Strong imagery, snag lists, and keeping up with technology: an interview with Jeni Daniels

“I know it can be daunting working in male dominated working environments, but the female/male office ratio isn't going to level out if we all shy away.”

We spoke with Jeni Daniels, a web developer at London Studio, Benchmark, to get her views on everything from the importance of strong imagery, to the thrill of pushing a site live, and encouraging more women to the web dev industry.  

Jeni, over the past decade, you’ve worked at a variety of agencies of different sizes and niche markets, but are there any common web dev mistakes clients make when launching a new site? 

Clients wanting to cover all bases with content. If a designer hasn't taken content length into account this can cause layout issues and make the site look totally different once it actually has real information in it. There needs to be a balance between what needs to be on there, whilst still being readable and looking great!

Another good one is site imagery; it's a lot more difficult to make an amazing looking website without good images - stock imagery is okay, but nothing beats a real image!

Generally you'd have a checklist to go through once a site has been launched, which would involve checking forms, telephone numbers and another sanity check of responsiveness and browsers just to make sure any snag fixes hasn't broken anything else.

Clients can get very nervous about pushing a site live, some would think that once a site has been uploaded and is open to the public, the whole world is going to visit straight away. Unless you are a global brand, this is generally a misconception. The site has to be marketed, indexed and people have to actually be able to find the site or physically type in the domain name that has just been launched. There would normally be a soft launch anyway where you upload the site, fix any teething issues and then you can shout from the rooftops you have a new site and everyone should visit!

Web development is still quite a male-dominated area of the industry – why do you think this is, and what’s your experience of being a woman in web dev been like?

When I did my apprenticeship it was very male dominated, I was the only female in my class and most apprenticeships available at the time were for tradesman roles or hair and beauty. I managed to find and get a place on an IT one and could choose modules relevant to the direction I wanted to go.

I know it can be daunting working in male dominated working environments, but the female/male office ratio isn't going to level out if we all shy away. I've made some great lifelong friends who are guys throughout my career and I think if you find a good company you will be respected and hired for your knowledge, regardless of your gender. 

Women in tech are such an inspiration, there are now specific 'women in tech' events that are reaching out to young girls and women who are just about to kickstart their careers – hopefully this should have a positive effect on the industry and bring more women into the dev workplace.

Do you think more should be done to attract (or retain) women to the industry?

Women in the tech industry are getting the recognition they deserve, we just need more! Things like the gender pay gap must be helping and the 'women in tech' events mentioned above as well as flexible working. 

In my current role I work from home every Friday and can ask for other specific days if I need to be home or if I feel I need it. This makes such a difference having to commute in one less day a week -  from the time saved and even just from a wellness point of view. I think office roles are heading more towards this now, whatever gender you are, modern life just gets a bit much sometimes so a bit of flexibility makes a role a lot more appealing - as long as you won't take advantage of it of course!

What work are you most proud of in your career?

In my current role we are lucky enough to get some big clients come through with a pretty big audience. One of my first projects at my current role was a competition page - their social media following is around 150k across social media networks so that was fun to see get used and pushed on social media. But even now, I've been doing this for 10 years say... and it's still super exciting to push a site live!

And finally, what do you wish you’d known earlier in your career?

Having a career in tech is difficult to keep up with because it changes all the time, there's always a new buzz word or language to familiarise yourself with, but if you keep yourself exposed to new things and keep an ear out in the industry you shouldn't go far wrong. I nearly got left behind on technologies because I got comfortable for too long but now I'm trying to change that and learn a bunch of new things.