Managing your Web Site Development Process

Many web site projects, which have the potential to be highly successful, fail or grind because of process problems. The following information is designed to help you understand and manage your development process.

Section 1: Managing Time

1. Web development and maintenance is just plain a whole lot of work.
   That means a whole lot of time. Time is expensive. There are things you can do to get the most from that time. However, there is no such thing as getting the process so perfect your web site will build and maintain itself!
2. Try to automate as much as you can.
   Many web tasks are repeatitive. These are tasks that can be made more efficient with programming.
   Examples:
   a. Use Dreamweaver Library Items, Templates and Cascading Style Sheets. If you happen to think about it, most of the pages on this site have the same "look, but different content. These pages are all done with Templates and Library Items. The use of Templates and Library Items are covered in the Web Development with Dreamweaver 2 class.
   b. If you have many pages that look the same, but the content changes (product pages are like this), use dynamic pages. Changing the content on dynamic pages is ususally done with an online form. More complicated (expensive) systems can read from your inventory database or other programs you already use. I am working on a project that automatically takes the information from sonars and puts it on a web page. Every time someone looks at the web page, the latest data is there. No one will have to make the changes on the page - it's done through programming.
3. Repeatative charges are more expensive than up front charges.
   While it might seem very expensive to spend $400.00 to buy Dreamweaver, if it costs you $40.00 per hour to hire a contractor to make updates on your site, you could easily exceed that amount in a year. The same is true with hiring a programmer. It may seem too much to pay a programmer $500 - $1000 to automate your maintenance with online forms, but you could easily save more than that in a year or so by not having to pay a contractor to build new static pages.
4. Be realistic about how long it will take to develop and maintain your web site.
   It could easily take 15 - 20 hours to develop a small, static site. This includes a) getting all your graphics together, b) getting all your words together, c) deciding on a "look", d) developing a template, e) making new pages, f) linking all the pages, g) realizing that "look" isn't exactly what you meant - making changes to the template, h) adding search engine optimization to your pages, i) realizing that you forgot some pages you need - add those pages, j) realizing that you now have too many links - reorganize your linking strategy, k) etc, etc, etc!
   You should plan to make changes to your web site at least every couple of months. Your viewers need a reason to go back to your site, and the search engines will consider your site "abandonded," if you - well, abandon it!
   A Nora Screw Up
   Due to a family and job change, I only made minor changes to my web site for a year. (Previously, I needed to make weekly changes because of a UM class I was teaching.) My Google position tanked! If I had been depending on income from my web site, it would have been a very bad thing!
5. Be realistic about your own time and your web developer's time.
   a) If you are already working 60 - 80 hours a week, you don't have time. Either dump some of your work, or have someone else work on your web site.
   b) Your secretary can't maintain a web site in 5 minutes over lunch any more than you can! It's a great idea to have an employee that can make changes to your web site, but if that employee is already time stressed, adding web development will only lose you an employee.
   c) Don 't expect your requests to a web developer to be done in less than two weeks - more, if the task is complicated. Your web development contractor isn't sitting by the phone waiting for you to call! In fact, your web developer is probably turning jobs away. Your requests for maintenance have to be scheduled with other clients' requests. If your developer responds within a week let them know how wonderful they are!
6. You may need to find a different developer, if your time needs don't match.
   Talk to your contractor about your time needs. If you say you are in no rush, your developer will believe you! The web development process often has some unexpected twists and turns with things that don't work as expected. If your project is very large or time critical, you may need to go to a development company with a whole team, instead of a single contractor. However, even web development teams have been known to take longer than expected on a web project!
   If you need to find someone else because of your business situation or a change in your business, it doesn't need to be a negative event for either of you! Your current developer should be happy to make the transition as smooth as possible by taking the time to explain the structure of your site and the current development status. (Expect to pay for this time.)
   Good web site structure and documentation will help the transition process!!! Always have your web site built with the idea that at some point in time, someone else will have to work on it - make it easy for that to happen.
   A smooth transition
   One of my cool clients had needs I felt would be better served by someone else. She took my advice and found someone else to work on her site. The new developer met her needs very well. In fact, I have recommended her new developer when I couldn't do a job.
   An experience to avoid with your web developer!
   I had one gentleman contact me in March or April to redo an existing web site. He was planning on starting a new business. I told him that my schedule was very busy until summer, but that I would do what I could. He said that was fine, and that he would appreciate whatever I could do for him because he didn't know who else to go to. Towards the end of June, he said he would like to have the site done by August 1. I said that was fine because the underlying structural work (templates, css, library items, etc. )was done, it was just a matter of going through each of the previously existing file and upgrading them to new look and programming. About July 3, he was very angry because his site wasn't done. His business had gotten off the ground sooner than he expected. He said that he had a friend that could fix it all in 20 minutes. That was fine with me - I had 3 other new jobs I had put off to do his. By the end of September, his site still wasn't updated. I wonder what happened to his "friend."
   

Section 2: Working with a Designer

1. The development process will be different depending on whether you build your own site, have an employee build your site, hire a designer to build the some - or some combination of those.
2. The development process will be different depending on whether you have a site in existence or whether you build it yourself.
3. The web site owner should be part of the process. One way to be sure there will be problems is to give an undefined project to an employee or a developer. The only thing that is near certain in this case is failure.
4. The web site owner should take the time to be informed, as much as possible, about how web sites fit into an organization, about how web sites work, and about the development process. One suggestion is to take a class on web development. Even if the course is technically "over your head," you will have some background information that will be helpful in the process. The lessons from the class are likely to come back as you go through the development process. Another suggestion is to listen to your web developer and ask LOTS of questions.
   Nora's experience: My best clients aren't the ones who just agree to everything I suggest. My best clients ask questions to understand what the options are and pay attention to details and explain what they want as the site develops.
5. When things go wrong, it's difficult for an uninformed site owner to tell whether it's a) the designer is incompetent, b) the owner has unrealistic expectations, c) a combination of both. The result is that incompetent web designers continue to work and that competent web designers are maligned by web site owners who don't understand the work or the process.
   Nora's experience: I have seen and rescued web sites that were developed by incompetent designers. In my 10 years of working in web design, I have only had one unfortunate experience with a web site owner who was uniformed and therefore, unreasonable. I have also had the wonderful experience of watching web site owners learn how their web site works and become very competent in their own ideas. I have also appreciated many web designers who have good reasons for doing things very differently than I do.
6. Find out how a prospective web employee or designer handles the following: file structure, page structure, search engine optimization, graphic manipulation and optimization, scheduling, billing, communication, and documentation. There are wonderful designers who aren't the right ones for your style, your organization, your time schedule, your budget, etc.
   Nora's experience: I have had some wonderful clients who have gone to someone else! I recommended to three clients that they find someone else because they were geographically distant. I felt that they would have better communication if they had some "face" time. I recommended to two clients, that they work with someone who was more in the graphic arts because I felt that their sites should be more "arty" than my training and experience allows. One of these clients comes back to me occasionally for technical work, but I appreciate the artful design that was developed.
7. Errors are not necessarily the sign of an incompetent web developer. With all those things to keep track of, don't be surprised if there are errors. Like work you have done at the printshop, your are responsible for the final proofing.
8. When you are proofing your site, make a note of the following: which page(s) has the problem; describe the problem and what you see; and, what browser you are using. Otherwise, it's like calling the doctor and saying, "I'm sick," and expecting a diagnosis.
   Nora's experience: my one troubled client called, very angry because "my site doesn't work." That was all the information I was given. I went to the site and the home page loaded fine. To a web developer, "My site doesn't work." means that if you type the domain name in a browser, nothing comes up. Other than one problem with the font size on a phone number, I still don't know what "didn't work."