It’s nice to see more and more companies investing in their web sites. Despite the poor economic news around the world, web site design and marketing help is still in high demand. What’s lacking are people who know how to do it.
Experienced Web Site Design, Marketing and Maintenance People Needed
Before your feathers get too ruffled up, yes. You do know what to do. Most of you know how to do at least PART of the job. Many of you work for companies with staffs that put teams on a project. And you still have to sub-contract out for additional help with things like user experience design, or integrated marketing assistance, or meeting accessibility and mobile design requirements. Your company either had no idea these areas would be needed to build an online presence, or they were too cheap and ignored requests to hire skilled employees.
For someone to be, what I call a “holistic, well rounded web developer”, the list of skills would look nothing like what I see in job sites. They never say, “Must be qualified in or show working knowledge of the following”:
- 1. Program in any language our client(s) want to use or that we use in our company
- 2. HTML5 and younger; CSS3, younger and future versions
- 3. Organic SEO
- 4. Search engine marketing practices such as PPC, AdWords, etc.
- 5. May need to know some “black hat” techniques (hey, just being honest)
- 6. Usability standards/heuristics
- 7. User centered design/engineering
- 8. Persuasive/conversion design
- 9. Accessibility (Section 508 and PAS78 standards) or basics
- 10. Use Photoshop, Macromedia, and related tools and software
- 11. Information architecture/taxonomies for SEO
- 12. Information architecture/taxonomies for UX
- 13. Create wireframes/mockups
- 14. Gather and write Business and Functional Site Requirements
- 15. User testing
- 16. Software QA testing for functionality and usability
- 17. Performance Engineering
- 18. Have exceptional writing skills
- 19. Have exceptional business, management and communication skills
- 20. Social media marketing/networking
- 21. Content building and beneficial and non-spammy linking
- 22 Understand hosting, domains, DB setup, DNS
- 23. Mobile device design
- 24. Data analytics and tracking
