> 1) Designers, how would YOU approach selling this concept? Or would you?
Here's my take as a designer/IA/coder who works in a similar market space to you: Sell the aesthetics, functionality and usability of the product. This is what makes your solution intelligent and different from the competition. Standards are just the means of executing the solution, like FrontPage, except good not evil. The point is, it's just a tool. The right tool for the job. If anything, you sell standards as something others aren't doing. Reaching the widest possible audience, coding efficiently saving bandwidth and offering greater long-term time & cost-saving benefits along with all the other real-world benefits of standards are factors that will show you take the time and effort to do the job right, but I wouldn't make it my unique selling point. After all, our job here is to encourage everyone to produce sites using standards, so one of these days (hopefully) standards will just be... standard. If Singapore is anything like Australia, there's that whole legal angle too. If the site offers a service and is inaccessible, there can be costly legal issues. hank --------------------- http://henrytapia.com > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of Wong Chin Shin > Sent: Wednesday, 29 December 2004 4:09 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [WSG] making money out of web standards > > > Hi, > > In Singapore, "web design" as a profession has gotten a bad rep over the > past few years. The barriers to entry aren't exactly high and the > fact is as > long as someone has a pirated copy of Dreamweaver, (ye gods) Frontpage, > Photoshop and a half-assed grasp of how to use them would be able > to thrash > out something that's acceptable to clients. > > Myself, I grew disillusioned with the rates and limits on > creativity that we > were getting about 3 years ago. Imagine your employer offering a > template-based website to multiple clients at S$500 for 10 pages > and you get > a pretty good idea of the lengths you have to go to so that the > budget isn't > broken. My then-employer didn't value creative personnel highly > either so he > refused to employ a graphics designer and for a long time, I had to > outsource design work at cutthroat prices for a single PSD template > document. Needless to say, I'm not proud of my work from that period and I > actively avoided doing websites for a while. > > After a 2 year hiatus, I am honestly feeling good about "web > design" again. > Separating content and layout made perfect sense to me as a programmer. > XML/XSLT is good 'cos it allows me to modularize sections of a > site without > having to resort to server-side technologies. CSS is great, just > great. But > the best thing for me so far, is that after looking through most of the > major corporate and government websites in Singapore and the > South East Asia > region, nobody's doing it yet. That's right, we're far away from standards > utopia as yet but where there's room for change, there's money to > be made in > my book. > > I've been spending the past half year learning up on standards-compliance > but one thing still stands out: how to market it. In US and Australia, > there're a growing number of web design outfits using compliance as a > marketing tool. They include: > > 1) http://www.stopdesign.com > 2) http://www.simplebits.com/ > 3) http://pixelplain.com/ > > Problem is though that when I read through the literature on > those sites, it > seems that they might appeal to MIS managers who have an eye on bandwidth > costs but to a small and medium sized enterprise (SME) owner? Bandwidth > would have nearly no bearing on their decision as they would hardly go > beyond the allocated bandwidth of a cheap hosting package. Neither would > accessibility unless you're selling Braille e-books. To this breed of > decision makers, IE *IS* the web so telling them you intend to fix this > would brand yourself in the same category as a "Linux-zealot > hippie" almost > immediately (not that I'm not, but I'm having my marketing cap on right > now). > > So, I would like to solicit some feedback on how exactly would > you market a > standards-compliant approach to website design. My take on this: > > 1) Choose the right firms to sell it to. SMEs may not be the right people > 'cos accessibility and HTML download sizes are not a priority. Government > and major retail sites would be good. > 2) Choose the right person in the target client to sell it to. A general > manager would not bother with background technologies as much as an MIS > manager. > 3) Judicious use of catch-phrases. I love Firefox, I really do, > but I would > be wary of dropping the name on a potential client as the last thing they > need is the impression that they need to install yet another software. I > already have problems getting graphic designers to install it. > Thanks to the > mass media however, the words "XML-compliant" has much better > connotations. > 4) Hard data. For practice, I've been taking major content-based websites > such as the local paper and re-implementing it using CSS/XSLT. If > I can get > my foot in the door and do a presentation, imagine the impression I could > make if I show them their home page and how big it is right now and then > show them my optimized version (identical pixel for pixel) and the 70% > savings in download sizes that it yields. THEN, I show them how I > can change > the entire layout just by changing the CSS file. You get the idea. > > > Challenges: > The main challenge is that the whole process may seem like it's much ado > about nothing visually. Nobody was kidding when the phrase "a picture is > worth a thousand words" was coined. No matter how the HTML is > optimized, the > visual layout is still the same. If your potential client doesn't > care about > anything else, you're barking at a wall. > > Feedback please: > 1) Designers, how would YOU approach selling this concept? Or would you? > 2) Managers, what would catch YOUR attention in a pitch geared > towards this? > > > Just airing some thoughts and trying to get some feedback. I hope it's not > off-topic. > > Thanks! > Wong > > ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
