10 steps to creating a site (for the client)
When you decide to create a website, you face a number of problems, usually associated with the question - what exactly should be done, how and in what order?
If you already have a functioning site that does not suit you with something, we can assume that you are lucky - you have invaluable experience that you can analyze, evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the old site and formulate suggestions for the new. If you order a site for the first time, it will be a little more difficult. However, in any case, it is better to have at hand a certain plan of action, acting on which you can really get the result that you need.
Ask yourself the first question - what do I want to get? Often there is a statement of the result “I want a website in general”. In this case, you can count on the “result in general”, which cannot be measured either in terms of money, nor in terms, or in the assessment of achieved goals. Therefore, the first step of your plan will be:
1. Presentation of the result.
Imagine your site is ready. What basic information does it contain? How is it structured? What is the overall impression created by its visitors when entering the site, what should they feel or think about? What are some of the sites you know?
')
Do not be afraid to formulate the answers to all these questions in a non-professional language or somewhere to be mistaken in the wording. You do not have to master the terminology, you need to try to describe on the level of actions and emotions the result you are striving for.
For example:
The site should give visitors a sense of solidity, stability, perhaps some conservatism. Basic information - a brief description of our market position, pricing policy, contact information and a notable section with the product catalog. When a visitor arrives at the site, he must quickly and easily find a link to the order form and, filling in the minimum required fields, send a request.
2. Goal setting
Be honest with yourself - why does your organization have a website? If it is fundamentally important for you that your billiard partners at the next meeting were complimentary about its design, just write. Or maybe you have plans to squeeze your main competitor from the Internet market, providing visitors with a more convenient online service. Or are you planning to use the site to work with potential clients in other regions, creating a kind of virtual office and serving their needs using the site?
Formulate one main goal, which should be achieved as a result, and do not feed illusions that with the help of one resource it will be possible to solve all the tasks that you can only imagine. If you plan to get an image resource with spectacular graphics and lots of animation, it is unlikely that it can be an online store for the delivery of electrical engineering or a powerful news resource.
Very important: the goal must be measurable. That is, a specific number of visitors, specific actions of these visitors on the site, specific money, which will increase your turnover. If, due to some incompetence in the topic, you raise your expectations, they can be adjusted and brought closer to reality later, when discussing the task with the web studio.
3. Target audience. The next step is to identify potential visitors, which will be designed for your site. It is very important to understand for whom all this is done. If you are well aware of the target audience of your site, describe it briefly and in simple words, this information will be needed later when filling out the web-studio brief. Men or women, what age, what is their social status? Where do they work and how do they relax? What topics are they most likely to worry about?
Introduce the most typical representative of your target audience and tell about it. Suppose this is a young man of 23-26 years old with a higher education who is interested in career issues, has no health problems, chooses night clubs as a rest, and prefers to rest in Europe. Or is it a working woman of 30-40 years old with 1-2 children, living in a small town and paying great attention to the issues of home improvement.
So, the result is described, goals are set, the audience is defined. What needs to be done to achieve all this?
4. Understanding the process. First you need at least in general terms to imagine what is happening in that black box, on the one hand of which you put a technical task and money, and on the other hand, a ready-made site will appear after a certain time. Therefore, the next step of our plan will be to make this black box more transparent.
In order for your site to start working, three conditions are necessary:
1) the site itself should be ready as a set of specific files and functions,
2) it must be hosted on a hosting, so that it is always accessible from anywhere in the world and
3) it should have a domain name by which users will access it.
Most often, the company in which you order the site can help you in registering a domain name and hosting the site, so the second two points will be left at the stage of interaction with the web studio, and at this step we will consider the creation of the site.
Several people will be working on your site. First of all, it is the project manager who will discuss and coordinate with you the nuances of the order, set tasks for the performers, follow the deadlines and serve as a kind of translator from the client’s language to the web studio language and back. After the manager submits the project to work, the content manager begins to engage him. The site is primarily information, so from the very beginning of work on it, it is desirable to have all the necessary texts and illustrations. You can provide ready-made information, and you can order the writing of texts and the preparation of photos and illustrations of the web-studio.
After the structure and content of the main and internal pages of the site are described (the interface designer can take part in this work), the web designer starts working. He draws one or several variants of the site design, that is, he creates exactly the picture that the visitors of the site will see as a result. After the design is approved, the layout designer starts working. He translates this picture into a view that is understandable to Internet browsers, coding it in html language. After the main templates of the site pages are put together, the design and content management systems are integrated, i.e. The programmer proceeds to work. His job is to enable the site to easily update information - edit, add or delete.
The programmer adds and connects the necessary modules to control the site. After that, the site is tested for operability and correctness first on the local server, and then configured and debugged on the hosting.
This is a fairly rough description of the process, but it gives a general idea of ​​the stages of work on the site. Now you can define your wishes for individual performers and prepare the necessary information or a list of questions for the project manager. It's time to move on to choosing a contractor.
5. Choosing a web studio. In this article I will not dwell on the criteria for choosing a web studio, I will describe only the basic parameters that should be paid attention to. Suppose you already have a list of studios that you would like to work with. Also at this stage you have already formulated the goals and objectives of the site.
Most likely, the web studio will ask you to fill out a standard brief to get the necessary information. Pay attention to this brief. Is it overloaded with questions, the answers to which will take you a lot of time, but are unlikely to be useful in developing the site? Do you understand the wording of the questions, and if not, is it easy to get clear explanations from the project manager, what do these terms mean?
After receiving the introductory information from you and filling out the brief, the web-studio will tell you the estimated cost and terms of website development. But do not rush to make a choice between contractors only on the price / terms ratio. Think about the representative of which company you have a greater mutual understanding, where they listened to you, asked you more clarifying questions, spoke in a language you understand, responded promptly to your questions or requests? Look again at the portfolio of these firms to make sure that you are comfortable with the level and style of their work. And most importantly, think about whether you have confidence that the chosen studio will try to achieve your goals and objectives, and not just “work off the order”. It’s not a fact that working with such a studio will be cheaper than other offers, but your task in this case is not to save, but to solve the tasks.
6. Project documentation. Website development begins with the preparation of project documentation. Sometimes it can take several dozen or even hundreds (in the case of large projects) pages. Be prepared to carefully read all the documents provided, find out and clarify incomprehensible moments and sign them only after that. It goes without saying that the development of such documentation costs a certain amount of money, and its structuredness and detailing indicates a serious approach of the web studio to the process of creating the site.
Do not save on the development of a detailed technical specification. First, all the work will be carried out in accordance with this document, and after you sign it, the further arguments that you mentioned or asked for something will no longer be valid. Secondly, with ready-made documentation in your hands, you can change your mind (situations are different) and give the order to another web studio before a large amount has already been paid. Naturally, provided that you have paid for the development of documentation of the first studio.
7. The choice of control tools. The main and practically the only tool for controlling the process is to check all its stages for compliance with the task. Make sure that you and the contractor speak the same language, that is, you have the same understanding of the terms and concepts used.
Try to abstract from your subjective perception of the project. This is not easy, but in 99% of cases you are not the target audience for which the site is being made, you need to remember this.
Since most often the client is not an expert in creating websites, there are certain difficulties with control. Therefore, ask questions, specify incomprehensible moments. But do not overdo it - if you acted on our plan, most likely your project is in good hands and the contractor can be trusted. In the end, your goal is not to end up with a project to become a web development specialist. If it is, you can always discuss payment for additional consultations with the web studio.
8. What else to do for maximum efficiency. Follow the correct sequence of actions. To create the final design when the content (site content) is not ready, to write project documentation, when you have not formulated the main goals and objectives of the site - it means to spend 2-3 times more time to rework done or to get the wrong site that is, throw money away.
Do not change the formulation of the problem in the development process, it will result in the creation of another site with different goals, so it’s better to think a little longer at first than to spend extra time and money later.
Make sure that you have a responsible person from whom the contractor can quickly get answers to questions and necessary information.
Follow the arrangements and monitor their compliance with the web studio.
9. How to verify that you have achieved the goal. This is easy, because in the second step of our plan, you have already formulated specific measurable goals set for the site. After launching the project, you can, independently or with the help of specialists, track the number of visits, analyze the behavior of site visitors, calculate the financial effect. The main thing - do not forget to check it and make sure that everything works correctly.
10. What's next? In order for the site to develop and be effective, it is necessary to place information that is interesting and relevant to visitors. Decide who will maintain and update your site, monitor its performance, designate a responsible person and monitor those excellent results that are not long in coming.
If you already have a functioning site that does not suit you with something, we can assume that you are lucky - you have invaluable experience that you can analyze, evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the old site and formulate suggestions for the new. If you order a site for the first time, it will be a little more difficult. However, in any case, it is better to have at hand a certain plan of action, acting on which you can really get the result that you need.
Ask yourself the first question - what do I want to get? Often there is a statement of the result “I want a website in general”. In this case, you can count on the “result in general”, which cannot be measured either in terms of money, nor in terms, or in the assessment of achieved goals. Therefore, the first step of your plan will be:
1. Presentation of the result.
Imagine your site is ready. What basic information does it contain? How is it structured? What is the overall impression created by its visitors when entering the site, what should they feel or think about? What are some of the sites you know?
')
Do not be afraid to formulate the answers to all these questions in a non-professional language or somewhere to be mistaken in the wording. You do not have to master the terminology, you need to try to describe on the level of actions and emotions the result you are striving for.
For example:
The site should give visitors a sense of solidity, stability, perhaps some conservatism. Basic information - a brief description of our market position, pricing policy, contact information and a notable section with the product catalog. When a visitor arrives at the site, he must quickly and easily find a link to the order form and, filling in the minimum required fields, send a request.
2. Goal setting
Be honest with yourself - why does your organization have a website? If it is fundamentally important for you that your billiard partners at the next meeting were complimentary about its design, just write. Or maybe you have plans to squeeze your main competitor from the Internet market, providing visitors with a more convenient online service. Or are you planning to use the site to work with potential clients in other regions, creating a kind of virtual office and serving their needs using the site?
Formulate one main goal, which should be achieved as a result, and do not feed illusions that with the help of one resource it will be possible to solve all the tasks that you can only imagine. If you plan to get an image resource with spectacular graphics and lots of animation, it is unlikely that it can be an online store for the delivery of electrical engineering or a powerful news resource.
Very important: the goal must be measurable. That is, a specific number of visitors, specific actions of these visitors on the site, specific money, which will increase your turnover. If, due to some incompetence in the topic, you raise your expectations, they can be adjusted and brought closer to reality later, when discussing the task with the web studio.
3. Target audience. The next step is to identify potential visitors, which will be designed for your site. It is very important to understand for whom all this is done. If you are well aware of the target audience of your site, describe it briefly and in simple words, this information will be needed later when filling out the web-studio brief. Men or women, what age, what is their social status? Where do they work and how do they relax? What topics are they most likely to worry about?
Introduce the most typical representative of your target audience and tell about it. Suppose this is a young man of 23-26 years old with a higher education who is interested in career issues, has no health problems, chooses night clubs as a rest, and prefers to rest in Europe. Or is it a working woman of 30-40 years old with 1-2 children, living in a small town and paying great attention to the issues of home improvement.
So, the result is described, goals are set, the audience is defined. What needs to be done to achieve all this?
4. Understanding the process. First you need at least in general terms to imagine what is happening in that black box, on the one hand of which you put a technical task and money, and on the other hand, a ready-made site will appear after a certain time. Therefore, the next step of our plan will be to make this black box more transparent.
In order for your site to start working, three conditions are necessary:
1) the site itself should be ready as a set of specific files and functions,
2) it must be hosted on a hosting, so that it is always accessible from anywhere in the world and
3) it should have a domain name by which users will access it.
Most often, the company in which you order the site can help you in registering a domain name and hosting the site, so the second two points will be left at the stage of interaction with the web studio, and at this step we will consider the creation of the site.
Several people will be working on your site. First of all, it is the project manager who will discuss and coordinate with you the nuances of the order, set tasks for the performers, follow the deadlines and serve as a kind of translator from the client’s language to the web studio language and back. After the manager submits the project to work, the content manager begins to engage him. The site is primarily information, so from the very beginning of work on it, it is desirable to have all the necessary texts and illustrations. You can provide ready-made information, and you can order the writing of texts and the preparation of photos and illustrations of the web-studio.
After the structure and content of the main and internal pages of the site are described (the interface designer can take part in this work), the web designer starts working. He draws one or several variants of the site design, that is, he creates exactly the picture that the visitors of the site will see as a result. After the design is approved, the layout designer starts working. He translates this picture into a view that is understandable to Internet browsers, coding it in html language. After the main templates of the site pages are put together, the design and content management systems are integrated, i.e. The programmer proceeds to work. His job is to enable the site to easily update information - edit, add or delete.
The programmer adds and connects the necessary modules to control the site. After that, the site is tested for operability and correctness first on the local server, and then configured and debugged on the hosting.
This is a fairly rough description of the process, but it gives a general idea of ​​the stages of work on the site. Now you can define your wishes for individual performers and prepare the necessary information or a list of questions for the project manager. It's time to move on to choosing a contractor.
5. Choosing a web studio. In this article I will not dwell on the criteria for choosing a web studio, I will describe only the basic parameters that should be paid attention to. Suppose you already have a list of studios that you would like to work with. Also at this stage you have already formulated the goals and objectives of the site.
Most likely, the web studio will ask you to fill out a standard brief to get the necessary information. Pay attention to this brief. Is it overloaded with questions, the answers to which will take you a lot of time, but are unlikely to be useful in developing the site? Do you understand the wording of the questions, and if not, is it easy to get clear explanations from the project manager, what do these terms mean?
After receiving the introductory information from you and filling out the brief, the web-studio will tell you the estimated cost and terms of website development. But do not rush to make a choice between contractors only on the price / terms ratio. Think about the representative of which company you have a greater mutual understanding, where they listened to you, asked you more clarifying questions, spoke in a language you understand, responded promptly to your questions or requests? Look again at the portfolio of these firms to make sure that you are comfortable with the level and style of their work. And most importantly, think about whether you have confidence that the chosen studio will try to achieve your goals and objectives, and not just “work off the order”. It’s not a fact that working with such a studio will be cheaper than other offers, but your task in this case is not to save, but to solve the tasks.
6. Project documentation. Website development begins with the preparation of project documentation. Sometimes it can take several dozen or even hundreds (in the case of large projects) pages. Be prepared to carefully read all the documents provided, find out and clarify incomprehensible moments and sign them only after that. It goes without saying that the development of such documentation costs a certain amount of money, and its structuredness and detailing indicates a serious approach of the web studio to the process of creating the site.
Do not save on the development of a detailed technical specification. First, all the work will be carried out in accordance with this document, and after you sign it, the further arguments that you mentioned or asked for something will no longer be valid. Secondly, with ready-made documentation in your hands, you can change your mind (situations are different) and give the order to another web studio before a large amount has already been paid. Naturally, provided that you have paid for the development of documentation of the first studio.
7. The choice of control tools. The main and practically the only tool for controlling the process is to check all its stages for compliance with the task. Make sure that you and the contractor speak the same language, that is, you have the same understanding of the terms and concepts used.
Try to abstract from your subjective perception of the project. This is not easy, but in 99% of cases you are not the target audience for which the site is being made, you need to remember this.
Since most often the client is not an expert in creating websites, there are certain difficulties with control. Therefore, ask questions, specify incomprehensible moments. But do not overdo it - if you acted on our plan, most likely your project is in good hands and the contractor can be trusted. In the end, your goal is not to end up with a project to become a web development specialist. If it is, you can always discuss payment for additional consultations with the web studio.
8. What else to do for maximum efficiency. Follow the correct sequence of actions. To create the final design when the content (site content) is not ready, to write project documentation, when you have not formulated the main goals and objectives of the site - it means to spend 2-3 times more time to rework done or to get the wrong site that is, throw money away.
Do not change the formulation of the problem in the development process, it will result in the creation of another site with different goals, so it’s better to think a little longer at first than to spend extra time and money later.
Make sure that you have a responsible person from whom the contractor can quickly get answers to questions and necessary information.
Follow the arrangements and monitor their compliance with the web studio.
9. How to verify that you have achieved the goal. This is easy, because in the second step of our plan, you have already formulated specific measurable goals set for the site. After launching the project, you can, independently or with the help of specialists, track the number of visits, analyze the behavior of site visitors, calculate the financial effect. The main thing - do not forget to check it and make sure that everything works correctly.
10. What's next? In order for the site to develop and be effective, it is necessary to place information that is interesting and relevant to visitors. Decide who will maintain and update your site, monitor its performance, designate a responsible person and monitor those excellent results that are not long in coming.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/22195/
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