Yasmine Robles from Robles Designs sheds light on the effective integration of storytelling in website design.

Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy, highlights the podcast's core focus areas—marketing, social media, monetization, and website design—and introduces Yasmine, who specializes in creating strategic, visually appealing, and user-friendly websites to help grow podcasts and businesses.

Yasmine brings her decade-long experience in design and marketing, emphasizing the power of storytelling to create a memorable brand experience online. She explains how to convey a compelling message through visuals and content, making the user journey seamless and engaging. Her insights include using clear messaging, knowing your audience, and visual storytelling techniques to make websites resonate with visitors.

The discussion features real-world examples such as The Carpenter's Son and Dreamlight Creative, demonstrating how storytelling can significantly impact website success. Yasmine shares how these businesses used narrative and visual elements—like family photos, timelines, and interactive features—to reflect their unique stories and captivate users.

Yasmine touches on modern web design techniques, including subtle animations and interactive elements, to add personality without overwhelming users. She also advises using tools like Hotjar for analyzing user behavior and VideoAsk for gathering customer feedback to refine website storytelling.

Emerging trends in storytelling and web design, such as AR, VR, and AI, are explored, highlighting their potential to enhance user experience. Yasmine provides actionable tips, urging listeners to think from the user's perspective and harmonize aesthetics with storytelling.

Top Takeaways

Storytelling in Web Design: Emphasizing the importance of storytelling as a powerful element in web design, not just in content creation like blogs and podcasts.

User Experience (UX): Explaining how storytelling can enhance the user experience by making websites more engaging and relatable.

Consistent Brand Narrative: Ensuring the story and tone of voice are consistent across all parts of the website, from the about page to product descriptions.

Visual Elements: Using visual design elements like images, videos, and graphics to support and enhance the storytelling aspect of the website.

User-Centric Design: Designing websites with the end user in mind, focusing on their experience, and making sure the navigation is intuitive and the content is accessible.

Case Studies: Illustrating the impact of storytelling on website success through real-world examples, like carpenters and creative studios.

Balance Between Aesthetics and Functionality: Highlighting the need to balance aesthetic design elements with practical user interfaces to ensure the website remains fast and functional.

Emerging Trends: Discussing future trends in web design, including the use of AR, VR, AI, interactive media, and custom illustrations to enhance storytelling.

Feedback Tools: Recommending tools like Hotjar and VideoAsk to gather user feedback and understand how visitors interact with the website to refine and improve the storytelling.

Collaborative Approach: Encouraging collaboration and ongoing communication with web designers to ensure that the website effectively tells a unique brand story and meets business goals.

Key Moments

00:00 Storytelling is the brand's heartbeat and connection.

03:13 Ensure clarity and engagement in website storytelling.

08:05 Enhancing brand identity through interactive, personalized content.

09:30 Examples show personality, story enhances business appeal.

13:27 Balancing aesthetics with website performance is crucial.

18:22 Use Hotjar and VideoAsk for website insights.

Yasmine works alongside clients to design a website that's driven by strategy, looks amazing, and that you can actually use to grow your podcast, and your business.

Her website.

Her Instagram.

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Each week, one of The Circle of Experts talks about critical aspects of growing your podcast. We focus on marketing, social media, monetization, website design, and implementation of all of these to help you make the best podcast possible.

Have a question or an idea for one of our episodes? Send us an email at podcasts@circle270media.com.

The Circle of Experts are:

Yasmine Robles from Robles Designs

Tonnisha English-Amamoo of TJE Communications

Don The Idea Guy

Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy, from Circle270Media Podcast Consultants

Copyright 2024 Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy™

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

Welcome to the Circle sessions featuring the Circle of Experts. Each week, one of the Circle of Experts joins me to talk about critical aspects of growing your podcast. We focus on marketing, social media, monetization, and website design to help you implement all of these together. Circle of Experts are Yasmine Robles from Robles Designs, Tanisha English Amamoo of TJE Communications, and Don The Idea Guy. I'm Brett Johnson, My Podcast Guy from Circle 270 Media Podcast Consultants. This week, Yasmine is here from the Circle of Experts. Yasmine works alongside clients to design a website that's driven by strategy, looks amazing, and that you can actually use to grow your podcast and then in turn your business as well. Yasmine, thanks for joining us today.

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Sure. I you know, this is an interesting, topic you wanna go over. And I really had never thought about using storytelling in web design. I mean, we we talk about storytelling in blogs, and podcasts and, you know, just anything in the in in a in a realm that we're creating content. But, but I I like this idea about storytelling in a web design. So let's talk about that.

Yeah. So, as I've been venturing into the world of design and marketing for, like, the past 10 years, I did come to realize that there is a lot of power in being able to tell your story online visually, maybe with some content in there, and creating this memorable brand experience that goes beyond, you know, when you're meeting somebody at a networking event, when you're speaking at an event, and then they actually go to your website and that whole story comes full Circle. So that's something that really entices me and I think that a lot of podcasters and small businesses can benefit from.

Yeah. So so let's talk about how that works in web design. How does it go beyond visuals and contribute to the user experience? At UX, we talk about a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. So storytelling is really the heartbeat of the brand. It's not just about the visual on a deeper level, and then when a brand is has, like, that compelling what that means really to when it comes to your website is that you want to create a message and get it out there, visually on your site. So that means making sure that the message is lightweight, that you're getting to the point, that you're giving cost experience experience on that site, making your path as simple as possible to understand that story. So let's say you are a speaker about mental health, you want to make sure that you're meeting that audience where they're at and that comes with research and knowing your field, knowing your audience, but you want to meet them where they're at right now depending on what you do and showcase what that transformation could look like after they have worked with you or after maybe they hired you to talk to their team. So you meet them where they're at. You showcase that transformation, that that aspiration that they have, and then that's when you can pitch a service or your podcast or your merch, whatever that may be.

But that's really where that storytelling comes in. And then visually, you want to make sure that the the user doesn't feel overwhelmed. So if any of you have ever been in, like, I know for me I was in AP European History, that's the one that really got to me because they gave me a book that was really thick, tiny text, and very I don't even it was very it was not even double spaced. You know? It it was very hard to read and no pictures. And so you don't wanna do that. You don't wanna give your, your audience PTSD about going back to high school. You wanna make sure that it's easy to read, short paragraphs, bullet points, sections that are divided up, headlines that if they're really just scanning through the page, they can still get that story across and understand what you do, who you do it for, and why you do it, why you're passionate about it. That's that's the essence of storytelling when it comes to your website.

That's a really good example because I've got a couple of books that I'm trying to get into, but it's that oh my gosh. It has to be 8 point font. No breaks in it and such, but I it's a really good example of you're seeing that on a on a website. You kinda go, okay. They're trying to tell a story here, but they're not they're not doing a very good job of it. I'm sure the meat of it is looks good, but it's like you said, it's gonna be broken up on stuff, in regards to maybe images or video or something like that. So, so, you know, talking, in a in a listener that maybe a designer and and businesses, of course, listen to podcast, how do you, Robles Designs, incorporate storytelling in that design process?

Yeah. So at Robles Designs, we approach every mindset and really a mindset that focuses in on your user. We know that it's a web that you're the one hiring us for the website design, for the marketing, the social, all that. But really, we're looking at the end user and what they're going to experience, what they what you want to get across. So we begin by understanding your story, your values, unique selling points. And from there, we interweave them seamlessly into the design and creating this really cohesive messaging that engages the user. In addition to that, we will just add some graphic fun elements, so or what I like to call fun elements, but, you know, very slight maybe hover effects or perhaps you have some images of how let's say for the for a chamber, how the chamber was founded. Do you have a photograph of the original founders? Things like that can bring delight to users.

It can be something that has an on hover effect or maybe a little game that's embedded into the site. It could also just be something that slightly rotates when they scroll. Those little delightful elements will help get that brand across. And, again, just keeping in mind that it's a website for you, for your podcast, for your business, but at the end of the day, it's really geared towards telling a story to your ideal client or listener.

Right. So, my mind's trying real real in regards. If I'm thinking of websites of doing that and maybe doing it poorly or doing it well, but can you share some specific case studies where storytelling made a significant impact on a website success?

Yeah. Yeah. So we there's 2 clients that we work with. We work with a carpenter's son and and you can Google them. They're they create really amazing, pieces of of furniture. Just whether it's a conference table or it's just incredible pieces, and they're growing really fast. A great great client to work with. They really had an incredible story of how they started the business because they I believe that they were accidental entrepreneurs.

They were just trying to gain funds, you know, to start their family. And so that story that can be pulled out can then visual visually be placed on the website. More of their story is really on the about page as it showcases images of the family, a timeline of how the business evolved and grew, where they were located. But then on the rest of the pages, you can still feel that same tone of voice, that narrative with all of the imagery, the text, showcasing their pieces, but everything still has their personality. And for them, it's a lot of images because they're proud of the work they do. It's beautiful work, and so making sure that we showcase visually the work that they put into it. So we were able to grab, blueprints of furniture pieces that they've created, that their designers have designed, and, place them on the site. So we don't just show the end result, the end product, but we're also showcasing their ability to be artistic with these pieces of furniture, these custom items.

Another client that I believe had a really great story to tell is Dreamlight Creative. It's woman owned, and they create content for entrepreneurs, basically, if you or if you are in the business, have a large business and need to train people, they will create those training manuals for you. But the the website looked a little stale, just like, Carpenter's Son. It didn't really explain that whole personality. And so with that, those small delightful items that we added there were slightly rotating. We extracted their logo and took parts of their logo and made it slightly rotate when it loads as you're scrolling through the site. These subtle things can really pull everything together visually as well as the way that the content is written with that same tone of voice, that personality that you bring. And ultimately, if you whether you have a podcast, a small business, micro business, you want to make sure that there is something that differentiates you from your competition, and that comes down to the content that's written, the tone, how you organize it visually, and if you have any other, delightful items to add, whether that is a photo of Brett when he was younger and not even thinking about being an entrepreneur, or it could be, you know, the the office pet, whatever that is to just bring a little bit of personality to that user and that story.

Yeah. Yeah. You're giving me a lot of examples in my head of of of it's at first, I'm thinking why? Why do this? But the the the examples that you gave and also things websites that have just popped in my head that are using it. It's like, yeah. That adds a lot of personality. It may not be the main page, but it is interesting to see the Genesis story, why they're in business, their attitude toward doing business, why you know, that sort of thing. I another one is, a local business here in Columbus, a little a pet store that has done a podcast in the past called Fangs and Fur. And they have a a a story page as well too, and it really describes well why they do it.

And it's a picture of the family with the with dogs and that sort of thing, and and it's, it adds value to the website.

Yeah. And people do business with people they love. So as an example, we run a marketing agency. We compare it to other marketing agencies. If you strip everything, all of our personality is probably the same. But at the end of the day, it's people that you just have fun speaking to, that you trust, and that you just vibe with. And so you wanna make sure that comes across. So whether you are, let's say, a divorce attorney or you are a future podcaster, you want to make sure that that story really comes across through your website because that's just going to see through everything.

And your website really is where people will stalk you, after they hear a clip of your podcast or they if somebody tags you and says, this is the person you need to contact for x, y, and z. You want them to get to know you and find out why you are valuable as well as why you would be the best fit.

Right. Exactly. And and why you should continue to listen in a in a podcast example too or continue to read or whatever it is. If you're in the entertainment world, I guess you could say, it's that Yeah. People kinda wanna know about you, why you're doing what you're doing, why you're doing that, true crime podcast or an exercise, you know, podcast or whatever. What why what brought you to this point of creating? Right? We talk you

know? And Go ahead. I was just gonna mention that there's been so many times that I have listened to podcasts and then go online just to find out what people look like. Mhmm. And it always blows my mind that I envision something something something completely different. And even just having a splash page for your podcast with the headshot, people love that. Right? If it is true crime, why are you into true crime? What is the story behind that? You know, who inspired you? Who was the what was the first episode of true crime that you watched or documentary or whatever it was? So people love to have a connection, and that's really what it is. You're creating a relationship with your user. You're creating a connection.

Well and you brought it up earlier too, that differentiation piece. That it's that, okay. I'm doing this because and let's stay with the true crime. There are lots of true crime podcasts. So what makes you do yours differently? And that's the that's the page, you know, or, entrepreneur podcasts. There's a boatload of entrepreneur podcasts. Well, you know, that page can help you differentiate between the, you know, the the top 10, entrepreneur podcasts, which you may not strive to necessarily be. But also, give a picture of I want you to listen to this podcast as well as others because of what I do.

And that that's that's your opportunity to talk on your web page. Yeah. That makes sense. We we talk a lot about, aesthetics on website in regards to, you know, what it looks like, what it does. So don't weigh it down too much. Don't make it too flashy. And knowing your your intended, user. So let's talk about the balance between aesthetics and storytelling.

How do you navigate this delicate balance in the web design?

Yeah. So being a website designer, I always wanna even for our own site, I always wanna add the newest, flashiest things. Or if I figured out how to code for example, on our site currently, I don't know when you're listening to this, but currently, if you hover over certain letters, the depending on the browser, they will be able to change color almost like a gradient, like, almost like you're coloring it yourself. So some of those things can it's technically, I guess, bog down the website, and you have to play this. It's really come it comes down to a choice. So if you're cool features to your website, you're bogs down the site or slows it down. Your storytelling will not even get across because people will not wait for things to load. So you want to make sure it is it is a very delicate dance between the aesthetics.

And and really while aesthetics create the initial allure, storytelling will ensure that your users stay engaged, that they will continue to listen to the podcast, that they will hire you for that custom furniture piece. Or I mentioned the worst stories. They will they will trust you with their the one of their most private and painful moments of their life maybe because storytelling. So although we want a lot of flashy things on our site, we wanna make sure that if there's a harmonious blend with the visuals, narrative, and that everything complements each other and really really just so look at it from their point of view, not necessarily from your point of view.

Right. So looking ahead, let's take a look at future trends, and in in the storytelling in the web design combination. So what do you see as emerging trends in that storytelling within the web design landscape?

So depending on your goals, and how techy you are, there are a couple of trends that are coming up. There's AR, VR. There's interactive media that's on the rise. We're entering we're just entering a really exciting era. We're also entering the era of AI, of Chat2PT, and all these things. These will make it really possible for you to immerse the storytelling. Now with some of the content AI stuff, you want to make sure that it still sounds like you that you are running the whatever you write through a checker. I would say your goal if you're just a business owner, if you're doing it yourself, your goal should be maybe, like, 20, 30% of it can come up as AI written.

And just kind of massage it and tweak it, and, you wanna make sure that it doesn't just sound like an AI wrote it. Even though it might be your story, it still might sound a bit robotic. So just making sure that you're you're looking at these advancements as a possibility, but you're also looking at it from a storytelling point of view, a human point of view. And that way, you can allow your brand to connect. There's other trends out there, visual trends. So you can go it depends on your brand. But you can go dark mode, which means that basically everything on your site is dark and the content, like the text, is a lighter color or white. There's also the option to code both of those.

So you could have a light mode and a dark mode on your site if you're nerdy like me. There's other trends like having more illustrations throughout the site, photographs. People are opting for custom illustrations to really get the point across or icons. There's, the big font phase right now where people just wanted a big purposes. And then there's the base, on the site where there might be literally your headline your top headline on the hero section, which is the topmost portion of your page. Could be one sentence, a short sentence, and that's the only thing maybe that and a button. And that's the only thing that's there. It's just maybe a color background.

And as people scroll, they get to know more. But really depends on your brand goals, depends on your business, and it really depends on the user. Right? If they're expecting a bright pink neon website, then that's what they expect. But if you are, let's say a really, calm and, calming and relaxing yoga studio, you might not want a bunch of flashy things throughout your site.

Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. It still comes down to that remembering and focusing on who will be using the website and and learning as you go, of course, being sometimes you just you you think that's who it is or who what that would be attracted them. But it's it's that listening to your listeners, to your viewers, to anybody that approaches, you know, the website or just, you know, anybody that, would have an interest at least looking at what you're creating or in that sort of thing to kinda give some feedback and and and know that I'm sure it has to evolve over time. Tweak it here, tweak it there, but at least create it. Right.

Yeah. Before we wrap up, any final thoughts or some key takeaways you'd like to share?

Yeah. So number 1, if you do have a site, I would encourage you to look up Hotjar, h o t j a r. I believe they have a free, version. You can install it on your site and really take a look at what people are doing on your website, and it's a nice visual, whereas Google Analytics can give you the numbers, Hotjar can give you a recording, it can give you a heat map, and it tell you where people are scrolling, clicking, etcetera. That's a nice one. Another thing I would encourage you to do is if you currently have a site or if you're working on your storytelling or messaging, go and you can either use and a friend of mine turned me to this. VideoAsk. I believe they also have a free version and send them a video questionnaire where they can answer some questions about their frustrations with the serve with the problem that they're having that you maybe solved for them, what they love most about it.

Basically, a nice, short, easy questionnaire through video format. The reason you wanna do it through video format is because you can pull the words that they're saying and use that in your storytelling. So if you're a personal trainer and you're tackling people like me, who I don't really care about getting healthy and I love my carbs, but if you spoke to me and said, do you wanna get back in those skinny jeans? I would that would be my messaging. Right? So you could attract me that way versus saying, do you wanna get healthy? So you really want to create that storytelling, that messaging by literally saying what they have told you. So those are 2 options that you can do. And you can always hit me up and, bribe me with either coffee or tacos, and we can get together and talk about your website and how you can really make sure that your content and the visuals of the site are geared towards your user.

Right. I I I was just gonna ask. I mean, the best way to contact you whether, they already have kind of a story built on the website and they're not happy with it or do you wanna start from scratch? How how can they get a hold of you?

Yeah. You can message me on any of the social platforms. I'm most active on LinkedIn. You can find me at yasminroblissorroblissscienceonLinkedIn. We're on Instagram, TikTok, all the places, but you can find me most active on LinkedIn. And you can find our contact form on roblest designs. That's roblestesigns.com. And just fill it out, and we can, have a chat.

Super. Yeah. And, for, Circle 270media, go to my podcast guide.com, and we do the same thing. Just, I don't necessarily, you know, have to go with the tacos. I could go with pizza. Anything carb filled, and I'm the same way. It's like, oh, man. Carbs.

I yeah. My my my downfall is carbs. I could do pizza though too, or or coffee is great as well. But I've got a contact, form. Just fill it out, put put some stuff on the calendar, and let let's talk a little bit at, my podcast guy.com. This has been interesting. Thanks for, you know, enlightening, me. I've been thinking about this too now in regards to just a little bit more about storytelling on the website.

I I love it. It's a great idea.

Yeah. I'm glad to be here.