2nd Floor

Just finished my “first” reading of REWORK, the new book from the founders of 37 Signals.  It is a bit edgy, but simple and has plenty of nuggets worthy of posting on the morning mirror. They evangelize about keeping things essential, easy to use and simple. Some favs during my initial run through include:

• Embrace less mass
• Emulate Chefs
• Decommoditize your product
• Don’t out-spend, out-teach.

I seem to find a new favorite every time I open the book, coupled with some provocative items that stir up debate. Overall, it is a book I see carrying with me for some time. It connects with our ambition to continually run a good business, use our core resources to the fullest, and serve good customers well with products and ideas they can really use….and enjoy doing so.

An organization near and dear to our heart, Louie’s Kids – a non-profit organization that teaches youth about the benefits of good nutrition, exercise and adventure in the prevention of obesity – recently had a courageous group tackle the 33rd Annual 10K Cooper River Bridge Run. In the end, they felt great, have more motivation to do even better next year, and got their 15-minutes of fame in the form of a little over 2- minute-video with NBC Chanel 2 in Charleston SC.

A few blog entries back, we had fun with an analogy that involved a passionless sandwich and a gas station. Now, we actually get in the car.  Basically, we feel we’re a pretty good bunch of web designers and application developers. We have honed our skills over the years to focus on meaningful design, practice usability, and adhere to good code writing that means more than most people realize. However, we keep coming back to the mantra of Content is King, especially on the web.

While discussing this with George (name has been changed to protect the innocent, but “George” is one of our biz partners and director of programming), he made a statement that had me rolling up my sleeves ready to take a swing at him. He said, in the context of the content discussion, “that design and focus on usability is overrated”.  What? Then I stepped back, and he continued with a good analogy to explain this blasphemy.

He continued,  “design and coding is only worthwhile if content is relevant and brings in users.” Good point, so far. “If a car is the website design and the driver is the content…if you put an Indy car driver in a Ford Pinto he can drive that sucker to the top of the search engine results and get as much traffic as they want, Ford Pinto or not.  Put him in a Ferrari and yes, might go faster, handle better and catch the users attention more but…doesn’t change the fact that a good driver (content) can make any car (website design) get results.” I agreed to a point, but he lost me on the Pinto. Actually, I think they stopped making Pinto’s before George was even born.

Okay, the analogy wasn’t bad, but I can poke some holes in this one. Yes, getting traffic and high rankings on search engines are important. However, good content in a Ford Pinto is not going to win the race. To me, winning the race is actually converting the traffic you work hard to get. Even word of mouth referrals are going to check you out on the web before engaging.  If they visit your site (traffic), but are welcomed by having a Ford Pinto staring back at them, then I doubt they’re going to hang around. Search Traffic = good, converting search traffic = better!  So, I would balance George’s analogy with the importance of a competitive vehicle, and up-to-date ride, that doesn’t backfire or blow up if someone hits you from behind. Instead,  give me the tools so the content (driver) can win. There, that’s better. George agreed, and clarified that the Pinto was a poor choice.

So good design is important. Logical code is important. Once those are in place then George’s analogy works and content is king, The web has expanded beyond design and coding and we now find ourselves focusing more on helping our clients develop, maintain and promote their content. To assist, most of our sites go out the door with a nice Content Management System under the hood so our clients can update their own content, without needing to be a mechanic. If they can turn a key, and change radio stations, they can update their website with good content and win the race.