An interview with Charles Prowell by |
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Editor-Guy |
I wanted to take a minute to congratulate you on your web site. It really is one of the more visually pleasing sites I've ever seen. |
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| Prowell | Thank you. The site is more the result of endless tinkering and editing over a span of, well. . I guess almost ten years now. Credit should be given to my sister, Anne, of Prowell Communications | ||
| GB | Ten years? That's a dinosaur in internet years. I mean, was there anyone on the web back then? | ||
| Prowell | The site was launched in late summer of 1995. It was an experiment, really. We were curious to see if the scope of commissions could be extended beyond the San Francisco area--that is without the usual marketing budgets, etc. | ||
| GB | And you were creating gates back then? | ||
| Prowell | Oh no. The gates were developed as a result. For so many years I designed and built studio furniture--one-of-a-kind works supported by a patronage of about 30 or so families in the bay area. But shipping furniture is expensive and rather iffy. The crates are difficult and packing it against the handling techniques of union truck drivers even more so. No, the gates were developed because they ship and crate easily. | ||
| GB | A web site in 1995. Were you all alone--the whole internet to yourself? | ||
| Prowell | Well, practically. We relied on magazine and newspaper features to drive traffic to the site; no one really surfed the web then. An interesting side note, in that with these features I insisted the phone number not be listed--only the web site address. This caused all sorts of arguments with editors. We also advertised and again, the sales people thought I was crazy for not including a phone. But to this day, I would prefer not to hear from anyone who hasn't first visited the site. | ||
| GB | Was the site successful--from the beginning. I mean, did your business improve? | ||
| Prowell | The site didn't begin to carry itself really until PC's were shipped with 56K modems. That would be in about 1998. Before that, with, well . . .originally 9.6K modems and then 14.4, then 28K--all too slow for viewing images without a lot of patience. It was also interesting to note that in that fall of '95, we were invited--Anne and I--to appear on the panel of an Internet Day here in Sonoma County--One of the first of it's kind in the country, I understand. During the question/answer between us and the audience, the audience turned on us for doing business on the web. We were suddenly, and unexpectedly, put on the defensive. | ||
| GB | I don't understand. The defensive? | ||
| Prowell | Well, it's hard to believe, but at that time--which seems as if we're talking decades and not a few years--the Web was considered more from a perspective of brotherly love. A 60's sort of thing. A free exchange of information and ideas. We were attacked, so to speak, for doing commercial business on the internet. | ||
| GB | Wow. | ||
| Prowell | Yeah. Although I suppose in ten years, we'll look back on this era as a time of unpolluted usage. No internet tax, no passcodes, no Homeland Security tracking every keystroke. | ||
| GB | Regarding the site itself: How do you and Anne co-author a site this size. What is it, four or five hundred pages? | ||
| Prowell | It must be near 500 pages. I'll usually dictate the graphical look--the interface--and establish most of the photoshop graphics. Anne handles the coding and the optimizing and the general maintenance, and together we decide on the general navigational layout--how visitors get around without getting confused. | ||
| GB | So Photoshop is one of your talents. I have to admit, the graphics are well done. A departure from what one normally finds on the web. How long have you been using Photoshop? It's a program that intrigues me, like eye candy. And yet it is, well . . a little overwhelming. | ||
| Prowell | It is overwhelming. I started with it when the site was first developed. So that would be 9 or so years now. | ||
| GB | Some of your imagery is downright startling. Very Escher-like. And funny. You have a section titled Renderings I came across one afternoon that has nothing to do with your work. It seems to exist solely as an amusement. | ||
| Prowell | An amusement. Yes, I suppose that describes it perfectly. | ||
| GB | I mean obviously you're having fun here. It shows a side to you, well . . a comical flippancy would describe it. | ||
| Prowell | In the mornings--the early early mornings--when I'm between writing projects, I tend to pass the hours fiddling in this vein. | ||
| GB | I want to get to that later--your early mornings. | ||
| Prowell | Okay. | ||
| GB | I thought we might, with this session, try to relegate ourselves to the web site | ||
| Prowell | This session? | ||
| GB | A web site that's been up as long as yours might provide a unique perspective on the changing Web. You mentioned how in the beginning it wasn't consider acceptable to use it commercially. That seems fascinating. | ||
| Prowell | I think the single largest issue is the sheer numbers. The number of web sites. Early on it was no great effort to get listed with the search engines. Now that's all a quagmire and requires some kind of rocket scientist to maintain a top listing. | ||
| GB | You mean when someone does a search, using keywords, to find your product? | ||
| Prowell | That's right. There simply are more sites to compete for those top listings. To be listed on the 2nd or 3rd or 20th page of results is obviously less productive than appearing as number 1 or 2 on Page One of the results. | ||
| GB | Well, how exactly does one go about maintaining a top listing? | ||
| Prowell | They delegate. That's Anne's domain. She's got it pretty well nailed. | ||
| GB | Should we give her a plug? | ||
| Prowell | Sure. Prowell Communications at <http://www.prowell.com> I've watched her take on a site--an extremely competative site like door hardware--and lift it from obscurity to a placement that results in four or five calls a day to more than a hundred. Something like that--I mean, that sort of thing changes lives. Suddenly they are hiring more staff, moving much more inventory, making more money. It all comes down anymore to optimizing your site, to finding someone who is current on what it takes to secure top placement listings. |
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| GB | Is it that complicated? | ||
| Prowell | Well, the thing is that the determining criteria are forever changing. Currently, Google dominates the field and they have their own set of criteria that ranks the relevancy of a site to the keyword search terms. And of course they are not disclosing what those criteria are. So an SEO (search engine optimizer) must spend a fair amount of time figuring this out. Years back, it was Yahoo who dominated and their criteria was simpler, although probably not as effective. And in time. Google will fall to another newcomer and the criteria will change again. For example, in November of 2003, Google altered their relevancy algorithms and my site dropped from top listing. It virtually disappeared. And of course the emails and phone calls stopped and all the while I'm slowly catching up and thinking how nice that I'm catching up but also wondering why. By the time I finally turned to the issue just after the holidays, I read testimonials of so many businesses, thousands and thousands of businesses, that had gone belly up simply because their listings had disappeared. On the other hand, there were those businesses whose site was considered more relevant by Google's changed algorithm and they were suddenly in the chips. An unhealthy dose of monopolized power that was, and is, unique to our times--to doing business on the Web. | ||
| GB | That's amazing. I had no idea. The age of cyber-business. So what happened? You obviously didn't go out of business. | ||
| Prowell | Well, while I ranted and raved and generally freaked out, Anne quietly settled in and figured out Google's hierarchy and how it was now based on Stanford's School of Marketing principles and, you know, got us back on top. Suddenly everyone wants a piece of her--huge corporations willing to pay whatever it takes for that top listing. So this one woman, this little dynamo, represents easily the single most important aspect of any business. |
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| GB | So it was worth whatever you paid her | ||
| Prowell | I don't pay sisters. They're just sisters, for cryin out loud. | ||
| GB | Seriously? | ||
| Prowell | It helps to understand I was raised on a farm in Illinois surrounded by sisters like swarming locust. If you want them to play catch with you, or wrassle or play army or build little roads for your nice collection of toy trucks and dump-loaders, well . .you have to trade time playing paper-cut-out dolls and playing house and even then you have to beg and plead to have them uphold their end of the bargain. My favorite book of all time is a little book I had in grade school called, Too Many Sisters. I recently acquired an original copy of that book.In fact I suspect it might be the very book I once owned; I recognize the broad crayola strokes over the front leaf. | ||
| GB | Interesting. Sort of. So sister Anne, a locust, rescued your site from oblivion without remuneration? | ||
| Prowell | She made a bundle. A fortune. She's probably in the Caribbean right now, as we speak, throwing her money around. A big shot. But it was worth it. She earned it. | ||
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