Posts filed under 'Design'
Back in the frontier days of the web–when flaming skulls, scrolling marquees, and rainbow divider lines dominated the landscape–”Webmaster” was a vaunted, almost mythical, title. The Webmaster was a techno-shaman versed the black arts needed to make words and images appear on this new-fangled Information Superhighway. With the rise of the Webmaster coinciding with the explosive growth of the web, everyone predicted the birth of a new, well paying, and in-demand profession. Yet in 2007, this person has somehow vanished; even the term is scarcely mentioned. What happened? A decade later I’m left wondering “Who killed the Webmaster?”
Suspect #1: The march of technology
By 2000, I think every person in the developed world had a brother-in-law who created websites on the side. Armed with Frontpage and a pirated copy of Photoshop, he’d charge a reasonable fee per page (though posting more than three images cost extra.)
Eventually the web hit equilibrium and just having a website didn’t make a company hip and cutting-edge. Now management demanded that their website look better than the site immediately ranked above in search results. And as expensive as the sites were, ought they not “do something” too? Companies increasingly wanted an exceptional website requiring a sophisticated combination of talent to pull off. HTML and FTP skills, as useful as they had been, were no longer a sharp enough tool in the Webmaster’s toolbox. Technologies such as CSS and multi-tier web application development rapidly made WYSIWYG editors useless for all but ordinary websites. And with the explosion of competition and possibilities on the Internet few businesses were willing to pay for “ordinary”.
In 1995, the “professional web design firm” was single, talented person working from home. Today it’s a diverse team of back-end developers, front-end developers, graphic artists, UI designers, database and systems administrators, search engine marketing experts, analytics specialists, copywriters, editors, and project managers. The industry has simply grown so specialized, so quickly, for one person to hardly be a master of anything more than a single strand in the web.
Suspect #2: Is it the economy, stupid?
Then again, perhaps the disappearance of the Webmaster can better be explained by an underwhelming economy rather than overwhelming technology. Riding high on the bull market of the late 90’s, companies were increasingly willing to assume more risk to reach potential customers. This was especially true of small businesses, which traditionally have miniscule advertising and marketing budgets. Everyone wanted a piece of the Internet pie and each turned to the Webmaster to deliver. More than just a few Webmasters made a respectable living by cranking out a couple $500 websites every week.
Once the bubble burst in early 2000, the dot-com hangover left many small businesses clutching their heads and checking their wallets. As companies braced to solely maintain what they already had, the first cut inevitably was to marketing and advertising. In-house Webmasters were summarily let go, their duties hastily transferred to an already overworked office manager. Freelance Webmasters were hit even harder as business owners struggled to first take care of their own. The gold rush had crumbled to fools’ gold even faster than it had started.
While a few Webmaster were able to weather the storm—mostly those with either extraordinary skills or a gainfully employed spouse—the majority were forced to abandon their budding profession and return to the world of the mundane.
Suspect #3: The rise of Web 2.0
Another strong possibility is that the Internet has simply evolved beyond the Webmaster. “Web 2.0″ is the naked emperor of technological neologisms; we all nod our head at the term but then stammer when pressed for a definition. As far as I can tell, Web 2.0 is mostly about rounded corners, low-contrast pastel colors, and domain names with missing vowels. But it also seems to be about an emphasis on social collaboration. This may seem like a no-brainer given the connectedness of the Internet itself; however, thinking back to Web 1.0 there was a distinct lack of this philosophy. Web 1.0 was more an arms race to build “mindshare” and “eyeballs” in order to make it to the top of the hill with the most venture capital. Even the Web 1.0 term of “portal” conjures up an image of Lewis Carroll’s Alice tumbling down a hole and into an experience wholly managed by the resident experts–the Webmasters. Despite the power and promises to be so much more, the web wasn’t much different than network television or print. Even the most interesting and successful business models of the Web 1.0 era could have been accomplished years prior with an automated telephone system.
It wasn’t until after the failure of the initial experiment did people begin to rethink the entire concept of the Internet. Was the Webmaster as gatekeeper really necessary? If we all have a story to share, why can’t everyone contribute to the collective experience? Perhaps it was the overabundance of Herman Miller chairs, but Web 1.0 was inarguably about style over substance. Yet, as anyone who’s ever visited MySpace can attest, today content is king. With all of us simultaneously contributing and consuming on blogs, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, and SecondLife, who needs a Webmaster anymore?
January 28th, 2007
It’s been some time since I last checked in since I’ve been so busy juggling projects. However, I wanted to make a quick update this weekend. I thought this would be a good topic.
Most of my readers I suspect are experienced web developers, but not everyone. Unless you have a formal education in software development or graphic design, getting a foothold in the industry is a lot like the chicken and egg paradox. Unless you have experience (and a portfolio to prove it), it can nearly impossible to find employment. Likewise, it can be difficult to develop said portfolio without having work. Difficult maybe, but not impossible.
Don’t work for free
First: resist the temptation to do professional work either for free, or at a cut-rate price, just to say that you’ve done something. You should want to establish a reputation as someone who does quality work for a reasonable fee. Freely giving away your work does nothing to advance that goal. Everyone and their brother is armed with pirated copies of Frontpage and Photoshop nowdays and they all call themselves a “web designer” (or worse a “webmaster”). If you start competing with these amateurs by cranking out $200 websites, it’s going to stagnate your career. Place a higher value on your finite time and skills and you’ll reap higher rewards.
You’ll also often find that a client’s expectations don’t change much whether you’re doing the project for free or several thousand dollars. They expect a well-designed and functional product delivered in a timely fashion and aren’t likely to give you a break simply because you gave them one. Worse, pro bono projects are often very informal: no written scope of work or defined process for handling changes. You could be supporting a free website years later, having to juggle update requests while still handling your paying customers. If you begin to brush off the client because you have higher (paying) priorities, your reputation will suffer because of it. A non-paying client is still a client. So take the high road and don’t work for peanuts–you’ll thank yourself later.
Be your own client
This blog runs on a dedicated server that I lease in a datacenter somewhere. It also serves as my staging server (where I move stuff that’s mostly developed, but doesn’t have it’s own home yet). Mostly though, I consider it my “side project server”. I currently have about a dozen side projects in various stages of development. Some are just stupidly simple (and somewhat poorly coded) like HowIsYourDay.com, which I wrote because I needed an afternoon mental break. Others are complex, database-intensive web applications. All of them were created simply because I had a cool idea.
Even though I’ve been a web weenie since ‘97 and have a pretty lengthy resume, I still sometimes show off these side projects to potential clients/employers because they tend to be more interesting than your everyday business website. They’re also less likely to have HTML murdered by client edits or go dark due to unpaid hosting. If you don’t have a long list of clients to showcase, then become your own client. I bet that everyone reading this has at least one cool idea in the back of their mind. Build it and you’ll have an interesting start to your portfolio.
Do work for free
There is one exception to my “don’t work for free” rule: charities. Charity work is the number-one best place to start looking if you want to build your portfolio. Working on a cause that excites you is an excellent motivator to producing a top-notch site. You’ll also find that charity work can lead to other, paying opportunies down the road. Many of the key players you’ll be working with at non-profits are well-connected, which can pay off if you network a bit. Investigate them a bit before committing. A great place to look for non-profit volunteer work is over at the GuideStar classifieds. Charities there frequently seek volunteer web design/development work.
However free chairty work does hold some of the same pitfalls as free commerical work. Despite the fact that money is not exchanging hands, still draw up a formal proposal. Spell out exactly what the expectation of both parties are: Who’s going to write the site content? When is the site going to go live? Where is it going to be hosted? How will future updates be made? Etc, etc. The goal is to provide a framework for a successful site launch, and then allow you to break free of your obligation. Even with charity work, don’t get suckered into providing ongoing support until the end of time. It’s ok to provide occasional maintaince, just make sure everyone agrees on a frequency and scope. Because, again, even a non-paying client is still a client.
December 2nd, 2006
A case study
One of the most interesting projects I’ve been involved with was developing and managing a site for an online automotive accessories retailer. At it’s peak, the site was serving over 20,000 sessions a month, and processing over $1M/yr in sales on the website alone. It was the first large scale projects that I had designed entirely from scratch, using a combination of MS SQL Server and classic ASP.
A favorite feature of the project was custom-written metrics package that intergrated with every piece of the puzzle. Using this system, I tracked everything. You name the metric–it was logged, sifted, mined, aggregated, plotted, and reported. Other than determining conversion ratios from various referers, the most frequent use of the data was a near constant tweaking of the site’s UI, especially the feedback forms. And with thousands of people using the forms, I was able to analyze quite a bit of data.
K.I.S.S.
Designing the proper feedback form is a balance between collecting enough information from the user, yet making it easier than applying for a job at the CIA. The biggest mistake made by developers is believing “the more information, the better. Period.” If you’re using a form to collect bug reports, then that’s probably a good philosophy. However, if you’re trying to turn the visitor into a sales lead, that misbelief will hurt you. When selling something to a person, you need to remove any obstacle, no matter how small, between the person and the sale. Being a computer geek and not a sales weasel professional, I had to learn this in a roundabout manner.
As an automotive accessories retailer, of course one of the first questions on our feedback form was make/model/year of the persons’ car. We’d also ask for their ZIP code in case we needed to quote a shipping rate… and a few radio buttons, asking which department they wished to contact… plus, a checkbox or two asking whether they wanted to be on the mailing list. We had all the bases covered, believing that the more information we had upfront, the better we could serve the customer. However, the problem was that less than 15% of people who viewed the contact form ever actually completed it. I double-checked the form validation routines, making sure that some odd error wasn’t causing it to bomb. I also rechecked the site on various platforms/browsers and monitored the database for connection problems. Nada. Then I decided to experiment with the form itself.
The initial change was removing the ZIP code box. The completion rate went up 4%. At first that seemed odd because it only takes a second or two to key in a ZIP code. In fact, the average completion time (page request to postback delta) was statistically insignifcant. I then removed the phone number input box. Completion jumped almost another 7%, even though it was clearly labeled an optional field. Eventually I whittled the feedback form down to just three fields: “Name” (merging the “First Name” and “Last Name” fields), “Email Address”, and a “How Can We Help You?” textarea. Now more than 40% of the people who loaded the page were completing the form–nearly tripling the number of people asking for sales assistance.
Actions speaking louder than words
Even more interesting was the fact that users were saving an average of just six seconds with the shorter form. Inevitably, it would take more than those six seconds to ask the customer their ZIP code and car model in a follow-up email or phone call. It also meant that we now had to manually route the email to the proper person. However, with a significantly higher “first contact” rate, sales also increased. Speaking through statistics, our customers were saying they’d rather tell us the details after they had our ear. In retrospect, that seems a bit obvious. Like a brick and mortar store, the majority of our customers would go through the checkout process unassisted. However, on occasion, someone needed a bit more help. The verbose feedback form was the equivalent of requiring that a shopper fill-out a comment card before they could speak to the sales staff. How often would you ask for help in a store like that?
Feedback Form Tips:
- Require either an email address or a phone number, but never both.
- Log validation errors and use them to improve usability of the form.
- Besides a “thanks for your feedback” confirmation page, also send the user a confirmation email containing your company’s full contact information, in case the person desires a more immediate response.
September 26th, 2006