The Holistic Web

So, I was actually doing some programming tonight (shhh! I still do that sometimes, but don’t tell). I was trying to take a short cut, working out how to do something to save a lot of time. Searched for it, found an article in Google that sounded perfect. Got taken to the site - it’s a site by developers for developers. It asked me to register to read this article. No problems, I really wanted this content.

I then get taken to a blank, completely unformatted page which says absolutely nothing except:
You do not have access to the content you requested.

No reason why. No explanation. No link to get access. No explanantion of access levels. Nothing. It turns out I really wanted this content so I hunted around the site (http://www.devx.com/) to try and find these answers. I never did find them. I did work out they have a premium section that costs money. If I knew for sure that joining would give me access to the content I wanted, I would have been tempted to pay. But no, their poor UI cost them an easy sale.

However, I’m sure that “You do not have access to the content you requested” is the technically correct answer.

Techies, keep your eye on the end goal. The site is there to achieve something, help the user achieve it. And devx.com, think how much money your technically-driven site is costing you.

I love working with good marketers. They are truly masters of their craft. I remember a campaign I worked on where the marketing manager planned very precisely what the response rate and resultant revenue would be from a relatively broad reach campaign. The end result was almost perfect for the predicted revenue. That sort of prediction takes a lot of experience and a great gut instinct.

What most marketers aren’t good at is design. I once did some training for some marketers on how to use a website content management system to make small copy changes to their site that weren’t worth briefing into an online specialist. One of the first questions one of them asked is “how do I change the background colour of the page?”. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of many reasons why you would want to change the background colour on a large corporate site.

Most designers have spent years studying design. It’s much more than just pushing pixels around a page and making it look pretty.

Font selection helps determines the mood & tone of the site - is it friendly? Authoritative? Fun? Informative? The structure and use of colour will direct visitors eyes towards, or away from, certain sections of the page. That can have a big impact on the success of your campaign. I’ve seen a pages redesigned mid-way through a campaign that have literally doubled the response rate. A good designer is skilled in their craft.

What this doesn’t mean is that you should just wash your hands of the design. A well written design brief will allow your designer the maximum creative flexibility while focussing them on the business goals. Focus on what you want to achieve, and leave the how to the designers (within the restraints of any corporate style guides of course). A design brief shouldn’t specify colours, fonts, imagery (unless there’s a specific reason), and so forth. Working with great designers is a very rewarding experience, enjoy it.

Amongst a lot of techies (no, not all - thanks to those of you who are open minded), there’s this pervasive thing that marketing is just a bunch of meaningless fluff that doesn’t do much. They just sit around and make ads all day, right? I don’t agree with this idea at all.

I once did some marketing study with a guy by the name of Mohan Sawhney. If you think marketers are fluffy, you should meet Mohan - he has an intellect the size of which you’ll encounter few times in your life (not to mention a PhD in marketing and a bachelor of electrical engineering). His definition of marketing was:

“Marketing is the holistic and adaptive process by which firms collaborate with customers and partners to create and sustain value for their stakeholders.”

Now, I’m the first to admit that it’s a pretty fluffy description. It’s also not how some companies do marketing - but it is what most mature marketing organisations are striving for. Note there’s nothing about advertising in there.

My simplistic definition of marketing? It’s about solving business problems. Those problems are sometimes, but not always, about making more sales. For example, you might find that people aren’t using your product properly, not appreciating its value and thus less likely to purchase more of them. That is a marketing problem, the solution would probably be to provide training in some form most suitable for the users. (A good example of this is the Microsoft Office online site, where I have quite a few friends doing some great work).

That is good marketing. The advertising you see on TV or in a magazine is one possible response to a business problem.

Techies, hang around with the marketing folk. Yes, there’ll be a few fluffy people, but the majority of them tend to be very clever, competent professionals who more than earn their keep.

My first post in the marketing vs techies series is aimed at marketers. Techies, your turn will come soon!

Requirements are the foundation of any software project. Requirements are, in essence, a list of things that whatever software is being built will do. Getting requirements right is critical to the success of any software project, it’s the old measure twice, cut once.

The natural tendency of marketers is to say “I want it to do x, y and z, make it so”. The problem is, they are simply assuming that it will also do a, b and c, as that’s how it always works, doesn’t it? Sometimes yes, but just as often, no. If you want something, you need to state it, no matter how trivial it appears. Some seemingly trivial things can have huge implications. Some of the “trivial” things I’ve seen assumed are:

• A web site search function: searching web sites (depending on the website) can be a whole project in itself, and very expensive.
• An undo function: in database-centric software, undo can be quite tricky and require a complete re-thinking of the way the database works
• It can be used by people off out intranet, right? Depending on the organisations network infrastructure and a whole pile of other considerations, internet vs intranet can in some cases have profound differences.

Your requirements are the foundations of the house the software developers are building. Ever been to a house that’s had one too many extensions done to it? Bedrooms in strange locations, doors that go nowhere, etc? If you state your requirements after the software is built, you’ll end up with strange extensions which don’t work anywhere near as well as if they were stated up front.

In defense of marketers, techies: use proper, experienced business analysts who can help with this process, and don’t say “but it was in the functional spec I sent you” - no one reads functional specs. It’s tough, but get over it.

I’ve spent most of my working life as an interface between “business” people and “technology” people. I enjoy both ways of working so like sitting in the middle - in fact, I tend to actively seek work like that. I also get a unique view of both sides of the fence, where I can see both the business point of view, and the technology point of view, and there is a great and might chasm between them!

Inspired by Darren at Problogger, one of my favourite blogs at the moment, I’ll do a series of posts aimed at helping each side have a peak at the other, based on my experiences at least. Stay tuned!