Asking Stevie for a change

Stevie, your AI web developer, is an add-on to your site. Without Stevie, a change is a piece of work we quote. If you email Stevie while he is not on your website’s plan, he replies to say so and nothing on your website changes. Your website’s Owner can add him from your billing page.

Email Stevie at your site’s Stillsite address, in your own words, from an email address that has been set up for your site. Say which page, and what should change. One email can ask for several things.

When you are first set up to email Stevie, Stevie emails you to say how: where to send a request and from which address, the three things a request needs (which page, where on it and what should change, and anything needed to add it), a few tips, what happens next, and how to rate a change. It comes once, to the address set up for you, and you can reply to it with your first request.

Your site’s Stillsite address is on Stevie’s card on your website’s dashboard.

Stevie reads your website before changing it, so you never need to say what it says now. What he never does is make up a fact. A request lands right first time when it has three things:

1. Which page, by the name a visitor sees: the Contact us page, the Services page.
2. Where on it, and what should change: the exact new words, number, price, date or time.
3. Anything needed to add it: the photo, the document, or where a link should go.

If a fact is missing, Stevie asks, and the change waits for your answer. Anything else that is unclear, such as exactly where or how it should look, he makes a sensible call on, says what he took it to mean, and you can put him right by reply.

For example, “Can you update the opening hours?” is hard to act on: Stevie would have to ask which hours, and what they should be. “On the Contact us page, change our Saturday hours to 8am to 4pm” is right first time, and if the footer shows the hours too, he changes both and says so.

A few tips:

• Write your request at the top of the email, above your signature and anything quoted from earlier. Only the new words are read.
• A short list, one change a line, works best when you ask for several things.
• The subject line becomes the change’s name on your dashboard, so make it say what the change is.
• To take something off a page, say so plainly. Nothing is deleted on a guess. What Stevie can change by email says what an email can and cannot change.

A new request is acknowledged by email once it has been accepted. Then you get one of four emails:

• the change, with a preview and an approval button
• questions, when something is unclear and guessing would be wrong
• an answer, when you asked a question
• a note that there was a problem, which also comes to us, and we look into it

When only part of a request is clear, the clear part is made and shown to you, and the rest is asked about in the same email. Approving a preview says what to do when the change comes back.

You can send as many requests as you like, and none is lost. Stevie works on your website’s requests one at a time, in the order they arrived, whoever sent them, and each takes a few minutes, from reading it to sending the change for you to approve. Each new request gets a reply straight away, saying where it is in the queue for your website and roughly when to expect the preview, so you know it has arrived even when others are ahead of it. Requests for different websites do not wait for each other.

Each request is made on your website as it is when Stevie starts on it, so each comes back as a change of its own, approved on its own. If two of them change the same part of a page and you approve one, the other no longer fits: Stevie makes it again on your website as it is now and sends you a new email to approve, so nothing is lost. To have several changes to one page shown together, put them in one email, or reply to the first with the rest.

Attach it to the email and say where it belongs. A document must be a PDF, up to 10 MB. A picture can be a PNG, JPEG, WebP or SVG, up to 10 MB: send the photo you have, straight from your phone or camera, and a large one is made smaller for the web automatically, so your pages stay quick to load. The place and the device a photo was taken with are removed from it before it goes on your site. Any transparent space around a picture is trimmed, and it is made the right size for where it is shown.

A picture that is only a few words, such as a strapline or a short notice, goes on the page as real text rather than a picture, in your site’s own font and colours: it stays sharp on every screen, loads quickly and can be changed with an email. Stevie says so when he does this. A logo, a photo or a flyer stays a picture, whatever words are on it, and if you need a picture used exactly as it is, say so in your email.

You can also ask for a simple drawing, such as a logo or an icon: it is made and shown to you in the preview, for you to judge.

To show Stevie what you mean, attach a screenshot: a part of a page that looks wrong on your phone, or a layout you like. He looks at it before he starts.

Reply to any Stillsite email and the reply is read together with the request it answers. Asking for a change to be done differently builds on the version you saw, and the new preview carries the whole change, so there is only ever one to approve. Replying “approved” or “thank you” changes nothing: a change goes live only when you press the approval button.

You can tell Stevie how you like him to work, and he remembers it for your website: “remember that I like short headings”, or “always sign off news posts with our team’s name”. He says in his reply that he has kept it, and follows it from then on. A note is how to work, never a fact about your business: a new price or opening hours are a change to the site, and Stillsite support keeps the facts Stevie knows about your business. You can see what he remembers, and remove a note, on your website’s dashboard. A website keeps up to 20 notes; when it has 20, Stevie says so, and one can be removed to make room.

You can ask Stevie about your website (what a page says, which pages there are, how something reads), about how the service works, or for advice on wording. The answer comes back by email and nothing on the site changes. A question uses your pack’s monthly allowance as a change does.