David has had a knack for pointing the way, when it comes to the Web. In David’s new book ‘Pull’, he’s now pointing the way when it comes to the Web, business and perhaps even more. In the following interview, I try to get to heart of what Pull is all about.
Thanks for reading,
Stefan Mischook
An interview with David Siegel about Pull
1. What is ‘pull’ in a nutshell?
It’s the first book of its kind, describing the next 10 years of innovation online, where all industries will transition from a push model to a pull model. In the next few years, your customers will pull information, products, and sevices from you, and you’ll have to set up to be pulled, rather than pushing.
Sometimes change makes people nervous. I got an email from someone recently, who’s been noticing some changes in the web design world and had some fears. Check it out:
I been noticing more ads on the TV and the internet about web site building kits and companies set up to build web sites through the use of templates and prearranged page layout formats to choose from. Since this is on the rise I was wondering in me learning to become a web developer, will this occupation be a dieing breed given all the self help web template sites that are popping up. What are some of the pros and cons of going with a web template based company or a guy who can do it all from scratch like yourself. Any thoughts appreciated.
Best Regards,
Rich
So let’s hit the major points:
… will this occupation be a dieing breed given all the self help web template sites that are popping up
Good question. Short answer: no. Couple of quick points:
Many of those website building kits are very, very limited. Though they will satisfy some segment of the population, they only have a small place in the grand scheme of web design things.
Web Templates should not be looked at as competition, instead you should look at them as tools … a way to rapidly produce websites. That said, you will find that many clients will not want to use templates for fear that their website will look like it was built with a template.
I would say that you should be open to using templates and designing from scratch. Some budgets will require templates where other clients will want to spend the extra money on original design work.
In the end, if you want to be competitive, you ought to expand you skills into things like PHP, Javascript and blogs.
After weeks of being good and not eating much junk food, I decided to treat myself to a steak submarine – 14 inchs no less! Anyway, within a few hours, I started to get those creepy-crawly’s in my legs and this morning, after having a tea, I started to feel like gagging.
!!
Lesson learned: no more subs and junk food. OK, back to web design business …
In the following video, I go over why you should keep you website looking active and I provide five tips on how to do this. But, just in case you don’t have time to watch a video, here are the bullet points:
Keep the copyright notice up-to-date.
Add a last ‘updated note’ – for example: Last update February 21st 2010
Anyone who knows me, understands that I think learning and using WordPress is pretty much a must for web designers – WordPress is a key tool in the web design toolbox. That said, WordPress does have it’s failings (though not many) and one of them is the seemingly constant stream of upgrades.
What!? Aren’t upgrades a good thing?
Normally sure. But it seems to me that just as soon as you’ve gone through the trouble of installing the latest WordPress upgrade … you get another dashboard message saying it’s time to upgrade, again!
Of course these days, WordPress now has an ‘Upgrade Automatically’ button that should do it all for you … but I confess, I’m old-school and I’ve never used it. I do it the old fashion way and download the new WordPress files manually, upload them to my server etc …
All my complaining aside, one option is to not upgrade all the time.
This book’s title does not do it justice – it’s also a great book for intermediate web designers (just out of web design diapers) who want to take it a few steps further.
The book revolves around the redesign of a pretty bland looking web site. You are walked through the whole design process:
sketching out the design/layout ideas.
interacting with the clients.
how to choose colors and fonts for the web site.
designing a logo!
Then you get into the coding (HTML, CSS) aspects of the web design process:
Why develop with Firefox vs Internet Explorer?
Basics of CSS and handling specific CSS tasks.
Dealing with browser compatibility issues.
Accessibility and usability.
… And a lot more of course.
If you are a web developer or web designer who wants to learn how to put it all together, this book does a pretty good job walking you through the process.
In the following video on Web usability, I talk about how fancy images can actually hurt your web pages in terms of ease of use. Watch the video for details:
About Web Usability
Making a website more user friendly is a tricky thing, because often times what looks good (in terms of design) actually gets in the way of the user – beautiful graphic often times makes the page more confusing. So, the tricky part is to make it look good while keeping it simple.
My Web usability tips:
Pictures should NOT be links to click on.
Use text links that stand out.
Use icons and images that provide information about the links around it.
A really interesting question was emailed to me recently by someone that I will call ‘Rick’. Her real name was Jenny, but she wanted to keep that private:
I’ve been trying to make a decision about my career path and I wondered if you could offer me any words of advice?
I have a disability that prevents me from working on-site and I will need to work from home as a freelancer. I’m trying to find out which of these server side technologies will make me more marketable from home as a freelancer …
… Rick goes on to mention a few of the popular web programming languages that he is considering:
If you want to work from home, by far and away PHP is your best choice because it is the most widely used language and it is the language that you see small business use more often than not. After PHP, I would give Ruby a go.
… Actually, why not learn both!
🙂
Java and .NET are not great choices for stay-at-home freelancers because those technologies are more or less used by larger corporations that more likely than not, will want you to work on site.
In the following video, I go over what the differences are between a web designer and a graphic designer. I also give a few tips on how to judge whether or not to become a web designer.
