Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
What does a float center need to do to get a website?
What should they be prepared for?
Find out now on Daily Solutions Podcast!
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Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: Okay, so this one is one less about running the actual Float Center and more about running the appearance of a Floating Center.
Ashkahn: Just like the facade setting, how do I set up a cardboard cut out and have a float in it?
Graham: And lure people in. Okay so, what should I be doing for a website setup?
Ashkahn: Okay that’s a good question.
Graham: You should probably have one.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s not a bad thing to have it nowadays.
Graham: Good advice if you were debating whether or not to go with the website or just no website, probably website.
Ashkahn: Yeah, this is just some of the insights that you’re going to get from the daily solutions podcast, you should have a website as a business.
Graham: Solid gold. All right the thing is that you don’t really need anything that fancy.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: You don’t need a crazy website, you’re not a web based business, your job is not to impress people with your prowess at web design, your goal is just to get them excited about floating-
Ashkahn: Make it easy to book an appointment.
Graham: I mean honestly most of the booking software out there is going to make it pretty easy to book an appointment.
Ashkahn: In terms of actually how to build your website, I mean that’s kind of the first question, what platform do I build it in? And you hear a bunch of things ranging from, you can build it yourself or you can use things like Joomla! There is all these kind of crazy words that people throw out there, but one of the biggest one is WordPress. I forget what the statistic is of like how many websites on the internet are?
Graham: 200% of all websites.
Ashkahn: 200% of all websites are WordPress. So it’s huge and it’s used by big companies and big websites (Float Tank Solutions). Float Tank Solutions is WordPress site The Float Conference is a WordPress site, our float HQ site is a WordPress site.
The nice thing about is, it basically makes a user interface for you to build a website, so it’s got a whole back end and if you want to add a new page, you just hit a big button that says add new page.
If you want to make sure you put this on the title, there’s a box that says title, and you type it in there.
It’s approachable and it’s also so widely used at this point that there is all sorts of plugins and things you can add on top of it that do variety of almost anything you would want a website to do at this point.
Graham: The kind of fancy name for this is CMS’s or Content Management Systems, of which WordPress is just one, Joomla is another Drupal is another. But WordPress by far is going to be the most supported of those out there.
Ashkahn: There’s basically the spectrum right? On one end you’re just coding everything and there is no kind of user interface for you to follow and on the other end is there is kind of no real back end.
These are called like Whizzywig websites, what you see is what you get. Where you literally have your website and if you want a paragraph to be above a picture you’ll just drag it with your mouse and put it above the picture.
You are kind of really just playing with what the website is and it’s very kind of outside. Then in the middle is something like WordPress where there is a back door and you go through and you kind of adjust everything. Pretty much along that spectrum you’re just giving up, you’re balancing ease of use and customizability.
The more you want to customize something to exactly how you want it to be, the more you’re leaning towards building a website completely from scratch yourself, which is very difficult.
The less you care about customizing things, the more you’re building super, super simple websites that are easy to use and easy to manipulate like those Whizzywig sites, things like Wix is an example of that.
Graham: I’ll give you a hint when you’re designing your float center website I would say you probably don’t care too much about having control over it.
Ashkahn: Yeah, so that kind of WordPress is that middle ground that a lot of people end up going with.
Graham: Another really common one that’s even more hold your hand through the process kind of style is Squarespace and that’s more a recent development than WordPress by far.
Basically came about as a response to a lot of these other CMS’s that were a little more complicated and it truly is one that you can design a really nice, very modern looking website that takes advantage of responsive design and all these other kind of buzz words that you might hear going around there and does all the heavy lifting for you.
You’re really just entering in your content the types of effects you want to have happen, different photos and everything comes out the other end looking very much like a lot of Squarespace websites if you start designing in there you’ll be like, “Oh, every single spot in my town uses Squarespace. I get it. That’s why they all look like kind of the same.”
You’ll be one of those very stylish nice looking websites that kind of looks like a lot of other content on the web – especially small shops. But there is a reason for that which is, it’s easy to use and your job again is not to be a really fancy web design company you don’t need the fanciest things.
At it’s core you have a link for people to click to schedule, you have your address and stuff about you and stuff about floating, none of that is too crazy or complicated.
Going with Squarespace is a very appealing kind of idea especially if you don’t have a lot of experience in web design yourself.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s pretty typical unless you have decent hand at this stuff, it’s pretty typical to find a freelance person or a company to kind of help you with this, with building your website.
My personal advice is always to find a company that can help you with the trickier parts, like setting up a website in the first place is probably one of the most difficult parts of having a website and then sometimes the websites just throw you crazy errors.
It’s like, “Oh, this like crazy plug in node 3.4 thing needs to be updated but can’t.” You’re like, “Oh I have no idea what that means.”
Graham: Node idea?
Ashkahn: Yeah, so it’s nice to have someone that you’re paying money to who knows stuff like that, who can just deal with that sort of shit so you don’t have to. It’s nice to have that, but in my mind you don’t want to… You want to have enough wherewithal in your website to be able to go make small changes.
Graham: Yeah, absolutely.
Ashkahn: If you just want to be like, “Oh, I just need to on my home page I want to change the title of this one little section of it.” You don’t want to have to, every time you want to make a small change like that, have to contact your web developer and pay them money to go into this thing and again WordPress can be nice because it’s easy to do those parts of it. That’s what I find to be a nice balance, like find someone you can pay to do these parts that are weird crazy strings of air, message words that don’t make any sense to you. But give yourself enough training and spend a little bit of time figuring out to the point where if you just need to do changing text, or changing a picture, or small stuff like that in your website you can do it by yourself without anybody else having to kind of be the gatekeeper.
Graham: That actually is just what I would say is a really good litmus test for whatever you end up going. Even if it’s raw HTML/CSS and you’re doing the coding by hand, if that gets you to the point where you feel confident in changing text or an image then you can actually manipulate that raw HTML/CSS then that’s a fine option.
Graham: If you’ve been using WordPress you can’t get to that point because technology is so kind of scary and different sizes of images don’t even really make sense to you then yeah, maybe something that holds your hand even more than that is really what you’re looking for.
Having to go back to a web developer or needing to just wait for a week for someone to respond to an email in order to change something really simple or type over something is so annoying. Getting it in your hands and feeling confident is probably prime.
Ashkahn: Often you change something and you’re like, “Oh, no that actually didn’t look as good as I thought.” It’s nice to be able to do four or five things until you get it right instead of waiting for someone to do it and having a lot of back and forth just sounds very annoying.
Graham: Yeah, other parts of this just to go over them really quick. I mean the nice thing is this isn’t float specific knowledge, so we kind of load you up with a bunch of keywords here and then you can go do a bunch of research on your own once you kind of know how it basically works.
But in addition to figuring out what you’re actually going to design your side on, you’re going to need a domain, so you’re going to need an address, which is in our case is float HQ.
A lot of people do just the name of their business, which unfortunately Float On was taken by a boat trailer company down in Florida who adamantly refuses to sell their domain to us, so we were unable to get on floaton.com.
But that’s kind of your address it’s the equivalent of if you have a house, you have your house and your property and your address. That’s the address part, is your whatever.Com, is the address.
Then the property is kind of like the hosting company that you’re using. HostGator is one, Bluehost is another that’s really common, all these are going to cost you maybe around $10 to $13 a month so really affordable, some of them even go down to like $5 or $7.
That’s again your property, that’s where your house is going to sit on, then something like using WordPress or Squarespace that’s your actual house that you’re building on there.
Once you have your address, you have your property you have your house that’s kind of the full array that you need in order to keep your website up and hosting and have people be able to visit it.
Ashkahn: Then from there the business just starts streaming you know, you seriously get your website up it’ll just be non-stop people.
Graham: Yeah and that pretty much also includes everything we have to say about marketing.
Good. Wonderful. Well, good question and we will talk to you all tomorrow.
Ashkahn: Bye everybody.
Recent Podcast Episodes
Being the First Float Center – DSP 320
What’s it like to be the first float center to open in an area? How do you handle it?
Graham and Ashkahn explain what it was like opening Float On, being one of the first dedicated float centers in the United States. The exciting thing is that creating awareness is really fun, but it can be a little stressful since your float center will represent floating as a practice for people.
Many of the tips here are the same for anyone opening a center: focus on awareness, be prepared to educate, and make sure your floats are the best they can be.
Are Light or Dark Colored Float Rooms better? – DSP 319
Is it better to have a light colored room that hides salt, or a dark colored room that easily shows it?
Graham and Ashkahn dish out some strong opinions on this idea, especially the idea that dark colored rooms and tanks are good for maintaining employee accountability.
What you Need to Know About Algorithms – DSP 318
Ashkahn and Derek talk about algorithms, those pesky bits of code that push your posts up or down on social media and search engines and leave you scrambling for ways to get likes and clicks, constantly mixing it up to just be seen.
The duo discusses how algorithms affect everyday posts for small businesses and how to keep up on information about the constantly changing nature of these systems. The main takeaway is, if your content is fresh, non-repetitive and you aren’t trying to game the system, you likely have nothing to worry about.
Commissions for Memberships? – DSP 317
Any sales related business knows that commissions are the gold-standard incentive program for drumming up business, but how does it work in a float center for memberships?
Derek and Ashkahn talk about the mixed success they’ve experienced at Float On each time it’s been tried.
Getting Members to Float More Often – DSP 316
Single float memberships have become increasingly more common in the float industry, typically with the option to purchase additional floats for the month at a discount. But how do you properly incentivize those members to float more than a single time per month?
Ashkahn and Derek talk marketing tips to keeping your float center top of mind and making sure your members are active regularly.
Latest Blog Posts
How Many Float Tanks Should I Have?
Intro If you’ve crossed over into the sacred realm of “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna open up a float center,” an obvious question arises — “How many tanks should I have?” Now, if you’re like me, you’re creating a 90 tank float community where everyone who buys in...
The Construction Secret to Soundproofing: Storage Between Float Rooms
If you’ve ever taken a look at our construction materials or gotten advice on soundproofing, you’ve probably heard of the importance of including “air gaps” when building out your center. What that means and why it helps can be a bit of a technical question, and the practical implementation can seem daunting and unreasonable.
Float Conference 2017 Recap
Now that the salt has settled, I’m sharing some thoughts from “The Great Gathering of People Who Really Love Being Alone Sometimes in a Dark, Briny Room,” also known as The Float Conference.
The conference has always been an amazing opportunity to connect with the pulse of the broader float industry and, if this year’s gathering showed us anything, it’s that our collective heartbeat is as strong as ever.
2017 Float Conference Program Introduction
Every year, I have the great pleasure of writing the introduction for the Float Conference program, and every year we share it on our blog so that members of the industry who weren’t able to make the journey out to Portland are able to check it out. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
From all of us at Float Tank Solutions, where our time is measured as the space between two conferences, thank you again for a wonderful year!
– Graham Talley
Show Highlights
Show Resources
Show Transcription
(in case you prefer reading)
Recent Podcast Episodes
Being the First Float Center – DSP 320
What’s it like to be the first float center to open in an area? How do you handle it?
Graham and Ashkahn explain what it was like opening Float On, being one of the first dedicated float centers in the United States. The exciting thing is that creating awareness is really fun, but it can be a little stressful since your float center will represent floating as a practice for people.
Many of the tips here are the same for anyone opening a center: focus on awareness, be prepared to educate, and make sure your floats are the best they can be.
Are Light or Dark Colored Float Rooms better? – DSP 319
Is it better to have a light colored room that hides salt, or a dark colored room that easily shows it?
Graham and Ashkahn dish out some strong opinions on this idea, especially the idea that dark colored rooms and tanks are good for maintaining employee accountability.
What you Need to Know About Algorithms – DSP 318
Ashkahn and Derek talk about algorithms, those pesky bits of code that push your posts up or down on social media and search engines and leave you scrambling for ways to get likes and clicks, constantly mixing it up to just be seen.
The duo discusses how algorithms affect everyday posts for small businesses and how to keep up on information about the constantly changing nature of these systems. The main takeaway is, if your content is fresh, non-repetitive and you aren’t trying to game the system, you likely have nothing to worry about.
Commissions for Memberships? – DSP 317
Any sales related business knows that commissions are the gold-standard incentive program for drumming up business, but how does it work in a float center for memberships?
Derek and Ashkahn talk about the mixed success they’ve experienced at Float On each time it’s been tried.
Getting Members to Float More Often – DSP 316
Single float memberships have become increasingly more common in the float industry, typically with the option to purchase additional floats for the month at a discount. But how do you properly incentivize those members to float more than a single time per month?
Ashkahn and Derek talk marketing tips to keeping your float center top of mind and making sure your members are active regularly.
Latest Blog Posts
How Many Float Tanks Should I Have?
Intro If you’ve crossed over into the sacred realm of “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna open up a float center,” an obvious question arises — “How many tanks should I have?” Now, if you’re like me, you’re creating a 90 tank float community where everyone who buys in...
The Construction Secret to Soundproofing: Storage Between Float Rooms
If you’ve ever taken a look at our construction materials or gotten advice on soundproofing, you’ve probably heard of the importance of including “air gaps” when building out your center. What that means and why it helps can be a bit of a technical question, and the practical implementation can seem daunting and unreasonable.
Float Conference 2017 Recap
Now that the salt has settled, I’m sharing some thoughts from “The Great Gathering of People Who Really Love Being Alone Sometimes in a Dark, Briny Room,” also known as The Float Conference.
The conference has always been an amazing opportunity to connect with the pulse of the broader float industry and, if this year’s gathering showed us anything, it’s that our collective heartbeat is as strong as ever.
2017 Float Conference Program Introduction
Every year, I have the great pleasure of writing the introduction for the Float Conference program, and every year we share it on our blog so that members of the industry who weren’t able to make the journey out to Portland are able to check it out. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
From all of us at Float Tank Solutions, where our time is measured as the space between two conferences, thank you again for a wonderful year!
– Graham Talley
