Review of Web Design in Russia

Smashingmagazine.com, which is an endless source of information and inspiration for Web people, has just published a sophisticated article about what Web design in Russia looks like. Smashing Magazine has chosen Russia to be the first in the series of “Global Web Design” and there really must be a reason for it!

The article is everything you ever wanted to learn about Russian Web design. It’s a bit of history and a lot about current state of things. It’s an interview with two Russian Web designers, describing life of Russian Web developer and telling you about differences between Russian and Western designs. It’s a showcase of creative agencies and freelancers (and I am sure they will get tons of work after this review!). And then, there is a huge list of Russian Web designs.

And… comments did impress me! Works of Russian Web designers got amazing feedback although some said they could not even think of Web design in Russia before!

9 Things We Don’t Like in Project Briefs

1. “etc.”
2. “CRM (or CMS or any other) capabilities” (without clear definitions)
3. “Clone of…”
4. “Here is code from my previous developers”
5. “My developer told me it will take you … hours”
6. “We need a quote for everything!”
7. “Home page like digg.com”
8. “I will provide all details when I select a provider”
9. “I need Flash developer with Java, PHP, and .Net skills”

German Online Marketplaces for IT Projects

English-speaking marketplaces where you can find freelancers are well known and include such monsters as elance.com, odesk.com, and guru.com. German outsourcing platforms are much less popular and of course demand good German knowledge: just for bidding there and for communicating with your clients once you win a project.

Here, we’ll speak of two marketplaces. The first is www.mondayworks.de. Available in German and English, it lists lots of IT-related projects but only few of them are active. Bidding for others has already closed. That’s because of the fact that a new project appears on MondayWorks approximately once in a week or two, so there’s no hunt for projects (you get an email with notification) and you have time to prepare for a bid. Paid subscription is 5.70 Euro/month and you get 5 credits for bids, which is more than enough.

The other more or less active marketplace is www.freelancermap.de. Be very careful with them if you decide to purchase a subscription. Once your paid period is over, they keep “billing” you by sending invoices. After few months you will get an email from a debts collecting firm that will ask you to pay some Euros to cover your invoices from Freelancermap.de and services of the collectors. If you ask Freelancermap.de what’s going on, they will tell you that they have a new management and you can not in fact cancel your subscription by email. If you go ahead and pay the outstanding invoices, you will soon get a new email with new invoices and so on and so forth. We feel that we must warn everyone of these unhealthy and scam operations of Freelancermap.de. Those guys don’t care about their karma.

Executives Consider Zend Certification the Main Criterion When Hiring PHP Developers, According to Sibers

Sibers has released a press release dedicated to the role Zend PHP certification plays.

Survey shows the thoroughness decision-makers employ when investigating software outsourcing. Objective proof of practical skills is the decisive factor in favor of certified developers.

Novosibirsk, Russia, April 2, 2009 – Sibers LTD, a Russia-based software outsourcing company, performed analysis of how decision making of executives looking to hire offshore developers changed in the last three months. The survey, conducted among selected current and prospective clients, revealed a significant tendency: a heightened level of cautiousness during the process of selecting a provider. Sibers analytics noted a longer period of hiring developers and weighting reasons for each supplier that takes part in the tender. The number of competing providers has also increased with the larger role of Eastern-European software companies.

Sibers experts conclude that it is the depth and character of hiring criteria that changed the behavior of product managers and investors. Prospective customers take into consideration a much larger number of decisive factors now, which they compare providers against. While attractive prices and a well-organized portfolio were the main criteria before December 2008, new customers are focused on objective methods of evaluating practical skills of their future suppliers. A universal and well-recognized tool is needed, and Zend PHP Certification is found to be an unbiased standard that helps to make their decision.

The Zend PHP certification is considered a worldwide standard for proof of practical skills for PHP developers. The target group of customers agreed that a successfully passed certification provides extra assurance that the code is written according to global PHP community standards.

“While a degree in CS assures theoretical competence, and a portfolio demonstrates abilities, the certification reveals solely the practical experience possessed by a programmer,” confirms Sibers PHP-Team leader Valery Makarenko.

Sibers contributes to the best software development practices by thorough training courses for its PHP professionals. It is confirmed by the fact that 13% of all PHP certified developers from Russia work at Sibers. The growing popularity of Zend PHP Certification in Russia demonstrates the awareness of best practices among Russian programmers who keep in step with the latest PHP technology.

“Our customers tell us that their development managers are finding Zend certification a useful tool in the hiring of PHP experts and both Zend Framework and PHP 5 certifications help those managers to validate practical skills. The Zend sponsored certifications use exam topics that are specified as competencies required in practice and are developed by a neutral board of global PHP community experts,” said Susie Sedlacek, vice president for global services at Zend Technologies. “We are pleased that the huge uptake in PHP in the Russian market also reflects the strong demand for Zend Certified Engineers with pertinent PHP and Zend Framework skills in that market, and at companies like Sibers.”

Looks Like Panic in the Outsourcing World?

Will Outsourcing prices fall in next two years?
What sectors or industries continue to grow despite global recession?
Is IT outsourcing seeing a decline given the slowdown?
Representatives of which industries will not decrease IT spending in 2009?

These are just few hot questions in LinkedIn Answers. What’s the matter? Crisis? No.

It is the fresh press-release by Gartner that claims that all prices for outsourcing services will fall.

However, if you read until the end, you will see that this press release ends up with a paragraph about the fall of India’s outsourcing operations (a major argument?). I dare to assume that the price fall (if to happen) will be due to the market inertia when businesses switch to out-of-India-sourcing not willing to pay significantly more than they are used to. This way worldwide prices *may* become more or less equal.

Anyway, it is all about what may happen and what may not. I would focus on just one thing: work.

Software and Web Development from Design Point of View

When you decide to get your software or website done, you go outsourcing and hire professionals. What should an outsourcing company do to successfully complete a project? Well, the scheme of the process is pretty simple. Its realization is not too obvious in many cases but let’s dig a bit deeper into four components of it.

1. The core of development process

a. Business Vision Document

Every project must have its goals defined and you should be able to answer the following questions:

• What is the business goal for you as the business owner?
• What benefit will you get after launching your project?
• What benefits will the project’s users get?
• And the last but not the least, what users’ needs does it cover?

If you are satisfied with the answers, if you and the end users are happy, the project lives long. This is what the Business Vision Document describes: the business idea and the goals that the product is to reach.

It’s a very important document as it inspires the whole team: developers and designers get clear understanding of the project goals and work becomes more efficient.

So, you should start any programming or any new business with working out:

• Business goals
• Users’ benefits
• Clear description of the product idea for team and customer

b. Functional Requirements Specification

Ok, general words about the product have been said, the idea is clear and it’s high time to step to the specification with detailed requirements, so that the development team and you have the same understanding of what they are going to create. A perfect variant is when you know what you want in every little detail and have documented it in the appropriate format that we understand. But it’s also ok if you have got only an idea. Our specialist will specify functional requirements in the process of communication with you asking certain questions that help to understand the details.

Functional Requirement Specification is the key document in understanding what the product is to do and what it is NOT to. If you don’t limit requirements, then development will last forever. But if they are specified, development process becomes clear and predictable.

c. UI design/Wireframes

We have described the functionality of how the product is going to work. But what should it look like? How to understand what the user experience will be like? What is the most efficient way to design the interface, so that users would be happy and enjoy their experience? All of it is under responsibility of the UI designer professional. On the base of the above documents – Business Vision and Functional Requirements Specification – they create wireframes, which is a schematic representation of the user interface, layout of all the pages and UI elements placement together with the description of their behavior.

Who needs it? In fact, everybody! You get the understanding of how UI works, graphical designer gets all needed details to create a unique style, look and feel of the interface, developers get much clearer understanding of the final look of the product.
Here’s what Wikipedia says about wireframing:

A website wireframe (also “web wire frame”, “web wireframe”, “web wireframing”) is a basic visual guide used in web design to suggest the layout of fundamental elements in the interface. Because of this they are often completed before any artwork is developed. When completed correctly they will provide a visual reference upon which to structure each page. Wireframes also allow for the development of variations of a layout to maintain design consistency throughout the site. This is an important part of the initial development stage because it creates user expectations and helps to develop an awareness of and familiarity with the site.
Creating a set of wireframes for any project also acts as a way to communicate with clients and stakeholders such as content creators, engineers, and developers. Over the course of a project the wireframing exercise functions as a stable base on which to consider changes, diverse user paths, and new requirements. The information architect and information designer typically use the wireframes as a meeting of the minds and as solid working documents on which to establish the language, content, and structure of interactions users will have with a given site or project.
The creation of wireframes also helps to define the positioning of global and secondary levels of navigation in a prominent and intuitive position, as well as providing an area for utilities such as helpful information and search facilities. When creating your wireframes it is beneficial to ensure that branding is central to the identity of a site so as to communicate the personality of the site.

d. Content/Copywriting

It’s not mandatory to have the content ready before the development, but with having all the common copywriting done and all typical content presented, design works go much more efficiently. In most cases the content is provided by the customer or a copywriter who works in close contact with the customer.

2. Pre-programming works

a. System Architecture

Well, having docs described above ready we’ve got about half work done: all business ideas are clear, functionality is clear, what it looks like – clear, content – got it! We are ready to implement out ideas into life.

Coding as any other development requires creating architecture of the project: DB schemes, the description of system modules and their relations inside the system. It is important to create such an architecture that allows future extension, upgrades, improvement. Thus, it’s a natural and important part of development.

b. GUI Design

Meanwhile, a graphical designer inspired by business vision, UI design wireframes and customer preferences of the look and feel of similar products creates the look and feel of the product we are developing, that is its style. Logo creation, website design, web 2.0 style, custom icons – any graphic work you need. A common mistake is when you require a GUI designer to design complex user interfaces requiring deeper analysis and UI design skills from the start. But when UI is ready, graphical designers feel free to do their best in turning wireframes into complete stylish pictures.

c. xHTML markup

Web projects require graphical pictures created by a GUI designer to be coded in xHTML (xHTML marked up) so that developers could later integrate functionality with design.

It’s much better if mark up is done before the functionality is implemented. It’s also applicable if done after, though the efficiency in most cases is doubtful.

3. Programming Implementation

Finally, all kinds of designing works are done and we can move forward to programming. As many of you might know, 1 week of coding works requires 1.5 week of design and documentation works. When more than a half way is behind, programming goes very smoothly since ALL details are clear.

4. Quality Assurance

If a project is big and sophisticated, you might need QA services. Our guys explore every little piece of the product and run different tests to make sure that it works as designed. (For more details about QA read about our services at www.sibers.com)
After we go through the process described above, we release the product and that’s pretty it. Any further questions?
The process summarized looks like a diamond:

That’s Extreme Programming!

Last week my schedule contained this one among other tasks:

Tuesday, January 20Th at 1:30pm Eastern (00.30am on next day here, at Novosibirsk)
AdWords Beginner Online Training Seminar

This webinar was provided by ROI Revolution, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant and Adwords Qualified Company. I’m a frequent participant of the seminars offered by this company, it’s really beneficial and unique opportunity for both beginners and advanced users. You can learn the basics or refresh your knowledge, you even can ask a question after the presentation or discuss it through the chat window during the session.

But on Tuesday I received a notification that warned me “that the webinar pushed back to Thursday, January 22nd at 1:30pm Eastern” and the reason was the weather forecast of the National Weather Service, which has issued a Winter Storm Warning for Raleigh, NC, where ROI Revolution offices are located. So, next day I have found images, checked the forecast for Raleigh, NC (ROI Revolution) and for Novosibirsk, where Sibers offices are located, also on the way to my office I took some photographs on the street. Let’s compare:

Raleigh, NC

Temperature: -1 °C

Snow: 8.89 cm

Wind: 11 km/h (North)

This is a quotation from MSNBC

“Ice turns North Carolina commute into chaos”

And here is the image:

Novosibirsk, Silicon Taiga

Temperature: -32 °C

Snow: 20 cm

Wind: 3.6 km/h (North)

And here is the image. Morning, 10am Jan. 21, the central office of Sibers.

Developers go to work. Remember, -32 °C

And I wonder, what kind of meteorologic conditions could prevent us from doing our favorite job. :)

For conclusion
“Sun is shining, the weather is sweet, yeah” © Bob Marley

Correct Software Development – What’s That and What’s It for?

By Alexander Nemtsov

What is meant by correct development of programming systems? What is right? Be it a primitive “piece of cake” or an exotic product using modern RUP, XP, UML, or something still more sophisticated, when can we praise the development as correct and what are the criteria?

The leading question in the title is somewhat similar to a widely discussed holy war of Delphi’s superiority over C++ or vice versa. Quite a number of folks will ignore it and try to prove that all this sophistication is nothing but a bubble in comparison to Visual Basic, the best programming language of everything ever written with a skillful pen of a man. You know, it is so simple without any classes or something odd used to work with a strange, almost swear word UML.

Let such advocates stick to their point. It is a highly thankless task to argue a person out of their opinion. It is not our mission as well to explain which tools help create programs. We will focus on how programs are created, that is, highlight the process in question.

Fancy that! John Doe, a creative programmer, appears at work by noon but presses his computer buttons with great enthusiasm till 3 a.m. When John is in a great mood, he can develop a very sophisticated algorithm, a real thing to boast about. Being out of spirits or humor, he just plays Quake or chats with his buddies. In his free time or even hiding from all-seeing eyes of the boss John sometimes tailors small applications, say in Java/C#/Delphi (you can choose any you like and tick it). The applications are supposed to automate routine work in the accounting department where his girlfriend/grandma/friend works (go on ticking the variant you like). Avoiding any novelties and any help of testers or analysts – the latter will want to be paid, won’t they? – John gets a decent fee, which can be spent on beer with friends, and is absolutely happy about his life in spite of the crisis and all that stuff. Do you think such an approach without a line of official documentation or a UML diagram in Rational Rose or Visio,etc. is a correct way of developing programs? I believe it is, and I am going to argue it. Just go on reading. We will be back soon.

Let’s start thinking in terms of the development goal. It might be a bit unclear, but it always exists. In the case of John he did his work meaning to create a necessary product and get a deserved fee. If the fee is paid, the goal has been achieved successfully. The fee can be not only the money but also some useful experience, one’s friends’ praise, self-satisfaction with one’s wide intelligence and what not. However, the end user does not have a slightest interest in the inside of the product or the development itself. Nor are they going to distinguish between Delphi and Java. The program should work fast enough, take up modest resources and be worth the money paid. And the last but not the least – to perform all the desired functions. In such a case John will get his money.

So, John aims at getting an adequate fee enough to, say, visit a pub/restaurant/bowling/Hawaii in return for his efforts. (If you still tick variants, it is high time you went for a cleaning tissue and wiped your screen.) The fee is the indicator of good and correct work. If John does not receive any complaints or face angry customers, they can be thought of to be satisfied. So, John is on the right way.

Let’s now take a small developing company with 10-15 employees who write programs for small businesses trading goods, or furniture, or something else granted that Excel cannot cope with the amount of data to be analyzed. Should our company use object oriented programming, UML, RUP, MSF or anything else equally complicated? There is a trap here. We cannot be sure if a company needs such tools unless we consider the fee for the efforts. Suppose the customers’ needs are met. Then why invest additional money into expensive courses or buying new licensed products?

It is here when we come to the crucial question asked at the beginning – what is meant by correct software development? I guess now you are ready to answer. Correct development is the process helping the customer to get profit. The choice between waterfall or an iterative process as well as the degree of formalism and sticking to traditional processes is important only in terms of your client’s business.

The series of articles to follow will describe making a product for our needs called Sibers Meetings. You will see how the product grew from «we have a problem» phase to a «ready to use solution».

Sibers Meetings dates back to the moment Sibers expanded its power to a new city office. The office showed up with a number of problems the main being everyday communication. Using a traditional telephone soon became ineffective as public address equipment did not serve the purposes of project meetings. We realized a need in some environment for collective discussions on our customers’ projects. It became the basis for the product in question.

(to be continued)

Four Google Adwords Trends

We have been using Google Adwords for site HireRussians.com for more than 2 years. Now it is when ads are optimized and run with only some small everyday tweaking.

Each month, we spend no more than $400. We decided that $400 is the absolute maximum we can pay Google and in fact we haven’t yet had a chance to pay Google in full. The graph below shows our spendings since April 2007 (blue line) and exponential trendline (black).

As you can see, usually we spend about half of the amount we allow ourselves. The next graph shows Adwords conversion over the time.

First of all, check that the blue line almost exactly follows the spendings line of the first graph. If we spend too little in August, there will be not many conversions in September. And check spendings in October and then the results in December. The cycle is usually 1-2 months.

And now look at the black trendline: even though that monthly conversion varies from 5 to 10% (twice!), the trend is very stable at about 7.5%. It means that the site works stably regardless of clicks and costs.

With conversions being stable, the number of clicks on our Adwords ads becomes fewer and fewer:

This chart exactly follows the first one, demonstrating direct relation of Adwords click depending on how much money you spend on them.

However, regardless of that, number of visitors to HireRussians.com is growing:

Having done a lot of work optimizing the site for Google Adwords, we found that we optimized it for Google generic search also. The hardest thing in SEO is optimizing the site for three things: ads, search engine, and… human. Finding a balance between them is our next priority for HireRussians.com.

Russia 2.0

Source: Admarket.ru

In their research of 20 global markets, including those of USA, UK, France, Germany, China, Brazil, Japan and Russia, Universal McCann claims that more than 50% of network population uses social networks and Web 2.0.

The research elicited great differences among the countries and referred them to the mentality and the level of available technology. The Chinese, for example, communicate mainly through user communities. They are hyper-responsible for every word typed and stick to rigid communication principles due to the total government control over the Internet in their country.
European users, on the other hand, value individualism and an opportunity to express their opinion.

Russian Internet users are very active in putting their views into words and sharing them with their friends and over users, even complete strangers. They are inclined to commenting other users’ entries and are more active about it than users, especially those without their own blogs, in other countries on average. An interesting Russian feature is obvious interest in discussing such impersonal topics as politics, arts, or history.

While in most countries blogs are a form of a dialog, Russians use them mainly for self-expression. They prefer to communicate through instant messengers (e.g. ICQ), which are used by 75% of Russian users vs. average 66% in other countries. IP telephony is also rather popular in Russia (39% of users vs. 38% on average worldwide). Future is bringing more communication opportunities apart from text ones (IP telephony, multimedia messages, etc.). The biggest social network MySpace, with its 220 million registered users, for example, has already introduced phone calls through Skype into its instant message service.

Web logs written by other people are read by overwhelming 73% of Russian Internet users against average 65%. This figure has increased by 14% compared to that in September 2006. More dramatic is the increase in keeping personal blogs, which is twice the number of blogs in 2006. The most popular Russian services of this kind are LiveJournal and LiveInternet with about 1.2 million Livejournal.ru users in the russian segment and more than 1.5 thousand blogs appearing every day.

In Europe, the blog creating index is close to maximum as the dynamics is much lower than in other regions. In Russia, there is enough space for potential growth of the number of blog users up to 30% of all regular internet users.

Multimedia services with photo and video materials are equally popular all around the world. Among them, video broadcasting has rocketed in Russia up to 57% respondents watching videoclips online (against 22% in Russia in 2006 and 61% in the other countries). Leaders here are also China, Malaysia and South Korea.

Podcasts (audio files for online listening) are not as popular. In Russia only as little as 12.6% respondents use this service. The average, though, is 22% with the UK at the top (the same 22% of users downloading podcasts).

Multimedia applications including VOIP, podcasts, photo- and videoblogs are likely to become the paramount direction in Web 2.0 development in Russia in the near future. Universal McCann might witness considerable growth of the demand for simple and accessible services with a wide range of features to locate and watch photo and video information (e.g., online editing, full screen, big private album, etc.).

Social networks are quite popular in Russia, even more than blogs. As many as 41.7% of respondents participate in them, which is the highest result among European countries. The main markets here are Brazil (75% of respondents) and Mexico (64%). However, Russia as well as South-Eastern Asia experiences certain stagnation and interest saturation, so serious increase in social networking is hardly possible in the future. However such resources as Odnoklassniki.ru, Moikrug.ru, Vkontakte.ru are enjoying growing popularity making it possible for users to form their own social networks and join those of their friends. In Russia we can expect more specialized sites with a wide choice of discussion groups and new features (e.g., video downloading, incorporated message exchange services, keeping private information).

To sum it up, the main Russia’s rates are at least average. The most impressive dynamics in the recent 9 months has been achieved in using multimedia services (locating and watching video clips and photos). Whereas such activities as reading blogs and participating in social networks (forums, communities, conferences), according to the research, has come to a saturation point.