Congratulations! By now, the planning phases are pretty much over and the “build” is underway.

8. Be clear about content and be sure content is clear

Even the most gorgeous website will have little impact if what’s on it is presented poorly.  Or, to be positive, great content will produce great results.

What do we mean by “content”? Text, of course, that describes your product or service, but also photos, video, audio . . . anything that expresses who your company is and what it has to offer.   For text, content should be crisp and precise — people expect to read fast on the Internet — and also mix in keywords that the search engines can use to find your site.  Photos should be clear and crisp; video should be relevant and present information in a format that will engage the viewer; the same is true of audio.

Who prepares content? Web developers and SEO (search engine optimization) experts may offer to write your text for you. That may work if what you have to say is simple, but it may not work well if the ideas and concepts you wish to present are at all complex. If you write the text, be prepared to work with the web and SEO experts to adjust it for maximum impact; if they write the text, explain first what you wish to emphasize and then be sure the results meet your objectives. (More on SEO in a separate post.)

Photos can come from a number of sources. Stock photo sites offer a zillion choices and usually are of good quality.  (More on whether and when to use stock photos in another post.) Beware of snapshots taken in poor light or at low resolution — they won’t represent you well online. The same general rules hold for video and audio.  (Copyrights may apply to some materials; be careful that you have permission to use the photos, etc., that you put on your site.)

Remember that the site cannot be completed without the content.  It is your responsibility to be sure the developer has what is needed and on time –  the completion of the site will be delayed otherwise.

9. Be engaged

Even with the best plans, challenges can pop up unexpectedly. Be active in keeping track of progress; a weekly conference call with the developer is a very good idea.

Be prepared to make minor adjustments to your site if this improves the ability of a visitor to use the site.  Perhaps you don’t really need a page you had planned or perhaps one page needs to be split in two. Or maybe the “signposts” you planned are too busy for the page. This happens, but such changes should be the exception if you developed a full siteplan in step 7.

If your company is putting up its own content, i.e., “populating” the pages, then the responsibility for keeping on track rests with you as much as with the developer.  Factor this into your planning.

1o. Test, test, test, and test again

Any good website developer will deliver your site to you in nearly — or completely — perfect working order.  The site should have been thoroughly tested and checked, including any usually hidden features such as confirmation or error pages. As an example, a think tank whose staff has an amazing number of combined years of education was shocked when an error page appeared after launch that read: “Please not to worry. We work on this.”  Funny now.  Not so funny then.

Delivering a perfectly working site for small sites is the norm; not much can go wrong.  For more complex sites, one or another bit may need tweaking; it is possible a feature won’t work quite right and will need to be corrected.  Before your site goes live, read every word, click every link, fill out every form — the right way and the wrong way, download all possible files, place an order, send an email with a link to a page, and do anything else a visitor could possibly do — and more than once. And think about hiring a proofreader — anyone who reads the same text over and over again will miss typos and other simple mistakes.  Only when you are satisfied it all works as it should, OK the launch.

Once the site goes live, do all the testing again.  Recently, we consulted for a site whose developer did not test well — after launch, the hyperlinks didn’t work; if a visitor emailed a link to a page to someone else, that link opened only to an error page.  The site should not have gone live with that mistake and the developer, not the client, should have caught this one first.

Remember to build requirements for testing and tweaking into both your timetable and your specs document.

Most developers allow a period of time after launch for finding and fixing bugs as part of the initial contract; usually 2-6 months.  Be sure you know what the details of that service are and keep testing.

11. Enjoy and promote

You have a website! Be sure it is submitted to the search engines — at least the key ones. It takes anywhere from a week to three to four months for your site to be indexed by the search engines.  If your site has a blog,  the search engines may pick it up sooner, assuming that you are posting frequently.

Send emails (or even postcards) to all your past and existing clients announcing the site.  Be sure your web address is in your email signature, on your business cards, on any other printed materials, and is clear in any other online presence, such as yellow page or other listings.

This isn’t the end.  Websites need nurturing.  We’ll cover that in a subsequent post.

To view all the posts in this series, click here.

The Mattison Group specializes in providing consulting in the planning, design, development and maintenance of small- to medium-sized websites.  We develop small websites in-house.

So, you’ve now worked through the first steps and decided what you want from a website.  The next step is to build the site — but how?  Small, brochure-type sites can be created online in just a few hours and require intermediate skills; larger sites are best left to the experts.  But how do you find the right one?

4. How to find potential website companies

First, look at your competitors’ sites. This can be useful not only in helping you find a design/developer for your own site, but it also can give you a better idea of what websites for your product or service look like and how they function.  Keep a list of the designers of the sites you like and keep notes on what you like/dislike about the sites.

Add other local website developers to you list — find them through the Chamber of Commerce, by word of mouth, or by an Internet search.

Once you have a list of at least a half dozen website companies, explore their websites.  What to look for:

(a) a list of their clients — does it include companies similar to yours in size and nature?  If not, this may be a poor fit.

(b) their portfolio, i.e., links to website they have created — are these websites attractive to you?  Each company has its own “look”, like any designer, and some may just not suit your tastes.

(c) their staff — do they appear to have the experience that will git your needs?

(d) how long have they been in business and have they have won awards? Neither is a guarantee of good results, just clues.

5.  Develop a good ‘specs’ or ‘RFP’ document

This step is critical. If you want a simple, four-to-eight page information site, this step will be relatively quick. If your site is larger and more complex, allow up to a month of elapsed time to complete this step.

Set out in detail and as precisely as possible (a) what your goals are for the website and (b) how you want the website to function.  Developing a sitemap at this point can be very useful.  Not only will it help the companies you approach be able provide a more a reliable estimate, but it will force you to put your objectives in writing and to develop a conceptual outline of what pages your website should have.  You can create a sitemap as an outline or as a mind map — the one below was an initial draft developed by The Mattison Group for a client. (We know you can’t read it; this is just to show the concept of mapping.)

Make sure your specs include not only details on website content, but who does what — for example, does the developer write/post the content, or does your company do that?  Who supplies the graphics and/or photos? As specifically about quality control, particularly if the company subcontracts some of its work — will they test the site completely, during development and again just after launch?

Also be sure to ask for estimates for hosting the site, unless the site is on your own servers; any ancillary costs (e.g., domain name, SSL certificate); and the costs of management/routine maintenance.  These can add up and will be billed year after year.

Don’t forget to include the deadline for delivering a completed, fully functional website to you.

A number of good guidelines for creating specifications are available online.  An outside consultant also can be cost-effective for this step, particularly as part of project management for the entire design process.

See all posts on this topic here.

The Mattison Group specializes in providing consulting in the planning, design, development and maintenance of small- to medium-sized websites. We develop and manage small websites in-house.

“We should have a website!” is a common thought for small businesses and non-profits these days.  Yes, probably you should, but before hiring a designer or ambitiously deciding to do one on your own, three key decisions need to made.  These are essential to building a website that will achieve your goals, now and for months (if not years) to come.

1. What do you want a website to do?

This is key: define your expectations before you set the budget in stone or take any other steps to develop your site.  This will affect many aspects of your website, including  both development and maintenance costs.

Two basic types of websites exist: (a) an online brochure that nicely presents your information and materials to all who find you (or to your membership) and (b) dynamic sites that attract people to you website and to your products, services and ideas.

Is one better than another? Not really, although some website gurus will say otherwise.  Perhaps all your organization needs is a convenient online source of information — a brochure, basically.  For example, a local small business — a tour guide or handyman, say — may just want an information site.  But this will not be enough for, say, a new non-profit hoping to grow or a research group that wants its ideas known.

If you are not sure what a website can do, then it makes sense to hire a consultant to help you think this through — it will save time and avoid disappointment later on.

2. How often will you make changes to the site?

In part, the frequency of change will be decided by your decision in #1.  A dynamic site, perhaps incorporating a blog, will gain the most exposure. Search engines — the gods of the Internet — love change.  The more you change materials on your site, the more prominent it will become in search results.  If you are competing with other organizations for the same audience, or are selling online, this can be critical.

Making this decision now is important for two main reasons.

(1) It is basic to your planning about designing and building the site. If change will be frequent, the site should be designed specifically to accommodate change easily.

(2) How often new materials will be added to the site helps determines costs after the site is launched — either in staff time, or for outsourced services, or both.

3. How much can you realistically do in-house?

This question has two parts.

First, does anyone in your organization know website design/function well enough to oversee a website designer and developer?  If not, find someone to help — a ‘translator’ — who can make sure that you and the website company understand one another.  In the long run, it will save you both time and money by avoiding problems during development and by ensuring your website is tailored to your needs.

Second, who will be making changes on the site, once it’s launched?  If #2 is done properly, then your website should be designed so that change is relatively easy and inexpensive.  Routine changes to a website with an intuitive, simple ‘backend’ interface most likely can be handled by someone on staff, with training.  In some cases, it can be cost-effective to outsource this, saving in-house staff time for other tasks.

Handling changes in house requires both (a) an in-house person who is comfortable with the tasks and (b) a website backend interface that is easy to use.  Test before you buy — ask the website developers you are considering to allow you to try out the interface.  Horror stories about overly complicated sites abound.

For ‘sticky spots’ and occasional problems, having an expert on tap is essential — a malfunctioning website harms your image.

The Mattison Group specializes in providing consulting in the planning, design, development and maintenance of small- to medium-sized websites. We develop and manage small websites in house.