Sarah Palin. Twitter. Why…It Would Be The Perfect Storm!

The story pans out like this. Sarah Palin is speaking at an event in Arkansas and someone asks “what’s the greatest threat to America today?” Someone else in the audience shouts out (predictably), “Obama”. Palin’s response;

See, they said that, I didn’t. Just you watch now, too, because somebody will be here with their little Twittering thing, and it’s going to be on the Internet any minute now.

That’s a smart response. It identifies the prevalence of mobile technology, the speed with which news travels, and the extent to which stories can be easily twisted and misunderstood. You can tell what Palin’s saying, that it’d be no surprise if a story didn’t turn up along the lines of “Palin says Obama ‘Greatest Threat To America’” based on a cat call at an event she was at. Let’s face it, the facts don’t get in the way very often when it comes to media coverage of Sarah Palin.

OK, so Palin has responded pretty quickly to diffuse one issue, so she gets jumped on for using the phrase “little Twittering thing”. Oh dear god, a criticism… of Twitter?! Obviously you have to ignore the fact that a) she’s talking about mobile devices, not Twitter and b) it’s not disparaging, but then it’s game on. Present Palin as making a critical remark of Twitter and here are some responses from Mashable’s site comments and also from their Facebook page.

I think she needs to close her mouth and her legs and the world will be alot better off…

That we still have to hear about her is a sad commentary on PART of society.

Sadly, it is not her doing alone- and it’s not because of those of us who are sickened by her…. who gives a rip what she thinks.

She’s as dumb as a rock.

just a dismissive remark, made by an unthinking, arrogant hairdo masquerading as a human being. we should be just as dismissive of her.

This mini story combines two important strands of online life; an overly aggressive response to conservatism in any form (and Sarah Palin in particular), and a preciousness about the sanctity of Twitter or similar technology, both of which exist for the same reason.

But I Thought You Were Liberal…

In many ways web design and online technology blogs and discussion are refreshingly non-political. When politics does rear its head, however, it’s almost exclusively of a liberal bent. Obviously there are a number of reasons for this. The demographic of web workers means that it’s more left leaning social group than average.

I find it funny though, because it leads to an expectation about my own political views. I only have to mention my profession and people will think I’m a left-leaning, liberal, Democrat. It’s surprising that such a young profession as “web design” already has such stereotypes attached to it. A demonstration of its acceptance and importance in the professional sphere maybe.

For the record, I do manage to successfully balance creative and professional success with a conservative political philosophy!

If You Diss Twitter, Well … You Just Suck!

Are we really so precious about the likes of Twitter that it’s insulting if they’re disparaged? So insulted that we have to invent criticisms when they don’t occur, just so we can get angry about them? If anything it suggests that Twitter users simply don’t have enough confidence in the service. If they did, then they wouldn’t have to react aggressively to “put down” a critical comment.

I like Twitter a lot, I use it regularly (@fogofeternity). I’m also confident in the service, I think it can stand up to criticism without my going crazy to defend it. And I’ll accept that lots of people use it for spurious or boring reasons. They still use it though. And, hell, if the best defence people can come up with is “you’re not using it right” then Twitter’s got bigger problems.

Any service that isn’t straightforward enough for people to use easily is always going to fail. I don’t think that’s a problem for Twitter, but perhaps there’s an elitist attitude to that defence; I like Twitter because I’m smart, you don’t like Twitter because you’re dumb.

Reinforcing My Own Belief, Undermining My Ability To Argue That Belief

This is all a demonstration about how the internet, for all the free information out there, actually reinforces people’s beliefs to the extent that they become blinkered. It’s “been decided” in left-leaning arenas that Sarah Palin is to be a figure of hate, to be disparaged regardless of factual accuracy. Passionate Twitter users have decided that Twitter is the most awesome thing ever.

The problem with this reinforcement is that it’s screwing up people’s ability to argue their point effectively. Contrary beliefs become a threat, to be shouted down, not something to engage in debate. The nature of online debate, the immediacy and relative anonymity, encourages this closed off attitude. I can’t remember the last time I saw someone reasonably address their political ideals and why they are better than Sarah Palin’s, better to call her a dumb blonde. I can’t remember the last time someone made a worthwhile defence of Twitter instead of suggesting that people who don’t use it or criticize it are simply too dumb to understand.

And, if I can kind of bring it back to the idea of web design right at the death of the article, blinkered thinking is never a good thing for creativity. I already see it online on web design blogs. There’s a right way to do things, there’s a wrong way to do things. There’s an incestuous self congratulation, where web design inspiration is taken from other web design. The internet for all its freedoms encourages that kind of blinkered thinking. Don’t fall prey.

PayPal – It’s Easy, Everyone Trusts It, Everyone Uses It

The Just So Festival is a family oriented weekend event scheduled for this August, “an unforgettable weekend of adventure and enchantment set in sixty-five acres of ancient English woodland.” This not-for-profit, community interest event has received lottery funding from England’s Arts Council and includes major sponsors such as Waterstone’s and Puffin Books.

Like so many businesses, they chose to use PayPal as their preferred method for selling tickets via their website. They have a business PayPal account, clearly identify their products as “concert tickets” (the closest equivalent PayPal has to “event tickets”), and have read carefully through the terms and conditions. Most particularly they focused on terms and conditions related to events ticket sales, which read;

Event Tickets – The resale of entertainment event tickets (including sporting events, concerts and plays) must comply with all laws and regulations in the applicable jurisdiction.

No problems there. They are selling tickets for a legitimate event, and fulfilling all the necessary conditions as required by UK law.

Tickets went on sale in autumn. Money was received for ticket sales via PayPal, and subsequently withdrawn by Just So Festival without any problems. That was until the event was featured in The Guardian newspaper. A national publication featuring the event unsurprisingly led to a rush on ticket sales. Great news!

…Until They Try And Keep Your Money

At least it was great news until PayPal decided to move the goalposts. Just So Festival found themselves unable to withdraw any of the money from these ticket sales. They contacted PayPal and were told that PayPal has decided they are selling “pre-order merchandise”. So PayPal won’t release any of the funds until 21 days prior to the event. Just So Festival pointed out that they were providing tickets to purchasers, but PayPal told them that tickets don’t count as merchandise, only the event itself does. PayPal’s alternative solution; to refund all the tickets, contact the buyers and suggest they make alternative payment arrangements. Just the kind of thing that’ll make those buyers think well of Just So Festival, isn’t it?

Just So Festival are lucky. With their government funding and sponsorship, organization of the event isn’t dependent on money from ticket sales, so they can go ahead with planning and running a great festival. Many other small companies trying to organize events might not be so lucky. For many (most?) event organizers, ticket sale receipts are vital to the event going ahead at all. If they found themselves in the same situation they might have to cancel. That wouldn’t just impact their finances for that particular event, but their future reputation and business viability. Just So Festival are faced merely with an annoying inconvenience, for others it might legitimately threaten their entire business.

It wouldn’t be a problem if this was a listed policy from PayPal, but nowhere do they seem to make any statement of this kind about event tickets. And it’s not as if they aren’t allowing people to pay, they’re still accepting ticket sales for the Just So Festival after stating they won’t release the funds. In fact they’re doing pretty well out of Just So Festival, because PayPal itself will be the one making six months’ worth of interest from the funds they are holding. A handy little bonus for them.

Clear Policy, Communication, Consistency – As Important Online As Anywhere

Customer service, transparency and clarity are vital in all business. Often it’s assumed that the nature of the internet means such transparency exists, but that’s not true. And with a company like PayPal, one of those success stories that have found themselves as the near monopoly on a particular online service, it’s even more frustrating when they abuse that position.

Still, I’m sure it was a great consolation when, after refusing to give Just So Festival money they have legitimate claim to, PayPal customer service told them “best of luck, it sounds like a really lovely event.”

Further information about the Just So Festival, including events, tickets and contact information, is available at justsofestival.org.uk, or on Twitter @justsofestival.

I saw a tweet asking for feedback on a new website for a firm in Florida, Ryan Design Group. Competently constructed in a technical sense, it’s a site that demonstrates the problems caused when client demands are at odds with good design practice.

The Good

The site in the main is reasonably well put together. It has a clear design ethos, a solid layout and good use of color. While not truly outstanding design, it’s better than most sites created for small local businesses. It showcases the company’s brand, has a nice (if over-engineered) navigation system, and lays out Ryan Design Group’s work and contact information effectively.

There are no major complaints about the core design and functionality of the site. Nothing to suggest the design company doesn’t know what they’re doing. It’s clear from their wider portfolio that they have the capacity to offer decent web design as part of an overall package of graphic and print services.

The Bad AND The Ugly!

Unfortunately, two huge errors mean the solid core of the site is going to be seen by a lot less people than might otherwise be the case.

Don’t have a lengthy loading Flash splash page.

It’s a core rule of web design, and this site falls straight into that trap. An eleven second Flash animation splash page. The Flash work is well done, but that’s beside the point.

I want to visit a website and immediately be able to access the information I’m looking for. It’s a two stage process; navigate to website then navigate to relevant content. A flash introduction page triples that; navigate to website, splash page loads, I acknowledge I’m not interested, I look for “skip intro”, I click it, I navigate to relevant content. Six steps instead of two.

The splash page adds no value, and a lot less people are going to stay on the site simply because it exists.

• Varying studies suggest that a splash page can reduce click through rates by anything from 25% up to more than 70%. People just give up.
• Flash splash pages lack important keyword phrases and significantly undermine search engine optimization.

Splash pages provide a barrier to information. They can mean the difference between winning new business or losing it.

Don’t embed music on your page, don’t open new windows.

The site automatically loads music, another fundamental error. It compounds this error to ensure the music keeps playing by loading the rest of the site in a new tab/window! This wrests control of the browser from the user and is confusing. I didn’t realize initially that the site had loaded a new window so I couldn’t even work out where the music was coming from!

• Sound loops increase page download times. Load times should be optimized. More than 5% of US internet users still use dial-up (with evidence that in tough economic times more people revert to that cheaper option), and broadband speeds can be variable.
• Musical tastes vary widely. I don’t mind the music on the Ryan Design Group site. Others might be put off because they hate it!
• I’m already listening to music. With online radio stations, iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, Last.FM etc, millions of people are listening to music while they browse. Adding another soundtrack just leads to a horrible clash of noise. It could be even worse; if your visitor is on a Skype phone call while they browse you’ve just messed up their call.

Do You Say “No” To Your Client?

The designers have done what they can to alleviate these huge problems, providing options to skip the Flash introduction and mute the music. But those are such negative issues for a website that there’s little that can be done to avoid the massive downsides to the user experience.

Should the designers have refused to integrate these client requests into the site? I would have. Clients hire me to be a web designer. They acknowledge I know more about web design than them. I’d explain to a client the problems of splash pages and integrated music, and why I wouldn’t do it, regardless of how insistent they were.

That’s a tough path to take. It’s where you have to have the confidence to say to the customer that they’re wrong, and to stick to your guns. I have no idea about this designer’s relationship with the client, their economic situation, or any of the other factors that made they accepted the client’s demands for this site.

I still think they should have said “no”. Every designer makes compromises, but compromise shouldn’t mean agreeing to something that you know is outright bad design practice. A clearly competent designer now has a portfolio piece that fails to demonstrate their ability. The immediate benefit of agreeing to this client’s demands could easily harm their future business.

This Kind Of Campaign Isn’t New

Grassroots campaign to skew the results of the music charts, sports shows and the like are nothing original. Going back as far as 1996, there was a powerful email and phone-in campaign to have gay soccer player Justin Fashanu named as BBC’s Sports Personality Of The Year. The campaign had such an impact that the BBC was forced to disqualify any Fashanu votes, and took a lot of criticism for it.

Husband and wife team Jon and Tracy Morter failed to displace the X-Factor winner from number 1 in the charts last year, but their campaign succeeded this time around. The organizational advantages offered by Facebook certainly played a part, but so did the increasing ease of access to music and other content via digital delivery.

It Couldn’t Have Happened Five Years Ago

…or even three years ago. It wasn’t until 2007 that digitally downloaded music was eligible for the charts, without needing a physical release as well. If the current campaign had been tried for Christmas 2006 it would have needed people to go out and buy a copy of ‘Killing In The Name Of’, except that they wouldn’t have been able to find one because it wasn’t on release. You can pretty much guarantee that the impact would have been far less if that had been the case!

So far all the talk about Facebook, there’s only been a couple of years during which a campaign of this type would even have been possible.

The Delivery Is The Deciding Factor

Campaigns of the type that saw Rage Against The Machine hit number one rely on an instant reaction. If someone sees the campaign and can respond immediately, then it has the potential for success. If it relies on someone seeing the campaign and responding later then most people are just going to let it slide.

iTunes was a bigger factor in the success of the campaign for Killing In The Name Of than Facebook. Without the success of iTunes and subsequent digital download alternatives, the Facebook campaign would have had a limited impact at best. But as soon as people can see the campaign and act on the campaign in the space of a few minutes, then the game changes.

‘Killing In The Name Of’ is the Christmas number one in the UK because it’s easy to buy any music track in a couple of minutes. It’s why there were 27 Michael Jackson tracks in the UK charts Top 75 in the immediate aftermath of his death! Digital delivery means immediate response, it means people don’t have to make an effort, and without that option then this kind of campaign wouldn’t have got off the ground.

Move forward ten years, though, and I’m stunned at how many companies still use their in-house content management systems as a selling point. They’re taking advantage of the lack of knowledge of potential clients. There’s no upside for a client to use an agency’s own content management system. But it’s a great scam if you can get them to agree.

In-House Content Management Systems Aren’t Very Good

I’ve had the joys of using a few content management systems that were exclusive to a particular developer or agency. They’re usually terrible. Difficult to use, lacking extensibility, clunky and primitive. They may very well have been great a decade ago when there weren’t other options, but most of them haven’t moved on from that point.

Open source options are so much better. WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, ExpressionEngine and the many other options are fighting it out in a competitive market. It means they’re continually improving their function and usability; they *have* to. Luckily, the open source community means they’ve got a huge pool of coders who can contribute to ensure those improvements are implemented quickly and effectively.

And that open source competition means that the paid solutions have also had to raise their game. If there’s good stuff out there for free, then widely available CMS that expect you to pay for them better be *damn* good if they’re going to succeed commercially.

They’re A Crap Deal For The Client

In-house content management systems are a pain because they tie the client to the agency that provided the original service. That raises more than one problem;

Who do you pay to fix a problem?

The original agency. They developed the tool, they’re probably the only ones who can fix it quickly.

How do you implement new functionality?

Say you’ve realized the importance of a Twitter feed to your business, or adding a blog, video, podcasts, or any other new idea. Widely available content management systems, whether open source or commercial, need to respond to demand, so they implement new functionality. Not the case if you’re stuck with an exclusive CMS. Until your agency adds that function, you’re stuck.

You’re Trapped

In a bunch of ways. You’re trapped with your original agency. It’s probably why they gave you the exclusive content management system in the first place, because it forces long term repeat business. But you’re also trapped when you want to fire Ted, your own web guy, because he’s been stealing from petty cash. Who else out there is going to be familiar with your content management system? Nobody.

Pity you didn’t have a widely acknowledged content management system. Then you’d have a pool of great talent to draw from, talent that would be able to get to work on your needs immediately.

Avoid Them Like The Plague

Unless you have *very* specialized needs (and most likely even if you do), there’s no need for you to use an agency’s own content management system. If they’re offering you one then they’re doing so for the wrong reasons, they’re doing so because it’s good for *them* when they should be thinking about the best service for *you*.

Any web designer you hire should be offering you a widely available content management system option, whether it’s open source or commercial. Ask them about the different options. A good designer should be comfortable working with a couple of different systems at least, so they can offer a solution that’s best suited to your needs.

If a designer still insists that their own in-house content management system is the best option, they’re lying. Don’t ask them to justify it, because they can’t.