Findings from the Web Design Survey

As some of you may know, I am very respectful of the job A List Apart have done for the web development community, spearheading standards compliant browsers and web development strategies. This is the second or third year in a row that they have surveyed the community. I’ve never really trusted surveys by companies like salary.com because their metrics just never felt right, and were never in line with what myself and my peers were doing.

This year A List Apart have published their results online (last year it was a PDF), with full access to the spreadsheets that drove the data and interpretation. I love it. Not only does it help me gauge and compare the health of my business, I get a peek into emerging trends. Some of the analytics are just interesting, and could be useful. Take the “CSS coding skill gaps by job title”:

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First of all, it’s interesting that A List Apart finds CSS skills important enough to analyze the data to stress the gaps. Secondly, we need to coach writers and editors more on the uses and benefits of CSS!

Another interesting tidbit is the “Confidence” section. Even in the worst recession since 1975 it seems that we have high confidence in the work that we’re doing.

Check out the Survey For People Who Make Websites 2008!