20% of what you do today will be responsible for 80% of the day’s results. 20% of a company’s clients will be yield 80% of the company’s revenue. I can imagine that almost everyone is familiar with the 80/20 Principle, also known as the Pareto Principle. Pareto was an Italian economist who discovered an economic pattern: roughly 80% of the world’s wealth was in the hands of 20% of the people.
This imbalance, as it turns out, reveals itself not only in money, but in virtually any situation where there exists a relationship between input and output or cause and effect. And that’s just about everything. The imbalance is not necessarily 80/20. It can be 70/30 or 90/10. The point is that there is a significant imbalance.
It’s logical, when you think about it. Not all of what you do can possibly have the same effect on an outcome. Not every design will get the same amount of attention. In a 10-slide presentation, perhaps two or three slides will have the most impact. A site we just finished has several nice features, but only one or two of these will set it apart from similar sites. We paid the most attention to these features.
As a web designer, developer, or whatever it is you do, it’s a good idea to go into 80/20 mode at several points during your project. What are you doing right now? Is it part of the important 20% or the trivial 80%? Is that button really a show-stopper? The 80% is not bad, it’s just not as important. Utilizing the 80/20 Principle can help you set the right priorities. Short on time? Do 20% stuff. It will have the most effect.
Think about it… How much of Microsoft Word do you really use, Or any app for that matter?
Recommended reading: The 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch. This book is a must have. Richard really goes geekily in-depth. The 80/20 Individual is also quite good, but you should really like the subject if you decide to read both.
JavaScript guru Peter-Paul Koch writes about the need to reach out to front-end developers at large companies. The ones using web standards should be encouraged to evangelize. Why? To in turn encourage non-standards-based (is that a word?) developers at other large companies who might not otherwise be convinced by the predominantly freelance and small-business based world of standards evangelists. Not that there’s anything wrong with those, mind you.
One of the article’s comments brings up an interesting point. While I don’t own a large company, we do serve some very large clients. And one thing I’ve learned from them is something anyone who sells anything could probably tell you: if you want to sell something, whether it be a product, a service, or an idea, you’re best chance is to first speak the language of the person to whom you’re selling. Once you’ve done that, you need to show the buyer what’s in it for them. At big companies, it’ll usually come down to the subject of money.
Peter-Paul makes an interesting point. Developers at big companies speak the language of other big-company developers. They have different work environments, often high-stress and high-profile projects, and they often work on one aspect of a project (e.g. only HTML/CSS/JavaScript). While this could be a great first step, we need to remember that getting large companies to embrace web standards will not only involve convincing the developers, but also the management of these companies. What’s in it for them? How’s this stuff gonna make them money? Got your pitch ready? Sell it.
(Update 2006.08.31: it seems that the copycat has removed his/her pages! Thus, the links in this post are no longer valid.)
This has got to be the worst copycat job ever. Not only do they steal tons of the copy straight from our website, but they’ve actually linked to Cinnamon, presumably being too lazy to even copy the text in full.
The idiocy peaks with the apparent lack of a decent search-and-replace job, as the name Cinnamon is to be found on the very first page.
These people can’t even do a decent job of copying a website, let alone build one. You can hire them, if you can even find their contact information.
Cursor Webdesign, if you want to run your own business, write your own copy.
