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What does it take?

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Dec 15, 2010, 12:02:53 PM12/15/10
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by Christopher G. Gunn

Far too often I hear someone saying, "I want to be a web designer"
or "I'm starting my own web-publishing business" and they have no idea
what is required. I'm hearing it a lot.

I'm very aware of the work and training that got my colleagues and I
into our careers, working full-time creating web pages, developing
protocols, and {gasp!} teaching other people what they need to know.

Way back when, I felt kind of overwhelmed, but very confident about
my ability to learn anything I might need.

If you want to publish on the web, think about this for a minute.
Everyone and their brother wanted to publish magazines when the first
Macintosh came out, and desktop publishing was "for the rest of us."
Lots of people set up shop in their spare bedrooms, starting up their
own "publishing houses", they quit their day jobs, and wound up broke
and jobless with smiling little beige boxes on their desks. There's lots
of parallels here with creating a web presence, either for yourself, or
for someone else. What have we learned?

Well, the most important lesson we learned is that just because you have
a computer, some software, and desire doesn't mean you're going to be
successful.

Think of a web page as a publication...say, a magazine. Or an ad
campaign. If you're Joe Smith. Oh and you want to publish an ad campaign
about your business or product, what do you have to do? Well, you have
to figure out who your market is. Then you have to figure out how to get
information to them.

Say Mr. Smith is going to do a brochure. He needs:

1. A copywriter to write the content
2. A photographer to take pictures of the product/business
3. A graphics designer to put the copy and the photographs/art together in
a cohesive package
4. A production manager to get the graphic designer's work into a
printable format
5. A printing company to get the thing printed
6. A marketing team to distribute the literature
7. A business team to send invoices and keep track of billing and
administrative issues

How is creating good web sites different? Not very different at all. And
unless you consider yourself an expert at most of these, how can you
hope to do it all yourself?

Here are some parallels:

First! You have to get clients.

Can you sell yourself and your services? Can you present yourself as a
professional, and meet the precise needs of your potential clients,
whatever they may be? Are you willing to deal with crazy deadlines,
after-hours work, constant updates and "I've changed my mind"s? Are you
able to prioritize your clients in such a way that, when two (or more!)
need something "right now", you can handle it? Are you willing to work
very hard at your client's whim? Can you do this?

Are you able to handle sharp comments about your design work and
what you write? Can you learn to accept criticism without it hurting
your feelings? If not, you won't work well with your clients.

Are you understanding everything I'm writing here? If not, are you
willing to spend many hours improving your reading comprehension?

Once you get the clients, you need:

1. A copywriter to write the content.
If your client has a marketing department, or good writers on staff,
great. If not, who's going to write the content? Who's going to make
sure that the sentences are grammatically correct, and the punctuation
is right? Spell checkers are woefully inadequate. Who's going to ensure
that you're not using terminology that's got too much jargon, or may be
insulting to the reader? This is what professional copywriters and
editors do. Can you do this?

2. A photographer to take pictures of the product/business.
Sure, you might be a whiz with your little point-and-shoot Nikon, or
even have a nice Pentax SLR hanging in the closet from your college
yearbook days. Is that enough? Do you have the ability to compose shots,
set lighting, deal with issues of models and releases, etc.? Do your
photos look like photos in big national magazines? Professional
photographers are paid hand-over-fist. There's a good reason for
it...they're artists, and they know a lot about taking pictures. And
they generally have the equipment that makes a difference. Do you? Can
you do this?

3. A graphics designer to put the copy and the photographs/art together
into a cohesive package.
Do you have any training in graphics design? (Not, "Oh, I can create
things that look good..." but real training, where a seasoned, respected
professional has told you that what you create looks good.) Do you know
about the psychology of color, have experience with typography, know
about drop shadows, contrast, placement, balance, etc.? Do you know what
constitutes good design, versus bad design? Do you know the difference
between various computer-image file formats, and what you can and can't
use on the web? Or what's best for what type of image? Do you know about
antialiasing and color depth, and the difference between "inches wide"
and "pixels per inch"? Image resolution and screen resolution? Do you
know about new technologies to serve multimedia, and markup languages
that will allow you to do this, or restrict you from doing what you
want? Can you translate a corporate image into a web-servable format? Do
you have, and know how to use, state-of-the-art tools to make your work
look better than anyone else's? Can you do this?

4. A production manager to get the graphic designer's work into a
printable format.
You need code. When the graphics designer creates a look, can you
implement it? Can you make it look exactly right? Do you know how to use
the programming functions necessary to make your page look the way it's
supposed to, and still work to serve the other professionals who offer
input? Can you make the copy and the images do what the graphics
designer wants them to do, without having to rely on software that
claims to be able to do it for you? Can you fix what that software
messes up? Do you know about accessibility issues, and how to make the
pages usable for people who are disabled, or who are using non-standard
browsers? Do you know how to use DHTML, VRML, SMIL, PHP, Perl, Java,
JavaScript, streaming audio and video, and so many other tools to best
serve your client? If not, are you the kind of person who is
technologically savvy enough to be self-taught? And are you willing to
invest the many (non-billable) hours needed to learn? Can you negotiate
with outside vendors to be sure that your code is served in exactly the
way the client expects? Can you do this?

5. A printing company to get the thing printed.
So, you're probably not going to serve the thing on your desktop PC, so
you'll need an ISP or other web serving organization. Who do you go
with? How do you get the domain name registered? Who will host you on
their name server? Where will the pages live? How long a contract can
you get? Can you ensure that the server won't go down? Do you have the
savvy to negotiate reparation if there IS a problem with your vendor? Do
you know how to get the files onto the server, and how to have them
organized so that the file structure makes sense, even to the end user?
Can you do this?

6. A marketing team to distribute the literature.
How are people going to find you? Do you know what the top
five/ten/twenty search engines are, and who's using them? Do you know
how to get listed on them? Do you know how to ensure that your listing
is where you want it to be, without embarrassing yourself by putting
keywords on your web page? Do you know how to drum up hits without
spamming the world? Can you do this?

7. A billing and shipping department to handle orders.
This means more code on the web site. Do you have shopping cart software
you can install, modify, and maintain that is secure and reliable? What
can you do to insure credit cards can never be compromised? Can your
clients learn to use the shopping cart? Can you teach them? Can you
really do this?

8. A business manager/team to send invoices and keep track of billing and
administrative issues.
Do you have contracts? Do you know how to bill (and dun) your clients,
to maintain positive cash flow? Can you keep on top of all your accounts
receivable and all your accounts payable? Do you have insurance, are you
bonded, and are you prepared to deal with liability claims? Can you do
this?

Can you do it again and again?

Web sites must be updated regularly. Can you teach your client how to
update the pages? Are you willing to update the pages on a regular basis,
to keep them looking fresh? Can you build in tools that will automate
the posting of new content? Maintenance is a huge issue. Can you do this
(over and over and over again)?

These are some of the issues that go into publishing anything, whether
it be a magazine, an ad campaign, or a web site. There are more issues,
of course, and perhaps a few issues don't apply in any particular
situation. But lots of people who fancy themselves experts (or even just
passable) at a few of these things jump into web publishing, not taking
into consideration all the other factors. Some people do have most of
these skills, know where to go to fill in the gaps, and have a penchant
for long hours and hard work. They will likely succeed. But just owning
a copy of FrontPage or Dreamweaver and knowing how to FTP isn't enough.
Knowing a lot about the business end, or just having HTML skills, or
just being a graphics designer is not enough. Be all that you can be,
but know when to ask for help.


Chris Gunn is a full-time Webmaster who has years of professional
experience as an educational developer, writer, editor, programmer,
business advisor, and has been presenting business enterprises on
the E-Ways since before the Internet existed.

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Reprinting requires permission from the author.


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