Week 5 of rebuilding my website on Framer

Alright, I feel confident that this is going to be the last week before launch. I have most of the website’s structure set up and I’ve populated as much content as I can. Or so I thought.

Truth is that there’s been a part of the website which I’ve been hesitant to update: the hero section. I’ve been rotating between different images as placeholders for the last few weeks because I had no idea what to put. I thought I did, but between creating my new blog pages and updating the copy of my main sections, I was certain the current hero section just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. It felt off, misplaced, and I couldn’t have asked for a better time to make changes.

I made this ~1 year ago for myself, when I was recreating my logo:

It was fun to relive my memories through these snapshots and compile them as a quick gif. I wanted it to look like a timeless reminder of the things I’ve done, places I’ve been and reps I’ve put in to become who I am.

I really liked the idea of it, so I created this video as a v2:

Then, I asked strangers for their feedback. Surprisingly, most of them liked it.

“You are your worst critic,” but I love it

However, I wasn’t entirely happy with it. I knew it was an improvement, but it wasn’t colour-graded, didn’t have sfx or any surprising composition. It made me realise that there will definitely be a time where I can elevate it.

That time was last weekend, and I spent my entire weekend on this (v3):

It’s not perfect, but I’m really happy with how it came out, especially because I was able to improve it on all fronts. This whole process has taken me just under a year to accomplish and here are the 3 tricky things I’ve learned about these type of website reels:

1. It needs to be short & engaging

Attention is the new currency, and goldfishes are the new standard for attention span. The reality is that there are many, many websites and content on the internet. Why should anyone visit yours and what would they get out of it?

Those were the questions I had to ask myself after receiving feedback from the public that my current website’s homepage just feels plain. Like oooo, yeah, shiny logo. What else? Nothing else was happening. It doesn’t inform the viewer about me, my services or what they can get out of it.

Factoring all of this, I made the current changes.

2. Self explanatory – show, don’t tell

When I was editing the video, one of the things I was fighting hard against was adding titles or words. It crossed my mind many times. Like “oh, I just need to say [ x ] and the audience will get it.”

“Well, duh,” is what you’d say.

But I think it’s tougher to design for yourself than your clients because a) client has a product, but it’s different when you’re the product, and b) how well do you really know yourself? I thought I did, but distilling my personality and working style through a vibe of visuals and audio was a challenge I didn’t know I needed. Instead of which words to say, I had to think about what clips to use and what music best describes that journey. Is there an overall theme? What’s the sequence? By which order? Off beat or on tempo?

3. Make it quick to load

Why? Because if we circle back to Point 1, most people will have left your site by then. Also, Google doesn’t like that, and scores you lower for SEO.

So, there are 2 ways to go about this: compress your videos or embed it (eg: YouTube or DailyMotion). I highly recommend compressing it, there are plenty of video compressors online or you can download Handbrake (I’m not sponsored), it’s an open-source app which does this too. On that note, my rule of thumb is nothing above 10mb. Those are tough parameters to work with, so do expect drops in quality.

Alternatively, embedding it as a clip from YouTube or DailyMotion works too, but I don’t recommend it because that introduces a third party overlay over your video. It makes it look less sleek and increases the odds of viewers clicking away from recommended videos. I’d say stay away from this option unless you’ve got a looooooong video.

Much love to every video editor I’ve worked with. If you’ve got one, be kind. Just imagine listening to the same audio on repeat for a week. That’ll drive anyone insane.