New Website Projects

Properly taking the up-front time to plan a website, and develop an overall Internet marketing strategy, is critical to its success. A few years back things were different. Today, you can’t just “build a website” and expect to get good – if any – reasonable results. I’ve seen this mistake made hundreds of times. Doing it right will save time and money. Doing it wrong will cost you time and immeasurable lost sales opportunities.

Phase One: Initial Planning

Phase one includes a lot of discussion about your business (phone consultations and email), who you are, how you got there, what products and services you sell, what you charge, what your unique value proposition is, how you promote your business “off-line.”

It also involves creating documentation from these conversations in order to effectively move forward and all be “on the same page.” When this phase is completed we have the basis for a solid plan; we have a pretty good idea of what we’re going to do, who is going to do it, and how it will be done.

1. Understanding business goals and objectives
2. Identifying current strengths and weaknesses
3. Identifying current search engine positioning
4. Identification of competitors; online, local and non-local
5. Identification of hot issues
6. Identifications of obstacles (i.e. limited budget)
7. Setting realistic expectations – timeframes
8. Setting realistic expectations – budgets
9. Initial website total pages and label identification
10. Initial SEO work, including keyword and keyword phrase identification, and current top ranked websites for keywords/phrases (i.e. search engine competition – it isn’t always “local”)
11. Page copy and website content development; who will write this, what content is needed for the website and the different pages of the website
12. Websites the client likes (and why)
13. Websites the client doesn’t like (and why)
14. Creating documentation for all of the above

Phase Two: Client Questionnaire

Client is provided with MS-Word document and asked to answer, as best as they can, all questions. This document is also available as a shared Google document if you have a Google account and use Google documents. Many of the answers to these questions may have been discussed in phase one. This document is reviewed by everyone involved and used by the web designer to create a mock-up.

In this phase all graphics, photos, testimonials, etc., that will be used at the website, need to be sent to the designer.

Phase Three: Mock-up Development

Using the information gathered in phase one and phase two the designer now has enough information to create the initial mock-up design of the website. The design is presented to the client, generally, within 10 to 14 days from the completion of the Client Questionnaire. Once presented to the client, a revision and modification phase takes place and a new, or “final” mock-up, is created.

During this stage several technical variables are addressed related to hosting, Google Analytics (website statistics), Google Webmaster tools (i.e. Google Sitemap), and if Blogging (if the project includes a Blog). Instructions, logins, and passwords are sent to the client.

All page copy will be finalized during this phase and prepared for the site during this phase. It is then presented to the programmer/designer to be “plugged in” to the final website.

Phase Four: Programming

Once a final mock-up has been approved the programming phase begins. All pages are created using standard .html (hypertext markup language) and using Dreamweaver. No proprietary coding or technology is ever used. The client retains exclusive and entire ownership of all website pages and all coding. All pages are optimized for search engines and a variety of testing begins.

The new website is presented to the client on a test server (online) for final approval. Once a client provides final approval the website is scheduled to go “live,” generally within 48 to 72 hours.

How Time Is Used

Projects are NOT fixed price and based on time. Each site is different, based on a client’s requirements. Generally, five to eight page websites break-out as follows:

Mock-up development: 15 hours
Programming and coding: 25 hours
Page copy, search engine optimization, technical issues: 20 hours