On Monday, Digg launched its newest design along with more topics for people to Digg. They went outside the Technology realm and have incorporated World News, Business, Videos and Entertainment. Not really the kind of topics the typical Digg geek would thrive on you would think. So then why would they even bother?
I wonder if they really considered who their audience is and if they did maybe they felt for one reason or another the community would try their best to get involved in World News. Was there a need to go through this expansion? I don’t think there was and staying selective in their topics would worked just fine for Digg the same way it has worked for Slashdot, Fark and many others.
With 9rules we add and remove communities based on the sites within them. We don’t force a community into our Network and then go looking for sites to fill it. If the interest is there then the sites will come and I’m going to take a wild guess and say that the Digg folks were not overloaded with requests to add a business section to their site.
Sorry, but this one smells like investor intervention to me.
There have been many times on this site and on others where the criteria for building a successful blog have been discussed, but I have never gone over what it takes to make a successful site/blog before it launches. I would advise myself to follow these guidelines since I get a bit overzealous with every launch and always seem to launch a bit too early.
The Design
Depending on the purpose of your site, the role the design plays in it will vary. For a blog a great design is good, but isn’t as key as the content that is already present on the site. For more web-based application sites, the design goes a long way into attracting and keeping those first customers. The reason 9rules was a success was because of the initial design we had of the site that kept people coming back despite the lack of content that could be found on the site.
The Content
Over at Business Logs I wrote about pre-launch content and how important it is to a site. In this community you see too many people announcing the launch of their sites and the only content that can be found is a “Welcome to my site” type entry. People bookmark sites with great content. People add sites to their RSS feeds with great content. Not too many people can remember a site with one entry welcoming them.
Try to have at least 4-5 quality entries on your site so at the very least visitors have something to explore and are given a better idea of what to expect in the future from you.
What is it?
Initially when you launch, I think it is a good idea to have a visible description of what your site is about. It’s probably better to always have description of what your site is about on the homepage, but over time some people choose to discard it and put it on the homepage.
After your visitors get passed the design of your site they are going to wonder what it is about. If they can’t find it or have to search too hard for it they may just leave especially if all you have is one entry. Let them know where they are and why they should be there.
The Review
When it’s almost time to launch a site it is easy to get so excited that you launch it, announce it, and only come to find some major errors when people start visiting it. I should know as I seem to do this with every site I create :-). Before you launch you should ask a couple of people to review the site to help point out anything blatantly wrong or missing that you may have overlooked.
Creating a successful site begins before it launches. You may have a plan in place explaining how the site will grow and become popular over time, but how well you are prepared before the launch can dictate how hard you have to work to acheive your goals for the site.
With all of that said I see a million things that need to improve on all of my sites. Both a gift and a curse for writing these kinds of entries I guess.
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Note: This was pulled from the old lost archives so it comes from a few years back, but still applies today. Obviously I don’t offer design services anymore since I partner with someone who is more than capable of handling that stuff.
As a designer beginning his own company it is important for me to have clients that believe in the service that I am offering and that service being designing web sites. Not only am I offering them a service, but I am also giving them a product, which is their own website. I wish that every client I have now will find my work good enough that they will refer me to others. This is obviously the best form of advertising and the best way to get business.
Now in my area there are a lot of designers (as I am sure there are in your area) who offer web design services. However, their services differ from mine. They create websites and offer many other services like database design and networking. I create websites and offer a limited amount of services. See, creating quality websites today requires great skill because there are many different things that you need to know. This is especially true if you wish to design CSS based websites. I want clients that can see that the service that I am offering them is quality. Sure the guy down the street can build their site for $500, but will that same guy put as much care and love into creating the site as I will? Will he be creating a site that when it comes time to update does not require hours or days to do so he can charge them a high fee? Will he create a site that follows the standards set by a governing body?
I need to pay bills just as much as the next guy. If someone offers me $500 and I let them know that if they want everything that I can offer them it will cost more and they still only offer me $500, then they will only get $500 worth of my skill and work. However, if I approach a client with a proposal that states they are getting my best quality work for $1600, then I obligate myself to offering them my best work and that includes building a standards compliant site.
I am a designer who offers quality. I create sites in CSS because I know down the road when it comes time to update the site I can do it quickly for my client at a reasonable fee. My client does not care if the site was created in CSS or tables. That was my decision. My client does not care if his site validates or that it follows some standards set by a governing body. However, I care because I wish to offer the finest service and product that my client paid for and that is one of the reasons I try to stick with standards.
Believe me I know how much of a pain it can be trying to get pages to validate. Actually I don’t, because whenever a page does not validate I can usually find the error quickly and change it. It seems the only hassle to getting pages to validate is going to the W3C site and typing in the url. I use a Firebird extension to take care of that for me so checking pages is almost no hassle at all. Even though this site validates it is not imperative to me that it does unlike my clients’ sites because at the moment this site does not pay the bills. However, the people who do pay the bills for me, deserve a quality standards based site if they expect to get all their money’s worth.
I am not preaching to anyone or forcing my beliefs of web design upon you. I just wanted everyone to see the ethical code that I have placed upon myself, which helps to explain why I design the way I do and why I like standards.
Do you ever come to the point sometimes when you are designing and the design is just simply not working so you begin to wonder why you are even a designer or could even claim to be one? This used to happen to me, but then I just surf the web and see somebody else’s ugly site and am instantly reinspired to push forward :). Now I am wise enough to have Rundle on my team.
I can see the reason for many people entering the field of web design is that they believe that designing a website is easy. Wrong. Building a website is easy, designing one takes skill. This is where the ego kicks in. There are two key elements (I am sure there are many more) that designers should possess.
The first one is that you need to be your own harshest critic. And believe me this is extremely hard to do on the web since there are many people out there who are quick to point out how wrong your design is. When you think you are done with a design, take a step back and look at it. Could you do better? If you think you could, but can’t figure out how then just step away for a bit. If you don’t think you could do better then either you are right, or you just don’t want to push yourself further.
Hopefully you don’t think your design is done because it looks like another popular site. You cannot call yourself a designer when all you do is steal other people’s designs. Sort of like thinking you can draw and placing a paper over a picture so you can trace the lines. Don’t get me wrong because it is okay to take the design elements of others to help with your own designs, but your ego cannot develop until you have your own style. Sure your style may be similar to someone else’s, but at least when you design something you know that you designed it.
The second important aspect of being a designer is knowing how to take criticism. I am fortunate to have an audience that gives excellent criticism without being too harsh or demeaning. Sure, many times I do not agree with what people say, but I have learned to listen to them because maybe in another design their ideas could work. Every once in a while you may get some jackass telling you how horrible everything looks. Why is he saying this? Who knows and who cares. When taking criticism there is always going to be signal and noise. Filter out the noise. Listen to others. Grow as a designer.
Even when your ego is too big to fit on screen and you think you are the best around or people tell you there is no one better, there is always a way to learn and get better. Every website on the web has something to teach you. Be it something good or something bad, but from every design it is possible to take some knowledge away with you. If you want to be a designer then be one. You must have an ego or else you wouldn’t be doing it (unless you just do it for fun). Just make sure to keep it in check.
Buildings that serve a purpose and enhance the beauty of the environment around them are created by artists disguised as architects. Buildings that are hideous and need to be torn down are created by architects. The difference is that the artist takes pride in what he is doing. He understands that his work will be viewed by many people and therefore stakes his pride in the building. The architect knows that he got paid to finish something within a timeframe and therefore could care less how people see his building. In fact he does not even think the building is his anyways.
Hackers act the same way as architects. They gather bricks and cement and throw something together called a house that although it works will more than likely not stand the test of time. As a programmer you should not see your code as a means to an end. It should provide a source for others to look at and revel in its beauty. I do not mean that you should write a ton of crappy code, but use appropriate whitespace and indents (although whitespace and indents should be used appropriately for legibility). What I mean by beautiful code is more than the look of it. I want to get lost in the beauty of its design. I want to see how simple you make complicated sequences appear. A quick example is the Towers of Hanoi done using recursive functions. There are plenty of ways to go about this problem, but the recursive approach shows you how code can be an art. Although very rarely you see recursiveness used in large designs you must marvel at the simplicity of the design to such a complicated problem. To me simplicity of design is beauty.
A lot of programmers are given code that is not their’s and they are told to refactor it or make it work better. This is the greatest time for showing that programming can be an art and probably an even better time to wish that every programmer treated their code as an art form. It is like someone giving you a marble statue of something that appears to be a man and when you are done with it looks like David.
If you tackle your code as an artist then you are putting an investment into it. You are putting yourself behind the code so that the code represents you. A lot of open source projects need to take heed and listen. Just because you start a great idea for a project and start an account on SourceForge.net it does not mean you will draw in the legions of the open source army. No doubt you will draw interest, but if your code is a catastrophe and the design is horrific then that interest will die quickly, very quickly. Beautiful code and design lasts like great pieces of art. There is a reason Ruby on Rails is becoming very popular and it goes beyond the fact that 37signals hypes it.
Programming is an art because you are creating your own masterpiece. You are creating your own exhibit for the world to see. Artists don’t paint just so they can keep their works to themselves. They paint because they want the world to enjoy what they enjoy. Why should coding be any different? Of course if you are writing a small program for yourself, write it however you want. I write small little programs that serve my purposes, but I also design them as if I were letting the whole world see them. For some reason I can’t let bad design and ugly code get in my way. I take pride in what I do because I take it seriously and I wish others to take me seriously as well. Nothing is more fulfilling to me than someone telling me they respect me. If they only know me through my code, then I wish for them to respect my code. For this to happen I have to become the artist that respects his own work.
As programmers you are more than likely under a tight deadline so your main priority is to create working code. However, if the design is not thought out then that working code might be incompatible with the other components that it has to interact with. If there is an art to the design of the code, then even though the code is incompatible, maybe it can be fixed easier than the messy code. If something is hacked together quickly, that is understandable, but go back and fix it up. 99% of the time there is a more elegant solution to the problem.
See yourself as a master craftsman who has apprentices and journeymen coming from all over to view your code so that they may learn the art of programming. Take pride in your work not for others’ enjoyment, but for your own sense of self. We are artists and that is why we love our art.
*Note: I wrote this back in the days when I coded more, but now I am graced by the presence of Colin Devroe to handle all the code jiu-jitsu.
If you know anything about marketing you will know that many professionals claim that testimonials are your best friend. Along the lines of word of mouth marketing testimonials give your product/service that much more credibility. Surprisingly, 9rules doesn’t have a buzzpage, but that is something I have been working on this week because in my mind they do more good than harm.
37signals always does an excellent job of collecting testimonials and I think it’s a great example to follow. This entry isn’t really a discussion on Testimonials since I don’t have that much else to say, but a reminder that if you see anything said about your, your company or your site then save it because you can put it to use later, even when it’s negative.
Whew, just got done with the 9rules Round 4 list and I need a bit of Friday fun since it is Friday. So I figured it would be cool to hear some client horror stories since I am indirectly experiencing one right now (remember I don’t do client work anymore). If you got a horror story let us have it so we can sit back and have a jolly laugh together. Hell, if you have a shitty boss tell us that as well.
