If you got the idea of creating a website, an application, or even looking to revamp your website in order to start buzzing the media; it’s important for you to understand the road-map for this process and indulge yourself into the development before the web agency or the developer initiate the work [knowing that the developer is the only resource whom you should rely on]. Obviously, this will help you to keep your objective, track your website without any deviation related to ignorance or indolence. It’s simple and smooth as it should be:
Online Strategy Involvement (7 days):
Put your website in the business model as a major component in your online strategy; check out our article on online strategy for start-ups.
Target the Audience and the Market (3 days):
a. Identify clearly your target audience, demographic, and behavior.
b. Do an in-depth research that can lead you to understand your competitors’ business model, key messaging, website usability, and the traffic size and behavior. Knowing these factors can help you to benchmark against it.
Defining Content (3 days):
a. Define what sort of content you want to communicate – content would mean copy, images, and videos.
b. Define the site structure of your website – you can take a look on any sitemap for your competition that shows at the bottom of their page.
c. Define what sort of communication channel you want to build: Is it feedback, enquiry, or registration forms; or newsletters subscription?
Writing (10 days):
a. Write your creative brief – it should include your objective of the website in terms of design, look-and-feel, and visitors’ call-to-action.
b. Write your website copy content and start gathering and auditing your website images and videos.
Select (7 days):
a. Request for Proposal – request for proposal by either filling in the agencies’ document or bringing out a free template from the internet. Then, review proposals from the agencies and pick one.
b. Also you might need to select a domain name and a hosting plan that suits best your application or idea.
Review and Approval (3 days):
After kick-offing with an agency, the agency will deliver the following based on your briefing and their expertise in what fits best for your target audience:
a. Sitemap – for easy navigation and with an online logical structure.
b. Creative Brief – for website look-and-feel.
c. Custom made design templates.
Finalization and Quality Testing (5 days):
After website completion, it’s very subjective for you to do the following:
a. Review the website content. The rest of the technical quality assurance should have been taken care by the company (HTML Validation, forms); however, report back if you suspect any unclear data.
b. Review website optimization and search engine friendly parameters, like adding Meta tags and description, then submit your URL into the top search engines.
c. Embed analytics in order to start reviewing traffic and visitors’ behavior, like Google analytics.
Congratulations Your Website is launched – have fun and start reviewing the traffic and continuously optimize the website and update the content.
For web designers, mobile web design is becoming an easy way to acquire new clients. It amazes me how few web design companies are offering this for their clients.