November 2006

I was just commissioned to make a bad site. No, it’s not that we have a client with no taste—this one is intentionally bad. Our Video department is making a promotional video to show how our web development teams can improve web sites. To tell the truth, though, I’m actually a little happy about this project. My time in web design has taught me quite a bit about what makes a bad web page, and I finally get a chance to show the public how bad these bad things can be. (Admittedly, not everyone will be as riled up about these things as I am. I don’t care. I’m angry.) So, for your reading pleasure and in no particular order, here are the top five things to avoid in web pages (according to me).

1. Don’t use images without alternate text.
   I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to a web site, used a form, and found the submit button to be a small image with no alternate text. Alternate text is text that shows up when the image can’t load for whatever reason. In Internet Explorer, the alt text will pop up when you hold your mouse pointer over an image. So in this scenario, if there’s a minor server slowdown that causes the image not to load, or the user has his or her images turned off to save on download time, there’s no way to submit the form.

   In addition, there are quite a few users who simply can’t view images. An estimated 4.7 million users have visual disabilities and nearly 10 million surf the web using cell phones—in the United States alone. Don’t ban these people from your web site.

2. Don’t use “mystery meat” navigation.
   “Mystery meat” navigation is a term coined by Web Pages That Suck and refers to navigation links that aren’t clearly marked or discernable until you move your mouse over them. It’s initially attractive because it’s flashy—it’s animated and interactive—but oftentimes, the user has no idea that they’re links until he or she accidentally mouses over them. Don’t confuse your users. If they can’t find out how to navigate your site, they’ll never come back.
3. Don’t bunch up your text.
   The average online reader has the attention span of an adolescent fruit fly. If someone sees a long span of text, or even a really long paragraph, he or she will usually stop reading right there. Keep pages, paragraphs and sometimes even sentences short and easy to digest. If you have a lot of content on one subject that you have to present, break it up into multiple pages.
4. Don’t assume that people want to read everything you have to say.
   In the same vein as the last one, don’t test users’ attention spans. Figure out what’s relevant to and necessary for your web site and leave it at that. If users have to wade through fifty links to find what they’re looking for, even the important content on your site is likely to be missed.

   This is doubly important in e-mails. If your e-mail marketing piece has more than a couple of paragraphs, almost none of it will get read.

5. Don’t make your pages too big to download.
   The total size of a web page is the size of the page itself plus the size of all linked objects (mainly images and videos). You have to weigh this against your target audience’s average download speed. Cable modems get an average of 708 kb/second, and DSL lines get an average of 467 kb/second—but dial-up users only get a download speed of 7 kb/second on average. Just this week, I ran across a blog that was 977k (that’s just the homepage, not the whole site). That’s 2.3 minutes of download time for a dialup user. I doubt even the blogger’s mother would wait that long to read a post.

   Trim down your page’s overall file size by reducing the number of linked images, videos and other media. If you have a video, don’t force the user to download it unless it’s absolutely vital that it be on that page. (You can put videos on their own pages, though—just make sure the user knows that they will be downloading a large file.)

Making sure your web sites follow these simple guidelines will make your web sites more effective and make the Web a better place for everyone. Also, if you’re ever commissioned to create a bad site, you now know what to do.

I knew this guy named Mike “The Hammer” who, as the story goes, didn’t earn his nickname because of his carpentry skills. The Hammer was a regular at the driving range I worked at as a teenager. The driving range was on First Avenue in Forest Park, Illinois. It was across the street from the Maywood Racetrack, a dumpy 1950s era harness racing track that was populated by lowlifes and losers and run by the Mob … and guys like The Hammer.

Over the course of the two summers I worked at the range, Mike sort of took me under his wing. He liked my golf game and told me later that he respected the way I looked him in the eye. I never told him I was scared out of my mind and kept a steady eye on him so as to know when to run.

Mike took to hitting balls in the stall next to me after hours. He was a hell of a golfer and had good tips to offer. In between our chats about putting and curing a slice, Mike would talk to his “associates.” I always kept my head down during the chats he had with his menacing pals, but I picked up that he also served as a mentor to his business partners. He offered advice on how to grease the Zoning Commission, who on City Council was friendly, and generally steered his minions down the right – or seemingly, wrong – path.

During the spring of my senior year, a friend and I decided to start a small business. We got a peddlers license (per the advice of The Hammer) and began spray painting fresh new addresses on the curbs of Oak Park, Illinois. We’d paint the address number in the morning hours, take the afternoon off, and then come to collect “contributions” from the citizens after they’d returned from work. Business started off slowly with a lot of doors slammed in our faces and even a threat of a law suit.

The Hammer insisted we weren’t doing everything we could to “close the deal.” He said, “You’ve got to advertise! I tell all my guys, early to bed, early to rise; advertise!” (Mike seemingly began every other sentence with “I tell all my guys” or “So my guys tell me” and my favorite, “I knew a guy in prison who used tell me …”)

Mike suggested we print up 5,000 bright flyers explaining that we were local kids performing a community service to raise money via donations for college. We not only did that, but we took out a full-page ad in Oak Leaves, the local newspaper. It cost us one block’s worth of work.

Over the next few weeks we put a Day Glo pink flyer on every house in town and raked in thousands of dollars, especially after the ad ran in the paper. Not only were we raking in the cash, the entire town was thanking us profusely for performing the task nobody had done in years. One cute old lady on Euclid Street told me, “Now I know where I live when I drive home.”

Back at the driving range, The Hammer was both pissed and impressed. “I hear you’re doing pretty well with our plan over there in Oak Park, eh? When am I going to see my cut of that stack of cash, Matty?”

Thankfully, I avoided seeing The Hammer in the weeks before heading off for college. I kept his cut of the cash – but I’ll always remember the lesson he taught me about advertising. Early to bed, early to rise; advertise … then get the heck outta town!

At the entryways of department stores and other retailers, the charitable groups are out. They are braving the dropping temperatures to ring bells and watch buckets fill with change and the occasional folded bill.

Most people consider the holiday season the time to give, but it’s that way around our office regardless of the season. And it’s a good kind of giving that comes through no obligation or pressure – with no incentive except the way it makes you feel. Our staff has a sincerity behind their giving, which makes us different from other corporations.

There isn’t any pressure from a manager or supervisor of any sort to make donations to the numerous charities the company supports. In fact, all of PlattForm’s philanthropic efforts were sprouted by an employee initiative to get involved and help people locally who are in need.

PlattForm has supported 10 charities in the past year by donating the time and talents of our employees to their causes. During 2006, PlattForm gave to the following charities:

• Alliance for Lupus Research
• American Red Cross
• Boys Hope House
• Della Lamb
• Hope House Lodge
• Kansas City Friends of Alvin Ailey
• Mattie Rhodes Center
• Ronald McDonald House
• Salvation Army
• SAVE Inc.

That list includes a variety of different causes just as diverse as the more than 350 employees we have on our team. And judging by the results of our annual gift buying for needy families in our community, nearly all of those employees find a way to buy a toy or something for these families to eat. Think about it – 350 people who truly care about the world affiliated with one organization, more or less in one place. We are making a difference because it matters to us, and that in itself is something to be proud of.

As a former newspaper editor, I loved and hated the weeks before and after the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years holidays. Employees at government offices and corporations headed out of town for the holidays and with them went our news stories. Instead of the flood of people wanting coverage for their events, we were left with more of a leaky faucet that barely drip-drip-dripped onto our editorial calendar.

On one hand, it gave me time to dust off those promising story ideas I had to shelve because more important news took precedent over them. It also gave me the opportunity to seek out new story ideas for the coming year and do some advance planning while things were still slow.

On the other hand, these slow news days made us desperate for news. Was there a construction worker with a backhoe digging up a busted pipe? Front page news! First baby of the year? Front page story with a big photo (even though it was pretty much the same news story every year).

The holidays are the perfect opportunity for public relations professionals to pitch stories to bored reporters who are desperately looking for some interesting news. The chances of your story seeing newsprint are much greater because you’re competing with fewer newsworthy events.

Colleges should plan ahead to make the most out of these slow news days. Have a culinary program? Can you get a few volunteers to answer a turkey-emergency hotline on Thanksgiving Day? Or maybe you’ve got an automotive program, and you can repair a needy family’s car just in time for Christmas. Invite the media out when you return the fixed-up car to the family.

Planning events like these will help you get your name out in the community and give reporters something to fill their broadcasts and news pages with during the slow holiday season. It also gives you a chance to build a relationship with the reporter, which might just give you the edge against other stories when the newsroom gets busy again.

Last week I had a RIVETING assignment in Sacramento … riveting only because I got the chance to hang out with my best friend Deirdre, a TV anchorwoman who lives in Sac Town.

Now, I know a lot of people. Most I merely tolerate. But only a handful do I actually call “friends.” And only one or two do I call BEST friends. You know the kind I’m talking about … Deirdre is my kindred spirit. Deirdre is the only one I call on in simultaneous moments of panic, delusion, sheer joy, bad hair and/or constipation.

And since she happens to be the single best writer I’ve ever met, I often call on her in moments of writer’s block.

She has yet to dangle a participle that doesn’t deserve dangling. And she practically oozes vocabulary words through her pores. Come to think of it, I hate her.

I met Deirdre while we were both working in Des Moines. It was our first big-boy and big-girl TV jobs, respectively. I had no idea what I was doing but was coolly confident that I could get by on looks alone. Deirdre COULD have relied on her looks – she’s a stunner … but she quickly began to weave a tapestry of stories that still hangs over Central Iowa to this day.

Then Deirdre did the unthinkable … she got a promotion and moved to Sacramento. I was devastated … so I tried to trump her ace by getting a promotion and moving to Kansas City. She won an Emmy. So I won an Emmy. She then proceeded to enter several triathlons, cover the last four Olympics for NBC, got married and reproduced a child prodigy.

I grew out my bangs.

Now over the years I have “honed” my killer writing skills … and by “honed” I mean copied Deirdre’s. She’ll never sue … I’m her best friend. Besides, we all know blatant, copyright-infringing imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Last week over seared Ahi tuna and a good bottle of wine, Deirdre sprung on me that we should write a book based solely on our weird e-mails to each other. I’m game. Why not? I write good. She writes gooder! So I’ll keep you posted on the situation as it progresses.

So cheers to you, Deirdre … you’re my touchstone! Remember that insipid Peter Cetera song where he sings, “You’re the meaning in my life … you’re the inspiration”? Yeah, well … neither do I.