Spicy Web Designer Interview with Mark O’Brien of Newfangled Web Factory

Mark O’Brien is the new CEO of Newfangled Web Factory (He’s been the president for the last 5 years), a company focused on helping advertising agencies build better websites for their clients. Mark was good enough to speak with us about Newfangled, which he has been a part of since 2000 and that he has played many roles with the company including ‘intern’ which is how he originally started with Newfangled.

1. For those who may not know, you are the new face of Newfangled Web Factory since you are in the process of taking the business over.  As the owner of the website is there a new direction that you are hoping to take Newfangled in?  If so, do you care to let us in on some of them?

I’ve been with Newfangled since 2000, when we started “Grayscreen Prorotyping” and built the CMS. I started as an intern, but I’ve been the President (there were many roles in between) since 2004. So, I’ve been with Newfangled for 9 of our 14 years, and I’ve been centrally involved in running the company for the past 5. This isn’t a situation where I’m excited to storm in and shake things up, since the company is on the exact track I think we should be on. That being said, we go through consistently directed, yet massive, changes every year, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. We’re focusing more closely on our positioning of helping marketing firms build great marketing websites for themselves and their clients, and I’ve been very focused on getting that message out there, mostly through public speaking. We work pretty closely with three of the main consultants in this industry, David Baker of Recourses, Blair Enns of Enmark Performance Development (a.k.a. Win without Pitching), and Tony Mikes of Second Wind. I’ve been speaking at their events, in addition to speaking at this year’s HOW Design Conference in Austin. We also have a new version of our CMS, NewfangledCMS, coming out in the next few weeks. This CMS is directly aimed at being the best marketing CMS available. We do this by building it for marketers, as opposed to many CMS that are built by programmers, for programmers. We focus heavily on dirt simple usability, powerful asset management, Business Intelligence and closed loop tracking for key site interaction events. In addition to the CMS, we have a new site design in the works, and the company name will be officially changing to Newfangled, without the Web Factory.

2. Newfangled Web Factory has produced some helpful and very useful videos in the past.  What drives you guys to put content like this together?

Our content strategy is, alongside with very well placed speaking events, at the heart of our marketing strategy. Between our newsletters, blogs, webinars, and videos, we add a huge amount of content to our site every month. We feel that the best form of marketing is free education, and the job of a marketer, any marketer, is to accurately, thoroughly and regularly describe the firm’s expertise to Google, so that Google may drive the specific masses to the firm’s website. I am talking about this stuff all the time, and we very much take our own medicine. We do this to get the attention of those that are contemplating a future website project, and are searching for expert info in preparation. We want those people to discover us as the experts in this field at that stage of the buying cycle, so that we are top of mind when they make the transition to the purchasing stage. This is not marketing content, by any means, it is generous, objective, and useful content. Beyond the soft sell, “pull” marketing objectives, we feel that putting great content out there makes the web a better place.

3. Is the main scope of your business working with Advertising Agencies or are there other secondary aspects of the business that also contribute to the bottom line?

Yes, working with ad agencies/marketing communications firms (based on what they might call themselves) is our very clearly stated focus. On every single page of our site you can read that “Newfangled helps Advertising Agencies build better websites for their clients.” A lot of development shops have had a flavor of this niche, at some point or other, but most ultimately abandon it. We enjoy this niche. We’ve been doing it for fourteen years, and we do really well with it. We focus on mid-sized firms for the most part, because they are the ones that generally need outside help with the web. What we’re really great at is building marketing sites, and that, of course, has all kinds of applications.

4. I see that you guys have put together a book “Client vs. Developer Wars” and I’ve read some of it.  Where did the idea to produce this come from?

Well, producing the book shares all the same base motives as our other content production. In this case, though, Eric thought our breakthrough discovery of effectively communicating web development intentions with our clients was book worthy, and I agree. For our first 5 years of business, we did what everyone else does; we built sitemaps and highly detailed wireframes. In those days we failed at communicating the subtle (read: most important) details of what we intended to build for our clients, which, of course, led to a lot of frustration and waste. Once we discovered our proprietary Grayscreen Prototyping process, or, building the site before we built the site, our rate of success skyrocketed. It was an industry-changing breakthrough that we swear by to this day. Why everyone doesn’t build websites this way is beyond me.

5. How has the concept and practice of using Gray-Screen Prototyping helped Newfangled since you started using it?

Hmmm, I think I might have just answered this question, I guess I got ahead of myself! Let’s put it this way, we are still in business because of “Grayscreen Prototyping”. It is how we impart our expertise to our clients, it is how we define scope, it is how we know we are going to get the project done right the first time, every time.

6. What else are you guys working on these days? Any “Top Secret” things that you might be able to share?

Well, this too I’ve already covered. NewfangledCMS 5, the best marketing CMS on the market, is our latest and greatest. Next up: real time Google Analytics integration. That is all I can say about that for now.