[thelist] targeting effectively

[David Kutcher]

Oh my god.  Give me a f$#$%n' break.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Samir M. Nassar" <nassarsa at redconcepts.net>

> It seems that that there are 2 kinds of website builders out there.
>
> The first are those who not only care about their clients, but actually
> care about the craft and art of website creation. To those the process
> and end result are important.

> The second group just don't give a damn. They neither care about the WWW
> or the internet as objects, but only really think about them in terms of
> 'How can I make a profit?' They care neither for the art and craft of
> website creation. They code for browsers, rely on non-standard,
> proprietary formats. This breed of people will cater to the dominant
> market force out of short-sightedness rather than actually take some
> sort of stand and code to standards that all people can use. This group
> usually doesn't 'get' what the first group is about.

I don't even know where to begin.  This is just one of the most ridiculous
emails I've ever received.

1. the "art and craft" of website creation?  Excuse me, but this is not
playtime nor am I using playdoh.  This IS a business for me.  And yes, I
take pride in my work, but it is neither an "art" or a "craft".  It is a
skill that I have learned through years of developing web based applications
for corporate clients that pay me to do work that provides them with a
return on investment and me with a source of income.  And I'm damn good at
it (judging by my clients' continued use of me over the years and the
clients that I have worked for).

2. The internet is not a something to care about in the sense of "wildlife"
and the "environment" need to be cared about.  What I care about in regard
to the internet is that adoption of technologies that forward the goals of
my clients are made readily available so that I can better design
applications for my clients to target their audiences.

3. I code for the people that my clients want me to code for.  If they say
"we need all AOL users to be able to view this", I will make sure all AOL
users will be able to view it.  This is not short-sightedness.  This is a
business reality.

This is how a major corporation thinks:
a. List of goals (check)
b. Can you create a way for these (x, y, z) primary users to accomplish
these goals? (check)
c. How much longer will it take to make it so that these secondary users (a,
b, c) can also accomplish these goals?

If c puts it out of budget, they get scrapped.  Done.

Examples:
Bear Stearns' client toolkit was designed and developed to work expressly on
Netscape.
Prudential's PruServe application was designed to only work on IE 5.01+
EuropaToGo (www.europatogo.com) was designed to only work for 4.0+ browsers
and requires javascript.

My clients don't give a damn about the "art" and the "craft" of building a
website.  Neither do I.  I care about providing the best experience for the
target audience in question, and doing it within the budget allocated to me.
This is my goal for every client unless they tell me that there is a
different goal to the project such as making sure ALL users can use it, that
it loads in 5 seconds on a 14.4 modem, that it can be translated into 20
different languages and available on hundreds of devices without
transformation, etc.

> 10 monkeys using FP and DW might make a good website with a bit of work,
> but it'll take a lot more than that to create good code. (Actually, with
> FP it is doubtful if one can ever make a good website, monkeys or not)

Just because I choose to exclude some users in the wild does not mean I
don't hand-write my own code.  Don't confuse a decision with ignorance.

David
www.confluentforms.com