Independent vs. Corporate

November 14, 2003 | View Comments (7) | Category: Design

Summary: turtle vs the hare, independent web vs corporate web

I am sure many will correct me if I am wrong here, but in the early web days, if you were to come across a clean, nice-looking site it was usually a corporate or big-name site. Personal sites were playgrounds where individuals toyed with new technologies such as <blink> and those wonderful marquee things. Well today, personal sites are still playgrounds yet the clean, beautiful designs that one should associate with a corporate sites seem to have faded into oblivion and personal sites rule the day.

I started the CSSVault 10 days ago with the idea of providing a gallery of beautiful real-world CSS designed sites. I was going to exclude all blogs because I wanted managers and other head honchos to see what innovative companies were doing with their sites. However, after the first couple days I quickly started running out of sites to place in the gallery. I had to start posting blogs up there so the Vault would actually become a useful resource. I was hoping that I had merely missed a couple hundred sites out in the far reaches of cyberspace, but if you are a web junkie like myself you usually know where the good looking sites are. Have corporations really lost touched with the world so much as that they think innovation is no longer important?

In today's society we are bombarded with so much marketing material that it has become harder for companies to gain mindshare with their products. We simply do not have enough time to evaluate something new if it doesn't appear interesting. It doesn't work to say you have a new brand of cereal that really does a body good, because there are 139 brands of cereal already filling up the grocery aisles. Corporate websites have fallen under the same trap.

Whenever I come across an online store and they mimic the "Amazon" tabbing system, my first reaction is that I could just go do this at Amazon or since they copied Amazon that must mean Amazon is better. When I visit an independent website I saw the same type of horizontal tabs. Then Taming Lists came out on ALA and people started to play with lists. Then you started to see the same tabs all over again only in different forms. Cederholm decided to drop a bomb on everyone and created mini tabs. Granted it wasn't a paradigm shift in navigation, but even this small change showed new progress. Over the last couple of months there have been new types of tabs, dropdowns and whatever to give users new ways of navigating sites. The independent web continues to move forward while the corporate world stands still.

If you don't keep on moving you will get left behind and forgotten. People's expectations change. New sites come up. I can understand not wanting to make any drastic changes because it can and will upset your users if everything simply changes. There is no such thing as a perfect site. Tweaks can always be made to improve and maybe you just need a new look to refresh your product in the eyes of your audience. On the independent web, change is applauded. Sure the new design you did might not be liked, but at least you are changing. I can respect that and hopefully your audience can to. Burger King made changes to their restaraunts. Nothing drastic, but they made them look more modern. Every new Walmart built looks newer and newer. Why don't companies apply these ideals with their websites?

I don't know any people personally who work in the "web" department of large companies, but I would be interested to see if they even try to implement something new what happens. I know there are too many hurdles at times to go through, but do they even try? Successful freelancers are like rogue tribes in Africa who continuously move to a new area when the resources have been depleted. Corporations are the ones who stick around hoping that the antelope will return so that they may feed again.

Companies realize how important the web is for them. They see how important it is having a website. Why don't they recognize the importance of keeping things fresh. Their stores are constantly being tweaked so why not their websites? If I knew the answers I wouldn't ask the questions. I really just want more inspiration so that I can continue to grow. I never want to go back to the corporate world because I know how it can inhibit growth, however sometimes you gotta pay the rent. Changing the look of a brick and mortar store can take years. Take years to change the look of a website and you might be the only one around to view the new design.

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Comments

#1

Quoting >>> Whenever I come across an online store and they mimic the "Amazon" tabbing system, my first reaction is that I could just go do this at Amazon or since they copied Amazon that must mean Amazon is better. <<< end quote

Then I think you need to step back a little and consider the larger picture. People don't choose stores based on the webpage design. Those stores don't distinguish themselves based on that design. And what a shallow world it would be if design was so essential!

At a certain point it's just not worth it to invest more in design, because there's a lot of more important things to deal with. Design is the icing on the cake, but it's not the meat of the business (to use a truly horrible mixed metaphor ;) -- or what makes a non-corporate site interesting either. So maybe you're seeing a period of time when people and corporations' concentration is focused somewhere else other than design.

Ian Bicking (http://blog.ianbicking.org)

#2

'I don't know any people personally who work in the "web" department of large companies'

::raising hand::
Not fortune 500, but we're something like a 4 billion dollar corporation.

"I would be interested to see if they even try to implement something new what happens. I know there are too many hurdles at times to go through, but do they even try?"

Well, it depends. We don't implement new things for the sake of new things, at least not big things. There has to be a sound business case for anything we do. Everything has to be done more carefully because of the potential impact. Everything has to be reviewed and approved by multiple people before it can be taken live, some items more than others. Things have to be documented better and the turnover process has to be documented and so on... lots of consideration for recovery in case of disaster.

As for trying... sometimes no. It's a matter of balance and common sense. I'm not going to push for xhtml+css tableless layout for our site yet. That's an utter waste of time, because too many of our customers (especially internally) use Netscape 4.x. We're here to serve the customer, not to force a little old lady using her children's old pentium 90 to upgrade her computer to run a modern browser, or to install any other browsers no matter the speed of the PC, for that matter.

But we'll eventually push it through on one of our low-traffic sites that's aimed at college students and is almost entirely IE6 with a smattering of safari and mozilla flavors.

We'll be redesigning the primary site probably next year... new look and feel, but still tables, but relying more on CSS for formatting of elements besides text (all of our text formatting is already CSS)... it'll probably be wholly database driven with language switching because we're starting to get a lot of spanish speaking customers.


"Why don't they recognize the importance of keeping things fresh. Their stores are constantly being tweaked so why not their websites? "

Well, I can't vouch for most sites, but we update things when they need updating. Most of our stuff hasn't changed in years, we're selling financial products, not pineapples. Our website is primarily just an online catalog of our financial products, with information about the company; and then there are a few more dynamic things, calculators and applications and so on.

The simple fact is, companies don't *need* to continually update every page of their websites... just the parts that change. We probably have a change or two a week, usually minor stuff... maybe a new page now and then when we have something new or some new regulation takes effect. And then we occasionally create new sections or subsites, like our new online banking site and the site we made for the clients of our retirement plan area.

Company websites for the most part aren't like blogs or news sites... people aren't going to keep coming back, there's no reason for them to nor should there really be, despite all the 'stickiness' push from the tech bubble days. They come, they find what they want, they leave; they come, they do what they need to do, they leave. Having something useful for them of course will keep them coming for that, but those are distinct from the content areas that make up the bulk of the site.

You have to remember, the website isn't the business. The website is a representative of the business which exists to serve the customer's needs, primarily for information about the business.

"Successful freelancers are like rogue tribes in Africa who continuously move to a new area when the resources have been depleted. Corporations are the ones who stick around hoping that the antelope will return so that they may feed again."

That's not a very good analogy. For one thing, you're making freelancers look like a virulent disease. If freelancers are hunters who deplete an area of resources and move onto the next, corporations are agriculturalists who continually plant and harvest the same area.

I freelance and have my own small business outside of my corporate job, and I enjoy both. Each has its benefits. Freelancing I can be as creative as I want and can experiment to some extent; at the office I have opportunities I'd never, ever have as a freelancer... working with multiserver clusters, interfacing with enterprise systems including a mainframe, building intranet applications and other browser-based software solutions to replace old terminal clients... that kinda stuff. You can become a freelance consultant that does that, but you can't get the experience you need to do that without working for a corporation first.

Hope that helps a bit. Looking forward to seeing what other people have to say.... I wonder if we could get Dan from inmyexperience to comment... he's a designer for a *very* large corporation (Fortune 50... not 500, 50)

JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#3

JC sent me the link, and I read the post (well, I carefully skimmed it) and do have a few points to make (and I think my employer is Fortune 100 or 200)...

Anway...

> I don't know any people personally who work in the "web" department of large companies,
> but I would be interested to see if they even try to implement something new what
> happens. I know there are too many hurdles at times to go through,
> but do they even try?

Yes. But it's a give and take situation. For some applications, you'll want new techniques to be employed because there's no other way to do it, or that's the most effective (and sometimes cheapest) way of doing things. In other situations, efficiency, WIDE WIDE audience support (meaning every browser out there that 4.x or above) and predefined styles get in the way of employing something new and 'cool.'

On one project that I'm sure a couple of million people have seen, we have some pretty good (mostly) standards compliant DOM manipulation code trucking along all day every day. This is wrapped up inside of another layer of tech, making it the first of it's kind at the company (afaik, and I've asked around).

On the other hand, any flash stuff that's put out there to the public is saved in the Flash 5 format to avoid certain compatibility issues (I'm not exactly sure what those are) which pretty much rules out the use of XML feeds to those Flash apps (XML parsing and DOM tree walking are pretty crippled in Flash 5).

Avant garde-ism is where huge corporations fall behind and small shops can differentiate themselves. I'm trying to inject some form of hipness and newness (and new methods and tech) into my work, but it's a nip n' tuck game.

Dan (http://inmyexperience.com)

#4

"and I think my employer is Fortune 100 or 200"
It was listed at #38 on Hoovers... unless they split again?

JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#5

Okay so maybe the rogue tribes was a "different" way of thinking, but I am sure everyone gets the idea. It would just be nice to see a company take a fresh approach to their websites. That is all I am really asking for. If something represents the business, to me that is part of the business. The thinking that a website is just another tool to put information on is what is going to hurt a lot of companies in the future.

Maybe I am just being young and dumb with this whole scenario, but there is definitely an idea I am trying to get across and at the moment I don't think I am communicating it too effectively :)

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

#6

well, basically it looks like you're trying to get across a rehash of 'larger $entities are big and slow to change, smaller $entities are small and nimble and can adapt more quickly to their environment'; which applies equally to plants, animals, and businesses, and probably lots of other things

I think part of the problem here is that you're equating clean and beautiful with CSS. There are plenty of clean and beautiful sites out there that don't have a lick of CSS in them. And since larger corporations are less likely to be using CSS based designs, that nixes the possibility of them being in your listing.

It's not like there's a pressing reason to switch to css based designs ASAP. A bunch of designers pushing it isn't a pressing reason. It'll eventually happen, probably between 2005 and 2010, as a part of corporations 5 year plan for that period; and at the same time will likely be accompanied by a significant increase in other functionality where appropriate.

There's just not a great financial reward in redesigning a website that already looks good and provides what it needs to provide. A redesign, especially a complete redesign like switching from tables to CSS requires, takes long and careful planning, and has to be worked into a project in conjecture with something else which either is not possible without css or is enhanced by CSS. For us, it'll probably be the switch to an entirely templated database driven site that can switch languages, though we'll probably continue using tables at first, once that's done it'll only be a few template files to change to switch from tables to CSS, instead of the 500+ html docs we have now (well, many of them are coldfusion but don't have any sort of server-side templates).

When we redesigned our site right when I started here, the project had been going on for about a year, and they had finally agreed on a look and feel and the overall layout of the site. First couple of months we did a few more sample pages and came up with a look for the detail pages, had dozens of meetings on content and images and contact forms and so on... after things started to get squared away, we started coding pages and had the site launched in december (I'd started in august or september). And of course, I should point out that the original plan was just for a redesign of the homepage, not to convert our 15-20 page site running on an old 486 novell server to a several hundred page site on big load-balanced xeon servers. So there's essentially how a corporate web site redesign happens, at least in that one specific instance. Leaving out all the political nonsense, of course, though not the time it took.

I still think it's funny that we have a fairly extensive section on one of our smallest areas, but the area that makes up a significant portion of our total value (and almost all of our losses) has a total of 5 pages - one intro page with 4 or 5 paragraphs and one seperate page with about a paragraph and a half for each of the four major divisions within that sector. But that's how things work sometimes. The manager there wanted it enough to push for it, and they could provide the content; the other management were interested but didn't have any content or any time to provide it (we had to nag for weeks to get those few paragraphs written).


As for this... "The thinking that a website is just another tool to put information on is what is going to hurt a lot of companies in the future."

I'm not sure I follow you.
A website exists to either provide information or provide some sort of service. Most companies simply don't have any sort of service to provide online. Stores can sell stuff online or show their catalogs or sales online, sure. We can provide online banking and loan apps and so on... but realistically, what is there that you think is missing besides the sort of design you prefer?

Unless you are totally web based, a website is just one tool in the overall arsenal of the corporation. Its primary purpose is to place information, preferably information which will lead to increased income. It also facilitates communications between potential customer and company by providing contact information and/or online contact forms or live support chats. Where needed, product support forums or dynamic knowledgebases exist, a more interactive way of providing information. Sites which do ecommerce of course have stores; sites which provide news of course provide news, all of these things are already out there, with companies adding additional functionalities as needed, where time, budget, and security concerns allow.

What am I missing? What are you looking for companies to do? It must be more than just 'switch to css' if you're saying it's going to hurt a lot of companies.

JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)

#7

After reading your comments I am starting to get the feeling I shouldn't have been anxious to press "publish" on this entry. All of the points brought up here in these comments are completely valid and I understand what everyone is trying to say. It's just it still doesn't really touch on what I was looking for. This is my own fault because I articulated this idea kind of wrong I think. However, if a website is going to be just another informative, marketing tool then most companies are simply wasting their money. The web could be used for so much more even if the company does not offer an online service.

I have so many different ideas that I believe would help to take companies to the next level all through minor website changes. Now of course I am starting to talk beyond merely the look and feel of a website. However, if we are just going on look-and-feel yes it would be great to see companies switch to CSS. When looking at other ways to cut costs they are not so slow in moving yet when it comes to a technology that has the potential (if not already) to save them money, they see their website as just another thing. Maybe I am just being a psychic here, but companies are making mistakes and missing the boat on some big web opportunities.

In the independent web it easy to spot trends that carry over to the general public. RSS feeds and the like is obviously one of them.

I am sure that well over 90% of websites are inaccessible to a lot of people and to me that is like making your store without a wheelchair ramp. Companies could start there. JC, I knew before I read your comments how most corporations think and I guess I was hoping to hear something different. Unfortunately, you have only reaffirmed my ideas on how coporate America sees the web. I get the feeling I have turned into a poor idealist now so maybe I will crawl back into my cubby hole until the future catches up with me...

Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)

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