Jacob Gube: Simplifying the Formula for Success

The secret to the success of Six Revisions is, in fact, not a secret at all. They have a singular purpose – providing “Useful Information for Web Developers & Designers” – and they serve it relentlessly. This straightforward, no-frills approach with an emphasis on quality, comprehensiveness and usefulness is exactly what drives the popularity of Six Revisions. The site has cemented its reputation among the development and design community for publishing consistently exceptional content written by talented professionals who not only practice but have a true passion for their craft. Recently Fame Foundry had the opportunity to talk with Jacob Gube, Six Revisions’ founder and chief editor, about what it takes to build a community around content, what he’s learned along the way and what lies ahead for the Web and web development. FAME FOUNDRY: Please tell us a bit about your professional background. How did you get your start as a web developer? JACOB GUBE: I got started as a web developer by doing freelance graphic design work. It was something that just fell into my lap. Companies that I did design work for frequently also needed a website, and they’d often ask me, “Do you know someone who can get a website up for us?” Not wanting to miss out on an opportunity, I’d say, “I’ll give it a shot!” And that’s how I got my start. FAME FOUNDRY: What was your first big web development project? JACOB GUBE: In terms of scope, the first big web development project I had was for a company called Eclipse Window Tinting. They offered car window-tinting services and wanted a Web presence as a way to drive traffic to their store. The site had a MySQL database for providing estimates based on car make and model, year and window tint type with a simple web app that calculated the price. It also featured an image gallery of cars they’d tinted using the original Lightbox script to open large-scale images inside a modal window after clicking on its thumbnail, which was still pretty fresh and new at the time. FAME FOUNDRY: What do you love about web development? Is there anything about it that you don’t enjoy? JACOB GUBE: I love the idea of being able to reach people who have an Internet connection with the products that we create. It doesn’t matter whether they’re just next door or thousands of miles away, they will still be able to interface and use the things we make. I can’t think of one thing that I don’t enjoy about web development. Maybe supporting old browsers like IE6, which can be frustrating at times. FAME FOUNDRY: How did Six Revisions come into existence? JACOB GUBE: It came into existence on a whim. I was just coming off a failed start-up for a blog that would discuss news and reviews of technology gadgets – sort of like Engadget. It failed because we didn’t really have a passion for the subject, so producing content was difficult. That experience taught me one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned about business: in order to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to believe in and have passion for your product. I started Six Revisions a few weeks after that experience. I just woke up one day itching to start a blog. I asked myself, “What am I really good at? What can I write about and never be bored of?” By the end of that day, I had a site about web development and design up and running, a domain name secured and my first post published. FAME FOUNDRY: What was your goal when you started out? Did you aim for this level of popularity, or did it begin as more of an outlet for your personal interests? JACOB GUBE: Six Revisions was never about popularity, subscribership, page views or profit margins. It was a personal side project – an outlet for me to share the things I learned while working as a professional web developer. I didn’t expect people would even read the site, but I guess they liked what I had to say and kept coming back. FAME FOUNDRY: What is the origin of the name? JACOB GUBE: In graphic design, you usually have rounds of revision after you produce a design for a client, so that’s where “Revisions” came from. Web developers and designers often have to go through these revision cycles as well. The number “Six” is arbitrary; it just sounded good to me at the time. I didn’t spend too much time picking out a name. I wanted a site up. FAME FOUNDRY: What were some of the influences that helped you shape the site? JACOB GUBE: I’d say, of course, the only real design blog out at the time, which was very popular then and still continues to be today, Smashing Magazine. My earlier work, though, was influenced greatly by Samuel Ryan’s Wake Up Later as well as Lifehacker. FAME FOUNDRY: How did you know that Six Revisions was going to be big? JACOB GUBE: I didn’t know Six Revisions was going to be big. I hadn’t anticipated for the growth, and I was ill-prepared. In the beginning, I had to move web servers five times in a span of maybe three months because the demand kept increasing, and no host could withstand the type of traffic the site was getting. That’s why my newest web start-up, Design Instruct, had a much longer planning phase and better infrastructure that scales as the demand goes up. Design Instruct is the fruit of my two years of experience with Six Revisions. Couple that with an amazing business partner, my brother Isaac Gube, and we’ve witnessed growth much faster than Six Revisions. FAME FOUNDRY: Was there any one moment or event that you attribute as your “big break”? JACOB GUBE: Our big break was being featured on Digg for the first time. That took our traffic and subscribership from basically zero to a very sizable amount. If I were to pick one single catalyst that took Six Revisions from a hobby to a company, it’d be the Digg community. You can see how much I value Digg by looking at the layout of each post: the Digg button is the first thing you see on an article. FAME FOUNDRY: How long did you wait for that first break? JACOB GUBE:: I’d say I had to wait maybe one or two months. FAME FOUNDRY: Did you ever get impatient or doubt your chances of success in the process? JACOB GUBE: Here’s the thing: I never really had any goals or milestones that I needed to meet. I don’t think I have them now. To me, when you build a product, all you have to do is work hard on it and let your passion show, and the rest will take care of itself. I didn’t get impatient or doubt my chances because I had no aspirations to be successful. FAME FOUNDRY: You’ve said that you prefer to let things grow organically in order to allow for creativity and flexibility. How has this played out over the history of Six Revisions? JACOB GUBE: Letting things grow on their own has worked out really well for me. When you have your five-year goal-setting, your meetings about meetings, your team-building exercises and your drawn-out private beta testing, you’re wasting the time that you could be spending on making your product better. To me, building a website or web app is simple: You do it. Your users tell you what you need to work on, and you do that. This mentality has played out very well with both Six Revisions and Design Instruct because when you start with a blank slate, you let your users shape your website. Any other development philosophy besides that is guesswork. FAME FOUNDRY: What happens behind the scenes at Six Revisions? What is a typical day for you? JACOB GUBE: I dedicate most of my time to the readers and the authors, both of which are what make the website what it is. The rest of the time is spent on making sure the site is running properly. A typical day for me begins early in the morning because that’s when I’m most productive. I do most of the creative work in the morning because I’m a morning person. Little time is spent on doing anything else: I’ll quickly scan my inbox to see if there are any pressing e-mails that need my attention and respond to those. Usually, e-mails that I respond to in the morning are from authors or readers. When my productivity and creativity are waning in the late afternoon, I do the administrative work – answering e-mails that I missed in the morning, accounting, site maintenance – all the tasks that you’d consider “boring.” FAME FOUNDRY: What are some of the challenges you see in running and growing an online magazine? JACOB GUBE: The biggest challenge will always be the lack of time. There are many things you need to do but very little time to do them. You need to move quickly and make speedy decisions or else you miss your window of opportunity. FAME FOUNDRY: Six Revisions has earned a reputation for great content. Where do you draw your inspiration from, and how do you channel that inspiration into content that is in demand among the design and development community? JACOB GUBE: I get a lot of inspiration from just making websites. Many of the posts I write were inspired directly by something I was working on that day. For example, my post about clean and simple websites was inspired by working on the design for Design Instruct. I feel that I have a good grasp on what designers and developers like because I am one, so I’m able to channel that inspiration into content that people enjoy reading. FAME FOUNDRY: Is good content hard to come by? JACOB GUBE: Good content is very hard to come by, especially in the field of web design and development. That’s because being a great web developer or designer and being a great writer don’t often come in one package. So when you find people who can do both, you try and hold onto them. FAME FOUNDRY: What do you look for in good content for Six Revisions? JACOB GUBE: My definition of good content is that which is well-articulated, provides solid arguments and is written by someone who’s actually done the thing they’re talking about. When you’re inexperienced about the subject you’re writing about, it’ll show. You can spend a lot of time researching a subject, but unless you’ve actually done it, you won’t be able to write about it as well as someone who has. FAME FOUNDRY: For those aspiring to use great content to create a community around their brand, what advice would you give? JACOB GUBE: You have to start publishing great content in order to get more great content. It’s the only way you’ll attract talented writers. When they see that you’re publishing great stuff, they will want to be a part of that. FAME FOUNDRY: You’re well-known for your affinity for minimalism – a philosophy that is as apparent in your site as in your personal workspace. Do you feel this helps you from an organizational standpoint, a creative standpoint or both? JACOB GUBE: Minimalism helps me in many aspects of my work and personal life. To me, a cluttered surrounding clouds your mind. You may not know it, but you might be feeling stressed or stifled because there’s so much stuff around you. When you live a life based not on how much stuff you have, but rather on how little stuff you have, you’ll find that you have more time to spend on things that really matter. From an organizational standpoint, you don’t have a lot of stuff to organize to start with, so it’s easy to keep things in check. From a creative perspective, when you’re comfortable and you’re not bogged down by “stuff” in your environment, you can output some pretty cool work. FAME FOUNDRY: Are you still active in web development, or is your time completely dedicated to the magazine? JACOB GUBE: I’m very active in web development. I wouldn’t be able to write about it effectively unless I was. FAME FOUNDRY: How do you see the Web evolving in the next few years? JACOB GUBE: In the next few years, I’m willing to wager that you’ll see simpler and cleaner designs. I think everyone’s had enough of the loud and bright-colored, 20-large-buttons-in-your-face web designs, so there will be a shift towards simplicity, cleanliness, and more thought-out user interfaces. FAME FOUNDRY: How do you see web development evolving with mobile platforms and the iPad? JACOB GUBE: I think the mobile web development industry is beginning to pick up. More and more web developers are thinking about engineering stuff for portability and mobility. That’s partly why I think simplicity will win in the next few years. Because of the current limitations of infrastructures, mobile designs need to be lightweight. They also need to be simple because the interface is limited by the controls and screen size. FAME FOUNDRY: What are your future plans for Six Revisions? JACOB GUBE: My only plan for Six Revisions is to continue the tradition of publishing great content written by great people. That’s my one and only recipe for growth and success. As the founder and chief editor of Six Revisions, co-founder and technical editor of Design Instruct and author of MooTools 1.2 Beginner’s Guide, Jacob Gube provides both inspiration and practical instruction to thousands of peers in the web design and development community. He’s also an active web developer and designer himself specializing in front-end and PHP development – work that fuels the success of his blogs as the source of content enriched by his depth of experience. Follow Jacob on Twitter @sixrevisions.

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The Web Marketing Universe

Confusion about successful web marketing is rampant. Even for those in marketing, there's an ongoing war to maintain clarity about how the web universe works and how successful web marketing is executed today. Building an outperforming web platform is very much like building and running a retail store whose primary objective is providing a product or service.

• The store must be attractive, have a good location and be unique to attract visitors.
• The store’s layout, personnel and operations must serve the customer and make the sales process as easy as possible.
• The experience must promote the visitor to return to the store.
• The experience must transform the visitor into a customer.
• The experience must provoke visitors to tell others.
• The experience must promote customers to become repeat customers.

And while the foundational recipe for a successful website is very similar, getting there is completely different. Life happens faster online. While visitors peruse a physical store, website visitors “use” an online store. They can leave just as easily as they walked in. Their attention spans are much shorter, and their tolerance for a confusing layout or arduous pathways is low. There are no roads leading to the Internet storefront. The idea of “getting there” is completely different. The straightforward “location, location, location” mantra is replaced with a myriad of new approaches and considerations to gain the foot traffic you need to be successful online. So, from the never-ending minutia of terminology, buzzwords and techno-jargon, let’s clear the air for once and get some things straight about what makes a successful web marketing machine.

Metrics

Before anything is done, before the first photo is taken, before the first line of code is written, you must take account of what you know. In the web world, everything is in the numbers. From the unaware prospect to the loyal return customer, all possibilities and measurements must be mapped out within the sales continuum. Where do your customers come from? How much does the average customer spend with you in a year? How much is spent to gain one customer? What has your past advertising and marketing efforts yielded? Who are your repeat customers? Why do customers come back? Why do customers leave? Are you doing everything you can to measure all elements that directly and indirectly affect sales? There is much inventory and soul-searching in identifying your metrics. You must be honest about what you know and what you don’t know. You must be critical and able to grade yourself. Doing the homework here will not only guide the purpose of all your web marketing efforts, but also allows you to measure your return on investment, make adjustments and out-perform your competitors.

Utility

In the vastness of the Internet, there are two classes of websites: the digital brochure and the utility site. Most websites are the first kind––the online equivalent of a printed flyer. Yup, all the computing processors, memory, software, hardware, power and communication lines for people to read the same information that they would get from a brochure. The brochure site states its case, makes its pitch and then its done. That’s what many companies do with their brands on the Internet, and their website’s performance is a reflection of it. Your website needs to be useful, not just informative about your primary business objective. Many websites waste inordinate amounts of time and money promoting a site with no utility. Its visitors see no reason to return, and it dies right there. The precious opportunity to turn a casual visitor into a return visitor—the web version of true branding—is sadly wasted. Your website needs to find its place on the Internet. It needs to be known for something. Awareness and traffic on the web is cumulative, and all the time used to gain a visitor is wasted if the site is not worth bookmarking, sharing, remembering or revisiting. To achieve this, you must be prepared to invest in your site’s utility. You must have an offering to the public at large, without the visitor needing to be a customer. Your website needs to find its place on the Internet. It needs to be known for something.If you sell lawn fertilizer, offer a lawn care calendar for the visitor’s geographical area, e-mail alerts on care stages, free weekly lawn care tips and write a regular article. Create a place the visitor can count on, all the while promoting your brand and selling your product or service. Comparative shopping listings, mortgage amortization calculators, games, a “rare word of the day” and “your lawn care tip of the week” are all beginnings of utility for a website. If your competitors are already introducing utility in their online store fronts and developing a reputation for having a website that’s worth returning to, then you have something to worry about. Don’t wait until then. Up the ante and don’t waste another visit to your site.

Content

Many times the utility of a good website resides in the content it offers. Now this is where many websites have an identity problem. Most view their website’s static “brochure” text regarding their product or service as the website’s content. It isn’t. Content has purpose and application to the visitor beyond your primary offering. It may not apply to everyone, but it needs to be content that your audience wants to read, see, play, view, hear and interact with. Content has been and always will be king. As a result, the content maker is king. Believe it or not, writers are usually the single most important factor to the successful website core. If your website features piano playing tips in video form, then the video producer owns the role of king. Don’t regard your website as a one-time sales pitch. Invest in content and the long-term rewards will be exponential.

The idea

The challenge of utility and content represents the stage where the good idea is born. If your website doesn’t present any reason for a visitor to return, then it’s useless. Your website’s success is based on its core concept. What is it going to offer people? What is its reputation going to be? What about your content is going to make people talk about it, forward its web address, bookmark it, share it and most important, what is going to make people come back to it? This is where a good web development firm shines. The responsibility of your web development firm is to make sure the idea around your utility and content is sound and executable. Web professionals work hard to stay abreast of what the Internet landscape—and all competitors—provide. They know what people want, what’s lacking, where the opportunities are and where to drill for maximum gain.

Presentation

You’ve got your idea, you’ve found your niche, you’re creating great content––now we can talk about building a beautiful and functional website. Crafting a superstar website is its own discipline. Professionals that build memberable websites master a craft that is like no other. Once again, the Internet’s vast array of possibilities and potential are the reason so much more must be considered. Take, for example, reading a magazine. The magazine contains a catalog of content. It employs the simple interface of a table of contents, page numbers and the action of turning the pages—that’s it. In contrast, a website has multiple dimensions and depth. It does more than display your content—it’s functional. It stores content, catalogs it and queries it. It reacts. It allows for conversation and builds community. Your 24-hour Internet house is, in short, a working engine that must reflect your brand proudly, be functional and easy-to-use and run itself without you in the room. Your website is a working engine that must reflect your brand proudly, be functional and easy-to-use and run itself without you in the room. But with great power comes great responsibility—in design and function. It’s very much like building a unique, first-of-a-kind car from the ground up, combining art and precise engineering into a beautiful, functioning machine. There is a metric ton of considerations in any given website, right down to the psychology of choice. As a result, there are many amateur web designers, but very few great web builders. Still, many companies rely on traditional marketing agencies who see web development akin to the linear development of print material, television commercials or radio spots [see our article on the fall of traditional marketing companies]. In other cases, some companies employ a single individual––usually a programmer or a designer––to build a competitive website that in reality requires experts from many disciplines. Both of these extreme approaches to web building leave a trail of failed websites littered around the Internet landscape. The memorable and over-performing website requires a unique and specific combination of expertise from an array of web professionals, all working in concert on the details and all joined together on the big picture. That doesn’t mean you need teams of people working around the clock, but you will need portions of their knowledge and interactive specialties to craft it the right way the first time. In fact, the right way costs less upfront and makes your investment that much more powerful.

Traffic Building

You’ve established a good foundation with your web marketing strategy and metrics; you’ve got an online building that’s both beautiful and very useful; now the focus turns to building foot traffic. While the traffic building plan is part of the web marketing strategy, its execution is on an ongoing basis. The exact strategies and tactics for traffic building are different for each business, brand, product or service, and covering all the possibilities would be beyond the scope of this article. Effective traffic building, however, depends on one key element: the relation of a website’s utility and content to the community at large. Food for thought: In the beginning, you will start with any traffic. However, the public does reside with other websites. Those other websites have provided a platform for community. There are an endless number of online communities on everything from aardvarks to zucchini that people bookmark, remember and participate in––weekly, daily, hourly. You need to be there too. Identify those spots and begin participating in them. Be real and helpful. Promote your brand when appropriate, and promote your personality in the process. Link to some of your good content. Extend an offer outside your primary objective. Create and build a reputation. Again, there’s more to this than a simple example can convey. Simply put, there must be regular engagement with the public outside of your website. People engage with companies through the best form of advertising: word-of-mouth. The Internet just sets that on fire.

Visitor-to-Customer Conversion

The science and art of converting a visitor into a customer is unique to each web marketing plan. It begins with identifying, marking and sometimes even coding-in conversion points within the site. Conversion points can be the creation of an account, the point at which a product is sold, the submission of a contact form or the making of an appointment. The array of possible conversions are unique to the business; however, they tie directly to the bottom line. This is where the experienced web development agency brings metrics back into play. All efforts in traffic building and advertising are mapped; traffic from websites, search engines and other sources are cataloged; traffic is tracked to conversion points within the site; analysis is taken and actions to improve traffic and the rates of conversion are continuously implemented. Such complexity is beyond the expertise of traditional marketing firms or the one-man-band.

Getting Started - The Big Picture

Yes, at first glance this is a lot to take in. That’s why it’s important to interview your marketing firm to make sure they not only recognize the web marketing universe, but that can also execute on it and show results. We’re here to help. Call or write us. We promise to answer all of your questions in a straightforward manner and help you understand it all. If you’re already engaged or under contract with another firm, at least ask your firm—and yourself—the tough questions:

• What is the plan?
• Why will people come to your website?
• What will keep visitors coming back?
• What will make visitors tell others?
• What will convert visitors to customers?
• How is it performing?

And most of all: What will make people fans of your website? This is ultimately the goal of any web marketing campaign, and it's indicative of any superstar website. From local dentists to international corporate brands, anyone can reach the apex of online marketing, win more customers and gain market share for less money. Remember: fans do the marketing for you.

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