RSSFebruary 4th, 2008
Looking for a New Developer to “Date”
Our software company, Brightwurks, is looking to hire a developer for ongoing development with our content management product Springboard, and also to help with some large client projects. Here are the details . . .
Location: Anywhere, preferably in the US
Time Frame: Ongoing contract, potential full-time
Requirements:
- A personality, along with a great work ethic
- 2-3 years plus experience developing web-based applications
- Expert knowledge of working with Java, Struts, JSTL
- Expert knowledge of PHP, and CakePHP experience is a plus
- Expert knowledge of MySQL and/or other relational database management systems
- Understanding of web standards and xhtml/css layouts is a big plus
About Us:
We like to date our people before jumping in the sack, and we believe you deserve the same courtesy. What does that mean? It means we should spend some time getting to know each other and working together before making any long-term career moves. If it’s a great fit, we would love to have you!
To start, you will be working on a couple of large-scale projects with our team. This includes work on our customized content management platform, called Springboard. These projects will require 20-30 hours per week of work, and you will be paid as a contractor. Those hours can grow into a full-time position if we still like each other after a while. If you want to have another job or some projects on the side, that’s fine as long as you can stay on track with our work too.
The only way to get great results from a developer is if they really love the work they are doing, so we want to give you work that you are psyched about.
Benefits:
- We intentionally don’t have an office. Work when and where you want, as long as you can do quality work and meet reasonable deadlines.
- We treat you like an adult. No micro-managing or silly rules. We currently have a very close team of 4 guys, and you get a say in everything that goes on.
- Each project we work on is different, so the work should be continuously challenging and fun.
- We’ll be honest with you. We have nothing to hide. We just need more help!
What’s at stake?
The opportunity to get involved in a young, fast-growing company that is trying to build some very successful applications.
If you are able to refer the winning candidate to us, there is a referral fee of $200 in it for you. We would appreciate the help. Sorry, you can’t refer yourself.
That’s perfect for me! How do I apply?
Please send a resume, samples of work and a preferred hourly rate to hireme@brightwurks.com. Or just touch base and send what you can, but make sure you fill the requirements.
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January 3rd, 2008
Update Your Copyright Notice
Welcome to 2008! Let this serve as a friendly reminder for all web developers out there to update your website copyright notice.
Many sites, including most of ours, have a copyright notice in the footer with the year. This is a very simple thing on your website that can make you look good or bad, so make sure your sites look good!
And set a yearly reminder so that you don’t forget in the future.
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September 4th, 2007
Feature in Smashing Magazine
We were recently honored to be featured alongside the world’s very best designers in an article from Smashing Magazine, called “50 Designers x 6 Questions”. This was an opportunity to share a little about web development and pass on some advice to fellow designers. For those that are interested, here are the answers we provided to the 5 questions in the article:
What’s 1 typical myth about web-development (which is not true)?
That a great site can get you to the top of google. Developing an SEO-friendly site is only the first step in accomplishing a goal like that. Past the development side of things, there are tons of other factors involved. That’s why we work with an outside company (VKI Studios) that is one of the very best, and I am thrilled to not have to worry about it outside of the code.
1 bulletproof method to get over creativity block
This is far from profound, but walk away. And don’t leave one screen to go sit in front of another and watch TV. Go workout, take a run. Or do some errands. Just do something active for at least an hour that does not require you to think about work or look at your crackberry.
1 thing to do before starting a new project
Get to know your client. What drives them? What are they passionate about? What can you learn about their business that will help you create their ideal website? Who do they compete with and how can you appeal to their target market?
It’s also important to shake their hand if you can. If not, spend 20+ minutes talking with them on the phone. Make sure that you get along, and that you can work well together. Be sure that they are open-minded to your ideas, and that you can be a good listener to them. If something’s not right about the relationship in the beginning, don’t be afraid to cut it off and save yourself a great deal of hassle.
1 thing I wish I knew before I’ve started programming/designing
How much I would enjoy it! Developing websites is really hard work, and it’s not always really fun. But in general I feel that working on different projects with clients in TONS of different industries always keeps the job fresh and full of new challenges.
I also learned very quickly the value of a team. I work with two guys that compliment my skill set perfectly, and I would encourage those just starting out to always be seeking people to work with that are better than you at certain things.
1 common mistake you should always avoid developing web-sites
Shortcuts. This applies to design and code. I don’t care if the client will never notice the subtle gradients or appreciate the beautiful semantic code. Just make sure it’s something you can get excited about, and that you can learn something on each project.
There’s simply too much talent out there to ever think you know it all, so do things in your everyday work that are incredibly challenging and uncomfortable. That’s the only way to keep getting better. Don’t hesitate to spend much more time on a project solely for the purpose of becoming better. It’s worth it!
1 tool or/and service/web-service I can’t imagine my life without
iGTD, from Bartek Bargiel. Unbelievable. http://www.igtd.pl/iGTD/
Also, I wanted to mention that Smashing Magazine just celebrated their one year anniversary. As a result, they are offering some of the BEST books on web development (40+) for free to those that choose to write a thoughtful comment. Read their post to learn more about it.
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April 21st, 2007
Smashing Magazine Interview
I was both honored and excited to be a part of a recent interview posted on Smashing Magazine this past Friday. Project83 was one of 35 designers/companies asked 5 questions about web development for their article.
I really enjoyed participating and reading all of the great things everyone else said in the interview. You can read the entire article here.
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March 30th, 2007
Designing with Constraints: The Good and Bad
Ever since our yearly journey to Austin, TX and the massive SXSW Interactive conference a few weeks back, I have been thinking a great deal about constraints and their role within web design. I came to the conclusion that they are both good and bad. Understanding both has been pivotal for us in building a successful web design company.
The Good
While it may not seem like it all of the time, structure inspires great work. Nasty terms like “deadlines” and “client specifications” exist for real reasons, and can actually be used as an advantage for designers.
I have heard a number of designers speak about the power of a deadline to make them try something they never would have tried. Somehow in those last hours, the light bulb comes on. Or maybe being forced to work within a specific wireframe for a design helps contribute to an idea you never would have been capable of without structure.
I see evidence of this principle often when designers have ultimate freedom, like on a site of their own. There are no deadlines, so the site literally takes months longer than it should. Sadly it also results in a sub-par product, simply because 110% effort is never given to it for any considerable amount of time.
A site without written specifications or pre-meditated structure can also suffer from the same complications. When we have ultimate freedom, somehow that makes us want to insert every possible feature or design concept. Again the end result takes much longer and it can be very cluttered.
Constraints only allow for the necessities and nothing more, which is a good way to start on the web.
The Bad
One thing people perceive as a constraint that I don’t understand is code. Thanks to technology, the web is a place where most anything is possible to create, so I see no reason to take shortcuts or water things down by considering code during the design process.
Quality web design should start with a user-friendly interface, something that is intuitive for users of all experience levels. Keeping that in mind, there is a TON of room for being creative and building a user experience that is not only functional, yet fun to look at and representative of everything the brand is about.
This principle comes into play with our design process at Project83. Our designer Jared does not get involved in the coding process. I believe this helps him focus on his primary objective, which is design. While having an understanding of how the code works, it is not a primary factor when focusing on the creative process in each site’s development.
Jared’s designs are very detailed, often encompassing tons of layers, gradients, rounded corners and other elements that are scary for geeks. But those characteristics make a good design a GREAT design, something that really leaps off the page. By thinking about the code and how much longer details like that would take to add, we might leave them out. Sure it can take much longer to code the design eventually, but I think it is absolutely worth it.
This is something I have grown to feel very strongly about. First, design for users. Then design for the sake of creating something unique, detailed and representative of the particular brand.
I would like to encourage all web designers to create something without code constraints, as if it were only being printed out. The result could very well be a design with more depth, detail and overall character.
Of course there will always be exceptions to both of these rules about constraints. I see more and more incredible design on the web every day. But in general, I feel these principles have merit. They certainly do in the way Project83 develops websites.
Posted in Project83, Web Development - 1 Comment
March 23rd, 2007
Defend your newsletter against spam filters!
When it comes to sending HTML email messages to a large number of people, web developers need all the help they can get. Not only are web browsers much more advanced in parsing HTML/CSS properly, but there’s the whole privacy/spam issue to deal with.
Spam will only get worse before it gets better. Popular web clients like AOL and Hotmail are among the toughest that I know of to blacklist servers, and I understand why. So as web developers, we have to continually find best practices and tools that will keep clients and list subscribers happy.
I recently found a very useful tool that can provide some insight on what spam filters look for and how your legitimate email can get through to subscribers. It’s called Email Check, and it’s a service from Active Campaign.
Simply enter in your newsletter details, such as sender/recipient name and email, subject and the message source. Once submitted, the newsletter will be checked against the very popular spam filter, SpamAssassin.
Email Check will then produce some very useful information about the email. First off, it gets a score from 0 - 7, zero being the best. The BEST part is that it also lists potential “problem areas”.
When running a recent email through, I learned about a couple problem areas within the copy and made quick changes to enhance my score. My final score on a recent email was 0.9, an estimated 12% chance the message will be marked as spam. I was satisfied with that result considering all of the HTML source in the body of the email. That in itself is a trigger for many filters.
I find the Email Check service to be a quick and FREE way to instantly build better emails, and now an essential to my testing suite.
Here are a few other resources I have recently found useful in building and testing HTML emails:
- How to test HTML emails
- Improve your email delivery rates
- EmailStatCenter.com- A new resource of email marketing metrics
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March 7th, 2007
Shopping Cart Frustration (part 2 of 2)
In part one of this brief series, I talked about an experience I had recently attempting to make a purchase from CircuitCity.com. Today I am going after another major merchant for some frustrating shopping cart practices. This article will be focusing on Buy.com.
Like Circuit City, Buy.com is overall a very solid store with many benefits and solid e-commerce practices. This article is not an attempt to take a shot at them. The idea of this series is to dig a little deeper and focus on some common practices that don’t make sense to users, so that is what we will do.
Why So Many Ads?
The main reason I end up shopping at Buy.com is to do price comparison. I never choose to shop there unless it can help me save money, and the reason is because the site just feels overwhelming. I know we are all in business to make money, but the advertisements on the website are too much in my opinion.
I find it ironic that Buy.com makes a huge effort to earn my business, yet there are at least two large images on each page directing me to a completely different site to buy something else. It seems counter-productive and really cheapens the look and feel of the site.
Sites that sell thousands of products simply don’t need help filling space. Buy.com already fills each page with TONS of content that is pretty overwhelming in itself; the ads just get in the way.
A Change of Pace
Want to see the complete antithesis of overwhelming, busy page structure? Just proceed to Buy.com’s checkout. I was so surprised the first time I saw it, I inspected the URL a couple of times to make sure I was on the same site.
Simplifying the checkout process is a breath of fresh air, and I would be willing to bet that it has improved their conversion rate. The major problem is that this checkout is based on the “best possible scenario”. If you proceed through without needing to go back, without needing help or without wanting to edit your cart, it’s a great process.
The fact is, we can’t just build a shopping cart hoping that the customer will checkout just the way we planned them to each time. Let’s take the Payment Page for example . . .
First off, the use of an order progress bar is always a plus. A very common mistake is that the progress bar is not clickable, though. If I want to go back and edit my shipping information after leaving that page, I should be able to click on the “Shipping” part of the bar and go back.
Throughout the checkout process, customers can neither go back nor view/edit their shopping cart. Aside from the very first page of the checkout, there is absolutely no way to get back to the regular Buy.com site without pushing the back button a bunch of times.
My favorite part of the payment page is on the bottom, perfectly summing up my frustration. There is a nice sentence here . . . “Having difficulties? Please visit our Help pages to learn more about placing an order.”
This is nice, yet NO PART of this sentence is hyperlinked. So how the heck am I supposed to find help? Where might these helpful pages be if there is no link to them anywhere? Is that just an FYI? I can’t figure out how that helps people.
Order Cancellation
When attempting to make my original purchase on this site, I did make it all the way to the final page. At that point, I decided that more price comparing was in order, and I needed this particular product sooner than they could ship it. Now all I need to do is cancel my order and be on my way.
Wait a minute . . . there is nowhere on this page where I can cancel my order!
I literally spent nearly five minutes reading and re-reading each word of the order confirmation page looking for a cancellation link somewhere. Do they really think that if I can’t find that button that I will just go ahead and make the purchase? Users deserve the option of canceling their order at any time during checkout.
It’s easy just to close the window and forget about the purchase, which is what I was forced to do. But being paranoid like any other online shopper, I just wanted confirmation that the order was cancelled instead of placed by accident or still existing a week later in my cart when I had no need for it.
There is an important lesson to be learned from the frustration found in Buy.com’s checkout process. We as developers must plan for every possible scenario during checkout. When a customer wants to edit their cart, find help or cancel an order, by all means we should find the most convenient way to help them do so. Even if they don’t make the purchase, they are more likely to come back another time.
From a user perspective, if the task of modifying a cart or changing the shipping address feels too confusing, it is likely that the cart is abandoned and possibly never picked back up.
Shopping cart conversion is all about convenience, so those that do their part to help customers with a smooth checkout process will be rewarded with higher sales and customer conversion.
Posted in Web Development - 1 Comment
February 7th, 2007
jQuery and InnerFade
One can easily be overwhelmed by the sheer number of javascript libraries out there these days. Is there one better than all the others? For someone that just tries to bluff my way through DOM Scripting without bothering our developer Denny, I have found jQuery in particular to be really fun and simple.
As of late, Denny and I both started using the jQuery library for little things here and there. Despite what others are using, I find the xhtml markup to be simple and intuitive. It’s also very quick, weighing in at only 55k. Some of the great demos showcase how easy it really is to use jQuery for yourself.
My favorite jQuery demo as of late has to be InnerFade, from medienfreunde. I would give them more credit, but their website is not in English :-). This page shows how simple it can be to create fantastic slideshows and such with simple front-end code.
We are also big fans of thickbox, in case you have not visited the showcase portion of our website.
Any other jQuery demos out there we should be aware of? Opinions on other javascript libraries?
Posted in Web Development - 3 Comments
January 25th, 2007
Shopping Cart Frustration (part 1 of 2)
Over the holidays I was doing a lot of Christmas shopping online, like so many others this past year. I love it, it’s just so easy . . . or at least I wish it was. Maybe I am a little critical, but there are some foundational mistakes being made during the checkout process by major merchants.
The checkout process is so important, yet it sometimes seems overlooked. This is the “make or break” point with a customer, and every effort must be made to close the sale. This two-part article will provide some commonly overlooked elements of a checkout process.
Today I will focus on CircuitCity.com. I would like to preface this by saying they seem to be a very nice company, and their website is quite useful. I found it very easy to browse and find the product I wanted. Their reviews are also very helpful in making an educated decision. However, I feel that a couple elements about their checkout process could be refined.
In my particular case, I wanted to buy a wireless router. I knew exactly what I wanted, so I proceeded to find the product. The product page was very informative, and I was ready to add the item to my cart.
Before adding the item, I thought it would be a great idea to pick up one for my home’s upstairs. Unfortunately I could not find a place to specify the quantity, so I just added it to my cart. Surely I could change the quantity later, right?
There are a lot of things right about this screen. It shows a picture and the name of the product being added to my cart. The thumbnail and product name link back to the product in case I want to go back and verify something. It’s great practice to always show a thumbnail and link back to the product throughout checkout.
This page also had one major problem: I still could not specify a quantity or edit anything in my cart. In going back to research for this article, I noticed that there is a small text link to “Edit Cart” to the right of my screenshot, but I honestly never saw it. In my opinion, I should not have to make another click just to specify a quantity that should have been available on the product page.
This last screen in particular was frustrating. I am now aware that I will not have the opportunity to edit my quantity before making the purchase. Yet, I click on the product name (in both places) and realize it is no longer a link. The only way I can view my cart is a little gray icon on the top right, which I did not see.
I happened to be in a hurry at the time of purchase, and decided to abandon my cart. I bought the two routers at a local store and was on my way.
I definitely overlooked some things throughout the checkout process, but so do most users. Customers are impatient, and often if what they want is not right in front of them, they abandon the cart. Here are a couple things Circuit City could do that would have prevented my abandoned cart:
- Allow me to specify a quantity on the product page, when I first add the item to my cart.
- Make a “View Cart” or “Edit Cart” button that is in the same location throughout checkout in the main viewing area. I should not have to look above the navigation in the header for a cart icon. It should be right there next to my product with the other nice GREEN buttons.
- On every page in the checkout, the product name should always be hyperlinked back to the product. This has been the subject of numerous user studies, and customers like being able to go back and forth.
- When I add a product to my shopping cart, I should be able to edit my cart on the very next screen. That way, if I added the wrong product by mistake or want to edit the quantity I can instantly do so without having to click on another page.
Stay tuned for part 2 of this article, where we look at another large online retailer, and where things went wrong in their checkout process.
Posted in Web Development - 3 Comments
November 15th, 2006
Highlights 11/14
Retail Email Reports
This blog has instantly become one of my favorites, and is very useful to anyone interested in email newsletter marketing. The site studies email campaigns from 100 or so of the largest online retailers, and comes up with ideas, trends and reports on what they are doing to win customers.
This site is especially important during the all-important Christmas season, and is a great place to start if looking for campaign ideas. They also have done some fantastic studies on things like Send to a Friend Forms, Welcome Emails and Email Subscriptions. Great resource guys!
Ever wonder how they named eBay?
Naming a company or product has to be one of the hardest things I have ever done; especially these days, when it is of the utmost importance to secure the right domain name. I happened to stumble on a blog today called day2dayactivities that researched a bunch of companies, and how they were named. Some of them have some really neat stories, it is worth checking out.
Here is one such story about how eBay was named . . .
Pierre Omidyar, who had created the Auction Web trading website, had formed a web consulting concern called Echo Bay Technology Group. “EchoBay” didn’t refer to the town in Nevada, the nature area close to Lake Mead, or any real place. “It just sounded cool,” Omidyar reportedly said. When he tried to register EchoBay.com, though, he found that Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, had gotten it first. So, Omidyar registered what (at the time) he thought was the second best name: eBay.com.
The Beauty of Photoshop
Brian Dilg is one of the best in the business at photoshop work, and his website proves it. Take a look at his imaging page and hover over each picture to see the original. I am not sure how I feel about making people look this artificially good, but it is amazing work regardless.
Steve Jobs’ First Keynote
Being a big fan of Steve Jobs, this video taken in 1984 was a real treat to find online. From the beginning, he has been such an innovator, and this was inspiring to see considering where Apple is as a company today.
Posted in Web Development, Highlights - No Comments