Interactive

As a developer, this is the #1 question I ask myself over and over again. We are faced with goals that we have to achieve and issues that must be addressed and resolved. So we are forced to ask ourselves, what makes it work? What is the best solution that will give us the results we want? I am not here to give the answer, but rather to help you ask yourself the right questions. In a corporate environment, there are many things that have to be considered. Before asking yourself how it will affect the website, you first have to consider the business at hand – the company. There is nothing worse than tarnishing your company’s name via an online website. Our leaders, Michael Platt and Dave Admire, indirectly give very good examples of the mindset needed to help the company succeed.

Even though we’re not directly an internet based company, the internet does account for the majority of the work that we do. So it can be very easy to get caught up in thinking what’s best for the websites rather than keeping the company first. And as a developer, I used to find myself in this situation often. But as time goes, you learn.

It will come to realization for you, that no matter how well a site is designed, how many clients you have or how stable the framework is that the site is built on, marketing is still the key. With all of those key factors, and no visitors, a website can still amount to nothing. But, with a company such as our Plattform Advertising and a team like the Internal Site Managers, I have realized much of what it takes to ensure the business succeeds as a whole. What I hope to take with me in the future, is this knowledge that I feel is very valuable to anyone who decides to get into marketing. And if you do decide to do so, PlattForm Advertising would not be a bad place to start.

For all non-Web-designers out there, Web design has become more of a science and less of a trial-and-error exercise in patience in the recent years due to Web standards. Web standards, put out by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), dictated the way HTML and CSS were to be interpreted by browsers. So all of the sudden, it wasn’t up to browsers to figure this out—there was a standard that all browsers should adhere to. Well, that was the thought.

Internet Explorer has been around far longer than Internet standards have been popular. Microsoft was used to making up their own rules and figuring out how to best display websites. In their defense, they actually did a pretty good job—they had one of the best browsers around, pre-standards, and they’re still the most popular browser. But once standards caught on, those proprietary rules made Web design a nightmare. This was due to other popular browsers—namely Mozilla Firefox—being almost completely standards-compliant. Internet Explorer 6 was mostly standards-compliant, but still missed the mark considerably. Those little quirks in Internet Explorer 6 often made us re-code perfectly coded websites, and, in some cases, provide entirely separate code for Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer 7 was a mixed blessing when it came out (for us, anyway). It was much more standards-compliant, and Microsoft actually saw the error of their IE6 ways and made Internet Explorer 7 a priority Windows update for all Windows users. So why a mixed blessing? Websites that had separate code for IE6 were suddenly “broken” in IE7. This was mostly due to websites not being built properly in the first place, but that didn’t stop the flood of hate-mail that Microsoft probably received on their new baby.

(I should also point out that IE7 had its own quirks that did cause standards-compliant Web designers some headaches. But the problems solved by IE7 greatly outweighed the problems caused.)

“Don’t break the Web.” That became Microsoft’s mantra during the initial development of IE8. In early 2008, they announced something called Version Targeting that would be implemented in IE8. Although IE8 was being developed for further adherence to standards, IE8 would interpret websites exactly like IE7 unless the website specifically asked to be interpreted by updated rules. This would also apply to IE9, IE10, and IE32—they would all interpret websites just the same as IE7 unless asked not to.

While this may have seemed like a good idea to the development team, which likely received a plethora of negative content about the latest incarnation of their browser, and to Web designers who built to browser standards rather than Web standards, it angered standards-compliant designers who wanted to see even more adherence to standards on the Web. Some of us came to see why Microsoft made the decision; others (like myself) remained angry about it, seeing it as a hindrance to progress toward a standards-compliant Web.

On March 3, Microsoft announced that they have reversed this decision. IE8 will now, by default, interpret pages in the most standard compliant way it can. The good news for designers worried about IE8 “breaking the Web” is that they can actually set their pages to request to be interpreted using IE7 standards. So version targeting is still around—only now, it’s the opt-in rather than the default. This is good news for the industry, and even better news for “standardistas” like myself.

So what does this mean for you, the non-Web-designer? Make sure your websites are being built to standards. Ask that your websites be built in XHTML 1.0 rather than HTML 4.01, and ask to make sure your code validates against the rules set forth by the W3C. As browsers move in that direction, compliance to Web standards is going to be more and more important, and early work will reduce the amount of adjustment needed whenever a new browser comes out. As an added bonus, it also gives you bragging rights in Web designer circles.

A few weeks ago I went to my cousin’s high school graduation. While she was excited graduation had finally come, she did confide in me that the last few months had been very stressful for her – trying to satisfy her teachers, her parents, her friends, her coaches, herself, all while searching for the right college and preparing to be on her own. While listening to her drone on and on about how hard it was to be a high school senior it suddenly hit me…that’s what my job is like. That’s how I can explain what I do to other people and have them actually understand it.

As a recent college grad I always have friends and family asking me, so what exactly is it that you do? Most of the time I settle for the generic “I work in internet advertising” line, but on the off chance that someone really probes and wants more detail I often find it difficult to explain the complexity of my position.

As an IMSer I don’t just have to worry about the client. I don’t just worry about PlattForm. I have to be concerned for the well-being of all parties involved. My goal is to make money for PlattForm while doing what’s in the client’s best interest and keeping our affiliates happy. I have to consider SEO and PSM. What about our internal sites, how do we get more leads from them? Can we run the call center? Is the copy on our forms good enough? The questions are endless.

If anyone ever told me I’d be asked to act like a teenager again I would have said they were crazy, but that’s exactly what my job requires. I have a multitude of avenues I have to consider and be knowledgeable about and bring together into one cohesive plan. I have a responsibility to so many different parties that it really is like being a teenager again, except without having your parent’s money to pay for everything.

- Amanda Burns

The last part of this series has to do with feedback, from both the client and users as well as the creative and business types. This should go without saying, but gathering accurate and meaningful feedback is one of the most important aspects of continuing to please clients and effectively meet their needs. Making sure nothing is “lost in the translation” between the client and the creative department is of the utmost importance when delivering feedback.

But the need for feedback is deeper than that. You have to understand that these Web sites are our babies. We put a lot of tender love and care into them. And, as discussed in the last article, we care (or should care, at least) as much about the results of our work as their aesthetic appeal. We care about perfecting our craft and will take as much information as you can provide in making our services and product better for the clients and their clients. Getting feedback is important to us both professionally and personally.

Business types, this might mean you have to get pro-active about gathering feedback. Learn about the types of creative decisions that are made and ask specifically about them—things like color schemes, fonts, white space, navigation schemes, and picture choice. The client may not always know to discuss these, or even give them full attention, but they can have a strong effect on how the client actually feels about the product.

Usability testing is another way to gather feedback from the end users of the product—potentially, the clients’ clients. In reality, though, user testing isn’t limited to a single client’s actual clientele. Anyone can be used for client testing. There’s focus group testing, where you gather people that match the demographic you’re trying to reach and get their thoughts on it; there’s usability expert testing, where you get opinions from people who know usability; there’s even hallway testing (I’m making these up), where you just grab the first person who walks down the hallway and ask them to use the Web site. The important thing is to get someone other than the designer to use the site and give feedback on it.

Feedback isn’t limited to creative considerations, either—sometimes there’s some feedback on the business side of things. There’s a phrase in the creative professional world: “Shut up and color.” It’s what business types sometimes wish creative types would do. I cringe as I write this, but sometimes that’s what we need to do. Creative types may soar to new heights of imagination, but business types get crap done. Creative types need to be allowed creativity, but they sometimes need to be respectfully reminded of the bottom line: results delivered.

But business types have to be willing to hear feedback from the creative types as well. If a feature was added because it was thought of as a small add-on, but ended up being a ten-hour deviation from the main work, that’s useful information to share with the people who pitch creative services to clients. We’ve had a few cases where a service was sold to the client for the equivalent of four hours of work when the actual work took sixteen or more. That’s bad business, it sets a bad precedent, and it’s a waste of the creative team’s time.

Let’s say a client requests message boards to be placed on their Web site. This could just get translated into a work order for Web Design to install some message boards, in which case the client would get their message boards. But it turns out that the client is totally unprepared for the amount of work that goes into managing and promoting message boards, and doesn’t have a strong enough community to keep the message boards going. After two months, the message boards die a long, slow, painful death, and all involved parties are frustrated. Even though the client requested message boards, what they wanted would have been much better accomplished with a blog. The Web Design department could have determined this in a simple conversation with the client.

The feedback should not be interpreted solely by either the creative or business types, as both types will have an incomplete grasp on what’s really going on with the request. That’s not to say that either one will consistently get it wrong—but if you could get two expert opinions on something, why wouldn’t you?

So the third tip for getting the business types and the creative types to play nice: gather as much feedback as possible and keep the lines of communication open. Schedule some cross-training so each department learns what makes the others tick. This makes it easier for us to understand each other’s goals, but also to gather meaningful feedback from the client to improve the current project and make future projects more effective.

I love my baby girl. There is not a second I spend with her that I wish she was asleep in bed or that her daddy was playing with her. There are many times when she is asleep that I go in to just watch her sleep. And if I’m not watching her sleep, I will go to the computer and look through the hundreds of adorable photos that I’ve taken of her in the passed 8 months since her birth (and yes, that includes photos that I took while watching her sleep!). I am obsessed!

But come weekday mornings, I drop my daughter off at daycare and begin morphing into a full-time Site Manager as I make my way down I-35 toward work. I review yesterday’s events and mentally prepare myself for another unpredictable day in the world of Internet marketing. Upon arrival at my desk, I start pouring myself into my websites, and the only evidence of a life outside this building is the collection of family photos on my cubicle walls. It isn’t until I hear the bustling of coworkers leaving work for the night that I snap out of my webby world and remember that I have a daughter, and she needs to be picked up from daycare!

My mind races with work-related issues until I arrive at her daycare. She greets me with that toothless grin, and I am a mommy again. All thoughts of Internet marketing are long gone, neatly packed into a corner room of my brain, lights off, door closed.

This is the system I’ve designed for myself, to keep my life in balance. I’ve made myself two people, the career marketer and the mother, and each gives 100% to their responsibilities. But each knows their boundaries, and these boundaries must be maintained if I want to continue being successful at both things I love. I cannot be the best mother if I allow my work to occupy my evenings, and I cannot be the best marketer if I’m pining away at my daughter’s photos during the day (Disclaimer: The “mother” personality always takes precendent over the career personality in case of emergencies. That should go without saying!). These are the commitments I have made to maintain balance in the busy life of a working mother.