William Yarbrough

So a few weeks ago, I was at a party and the ever popular, “So what do you do?” was met with a blank stare. The conversation is (roughly) as follows:

ME: I do Web Development
HIM: huh?
ME: I build Web sites – all shapes and sizes
HIM: Oh, cool! My brother’s in a band and they want someone to do their MySpace page!
ME: Cool, I’ve done a few for bands. They’re not as easy as it seems.
HIM: So how much for a Website?
ME: How much is a car?
HIM: Uh, that depends, what kinda car?
ME: Exactly. If you wanna think of sites as a good, rather than a service, think in terms of investments like cars. How fast do you need to go? Where will you be driving? How long does it need to last? A Porsche doesn’t do too well off-road, you know?
HIM: Cool. So about how much for a MySpace?
ME: Well, MySpace sucks. You have to use a lot of hacks to get the code to do what you want and on top of that, you’ve got little room to work with. Remember, you’re paying for my time…
HIM: So, like $250 or thereabouts?
ME: Add another zero to that, mate – then we’ll talk, sad but true – shit’s expensive
HIM: *unintelligible gurgling noise*

And so it goes. This is really common with a lot of professionals (that is, I’m sure it’s happened to you in your job) and it stems from either preconceived notions about what a person does or it stems from having no idea what the job is. Asking me to do something like fix your email is like handing a mechanic at a bar an oil filter and asking him if he could fix your car. The mechanic’s off work. He fixes engines, yes the oil filter’s part of it, but are you gonna fork out for the time and labor?

So I’m moving forward. I’ve gotten a new job with a new team. It’s something of a change – I’m no longer senior staff, but I’m getting paid more. I’ve no longer got to handle much back-end programming, but the front end programmers I’ll be working with still work in tables at times (they should be beaten around the ears for this, obviously). I’m no longer working in Austin, but I can’t telecommute. I’ve never heard of a Web firm which doesn’t understand telecommuting. The management was boss, though, as they’re giving me a stipend to cover gas and toll! So on the whole, it’s cool.

Disclaimer: everything I’m about to say could be completely off base. I have not worked with the team yet and in fact not even met a fellow code monkey there. So even I have to take this all with a grain of salt.

I’m worried about job creep. I understand SEO, but I’m not sure that making a position dependent upon the SEO for the client I’m working on seems a bit much. I never claimed to be an expert on the subject and probably never will. I am not privy to the innermost workings of the great goddess Google and her spider minions. I do know what I know, and I hope that will serve me well.

I got the official and very pleasant letter of employment yesterday saying: programming world class coded websites (new & updates), e-mail marketing campaigns, landing pages, managing on page search engine optimization, identifying gaps in content, analysis using google analytics to improve rankings and conversions. Now, the Web program and the e-mail campaigns I can handle – it’s what I do. I can handle landing pages, it’s just an upkeep thing. My main concern is the “on page” optimization – this is a lot more than I’d normally do, I feel you really need specialized search engine gurus for this kind of thing – with every page optimized for a strict level of searchability. Research shows that as the algorithms incorporate more fuzzy logic sets, the more search engine optimization will depend on well-written content and clear, well done short paragraphs.

The part that also worries me (going in, at least) is the identifying gaps in content bit. The new group’s got an in-house copywriter but I get the impression I will need to be keeping up with the page SEO to the point that I’ll be telling the copywriter what new paragraphs we need on said page and which we need to remove. It’s always been my impression, that job belongs to the copywriter.

I’ll post more as it gets closer to my start date. I’m taking a week off between jobs, so that should afford me some time to relax a bit.

Yippy skippy hoorah!

For whatever reason (I blame the relative youth of the tubes) there is little data out there on the people who are actually designing, coding, implementing, consulting, and basically sacrificing to make the Web a nice place. Thank goodness A List Apart, one of the finest online resources for people like me, decided back in 2007 to start a survey (the results of which can be seen here – 2007 survey results from a list apart) to document all this undocumented stuff.

I participated back in 2007 and I’m really glad I did. It really showed me how in and out of tune I was with the rest of my peers. I know I’m certainly WAY under-paid, I’m doing the job of roughly three people (thank the Web gods it’s not a design position on top of that), and it’s perfectly fine that I don’t have a degree in what I do because neither do about 46% of the industry!

I encourage all my peers out there to participate and help us figure out how to make this brilliant career work for all of us! If you’re a designer, a code monkey, a back-end sysadmin, or just a student making sites in your spare time, fill out the 45 question form (took me about 5 minutes) and we can see some cool results in the coming months! I love the fact that there are so many job titles from goofy pc-correct/ new-agey/ Web 2.0 “Information Implementation Engineers” to old school “Web-masters” to the bizarre “Lead Programmer” (that’s my title and it really makes no sense and insults those who actually do the hardcore coding tasks), there’s little standardization in the industry. I prefer “Web Developer” because I think it’s short and to the point.

So at my day-job, we’re working to turn our static (but accessible) XHTML + CSS site into a clean, usable Flash-based site and run it in conjunction with our redesigned static one. As Sun Tzu once said, ” One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be in danger in a hundred battles,” and so it is with development. We don’t look at the design, the copy, or the code until we tackle the information architecture for the site as a whole. The planning is key – knowing yourself (that is, how to structure your copy and path) is just as important as knowing your enemy (that is, your visitor, your end user, and how they will perceive the site).

When we jump into this kind of work we generally start from a flowchart. This chart outlines how the site gets structured and where the copy should go. We’re moving from a roughly sixty page (fifty of those are dynamic and populated by portfolio samples) to a 10 page site. This gets a little harrowing

On top of all this, we are restructuring to allow for a Flash-based version of the site which will showcase Flash and dynamic content skills. We want to move away from the tired old portal with “here’s the bitching new Flash site with the latest and greatest and here’s the tired old piece of shit XHTML site that we update when we feel like it – you pick” and move towards “here’s our Flash site, where stuff moves and is fun and here’s our XHTML site loaded with SEO, great code, and really beautiful look which completes the package – explore both!”

Information Architecture is one of the most important steps in development. I don’t care how beautiful, how complex your site is, if it’s hard for users to navigate and find what they need quickly and easily, they will leave and not come back. This is a time-honored, more-labor-intensive-than-you-think, activity which happens between clients, developers and creatives that requires in-depth thought and knowledge before a design ever gets considered.

Creating IA for a Web site is like a well-planned waltz – every step needs to be in the right place, in time with the music or it doesn’t work. It’s the Information Architects who really make the base of the site, that give it the structure around which the copy flows and the design is stretched. If you’re not working with solid IA, you’re not working.

So there’s always been an issue between account services and developers/ designers/ creatives/ a.k.a. the people who do the work. Account service people have the best interests of the client in mind, but they also want to make the client very happy. This has (and always will) the potential for abuse.

If the client wants something, let’s call it “stupid thing X”, the account service wants to make the client happy, so says, “of course we can do that”. Now “stupid thing X”, or STX, is only stupid because it’s stupid – not the client. The client is smart, I mean, they came to you to do their Web didn’t they? The problem is that they asked for STX without knowing that it was either not in their budget, not the right tech to get them to their goal, or something that is completely superfluous to the action of the site. We’ve all run into STX and we’ve all told the client why we though about it and think that there’s another way to get them where they need to go.

Because Account Service has already promised the client that development was going to get them their new, shiny, “stupid thing X”, we as developers look the bad guy when the Account Service rep complains that we have to go tell the client “stupid thing X” won’t work for her/him. This can be solved through consistent, clear inter-office communique.

The party line, so says the entity known as Wikipedia: “The Marxist-Leninist concept of democratic centralism involves strict adherence to, and defense of, a communist party’s positions in public, while in inner-party debate sessions, the line can be questioned, criticized, and changed if necessary.” This is what we mean by party-line. We can talk it all over inside the agency, but the client sees one face, one unified front set on helping them achieve their goals because we are a well-oiled, sleek uber-machine of creative awesomeness.

Account Service must be trained well, they need to understand how time and organizational structure in done internally. They should always be open to ask questions of creatives, and be trained in the subtle art of weaning a client to a line of “Well, that’s interesting! Let me run it by the creatives and see if there might be a more economical, or direct method to help you achieve our goals. It might be that that’ll work just fine!” This is helpful because it makes the client feel like a rather smart chap, shows her that her money is being well spent and the entire team is thinking of her and her goals for the site, and that the Account Service is taking care of everything (‘our’ goals makes the client part of the team, you see).

Account Service, go talk to your creatives – see what they have to say. Read their blogs, find out what they think. They like to rant a lot, so you’re bound to pick something up. Get out there and keep the client happy, but toe the party line on what you agree to!