In this episode of Divi Nation we sit down with Nathan Duval. Nathan is a customer care specialist who has seen success as the head of two different WordPress/Divi ventures: GruffyGoat (his web design company) and Elegant Child Themes (his Divi child theme project). We talk about how centering these businesses on great customer care has resulted in sustainable success.
- 1 Divi Nation Episode 08: Creating a Customer Care Centered WordPress Business with Nathan Duval
- 2 This Week in WordPress 06
- 3 Creating a Customer Care Centered Business with Nathan Duval
- 4 Divi Quick Tip 05: How to Hide Divi Sections and Modules on Mobile
- 5 Product Update: The Divi Builder Plugin is Here!
- 6 Production Notes
- 7 Nominate Our Next Co-Host!
Divi Nation Episode 08: Creating a Customer Care Centered WordPress Business with Nathan Duval
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Nathan Duval brings with him a few unique perspectives compared to past guests. For one, all of his WordPress/Divi ventures, regardless of success, are still side projects to his regular 9-5. Secondly, he is the only customer care specialist we have featured on Divi Nation so far.
I hope you enjoy this episode and our conversation. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.
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This Week in WordPress 06
In this edition of This Week in WordPress Nathan Duval and our host Nathan B. Weller talk about how to build and launch successful side projects as well as the importance of reputation within the WordPress community.
Creating a Customer Care Centered Business with Nathan Duval
In this interview, Divi Nation Host Nathan B. Weller sits down with guest host Nathan Duval to talk about how centering your WordPress business on high quality customer care can lead to sustainable success.
Divi Quick Tip 05: How to Hide Divi Sections and Modules on Mobile
In this Divi Quick Tip we show you how to hide any section or module on mobile devices using just two small lines of CSS and a CSS class you can use over and over again.
To follow along with this tutorial, copy and paste the code below into your ePanel’s custom css panel. Click save.
@media screen and (max-width: 960px) {
.hide-mobile {display: none!important;}
}
Next, navigate to any section or module in the divi builder that you would like to hide on mobile devices and give it the CSS Class hide-mobile. You can give this CSS Class to as many sections or modules as you like without having to enter any additional code.
Also, as a quick note, I’d like to thank the Elegant Themes support staff for supplying this quick tip. They’re awesome!
Product Update: The Divi Builder Plugin is Here!
Last week the Divi Builder Plugin went live and is now available to download by all Elegant Themes Developer or Lifetime members. You can now extend the extraordinary power of the Divi Builder to ANY WordPress theme.
Production Notes
This week, as you probably noticed from the audio and video, I used some new gear. I’ve updated the gear list below to reflect the new items I used this time around.
- Scrivener for the scripts.
- Skype for the interviews.
- Ecamm Call Recorder for the interview recordings.
- Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 for call recording and webcam segments.
- Canon XA20 Professional Camcorder for my segment videos
- iPad Teleprompter for segment videos.
- LimoStudio Light Kit w/ Backdrop for my lighting.
- Screenium for screencasting.
- Rode Procastor mic for my interview audio.
- Zoom H6 for my segment audio.
- Adobe Audition for audio editing.
- Adobe After Effects CC 2015 for the motion graphics.
- Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 for video editing.
- Blubrry PowerPress for podcasting from WordPress.
There is a lot of room for improvement. The segment audio/video this time around was really the first experiment with using the studio lighting equipment, canon camera, and H6 zoom together. The biggest challenge so far has been getting everything set up in an already fully furnished apartment!
As you can see, this gear is full-size professional gear and as a compromise of time for this episode I was not able to use the full backdrop setup. Instead, I used just two lights and set everything up at my desk.
In future episodes I think I’ll probably only use this “at the desk” setup for leading into Divi Quick Tips. Everything else will either be in front of a backdrop or shot with the web cam.
I also plan to work on creating some custom video settings with the canon camera for increased quality. This episode was shot more or less on “auto” mode. Which will always give you a baseline of image quality but not the best possible.
As far as future audio is concerned, I have some more testing to do with the H6 and its various accessory mics in order to bring its quality up to the same standard as the Rode Procastor interview mic. I’m hoping to have that figured out this week in time for next Tuesday’s episode.
Another interesting curve ball that the new gear threw my way is the fact that with professional lights and a higher quality camera I needed to start using makeup! Thankfully I have a very talented and generous friend who happens to be a professional makeup artist. She was able to show me the basics of on-camera makeup for men. Hopefully moving forward I’ll be able to avoid looking overly washed out or shiny.
If you have any production related thoughts, comments, or questions I am more than happy to discuss in the comments section below.
Nominate Our Next Co-Host!
We are looking for Divi enthusiasts to co-host Divi Nation each week. If you are interested in sharing your experience with the Divi community, be sure to submit your application below so that we can get in touch! Or, if there is someone else you’d like to see featured on the show, please take a moment to nominate them so that they’re on our radar and we can reach out to them.
Hi guys,
Great podcast. I love the idea of giving my clients video tutorials for their specific sites. What software do you use to put together the videos?
Thanks!
@Jeroen Rotty –
Your method worked! It worked beautifully!! Sweeeeeeet! I’m so happy I could cry! I’m such a nerd! LOL! Thank you all so much! 😀
Thank you guys so much for all of your awesome quick tips, podcasts, blog posts and generally just fantastic content… it’s so valuable and I genuinely appreciate each and every post/podcast/video, et.al! 🙂
Just have a quick question re the quick tip and hiding certain sections or modules on mobile devices.. does this include sidebars as well?
I put the code
@media screen and (max-width: 960px) { .hide-mobile {display: none!important;} }into the Custom CSS box in site options and then went to a left sidebar I have in place at http://tns.deblizdemos.com/ …. I’m trying to hide the left sidebar section and contents under it – in this case the social follow buttons – so that the page (on phones) starts off with the title and main content .. as it is, the site is very awkward to navigate on mobile … because it shows the left sidebar (in its entirety) before it even begins the main content… and then once the user is through the main content, they see the right sidebar stacked up…. then they see the footer elements, etc…
I tried just moving what my client originally wanted in the sidebars – over into the main content (making it full-screen and not including sidebars at all) – just as a way to get around this formatting problem.. but my client is completely dead-set on having sidebars…. on every single page…
But by using the code mentioned above and then placing the class: hide-mobile in the sections I wish to hide, I’m not seeing any changes on mobile devices. Any idea why that might be? I hate to post another support ticket in the forums because you guys are perpetually inundated with requests! But I may have to…
I will be checking out the mentioned inherent hiding within Elegant Themes CSS mentioned from an OP… but any help I can get on this will be greatly appreciated! 🙂
Again, thanks so much for everything, guys. You’re the best! 🙂
Deb
Hi Louise, thanks for checking out the podcast. Just following up with what Nathan said… this was just a general observation from several other conversations I’ve had with others in the group recently – not related specifically to the discussion you’re referencing.
I’ve had several clients that have fit this category as well – and you’re right – you can’t force a client to agree to your maintenance package. I’ve been lucky in this regard though – most of mine do and I think it’s because of how I offer my services from the start. The predefined packages I mention in the podcast (Basic / Popular / eCommerce) all have maintenance plans built in and I sell them on the benefit of that before they ever sign on with me. That’s helped. Like I said in the interview, for me it’s more about developing a customer for life and me being a resource to them over the long haul.
And frankly, some customers don’t even know what they need until you present it in a way that sells them on the benefits. The average client has no clue what WordPress is or what all it entails to keep it updated & secure. Of course, everyone’s business model looks differently than mine, but that’s what’s worked for me.
Just wanted to pickup on the comment Nathan made about a comment made by myself and others on the forums. He suggested we did not set up our clients to succeed. This is really a comment taken out of context with the discussion. What we where discussing is that some clients do not want to take up a support package and then will go on to not maintain and ultimately “break” their website. We felt that we could not really do anything about this category of clients. We can design a website on WP that is robust but cannot force a client to take up lifetime support.
The main conversation was also around how much should you lock down the site so that you as the designer are the only one able to access parts of it. What is the ethics of locking a site owner out of major parts of their site especially if they want to DIY their own maintenance.
Good customer support is about servicing what a customer needs and for some customers that does not involve a maintenance contract.
Hi Louise, thanks for offering up your point of view. As you could hear/watch in the show we didn’t talk specifics (names, etc.) and the example was one that Nathan pulled up off the top of his head. I personally have zero context or knowledge of that conversation and would not want to give you the impression that I’m condemning your approach. I think we’ve all had a client go off and mess up a perfectly good website 🙂
Nathan W.: Congrats with a even more professional studio! Nathan D.: May you reveal what is the email popup subcription module you use on your web site elegantchildthemes.com. Very professional. Thanks.
Hey Roger – that’s ET’s Bloom – just a slightly modified version of it. 😉
Thanks Roger!
Hi Nathan congratulations for the new audio quality!
Now I would like an Extra theme update..
why arent there any links to past podcasts?? they are so difficult to find. There should be links to old ones with each new one.
All of our podcasts can be found in the Community category in the right-hand sidebar.
For hiding sections on mobile there’s a better solution from ET itself. Just get the css class ‘et-hide-mobile’ in the section and there you go 😉
Thanks. Are there more classes for hiding on tablet and desktop? I tried et-hide-desktop but that didn’t work.
Cool thanks