And Proposed Web Developer Power Ranking

For most organizations, the value of "Web Developers", "Web Designers", and "Web Architects, depends upon how much traffic they deliver. Following an unsuccessful search for a site that ranks Web services providers in terms of this ultimate goal, I developed a ranking system to gauge my own effectiveness. With the 2011 NCAA Tournament fresh in my mind, that ranking system is presented here in terms that hopefully will engage and draw a broader audience into the discussion.

"Basketball" is pickup games, the NCAA Tournament, the NBA. All are "basketball" with potentially great talent at all levels.

"Web developers" are those who can cut and paste html better than joe six-pack, are actively building top ranked sites, are actively developing the top Web communications systems on the planet. All are "web developers". There is potentially great talent at all levels.

In basketball, there are obvious distinctions between pickup games, the NCAA, the NBA. In Web development, there are also obvious distinctions, just not the same level of widespread understanding of the distinctions.

Site traffic is THE scoring system to measure level of achievement in Web communications. If there is no traffic, there is no communication, no value. If there is great traffic, there is great communication, great value. The highest traffic site on the WWW is Google, next Facebook, next YouTube, and so on. The top few are metaphorically speaking not just NBA players, they are the superstars.

At the other extreme end of the scale, traffic is measurable through various analytic tools. That is most of the other approximately 200 million sites that make up the WWW, playground and high school basketball to continue the metaphor.

Sites that break into the top 10 percent of traffic worldwide are ranked by an outfit called  Alexa . To continue the metaphor, that is roughly comparable to NCAA basketball, the top 10 percent achievers in the game.

The remainder of this article proposes a scoring system to measure relative level of achievement at the "big dance" level. The hope is to improve decision making processes for developers, businesses, and organizations who have their "eye on the prize", the prize in this case being site traffic - communication of a message.

At its core, the Web is not a video game, parlor trick, voodoo or black magic. Done well, the Web is people communicating with people, precisely as originally intended by Sir Tim Berners-Lee .

Besides feel good anecdotes and cool designs, there are concrete ways to measure the effectiveness of Web communicators. Not all developers are good communicators. Some make gorgeous sites, that seldom get viewed. That is art, not communication. There is undeniable value in art, the value is measured in the eyes of the beholder. Artful interpretation of exactly what the buyer wants to see is a popular method of selling Web development services. Giving businesses what they need versus what they want requires discipline, and the often difficult task of knowledge transfer.

Given the relative level of work v benefits, it is little wonder that even potentially great communicators throw up their hands and spend the budget on design versus communication. It is the easy sell. Hopefully the client will derive enough benefit to come back when their level of understanding increases.

$33 million in "Cool" Search Design

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuil

Those who say the Web does nothing for them may be 100 percent correct. No eyeballs = no value, just like any form of media communication.

Misunderstanding the Web

"The Web just doesn't do much for us." I hear that phrase far too often, when I personally can see many ways the Web could be working for them. The degree of misunderstanding is so great that it is difficult to know how to begin relating possibilities. I know I am not alone.

People are interested in a product, or there would not be a viable market. Feeding that interest through online communication is easy, for those of us who know how.

The next hurdle is convincing owners that large sums of cash and endless hours spent pondering "makeup" is wasted.  It truthfully does not matter what a site looks like until somebody is looking at it.  When visitors view and use a site, better ways of presenting the information quickly appear. Content first, then layout, then design, it is a simple and logical progression.

On the Web, content is king, time the dominant parameter, design possibilities endless , final designs seldom final. HTML5, CSS3, Flash - No Flash on mobile, design decisions are temporary, because the possibilities change almost as quickly as the future becomes past. Being able to change the design quickly is much more important than a glamourous starting design.

Body of Work

Body of work is the catch phrase this year for NCAA basketball teams who did or did not make it to the "the big dance". Every year, the last few slots are controversial. The last few teams to get in, make it, based on a "body of work" the committee believes will bring the most value to the show.

The Point of the Game on the Web is to Deliver Site Traffic.

The point of being in business is to promote and provide a product, cause, or both. Promotion requires communication in one form or another.

Traditional media outlets are expending major resources promoting their online presence, precisely because they understand better than the mainstream public where promotions and mass communications are headed. The Web is old and new media, in all its forms, all together and searchable. The viewer base includes practically everyone on earth. It is big, but not unlimited. There will be winners and losers.

Driving traffic to a site is the point of traditional media promotions. Traffic is the Web metric that trumps all others, because it signals delivery of a message. Delivering a message is the unchanging purpose of all past, present, and future media communications.

To Determine Winners, Look at the Scoreboard

In NCAA basketball, the goal is for the ball to drop through the net. That is an easily measurable goal. Track it over the course of each game, through many games in a tournament, crown a champion. That is simple enough.

The Web has metrics to gauge effectiveness of message delivery, metrics that determine whether or not the "ball has dropped through the hoop".

Alexa site traffic rankings answer the question "How many people are visiting a site?" Only sites in the top 10 percent of traffic worldwide are included. If a site is not there, it may be a basketball bouncing around the rim in the NCAA tournament. Or it may be a dozen three pointers in a pickup game in the backyard. No matter, it has not dropped through the net at "the big dance".

Google Page rank is Google's fabled system for interpreting what sites are important on the Web. The system is named after Google co-founder Larry Page. Page rank is important primarily because the longest runnning number one Alexa traffic rank site in the world is Google.

Being flatlined is a good thing, when that line is at the top! Page rank (Pr) affects Google search results, so Page rank ultimately affects how much traffic a site is likely to get from Google searches.

Sites can become popular without Google. Massive word of mouth is easier in these days of social networking. Old media advertising, although hugely more expensive than a website, still works. Page rank is secondary to site traffic in terms of importance, but an easy metric to gather, and a reasonable predictor of future impact on the WWW, as long as Google remains the highest traffic site on the Web.

Proposed Method for Gauging Web Developer Effectiveness

Add the accumulated percentiles of Alexa traffic statistics and Google Page ranks per developer to determine individual developer effectiveness. The glamour of the methodology is how simply it measures the ultimate goal. Much like measuring how many times a basketball goes through the net. Traffic is the goal, who is generating traffic now, what are prospects for the future?

In less than an hour per developer practical real world performance can be measured to compare with the past and with the accomplishments of others.

For Alexa traffic, I propose a simplified percentile style result to four decimal places. I set 200 million web sites as the constant for the calculation. (The real number hovers somewhat above 200 million). Alexa only ranks sites in top 10 percent of traffic worldwide, so this is the big stage, the big dance, comparable to the NCAA tournament, not NBA, but definitely not playground. It requires having some sites that compete at this level.

Using Google's 1 in Alexa traffic as an example (1/200,000,000 x 100) - 10 = -10.0000, change the sign = 10.0000 
Add the Google Page rank. Again using Google as the site example, another perfect 10.
Total of 20 points for the Google site.

If 4 developers are required to develop and maintain the site, each shares 1/4 credit, a 5.0000 ranking per developer. A spreadsheet template in .ods format is linked below to simplify calcs.

My results for past three months and past month, are 36.5186 and 43.3590 respectively.

The numbers are climbing, good! Because the number measures exactly what I am working to achieve - high traffic and search engine placement. I HAVE A SCOREBOARD! Actually half of the scoreboard, call it a scorecard. A scoreboard requires comparing to another scorecard. Scores are a simple calculation using readily available, completely independent metrics that measure success in terms of the ultimate goal.

Rather than measuring basketballs falling through a hoop, I measure site visitors, and probability of showing up in a Google search. Basketballs through a hoop is THE critical measurement for a basketball game. Traffic and search result positioning are THE critical measurements for successful Web promotion.

My Details:

• 5 alexa ranked sites
• 9 Pr ranked sites
• Dollars spent on traditional media advertising = $0
• Dollars spent purchasing links and backlinks = $0
• Social media at the simplest levels, no gaming ie buying "followers" and "friends".

Discussion:

There was one Alexa ranked site that had no Pr rank. That particular site was 90th percentile for three month average, 94th percentile for prior month. It will be interesting to see if and when that site appears as a 1 in Google Page rankings.

Also interesting to me is a 8.5670 3 month average Alexa site that is a Pr of 1. I have sites that do not break into the Alexa rankings that have a Pr of 1. How does a site ranked in the top few percent (10 - 8.567= 1.433 percent) of traffic on the WWW get stuck with the lowest possible Google Page rank? A very popular brand new site is one possibility. This site is over 2 years old and has dropped in Pr while its Alexa traffic continues to climb.

This particular site exhorts people to take control of their own web presence and stop wasting money on internet advertising. Google, being a "not evil" corporation would never use their dominance to influence public opinion, just because 98 percent of their revenue comes from Web advertising, would they?

I am not the only one asking this question. Hopefully people asking questions like this are the reason for Schmidt's exit and signal a less exploitative strategy for Google going forward. "Don't be evil" may directly conflict with investor profits. In that case, which is the higher obligation? That is a big question. For now, I will settle for proposing a method to measure and compare results of Web development efforts, over time, and among developers.

NBA teams and managers will closely watch the NCAA tournament. Organizations seeking promotion of their products and services on the Web, will do well by seeking developers with proven ability to score traffic and Google search prominence at the "big dance" level.

More..

The only really interesting result I could find in a Google search for "web developer power ranking"

 -- http://www.mobinode.com/2010/12/13/gurudigger-com-–-web-engineer-power-ranking/

Discovering Alexa Traffic Rank - plug the domain name into the last position followed by a #

 -- http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/microsoft.com#

Discovering Page Rank - Google claims to be backing away from such a simple measurement. Page rank is also available as a browser extension for firefox, and the Google Toolbar

 -- http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

Alexa traffic graphs for Apple, Microsoft, Twitter:

Alexa-Traffic-Apple

Alexa-Traffic-Microsoft

Alexa-Traffic-Twitter

I have said for some time 2011 is the year of twitter, the traffic graph confirms my beliefs.

Most great Web developments of the past decade came about as the result of a one or two man initial development team. Google, twitter, facebook. Human capital still trumps all else.

The key to my development efforts is eZ Publish CMS. eZ makes it easy to build a site out of the ground quickly, then easy to maintain multiple sites. I think I tried every open source solution fairly long and hard before finally working my way through the eZ Publish learning curve. My journey of eZ Publish exploration is documented at one of my top traffic ranked sites:

 -- http://www.webportalmaster.com

 -- http://ez.no

Emails that start off "I visit your web site often just to browse", makes the Web in general and this developers efforts in particular feel worthwhile.

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