Hello. This is Matsunaga from the Webmaster Support Department.
I have experience in a variety of industries, including apparel and engineering, and have now been working in the web industry for about five years.
In my daily work, I mainly manage the website and am also the liaison for operational projects. At the same time, I also work as the coding director for the renewal of the BtoB corporate website . I am very busy because I am also responsible for BtoB direction work on a 1-2 month scale while also dealing with daily operational work.
I also do coding in Javascript and other languages. I also like analyzing code, so I participate in the coder meetings held monthly by the Coding Factory Club and look forward to sharing various information.
My daily work is quite hard, but I don't feel like I'm struggling with it. Also, people around me tend to think of me as someone who is "motivated despite working hard" (laughs).
Come to think of it, that might be true, I thought to myself, and decided to take another look at why I remain motivated to work in the web industry.
"You can make money from the Web if you use it well."
The formative experience that gave me a sense of accomplishment
The first time I created a website was about 10 years ago, when I created an online shop for penlights with a neighbor I used to share a room with.
I've been using the web since I was a student, mainly using message boards and chatting on MSN Messenger, and later on I used it quite like most people for online games and the like, but I never thought back then that I'd create my own website.
My first online shop was made for me using Dreamweaver by my roommate, a person I called my "assistant professor" (who knew Adobe). I continued doing business on that site for a while, but it was a pain to contact my assistant professor every time an update was needed, so I thought, "Why not do it myself?" I bought an HTML book and redesigned it by myself. That was the first time I designed and coded a website.
The first thing I realized when I worked on my own website was that the web can be profitable if used wisely .
The online penlight shop offered higher quality and lower prices than other penlights, so it sold quite well (it was more than I expected at the time).
At the same time, I was also interested in how events, magazines, and TV make money, so I studied on my own at seminars and intensive courses. I learned that magazines are made up of advertisements and articles, but advertisements cost money, and articles are free advertising.
So I decided to apply this to the Penlight Shop, and while I was lightly running CPC ads (Adwords), I tried out thorough SEO for organic searches. I implemented weighting of HTML tags, the relationship between URL strings and search rankings, the importance of titles and meta information, and measures for external and internal links. When weighting HTML tags, I used strong tags for keywords and b tags simply as decoration, and created text that included as many words that I wanted to be found in searches as possible.
As a result, since the product name was originally included in the site's URL, which was advantageous in terms of SEO at the time, we were able to consistently rank between 1st and 2nd in search results.
I started web production by chance, but I was surprised when strangers bought products through the site I created, and I was able to earn a profit from it. The more I understood how it worked, the more exciting it became to see what kinds of things I could achieve. I became fascinated and thought, "I want to do more with the web!"
However, when we ended our room share, the online penlight shop was closed.
The realization that "I want to work on the web"
After the Penlight online shop closed, I put the web thing behind me and got a different job. However, when I thought about my job again, I remembered the fun and satisfaction I had when I created the website, and I thought "maybe it was the right fit for me after all," so I started down the path to the web industry again.
First, I spent six months studying intensively at an online school.
Apart from the web curriculum, I also studied Javascript on my own, believing an article on the Internet that said "Javascript is essential for front-end development." Also, since I already had knowledge of SEO, I also got certified as a web analyst , thinking that analysis was essential.
After that, I joined Monosus.
After joining the company, I was assigned to the operations team, where I initially did simple tasks such as editing text and registering products. However, even from the time I joined the company, I wanted to do more coding and analysis using Google Analytics and the like! Then, about a month later, I was assigned to help another team with editing the site, and the opportunity to code came up.
At first, I was told that I would be correcting text and adjusting margins, but in reality I ended up making quite a lot of CSS corrections, and although Director Nakagawa scolded me for my deficiencies, I think he gave me the impression that "this guy can actually code," and my coding work gradually increased from then on.
After that, I was assigned to operational tasks such as coding landing pages, modifying Javascript, and coding for the site, and I gained experience as a coder/coding director, leaving SEO and web analysis aside.
Why do I work in website management?
Now, in this situation, I once again thought about why I work in website management.
The first thing that came to mind was the feeling I had when running the penlight online shop: "If you use the web well, you can make money ."
I am currently in a position where I create work based on work instructions from clients, but I often find myself not only creating but also unconsciously thinking about PR strategies, such as, "I see, so this is how we run the campaign" or "If we put up a banner here, it might get more attention."
Also, as the production progressed, I realized that I also make suggestions to the client as necessary, such as "It would be more convenient if this button was higher up" or "It would be more appealing if we put a banner on the list page."
In other words, even in my current operations work, I was thinking about how I could make a profit by making good use of the pages I was creating to leave a good impression on end users. Of course, when I say profit, I don't mean for myself, but rather, "I want to help my client's business." I concluded that this was what motivated me.
I believe that operations is where we are closest to helping our clients' businesses.
Even if a plan has already been formulated, I would like to continue to grow as a person in my work so that I can think of the best technical methods to meet the original requirements, by carefully checking what the client's original requirements are and sometimes making proposals that differ from what was instructed.
MATSUNAGA Satoru