Web 2.0 Revealed: Steve Rucinski is Wrong on This One
The Title Is All Wrong
Catching up on posts this morning I came across this post from Steve Rucinski (whose posts I go out of my way to read) at BizInformer. Steve wrote, “…this company (www.sitekreator.com) is actually integrating the underlying basic principles and technical capabilities to help businesses improve customer relationships by developing a better online and more interactive presence.” What I take issue with is his post title, “Web 2.0 - Get Your Own Site with it.”
While I agree that businesses need to incorporate more relationship building and ways to use the web better than has been done in the past, one of the issues with many Web 2.0 offerings is that they too often make window-dressing superior to other aspects of web site design and development. It is even evident that Rucinski seems, in part, swayed by the visual aspect: “The finished product looks like a custom design by a pro shop…” Note: one key word—looks.
Turd 2.0
Well this is just Turd 2.0, as making good looking web sites is but one facet of design and development. If you are a small business looking to develop a web presence make sure you know who your customers and prospective customers are. I am sure that your business wouldn’t discriminate against people who are visually impaired would you? SiteKreator may have hit the mark on function and visual appeal by couldn’t even find the target on document structure and accessibility.
Why should these things matter? Well closing doors to prospective clients is not the best way of doing business—Web 2.0 or not.
Accessibility, Document Structure: Inclusion is Web 2.0
Making web sites accessible is important as many people who cannot shop or learn about companies in the real world are able to do so on the Internet using screen readers and other assistive technology. In addition there are a large number of people with low-bandwidth or dial-up connections who shut the images off in their browsers. By making your site accessible you are ensuring that your site is functional for these groups—maybe.
Document structure is another big issue. In Web 1.0 would-be designers would open up their visual web site editor and make pages that look good no matter how it had to be done and no matter how bad the underlying code was. Bandwidth aside, the problem with this approach is that if your page is viewed or read via anything other than a visual web browser the document doesn’t make any sense. Text and images are strewn across the page in no particular logical order and reading such chaos is short of impossible. Documents on the web should be logical and there is NO reason it can’t be done. HTML has always provided the means to create logical documents that have hierarchy and flow. With the advent of Cascading Style Sheets, designers were made able to create visually stunning sites that has no impact on the underlying document.
Code Bloat: How to Kill a Web 2.0 Service
Looking at one of their sample sites, it has nearly 1700 lines of code for a single page document with less than 183 words and 14 images only four of which should be within the page itself. This page could be easily written using 10% of this code, just 170 lines. This would increase the speed with which this page loads by likely 60-70%. Wouldn’t you like your pages for your site to load fast?
When testing the same sample page using the Web Page Analyzer, the page takes approximately 30 seconds on a dial-up account and almost 10 seconds at T1. I have a 10Mb connection and the page took nearly 4 seconds to load. One thing to remember is that like microwaves, broadband just makes us less patient for slow loading pages.
The odd thing is here is that SiteKreator has to pay for all this wasted bandwidth so as they get more popular, this code bloat is going to slow service, increase strain on the servers and possibly lead to outages if NetClime (the developers of SiteKreator) can’t keep up with growing demand. Yes, they could just keep adding servers, but servers require management and the more servers the harder they become to manage. Creating an efficient as possible back end would slow their need for equipment and likely mean they would be better able to manage growth.
Kudos to NetClime
I don’t want to rake SiteKreator over the coals here, as they are not out promoting themselves as Web 2.0—or anything other than an easy way to build a great looking web sites with some important Web 2.0 features. For many businesses I would recommend this service well over the alternatives such as GooglePages. I certainly applaud any company who is able to make developing a website in 30 minutes that looks good for moving things forward, just know that what you are getting into is not yet the essence of what Web 2.0 is—inclusion.
Tags: Steve Rucinski, sitekreator.com, NetClime, Web 2.0, accessiblilty, inclusion, business, small business, GooglePages
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:09 pm
I commented on “Mag.nolia - utterly incomprehensible” in http://hfx-ben.livejournal.com/728058.html. … don’t get me wrong: I’m definitely a Web2.0 booster. But for me it’s about user experience, and that means delivering the goods. /Unless/ even the site derives income from even futile visits *nudge-nudge wink-wink*
You’re ace, Jay … really. And this article proves that “counter culture” is a lot more widespread than conventional thinkers might assume: it’s about selling steak as well as (not “instead of”, note) sizzle. Steak /and/ sizzle instead of just sizzle.
But it’s sizzle that sells. see the photo of PlentOf Fish’s creator holding up a 2 month cheque from Google for US$920M. (Can’t locate the URL; sorry.)
Speaking of “steak”, when I’ve imagined likening my connundrum to trying to sell the idea of google in the early days I see that this would be misleading: the objection there would be “where’s the income stream in the business model?” Today I came up with something more apt: even in the early days of the web we knew that search engines were key. My own collection of choice links ran to more than two dozen pages, each of them big. My “Green Futures” website comprised 12 topics; some of those pages held a couple of hundred links. Point being that the concept and intention communicated. My predicament is like talking “dictionary” before Ben Johnson … folks’ eyes go entirely blank before they glaze over. And the point here is that (I may have laid this on you already) my “steak” is about as sexy as index, or table of contents, or footnotes … all of which are artifacts, i.e. inventions i.e. the products of _techne_. Geeks and my fellow nerds get it, but few apart from that.
If I was selling sizzle I’d get funding. I spend my days typing yet more documents (http://bentrem.sycks.net/gnodal/ is the thin edge of the wedge) because I can’t afford an internet connection. *shrug* “Successfull” cattle farmers go bankrupt all the time. As do “successful” lumber mill operators. “Market conditions” are derived from the community’s psyche. And folk are in the mood for sizzle. Soon? Bread and circuses. (I usta clown at folk festivals, so I don’t need the circuses. But I’m going to get by the next week on rice and macaroni … ran outta bread.)
cheers
p.s. http://hfx_ben.livejournal.com
p.s.2 I just connected with a tech_docs prof at UCBerkeley; wonderful how grounded that task makes folk!
p.s.3 is it impossible to cut a strategic partnership with a company in the US? or just difficult? the economy here is so overheated it’s like everybody’s on crak.