A few years ago, we got a checklist of proposed features from a client. They wanted the site “.mobi enabled”. We spent a few minutes looking at each other like dogs trying to understand calculus, and then realized, fundamentally, that we were looking at a “someone read a white paper” scenario. They wanted to get in on the big buzzword, but had yet to analyze the value proposition.

Nobody’s going to discount the growth of mobile. We’ve all got our collections of phones, tablets, and even the occasional netbook. However, a fortune thrown at mobile development will net you no extra revenue if it doesn’t serve a user purpose.
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I notice that many web-design products start with, at most, a high-level functional view of the project, and some shiny mockups of workflow. Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with these assets. Many times, it’s an easy way to resolve ambiguity in specifications and help to elicit what you need.

However, before you get too involved in development from these documents, it makes sense to design and approve the database schema. In particular, it should be walked through the client or their representative to ensure it matches their expectations.

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I know you want the entire site to roll out on launch day. The huge cart with 5,000 products. A blog with articles stretching back to when Al Gore first breathed life into the Internet. A customer-relationship management package so sophisticated it has seperate responses for every obscenity an angry customer uses with your call centre staff. But is this the best choice for your company? Probably not.

A staged deployment offers you several benefits at no significant extra costs.
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If you follow Web-Op, you obviously have way too much free time. But you’ll also notice our global ambitions. We’ve started rolling out sites for Brazillian and Chinese audiences. We recognize that going overseas is far more than just slapping some extra stamps on your shipping envelopes and trying to schlep payment to the foreign-exchange counter at the bank.

One thing we can’t stress enough is not to simply take your existing site and run it through a translator, whether Google Translate or a college intern hired for sub-minimum wage.
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In this blog, I tend to be inspired frequently by the interactions I have with clients. Over time, you see the same requests again and again.

A real doozy is the “can’t we edit…?” line of discussion. Whenever you build a database-driven system, like a CRM system, or even a sophisticated order-tracking or shopping cart system, people decide they want to be able to edit the enterred data.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with allowing you to edit PARTS of your data. The trick is to abstract it– rather than editing data with no constraints, you provide the functions to perform legitimate business operations. For example, it makes sense to have an “update customer address” tool, or a “delete product from order and adjust price tool.” The dangerous aspect comes when you want to start editing any field on a record free-form.
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I recently had a discussion with a customer annoyed that it’s hard to edit the home page contents in Zen Cart. Not surprising. It’s a cart, not a full-service WYSIWYG website system. Given the hammer he has, the home page became a nail.

While it often makes sense to make a shopping cart, or a blog, the central aspect of your site, you do have to recognize the tradeoffs.
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At Web-Op, we’ve been doing sites for local real estate agents for years. In many ways, it’s still a market which is fairly weak in the SEO space. Many firms rely on cheap ‘iframe’ display of listings, so they end up with a site that Google sees as having no real content.

However, even innovations in data import technology, like TransparentRETS and dsIDXPress, allowing you to import MLS data in bulk onto a familiar, easy-to-install backend, are not a cure-all for top rankings. (more…)

Yes, I’m being deliberately inflammatory. The media seems to imagine it’s the salvation of the newspaper, and some brilliant shift in the Internet to accomodate it. Sorry, but what it is is a shiny, locked in gimmick.

Apple has steadfastly avoided the Netbook trend– the sub-$400, 7″-12″ laptop which now represents a significant amount of all PC sales. No surprise– a $399 iNetbook would cannibalize sales of their $1,000 and up machines.

Instead, the iPad runs a limited system most reminiscent of an iPhone scaled up to twice its original size. Among the major limits: limited developer access, crippled multitasking, and the same interface conventions.

Limited Developer Access doesn’t sound like a big fear. Get anything you want from the App Store. It’s all pre-vetted and safe too! Consumers initially like the concept of a ‘safe’ source for software. Apple drools over a cut of every sale. But what happens when there isn’t the App you want, because of Apple’s policies? We’ve seen it plenty of times on the iPhone platform already– Google Voice was delayed and hobbled, turn-by-turn navigation arrived late to the party. Unfortunately, the truly breakthrough products– from the open-architecture PC to Facebook– have benefitted from an ecosystem which allowed someone to bring out the “out of left field” application.

Why does multitasking matter? The more hardware resources you have– whether it’s screen pixels, processor cycles, or memory– the less likely you’ll need them all the time. Moreover, the more convinient it can be to have something else in the space. If you have a big monitor, you probably don’t keep one window full screen all day– so it becomes worthwhile to have media players, IM clients, and such which can fill in the extra space. A device like the iPad will be fundamentally limited if you have to stop and go to a different program every 5 minutes.

Finally, the interface conventions. Once you get to an 8″ or 10″ screen, you’re making excuses if you can’t have a decent keyboard. In such a situation, it seems like you’re really just trying to keep the device a toy– if people can’t write a document on a touch-screen, they’ll buy that $1,000 MacBook.

All in sum, it means Apple delivered a compromise device– built more around their desires and product-segmentation aims than a real consumer desire. It also means thaat it’s unlikely to become a true “platform” the way the iPhone and iPod systems did.

For the person who wants a full-scale device, the Asus EEE Tablet can do anything the iPad can and a thousand things more. For the customers who want a little less, single-purpose devices like the Kindle offer a experience built around a single need. The eBook sales logic for the iPad seems a little weak when you realize the Kindle offers 10 times the battery life and a text-friendly screen.

Finally, how does it fold back into the whole web thing? Simple: The “Our Company is an App” thing will not scale past a certain point. Yeah, when it’s a mobile phone, fine, but when you’re looking at bigger screens, bigger memories, and bigger expectations, you’d better return to the basics of the Web:

* There won’t be one master device to emulate the behavior of. The iPhone apps which follow Apple’s style guide are fine. But a website designed to match the feel of OSX looks out of place on Windows XP. It’s true even on “midsize” devices like netbooks and tablets, which may run the iPhone OS, Windows XP, Vista, or 7, Linux, or potentially even Android.

* Users will expect an experience on their terms. Their MP3s are running in the background, so don’t load music. They may be leaving an instant messenger or video open, so don’t hog every pixel on a display.

* Compatibilty is still king. Yeah, it works in Mobile Safari on the iPad, but for the people who bought someone else’s tablet and are running Firefox or, help us all, IE8?

* There’s no master storefront to get on everyone’s desktop. even if you make apps for the main mobile and “pad” systems, it won’t reach a lot of people, and especially the desktop. Instead, appeal to normal search behavior and live inside their browser. Or do you prefer deliberately reaching only a small percent of the market?

Like many of you growing up in the 1990s, I have fond memories of playing the classic role-playing games on the SNES, and later, the PlayStation.  Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, and the like.  I bet many of you can still hum the level-up song from Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest in your sleep.

A frequent theme for these titles was, about 80 percent of the way through the game, your character’s love interest ceases to be an adorable 20-pixel-high maiden, and turns into a screen-filling ball of evil spells and tumors which must be dispatched to move forward.

What does it have to do with the Internet?  A lot.

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I’ve noticed an alarming trend recently:

You’ve picked an industry. You want a website. But you have no meaningful value to add.
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