What you need to know about building a web site:
Most companies don’t understand that a web site is also a face of their organization, just like an employee, advertisement, business card, or brochure. In order to leave a lasting impression, your site should be developed and designed according to your existing brand image, not a preexisting, template solution. Having an experienced web developer and designer is crucial to ensuring your site’s usability and effectiveness. For your help, Digital Function has prepared a comprehensive plan of action for a successful web environment that meets your business needs and aligns with your strategies and goals.
Consulting
The single most important piece of creating a website is finding out its purpose. Since each project is different and no two web sites serve the same purpose, determining what you need and expect from your web environment will uncover the cost, approach, and timeline to completion for your site. Digital Function meets with each client to figure out the scope of the project and prepares a comprehensive proposal to cover each aspect of a site and creates a succession of milestones and dates to keep each project under budget and on time.
Logical Design / Site Map
The logical design, or site map, is the blue print that defines how a visitor navigates through the site. Clicking through the site should be well thought out, as an illogical or unplanned flow of navigation leads to confusion and serves as an invitation for visitors to leave the site. It’s important that you set up a well-defined workflow and consider whether visitors will need credentials to view certain pages and other navigational issues. A site map will help define the interface requirements for the interface design step.
Content Production/Strategy
Your content, whether from your staff or a contracted copywriter, should reflect the stated goals and objectives for the site, as well as your company. You will also have to think about the message that you want to convey to the visitor. Who are you targeting? What’s the best way to explain your company and services to this audience? What are they looking for on your site? You also have to think about the layout. Too many block paragraphs get overlooked but too few lines don’t make an impact. Well-planned and written copy can make or break the entire site. Also, the content plays a major role in how well your site is indexed by search engines. Digital Function advises each client to sit down with their copy writers and devise a solid plan on how to successfully write for the web.
Web Design
Whether you use your own graphic design firm or need us to refer one of our partners, we want to be sure that your site is designed around your brand image and site map, not the other way around. The mistake that many companies make is hiring an inexperienced web designer with limited or no knowledge of true web design. The web is different than any other medium: print, tv, and radio. You need someone who knows about the web and User-Centered Design (UCD) techniques that can design a site consistent with your brand image yet with the end user in mind.
For more information, read:
UCD: The ‘Magic Pill’ for the Web
Web Production
Once your design has been approved, your chosen designer must create a web-specific template that is user-friendly and matches your corporate image. The great thing about Digital Function is that our software can adjust and mold itself around virtually any web-specific design.
Application Architecture & Code Production
Similar to building a house, your site should have solid framework. The wrong programming could throw off the functionality, corrupting data being collected form visitors and causing other unforeseen problems. A lack of fortitude could cause the site to crash in times of high traffic. These are just some of the architectural issues that are planned out by experienced web developers. Even still, the code behind it all represents several layers of your site’s foundation. Depending on functional requirements, your site can need more than simple html coding, like scripting, logical programming, and database development. Coding is a key piece to the main functioning of your site. Each one of these steps is critical to the back-end of your site, and having the right skill set can save you lots of time and money. Digital Function’s staff specializes in every skill set you’ll need to develop your site; we have deployed many successful sites serving millions of visitors.
Hosting
Hardware consideration is another important component to your site. Will your hosting provider support your site’s needs? What are the limits to their support? In choosing which server you want to host your site on, you should know the size of your site, as well as storage limits and bandwidth usage on the server. Digital Function does offer hosting to every client; however, you are free to choose any hosting service you want.
Data Entry
After your site content has been written and produced, it must be entered into designated pages and laid out in a user-friendly, logical format as outlined in the content production step.
Set-up
Before you can upload your site, you need to buy a domain name and any other certificates (SSL, etc.) to make sure all functionality on your site is optimized and legal. In order to collect and distribute certain information online, you should have the proper licenses and certification to avoid problems with customers, and perhaps the law. Digital Function lets each client know what proper forms and certificates they’ll need during the discovery process. We can even refer you to vendors who previous clients have had success with, especially if you are clueless as to where to go, what to get, and who to ask.
Testing
It’s critical that your site be tested before going live. You don’t want a visitor, or customer, to experience a bug that could have been prevented. Testing ensures that each deliverable outlined in the discovery process is functioning as promised and ready for public use. A major consequence of not testing is shutting your site down indefinitely after going live prematurely, ruining any marketing plans and potential customer relations. Digital Function works hard to test each client’s site continuously before deployment and fixes any bugs or improper functionality before going live.
Deployment
Your site goes live! Although it’s your most anticipated step, deployment is not the end to a successful, effective web site.
Maintenance
After going live, you need a plan that ensures your site will continue to be updated and monitored, whether you let Digital Function do it or your staff. From rewording to updating pictures and events, a consistent and stable web image will keep reaping more user returns. Ongoing maintenance will also help increase your search engine ranking.
Marketing/SEO
Congratulations, you have this awesome site, now! But who knows about it? Digital Function can help you devise a strategic, sensible strategy for search engine optimization and other web marketing tools.
