a WordPress plugin called Easy Digital Downloads, which was created by Pippen Williamson, friend of the show.
Brian Casel:So, that that could be a good solution as well. I'm I'm gonna figure that out one of these days. And, still more more things to do as well. I I've got five actually, now it's six confirmed, guest articles to write on on other blogs. I've written a couple of those.
Brian Casel:One of them actually published yesterday on on Mashable. And I've got a a couple of other ones, getting ready to publish, and I've got about three or four more that I still need to write. So, I've got a lot of I still even though I've I've written the book, I I still have a lot of writing ahead of me here. So I definitely got got my cut my work cut out for me. Again, if you wanna get on that prelaunch list for Design for Conversions, you can get that free chapter and get a discount when the book comes out.
Brian Casel:Head over to castfam.com/book. And, okay, let's get on to the main event here, my case study interview with Sasha Greif. Again, the video for this interview is available on the blog post for this episode. Okay. So I'm here with Sasha Greif.
Brian Casel:Sasha, thanks for joining me today. And what we're gonna be looking at is your recent redesign of the Folio website. So, Sasha, thanks for joining. And and can you tell us a little bit about Folio? What what is it?
Sacha Greif:Sure. Folio is a project I've been working on for about two years now, on and off. It's basically a job board for freelance designers, except that unlike most job boards, it's private, meaning that there's a selection process for people who want to join, for designers wanting to join, and the job offers that get posted to the site are only made available to the designers who pass that selection process. So it's a way to ensure that companies posting job offers only get good quality replies, and they don't waste time sorting through you know, unqualified applicants.
Brian Casel:Gotcha. Very cool. By the way, if possible, I think you're you're on you're sharing your screen right now. Right? If if you could just switch to your browser so that it's not like a video of me on your
Sacha Greif:your screen. Sorry. So, yeah, this is Folium. This is the the new homepage that I redesigned a couple of weeks ago.
Brian Casel:Cool. Yeah. I I mean, I I just love this new design. It's it's it's very innovative in a way. I mean, it's It takes the long form sales letter idea and totally transforms it, brings it to a new level.
Brian Casel:And it's just really, really unique. On your blog a few weeks ago, you had a walkthrough case study of this redesign. So we're gonna touch on some of those points here in this video. So again, this is a redesign, it's version two of the site. So what made you decide that it was time to do a redesign?
Sacha Greif:So a couple of Mostly that the previous site wasn't doing that well, and I mean, it wasn't doing that well for a couple of reasons. First of all, I I believe there were problems with the landing page and with this the the service in itself. Also, I was simply not that motivated to work on it anymore. So this new design was a way to fix all those problems and also to just, you know, start fresh and try and envision Folio as a brand new project, you know, that I'm starting two years later as a fresh start, not so much, you know, iterating on something that doesn't doesn't work well and that it's not very motivating.
Brian Casel:Gotcha. So what were what were some of kind of the new business goals as as you're heading into this new design? It's also kind of a phase two of the app and the business as well. Right?
Sacha Greif:The business goals are to make more money, I guess.
Brian Casel:Sure. Of course. I guess in terms of conversions or performance of the website, is it well, so it's kind of a marketplace. So there are kind of two audiences here, designers and people who hire designers.
Sacha Greif:Right.
Brian Casel:Is the main goal to attract more talent into the marketplace, more designers or or more clients looking to hire or both?
Sacha Greif:More clients, definitely, because I only charge clients. It's free for designers, so Mhmm. It's actually pretty easy to attract designers. It just takes them, like, two minutes to sign up, and it's free for them. So that has never been a problem.
Sacha Greif:On the other hand, attracting clients is much harder because they need to pay a $150. They need to go through the process of writing out their job offer, selecting the designer. I mean, Folio really I believe Folio really simplifies the whole process, but it's still a little bit of work.
Brian Casel:Sure.
Sacha Greif:The goal was to make the homepage much more appealing and the whole process explained it better for clients.
Brian Casel:Gotcha. And so coming from the previous design into the new one, did you have any big picture goals in terms of design and and user experience before you really did anything, before you took those first steps in in working on the project? Any kind of big picture goals?
Sacha Greif:This was the previous landing page, and, like, I knew there were problems with it. Mostly that the message is not that strong and not that clear because the message is kind of split up in different parts of the page. You know, you have the tagline. You have over here a smaller tagline, a button, then below four four different blocks that each kinda say something different. So I wanted to, you know, streamline all this and make that much stronger by having a more linear layout and page structure.
Sacha Greif:And you talked about the the long form sales letter format, and that was definitely my inspiration. Although, like, I think it's easy to take that too far, so I don't have to find a middle ground, but, yeah, my goal was definitely to go to move in that direction.
Brian Casel:Sure. Were there any kind of more specific inspiration or areas of inspiration that you looked at other sites or other interfaces or things like that that you use for inspiration on this new one?
Sacha Greif:Actually, one site that really inspired me was Freckle. So Freckle is a time tracking app by Amy Hai, which writes a lot about marketing and, you know, conversion and all that. So, I mean, as you can see, it's very, very text heavy, almost all text. There's a couple of things I like here. First of all, if you can see each, there's, like, animated GIFs and there's a you know, the the page is not a 100% text.
Sacha Greif:It's, 90% text, but it's sliced up with a few elements, so I thought that was nice.
Brian Casel:And The visual hierarchy also really works well. It's not just one long block of text.
Sacha Greif:Yeah. So that's done really well. And also, mean, I've always read that these kind of pages convert well, and also just you get more room to explain what you do. So the problem with a design like, sorry, like this one, the previous design, is you actually get very little real estate because of, you know, self imposed constraints of everything has to be above the fold or Yeah. Everything has to be balanced so you can have, like, too much text in any one place.
Sacha Greif:So you end up having these really small blocks to play with, and sometimes it's just not enough to explain something clearly. So that was definitely an inspiration. I didn't want to do something that text heavy, so I tried yet to find a middle ground between this and the previous version. And, there was also a a case study by thirty seven signals about the high rise redesign, high rise landing page redesign where they AB tested a long form sale letter version with with also a a version that featured a photo of a customer, very large. And, yeah, I guess those kind of case studies have always been an inspiration for me because, well, as you know about a lot of the design writing and design case studies focus strictly on design, but not so much on marketing and the efficiency of conversion and getting the message out there.
Sacha Greif:So I'm always interested in looking at people who do focus on that side and not just making it look nice, although I mean, that's also very important.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Exactly. And and kinda coming back to the the idea of of the fold. Right? I mean, every these days, all designers and devs love to kinda make fun of their clients who demand to to put everything above the fold.
Brian Casel:Right? And I guess one part of that is, it's 2013, people know how to use the scroll bar. Just generally, people will naturally scroll. But I think another part of it, as you're designing this site and writing the copy and laying it out, it's also about making it compelling enough to make you want to get to scroll down the page. That's kind of part of the thinking of the long form scrolling page.
Brian Casel:And your site here for Folio takes that even to a new level. You can't help but scroll down. That's the call to action, right? And the first thing that you see is is telling you to go down.
Sacha Greif:Well, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's kind of the the opposite of above default design because when you're you know, with that all the philosophy of everything has to be above default, you assume that people won't scroll and you make it possible for them not to scroll. And I did the exact opposite. I made it impossible for them not to scroll because I want them So, I mean, we talked about conversions and call to action. So for me, the first call to action is scrolling.
Sacha Greif:So the first conversion rate is actually the rate of people who do scroll the page. And I mean, I don't have it, but it would be interesting to track because that's really the first action I want people to take.
Brian Casel:Yeah, that's really interesting. That's kind of one of the chapters in the book, is talking about conversions and how everything is a conversion, every step. So as soon as they hit the site, the first conversion is, are they gonna bounce back to Google or wherever they came from, or are they gonna stay? And then do they become engaged? And then do they scroll?
Brian Casel:So on. Very cool. So, okay, you had these sources of inspiration, you had a few goals for the new redesign. What is your first step for getting started? Did you start sketching or
Sacha Greif:how did that work? Not really, actually. I I never sketched. I I mean, some designers do, but I've never really, you know, found the the need to sketch. On the other hand, my first step is usually just working on the copy.
Sacha Greif:So opening a Google box or whatever text editor and then just playing around with taglines and and messages and until, yeah, something emerged from that, and that's usually kickstarts my design process. Awesome. So, I mean, this is pretty short. I'm not I'm not sure. I don't remember if I had other copy elsewhere or if that was enough, but that's basically the start of it.
Sacha Greif:And after that, actually used Sketch this time, and I started doing some, sorry, some mock ups. Okay. Yeah. So this is like one of the first versions I had.
Brian Casel:Oh, nice.
Sacha Greif:And it's I mean, some of the elements are here, especially the whole how Father works zone with the little speech bubbles. So that was the the first thing I had in mind, like, really laying out how the service works with a very, like, literal depiction of the the process. So not trying to, you know, explain so much as to show yeah. Even though it's not the actual UI, I mean, there's no, like, speech bubbles when people reply to you, but it's kind of a metaphor for the whole process in a very, like, graphic way. So that was the first part I had in mind, then the rest of it just fit around that.
Brian Casel:Very cool. So kind of going back to that Google Doc where you started writing out, I guess those are kind of copy ideas.
Sacha Greif:Yeah.
Brian Casel:I mean, I can't actually read it here, but what is that at this stage? Is that kind of just thinking out loud a few paragraphs or potential headlines or
Sacha Greif:Yeah. Exactly.
Brian Casel:Cool. And is that are these act like, did these actually make it into the final website, or did you refine them even more once you were in the mock up and and coding up the site?
Sacha Greif:They actually made it. So you can see, like, the four points made it here, except, like, now I have, like, four negative points and four positive points. So it looks a little bit different. But most of the ideas, yeah, did make it into the final version.
Brian Casel:Nice. So Although,
Sacha Greif:I I have to say, for me, it's much easier to work on copy, you know, once I do have a a design even if it's not the final one. So I I like to start with copy, but, also, I I like to move to visual design as soon as possible to make sure that copy and design work well together.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I absolutely agree. I I might start with, like, one or two headlines in in in a note file, but I I actually do a lot of my almost all of my copywriting in in Balsamiq, in in a wireframe. And and that's that's where I do all the writing, and then I might tweak it a little bit in the browser. But cool.
Brian Casel:So so from there, you mentioned you you use so you're you're talking about the app, Sketch?
Sacha Greif:Yep. Yes. Exactly.
Brian Casel:Do you like that, by the way?
Sacha Greif:I really like it. It's well, it's kind of like Photoshop, but it's all vector based. So every element is much more flexible. You can explore it at any resolution, and it's also much lighter than Photoshop, so it loads up instantly. Photoshop, I mean, have my hard drive is pretty full, so I mean, Photoshop complains every time I open it, it's kind of a pain, and Sketch doesn't do that at all.
Sacha Greif:It's much more friendlier to my workflow.
Brian Casel:Nice. Yeah. Sketch looks awesome. It's definitely I've been meaning to try it out one of these days. Whenever there's a Photoshop alternative, I really wanna use it, and Sketch looks awesome, but there's part of me that just says, man, I don't wanna spend a whole day redefining my whole workflow here.
Brian Casel:Photoshop, I just know all the keyboard shortcuts and problems, but gotta do it.
Sacha Greif:Well, I've been using Photoshop less and less anyways because I'm designing more in the browser now. So I kind of fit well because, you you know, I I mean, it's not like I'm replacing spending my whole day in Photoshop by spending my whole day in Sketch. It's more like replacing a couple hours a week by a couple hours a week. So the transition is a bit easier.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. So for so for the Folio site, how much of it was designed in Sketch, and then how at at which point did you did you get into the browser? This is a and this is a a personal project, by the way, so it kinda doesn't matter. Right?
Brian Casel:I guess if it were for a client, maybe you would have to present a mock up. But in this case, that's that doesn't factor into it.
Sacha Greif:So let me find the the Folio mock up. So this is what I had in Sketch, which is kind of similar, but you can see it's missing a few zones, like, put on the final home page. Yeah. The the copy might be a bit different. So this is pretty much, like, how far I got in Sketch.
Sacha Greif:So, like, a a basic outline, most of the ideas, but not something you know, not pixel perfect at all. More like a a blueprint or, you know, or a sketch, actually.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Sure.
Sacha Greif:So
Brian Casel:Very cool. So so let's kinda talk again about the copy and just the the sections of the page. So, you know, having this long scrolling page, we we have a few a few very defined sections.
Sacha Greif:Yep.
Brian Casel:Can you kind of talk through the sequence of the message? Like, how did you decide which things to focus on first, and then what goes in the second section, and then how does that progress as you get further down the page?
Sacha Greif:Right. So first of all, I mean, a disclaimer is that it's all very subjective, and I should AB test everything and get hard data on everything, but I haven't done that yet, so I take what I say with a grain of salt. Maybe I'm wrong. But I thought that the problem with the previous landing page is that although, like, I'm explaining, you know, the value, Folio helps you find a great designer, Maybe I'm not I thought I wasn't explaining the problem well enough because after all, you know, a lot of people might not know that finding a designer can be hard. Right?
Sacha Greif:If you if you've never done it, I'm, like, trying to sell you a service that you don't even know that you need. So the new landing page, first of all, explains why finding a designer is so hard. And that's what this block here does, like, because when you're contacting a designer out of the blue, you know, they might be unavailable or uninterested or too expensive for you. So for yourself, that problem.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's interesting because it's I guess a lot of people hiring designers, at at first, they kinda think that it's easy, then they'll have a a bad experience.
Sacha Greif:Right. And this kinda speaks to that. Yeah. It's why why just target people who already had the bad experience? You might as well explain to everybody, and then people can avoid having that bad experience in the first place.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. And and people who who have had that bad experience, this kind of confirms that pain point Yeah. Exactly. And helps them relate to to what you're saying here.
Sacha Greif:So that's the first part, and I'm actually not that happy with that part. I mean, I like the copy, but, visually, it's not that interesting. So I don't know. I might change it later. I'm not sure what to do about that yet.
Sacha Greif:Anyway, then the second part is designer to contrast. And this is also something that I want to change because I want to feature designers' actual projects more, you know, screenshots of the of logos, icons, UI's.
Brian Casel:Kinda like the final product of
Sacha Greif:Yeah. But, you know, on the other hand, featuring, like, nice portraits is always effective. I mean, people like learning about other people. That's how we work.
Brian Casel:So Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, like it. You know? I I think it kind of humanizes it.
Brian Casel:Again, it's
Sacha Greif:Yeah.
Brian Casel:You're it's a place to connect with people, so that's that's part of it.
Sacha Greif:Yeah. Exactly. So then we have these skills that should I mean, that could also be more important and better done. Like, I think it's important for SEO. I could have those keywords.
Sacha Greif:Maybe it would be nice to have a description for each skill, and I've actually been thinking about creating landing pages for each skill. So if you type logo design in Google, you'll have a page about logo design that really explains what logo design is, you know, you know, what the branding, you know, is doing business cards part of it, or do you hire somebody else, all that.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I I could certainly and and even for a site like this, having landing pages for how to hire a logo designer and and Yeah. Things like that.
Sacha Greif:How to work for the logo designer. Yeah. Exactly. So that that's in in my in the works. Cool.
Brian Casel:And then kinda scrolling down, we get into kind of the the mechanics of how the service works. Right?
Sacha Greif:Yeah. Exactly. So I really like the animations here. Yeah. That was something that was fun to to do for me.
Brian Casel:What is the what's the technology behind that? How how'd you how'd you set that up?
Sacha Greif:I use a plug in called what's it called? I forgot the name, but it's like a jQuery plug in that can trigger, JavaScript events when you reach a certain point in the page. So basically, it just applies a new CSS class to the div, and then there's a CSS animation that takes over. Awesome. I'm not excellent.
Sacha Greif:Yeah. I've been wondering if I should do it that way or just, you know, trigger the whole thing, like, when you're here. But I don't know. Like, just crawling animations are very trendy right now, but it I mean, it's I believe if there's there needs to be, like, a it needs to make sense, like, that the animation triggers on scroll. A lot of these sites, I feel it's very artificial because it's just, you know, making you do the work of scrolling scrolling just to see an animation.
Sacha Greif:So in this case, I think it makes sense because it's like the the replies are coming in one by one. But I I did wonder about, you know, should how exactly should it trigger?
Brian Casel:So you're you're saying, like, it maybe it should trigger as you scroll, whereas
Sacha Greif:Well, now that's what it does. It triggers as you scroll, but it could also trigger all at once. You know? Basically
Brian Casel:So if you kind of scroll down and and then stop scrolling
Sacha Greif:Yeah. Exactly. Then only, like,
Brian Casel:one or two of them are gonna come in?
Sacha Greif:Yeah.
Brian Casel:Okay. I see.
Sacha Greif:So yeah. If you stop here, yeah, the animation stops as well.
Brian Casel:Oh, okay.
Sacha Greif:Which I I don't I don't know. I mean, I've been going back and forth on that. I don't think most people will really notice that, but
Brian Casel:Yeah. I think most people would would keep going down anyway.
Sacha Greif:So Yeah. Anyway, yeah, it's kinda fun. Just giving you some insight into the kind of problems I have with that. Absolutely.
Brian Casel:All these little details most people would never even know exist behind the That's why I love getting into these case studies. You never know what you'll kind of see and learn. Cool. So below that, kind of mentioned how you're getting into doing these guides. Yeah.
Brian Casel:How does that play into it?
Sacha Greif:So those guides were actually I I wrote them before for the old sites, but they're actually completely broken right now. So that's something for my to do list.
Brian Casel:So these are on the live site, you have them linked up and everything, even though they're going to broken pages?
Sacha Greif:Well, I just noticed the other day. So I didn't do it on purpose. Yeah. I mean, the CSS was working fine, and then I don't know. I changed something or unlinked a a style sheet or something, and that That's the result.
Brian Casel:It happens.
Sacha Greif:Something from my to do list. But yeah. I mean, guides are important. Writing that kind of of content, I think it's very important. It's one of the things that has worked best for me in terms of marketing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's something I I I feel I need to do a better job of in in my landing pages, especially on the home page. I so I I feel like on this page or in general, having a section like this would be about if you've come here and you really like what you see, but maybe you're not ready to actually hire a designer, but you want some kind of value, this is something that you can get right now to kinda Yeah. You know, just get some kind of value out of it. So
Sacha Greif:Yeah. That's true. And, you know, it's a way to engage people, like, get them to create a relationship with you in a way, to know you for all for the side that has these great guides or and even if they don't, you know, converge right away, maybe one month or one year down the road, they'll remember you because of the guy. Yeah. Totally.
Sacha Greif:So next is the testimonial section. So right now, is only one testimonial, but I think I mean, I could get more, and I will. But I thought one really good testimonial would be, you know, first of better than nothing and maybe even better than having, you know, lots of small smaller quotes.
Brian Casel:Yeah, and I really like how you even broke up the quote of the one testimonial. I mean, that has its own hierarchy within the quote. It's not just a random bubble with a whole bunch of text. You really highlighted some key points in the words of the customer. So
Sacha Greif:Yeah. I mean, the reason I think that quote is because I think it really you know, it explains FOLLOW perfectly, and it it matches our portfolio's value proposition perfectly. So that's what I tried to highlight in the in the quote itself.
Brian Casel:Nice.
Sacha Greif:Yeah. And then the call to action, which is pretty far down the page. But, you know, my thinking is that by now, if if you click that button, you probably know what Folio does, and you probably you know, you have more chances of going through the process. So, you know, why waste people's time with, you know, a huge sign up button right on the start and people click it and then realize the service is not for them, and they close the browser tab? So, I mean, this way, maybe yeah.
Sacha Greif:A lot of people have told me that you know, ask me, oh, why is the button so far down the page? You're gonna lose conversions. But on the other hand, yeah, the conversion I do get the clicks I do get will be higher quality, I believe.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Absolutely. I've actually noticed the same thing on on my restaurant engine site. My my recent redesign, it it's similar in that it doesn't have on the home page, it has no top navigation. You have to scroll down.
Brian Casel:And that first call to action isn't until you hit the very bottom. And I have noticed a decrease in the number of sign ups, but also a decrease in in cancellations. So you know?
Sacha Greif:And I think I mean, when you're, you know, when you're bootstrapping a project and working on it alone although, I mean, I have a developer helping me, but for the whole customer development part, I'm doing that myself. So it might make sense to, you know, kinda minimize the false positives, like people who sign up but aren't really going to go through or, really want to focus on those customers that are most valuable to you, I think. You have to realize that maybe what works for a big startup with lots of people might not work for you.
Brian Casel:Yeah. That's a great point, just optimizing for what you're actually able to manage and take action on. Very cool. So what I really like about these buttons, the main call to action and your navigation buttons, the labels are really descriptive. You know, it's totally clear what's going to happen after I click this button.
Brian Casel:You know? Yeah. And I also like how the the smaller text is it kinda gives you even more of an incentive. Even you're just coming right out and saying it costs $150. That's the price.
Brian Casel:You know, and I I like like you say, I mean, if somebody were to click that, they're they must be much more likely to convert because they're already opting in for a $150 price tag.
Sacha Greif:Right. And I mean yeah. You mentioned that the labels and the buttons, as you can see, the design is pretty simple and it's pretty flat. So I find that one of the advantages of doing that kind of design is that you have more time to spend on the copy and on this kind of details. So there was a big debate about flat design and the new trends, and I do think that's one of the advantages.
Sacha Greif:Also, making it responsive, it's kind of easier. Well, the simpler the design, easier it is to make responsive, so that's another benefit.
Brian Casel:Sure.
Sacha Greif:So comparing this with the previous one, you can see that it's a bit simpler and a bit although the previous one was already kinda flat in some areas, but for the the new one, yeah, I tried to go even more in that direction to make sure that I can really focus on what matters most.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Gotcha. And so can so how about so now that we have kind of a handle on on the structure of the site and and the copy, how about things like colors and and fonts? How did you go about kind of picking the the colors here?
Sacha Greif:So the colors are actually the same as before. By now, they're just like photos brand colors, like green and blue and gray, so it makes sense to to keep them. Like, I believe in being colored for what they mean more than how they look. You know? So I wouldn't pick something very aggressive like red even if it looks good visually because it's not the message I want to convey.
Sacha Greif:You know? So that's why there's, like, a pretty fresh green that's kind of optimistic, and and, yeah, I I've used it a lot for the new version as well. I'm not using blue as much. Like, in here, at least, I don't really have those blue buttons. Mhmm.
Sacha Greif:But I still have them elsewhere in the side, so and the links are still blue. So, yeah, it's kind of a it's not too in your face. Like, I'm keeping kind of the standards of blue links, white background, light colors with a green accent color. And, yeah, I tried to find that middle ground where it's not in your face but has a strong enough branding that you still remember it. And and actually, for the new site, the way I did this was to have a really, well, really green first top screen, and hopefully, that will make people remember the the brand of the site, but then this goes away very quickly, and then you're left with a much more readable and lighter design.
Sacha Greif:So it's kind of a way to, you know, have the best of both worlds, both a strong brand and a readable design.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, very big and bold up up at the top, and then the green is kind of after that, it's kind of reserved for, like, active it's the call to action buttons, and it's the most prominent headlines. But, yeah, very cool. How about fonts?
Brian Casel:What font is that?
Sacha Greif:The font is Rooney. And, basically, I have a I use Typekit, and I have a list of favorites in Typekit. So every time I find a new font, you know, on the web or inside Typekit, I add it here. And when a new project comes around, I just have my list and I I scroll through. Like, I'll add maybe six or seven fonts to the the kit to the JavaScript snippets and then just play around with them on the left side, like, seeing what looks best.
Brian Casel:Gotcha. So are you kind of making all of your type choices in the browser? You're not really worrying so much about that when you're in Sketch or
Sacha Greif:Yeah. Exactly. In Sketch, which one did I use? Yeah. I use go time rounded for the body copy, and this is info.
Sacha Greif:So yeah. I mean, I did spend a little time playing around with fonts inside Sketch just to see if, you know, if anything looked good, but, the the serious font selection always happens in the browser because, sorry, It just renders differently, and also, like, I don't have the same selection. You know? Like, if I wanted to use Govtam on Folio, I would need to get a subscription for Huffer and Fred and Jones cloud typography service, and that would cost a lot more. So
Brian Casel:Yeah. Sure.
Sacha Greif:Right? It it was nice to play around with it locally, but it was kind of, you know Yeah. Not for real.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Sacha Greif:So anyway, yeah. This is Rooney, and I I picked it because it's a very friendly, like, long accents and I I don't know. It just looks, yeah, friendly and and warm and Yeah.
Brian Casel:I
Sacha Greif:guess to it's still very readable and it's not also, it's not too, you know, like it's still a bit serious. It's a good new all around.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And then for somebody who's who's hiring a designer perhaps for the first time, it's it's it's and it's not overwhelming or intimidating, that can Yeah. I mean, they're doing something. They're hiring a designer because they have no experience creating So, whatever they need to yeah, it looks great overall. So, I mean, we kind of touched on it a little bit, but how about now that the new redesign has launched, what kind of results have you seen from version one to version two changes?
Sacha Greif:Well, like, the couple weeks after the redesign, I got the the design is very good, but that's mostly because of the added traffic, I think, from, you know, blogging about it and people linking to it. So, I mean, now that it's died down, the con I don't get that many conversions, but it's still doing better than the previous design though, so I think that's good. But, you know, at the end of the day, like, a new design can't do everything for you, so you still have to take a look at the actual product and and make that better, I think. So that's what I'm trying to do now. I most I also have ideas to improve the the landing page even more, like like I said, featuring a designer's work on the home page, yeah, and maybe featuring more guides, more links to other landing pages, So
Brian Casel:So kind of building out additional pages to the site, more content that that can not only help help to sell the product and and help to establish trust with visitors, but it's also, you know, good for SEO and and that sort of thing.
Sacha Greif:Yeah. Exactly. And I mean, you know, Folio, it's kind of well, to be honest, the business model is not that good in the sense that it's recurring revenue and, people only pay once and there is very little chance that they will become repeat customers. People really don't need a designer like every month. And also on top of that, it targets a very niche market of people who need a designer, but want a freelancer, but are ready to pay more than, you know, 99 designs rates.
Sacha Greif:So, I mean, it's it's kinda hard to get data on it's not like I get, you know, 100 conversions a day and I can just say, oh, like, you know, I get a 120. So it's like, you know, I get a couple calls a week and it's gonna be a slow process, I think, to scale it up and and make it more successful. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just a long road, I think that gets me a little bit further ahead.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Absolutely. And I guess one other way to kind of track the effectiveness of the new design would be in the number or the types of presales questions that you're receiving. I'm sure that the new design does an even better job of communicating what the service is all about, the benefits, and how it works, which we kind of walked through. I would think that presales questions have probably decreased, or at least people are a little bit more clear about what it's all about.
Sacha Greif:Yeah. I mean yeah. That was definitely one of the things that pushed me to redesign the page is that whenever I would refer people to Folio, I had a lot of questions that showed that they didn't really understand how Folio worked. Like, for example, oh, people would ask me even after I showed them Folio, they would ask me if I can recommend a designer, which is, you know, with Folio, it removes the need of getting a recommendation because you get the list of short list of designers who are ready to work with you. You you don't need to ask individual designers for their own recommendations because that's know, you never know if the people I recommend will be available or interested, etcetera.
Sacha Greif:So, yeah, that was that's definitely something that was successful. I think it's much clearer now. And, yeah, I mean, overall, yeah, I'm happy because it works better, and I'm also happy because it gives me a new base to to start off.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. Well, you know, the site looks looks looks fantastic, and and thank you for doing this this case study. I certainly learned a lot. You know what?
Brian Casel:This was actually supposed to be packaged with the book, but I think this conversation was just really valuable. I think I might just post it on my blog tomorrow.
Sacha Greif:Oh, cool. Yeah, sure.
Brian Casel:Just put it out. We'll see. But thank you so much for doing it, and yeah, again, congratulations on Folio's success, new site looks great.
Sacha Greif:Yeah. Maybe wait a little bit before eventually mail back because I'm not quite there yet, but Well, it
Brian Casel:looks awesome. And where can folks find you and reach out to you?
Sacha Greif:Sure. So my blog is sashagreef.com, and there's so you'll my other main project is Sidebar, sidebar.io, which is a daily newsletter of design links. So if you wanna stay in touch with what's happening in the design world online, then go check out Sidebar.
Brian Casel:Awesome. Well, Sascha, thank you so much for taking the time from across the world. You're in Japan. I'm in Connecticut.
Sacha Greif:No problem. My pleasure.
Brian Casel:Cool. Alright. Take care. Okay. So I hope that you you enjoyed that case study interview with Sasha Greif.
Brian Casel:Definitely head over to folio.me and check out that site because it's it's really a a pretty impressive redesign. I should also mention that that Sasha posted kind of a a case study recap article on on his blog, which is at sashagrief.com. So that's really worth checking out as well. He kinda talks through and writes through his strategies again there. So, and once again, you can find the video for this case study and really actually see Sasha point out things throughout the site by, checking out the video on the blog post for this episode over at castjam.com.
Brian Casel:Thanks for tuning in, and, I will, see you guys next time on on on the next episode of Bootstrapped Web. Take care.
Creators and Guests
![[13] Case Study: Sacha Greif on His Redesign of Folyo.me](https://img.transistorcdn.com/LDB_Cv9bHAA2vtoSPkZCpkdHPF6fAqfl7PL-PG7_c-M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:800/h:800/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jMjkw/MDYxZDQ0MWIxYTUw/NTMzMGI2NTExZWMx/MWQ1Yi5qcGc.webp)