Web Development – Art or Science?

This is going to be one of those theoretical deep-thought and “think piece” posts.. The kind that makes you ask yourself.. “Is this dude on acid!?” because after all, the title alone reminds me of a conversation I overheard two hippies having at a music festival.. asking each other “what is art? is that art? is this art???” lol. I will try not to get THAT deep, but I did want to do something outside the box today, so the rant begins now..

Web Development.. What is it?? A product?.. A service?… It’s certainly not a physical item your client can hold and admire.. But if I had to give it a definition, I would call it the first source of communication between customers and a business/company. I very rarely seek out an item to purchase without looking into it online.. If the website or feedback about the item is not up to par, I look elsewhere.. THAT friends, is easily the biggest consumer change of the last decade. Of course I could go on forever about the importance of a website, but instead I’m going to talk about all aspects of web development, and what your biggest priorities should be while creating a landing page or full scale website.

Content is always King – SCIENCE
The one and only thing that drives people to your website is the content, you MUST have something with either educational, or entertainment value in every single circumstance. I have often heard people say, “My website looks great and it’s optimized for my keywords, but my bounce rate is very high and I don’t know why.” If your bounce rate is higher than 50%, your doing something wrong. Even if your website isn’t content oriented, you can still find ways to make content available – A great way to do this, is to provide links to additional (content locked) pages, then you have the option to monetize that “roll-over” traffic and receive likes, +1′s, or other social media kudos.

Clean and Simple Navigation – ART and SCIENCE
When I create the layout for any of my designs, I always ask myself one thing – can my Grandma navigate through this site easily? If there is any doubt in my mind, I start over. One of the biggest things I have learned as an internet marketer, and please forgive me for saying this, but it’s that the average web visitor is not Albert Einstien, in fact, I have discovered that the more I dumb down the adverts/creative, the better my offer tends to perform (some offers more than others). You can’t just lay down a cluster of design/information and expect results. Keeping a site clean and eye-appealing takes a a great deal of give and take. As a foodie would say, presentation is a huge part of the culinary experience… The same goes for web development, you must present the sites content in a way that makes your visitor want to experience more of what you have to offer.

Theme and Color Scheme – ART
I labeled this aspect as ART, but there is a tiny amount of science involved as well when it comes to picking your color scheme and theme.. I wrote a post titled “Subliminal Messages in Internet Marketing” that will better help you understand the science here – Blue color schemes can be used to depict professionalism and soft cornered themes can be used to demonstrate comfort and an easy going atmosphere – so on and so forth. But ART is hands down the winner, as it takes a skilled artist to create a theme that flows and visually describes the websites/business’s attributes.

Marketing, Tracking, and Split Testing – SCIENCE
When I develop a website for a client, I always give a free consultations on how they can manage, launch, and propel their site to the top, and in that conversation I determine whether or not they intend on purchasing traffic, or going the long haul haul with SEO. The reason I ask these questions, is because their answers factor in on the back end of the project. If a client is planning on running large scale paid traffic campaigns, then setting up high end tracking software is necessary. If your doing high volume, its very important to track every aspect of visitor trending, and then be able to split test different copy, function, images, color, and even layout. There is much more science behind this than the average consumer would ever know.. If you don’t optimize your website to bring the best results/ROI, your traffic is a complete waste of money/time and other resources. This in my opinion, is the absolute most important aspect of any web development job, because if you can pinpoint the highest converting design, your financial returns can go up dramatically. I have seen extremely simple changes (like font color/images), make or break campaigns… The key here is to find out what changes are performing best, and theoretically piece together the perfect website.. If you can successfully optimize your website, you know you are getting the highest returns possible, and that my friends, is one of the reasons I love this industry…

Banner Creatives and Adverts – ART and SCIENCE
These two aspects correlate hand in hand with paragraph above, because tracking and split testing these items is just as important as tracking/testing the website itself. BUT, there is a huge amount art and science involved. When I create banner adverts, I generally keep a couple factors in mind:
#1. Will this media buy place my creatives in a position where my visitors eyes are forced to look. Always buy ad space that is “above the fold” (the part of the website seen before scrolling down). This will guarantee that the visitor will take a better look at the banner, and their eyes will not glance by in a fast paced scroll while looking for the content they searched for.
#2. Load Times – You MUST have high end servers that can handle your traffic loads. If your server can load an image faster than the website its displayed on, you have a huge advantage, because it will be the first thing the visitor see’s. If you have slow banner load times, your wasting your advertising dollars, because there is always a possibility that the visitor will scroll or click past before your banner is visible.
#3. Does the banner catch the viewers eye? I always check out the traffic source first (where the banners will be displayed), and then attempt to make the banner look like it is not supposed to be there. I consider my biggest creative strength to be my “shock and awe” mentality. If you can use an image or headline that forces the viewer to focus on it, and contemplate why its there, your 10 steps ahead of everyone else. You must force the visitor to acknowledge and ponder.
#4. Does the banner look appetizing? A purely graphical element – If your banner looks better than the site its displayed on, the visitor is more apt to click on it.. It’s all about the art of attraction – make your viewers fall in love with the design so that they want more of it.
#5. Branding. Embed the websites brand into the ad so the viewer feels safe clicking on it. This will demonstrate professionalism and allow the viewer to feel comfortable making a purchase or completing a lead with personal info. Nobody wants to tell a hobo their phone number, the same goes for websites.

Social Media Functionality – SCIENCE
Facebook hit a benchmark last year when they overtook search engine traffic volume. In the world of today, your website must have strong social media power. This means that all websites should have proper sharing function. Not only should you embed things like the “+1″ or “like” buttons, but you should also have your content set up in a way that when it is shared, the proper images and textual description are used. If a visitor attempts to share your links or content, you need to have the social media site spider and load exactly what you want it to.. You simply cannot afford to have irrelevant pictures or information displayed on your social media links, as it will detour other potential visitors from clicking.

If I personally had to give web development a label – art or science… I would have to say that SCIENCE is the winner here. Others may disagree, but as a performance marketer, I fully understand all the sciences behind different traffic generation techniques, and the importance of tracking and testing. If you agree/disagree, or if I missed any aspects of web development that you feel are important, please start a discussion below and we can continue on with a debate that has no purpose besides a web developers self worth.

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