I knew the answer to the question even before I asked it. A somewhat knowing laugh sounded out from the speaker phone. I winced.
“No.”
The client looked at me and began to scribble a few notes. 15 minutes later after we hung up the phone he turned to me and said
“I have a few questions about the points you raised.”
“I thought you might.” I replied.
I have an unwritten rule. The rule is simple. Give my best to each client. This sometimes requires asking questions of vendors that provide goods and services to my clients. I have another unwritten rule. Try not to badmouth those vendors. I’ve broken this rule many times but I’m trying to be better about it. In this case I succeeded – mostly.
The client had purchased an online solution for their small credit union. The solution provided online banking services from a company called Worldwide Interactive Services, Inc. (WWIS). The solution also included WWIS’s online website editing tool – which is what I was reviewing with my client. It’s not a bad tool. I just wouldn’t call it a great tool either. To be fair, I haven’t given it a full test drive yet but will soon and I may come back and post more about it later. The product is called, you guessed it, Site Builder.
WWIS’s version of Site Builder is based on the ASP programming language. The company touts the product as “You have complete control over the colors, content, layout, images and more.” Well, yes and no. You can do all those things though I’m not sure what the “more” refers to. But the method for completing them leaves a bit to be desired. I admit that I am critical of template based WYSIWYG tools but what struck me is how this tool defeats it’s purpose. It reminded me of “yes, we have no bananas” in that it’s confusing and there seemed to be a number of ‘gotchas’ in the interface. On the one hand it was designed to be intuitive and simple to use. On the other, it had few safety nets and limited choices.
The Site Builder application was designed to allow a non-technical person build a website. Read: small business owners and their support staff. One big problem is that it isn’t full proof. There are plenty of ways someone can make a mess of their website. Example: the product has no backups. None. Once the page is edited it’s live. No going back. The tech that was giving me the demo suggested I copy and paste my code into Notepad and save as a backup. I winced again when I heard this and I saw more scribbling from the corner of my eye.
What I’d like to see here is a bit more emphasis on user friendly interface design! As in, protect the user from themselves. I know it isn’t easy but I think it should be the goal. I admit that there needs to be some level of reasonable expectation to use a CMS like Site Builder, but it’s also a bit of a stretch to ask a person (with tech skills or not) to remember to do mundane tasks like copy and paste as a backup. Backups should be built in and the user should have to think about them!
I’ll be working with this product in the near future and I’m actually looking forward to it. I was told by the tech that there is another version in the works. I’m looking forward to seeing it and hope that it addresses the issues I saw in the first go round.
Oh, and the question I asked was if Site Builder produced code that followed the W3C guidelines – what is often referred to as valid code. The programmers that wrote the core of this application neglected to include a DOCTYPE declaration for starters. So my validator simply stops there. I like to see valid code when possible. I’d love to see a CMS convert all those miscellaneous characters into valid HTML or XHTML.
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