The Website Design and Implementation Processes
March 31, 2008
Thoughtful website requirements analysis is a logical process the benefits to which are inevitably seen during the project roll out. A general rule of thumb commonly used is as follows, every change or revision made during the Web Design and Implementation stages will cost 1 unit, say $100, and suppose that change wasn’t planned either so several changes are made for the same original change… multiply that by the number of unique changes and, well, you get the idea. It is extremely important, therefore, to ask as many questions as possible and discuss the project in detail during the early stages. Proper design and planning might take a while, however, many successful previous projects have proven that this approach results in a shorter time to delivery and most cost effective execution.
Primary stages of the development process
Stage 1. First Meeting
The initial meeting between the client and Account Manager/Consultant, designed to allow both parties to become accustomed to each others style and requirements.
Stage 2. Website Specification and Requirements Analysis.
The account manager will document customer requirements in a concise way so as to effectively relay them to the design team. The design team will help determine scope and associated cost. At this stage the development schedule and budget are determined.
Stage 3. Proposal Submission
The proposal estimate or quote, created in Stage 2, is presented to the client for approval. Revisions may be necessary and should be agreed upon by both parties.
Stage 4. Development
The website is designed and developed according to agreed upon customer requirements and scope. Stages are tracked and managed by a project manager ensuring timeline and project component completion.
Stage 5. Draft Submission
The first draft of the website is presented to the customer for review. Any necessary changes are recorded and returned to the design/development for implementation.
Stage 6. Website Completion and Final Submission For Acceptance
The website is now ready for delivery. The customer tests the site thoroughly for requirements completion and usability.
Stage 7. Product Delivery
The website is pushed to the hosting center and all associated services (email, marketing, etc) are engaged.
Flexibility in Content Management Systems
March 28, 2008
A Content Management Systems (CMS) is a powerful tool used for adding, organizing, and managing content in a website. The beauty of a content management system is that it requires no HTML coding knowledge at all. An online management system allows a site administrator the ability to manage content through an enhanced text editor similar to Microsoft Word or Adobe Writer. A content management offers the following flexibility:
- Import and creation of documents and multimedia material
- Identification of all key users and their content management roles
- The ability to assign roles and responsibilities to different content categories or types.
- Definition of the content workflow tasks, often coupled with event messaging so that content managers are alerted to changes in content.
- Allow the textual aspect of content to be complemented through formatting. For example a CMS can automatically set colour, fonts, layout format, or images.
Designing For Optimization
March 26, 2008
Before you design that website or engage a web developer to develop a website for you, let’s talk about optimization!
Undoubtedly, you have a very strong opinion about what your potential customers are searching for. You are, however, undoubtedly wrong. Sorry, but it has been proven over and over again. People type in the strangest things when searching for products on the web. It’s far more important to analyze and research search trends for products than market the product… based on the product (if that makes sense). As those trends appear they should incorporated in the website design. Each trend should have its own section therein.
Optimizing your site is not the easiest of tasks. Nonetheless, the important thing to realize is that you must have an optimization strategy in place before the site is built. Optimizing an existing site is often quite laborious and more costly. Optimization techniques are like the electrical wiring in a skyscraper. Once they are in place, it takes a lot of effort, time and money to change them.
Website designing and optimization should be done in concert with one another. If you can avoid building a site before even thinking about optimization, you will be far ahead of most sites on the web.
RawkMedia Joins SYPE
March 25, 2008
In an effort to establish professional connections with the Saskatoon Business Community, we’ve joined SYPE (Saskatchewan Young Professionals and Entrepreneurs). SYPE, as the title indicates, is a group of young professionals and Entrepreneurs to work together and promote business opportunities in Saskatchewan. Another main SYPE agenda is to retain young graduates and professionals in Saskatchewan to help grow a healthy and competitive Saskatchewan Business community.
Web Site Analysis
March 24, 2008
We’re often asked, “what exactly are the necessary steps to analyzing a website for optimization and presentation?” When evaluating a customer’s website, we use the following checklist:
- • Does it focus on its audience’s requirements? If not, why not, and what can be done to fix this?
- • Does it provide users wilh all the necessary information? If not, why not, and what can you do to fix this?
- • Does each internal page have one clear objective? The main page and category pages usually have to ‘share’ attention, but internal pages can focus on one objective only.
- • Is each page consistent with all primary / secondary goals? If not, then why is it there? How can it be made more relevant? This will depend on the context and purpose of your website of course.
If the answers is “yes” to any of the core questions above, the website has a solid foundation for the target audience. If the answer is “no”, time to contact a website consultant!
The Importance of Market Research
March 24, 2008
A necessary (and not as boring as you might think) part of SEO. I’ll admit, I’m not the sort of person who likes to over-elaborate or over-do the planning and research phase. I follow the ‘ready-fire-aim’ school of thought, so my goal with every website is to just get started and fix things later. However, there still is that ‘ready’ bit of the whole ready-fire-aim process, and there is some research that you will have to do in order to be ready to conquer your target niche.
Understand your targets for the website and profile the ideal audience.
Once you know your topic (and have a feel for your audience), find out what keywords they are using.
Find out who your top competition is, and what they are doing in terms of SEO / online marketing.
An Introduction to Google Adwords
March 24, 2008
Google Adwords is Google’s pay per click advertising system, which you can use to drive targeted traffic to your website. You can bid on specific keywords, create an advertisement which will display on Google, and pay for each click that sends traffic to your website. An effective adwords campaign can produce favorable results, an ineffective campaign will cost you money without yielding any results. It is important therefore to have a web consultant assist you in the development and execution of an adwords campaign. Contact a RawkMedia web consultant today to discuss possible strategies to get your website better exposure and results from an effective adwords marketing plan.
If You Build It, They Will Come?
March 24, 2008
The most common problem that our customers face when deciding to sell online is, in their excitement at the opportunity to sell to a “global” marketplace, they have forgotten that they will often have to compete with larger, more established competition.
It’s a common enough tale. The customer decides they need a website. The website is designed and the e-commerce program is launched… now what? What happens next? Most often, very little. Why? Well, online success is all about traffic - traffic quantity. It is a percentages game; you will sell to a percentage of the people who visit your site (assuming that you have a credible product and have all pricing and logistics strategies down). The problem is one of scale, as the conversion rates are typically very low and you need high volumes of (quality) traffic to your website. Incredibly, most businesses still operate on a “build it and they will come” basis.
A marketing strategy requires patience and persistence. A well formulated strategy is important and an understanding of who your target demographic is, is equally important.
We Have New Partners
March 24, 2008
RawkMedia has come together with another web design company SharedEvent.com. SharedEvent is focussed on web design and hosting solutions for the small to mid-sized Saskatoon business community. Partnering with SharedEvent will allow us to offer a broader and more robust range of hosting services. The RawkMedia group will be focusing on Sales, Marketing, and online consulting of both our partnership and our customers.
New Site!
March 24, 2008
Hello to our readers and customers,
Just a quick note to inform that we’ve completed the flash design for our website site. You can check it out here.