flyte blog: small business web marketing blog

This past Friday we shut down flyte for an all-day planning session with the entire staff. It wasn’t nearly as painful as it sounds, in big part because we’ve got a great crew here that likes and respects one other. I truly believe that dartboard with my face on it was an aberration…Jonathan and Andy tell me that outside the U.S. it’s considered a sign of respect…like burning the flag. But I digress….

We spent most of the day reviewing our process and identifying weak spots in documentation, hand-offs, and communication breakdowns, coming up with ideas on how to improve these areas.

We also spent a good deal of time talking about the type of Web sites we’ll be building this year. Without giving too much away, I really feel that the future of Web development is platforms. One of the things that I find most frustrating about our work is that it often feels like we’re reinventing the wheel with each job. Although the structure of many Web sites is similar–navigation on top or left, banner at top, two or three columns, call-to-action down below–it always feels like it’s the first time we’re building a site. 

Platforms are software applications that take a lot of the grunt work out of building a site. Examples include Joomla, WordPress, Drupal and a thousand other content management systems (CMS). And although those are all open source
platforms, there are of course hundreds if not thousands of companies
rolling their own CMS to meet their or their clients’ needs.

Platforms can reduce a lot of a developers time on a project, allowing
him or her to concentrate on other areas of Web development, including
usability, conversion and Web marketing, for example. Because most
platforms are in fact CMSs, they allow clients to update their own
content without any HTML knowledge. Of course, this brings it’s own
potential problems.

Once a platform is learned, however, it can make the upkeep of a Web site easy for anyone comfortable with a computer.

Platforms do have their drawbacks. One issue is that you often have to
give up a little bit of control over layout when using these platforms.
The very flexibility that reduces development time and allows anyone to
update the site can hamper pixel-perfect layout. Now, that may not be
an issue to many people, but other organizations may have a hard time
with that.

One thing we’ve seen over the years are clients who plan on updating
the Web site themselves, so request a CMS, then find out that they
don’t have the time or inclination to do so. Instead, they end up
forwarding updates to us–which is fine–but since we’re fluent in
XHTML/CSS, updating the site through the CMS takes us longer, costing
the client more money. Picture Lance Armstrong on a bike w/training
wheels and you’ll understand why.

Another issue is that since platforms are built to support a wide variety of different
business types, there can be a middle-of-the road generalness, a
vagueness of design. I’ve seen plenty of sites that reek of the
platform they’re built upon. They’re just a step above those ubiquitous
FrontPage Web sites that caused conniptions among Web designers
everywhere in the late nineties and early oughts.

However, if you pair a talented designer with a robust platform, you
have the opportunity of building a Web site that can help grow a
business or organization. A platform can’t replace the need for proper
planning and execution, but it can free up some of the drudgery of
development.  That gives a talented Web development team the time and
flexibility to help a business leverage the Web to generate more online
leads, convert those leads into customers, and improve the bottom line.

The future looks bright….

Photo Credit: Renato Guerreiro

Rich Brooks
I Gotta Wear Shades

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 8:47 am and is filed under Web Design & Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.