How to Plan your New Website
There comes a point when you've decided you want a web site that you will need to actually begin the project. This is the same point where a developer may find it necessary to begin pulling his or her hair out - if you haven't both planned ahead.
It's a very simple fact. I don't know what you want, until you tell me. You don't know what I can do, until I tell you. Communication - that's the secret.
I can't help that, unfortunately. I have a lot of experience with web site development — but until I know your project, business, or interests, I can't really make any progress with your site. I'm glad to be consulted, and happy to answer your questions - but the first person you need to consult before starting a web project is yourself. Be very frank with yourself, and get right down to business. Before you contact the developer, get a few specific things solid in your mind:
- What is the purpose of my site?
- How frequently will my site need to be updated?
- How large is my site?
- Who will be providing the content? Is it prepared?
All of these things are necessary for your own planning to begin to contact the professional web developer (or teenager next door) who will help develop your site.
What is the purpose of your site?
Are you creating a personal web site, to share a few humorous tidbits about yourself with the world? Are you an amateur photographer wanting to display hundreds of photographs you've taken? Are you a business, hoping to raise awareness for your business through the web? Are you starting an e-business, where this web site will need to generate revenue? These options will each have different requirements for developments, which I'll discuss further on.
How frequently will your site need updating?
Many people don't take this factor into consideration when they're designing a web site. If you want to update your web zine every two weeks, somebody will need to do this. A web design does not automatically come with years of free maintenance - so maintenance costs money. There are several options, of course. You can spend a bit of extra cash at the beginning, and have the designer put together a content management system or database driven website that you might be able to update easily, or they could create a few templates for you and teach you some basic coding. Or maybe it would be easiest for you to simply hire the designer to do maintenance for you - definitely the easiest answer, but it will require a regular commitment to keep this up.
How large is your site?
Give some thought to how many pages of content you might end up with - it'll probably be more than you thought, at first. Larger sites mean larger costs. It may seem that just adding an additional page shouldn't be a big expense - I mean, the design is already done, right? This is true. However, each additional page makes the development more difficult, and makes it more difficult to check for errors and design the navigation. The difference between 5 and 6 pages is pretty insignificant. But the difference between 5 and 15 pages is not so small! In the case of extremely large sites, with hundreds or even thousands of pages of content, a database driven site is going to be needed just to keep everything organized.
Who will be providing the content? Is it prepared?
Different web developers have different preferences for content delivery. A few important things to keep in mind, though. First, it's much easier to do the initial layout if you know what the major sections of the site will be and what the content of the front page will be. Second, the content that you deliver should be organized the same way as the site will be. If you've agreed with the developer that you'll have sections a-e, don't deliver documents 1-9!
My preference is to receive as much of the content as possible as soon as possible. This enables me to plan ahead. At the very least, I like to have a good sense of just how much content there will be! If you are not preparing your content yourself, be sure to get a good commitment to a schedule for your content providers.
Building a web site doesn't end when the site is built. Realize before you start that your site will need to be publicized, and it'll need to be maintained. People don't arrive at your site immediately upon launch - they need to learn about your site. Site marketing is an important aspect of your website development. I've written extensively website marketing, and you can learn more about it at inter:digital strategies, my web marketing consultancy.
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