The Great Craigslist Experiment
01/20/2011

The whole point of marketing is to get people using your product. Obviously. But when it comes to our line of work, the product is rolled into the service. You want to use our CMS, shopping cart, or MagicMirror? It comes as part of our Traction Systems web development solution.

MagicEdit is much the same, as it includes an easy-to-use CMS that is perfect for smaller projects. Of course it does not have all the features a full-blown Traction site has, but our customers are more than pleased with its capabilities. The thing about MagicEdit, however, is that it's not necessarily both a service and product; it can be just a standalone product. That is to say, any designer who knows basic HTML (and I do mean basic HTML) can deploy it on any website.

The Problem

Just like everyone else, web designers are only interested in shiny and have a very high opinion of their own personal style. Not that they shouldn't hold their own work in high regard, I'm just saying that they won't look twice at MagicEdit if it's not running on a site they designed. Knowing this to be true, we put an ad out on Craigslist to "hire" a designer to design us a website using MagicEdit. We didn't do this as a contest or a marketing ploy per se; we actually wanted to pay a designer or two to throw together a simple site in their spare time, just so they could see how easy MagicEdit is and hopefully start using it for some of their clients. The result? Food for thought, to say the least.

Now I know there are a lot of experienced, hard-working freelance web designers who hang out on Craigslist looking for work. There are also a lot of less experienced, less hard-working freelancers who hang out on Craigslist, looking to steal clients with the promise of quick turnaround and unbeatably low prices. We knew the market going in, but we were hoping to get a few decent designers out of the bunch and were willing to pay fair market value for a simple brochure site.

The Experiment

We decided on a few criteria that had to be met before any designer would be considered. The first criterion was that the designer had to be independent and somewhat local, meaning on this continent. Nothing personal against foreign web mills, but that's just not what we were going for. This automatically removed about two thirds of the applicant field. Second requirement was that they were actual designers, not high school students saving Word documents as websites or retired electricians looking for a new line of work that decided web design was their calling. This got rid of a bunch more. Third criterion was that they not reply to us with a form letter. For the remaining applicants we referred back to the number one guideline as listed in the job posting. "This site must be done using MagicEdit." This requirement got rid of about 95% of the remaining candidates. Seriously. Out of the 100s and 100s of applicants, only a handful took the time to: a) read the job posting; b) figure out what MagicEdit is; and c) agree to use it. While we did find a couple people that we hired to try it out, the entertaining part is, of course, the other replies we got back. Keep in mind that the only people at this time using MagicEdit were our own designers; we had no freelancers as customers yet. The responses, therefore, range from desperate to flat-out lying, with some hilarity sprinkled in along the way:

• "I have had experience with Magic edit in the past with a couple of my clients so this won't be a hard project."
  [Appreciate the kind attitude. We know you're lying.]
• "Hello, I can make you a sweet HIGH END flash website."
  [Duuuuuude? Sweeeeeeeet.]
• "I have experience in web development and can definitely help you with your project... my resume is attached to this email as a word doc."
  [Perhaps you might use that web development experience to put your resume on-- I don't know-- the web?]
• "Saw your add [sic]. I can come by and get your site done right there and on the spot. Let me know as soon as you know"
  [Ah, then it will be a well-planned, thoroughly-designed, custom site?]
• "I specialize in creating cost effective websites and landing pages utilizing Web 2.0 Technologies such as Adobe Web Studio CS3 (photoshop, flash, dreamweaver, fireworks etc)"
  [Awesome. You've certainly got your buzz words down. The only one you're missing is synergy.]
• "If you feel the synergy and need more info please email us on..."
  [Ah, there it is.]
• "I am a independent designer and do layout work that is hard to beat , and my designs make it easy for you to go into it and update what you need with out a hassle... Here are a couple of designs I have done on myspace"
  [MySpace? I... never mind.]
• "I have been building websites for a long time now I can can defiantly help you build a good straightforward site without wordpress and without busting you pursestrings."
  [So, I should probably supply all the content myself?]
• "Hey dude, I'll make your website."
  [Cha, dude. Awesome.]
• And the best response of all...
  "I can build your website for you, however I do not believe MagicEdit would bet the best fit for you. I have had some experience with it in the past and my previous clients and I have agreed that it is not an “easy” solution to update their website."
  [So you're blowing off our one requirement by bashing it and lying about having used it? Hired!]

The Analysis

So what do the results mean? Well, looking at it from our point of view as a potential client who actually knows what web design and development entail, it means that most designers are not open to new ideas, regardless of how much they know. Many of them were fully prepared to use clunky and/or useless tools to get a job done quickly when instead, using basic HTML, they could have gotten paid to learn a new skill that would actually make their lives easier. And yes, I know, probably all designers and developers (ourselves included) have been guilty of this at some point. The system you use is the best, right? Well, maybe not. There is always a better way to do something and there is always a better tool for the job. When it comes to simple yet robust, built in CMS solutions, we are sure MagicEdit is the best. Not just because we built it, because we actively use it. And how many of our sites look like WordPress templates? None of them. If you build HTML-based sites (and I hope you do, because the days of Flash are certainly numbered), then you need to try MagicEdit.