I recently had a colleague of mine approach me with a conundrum. He’s a great marketer and felt he had a firm understanding of exactly what he wanted to do with a variety of web site projects he was working on, but he was just at his wits end trying to find a web developer that he could really work with. He’d contracted out with a long line of web developers that he had met in different online and offline venues, but he consistently had problems having the results of the projects he assigned be even remotely close to the outcome he envisioned. Ultimately, he concluded that he was having a difficult time communicating with the developers in helping them understand what he wanted to have accomplished, but he also suspected that a lot of those developers that he had hired simply did not possess the skill sets that that claimed they did, or that their proficiency was simply lacking. Whatever the truth actually was, he needed help and advice in determining how to more effectively evaluate and communicate with his potential developers.
The Hard Truth
The inherent problem with WordPress in particular is that it’s so incredibly easy to use and to “develop”. That’s why there is this massive oscillation between people tending to feel that “this stuff is really easy”, but then all too often becoming frustrated when they can’t find a developer that can adequately accomplish what should be simple tasks. This frustrating phenomenon happens because WordPress is such an easy-entry field. Literally anybody with half a brain can simply pay Hostgator $20 a month for a reseller account and start selling WordPress themes, add a few plugins, and call themselves a web designer. Heck… learn a few CSS commands so you can actually change some colors, and suddenly people begin to feel really empowered.
Ultimately, that’s just good enough to be really dangerous.
What most marketers are really looking for is the rather small percentage of the web development contractor pool who actually know what they are doing… at least enough to meet the needs of the marketer in question. However, most marketers have a difficult time evaluating exactly who is realistically good enough to do the work they need done.
Action steps for any given Marketer looking to engage a developer
So if you are a marketer looking to engage a web development professional, what primary factors and/or knowledge should you try to keep in mind? I’m glad you asked…
#1: Understand the basic vocabulary
Simply put, there’s no substitute for having a very basic understanding of the technologies that you are hiring developers to preform for you. Am I saying that you should learn to become a developer yourself? Absolutely not. But I believe it to be an EXCELLENT use of time to take introductory classes in PHP, CSS & HTML5. This will help you at least begin to understand the language that a developer SHOULD be able to speak… and if they can’t, then you’ll know that you should move on.
There are a lot of places to get this type of information, but I have found that I really enjoy NetTuts. Additionally, I personally have a loose affiliation with Sitepoint.com, which is actually the web development training firm that I grabbed all of my own training materials from in the 90s.
#2: Understand what, actually, IS WordPress
Forgive me if this is too basic, but it is useful to know what, actually IS WordPress. WordPress is just a program that organizes PHP, CSS, HTML & Javascript in a very specific, useful way. There are specific PHP functions that are unique to WordPress and you’ll find those in the Codex, but again it’s all PHP, and logic is logic.
In WordPress, there are really only three types of major components to consider… everything else is just a detail, depending on how you slice it. You have 1) Core WordPress which is everything that comes “out of the box”, 2) Themes which describe what a site will ultimately look like, and 3) Plugins which add functionality.
#3: Come up with a test
Once you actually have a handle on the basic technical vocabulary you need – and frankly that’s going to be different for everybody – find a developer that works with your style and who you can relate to. Consider coming up with a test… most contract developers are used to taking brief, 10-12 question tests to determine whether they have the required skill sets necessary to work on your stuff. This is literally something that they should be able to complete in just a few minutes, so don’t try to get fancy on these tests… but the goal here is for you to quickly develop a basic understanding of the developer’s skill level so you can assess whether or not they are a fit for you.
The Takeaway for the Marketer?
It’s both unnecessary and unreasonable to be completely fluent in web development processes and trends in order to conduct actionable business on the Web, but the nature of the beast requires that you develop a basic level of coding competency in order to accurately assess the quality of any web development contractor. With that said, there are plenty of genuinely solid WordPress plugin solutions that require little to no coding and will allow you to do an extensive amount of really cool stuff. To learn a bit more about that, check out this post on easy-to-use WordPress plugins built with marketers in mind.
