Branches

When starting this business, one of the things that most motivated me was the potential to take on projects that challenged me. I had no idea what kind of things would be in store—my stock answer when people asked me what kind of projects I work on was “anything, as long involves something I’ve never done before.” My first project out of the gate—actually, well before the gate opened, or even rolled up to the starting line—had a few of those somethings.

Syd Lieberman is an internationally acclaimed storyteller. He also happens to be my father-in-law. AND he also happens to have performed at my Bar Mitzvah, 17 years ago, in Indianapolis. (Long story.) About 16 months ago, just before I was to quit my job and go freelance, he asked me to design and produce a website for him. I was pretty thrilled. I looked around—the field of storytelling websites left a lot to be desired. There was potential to do some cool stuff.

We discussed what Syd wanted to get out of the site. For the most part, the answer was publicity. Syd’s work is more than just telling and recording stories—he leads workshops and writes commission-based pieces, and he needed a focal point online to present himself. Secondly, he wanted a way for fans to purchase his work. Practically his only method for selling merchandise was at festivals; a website would give him another outlet for that business.

With that in mind, we built the site. We went for fall colors, browns and oranges, evoking the warm feeling that comes with good storytelling. Interesting fact: Syd’s color blind. Reds and oranges to him are a shade of beige. Meaning that, in addition to designing for a color-capable audience, I had to make sure the scheme worked for those with protanopia. I was thankful to find a cool app, SimDaltonism, which let me see my computer screen as a color-blind person would. Chalk up another lesson in accessibility. Challenge number one.

The site was an immediate success. Not only was the client pleased with the design, but we started to earn accolades from a variety of design appreciation websites. This brought new traffic, most of whom had never heard of Syd before. Some of them even bought some CDs. (A nice side effect of all this is I can now point potential clients to the quantitative benefits of spending money on good design.)

The store was also successful. I don’t think I’m at liberty to disclose any specific numbers, but I’m pretty sure his sales figures for the first year doubled because of online sales. The Paypal connection was not too difficult to set up, but still, it was something I’d never done before. Challenge number two.

After it had been up for a while, we realized how silly it was to have a storytelling website without any actual audio clips of the storyteller telling stories. We didn’t want to give up too much, for fear of not leaving customers any incentive to make the purchase. So I cut out some audio clips from each of his albums and added them to the store page, giving customers a chance to sample before they bought.

And that’s how it stood, a solid brochure for a storytelling master, for about eight months, as old fans and new listeners found the site, read about Syd, and, on occasion, sent Syd an invitation to come speak at their event. The site was doing it’s job, and all parties were happy.

But had it really tapped into all the potential the web offered as a medium? Some of us thought not. It was late in 2006 when a seed got planted in Syd’s brain on how to use his new platform and vast oeuvre to really drum up some attention.

To be continued…