Websites & Taxes
Bootstrapped web. We're gonna try to make it happen today, Jordan.
Jordan Gal:We are I am making it difficult on us. I am on my phone. I haven't had Internet in the house all day. Ugh.
Brian Casel:It's the
Jordan Gal:worst. Taking a few calls on my phone. Oh, it's goddamn plan, but we're fine. We're gonna make
Brian Casel:it work. It's so annoying. That happened to me, like, two weeks ago. Just randomly. On, like, a sunny day around here, like, no weather issues, Internet goes out.
Brian Casel:It's like, what's happening?
Jordan Gal:That's where I'm at. It's beautiful out. There's no outage in the neighborhood. It's just fuck you in particular. You're out.
Brian Casel:Oh, worst, man.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. But at least Friday, had a great week so far. And, you know, gonna head out to a coffee shop after this to try to send some emails out. But feeling great about this week and looking forward to the pod.
Brian Casel:Nice, man. Yeah. I got my second coffee going right now because I got no sleep last night or most nights this week next to my old Why? Old dog who decides to wake up four times a night now. So that's that's Okay.
Brian Casel:Okay. Okay. Yeah. But just trying to make it through. I got a bunch of stuff.
Brian Casel:You know, as I talked about last last time, the rollout of clarityflow.com went went live public, when the last episode went out this week. I think that was on Wednesday. So, yeah, it feels good to have it out there. I've got some a couple notes on on the aftermath of that and moving forward.
Jordan Gal:Yes. I wanna know how it's how it's gone, the the good and the bad. Mhmm. Right? What what what has gone well?
Jordan Gal:What hasn't? How has the response been from ZipMessage customers? And, yeah. So it'd be great to get into that. On on my side And and also
Brian Casel:just, like, making the turn to, like, marketing stuff this week has been, like, a context shift as well. So yeah.
Jordan Gal:True. True. Right. You did you did so much work on the actual, like, you know, making the cycle live and everything. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:On
Brian Casel:our
Jordan Gal:side, so we're redoing our website, and I can talk about that experience. And some things over the last, I'd say two weeks are are are making us feel confident about our general thesis on the market. We just have some new proof points that are adding up to optimism on our end. You know? And when I say us, it's when I when I talk about us at that level, it's like myself and Rock and Jessica.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:Right? That's like the leadership team and, you know, we're the ones that, like, are worried about what's happening in the market more so than, like, what's happening on our plate right now. And then I think we should talk a little bit about, you know, the IRS and the stupidity out of Washington DC around software development costs and amortization. Very exciting topic, but important one.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah. Very, very good radio, but it is important for for folks in our industry. So, you know, it's definitely good to see just off the bat, like, near the top of the show we should just mention. Michelle Hansen has been putting together this website, ssballiance.org.
Brian Casel:So we'll we'll link that up. You know, thanks to her and and Ian Landsman and a bunch of other people That's right. Who've been, like, really, you know, like, publicizing this and and getting the ball rolling, get getting us organized here. So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It is I think all of us have felt over the last, call it, year or six months or so that these big macro things can't be avoided. They impact us whether it's the economy or interest rates or banking issues. And in this case, it's tax law, but we can't just pretend that, oh, just because we're small businesses that they don't affect us. Like, these things, they definitely do.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. And this one this one's gnarly in particular.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Alright. So we'll we'll get into that. Why don't we talk about the the more fun stuff, the business stuff first?
Jordan Gal:Agree. Agree. You want me to kick things off and talk about website? I I okay. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So
Brian Casel:This is cool because, like, again, it's one of those things that, like, both you and I happen to be working on around the same time, so we've got some good good notes to share.
Jordan Gal:Yes. And you you felt my stress because alright. So here's what happened. We are redoing our website. We wanna make some adjustments, do some cosmetic refresh, and get things right in terms of positioning based on what we've learned over the last year and a half or whenever that the site went live.
Brian Casel:So, actually, let pause you right right off the bat. Sure. My my question because I I'm I'm just learning this from you as well. I I don't know too much about the story yet. When you say refresh, what what's Mhmm.
Brian Casel:In your mind, are you thinking, like, start from scratch, new design, new messaging, everything? Or take our existing structural website, maybe rewrite some parts, change some layouts, but keep the current technical website there? What what are you thinking?
Jordan Gal:No. So so it's it's a redo of the website, not a refresh. I think of it as refresh as, you know, our logo is staying the same and our colors are basically staying the same, but we're redoing the site. And we need to improve the the blog kinda I don't even know what happened in the blog. It went from, like, okay to yeah.
Jordan Gal:I don't even think it's very readable. I I I really don't like it. So we wanna do some things there and some position changes. And so we're redoing the website. I think it's more accurate.
Jordan Gal:Cool. So I think I was a little bit negligent in the amount of attention that I paid to this process because I had confidence and also because I wanted to focus on other things. And now we're at the stage of, okay. Here's basically version one, and I need feedback from the designer. And I got on a call yesterday with Elizabeth, our marketing director, and Jessica, and we started to really look at this very closely.
Jordan Gal:And the sense of dread that fell over me when looking at what we had, the general sense was, okay, buddy. You have a lot of work to do. Mhmm. Right? And not like, oh, there's a lot of work that needs to get done.
Jordan Gal:It's like, no. You, Jordan, you cannot not pay attention to this. You have to do hours of work to get this to where it needs to be.
Brian Casel:And did you did you sense that Elizabeth and Jessica were also on that same page with you? Like, you all had that sense of, like, this this project needs work in general.
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. As soon as we started really digging into it, it became it became apparent. And there's there's always some element around, the balance between how great something looks and how effective or clear it is. And it felt like this was designed by our designer in such a way that it looks great.
Jordan Gal:It's almost too mobile first. It's almost that it takes mobile so into account in the design that it doesn't give it room to breathe on desktop. And, you know, we're b to b SaaS. Like, the the mobile version obviously is important because people get to it on their phone through different links and whatever, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, whatever. But at least I feel you do have to nail the desktop experience because that's really where you get a chance.
Jordan Gal:Okay, so here's where I think practically speaking, our website missed the mark. Our website assumes, our new version assumes a lot of understanding on the audience's part. And it just kinda jumps right to the part where here are the next steps you need to take. Here's how it looks to use our product. Here's, like, how easy it is to set up.
Brian Casel:Mhmm.
Jordan Gal:And I firmly believe that we are in, like, new category territory, and we need to be extremely clear on what the product is and does before we get to a conversation about here's how easy it is to set up. Yep. So that's what I saw when I looked at the site and my general preference right now is to show the product. Just shut up and show the damn product. Screenshots, GIFs, animated SVG, whatever you wanna use, but show me the damn product.
Jordan Gal:And right now, we're taking stylized elements of the UI and making it look beautiful, but it's just not clear enough on what the product is and does.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I haven't seen the new design. So but I guess I have a bunch of questions. So because I dealt with a lot of the same Mhmm. Goals and issues and and, like, correcting a lot of mistakes with our with our what you see on zip message and, like, correcting some approaches there with what we're doing on clarityflow.com.
Brian Casel:Yep. You you said that, assuming the the user has a baseline understanding or or or how did you put it? Like, they like,
Jordan Gal:you're putting a lot of Yeah. You're you're you're making a lot of assumptions on this. The familiarity of of the visitor where we we still, on a regular basis, have to very slowly explain what the product is, what it does. And we usually we we find ourselves in a conversation. What we wanna do is we just wanna get to a screen share.
Jordan Gal:We just wanna say, let me just show you the same so you you get the assumptions right. Terms about Fast, they think about Bolt, think about Shopify, they think about e commerce platforms, they think about front end, they think about carts, they think about Stripe checkout. It's like, no, we are our own thing. And that impetus to just get to a screen share so we can just start talking about the same thing, that's almost what the website needs to do. Like, just show me what you actually mean already.
Brian Casel:What I what I tend to think of in terms of hierarchy on the homepage and and, like, especially the the hero section, the above the fold, like, first thing you you see when you land on the root domain. Right? I think number one, and this mostly comes down to writing the h one headline copy. And I don't think that we've nailed ours yet. It it's actually just a kind of a draft what we have on on clarityflow.com, which was, believe it or not, half written by chat GPT.
Brian Casel:But That's
Jordan Gal:that's cool.
Brian Casel:The my goal in in what I put into the h one on the homepage is it's not even so much about, like, sell the benefits. I know a lot of people talk about that. It's not even so much about digging into the pain point. Again, another talking point people like to say. Yep.
Brian Casel:My my main goal when I think about the h one is resonate with a person. Like, identify, hey hey, you, you are this person. And there's gonna be some segment of the world that's gonna be like, oh, they somebody is talking to me. They know they know who I am. They they just caught my attention because it's almost like they just said my personal name.
Brian Casel:Like, that's you know? So I I think our what is our current h one on Clarity Flow?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I was looking at your site Like, what? When when talking to our team.
Brian Casel:Our h one right now, and this is sort of a draft, but it's elevate your coaching business with a platform that drives results. So, like, right away, we're like, you are a coach. And if you're not, then this might not make any sense to you.
Jordan Gal:Yes.
Brian Casel:So so, like, that's that's number one. But then the other piece that you were talking about was, like, get to the product. And this is one of the corrections that that I'm making from Zip Message to Clarity Flow. So we do have a big image showing the product, like, right near the top of the of the site. But That's right.
Brian Casel:One of the goal that's not the actual product. That's an illustration of our product.
Nathan Barry:Right? Okay.
Brian Casel:And that was that was intentional. I wanted to you know, it was one of the first things that I communicated to Mike McAllister, who was doing the design. I was like, we need somewhat simplified illustrations of the product that more or less show what it is. Like, we show the the async flowing conversation, and and it sort of animates. But it's gotta be simple enough that it just communicates, like, generally what it is.
Brian Casel:We don't need to show all the buttons on the page that that might actually be there in the app. And number two, it has to be simplified enough that, a, it's like fast loading, but also just easy for me to keep up to date. You know? Because, like, if you look @zipmessage.com right now, which is still live, I think we actually have a video, like, a looping video of the actual app near near the top, which is, like, out of date. Like, our app has it it actually looks so much better in real life once you're Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That's an issue.
Brian Casel:It, like, it all these little GIFs and videos and if you use real screenshots of your app, like, they get out of date so fast, especially when it's an early product because the UI updates, you know. So he did this really, cool approach. Like, number one, we've got the the big scrolling image near the top, but it's just enough to show you what an what a flowing async conversation looks like. But then down further down the page, you know, he used this approach where he sort of cuts out these little cards of, like, features from the app. And and again, like, they they they somewhat illustrate how the feature might look and feel when you're in the app, but it's not the actual feature.
Brian Casel:It's a simp it's it's a cartoon of the app Mhmm. Basically, you know. That tend I think that tends to work pretty well. But, like, it's and it's, like, I don't need to, like, show people exactly how it works. The like so one of the things is we have workflows.
Brian Casel:Right? Like like, those linear step by step workflows. We have a little card that illustrates that. But all it shows is that, like, there's something that looks kind of like workflows that you've seen in other apps. Like, that's all you kinda need to know at this level.
Brian Casel:You know, you don't need to know the nitty gritty about how it works. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. I I I could see that. I I think I am leaning more towards showing more of the product and the admin and and and so on. I just I just want some more space to work. That's kinda how I felt that the images were so small that it really didn't give the visitor a chance to see what the hell we're talking about.
Jordan Gal:So I I hear you as some of it can just be stylized, and it doesn't need to be an exact screenshot of the admin or the UI or anything like that. But if you're just if you just have like a Stripe logo and a Braintree logo and a Coinbase Commerce logo, it's like it's just not quite enough to convey Yeah. What we're trying
Brian Casel:to do. I'm not such a fan of the, yeah, like, the theoretical diagrams that that connect ideas together. Like, I I do wanna see illustrations of of what is it. Like, what's the product?
Jordan Gal:Yes. Yes. So that's I got upset by it. You know, I, like, walked away and, like, I I went in a call at 05:00 in the afternoon, and I was on for an hour. And by the time the call was over, I was, like, really frustrated.
Jordan Gal:I was like Mhmm. Shit. I should have gotten involved much sooner. Now there's a whole bunch of work to do. We've kind of been waiting on making a funding announcement for when the website goes live, and now I'm like, this this is gonna be live for another month.
Jordan Gal:Let's just get the announcement out. So it just kind of threw me off. And
Brian Casel:then Actually, other thing before we move off of the images is, like Yeah. Yeah. Again, one of the goals or corrections that I'm making is speed, like page load speed. Zip message is way too slow. The and on Okay.
Brian Casel:In terms of our marketing site, our homepage, and product pages, know, from an SEO standpoint, that's not a good
Jordan Gal:So it's not good enough.
Brian Casel:It's it's a problem. So, like, we like, another directive that I had was like, yeah, we'll have a lot of images that illustrate the product, but they have to be minimal, fast loading, or doing lazy loading. Mhmm. And and we have a little bit of, like, subtle animations, but, like, nothing too crazy. Like, just make the page load fast.
Brian Casel:That's that's a priority
Jordan Gal:for us.
Brian Casel:You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Alright. Yeah. For for me, I I tend to I tend to not pay attention to that as much because I don't know how to do it. And I'm just so so concerned with the positioning and the, like, flow from the homepage to feature pages to pricing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:So I I think I'll I'll report back in a week or two, but but there's a lot of work to be done on that. Yep. How about you? Let's I mean, how'd the how'd the week go? How do you feel?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean yeah. I so overall, honestly, it was pretty positive in terms of, like, getting it out there. And I I always have this mentality going into things like this. There's always some negativity in my in my head that, like, does not come to come to fruition.
Brian Casel:Like, I
Jordan Gal:It's just the paranoia.
Brian Casel:How do they respond? I genuinely had some fears around, like, announcing a a new name for the product. And just and even if the name was fine, that people would have some sort of negative reaction to it just because it's new. That that was my fear. Yeah.
Brian Casel:And I saw none of that, to be honest. Like, literally all I mean, there might be some of that that I don't hear. But All the feedback. All all the feedback has been completely positive. And, like, a much higher reply rate to the emails that I sent, much you know, the the tweets that I put out that day, I thought they might go silent, but they got passed around quite a bit.
Brian Casel:And so Okay.
Jordan Gal:It it To the drama, it
Brian Casel:was it was positive. Yeah. And I It was actually a grind, like, for twenty four, forty eight hours of just writing and putting together these announcements. You know, I again, like, it's one of those things where I I have so much other work. I don't I I don't wanna spend all day writing an email or a blog post, but I I just have to get it out there, get it done.
Brian Casel:So I wrote a big blog post that's, like, our announcement pro post that'll sort of evolve as this transition goes forward. I sent an an email to the Zip message list. Basically, the whole list. I I did exclude current paying customers from that list.
Jordan Gal:They're Wanna communicate differently?
Brian Casel:Well, I just excluded them. They're they're gonna hear about it in the in the next few weeks, and I'm sure many of them heard about it this week anyway. But I just didn't see a need to necessarily, you know, rock the boat with every paying customer right away.
Jordan Gal:Because Right. And Yeah. That's such a that's such a tricky thing.
Brian Casel:Yeah. And and also, like, there's I did hear a little bit of this confusion from a few replies. Like, what action am supposed to take from this email? Like, Mhmm. Like, some of them were like, this is all really exciting.
Brian Casel:What do you want me to do now? Do you want me to go put my email for early access on Clarity Flow? And and I'm and I'm like, I mean, you can if you want. Like, that that's Yeah. Yeah.
Brian Casel:But, like so maybe I didn't do a good job there, but I the I to be honest, like, there wasn't much of a call to action. It was just like, hey, just so you know, a new name is coming. Yes. So it doesn't come out of nowhere in a few weeks. Here's a one page preview.
Brian Casel:We do have an early access list over there. And there was also some confusion about, like, you know, I definitely had multiple people saying, like, this looks awesome. I I want these new features that you're promoting on clarityflow.com. Like, can I get in now? Like, how do I buy?
Brian Casel:And, you know, it's the it's that frustrating thing, like, we're we're Few weeks away. Soon. Months away from most of that being live, you know. We're we're pushing through that road map. But, also, some some emails from customers who happened to to catch wind of of the new name, even though I sort of excluded most of them, asking, like, what you know, how how do I transition?
Brian Casel:When do I transition to the new stuff? Yeah. And and I guess I guess this is a good sign. I I did mention in the announcements that we are gonna be raising prices. I didn't specify what the new prices are gonna be, but I didn't have a lot of questions about that.
Brian Casel:But I like, people acknowledge, like like, in different ways that, like, they they know that the price changes are coming. Mhmm. They didn't seem I I think that's to me, that speaks like, well, our current prices are low.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. That's part of it. And, also, people react more specifically to more specific numbers.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So much great feedback on the actual design and the branding. And, you know, Mike McAllister and and Jason Beggs have have both done an awesome job in terms of design and building out the the site. And and now we we continue that work. So, like, that that's the other thing about this week, the the aftermath.
Brian Casel:It's like, lot of excitement happened on Wednesday when I put it out there, you know. But other than that, other than Wednesday, this week was the same as every other week has been. We got a handful of new customers. We got a handful of churns. It's it's like same same story every week right now.
Brian Casel:You know, bunch of customer support and and a bunch of product work. And I'm grinding on all these different projects. It's like other than that, I I don't think that it made much of an impact. I didn't expect it to. But it does it does feel good that we have the name out there, and now we push forward.
Brian Casel:So the next step is to build I mean, there's multiple next steps. But on the website front so my plan or or how how we're putting this website together is Mike McAllister designed the homepage. So he defined the styling and the look and feel of everything, and he he provided me, like, a really great style guide in Figma and everything. So now I'm taking that, and I'm designing the rest of the pages.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Nice. And he he did a great job on it. It looks great.
Brian Casel:Awesome job. So so yesterday, I designed the new pricing page, which is not live yet.
Jordan Gal:Oh. That's exciting.
Brian Casel:So I spent a lot of time on that and and finished it last night. So now I handed that off to Jason. He's gonna be building that out. It and it I I sent a zip message to to Mike yesterday, like, saying, like, this has been, like, the most efficient way that I've ever produced a web I'm not joking. Like, I not only did it go faster than every other website I've ever made, it it came out better.
Brian Casel:Mike and I and Jason, we did not have one live call throughout this school. Seriously? Not one. I've I've never met them live. I've I've had multiple face to face conversations through Zip Message with them day to day.
Brian Casel:We have not spoken live, and it's worked beautifully. I mean Yeah.
Jordan Gal:That's pretty wild.
Brian Casel:You know, we show we show designs on screen. We talk through them. We have deep conversations. We just haven't had the we we negotiated price and and payments and made the project happen. Like Yeah.
Jordan Gal:It's pretty wild.
Brian Casel:It's it's been great. And then and then, like, I I I took his design, put the pricing page together, sent it to Mike to get his eyes on it, and then he he gave me a few pointers to improve it a little bit. And now it's off to Jason. And it was, like, seventy two seventy two hours, pricing page, done. You know?
Jordan Gal:So are you're you're you're making you're it's encouraging to hear because it it doesn't it it's not the amount of time you spend on it. It's how focused
Brian Casel:and I mean, I'm
Jordan Gal:talking about the
Brian Casel:yes. I mean, the planning of the pricing itself, that's been months in the making.
Jordan Gal:That's right. That's right.
Brian Casel:Lots of iteration, but the layout of the page, came together pretty quickly. You know?
Jordan Gal:And, you know, what I asked you yesterday, when I pinged you in frustration over the our our website, I asked you for, like, who are you looking to? Because what I'm used to doing and how I generally work on a lot of things is I just like to go out and gather a bunch of info and then just let it soak in and influence me and help me that I don't feel like I'm starting with a blank slate. And when I looked around, I don't even know who to look at anymore. I I feel like I used to go I used to hit a handful of websites that did a killer job, and I would go look and get inspiration. And now websites are all over the place.
Jordan Gal:They are. They're kooky.
Brian Casel:Actually, I feel like I didn't I I don't think that I spent enough time looking around for inspiration. I did a little bit. But part you know, part of the problem there is that, like, I tend to just know and remember sites of tools that I personally use. So, like, I think I had a list of maybe eight or 10 websites that I sent to Mike and and a couple notes on what I like about each one. But, like, five of them were, like, developer tools,
Jordan Gal:which which It's very tricky.
Brian Casel:Which do not make sense for our target audience. Like and I I made that clear.
Jordan Gal:Try, like, showing code all over the place and code snippets and different framework versions. And but they're they're the b to b SaaS, like, I just remember, like, that heyday of Amy Hoy of writing out how to create a SaaS website and do the copy first. And I used to really follow that stuff and felt so much more confident in my ability to create a site that converts. And we used to look at other sites. I remember looking at like drip site and then intercom.
Jordan Gal:And I don't know these are classic sites that did a great job. And now it feels like either the products have gotten so big. So you go to Intercom site. It is a you know, they they have to convey 5,000 features.
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And then the flow is strange. And then you go to other sites and you're like, you're getting away with this because everyone already knows who you are and what you do. So you Right. Barely have to do any work. Whole thing is very strange.
Brian Casel:I do think
Brennan Dunn:And I
Jordan Gal:don't really know. Of Wait a
Brian Casel:one okay. So I do look for specific things like in terms of, like, home pages, I I tend to try to look at at sites that are not as well known. I I just didn't do enough digging to find many of them. But, like, you know, just like these smaller SaaS tools that I become aware of.
Jordan Gal:Right. Going to HubSpot is is the wrong orientation.
Brian Casel:Right? Yeah. They're a completely different brand. Huge huge, well known, you know. Yep.
Brian Casel:So I tend to try to look at that. But the styling and, like, look and feel and font choices and colors, which was really all Mike's doing, he had the perfect right instinct of, like, going with, like, very warm, inviting personal colors, you know, for this type of audience, and and we just ran with it. So I tend to look when I look for sites, I'm looking more for structure. Like, they like, I look at sites and how do they organize all of their information? How do they organize their navigation?
Brian Casel:How do they organize their pricing page? And I take those cues to to inform how how we should it's like, you know, I guess that's more like information architecture. That that's what I'm more interested in.
Jordan Gal:I I totally agree. That's the thing. You you I have a lot of faith in our designers' taste, but it's it's the information architecture that is way off. That that's really the issue, and that feels like that's actually the job that I have to take on Yeah. In terms of, okay.
Jordan Gal:You know, where are you using where are you doing things vertically where h one subheadline large screenshot? Like, let me get the point across as quickly as possible. Then how do you wanna highlight features? How do you wanna incorporate testimonials? Where are little embellishments?
Jordan Gal:Where do logo, like, groupings go? Where is the CTA entry point into the blog? Like, just you know, it's like we, like, forgot about all this stuff. It's crazy.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Totally. I I like, what I sent to Mike and I also part of working with Mike was that, like, I've I've known his work, over the years, like his own products and stuff. And so, like, I knew, like, he completely knew the language and the and the typical structure of of a of a good SaaS website. Right?
Brian Casel:So Yep. I knew that I'd you know, we spoke the same language. But then, you know, since he was doing the the homepage, I'm just pulling it up now, like the Notion thing that I gave him. All I basically gave him was this is gonna be great radio because I'm looking
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Well, I'm curious. Did you did you, like, did you list out the things that needed to be incorporated on the homepage and in a particular order?
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, that's literally what like, I'm looking at it now. So I have a page in Notion called site structure under homepage. I I then list it out in in this order. We've got hero h one section with a sub headline.
Brian Casel:And then I I got a section called core parts of the product. I sorry. Let let me slow down. Hero, I I gave him, like, a very rough draft h one and sub headline. He he sort of ran with that.
Brian Casel:And then, core parts of the product, in in our case, we're sort of bringing together these four really big pieces, you know, conversations, coaching programs, group spaces, and payments. And I gave them one sentence on each one of those. And and so, like, that's a that's a big middle section, kind of a like a product tour section in the middle of the homepage. Below that, we've got key features, which is like, here's a here's a grid showing a bunch of other features that you might be thinking about when looking at a product like this. We we got them all.
Brian Casel:Look look at this list.
Jordan Gal:Right. That that that grid is useful for. Alright. Let let's put out a list that looks good still.
Brian Casel:Yep. And then and then I've got customer case studies. So this section is actually not live yet, but we're gonna have a section that has, like, three big call outs to stories about customers. And then and then I got, like, a big call to action near the bottom. That that's basically the homepage.
Brian Casel:And, like, in between some of those sections, we have testimonials. I'm trying to see what else did I give him. So, yeah. Like, for each one of those sections, I I gave him, like, my draft copy. And he he put in some some copy ideas in some spots.
Brian Casel:There were a few things as he put it together. He was like, you know, I think we really need, like, like, a one paragraph, like, introductory piece of copy here that, like, I didn't originally think about. But, from the flow of the page, he was like, I think it would help.
Jordan Gal:Right. It needs it.
Brian Casel:Yeah. So stuff like that.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Alright. Well, I'm gonna be looking over at your site a lot over the next week.
Brian Casel:Yeah. I mean, you know, to be honest, the rest of the pages alright. So, like, pricing is now done, being built. And the rest of the pages to me are actually a lot harder. And that's my task for next week is, like, build out a dedicated page for each of these four big parts of the product.
Jordan Gal:Okay. So you you look at it that same way. Homepage is like almost like a category page, an entry point, and then you go deeper on the core features and give them their own page?
Brian Casel:Yes. Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yep. That's
Brian Casel:the same.
Jordan Gal:And that's where I kinda lost my mind.
Brian Casel:Any work on that yet. Like, I I need to write copy for that stuff.
Jordan Gal:Okay. Yeah. I I may I may ping you on that because that's that's where I lost my mind. Like, the homepage was one thing. I was like, oh, we can just kinda change how this is oriented instead of, like, you know, how to get started.
Jordan Gal:It would be like, you know, highlighting our three or four big features. But then when I went over to those feature pages to, like, dig in, I was like, this this isn't digging in at all. This is like some good looking embellishments, but it doesn't help the visitor dig in. Like, this is what I wanna know about. How does Rally work in a headless environment?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Like, click there and then really explain and show. Yes. And it just didn't give the room to dig in, which is Yeah.
Brian Casel:Like, high
Jordan Gal:what you want people to do.
Brian Casel:High level, I see the homepage as what is it? What what's your brand all about? Who's it for? Like, high level, like, get a sense of, like, what are the big touch points? Like, what should I sort of know about this whole world view of this product?
Brian Casel:But you don't have to get too specific. It's more about, like, the you know, the goal of the headline is to keep you on the page so you scroll down. The go the goal after you scroll down is to keep you on the website so you start to click into these other subpages. Right? And then and then the sub pages is where where okay.
Brian Casel:You're you're interested enough that you made it here. Let's dive in. Right? And I yeah. It so I'm thinking, like, four or five sub pages that really go deep on these four or five core parts of the product.
Brian Casel:And that's, like, a combination of, like, use case, functionality, search intent. Like, some of these are search optimized. Like, they actually align with some search that we we already get on ZipMessage. Like, people land on some of our sub product pages. So, like, it has to be optimized for that.
Brian Casel:And, yeah. And then and then that's it. And then there's the other whole part of the website, which I'm also work now working on is, like, content marketing strategy. Mhmm. You know?
Brian Casel:So we're building out a like, our we've already had a blog on Zip Messenger. We're gonna be transferring all those articles. Most of them, reoptimizing them and continuing to build out more content clusters that align with with our product stuff. So we're gonna have a whole blog and and but, like, organ much more strategically organized in into, like, topical sections rather than chronological blog. Like, what and I've always wanted to do that.
Brian Casel:We just never got around to doing that organization on ZipMessage. Like, now now we're gonna take that opportunity to make, like, a a really nice nicely organized, you know, five or six categories of of topics from the articles page and and really build that out nicely. Yeah. And and and then the other thing, I don't know how much I'm gonna use this, but we're gonna essentially have two blogs on the website. One is is the main one, like, with content, like, to articles, SEO driven articles.
Brian Casel:The other one's gonna be like a company blog, which we'll just use for, like, announcements, new feature releases, you know, stuff like that. Maybe some, like, behind the scenes
Jordan Gal:Okay.
Brian Casel:Kinda kinda stuff. Like, we don't have any sort of space for that right now except for, like, my own personal Twitter stuff, you know.
Jordan Gal:Right. Right. So a little bit of work in public, but, like, at the company level.
Brian Casel:Yeah. Like and I think it would be good to have a company blog where we can have official announcements of every new feature when we release them. And, like, a little story about why this why this feature came to be, you know. Because we've released a bunch of features, but they're but there's nowhere on the website that I can point to as, like, that's when that feature came about and the story behind it. You know?
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Ours are just kinda mixed in chronologically with other other types of content. Mhmm. Yep.
Brian Casel:So, so, yeah, what else you got?
Jordan Gal:Should we talk about, should we talk about taxes?
Brian Casel:Yeah. Sure. So, I mean Not the the most more about this than do. I I've only seen a a couple of, Ian's angry tweets about this. But
Jordan Gal:Yeah. People are really upset about this because this is one of those things that just make you scratch your head in puzzlement at how the government can be that stupid. Right? There's they're stupid, and then there's, like, government stupid. And and and that, like, defies all logic sometimes, and this is one of those moments.
Jordan Gal:So, alright, the very quick version of it is that the IRS wants to force software development among other types of research and development to be amortized over a lengthier period of time, like like a five or ten year horizon. What that means is if you take a developer's salary, call it a $100,000 a year, you can't take that 100,000 as expenses in year one. You have to split it out over, like let's just if it's five years, then it's $20,000 a year. The the problem with that is what it really turns into is unrealized profit that that you get taxed on. So let's just say, for example, you have
Brian Casel:You paid a $100,000 salary. You're you know?
Jordan Gal:Right. It should come off of your taxable income.
Brian Casel:That's an expense. Right. It should be an expense.
Jordan Gal:Right. It's so straightforward and obvious, but it's so dangerous if it doesn't get fixed. It's like, let's say you have a successful software business that has five employees and makes a million dollars a year in revenue. Cool. Out of that million dollars a year, you have $800,000 in expenses and you make $200,000 in net income.
Jordan Gal:The company pays taxes based on that $200,000 in net income. That's how things look right now. In the future, if this goes into effect, let's say four out of those five people are developers, and they each make a $100,000 a year. So instead of being able to take $400,000 as expenses in that year that lead into the $200,000 in net income, you have to amortize those. So only a portion of that $400,000 in salaries can be taken in year one.
Jordan Gal:So it's it's it's as you it's as if instead of net income that you actually brought in of $200,000 now all of a sudden your taxable income is like $700,000 because you can only deduct year one of those developer salaries. It's ridiculous. Like you're paying taxes on $700,000, but you only made $200,000 in income. It's it is it is so stupid and, like, anti innovation and growth that the hope is that the government repeals it. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:But it's it's not happening on its own, which is why you see a lot of people suddenly get loud
Brian Casel:about it. Comes about because it's like I I don't know if this is just your typical, like, lack of understanding from the government on technology in general, which is completely ridiculous and aggravating. But, like, this is people. Like like, technology doesn't just sprout out of the ground out of nowhere. People actually work on it, and they require salaries, and they get paid for that work just like any other industry in the world.
Brian Casel:I don't know why
Jordan Gal:Yeah. It's Why why this is
Brian Casel:the cost of people building things can't be treated like any other industry.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yes. It it's tough to know how that actually happens. Right? Is it just a matter of, you know, staff in a room looking at ways to make a bill seem like it's not detrimental to the budget?
Jordan Gal:Right? Because, right, all those bills have to get scored
Brian Casel:Yeah.
Jordan Gal:And and and show what impact it's gonna have on the budget and the deficit and all that. So if you tweak that, right, if you if you if you about it as a giant Excel spreadsheet, a huge bill from Congress and everyone's saying, But I want this break for my industry in this state and I want this thing, you can see how tweaking an assumption inside of that Excel spreadsheet by saying, Hey, let's amortize developer expense as r and d spread out over five years instead of one is gonna make the scoring of that bill look infinitely better, and there's no one there to connect on what that is actually going to do to businesses.
Brian Casel:Yeah. It's ridiculous. Yeah. That's
Jordan Gal:that's that's the problem.
Brian Casel:I mean, we we will, you know, again, like, call out this, ssballiance.org. You know, Michelle Hansen and and I I think she's she's driving the organization behind this. So that's it's really awesome that, you know, we I mean, we can organize. We can put websites
Jordan Gal:That's together and right.
Brian Casel:And get the get the word out. I mean, I I should also, you know, mention Justin Jackson has been doing a couple of, and John Buddha have been doing a couple of episodes on their podcast, Build Your SaaS. Really, totally different issue, but, you know, on, like, collecting sales tax, which sounds like terrible radio, but it it it's it's equally aggravating and and it but, like, we should be listening to it. I I learned a lot just listening to their whole, experience that they've had. It's it's been sort of a night.
Brian Casel:In terms of, like, you know, SaaS companies collecting sales tax on on behalf of all these different government entities, federal governments around the world, states, cities. I mean, it's unbelievable.
Jordan Gal:Yes. It's a mess.
Brian Casel:And and as, I mean, I I really commend them for talking about it. Same thing with with Ian and and Michelle and people, like, making people know you know, making it known about these kind of issues. Because most people just don't wanna talk about this kind of stuff. I mean, we talk about building public all the time and sharing our revenue graphs and our and our product work, but nobody wants to talk about taxes or
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Tax collection, filings.
Brian Casel:Or you know? A, because there's there's confusion about it. Maybe, b, they they don't wanna talk about their their own experience with it. It's you know? But there there's a lot of sticky issues, and I don't feel very qualified to talk about about them on
Jordan Gal:any know. I know you wanna just, like, go to your accountant and say, okay. Tell tell me what needs to be done.
Brian Casel:But it's And and but, again, like, we're in the tech industry that, like, there's not that many accountants that really know all the ins and outs of what we do as well. Mhmm. So
Jordan Gal:Yeah. That's right. And when when you find someone, then, like, they end up getting referred to an entire friend group, and they get really busy. Yep. That that that's how mine is.
Brian Casel:Yeah, man.
Jordan Gal:Well, that's it on my end, man. I don't know what to tell you. I'm just waiting for my Internet to come back right now. Then we're gonna get the weekend started. Yeah.
Jordan Gal:Got a big, birthday party here at the house for, my middle daughter with 22 kids. That's gonna be fun.
Brian Casel:That's fun. We've got this local thing in in our town called Urban Air. I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's it's one of these, like and they imagine if they had these places when we were kids, but, like, you know, ball pits, trampolines, go karts, video game, like, arcades. Like, it's this massive warehouse of just fun for kids.
Brian Casel:It's just a madhouse for kids. Right? So my daughter had a birthday there, and then five other kids in her class and both my daughters. So I'm going to this place, like, twice a weekend for, like, for, like, three months straight. It's kind of insane.
Brian Casel:Yep.
Jordan Gal:Yeah. Yeah. That's that that tends to happen. I I find myself driving to a, like, soccer bubble on top of, like, an a landfill. I'm like, okay.
Jordan Gal:This is my life. Yep. Sure. Yep. That's what it is.
Jordan Gal:That's what I do a few times
Brian Casel:a week.
Jordan Gal:Mhmm. But one more week, we'll do next week on the pod. And then after that, I'm off to Hawaii, baby. That's what I'm looking forward to right now.
Brian Casel:Oh, sweet. I think you and me are vacationing the same week. Nice. April April 10?
Jordan Gal:No. No. No.
Brian Casel:March 25. Oh, okay. Cool.
Jordan Gal:Yep. Yep. We'll figure it out. Yeah. Alright, dude.
Jordan Gal:Pray to the Internet gods for me and, into the website gods while you're
Brian Casel:at it. Alright, dude.
Jordan Gal:Good to see you.
Brian Casel:Later, bro.
