David A Robinson asked:




Introduction

A website development project has many component parts. Some are well understood, some are misunderstood and some come as a complete surprise. This document outlines the many aspects of a web development project and demystifies them.

We need a website

Not surprisingly web development projects often start with this premise. A variation on this theme might be ‘Our website is looking dated, we need a new one…’ To many, the first stage, having established the need is to embark on the design. This is wrong.

KEY POINT Starting a web project by looking at the design is wrong

The first stage of a website development project is to establish the need. This however does not mean simply deciding you need a website. Establishing the need means understanding the needs of your business and the needs of your customers and how a website might address those needs. For example:

Our clients need access to support documentation for our products 24/7 Our clients need to be able to view our available rental equipment in real time We need to showcase our products and services. We need to sell our products globally, 24/7 We need to provide new communication channels for our clients

Not surprisingly this phase of the project is often referred to as needs analysis. This work is key to the success of a web development project but is often poorly executed or even ignored in favour of getting on with the sexy stuff such as design and photography.

Someone a lot smarter than me summarised the result of ignoring needs analysis thus. “The customer doesn’t know what he wants until he sees what he gets, realises it’s not what he needs even though it’s exactly what he asked for.”

This is perhaps the most testing aspect of a web development project and if it doesn’t hurt the chances are you are not doing it properly. A detailed common understanding of what success looks like will prove invaluable as the project progresses and will give the whole project team clear terms of reference.

KEY POINT Establish the needs of the business. Understand the needs of the different stakeholder groups

Build it without any glitz

This approach assumes you are adopting the web development practice of separating content from presentation. In simple terms this means the content of your site, the words, pictures etc., are separated from the look and feel or design elements. This can be achieved through the use of a Content Management System (CMS) and technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). A CMS will also ensure your site can be maintained by nontechies as it hides all the code and script that makes your website work behind simple tools similar in functionality to a modern word processor.

KEY POINT Use a system that provides separation between content and presentation

By using this method you can develop your website with a plain design and once you have your content, navigation and functionality sorted you can simply overlay the final design. Think of it as a rehearsal for a play wearing jeans and a tee shirt, everything is in place and all that’s missing are the costumes and lighting. At this stage you don’t need to worry about the real copy, you can use a lorum ipsum generator (Google it) to create dummy content as a space filler. This approach allows the content and functionality of the site to drive the project instead of the design. Sound strange? Let me explain.

It’s very unlikely you are building a website in the hope that nobody will visit it. In fact it’s very likely that once your site is finished you will want lots of people to visit it. One of the ways to generate visitors to your website is by establishing it on the major search engines, such as Google. Can you ever remember a Google search that listed sites by how good they look? No; Google indexes your site by reading its content, it doesn’t care a jot what the site looks like.

KEY POINT Your content plays a significant part in how Google will rank your site, the visual design plays virtually none

I’m not suggesting the design isn’t important I am however saying if the design compromises the site’s content you may pay the price with a poor search engine ranking, and if the design compromises functionality you will alienate your users.

Website design

I’m not a designer but like most people I have an opinion on design. We have a design team and we rely on their skills to make a website work. Unfortunately when it comes to web design everybody is an expert. However, when you trawl through the web it’s clear that everybody is not an expert.

KEY POINT Do not make the mistake of assuming because you can use Photoshop you can design a website

Here are some design tips:

Use a web designer Don’t create your entire site with Flash Make sure the final design complies with web standards Don’t use tables for design layout Don’t use any inline styles, use CSS Use somebody who understands all of the above!

Website content

Up to this point you have been using dummy content to help your designer, but you now need to develop the real content.

The content of your website is what Google reads when it indexes it. Although your web pages may use META tags a short hidden description of the page it’s claimed Google prefers to read the same content people read. However Google doesn’t use people to index your site, it uses software, sometimes called a spider. The content of your site has to be tagged to allow these spiders to figure out what it’s about. Effective tagging is covered in Part II of this document.

Consider SEO right from the start

There are many great SEO check lists out there but they are sometimes a little long and confusing. Here’s a concise SEO check list.

Research your market and understand what people are searching for Write content that matches your research Build your site using clean code and well tagged content Ask for and try to attract relevant links Measure it all and fine tune it with an analytics package Repeat until you succeed!

Conclusion

Online success doesn’t come easily. You have to consider all the many aspect of a web project from visitors needs through to measuring the success. This article is intended to set you off in the right direction.

Every Book you can find online on the Topic of Success