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We’ve partnered up again with our wonderful friends at Next Day Flyers to give away two sets of 1/4-page flyers with free shipping anywhere in the Continental U.S. Each set contains 100 flyers. Flyer printing can be used and customized for a variety of purposes including promoting a club event, marketing a small business and sending out announcements. Read on to see how you can win!

** Update: Giveaway Period Has Ended **

About Next Day Flyers

Next Day Flyers is an offset printing company offering an array of printed materials such as flyers, business cards, postcards, brochures, tickets and more.

They’re not newcomers to the industry. They’ve been in business for 13 years and have over 100,000 satisfied customers.

And with longevity comes experience. They know what their customers are seeking and how to meet the high expectations.

Quality is of utmost importance as Next Day Flyers utilizes a quality checkpoint system which includes 33 steps to ensure the files are printed correctly and ready on time.

And speaking of time, this is a strong point of Next Day Flyers. As the name suggests, they offer next day turnaround time, but as customers asked for a same-day print option, that was added too. So files in by 10:00 AM PST can be printed the same day, while files in by 6:00 PM PST can be printed and ready to pick up or ship the next day.

The Next Day Flyers online ordering system allows for easy file uploads of print ready files. They have file prep guides and templates available to make sure the bleeds, size, color are set to print correctly.

** Update: Giveaway Period Has Ended **

How to Win

To win, simply answer the following question:

• How can these flyers help you and/or your business?

Giveaway Details

This giveaway ends on Monday, January 30, 2012 after which the comments section on this post will be closed and you will no longer be able to leave a comment. Shipping outside of the continental U.S. will incur extra costs. Please leave a valid email address when filling out the comment form so that we can contact you if you have won. Please only comment once. The winners will be randomly selected using a similar method as previous Six Revisions giveaways. The winners will be announced on a separate post. You are advised to subscribe to our RSS feed so that you can be quickly notified when the winners announcement post has been published. Please note that comments are moderated and so your comment may not show up right away. Please note that comments that do not follow the instructions on how to win (described above) may not be published, or may be removed later on.

Related Content

• Create a Slick Business Card Design with Stunning Typography
• 15 Excellent Logo Design Tutorials Using Illustrator
• 20 Useful Websites for Graphic Design Textures and Patterns
• Related categories: Graphic Design and Resources

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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In web design, the position of design elements and the layout of web pages is everything. So many cool, exciting techniques are available to help us lay out our designs (especially with CSS3 at our disposal) that we often forget that structure is as important as aesthetics.

How do you determine where content should appear, and how can a well-oiled interface increase website readability? This is what we’ll aim to uncover in this article.

We’re going to examine a basic technique that could help you improve your general content flow, and, for lack of a better term, I’m going to call that technique the proxority principle (a portmanteau word that combines "proximity" and "priority").

Communication through Design

Designers already understand that the relationships between objects on a page matter. That’s why when we create a design, we think about visual hierarchy, visual weight, Gestalt psychology, the distinctiveness of important elements and other principles that affect relationships between the various components of a web page. It’s one of the reasons why we tend to get neurotic when it comes to navigation menus, headers or footers.

With so much going on inside the average web page, getting the right content to users in the right place and at the right time is quite an achievement!

If your content isn’t structured suitably, there can be a number of downsides, such as:

• Critical information getting lost or skipped
• User interaction issues like error-proneness or confusion
• Reduced web accessibility for screen readers

The proxority principle, in a nutshell, puts forth the idea that if we can prioritize our content to ensure that the most relevant material is visible and appealing, users will immediately be drawn to it.

This principle asserts that all related, important content should be grouped or joined together whenever possible to allow flow and feedback.

The art of this technique isn’t in the theory, because we often lay out content logically as we write it (headings, subheadings, bullet points, etc.); instead, it’s in the planning stage.

Proxority Principle in Site Navigation

Consider something like a navigation menu. One of the first things we do when producing the information architecture of a site is to organize pages and links into one cohesive structure, after which we add categories or subsections if appropriate.

This technique leads to the development of drop-down menus and other unique browsing aids which help us to further bind content that lacks proxority.

When planning navigation menus, one must pay particularly close attention to the value of pages and their connections, in order to make them a perfect example of proxority in action.

This particular technique works for any style of website, so whether you’re scaling a huge service-heavy but content-light layout (like Amazon) or a content-heavy but feature-light design (like a blog), the technique should be of use.

Better yet, the principle can help you organize your website’s information architecture; the proxority between pages is as important as what exists upon individual pages.

If you find yourself struggling to determine where stuff should be placed, this strategic guide will help you.

Priority: Boost the Best, Weed out the Worst

Many of us know only too well the benefits of prioritizing. The priority we give our content plays a huge part in the perceived value it has upon a page.

A site’s logo/name, for example, is recognizable because of its critically high placement, usually in the top left-hand corner, and it maintains visibility in that position on every page of a website.

A logo should be dominant over all other objects on a page. That’s its proxority.

Rate Each Element’s Value

To identify which pieces of a web page are most critical and important, we need to begin by examining every object in a layout, no matter how small.

Rate them based on their perceived value (according to what your visitors need to know or are likely to want to know) and their functional value (according to what contributions they make to the website, such as functionality or advertisements).

You can do this either by taking a screen capture (or printout) of the entire page and annotating it, or by producing a list of everything that appears on a page. This exercise will help you reassess the value of your website’s content.

Rate images, media, content (at a paragraph level), and everything else according to this numbering system:

Eliminate Unneeded Elements

When you’ve gone through everything, review the results.

Before we go any further, it’s probably worth mentioning that if you find content, links or objects that are no longer useful or don’t contribute anything, remove them.

Eliminating clutter from an interface is tough, but reductionism improves the general user experience of a website.

For elements rated at a 3, removal might be a bit harsh, so consider rewording or attaching things together to add value.

This website arranges its critical information into clearly defined segments for readability.

After you’ve identified the stuff that can be deleted, merged or moved, look at everything you’ve given a rating of 2. These elements can be the toughest to deal with because you want visitors to benefit from them, but you don’t want to overburden them.

One solution to giving these these needed, but non-essential elements an appropriate proxority is to use progressive disclosure: make content appear on demand with drop-down menus or tooltips, or display it further down the page so that it’s still available but less prominent.

Many websites use progressive disclosure to avoid swamping their users with details.

Proximity: Flow, Feedback and Functionality

We’ve considered the importance of prioritizing every asset on your page, identifying which bits have more sway than others, eliminating the fluff that has accumulated, combining weak material into a strong structure and pushing the less critical data out of the field of vision.

We now need to take all the remaining content and follow through on the second part of the process: to connect everything logically and put it all back together, as if it were a jigsaw puzzle — or a storybook, wherein the plot develops at consecutive points.

You should be left with everything that needs to be on your website, in its most diluted form, with supplementary content either hidden down the page or waiting in tooltips and extensible data boxes.

Rate Important Elements in Relation to Each Other

Go back over everything to which you have assigned ranks of 1 and 2, and rank them again; number everything according to what order you believe readers need to know about it.

If everything ends up where it should end up, it will all make perfect sense when you read it aloud.

The developers and designers behind this website clearly understand the need for organization and feedback.

Redesign

Once you’ve got everything labeled, re-shuffle your source code to match the new reading order. Pay special attention to bits of content that connect to or depend on other pieces of content (such as image captions), and put them as close together as possible.

Then, make the necessary changes to your CSS and JavaScript.

Proxority: Examples and Patterns in Action

Many websites already exhibit what I’d define as high proxority in that they take great care to use techniques that account for both priority (bringing attention to certain elements) and proximity (making reactions happen directly next to or above the objects being interacted with).

Below is a showcase of a few examples of best practices in use. Some we’ve briefly mentioned before, and others are being introduced here. By following similar practices, you can avoid user confusion and increase reading efficiency.

Using progressive disclosure to track the progress of a form:

Informing visitors of errors as they enter data:

Drop-down menus expanding close to the cursor icon:

Input objects disabling once they’ve been submitted:

Progress bars showing loading progress:

Content or light boxes expanding upon user interaction:

Proxority: Origami for the Web

The proxority principle posits that everything you find on a web page can be assigned a value and a place in sequence, in relation to the objects that surround it. This idea has existed since the early days of the Web, but too few designers pay enough attention to it. Think through what is actually needed, where it is needed and when it should appear (as opposed to simply putting all of the content on the screen, in its entirety, in an order that "looks pretty"). The need for such techniques is increasing, especially given the proliferation of handheld devices and the idea of designing with a "mobile-first" philosophy.

If content isn’t worthy of a restrictive mobile layout, why is it needed in the desktop layout?

If you have ten spare minutes, give this simple activity a try. Go through your website and weed out anything that isn’t offering what it should. Make existing objects provide greater value to users (or use less space), and don’t be afraid to reorganize your code and its content to ensure that what’s needed is what appears. Oh, and if you do feel tempted to make actions elicit responses, ensure that users know that your website is responding; after all, you don’t want them clicking "submit" ten times in a row, only to fail.

Related Content

• Quick Overview of User Experience for Web Designers
• Is It Time to Rethink Website Navigation?
• 10 Important UI Design Considerations for Web Apps
• Related categories: Web Design and User Interface

About the Author

Alexander Dawson is a freelance web designer, author and recreational software developer specializing in web standards, accessibility and UX design. As well as running a business called HiTechy and writing, he spends time on Twitter, SitePoint’s forums and other places, helping those in need.

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Mindomo, a mind mapping application for brainstorming,  has teamed up with us to give out 10 Premium Account subscriptions for one year (worth $65 each). Read on to see how you can win this awesome prize.

** Update: Giveaway Period Has Ended **

About Mindomo

Mindomo is a simple mind mapping application, which can be used individually or in group for creative idea generation, gathering project requirements, building quick site-maps and simple project management.

A designer’s mind map created by Mindomo.

Mindomo allows easy development of a design concept or idea. When you start a web design project, you need to analyze the requirements from your clients, then you need to come up with a proposal which contains proposed solution, terms of agreement, financial points a simple site map and required resources.

Mindomo allows to handle all these intuitively, and when you are done, you can quickly present the whole project settings with Mindomo’s unique Presentation mode.

Mindomo’s Presentation mode.

Some of the things you can do with Mindomo:

• Work on mind maps simultaneously with your clients
• Create full detail sitemaps
• Comment or vote on topics to evaluate
• Show your work to clients with no login required
• Drag and drop pictures

Try Mindomo for Free!

Mindomo has a free account with a limited number of maps so you can evaluate their tool.

Signup now and start using mind maps for your projects.

** Update: Giveaway Period Has Ended **

How to Win

For a chance to win, simply answer the following question in the comments:

• How would you use your subscription to Mindomo if you won?

This giveaway ends on Wednesday, January 25, 2012 after which the comments section on this post will be closed and you will no longer be able to leave a comment. Please leave a valid email address when filling out the comment form so that we can contact you if you have won. Please only comment once. The winners will be randomly selected using a similar method as previous Six Revisions giveaways. The winners will be announced on a separate post. You are advised to subscribe to our RSS feed so that you can be quickly notified when the winners announcement post has been published. Please note that comments are moderated and so your comment may not show up right away. Please note that comments that do not follow the instructions on how to win (described above) may not be published, or may be removed later on.

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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We had a great giveaway from our friends at PSD2HTML.com, a leading provider of PSD to HTML conversion services. In this post, we’d like to announce the two winners who’ve won themselves $400 and $300 worth of PSD2HTML.com services, as well as three free pages of design to mobile template conversion.

The Winners

The first prize winner receives $400 worth of services and three free pages of design to mobile template conversion, while the second prize winner gets $300 worth of services and three free pages of design to mobile template conversion.

Below are the two winners of our most recent PSD2HTML.com giveaway.

• First prize: Doris
• Second prize: Elle

I’d like to congratulate our two winners! The winners should’ve already received an email from the folks at PSD2HTML.com regarding their prize.

SQL query result that selected two winners at random.

About PSD2HTML.com

PSD2HTML.com is a well-established company with over six years of experience and 50,000 clients (and counting). Their corporate culture and staff are innovative, professional and always on top in modern web development.

Design to Mobile Template is a new option from PSD2HTML.com that provides markup optimized for mobile devices. This service is compatible with iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Firefox Mobile, Opera Mobile and Windows Phone 7.

For more details about the quality service they provide, check out their Examples page and the testimonials of their clients.

Related Content

• 50 Beautiful Retro and Vintage Photoshop Tutorials
• Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials
• 9 Photoshop Editing Tips Web Developers Should Know
• Related categories: Web Design and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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Our friends at Deals2Have — a site providing great discounts on digital products for Mac enthusiasts, creative professionals and startups — is giving away five free deals to five lucky Six Revisions winners. Read on to find out how you can win!

** Update: Giveaway Period Has Ended **

About Deals2Have

Deals2Have, which started in summer of 2011, is a site where you can find big discounts on useful digital products.

For example, Deals2Have is currently running a deal on the Photoshop Styles Mega Pack Collection; normally it costs $59, but they’ve worked with the creators, Design Panoply, to slash the price by 51%, down to only $29!

For the latest deals and news, follow Deals2Have on Twitter, join them on Facebook and subscribe to their RSS feed.

** Update: Giveaway Period Has Ended **

How to Win

To win, follow these two steps:

1. Go to the Deals2Have website and browse their collection of deals.
2. Once you’ve found the deal you’d like to potentially win, write its name and URL in the comments below.

Giveaway Details

This giveaway ends on Tuesday, January 17, 2012 after which the comments section on this post will be closed and you will no longer be able to leave a comment. Please leave a valid email address when filling out the comment form so that we can contact you if you have won. Please only comment once. The winners will be randomly selected using a similar method as previous Six Revisions giveaways. The winners will be announced on a separate post. You are advised to subscribe to our RSS feed so that you can be quickly notified when the winners announcement post has been published. Please note that comments are moderated and so your comment may not show up right away. Please note that comments that do not follow the instructions on how to win (described above) may not be published, or may be removed later on.

Related Content

• Things You Should Do Immediately After Launching a Website
• How to Grow a Community: Insights from Experts
• Launching a Blog Successfully in 15 Days
• Related categories: Website Management and Resources

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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This will be the third year that I’ve sat down in front on my keyboard to write my predictions of things that will shape the Web industry in the coming year.

Before I share my predictions with you for 2012 (which I’ll do in another article), I thought I’d look at my 2011 predictions first and see how they panned out.

Previous Predictions for 2011

At the start of 2011, I wrote about what I thought would be the five things that will shape the Web this year. If you missed that article, you could check it out first to give you a bit of context for the things I’ll be talking about below.

In the article, I predicted these five things would be influential in our industry:

1. Flash
2. Print media
3. Hardware-accelerated browsers
4. Television
5. Location-based services

Let’s talk about those five things, and see if they did, in fact, make an impact this year.

1. Flash

At the start of this year, I said:

"Expect to see something out of Flash this year, whether it’s innovation, a repurposing of the technology, or a significant drop in usage."

I think we’ve mainly seen more of the latter — a drop in usage — than anything else. For instance, as of August this year, jQuery was used on more top websites than Flash.

Even Adobe, the company that owns and develops Flash, announced that they would no longer develop Flash for mobile, opting instead to focus on HTML5.

As 2011 marched on, HTML5 and JavaScript chipped away at Flash’s place on the Web as a facilitator of rich interaction. Designer/developer Aral Balkan, who covered the possible demise of Flash for .net magazine earlier this month, suggests that "if you’re starting a new web project, do not use Flash for it."

2. Print Media

Just how much of an impact have traditional print publication companies — magazines, newspapers, books and so forth — had on the Web?

It does seem that all the experiments and ventures rolled out by print media on the Web are still going strong. The Times, for example, still sits behind a pay wall and appears to be doing fine. The iPad-only Project Magazine I mentioned in my predictions is now rolling out issue 11. Pay walls and premium content are popping up on many sites around the Web, and appear to be a sensible way to monetize content.

The future of traditional print-based media companies moving onto the Web is still very much focused on the tablet market, and iOS5 brought a new angle to this model with the Newsstand feature aimed at digital versions of popular print newspapers and magazines.

More and more people are putting down their newspapers and magazines, opting instead to use their tablets and smartphones. Research by eMarketer showed that Americans spent more time on their mobile devices versus reading newspapers and magazines; over 1 hour per day on mobile devices compared to only 44 minutes on newspapers and magazines.

3. Hardware-Accelerated Browsers

Hardware acceleration has probably had an impact on the Web that most people don’t even realize. Most modern browsers now ship with some kind of acceleration running in the background, but as far as users are concerned, it isn’t really noticed except when used in cutting-edge experiments and demos such as OK Go’s video website for All is not Lost.

However, the run-of-the-mill hardware acceleration was trumped with a new technology called cloud acceleration, which we saw on Amazon Silk, a new web browser for Kindle Fire.

How does a cloud-accelerated web browser work? To reduce the processing power needed on the tablet, Amazon decided to leverage their Amazon Web Services (AWS). The Amazon Silk web browser, for those not familiar with it, offloads the processing required to render web pages and JavaScript to AWS, which compresses the output and shoots it down the interwebs to your Kindle Fire, therefore removing the need to process a lot of stuff on the tablet.

There was a bit of a problem though, as it turned out that it wasn’t quite as fast as everyone hoped; tests showed that web pages loaded more slowly when the cloud-accelerated feature was turned on. This may well change as AWS caches more and more web content. Amazon also promises a speed boost with their next release of the browser.

4. Television

The Internet TV wave isn’t quite upon us yet, and the bottleneck may be Apple. There is talk and rumor of an Apple TV hitting stores in 2012, and consumers and manufacturers may be holding their breath and waiting to see what the technology giant will release before moving into this space.

In the same way that Apple made the tablet market, speculators are saying that Apple TV could revolutionize the way we use our TVs.

We’re also seeing traditional television moving onto the Internet more and more, as shown by the continual growth of web-based services such as iPlayer, Hulu and Netflix (well, at least until Netflix shot themselves in the foot).

Live coverage is also popping up on the Web, where we used to expect them to be on our television sets. YouTube, for example, showed live coverage of the British Royal Wedding. Facebook now streams numerous live events, including UFC fights.

TV shows are increasingly leveraging social media for live discussions with fans; many shows even include hashtags for Twitter.

In my opinion, it seems that the Television and the Internet are on a steady crash course to blend into an integrated, on-demand medium.

5. Location-Based Services

A quick look on your smartphone, and you’ll know that pretty much all apps ask for access to your location data.

One of the most interesting implementations of geolocation I saw this year was from Apple with the Reminders feature on the iPhone. This is how the Reminders feature works: You set your iPhone to remind you to do something (e.g. "get milk from Supermarket X") and when you’re close to the location, it will remind you of a to-do you created for that area.

In fact, you can tell a technology is getting serious when big companies put money behind it: Facebook acquired location-based social network Gowalla for a cool $3 million so that they can improve their own location-based services.

Conclusion

There’s my look back at the five things I thought would shape the Web industry this year. I’ll be back in a later article to have a look at what I think will affect our industry in 2012.

What things will shape the Web in 2012? Share your own predictions in the comments!

Related Content

• The Mythical Paperless World: Why Print Will Stick Around
• Building the 3D Web
• Five Technologies That Will Keep Shaping the Web in 2010
• Related categories: Web Technologies and Web Development

About the Author

Dave Sparks is a web designer and developer working for Armitage Online in the Lake District. He can be found writing about various web topics on his blog at Kamikazemusic.com, twittering as twitter.com/dsparks83 and working on his website analytics project – Stat Share.

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We had an awesome giveaway of five Deals from Webmaster Deals! In this post, we announce the five lucky Six Revisions readers who have won the giveaway.

The Winners

Here are the winners of the Webmaster Deals giveaway:

• Ross McLoughlin
• TJ Hemingway
• S. Sharma
• noeki
• Joelji

I’d like to congratulate the winners! You should’ve already received an email from the folks at Webmaster Deals with information about the prize you’ve won.

I’d also like to thank all of the readers that participated by leaving a comment that stated which Deal they wanted to win.

If you didn’t win or weren’t able to participate, don’t worry, you’ll still get plenty of chances since we’ll be having more giveaways in the future. The best way to make sure you’re notified when a giveaway is published is by subscribing to our RSS feed.

About Webmaster Deals

Webmaster Deals is a website that offers deep discounts on products that website owners, web designers, web developers and other people interested in the management and creation of websites will appreciate. They regularly feature discounted items such as premium WordPress themes and royalty-free vectors.

To get exclusive free downloads and notifications about new deals, please subscribe to the Webmaster Deals newsletter.

Related Content

• Things You Should Do Immediately After Launching a Website
• How to Grow a Community: Insights from Experts
• Launching a Blog Successfully in 15 Days
• Related categories: Website Management and Resources

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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We have teamed up with one of the industry’s most experienced PSD to HTML conversion service providers, PSD2HTML.com, to give out awesome prizes to two lucky Six Revisions readers.

The first prize is $400 worth of services and three free pages of design to mobile template conversion. The second prize is $300 worth of services and three free pages of design to mobile template conversion.

Read on to see how you can win one of these spectacular prizes.

** Update: Giveaway Period Has Ended **

About PSD2HTML.com

PSD2HTML.com is a well-established company with over 6 years of experience and 50,000 clients and counting. Their corporate culture and staff are innovative, professional and always on top in modern web development.

In order to provide optimum service to its customers, PSD2HTML.com has obtained a certificate of quality ISO 9001:2000.

PSD2HTML.com’s research department continually works to explore new technologies, methods and techniques in markup creation.

Design to Mobile Template is a new option from PSD2HTML.com that provides markup optimized for mobile devices. This service is compatible with iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Firefox Mobile, Opera Mobile and Windows Phone 7.

What PSD2HTML Offers

• High-level, W3C-valid, table-less, SEO-friendly and fast-loading XHTML/CSS or HTML5/CSS3 markup
• CMS implementation: WordPress, Drupal, Magento, etc.
• Compatibility with all popular browsers: Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 3.6+, Google Chrome, Safari 5 and Opera 11
• Mobile device compatibility: iPhone, iPad, Android 2.2+ and Blackberry 6+
• The standard turnaround time is 1 working day for the first page and 3-6 hours for each additional page
• Various discount opportunities: Each secondary page of the same website is offered at a 50% discount rate and discounts are offered for bulk orders
• Effective and efficient communication: They can be reached via the Client Area, live chat or phone
• Non-disclosure guarantee

For more details about the quality service they provide, check out their Examples page and the testimonials of their clients.

** Update: Giveaway Period Has Ended **

How to Win

To win, simply answer the following question in the comments:

If you won, how would you use the PSD2HTML conversion service?

Giveaway Details

This giveaway ends on Friday, December 23, 2011 after which the comments section on this post will be closed and you will no longer be able to leave a comment. Please leave a valid email address when filling out the comment form so that we can contact you if you have won. Please only comment once. The winners will be randomly selected using a similar method as previous Six Revisions giveaways. The first randomly selected winner will win $400 worth of services and three free pages of design to mobile template conversion. The second randomly selected winner will win $300 worth of services and three free pages of design to mobile template conversion. The winners will be announced on a separate post. You are advised to subscribe to our RSS feed so that you can be quickly notified when the winners announcement post has been published. Please note that comments are moderated and so your comment may not show up right away. Please note that comments that do not follow the instructions on how to win (described above) may not be published, or may be removed later on.

Related Content

• 50 Beautiful Retro and Vintage Photoshop Tutorials
• Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials
• 9 Photoshop Editing Tips Web Developers Should Know
• Related categories: Web Design and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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Content management systems are a wonderful tool for empowering website owners. Most of us have witnessed the power and ease of use of CMSs like Drupal and WordPress. They have changed the web development industry in a significant way.

Now, even average Internet users who have very little technical knowledge can have the ability to run and manage websites without any help from trained web developers.

Because of this CMS revolution, a major segment of the web development industry — dedicated to developing simple to complex CMSs for a broad set of users and premium themes for popular publishing platforms — has blossomed.

There are quite a few benefits to developing a site powered by a CMS. Chief among them is that the website owner is able to add and manage their website’s content, thus keeping visitors interested and search engines tuned in. And for the web professional, he has much less responsibility in maintaining the website.

But is empowering the business owner with a CMS always the way to go? Sometimes leaving tasks such as website maintenance and system upgrades to a professional leads to better results for the owner.

To explore the question of whether or not we should always deploy content management systems for our clients, let us first go through some types of clients who would not fully benefit from them.

Owners of Static Websites

Not all websites have content that constantly changes. Websites for small- to medium-sized businesses and brochure websites that provide relatively static information usually require only a few changes throughout the year, such as when featuring a new product or making an event announcement.

The brochure website of Pic Fresh (a catering company) has information that changes infrequently.

These websites just include an overview of the business, a presentation of its products and the company’s contact information. We see this with restaurants, small shops and local organizations (such as a non-profit animal shelter’s website).

Such business owners usually have a small budget, so the extra cost of a CMS might be unnecessary if they don’t use it to its full potential. Asking a professional to make a couple of changes per year could be easier and cheaper.

Owners Who Don’t Want to Be Empowered

When I entered the Web industry, I assumed that every business owner would absolutely want a CMS to manage their content. But then I had a string of clients who made it clear that they wanted absolutely no involvement in technical matters or that they would just rather a professional maintain their website after launch. This is when I decided to cater my services to this category of clients.

Some clients simply don’t want to be empowered for various reasons; whether it’s because they’re not the best of friends with technology or they just don’t want to add to their existing workload and responsibilities.

By hiring a professional, clients that fall in this category feel more confident in the changes being made to their website and they have one less thing to worry about.

Many of my clients have told me that it’s like hiring an accountant to manage their finances or a secretary to manage the office; the work is done more efficiently, and the owner has more time to focus on their field of expertise.

Owners of Websites with a Shelf Life

Some websites have an expiration date. These usually support an event, such as a conference, a cultural event or a promotion of a special deal on a product. The website promotes the event ahead of time, stays up during the event and a little while afterwards.

The single-page promotional site for a 2009 event, HDLive 9 (hdlive09.co.uk) would not fully benefit from a CMS.

Projects like these require heavy maintenance for a short period of time (several months to a year), and doing it efficiently is critical. The event’s organizers will be preoccupied with planning the event and reaching out to participants through newsletters, media, the website, email, etc.

Hiring a web professional, then, is much easier, if not essential. Empowering such a client with a CMS would do them little good.

Owners Who Rely on a Web Professional’s Expertise

We have all come across websites maintained by people who don’t follow any design or usability principles. And preventing a hapless owner from ruining their own website is difficult, which is why we so often see links in multiple colors, excessive use of bold and underlined text, mixed font families, body text the size of headings, images squeezed in here and there, navigation menus that pop out of their containers — the list goes on.

The truth is, when we let non-technical website owners maintain their own Web property, we can’t expect them to adhere to the rules of aesthetics and usability, simply because it’s not their job to know these rules.

The moment the owner takes over their CMS, we should expect that the beautiful and functional website we so painstakingly created will start to look a tiny bit (or a whole lot) less perfect. This isn’t a big problem for every website, but some websites rely a lot on detail and uniformity of content.

Poorly styled text, for example, might not look so bad on a teacher’s blog where visitors mostly seek specific information, but it can be a disaster on the website for a new fashion line where users want to get a feel for the company before browsing the collection.

Empowering owners of websites that fall into the latter category is questionable.

By the way, some Web professionals worry that a deterioration of their work will reflect poorly on them when potential clients visit their portfolio. The potential client might be impressed with a screenshot in the designer’s portfolio, but then be surprised when they click through to the actual website. For this reason, mention whether you or the owner is currently maintaining a particular website, so that potential clients are not caught off guard.

Website Maintenance as a Service

Now that we’ve gone over some examples of business owners that wouldn’t benefit from a CMS-driven website, let’s now talk about what we can do to fulfill their needs.

For site owners that don’t need a CMS but would still like to have a site that’s taken cared of, we can offer them website maintenance as a service.

The following are some benefits that come with offering website maintenance as a service.

Extra Income

Maintenance is a paid task, and you can increase your income a little or a lot, depending on:

• The difficulty of tasks that are requested
• The frequency of updates
• The number of websites you’re maintaining

Keeps Existing Clients Close

Providing website maintenance as a service strengthens your relationships with clients. Not only will you be at the top of their mind by providing long-term quality service, but you’ll also get to follow their business as it evolves. This will make you a prime candidate when they have a new project.

Promoting your services also becomes easier, e.g., when creating a mobile version of the website, or redesigning for a small discount.

Easier Upgrades

As with every technology, websites get rusty over time. A client might want to add features down the line. Adding code and updating site features will be easier if the code and product are your own. If the client has meddled with it, upgrading could entail a lot more work.

Before You Offer Website Maintenance as a Service…

The main disadvantage of maintaining websites is that it can really fill up your schedule. In case you decide to add this to your roster of services, be clear about the following.

What You’re Charging

I suggest that you offer maintenance only to customers who have been pleasant to collaborate with and who don’t give you trouble with payments. You can charge by the hour or by the amount of work done.

Overcharging can scare clients out of requesting changes, so be careful with your pricing. A website maintenance plan is a sensible approach. For example, a customer could prepay for a three-hour maintenance plan, which could be spread out over several updates during the year, equaling three hours of work for you. Or it could be a casual maintenance plan; for example, one new page of text and five new photos per month.

Here’s an idea: You can bundle these website maintenance plans as part of a new project.

What the Deliverables and Terms of Services Are

Draw a line between maintenance and redesign. Be clear on the definition of website maintenance. You could allow for minor new features, such as new icons or a fancier photo-gallery script or a new color for links. But draw the line when a request looks like a big change. You wouldn’t want to end up doing a redesign by making hundreds of gradual little changes.

Expected Delivery Time

Website maintenance work should be scheduled so that you don’t fall behind on other commitments. Ask clients to inform you of requests ahead of time (for example, an email one week in advance).

Also, give yourself enough time to fill the request so that it doesn’t interfere with other projects. My current arrangement with clients is to fill casual requests within five working days and to perform urgent updates within 24 hours. This can vary according to your own capabilities and priorities.

To Empower or Not to Empower?

The answer to that question depends on the type of client and website you’re dealing with. Empowering the owner to maintain their website is great as long as it’s worth the cost of implementing the CMS, and as long as they feel comfortable doing it.

Present the client with both options, and explain the reasons for opting for one choice over the other. Some websites absolutely need to be maintained by the owner, while others are best left to professionals. Some websites can go either way, in which case the client’s preference could be the deciding factor.

Last but not least, if you’re not willing to maintain websites yourself or are not willing to let clients do it, let potential clients know this in advance. And don’t recommend one approach over the other merely because you don’t want to offer both solutions. You shouldn’t feel inadequate for preferring one method to the other. Rather, try to excel in the services you offer, focus on your target market, and keep your clients and the Web happy!

How do you handle website maintenance? Do you use one approach over the other? What are your clients’ preferences? Share your strategies and thoughts in the comments.

Related Content

• How to Find Awesome Clients
• You Should Build Websites That Empower Site Owners
• 6 Tips for Effectively Dealing with Client Demands
• Related categories: Project Management and Web Design

About the Author

Maria Malidaki loves creating and managing websites, focusing on clean and simple design primarily using semantic HTML/CSS. Planning to also work as a vet and researcher, she specializes in building the web presence of academic and scientific events. Keep in touch with her on Twitter @mthunderkit and at her professional website at thunderkit.net.

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