Quick question.
Do you actually know what all the different buttons in ChatGPT do?
Because most people don't.
But when you do, it totally changes how useful this tool becomes.
In this lesson, I'm going to use an example use case to walk you through the ChatGPT website interface.
What each part of the layout does, the features that can seriously boost your workflow, and some cool
tricks to make ChatGPT work smarter for you for your personal and professional life.
Now, before we get started, I want to mention the desktop app, the mobile app, custom gpts, deep
research and web search, plus some other functionalities.
All have their dedicated lessons later in the course.
So in this lesson we're going to focus only on the ChatGPT website experience.
Let's dive in.
First things first, your ChatGPT layout might look a little different than mine.
OpenAI updates the interface all the time, so things might shift around a little bit.
But don't worry, just look for similar icons or labels and the features are still going to work the
same.
That being said, let's start with what you see at the moment when you open ChatGPT.
There are three main areas to know.
The side panel on the left, the model panel on top and the prompting window right in the middle.
For now, let's focus on the side panel.
On the side panel, you'll see all your recent conversations, and you can click any of your past conversations
to open them up.
You can also rename chats by hovering over the title and clicking the three dots.
As you can see, this chat is named untitled and I'm going to rename it to Paid Media Budget Split,
so it's easier to find when we're going through our example of analyzing ad spend later in this lesson.
The pro tip here is that emojis make your chats way more visually scannable and easy to find, so I
highly recommend adding one that refers to the specific chat if you know you'll be coming back to it
multiple times.
Now let's say I'm looking for that one chat, for example, where we brainstorm taglines like a week
ago.
Instead of scrolling through the different chats, I can simply click the magnifying glass at the top
panel or hit command K on a mac or control K on windows.
Type in tagline and boom, there it is.
Now if we look at the side panel, you'll see the projects tab.
We've got one called New Product Launch 525 inside I've uploaded a few campaign materials like the PDF
with competitor analysis and creative assets.
Projects are like folders for your workflow.
This is where we can really organize large projects or multiple chats into one place, like a mini workspace.
This just keeps your chats, files, and ideas all in one spot.
Perfect for when you're juggling multiple tasks or team feedback.
Now let's move to the center.
The prompting panel.
This is where all your conversations happen.
You type in the box and ChatGPT responds right below.
Right below the input is the plus icon, and this is where you can click to upload files like spreadsheets,
PDFs, or screenshots, or even drag and drop them in.
So for this example, I'm going to upload a spreadsheet with some performance metrics from the last
launch that will work perfectly.
In this scenario, I'm going to prompt summarize the top performing channels and highlight any budget
concerns.
I hit send here and ChatGPT gives us two options to choose from.
Sometimes you might see ChatGPT give two versions because there's more than one way of answering your
request, and this just makes sure it finds the best fit without needing to rephrase.
Now look at the very top of your screen and you'll see the model panel.
This shows which version of ChatGPT you're using.
Right now we're using ChatGPT 4.0, which is designed to be fast, supports images, and works well
with uploaded files.
You might also see GPT four mini, which is a lightweight, faster version of ChatGPT 4.0.
That's not super important for this lesson, because we have lessons later in the course that talk about
each specific model and when to use which different model, because OpenAI updates their models frequently
to get a full breakdown of the capabilities and stay up to date on the pros and cons of the latest models
available, you can download the ChatGPT models PDF, which is attached in the resources tab of this
lesson.
Now let's say I keep response one, and let's say I didn't love the way ChatGPT summarized the budget
in this output.
I can hover over my original message, hit the pencil icon and rewrite it.
Instead of a summary, break the data into a table showing channel spend and ROI.
ChatGPT then creates an updated output.
And what's really cool here is that I can toggle left and right to compare the original and edited results.
This handy feature lets you change or refine your prompt and instantly see an improved or alternate
response.
Now it's time to note that the new version will delete all the outputs below it, but of course, you
can toggle back to your original prompt and see the previous outputs again using the arrow.
This is super useful when refining something like messaging or nuances in your outputs.
Now what if you don't like either version?
You can hit Switch model.
Try again to get a totally fresh output.
Now to switch gears, let's say we've got some sensitive information to review.
Let's go ahead and start a new chat.
But I'm going to activate the temporary chat mode.
This makes sure the conversation won't be saved or used as training data by OpenAI.
And this is also helpful when you have a quick question and don't necessarily need the chat to be saved
for future use.
Just be careful.
If you close the tab or reload the page, everything in that chat disappears.
So be mindful of this feature and copy and save the information somewhere else if it's important.
Now let's make ChatGPT feel a little more personalized to you.
You can click your profile icon on the top right, then select customize ChatGPT.
Here I'll type as an example.
I'm launching a consumer wellness product.
Keep answers concise, marketing focused, and use a friendly tone.
From now on.
ChatGPT will keep that in mind even in brand new chats.
And to go a little deeper, you can enable memory in the same settings panel under personalization.
That way it can remember key facts like that.
I'm a marketer or a sales manager across multiple sessions.
This improves over time as it gets to know you better the more you use it, and you can review or reset
this anytime under settings.
We'll do a deep dive on all the customization settings in the next lesson, but while we're in this
menu, you can go to Data Controls.
This is where you can export your own chats, manage what's saved, or clear your entire history.
Now let's go back to the side panel and click explore GPT.
These are pre-built versions of ChatGPT for things like SEO, content strategy, or legal writing.
I'm bookmarking one called AD Copy Wizard, which is perfect for writing social captions and split testing
hooks.
Think of GPT like custom versions of ChatGPT that have been pre-loaded with specific skills, knowledge,
and personality traits to tackle particular jobs or topics.
You can basically create your own specialized assistant, maybe one that writes like your favorite author,
or analyzes data in a specific way, or helps with customer support using your company's exact guidelines.
Now to find the GPT you've created or saved, just click my in the top right or under your profile.
In a later lesson, we'll build our own custom gpts.
And alongside that, I just want to give you a quick peek at some tools that we'll be learning about
later in this course, there's a feature called Deep Research, which helps you get cited trustworthy
sources directly inside ChatGPT.
You also have canvas, which lets you visually organize and build ideas step by step.
And then there's Web Search, which connects ChatGPT to the internet in real time.
We'll cover these in detail later in the course, but just know that they're here and they're super
useful for researching, planning, and strategic thinking.
All right.
Now that you've got a solid overview of ChatGPT, now it's your turn.
Let's bring it all together.
You can either follow along with all these exact steps and materials, or adjust it for your own specific
project or task that you are working on.
Step one open a new chat.
Upload a document or PDF into the prompting panel.
For this example, I'll do a competitor research PDF and ask ChatGPT summarize the strengths and weaknesses
of each competitor for our launch deck.
You can write a prompt that makes sense for your specific uploaded document or image.
Next, I'm going to upload creative assets and ask what platform would each banner work best for Instagram,
YouTube, or display ads?
Then let's rename the chat to do something specific with a relevant emoji.
I'm going to say Morning Bliss launch.
So now it's ready for the team and we can organize it under the project called New Project Launch.
After that, let's add some custom instructions.
I'm going to say you're a brand strategist working on a wellness product, just so that ChatGPT is more
detailed and specific in my future outputs, let's make sure that we can successfully search through
our chat history by clicking the magnifying glass at the top of the panel, or hitting command K on
a mac, or control K on windows to search for the word taglines.
And here we can revisit some past brainstorms.
And there you go.
That's your walkthrough of ChatGPT interface, features, and layout.