Don’t get me wrong, I realize that print design has its own challenges but sometimes web guys can’t help but fantasize about a project ending once the comp is approved rather than it just beginning. For companies that focus on branding and traditional media, from my outsider’s perspective, it looks like all “fun part” to me. Regardless of what medium you’re working in, most of us get to an idea the same way. Sketching, spitballing, competitor audits, hours staring at the ceiling, ping pong games, endless sketches and finally the one pops into somebody’s head, the copywriter goes to work on the perfect glossy line of copy, the production artist finds that ideal image of a beer on the beach and before you know it, you’re presenting to the client.
For those of us in the business of creating web sites, the concept, the message and the look/feel is literally just the beginning – not the end. From there the Designer is charged with carrying the design throughout the site while doing the original concept justice, the Copywriter has pages and pages of “consistent message” to write, the Technical Architects and User Experience Engineers have to create a feature set and figure out how the whole thing fits together. Then, the programmers have to bring it to life while making sure that it’s stable, looks right in all browsers, matches the comps/requirements and is easily adminable by the client. All the while, the Account Manager and Producer are doing their best to make sure that the original expectations of the client are being considered and the whole thing is on brief, on budget and on schedule. Madness.
However, consider the concept of a market targeted website compared to a print campaign. It’s an intangible, interactive, engaging, analytics gathering machine and by its nature lends itself to experimentation and a fair amount of trial and error. Print designers don’t have the luxury of real time analytics, they can’t experiment with different callouts or navigation schemes or tag lines. There’s no SEO on Outdoor. Try changing a typeface on a billboard and then ask it how effective it was the next day. Nope, they have to go with what they think their demo will respond to – and when they get it wrong, the work just sits there and stinks. Hell, even when they get it right, it’s damn near impossible to truly quantify the effectiveness. So, while we may have a bigger mountain to climb, the extra work adds up to more complete, goal driven solutions for which we are accountable to the client. When we get it right, conversions go up, visits go up, we can track provable improvements in brand awareness and can calculate an actual ROI – but even if we get it wrong, we can fix ‘er on the spot. I don’t think I could live without that, I don’t think any of us could. So, we’re web guys for life – or maybe I’ll just go be a UPS man.