By Margaret Wong
Martin Raska is a professional Web Designer. His homepage is his
portal to the world. The first thing one sees is a flash introduction,
which took too long to setup. It is clear he wanted to show those
potential customers he could perform animation by cleverly using Flash
in the introduction. But it would be trying the patience of anyone
to have to sit through his introduction, which lasted a full minute.
The rest of his site is static HTML. After the introduction the viewer
breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of static images.
The organization of his site is very professional. This is his portal
to potential customers. His portfolio, his resume, and the presentation
of his own homepage are all things the potential customers are contemplating
when shopping for the right designer for their own commercial or personal
site. Raska's site mimics a profile of his experience, similar to
an artist handing over his portfolio for job considerations. What
he failed to do is utilize the dynamic nature of the World Wide Web.
Raska has presented himself, but he does nothing to attract the attention
of surfers. His Web presence can be equated with standing in the middle
of a park with a simple sign that says he has skills and he wants
to work. But with normal voice levels, he attracts very few people's
attention, and in his babble no one sticks around to hear what he
has to say. As opposed to www.nobodyhere.com/justme/, where it screams
its existence to passersby, www.raska.com has failed miserably. He
has proven to be the voice that cannot be heard due to its plain and
singular nature.
The lack of luster in his site cannot generate much random traffic.
It is most probable his main traffic is with the aid of word-of-mouth.
Once again the traditional medium of communication is key to the success
of commercial developments in other mediums. Raska has clearly created
his site to target viewers in need of his technical expertise. The
site's impersonal atmosphere is almost spiteful. Though "personal"
is a section containing his interests and hobbies, the setting is
so cruelly "professional" the person behind the site is
lost. In this sense, the singular voice really is lost in the world
of large commercial media presence. To the untrained marketing personnel,
Raska's professionalism is probably appealing. His self-promotional
goals are realized in that respect. However as a voice, he is not.
It apparently is never his purpose to be a voice. If Raska did, he
has been rendered speechless.