Suggestions for the comparison page

I've redone the model comparison page as feedback I received was often "what's the difference between the models" and "where are the specs?"
https://decentespresso.com/compare

The water tank size is given, warmup time. I expressed warmup time in two ways, because so many people don't use steam, and the new de1app allows you to turn off the steam heater, for faster warmup time.

I've added a sentence under the title I also added weight info, and overall dimensions.

And I've tried to use "Same as..." repeatedly to show how the models are similar.

Very much looking for suggestions/feedback.

I'd like to have something like "Monthly electric cost" or some sort of measure of how eco the models are, but I don't know how to do that in a way that makes sense globally.

Dialing in Decently: Rao Allongé on the Niche and Lagom P100 A deep dive into the Allongé recipe, including tips on how traditional 9 bar machines (ie, not Decent) can do this recipe.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

We'll be trying to make espresso with a light roasted bean meant for pour-over coffee. Can we do it? Does it taste any good?

In addition, we have also:
- Made a 3 minute video about Third Wave Water
- and another video about Conical vs Large Flat Grinders (Niche vs Lagom P100)
- Color corrected and trimmed out the unrelated questions from our full El Dama episode
- and our full Red Brick episode

All these can be seen on the Dialing In Decently Youtube playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... hXPDS4bNc6

which makes a quite tidy job of all these videos.

Now available: custom laser etched DE1XL back panels

We found that the laser etching machine we own, which can etch in metal and wood, is also able to nicely etch into the black plastic back panel of our DE1XL/DE1XXL machines.

Hazard Coffee Company https://www.instagram.com/hazardcoffeecompany/ has three of our DE1XXL machines (actually, one prototype DE1XXXL too) and to thank them, I made a free sample, plus their logo looks super cool this way.

We're offering to make a custom panel for USD$99. The price includes working with our staff to get your logo, optimize the placement and size with you. Only currently available in black. Only currently available with the DECENT logo on top, until we get a new order of back panels, which will include some with no DECENT logo on them, so that we can then do anything.

The "print" quality is slightly "coffee colored" on the black panels (slightly brown) and also a bit "brass" colored. We can't unfortunately etch on our white plastic back panels, with the machine we have, as that requires a different laser. If there's some demand for custom black panels, we'll go ahead and spend the money on a machine that can do white panels too.

Find it at:
https://decentespresso.com/accessories

Decent XXXL? Is there any information you can give on the differences or is it still under wraps?

It's our most powerful machine, and requires a 230V/13A power line.

On the compare page:
https://decentespresso.com/compare



The DE1XXXL comes in at 17 seconds to steam a 200ml latte from refrigerator-cold milk temperatures.

Steam pressure on the DE1XXXL is typically between 3 to 5 bar. That's significantly higher pressure than boilers, which are limited under boiler safety rules to lower pressures (around 2.3 bar, I believe).

At the moment, the DE1XXXL works great with 200ml to 1000ml of milk. However, for smaller drinks (80ml piccolo lattes) the steam power is too great.

And so, this is currently still in R&D because:
1) we need to program a "power reducing" method in firmware, that is easy to use in real time, for when you want to steam a small amount of milk
2) we want to give this a lot of testing, before we claim that it's ready for production use.
3) we're developing a new steam wand tip to distribute this power smoothly.

Last week, we found that Hazard's DE1XXXL was having steaming problems. After some back and forth, we discovered that they were never descaling, because they didn't think they needed to since they use RO water. The RO did allow them to not descale for months (in a busy cafe setting) but descaling is still necessary at some point, as RO does let the original minerals into your espresso machine (at a lower TDS).

We're also testing to see how far we can go, and still have reliable heaters. We went to 15A on-demand steam with several machines and found that we burned out the heater elements. At 13A, things have been reliable so far for 6 months in two cafe settings (in the USA and Kuala Lumpur).

Using a Calendar Subscription to announce Decent Live Events

Deep dive into Rao's "Filter 2.1" (using Square Mile's Filter Roast and El Dama)
- Our next event is this Friday at 4pm (HK time), which is 10am London time.
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM23I3v3gKM
. . .

It's my intention to film most of our videos live, and invite people to join in with questions.
- Not just "Dial In Decently" (one hour shows)
- but also the shorter "How To" videos like "How to control pressure in real-time with the group head"
- or even "How to clean the uptake water filter" (fascinating!)
- So that our videos can benefit from relevant questions, as we're filming

I can't be constantly announcing every video schedule to social media, as everyone will get tired of it. So, instead, I'd like to recommend that people subscribe to our "Decent Live" using Google Calendar or iCal. That way, if you're interested, you can see the events as they get scheduled, on your calendar, and ask for notification when they're about to happen.

I'd like to make this as easy as possible, and that's where I'm asking for your help.
- If you can advise on "best practice" to enable people to smoothly subscribe to our calendar, that'd be super helpful
- Our Google Calendar URL:
- https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/ ... 9nbGUuY29t
- Google automatically gives you a subscribe popup, which is helpful.

- Our Apple iCal URL:
- https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ic ... /basic.ics
- Subscribing on iCal currently requires you to use iCal to click "File/New Calendar Subscription" and choosing something more frequent than weekly refreshes

In about 2 hours:
Youtube Live: Deep dive into Rao's "Filter 2.1" (using Square Mile's Filter Roast)


On our Youtube Channel
https://tinyurl.com/decent-live-yt

On our Google Calendar:
https://tinyurl.com/decent-live-gcal

On our Apple iCal:
Subscribing on iCal currently requires you to use iCal to click "File/New Calendar Subscription" and choosing something more frequent than weekly refreshes
https://tinyurl.com/decent-live-ical​

Here is the episode we just filmed, covering Filter 2.1: We tried a lot of new things with today's shooting:

• installed a metal ceiling rack
• moved from a 4 channel video mixer to an 8 channel one
• down-facing camera installed, looks onto the cart table top
• 2nd camera on Paul
• two mics hung from the ceiling, above our heads
• two lights hung from the ceiling on the sides
• video titling software showing the current recipe and grind settings, changing in real time
• beans weighed ahead of time
• sound dampening curtain hung in the corner
• I waved my arms and torso less than previously, toning down the mania and staying in frame more
• HDMI amplifying repeaters installed, so we could site the video editing desk from from the cameras using long HDMI cables, and put the cameras where we wanted them
• Balanced XLR sound output used (special cable arrived) solving 50hz audio buzz problem
• Consistent picture-in-picture showing the tablet screen during extraction
• Actually read the live questions and got to answer them on-air

What we got wrong:

• Niche was powered off (again!) at the start <sigh>
• Main camera overheated and shut down several times, until Harris figured out how to override the shutdown-on-overheat
• behavior
• Paul-camera tended to auto-focus to the background until Harris changed it to manual focus

Still to do:

• figure out how to use audio compression, limiting, to tamp down on audio volume when we get too loud
  flush text left, when right-aligning the grind settings
• record the session with all cameras, to a hard disk, so we can improve the edit afterwards
• a camera on the extraction itself, showing the bottom of the portafilter, shot liquid, cup and scale
• a camera on me too
• install air conditioning, so the camera doesn't overheat
• install sound dampening material on the ceiling
• install vertical wood slats sound dampening background that also looks nice, behind us
• make the sound better when Paul and I face away from the camera

Here are pictures of the video studio as it was today.

Help me understand what you search for

I used Google today to search for an espresso basket photo, and was really surprised to find the Decent was the #2 result. We do fairly well, it turns out, in the Google search results, for about half our coffee accessories.

We don't do well at all for any "espresso machine" searches, probably because there's so much competition, but also because I don't really know what kinds of words people might use to find a machine like ours? I mean, it's not like there's a whole "category" of espresso machines that are like the Decent.

I've never done any website SEO, as I felt that Google likely has algorithms to figure out that "you're cheating" and punish us for it. Maaaaybe we're doing well in rankings because we never cheated, and enough people now link to the Decent website?

Most of the website pages at Decent are very text and content rich, but if I hit any keywords, it's by accident.




I'm willing to do a bit of "ethical optimizing", namely by writing text on our web pages that discuss what people are searching for. Obviously, people search for the word "best" <smile> but what else?

In the comments, it'd help me if you let me know the kind of words you'd use to search for an espresso machine or coffee accessory. I'll work on the website to discuss what you're looking for.

Thanks!

Completely agree with your SEO approach. As they say, content is king. Other than that you already seem to have mostly what I would search (profiling, advanced, pre-infusion) except for compact size. More than being able to carry it around I would be interested in its compact size.

You came up at around 20th or so in my search (compact profiling espresso machine) after all the articles talking about what the different profiling methods actually are, which of course linked to your site.

But I originally got to know your machine from forums and groups like HB here, not by googling nor by reading coffee related news sites or blogs. So, call it word-of-mouth or influencer marketing. I've no idea how someone completely new or otherwise detached from the industry talk would search for such a machine. From what I know even those people would hear about Decent from a friend or other "coffee person".