Hello, everyone, and welcome to the WordPress Briefing, the podcast where you can catch quick explanations of some of the ideas behind the WordPress open source project and the community around it, as well as get a small list of big things coming up in the next two weeks. I’m your host, Joseph Haden Chomphosy. Here we go!
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 00:40
For anyone who has ever organized something, whether it’s a social event, a school project, or an annual family gathering, you know that there are many different opinions. The more opinions you have, the more likely people don’t see eye to eye. And before you know it, you’ve got some disagreements. Some things make disagreements worse, like imbalance of information, lack of showing your work, and sometimes just “too many cooks in the kitchen,” to use a regional phrase. Frankly, sometimes it seems like the second you have more than one cook in your kitchen, you’re going to get some disagreements. But I think that’s a healthy thing. WordPress is huge. And there are huge numbers of people contributing to WordPress or any other open source project you want to name. So there’s a lot of stuff available to disagree about. If we never saw anyone pointing out an area that wasn’t quite right, there would probably be something wrong. If you, like me, think that a healthy tension of collaborative disagreement can be useful when approached thoughtfully, then this quick start guide is for you.
Step one, prepare to host a discussion. This is, by the way, just the hardest step out there. You have to take a little time to figure out what problem you’re solving with the solution you’re suggesting, any goals that it relates to, and then figure out what the bare minimum best outcome would be and what the wildest dreams magic wand waving outcome would be. And you have to be honest with yourself.
Step two, host the discussion. The venue will be different for different discussions, but you see a lot of these on team blogs or within the actual tickets where work is being done. Wherever you’re hosting it, state the problem, state your idea for the solution and ask for what you missed. If you’re hosting a discussion in person, like in a town hall format, this can be hard. And generally, hosting discussions in an in-person or voice call or zoom call kind of way is hard. So if you have an opportunity to start doing this in text first and level your way up to in person, that’s my recommendation.
Step three is to summarize the discussion and post a decision if possible. So organizing a big discussion into main points is a really good practice for the people you’re summarizing it for and yourself. It helps you to confirm your understanding, and it also gives you the chance to pair other solutions with the problem and goals you outlined in step one. If a different solution solves the same problem but with less time or effort, it’s worth taking a second look with less time or effort. There’s something that I say to WordPress contributors frequently, and that is there are a lot of yeses. There are a lot of right ways to do things and only a few clear wrong ways to do things. So be open-minded about whether or not someone else’s right way to do things could still achieve the goals you’re trying to accomplish with your solution. A note on step three where I said, “and post the decision if possible.” Sometimes you’re the person to make that decision, but sometimes you are not the person who can give something the green light, and so you’re preparing a recommendation. Whether you’re making a decision or a recommendation, sometimes you may experience a little decision-making paralysis. I know I do. So here are a few of the tools that I use.
If you’re avoiding the decision, use the 10/10/10 rule; it can help you figure out if you’re stuck on a short-term problem. If there are too many good choices, use the Eisenhower Matrix that can help you to prioritize objectively. If there are too many bad choices, use the Maximin strategy. It can help you to identify how to minimize any potential negative impacts.
Okay, so you’ve considered your position. You’ve discussed everything. You summarized the big points. Maybe you also worked your way through to a recommendation or a decision. What about everyone who disagreed with the decision? Or have you made a recommendation, and it wasn’t accepted? How do you deal with that? That’s where “disagree and commit” shows up. This phrase was made popular by the folks over at Amazon, I think. But it first showed up, I believe at Sun Microsystems as this phrase, “agreeing, commit, disagree and commit or get out of the way.”
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 05:34
Disagree and commit as a concept works pretty well when everyone agrees on the vision and the goals, but not necessarily how to get to those goals. We’ve had moments in recent history where folks we’re not able to agree, we’re not able to commit, and so then left the project. I hate when that happens. I want people to thrive in this community for the entire length of their careers. But I also understand that situation shows up in the top five learnings of open source when you no longer have interest in the project and handed it off to a competent successor. So there it is – disagreements in open source in WordPress.
As with so many of the things I discuss on this podcast, this is incredibly complex and nuanced in practice. Taking an argument, distilling facts from feelings, and adjusting frames of reference until the solution is well informed and risk-balanced. That is a skill set unto itself. But one that increases the health of any organization. I’ll share that list of references and general materials in the show notes, including a link explaining each of those decision-making tools that I shared. I’m also going to include the contributor training module on decision-making in the WordPress project. It’s got excellent information. It’s part of a series of modules that I asked team reps to take and sponsored contributors. I don’t require it from anyone, but I do hope that it is useful for you. Also, speaking of useful for you, if you are just here for leadership insights, I included some hot takes after the outro music for you. It’s like an Easter egg, but I just told you about it.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 07:33
And that brings us to our small list of big things! First off, WordCamp Europe is happening this we; I hope that everybody has an opportunity to attend. If you still haven’t gotten your tickets, they are free, and I think there are still a few left. I will include a link in the show notes as well. There’s going to be a little demo with Matt Mullenweg and Matias Ventura on the WordPress 5.8 release that’s coming up. And then kind of a retrospective discussion between Matt and Brian Krogsgard. I encourage you to join; I think it’s going to be very interesting.
There’s also WordCamp, Japan coming up June 20 through 26th. I mentioned it last time – it has a big section of contributing and contribution time. So if you’re looking to get started, some projects are laid out, and I encourage you to take a look at that as well.
The new thing on this list, and I don’t know how new It is, in general, I hope it’s not too new to you, is that WordPress 5.8 release is reaching its beta one milestone on June 8th, so right in the middle of WordCamp Europe. I encourage every single theme developer, plugin developer that we have, agency owners that we have to really take a look at this release and dig into testing it. It’s a gigantic release. And I have so many questions about what will work and will not work once we get it into a broader testing area. We’ve been doing a lot of testing in the outreach program. But it’s always helpful to get people who are using WordPress daily in their jobs to really give a good solid test to the beta product to the beta package. And put it all through its paces for us.
So, that my friends, is your small list of big things. Thank you for tuning in today for the WordPress Briefing. I’m your host Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and I’ll see you again in a couple of weeks.
Josepha Haden Chomphosy 10:09
Hey there, you must be here because I told you about this totally not hidden easter egg about my hot takes on organizational health; I have three for you. And if you’ve ever worked with me, none of this will surprise you. But if you haven’t worked with me, hopefully, it kind of gives you some idea about how I approach all of this a bit differently. So, number one, critical feedback is the sign of a healthy organization. And I will never be dissuaded from that opinion. A complete lack of dissent doesn’t look like “alignment.” To me, that looks like fear. And it goes against the open source idea that many eyes make all bugs shallow.
Tip number two, a bit of tension is good, a bit of disagreement is good. The same thing that I say about women in tech, we’re not all the same. And if we were, then we wouldn’t need to collaborate anyway. But diversity, whether that’s the diversity of thought or of a person or of experience, just doesn’t happen without some misunderstandings. It’s how we choose to grow through those misunderstandings that make all the difference for the type of organization we are.
And hot take number three, changing your mind isn’t flip-flopping or hypocritical. I think that’s a sign of growth and willingness to hear others. I like to think of my embarrassment at past bad decisions – as the sore muscles of a learning brain. And I, again, probably won’t be dissuaded from that opinion. Although, you know, if I’m sticking true to changing your mind some flip-flopping or hypocritical, maybe I will, but you can always try to, to give me the counter-argument for that, and we’ll see how it goes. Thank you for joining me for my little public easter egg.
WordPress is open source software, maintained by a global network of contributors. There are many examples of how WordPress has changed people’s lives for the better. In this monthly series, we share some of the amazing stories.
This month to coincide with WordCamp Europe, we feature Tijana Andrejic from Belgrade, Serbia, about her journey from fitness trainer to the WordPress world, with the freelance and corporate opportunities it introduced.
As a professional manager with a college degree in Organizational Science and a certified fitness instructor, Tijana is nothing if not driven and goal-oriented.
Following her time as a fitness trainer, Tijana moved to work in IT around 2016. She first explored content creation and design before focusing on SEO and becoming an independent specialist.
Tijana was hired as a Customer Happiness Engineer for a hosting company, where she discovered the benefits of having a team. She realized that having close working relationships with colleagues is helpful for business success and accelerates personal growth.
Tijana hopes that by sharing her story, she can help others who are either starting their career or are moving roles. She describes the opportunities she discovered in the WordPress community as ‘a huge epiphany’, especially in the world of freelancing.
She highlights 5 things that helped her to start a new freelancing career. Let’s dive into them.
What motivates me?
“Why am I doing this?” is the first question that Tijana asks herself before starting anything new. This self-review and honesty, she feels, allows her to determine her priorities. She also benchmarks options around her motivations of wanting a flexible schedule and to grow professionally.
She lists the reasons to make a particular choice, like being a freelancer, to help her choose the right job, pathway, or identify alternatives.
She recommends that others can take a similar approach. If freelancing is still the best solution after examining all their goals and motivations, Tijana believes a good next step would be to learn WordPress-related skills.
Develop WordPress related skills
The next question you may ask: “Why WordPress?”
WordPress is used by more than 40% of websites in some form and offers various roles, many of which are not developer-specific. Tijana highlights a few:
web developer (coding websites, themes, and plugins)
web implementor (creating websites from existing themes without coding)
web designer (designing website mock-ups, editing images, or creating online infographics)
client support professional (helping people with their websites)
website maintenance (WordPress, themes, and plugins are maintained and backed up regularly)
WordPress trainer (helping clients with how to use the platform or teaching other web professionals)
content writer
accessibility specialist (making sure standards are met and suggesting solutions for accessibility barriers)
SEO consultant (improving search outcomes and understanding)
statistics consultant, especially for web shops
WordPress assistant (adding new content and editing existing posts)
website migration specialist (moving websites from one server to another)
web security specialist
Tijana emphasized: “Another reason why WordPress is great for freelancers is the strong community that exists around this content management system (CMS).” WordCamps and Meetups are a way to get useful information and meet people from a large and very diverse community and get answers to many questions straight away.
In the past year, these events have been primarily online. However, the contributors who run them continue to make an effort to provide an experience as close to in-person events as possible. The biggest advantage to online events is that we can attend events from across the world, even if sometimes during these difficult times, it is difficult to get enough time to deeply into this new experience. Since Tijana’s first Meetup, she has attended many WordPress community events and volunteered as a speaker.
Plan in advance
Becoming a freelancer takes time. For Tijana, success came with proper planning and following her plan to ‘acquire or improve relevant skills that will make you stand out in the freelance market.’ She strongly believes that learning and growing as a professional opens more business opportunities.
If you are considering a freelance career, she advises improving relevant skills or developing new skills related to your hobbies as ‘there is nothing better than doing what you love.’ In cases where no previous experience and knowledge can be used, she suggests choosing ‘a job that has a shorter learning curve and builds your knowledge around that.’
Tijana started as a content creator and learned to become an SEO expert. However, she highlights many alternative paths, including starting as a web implementer and moving to train as a developer.
She suggests to others: “It would be a good idea to analyze the market before you jump into the learning process.” She also recommends people check the latest trends and consider the future of the skills they are developing.
Visit the new Learn WordPress.org to see what topics are of interest to you. In this newly established resource, the WordPress community aggregates workshops to support those who want to start and improve their skills, provides lesson plans for professional WordPress trainers and helps you create personal learning to develop key skills. There is also material on helping you be part of and organize events for your local community.
Tijana highlights that there are many places for freelancers to find clients. For example, the WordPress Community has a place where companies and individual site owners publish their job advertisements – Jobs.WordPress.net.
Hurray, it’s time to get a first freelancing job
As a pragmatic person, Tijana recommends: “Save money before quitting your job to become a full-time freelancer. Alternatively, try freelancing for a few hours per week to see if you like it. Although some people do benefit when taking a risk, think twice before you take any irreversible actions.”
She shared some possible next steps:
use a freelancing platform
triple-check your resume
professionally present yourself
fill up your portfolio with examples
use video material
“By using video material, your clients will not see you like a list of skills and previous experiences, but as a real person that has these skills and experiences and that provides a certain service for them.”
She adds: “Have a detailed strategy when choosing your first employer. Choose your first employer wisely, very wisely. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is”.
When Tijana took her first freelancing job, she considered the following:
how was the employer rated by other freelancers who worked for him previously
how does the employer rate other freelancers
how much money had they already spent on the platform
the number of open positions for a specific job and the number of freelancers that have already applied
“The first job is not all about the money. Don’t get greedy on your first job. If you get good recommendations, your second job can pay two to three times more. And your third job can go up to five times more. That was my experience.”
Take responsibility as a freelancer
Tijana reminds us: “Freedom often comes with responsibility; individual responsibility is key when it comes to freelancing.”
She advises others not to take a job if you can not make a deadline and have someone reliable who can help you.
Missing deadlines will cost your client money and affect the review the client will be willing to leave about your job, and this can have a big impact on your future opportunities or freelance jobs.
She adds: “This can start a downward spiral for your career. However, we are all humans, and unpredictable things can happen. If for some reason you are not able to complete your work in a timely manner, let your client know immediately so they can have enough time to hire someone else”.
Tijana emphasizes the importance of making expectations clear before accepting a job, both what the client is expecting and what you can expect from the client.
Lastly, she points out that if you are working from home, your friends and family should treat you the way they would if you were in an office. She advises: “Let them know about your working schedule.”
She hopes that these basic guidelines will be useful in launching freelance careers, as they did her, even though there is no universal recipe for all.
Tijana highlights: “It’s just important to stay focused on your goals and to be open to new opportunities.” Freelancing wasn’t the only way she could have fulfilled her goals, but it was an important part of her path, and it helped her be confident in her abilities to make the next big step in her life.
As a freelancer, she was missing close relationships with colleagues and teamwork, which she has now found in her current firm. Her colleagues describe her as a: “walking-talking bundle of superpowers: sports medicine and fitness professional, SEO expert, blogger, designer and a kitty foster mum”.
If you are considering starting your career as a freelancer, take the courses offered at learn.wordpress.org, reach out to companies that you would be interested in working with, and remember that there are a whole host of opportunities in the WordPress project.
Thanks to Olga Gleckler (@oglekler), Abha Thakor (@webcommsat), Chloé Bringmann (@cbringmann), Surendra Thakor (@sthakor), and Meher Bala (@meher) for working on this story. Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune) and also to Topher DeRosia (@topher1kenobe) who created HeroPress. Thank you to Tijana Andrejic (@andtijana) for sharing her #ContributorStory
This post is based on an article originally published on HeroPress.com. It highlights people in the WordPress community who have overcome barriers and whose stories would otherwise go unheard.
Virtually every business out there has competition – and it can get heated. For example, consider automobile manufacturers. Think about all the money they spend trying to one-up each other in both product features and marketing. Must be quite a stack of cash, huh?
Web design, at least at the freelance and small agency level, doesn’t give off that same vibe. There may be dozens of design firms in a given geographic area. Yet, they’re more likely to take part in a collective meetup rather than attempt to publicly call each other out.
Why is that? For one, the web design industry is based in part on sharing. It’s a community of people who freely share code, resources and advice. The widespread use of open-source software only encourages this behavior.
That’s not to say that web designers aren’t driven to succeed. It’s just that they don’t mind seeing others do the same – even in a highly competitive field.
Still, it brings up several questions. Do web designers need to spend time researching their competition? Should they worry about what other firms are doing? And, is there even any valuable information available?
Let’s take a closer look…
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Quick: see how many great web design rivalries you can name. Can’t come up with any? Neither can we. Certainly nothing like Ford vs. General Motors or Coke vs. Pepsi.
But rivalry isn’t the name of the game here. That’s an aspect of web design that stands in contrast to other industries.
So often, competitors want to find out everything they can about each other in order to distinguish themselves. The idea is to outsmart and outsell everyone else. This is especially important in volume-related businesses, where the number of sales makes all the difference.
Volume isn’t so important for web designers, though. Theoretically, you can make more money from a single large project than you can from a handful of small ones. It’s more about finding the right clients, rather than taking whatever comes your way.
Thus, the traditional spirit of competition may not apply to web design.
The Challenge of Assessing Competitors
Perhaps one of the reasons some designers don’t focus on their competitors is the difficulty in getting relevant information. It’s much different than, say, retailers. There, you might simply browse a competitor’s location (physical or virtual) and compare product pricing and stock. Web design isn’t so straightforward.
A quick search will show you other firms in your immediate area or even your niche – if you’re thinking globally. But a number of traditional aspects of these businesses aren’t as easy to find.
For example, pricing and revenue is very rarely published. Thus, it’s harder to get a sense of where your own business stands in comparison. Client listings in a portfolio may provide some clues as to pricing and targeted industries, but that’s usually as far as one can get.
In addition, so much of the market is comprised of solo freelancers and small agencies. They’re not publicly-held companies and don’t have to publish financials and so on.
That means, at most, you’re left viewing a competitor’s website and maybe some of the other sites they’ve built. This isn’t ideal for the type of high-level intelligence gathering that we see in other industries.
Yes, It’s Still Worth Knowing the Competition
Given web design’s uniqueness, researching your competition may seem of little benefit. But that’s not necessarily the case. There are some valuable things these other designers can provide:
Design and Marketing Assessment
Comparing your portfolio website with those of your competitors can bring perspective. How do your design skills stack up to others? What sorts of information are other designers offering? What areas of your site could use some improvement?
At the very least, you’ll gain some knowledge of what prospective clients are looking at when shopping for a designer. That can help you make some positive changes to better serve them and encourage conversions.
Features and Functionality
Looking through the various sites in another designer’s portfolio gives a sense of what they provide to their clients. This is incredibly valuable when looking at your own services list.
With a little snooping, you can find out tons of useful info. For instance, it’s possible to find which content management system (CMS) was used on a project. From there, items such as themes, plugins and JavaScript libraries are also detectable. Even looking at the CSS source code will help you figure out how they achieved a specific layout.
While you may find that you’re ahead of some competitors, you might also discover that you’re behind others. There might even be some tools and technologies you can employ for future projects.
The Company They Keep
Is that other design firm really a direct competitor? One way to tell for sure is to look at their client listing. If they’re working with similarly-sized organizations or those within your niche, they may be worth watching.
On the other hand, there can be some value in seeing what larger and smaller companies are doing as well. Lessons can come from anywhere, after all.
Identify Your Competition, but Don’t Obsess
It’s unlikely that we’ll see competing web designers go after each other with boastful ads or guerilla marketing tactics anytime soon. That’s a good thing, as it keeps with the industry’s tradition of sharing. Plus, who would want such ugliness in the first place?
In our line of work, checking in on the competition is more of a learning opportunity. By seeing what other designers are up to, it helps us to understand our own place within the landscape. From there, we can make the necessary adjustments to get where we want to go.
Still, that doesn’t mean you have to spend hours on end doing research. Taking a quick look around from time to time is more than reasonable. And you might just learn something in the process.
Poll: How Much Time Do Web Designers Spend Researching the Competition?
Our very-unscientific Twitter poll asked designers about the amount of time they spend researching and/or thinking about their competitors. Most respondents do not appear to be obsessing over them.
Web designers and developers, do you ever spend time researching or thinking about your competitors?
There are some things you can’t explain in a few words, or with website copy. You need a booklet or a brochure. Now, there are all kinds of brochures. Practically every business is giving them away these days. If you want your audience to take you seriously, both your content and your booklet presentation have to be top-notch.
In addition to explaining what makes your business different, you can also use booklets as short catalogues presenting your products. It’s especially handy in B2B sectors! You could spend hours describing your products, and yet, one thing is true: A picture is worth a thousand words. So before you turn on the printing press, make sure you use some of the best booklet mockup PSD templates for Photoshop.
If you’re a designer, it’ll be easy to convince your clients that your design is the best medium for explaining their ideas. If you’re a business owner, you’ll easily create engaging and realistic booklets to promote your own products.
The best part? These booklet mockup templates come as PSD files. It’s easy to customize them and add your own content in Photoshop! You don’t have to reinvent the wheel; just plug and play!
From brochures and catalogues to passport and square booklets, we’re giving you plenty of options for taking your project to the next level.
Create a gorgeous letter brochure, booklet, or template with this stunning booklet mockup template. Once you download the 9 PSD files, you can simply customize this booklet mockup template in Photoshop by adding your own content with smart objects. You can even adjust the shadows, shades, background, colors, and more!
Present your design in the best light with this A5 top view portrait booklet. This flat lay booklet mockup allows you to customize practically everything: from colors and shades, to background of your own choosing. Perfect for announcing presentations and reports, this booklet helps your design and your subject shine!
If you want to show the synergy between your booklet design and your booklet content, choose these 3 beautiful square booklet mockup templates for Photoshop. Easy to customize, these mockups offer high-quality, photo-realistic results for your next brochure, booklet, or catalogue. Both B2B and B2C audiences will love this booklet!
Your content is great, but what will your booklet look like in prominent places? That’s exactly what these 2 booklet mockup templates help you understand! Offered in two different positions, you’ll be able to upload content and designs for both front pages, and both first pages.
Gorgeous and glossy, there’s no better square brochure mockup template than this one! With 8 photo-realistic ways of presenting your content, this booklet is the perfect choice for your next booklet or catalogue. With Photoshop smart objects, you can even customize the background, and it retains its photorealism.
If you want to elevate your event or loyalty program, leverage this passport booklet mockup template for Photoshop! Offerinig powerful presentation that allows you to mimic passport aesthetics, this mockup comes with plenty of customization options (foil print, editable smart objects). Add a dash of luxury and charm your clients!
There’s nothing like landscape booklet mockup templates to emphasize the quality of your designs and products. These beautiful mockups highlight your content and your visuals. You’ll also get multiple layout options to make them your own, and editing becomes a piece of cake with PSDT files.
Simple and easily editable, this open horizontal magazine mockup template for Photoshop is perfect for a brochure, a magazine, or a showcase of what your catalogue will look like. You can customize content, as well as the color and the background. It’s simple, effective, and we love it!
An elegant booklet mockup that offers plenty of options to add even more photorealism to your designs, this square brochure mockup is perfect for both B2B and B2C audiences. With 9 angles, light exposure and shadow density options, and photo filters, you’ll get the booklet of your dreams!
Create the perfect booklet with these 4 square brochure mockup templates for Photoshop! Clean and minimalist, these booklets offer plenty of customization options to adapt them to your brand: different poses, realistic effects and shadows, as well as changeable backgrounds. Perfect for advertising, this mockup set will charm your clients!
Simple and fully editable, this sketchbook mockup template works as well for brochures and catalogues. You can easily add your own designs and get beautiful photo-realistic results. This minimalist booklet mockup template for Photoshop also works great if you want your content, not your visuals, to shine in the limelight!
Simple and minimalist, this open booklet mockup template is perfect for highlighting your designs without extra fuss. Easily upload your designs or content, change the color, or modify the background to suit your brand. You’ll get plenty of options for an effective presentation that will wow your clients!
If you want to create an elegant design, look no further than these square brochure mockup templates. They work perfectly for catalogues, too! You’ll get 6 beautiful PSD files, as well as 6 background textures, all of which are easy to customize and adapt to suit your branding.
Start a design revolution with this elegant and versatile passport booklet mockup template for Photoshop! Featuring 4 mockups, foil print, and customization options for background and colors, this passport mockup is perfect for your next event or exclusive loyalty program. Don’t settle; show your design’s brilliance!
This magazine mockup template allows your clients to judge the book(let) by its cover – and its content! Featuring 2 glossy layout options (open and closed), horizontal orientation, and easy customization, this magazine mockup is the perfect choice for elegant and stylish brands and publications. It’s design time!
No fuss – just the beauty of your designs. This minimal square magazine mockup template is perfect for showcasing your visuals and your content. It’s easy to customize; from content, to colors and backgrounds. It works as a magazine, but your booklets and catalogues will look gorgeous too!
These A4 and A5 brochure and booklet mockup templates for Photoshop add a dose of interactivity and dynamism to your designs. You can create gorgeous results with 10 versatile PSD files, and edit whatever you’d like; from shadows, to the background. Tease the beauty that is to come!
Flat lays are great, but sometimes you need a little more. This square trifold brochure mockup template for Photoshop is the perfect choice for your next project! Emphasize the effect of your designs on your audience with 7 photo-realistic mockups. These booklet templates are perfect for modern and engaging brands!
Envision what your customers will feel once they get your booklet with this versatile booklet mockup template depicting two hands holding your materials. Simple, yet effective, this booklet template will show you what your brand looks like through the eyes of your customers! It’s time to amaze them!
Stylish and relaxing, this squared booklet mockup template is perfect for brands that fit the same bill! Depicting your booklet and a few lifestyle objects like a croissant, and a plant, this booklet brings an extra dose of realism to your designs. Play with colors, and make it your own!
No matter the size or the purpose of your booklet, these templates will give you plenty to pick from! Forget about the old way of doing things: designing, and then heading straight to printing. Test your designs and your content first with these photo-realistic booklet templates.
Once your design is ready, simply boot up Photoshop, and add your content. The mockups will show you what the end product will look like. From there, it’s easy to make sure every detail is perfect to convince and convert your clients.
When I started writing about website architecture, the idea of a skyscraper construction project came to mind.
I thought of a huge skyscraper with restaurants, retail stores, offices, gyms, and residential spaces — a large self-contained, compact community all by itself.
I’m not a building architect or construction contractor, but I can still see the innumerable requirements you need to draw out before proceeding to construction. Room planning details, sourcing of good construction materials, managing the different teams involved in the building’s construction, zoning permits, funding allocation, natural disaster planning in case of earthquakes, the list goes on.
Everybody considers design as an important component of things; whether it’s the design of a skyscraper or the tires of your car.
Design is about not only bringing convenience, innovation, and comfort into people’s lives, but also in many cases such as skyscrapers and your car tires, people’s lives and safety becomes dependent on it.
I’m not an architect.
I’m an IT person. I’m a concept designer to be more exact.
For years, I’ve been designing strategies and conducting research for very large, ambitious website projects.
Concept design is the foundation of a robust website architecture. Like in the construction of a skyscraper, you need to have a sound blueprint for building large-scale websites.
In this article, I’ll share our company’s process for architecting large websites.
The website architect
Let’s first figure out whose role it is to do this thing called website architecture.
To me, this job is carried out by a website architect.
I deliberately avoid mentioning UI/UX designers and the IA guys here because website architecture goes beyond — or rather encompasses — the user interface, user experience, and information architecture of the site.
The website architect needs to have a solid understanding of usability, in-depth knowledge of web development tools, online marketing technologies, and everything else involved in the construction and maintenance of a website.
Just like an architect of a skyscraper or a residential home, she must be well-versed with the tools, materials, and processes of construction in order to plan the product efficiently and effectively.
This person, our website architect, should possess strong logical thinking, has an analytical mind, is smart with commercial aspects of websites, and be attentive to details.
Of course, for a guaranteed quality product, the architect can/should consult other specialists: designers, developers, etc.
As you see, the ideal web architect in my mind should be a broad specialist, because, as you’ll soon see below, there’s no getting away from that.
Overview of the website architecture process
I’ll give you just a general overview of my company’s website architecture process.
The process is divided into these 11 stages:
Project brief
Website goal definition
Define the target audience
Competitor analysis
User goal-problem-solution
Scenario mapping
Mind mapping
Information architecture
Prototyping
Prototype usability testing
Project specification
As you can see, all these stages are related to each other, and we’ve organized them in a sequential manner.
Let’s discuss each stage.
Stage 1: Project brief
Gathering the needed data from the client and your team can usually take 2 days. Though you should be as thorough as possible, also keep in mind that there’s always room for elaboration and additional data-gathering in the other stages of the website architecture process, so don’t get too off-track if some pieces of information haven’t been transmitted to you.
Determine goals and expected outcomes
What is the client’s goals and expected outcomes of this project, and how does she envision the end result of the project?
You should be clear about the evaluation criteria of these goals and expected outcomes to make sure you’re both on the same page.
You have to be as specific as possible; goals and outcomes should be quantifiable and measurable.
Brainstorm with the client
Ask the client to tell you everything he has on his mind. Listen to what he says patiently and thoughtfully. Take notes. Focus on what they’re saying and resist the urge to chime in. Your ideas and remarks can wait.
If the client is passionate about his ideas for the project, he can spend hours talking about it, which is completely normal.
When the client is really into the project, he’s a great help and pleasure to work with.
Client idea summary
At the end of your brainstorming session, you should ask the client to sum everything up — if he succeeds in boiling his idea down to one sentence, then the idea is clear. If not, you will need better clarity and focus.
Determine the target audience
Who is the client’s target audience? Who’s going to use this site, and how might they benefit from the site?
The client should have a clear idea of who the end-user is so that we can produce a website for them. Otherwise, it’s like playing darts with your eyes closed: You know where the target is, but it’s going to be nearly impossible to hit it.
You can also start discussing what the client already knows about their target demographic: gender, age, location, etc.
Determine competitors
Who are the website’s direct and indirect competitors? The client and the website architect should be aware of the existing competitive environment.
There are always competitors. Even if the website’s idea is completely unique, there are at least indirect competitors.
Meet the decision-makers
Meet with the people who make decisions. Discuss the deadlines, the budget limit, resource availabilities, and so forth.
Organizational matters, matter.
Results and deliverables
Some of your other questions will need to wait to be answered later on in the website architecture process. What you get out of the project briefing stage will be basic data and just to get a general feel of what your client already knows about his project.
It’s crucial to understand the client’s needs and expectations at this early stage, and to choose the right direction for the project right at the starting line. The price you pay for not giving enough time to this simple but critical first stage exponentially grows as the web architecture process and website production progresses.
A project brief template. Source: docstoc.com
The deliverable of the briefing stage is a written document with detailed information given to you by the client and the decision-makers. This document should be approved and verified by the client. It can be in the form of a design brief.
Stage 2: Website goal definition
A website needs goals. The client’s goals might be these: to monetize the site, to increase the offline market share through online marketing, to better engage customers online, and so forth.
Besides determining the website’s goals, you also need to define success criteria according to the client.
A good way to establish goals is by using the SMART criteria. That is, each goal should be:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound
For example:
Generate $50,000 income within 5 years through ads, information products like e-books and paid subscription plans
Assist users in making a choice of what pet to own
Provide users with advice on pet issues
Create a marketing platform for pet products
Results and deliverables
As a result, you will have a document containing 2 lists:
A list of project goals
A list of the client’s goals
This document needs sign-off by the client/decision-makers.
Stage 3: Define the target audience
This stage involves researching the target audience. We need to identify what types of users will go to the site, and also define the needs of each group.
Gather characteristics data
We need to create a common persona for each group. The user interface design depends greatly on the results of this stage. To get started with this, we first need to define what our audiences’ common characteristics are.
Define socio-demographic characteristics: We should figure out the sex, age, education level, and occupation of our target audience. Targeting teenagers (15-18) is going to differ from a site meant for people over 60.
Define psychological characteristics: We should determine the lifestyle, personality, temperament, motivation, value system, philosophies, etc. of our target audience. This information is even more important than socio-demographic characteristics in terms of user interface design. If, for example, our users are early adopters, the user interface and pre-launch strategy will be different than other websites.
Define wants/needs characteristics: We should figure out why our user would want to sign up to our website, what problems they’re looking to solve with our site, etc. We define their pain points and aim to solve it with our website.
This information is vital, though it’s hard to find. If you’re working on a website redesign project, the client may already have this information if they have user feedback tools in place.
Sometimes the competitor can have it (but good luck getting them to share it with you). In this case, you need to perform user research studies and conduct surveys.
Geographic location characteristics: Country, city, region, continent — these are all helpful information. Being online does not completely eliminate the location factor.
Sometimes geotargeting is the first thing to think of when creating a national site, government website, or any location-dependent website.
Moreover, website content and website copywriting is heavily determined by the audience’s location.
The main goal of the web architect here is to determine all the possible groups of users, starting from the largest (core) group, and ending with the smallest one.
Then we create a persona for each group.
Each of the personas you develop should have a:
First and Last name (Don’t use the names of real people to avoid distortion of the story)
Photo
Age
Location
Occupation
Marital status
Hobby
Skills
Problems they need to solve
Personal and professional experience
To get a better image of your target audience you can interview potential users. This is about marketing research at this point.
Results and deliverables
After finishing this stage, you should now have two things:
A document presenting the general characteristics of the target audience
Personas
Stage 4: Competitor analysis
To ensure the success of the project, you need to know your competitors and have good ideas on how to get ahead of them. You should discover their strong points and weak points.
There are several methodologies involved in conducting competitor analysis research, including market participant polling, and Internet and print media research.
If you’re creating a local website, don’t limit yourself only to your country. Look through international websites that are doing similar things. Most likely, there are similar or analogous projects up and running somewhere in the world. Some of these projects can be rather inspiring.
For example, we’ve been working on a social networking site for pet lovers for a client in Russia. We didn’t find direct competitors in the local market. However, there are several foreign sites and indirect local competitors. They are:
Your website’s competitors can be direct competitors or indirect competitors.
Direct competitors can be defined as any website operating for the same user base and who offer analogous products. For example, a direct competitor of Microsoft Windows is Apple Mac OS.
Indirect competitors are competitors who offer similar products, but only partially satisfy the target audience’s needs.
SWOT analysis
There are different approaches towards competitor identification and analysis. I like SWOT analysis the best.
SWOT — which stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats — helps indicate the strong points and weak points of your competitors, and more importantly, aids you in figuring out project opportunities.
While analyzing competitors, you can discover useful site features and ideas worth adapting onto your own website — general, universal site features like commenting systems, web forms, etc. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel in these cases.
All good ideas you end up with during the competitor analysis stage will be needed for the mind mapping stage (which we’ll discuss later on).
Results and deliverables
You should now have:
A list of direct and indirect competitors
A SWOT analysis for each competitor
Research summaries (ideas generated, market opportunities, etc.)
Stage 5: User goal-problem-solution
Proceeding from the personas we’ve developed, we can start working on goal-problem-solution.
User goals
Every person has short-term and long-term goals.
There can also be sub-goals. For example, a person might desire to improve his career, but first he needs to find a job. The sub-goal is finding a job to reach the goal of improving his career.
For our website project, we identify a person’s goals, problems, and we look towards providing solutions for them.
All goals should be designed well. Fuzzy goals won’t help, as it’s impossible to solve all problems within one site. Focus on primary goals and keep the list of goals short.
Some clients think if users listen to music online, their site should also provide such a service, even if their website isn’t looking to solve this problem. The more features we add, the more diluted our core objectives become.
User problems
When we have a list of concrete goals, we can determine concrete problems.
For example, a user goal on our website might be to find a contractor that can build his construction project. That goal is more complex than it seems: How do we locate the right contractor for the user’s specific construction project? Is it important that the contractor is located close to where the construction project is? How do we allow them to quickly evaluate many candidates? Due to questions like these, you’ll generate ideas easily.
Our solutions
When we’re done identifying goals and problems, it’s time to design and develop solutions for them through website architecture design.
This process brings great fulfillment to the website architect because she’s looking to solve pain points that her users have.
Results and deliverables
As the result, we’ll have a goal-problem-solution matrix designed for each persona we’ve developed for our website.
Stage 6: Scenario mapping
Scenario mapping is the stage dedicated to revealing possible user flows.
Once again, we need to think like an end user and create probable scenarios of his actions on our website.
Every goal of every persona has his/her own set of scenario maps.
These scenarios help reveal weak points in our existing ideas and knowledge. Scenarios also help the website architect develop good user flows later on.
Results and deliverables
We should have scenarios mapped out for critical site goals that we’ve established in the previous stage.
Here’s an example of a scenario:
User goal:
Choose a dog
Scenario:
Go to main page
Go to “Zoopedia” section of the site
In “Zoopedia” section, find topics and discussions about dog breeds
Read topics and discussions of interest
Go to the Read Also section, located at the end of the topic because there’s more information there
Choose 3 preferred dog breeds
Return to “Zoopedia” top-level web page
Read some more
Find links to people selling dogs of these breeds
Make an informed, final decision
Go to a pet store to purchase a pet
When we wrote out this scenario, we ended up adding these site features:
“Zoopedia” rubricator
“Read Also” widgets
Links to pet stores and dog sellers on the breed information pages
As you can see, scenarios help us find opportunities for improvement.
When we have a bunch of ideas, it becomes helpful when we start visualizing and interconnecting them.
The mind mapping stage is dedicated to creating a solid system of logically connected ideas and also helps us cut out unnecessary things. It’s a popular design conceptualization tool.
Find your list of ideas and divide them into logical categories. For example, let’s say we’re working on a real estate website. The real estate website’s sections might be:
Property Catalog
Community Forums
Articles/News
Information Center
Map all of your ideas into one of these categories.
If an idea fits in more than one category, choose the best fit for it.
Brainstorming will help sift out the useless and unneeded features, web pages, etc.
Each website section should be planned logically. Don’t forget about section-dependent features (such as the user being able to rate each property, in our example). Mark this connection with an arrow to remember the dependence (in our example, it would go to the Property Catalog).
You can design your own symbols to indicate different functional sections. If the web architect, for example, is undecided in terms of which section a certain site feature belongs to, she can mark it with a question mark. These symbols are really important if the project is large.
Results and deliverables
As a result, we have a bird’s-eye view of the interconnections of site features and sections.
Stage 8: Information architecture
Now that we have a detailed mind map of our website, we can start working on the website’s information structure, which will be the foundation of the website’s prototype.
The website’s IA can be created with the help of flowcharting software like Visio.
Results and deliverables
You should end up with an information architecture (IA) design after this stage.
You will need prototyping software for this stage. I recommend Axure, though there are a number of other similar programs.
The home page prototype doesn’t necessary have to be prototyped first. For example, in the case of an online shop or a blog, the product page or blog post page should come first, because these are critical pages, and will typically be the landing pages of most users on the site.
The website architect is going to lean on the mind map and information architecture diagrams to develop this prototype.
When creating each web page prototype, you should focus on how the user can achieve his/her goals. Before prototyping, you should refresh your knowledge of your target audience using the previous stages in the site architecture process.
Prototype the primary navigation menu
The primary navigation menu is the first to create. We need to figure out the number of menu items and the number of drop-down menus.
Prototype the header section
Then we design the header section that typically contains these items:
The primary navigation menu
Search form
Contact information
Website logo
Prototype contextual areas
Now we start designing contextual areas, which will differ depending on the web page you’re prototyping. We will make content blocks, some of which are constant for every page, some of which won’t.
Prototype the website footer
The footer typically stays the same on each web page. Usually, the footer duplicates the main menu. It also contains auxiliary information such as the website’s privacy policy, links to social networks, contact information, copyright information, and so forth.
Client feedback
The first web page prototype should be shown to decision-makers, and the reason for the layout should be explained to them. The client might revise and suggest some adjustments. That’s OK, because having this done on a low-fidelity prototype is much easier than if we had a higher-fidelity prototype.
After the first page is approved, we can move to the next prototypes. All the ideas represented in our mind map should be found in these prototypes. It’s crucial not to forget about the smallest detail, as it can turn to hell in the long run if you do.
Test the prototypes against scenario maps
Our scenarios will help test the mockups to ensure the logical order of every action.
This is the most time-consuming component of this stage and requires a lot of patience and attentiveness. In the case of large websites, there could be over 100 unique interface prototypes.
Results and deliverables
The deliverables after this stage are low-fidelity prototypes/wireframes of all web page types.
Examples:
There are 90 some such prototypes for the example project above. As you can see, each prototype was broken down in detail. This way, no questions and uncertainty arose during the design of the functional prototypes and finished web designs.
Stage 10: Prototype usability testing
This is one of the best ways to quickly validate the effectiveness of the website architecture and make changes before things progress further.
Axure generates HTML from prototypes, which make them interactive and ready to test on users.
Usability testing at this stage will help you notice gaps and flaws in the architecture.
For testing purposes, we invite some representatives of the target audience and observe how they manage to reach certain pages and results within the site.
Then, the users can be interviewed regarding the site in general.
After usability testing, we make final corrections.
Results and deliverables
As the result, we will have validated and improved the user-friendliness of our web page prototypes and we get a better picture of how users would be interacting with the site.
Stage 11: Project specification
The final stage of the website architecture process is to create the project specification document. This should contain a detailed description of each stage of the site architecture process.
The project specification is the result of all the stages you’ve gone through. It typically will contain a detailed description of each prototype, user flows, and so forth.
The specs should be full and unequivocal. Be detailed and thorough, but also keep it as succinct and as concise as possible.
The project specification should contain all the information regarding software and web technologies required for the website.
Design requirements should be clear.
Once the project specification is approved, website development starts.
