Shenanigans: Book of Lists
A little late to the punch on this one, but I couldn't let it slide without offering up my two cents:
In Charlotte Business Journal's 2007 Book of Lists, the listing of Web Design Companies ranked Charlotte companies by number of websites designed locally in 2006. Quality is purely subjective, so that's really the only quantitative, non-biased criteria by which Charlotte companies can be ranked. I get it.
That said, I call shenanigans on pretty much the top four companies, based solely on their reported numbers. For brevity's sake, I'll just break down the numbers for the company ranked first on the listing—I'll refer to them as Company X.
Company X reportedly kicked out 1,250 websites in 2006. That's a big number. There are essentially 260 work days in a year, not including holidays. So, even if the 5 designers at Company X worked all 260 available days of the year, that's an average of 4.8 websites per day! That's more than a little hard to believe. The only way it makes sense, is if it's a tally of total web pages, not complete sites. I would give them that number, but the ranking is based on sites not pages.
Now, this isn't some petty ploy to get Studiobanks further up the list—we'll happily ride the bottom quarter of the list and continue to push the quality of our work. I just found the numbers to be unbelievable enough to call into question the credibility of the ranking.
If someone wants to debunk my math, by all means do so. I would actually like to understand the legitimacy of the reported numbers.
FEATURED: Varji & Varji
I've made 8 websites already today...I don't see what your beef is Banks.
Robbie wrote this...change above from Banks to Robbie.
yeah, i'm up to 4 today... and i'm a print designer.
As an employee for "Company X" I agree with Robbie that our number is misleading and I will suggest a solution.
A large number of our websites every year are template sites that we sell, create, and host. Each site is pretty personalized, i.e. not a robot site, but we have the process down to a quickness. I actually finished the art for 4 sites today in about 30 minutes.
I would say we probably built 125 to 150 unique websites when discounting templates, split between 5 designers and 3 programmers.
I know similar math is true for at least one of the others at the top of the list.
Listing template sites beyond the first original design has little value. Counting the number of websites in general isn't really that valuable past a certain point, but as you said, quality is off the table.
The biggest improvement I think they can make is to define it as the number of UNIQUE websites, getting rid of templates, robots, etc. This will add some clarity to the list.
This happens in every industry and shouldn't be taken too seriously. The list will mainly be used by people to mass email/spam a ton of uninterested companies about their useless services. I wouldn't feel too bad that you're lower on the list.
At worst you'll receive a little less spam emails.
Seth - I would not discount the value of being listed as a top company in your industry by the Business Journal. We have gotten many leads from potential clients who found us on the list. Being at the bottom doesn't bother us - we will always push quality over quantity. Further, when people review the list they are likely to visit the listed company's websites. That quickly separates the contenders from the pretenders.
I couldn't agree more. Quality over quantity is far more important. Templates are easy to throw up on a server and call it custom..
You would think that a potential client would think to themselves "...if company x pumps out that many sites in a year, how important would I be to them? What level of unique identity would my site have over the other gazillion sites?" Though, in counter argument, one could also assume that the companies lower on the list are start ups or some guy in a garage. Um... mentioned in Business Journal is good yes, but remind me what the point of the list is again (not having seen it)? I'm not seeing the point here?
Side note: If an employee of company x checks out Studiobanks' blog then that says a lot about your quality (which is by far more important than quantity).
Whatever I'm voting for ROBOCOP.
Banks is right, being at the top of this list (despite its actual or perceived legitimacy) has value. We have seen some significant new business that can be partially attributed to the listing.
A client that would go for someone at the top of this list and a client that would go for the more boutique shops would typically be very different in their needs and goals in my opinion. People go to Studiobanks want unique dynamic design and web based marketing. People that go to Company X are national associations and distributors, counties, hospitals, etc. You know, the real exciting stuff.
And trust me, we sell our listing, but when we first saw it, anyone worth their salt around here laughed at the criteria.
Glad you posted this Robbie, cool discussion.
If I was the Business Journal and wanted to give a more accurate assessment of the amount of websites local design firms developed over the course of a year I would take a page out of the IRS playbook. On April 15, 1987, when the I.R.S. began requiring Social Security numbers for dependent children listed on income-tax returns, seven million American kids vanished overnight.
Perhaps the Journal should require the actual URLs of the websites companies developed. I would not be surprised to see the overall number of websites claimed to drop dramatically.
Jason, I'm happy to see this turned into a discussion and not some flame war. I was really just after some clarification. There is some merit to every facet of design, so I didn't want you to think I was putting down your employer. Much like the hundreds of thousands of people who use Wordpress blogs, sometimes people only need a template.
If anything, I think we've come up with some valid and reasonable ideas to put a little more scrutiny on the Book of Lists ranking. Said ideas would only boost competition, which should push everyone to work harder than they did the year before.
Word.