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New Website Development How To Prepare
Looking To Have A New Website Development For Your Business
Your business doesn’t commission a new website every week. Probably once every three to four years, maybe even less often. So how can you make sure the website development process is conducted as effectively and efficiently as possible
The problem with this kind of activity that is completed infrequently is that at the outset it can be seen as daunting, however with the correct preparation it doesn’t need to be.
The good news is that as marketing and website designers we do this all the time and work with businesses of varying website skill from those with basic knowledge to those with advanced knowledge. In this article we will provide hints and tips for preparing to build your business’s new website.
Our recommendation is that as a business you set this out on paper before you meet with your web designer. Agree it amongst the decision-makers, and everyone within the business will reap the rewards and find the process easier, faster and less stressful.
We’ve broken the new website development process into three areas Context, Process and Discovery
1. Website Context
Why do you want a new website?
- Did you identify a (new) business need? – perhaps you have launched a new product or service that isn’t featured on your site
- Is your competition looking more professional and credible than you? – This could be your known existing competitors or have some new competitors entered your market
- Do you feel your company image is outdated? – If you haven’t updated your site for many years does the site convey a tired dated feel
- Or
- Are you just bored with your current site, this occurs a lot with business owners saying “The site just doesn’t match what we do and who we are anymore”
What is your business?
- What is it your business does, – products / services the solutions it provides and pains it solves
- How long have you been trading and have you been providing the above solutions all that time
- What is your vision, where do you want to take the business?
Who are your competitors and how is competition changing?
- Direct competitors – i.e. those companies doing exactly the same as you
- Indirect competitors – companies who don’t do what you do but their product / service could be seen as an alternative
- Future competitors – what new technology / offerings will become available that will impact on your product / service
What’s your business plan?
- Do you have a business plan
- Is it formalised
- Does everyone within the business know the plan
How does a successful website impact on the business plan?
What is the hierarchy of priorities for the website?
- Will it showcase all products and/or services
- Will it only showcase selected products and services
- What does it need to showcase that’s unique and different
- What kind of customer experience does it need to provide
Your personal website preferences?
- Examples of websites and website styles you like
- After ten plus years of website design and build suggesting that you like Apples website ( clean, crisp, minimal text and phenomenal imagery). Bentleys website (dark, moody , passionate , luxurious with outstanding imagery ) etc
- Examples of website styles you don’t like
- What we are looking for is examples of colours and combinations you like and don’t like
When does the website need to be ready?
- Do you have a specific date the site needs to be ready by
- Who is responsible for setting a go live date
- What are the implications of being late / early
2. Process
Who are the decisions makers?
- Who are the people who need to approve
- designs,
- functionality – how the site will work
- content – wording and imagery
- Note: often with website projects people within the business will say they are not interested in the website. Then a few weeks before the site is due to go live. They will request to see designs, functionality and content. Who is going to take the lead and have accountability
- Note – Leaving the site to be designed by committee will definitely lead to delays and most likely a poorly executed website
Who are the influencers?
- Who are people whose advice you trust
- Most importantly who are people with relevant and appropriate experience*
BIG WORD OF WARNING – don’t be tempted to send out the website just before it launches to all and sundry to ask for opinions. Without fully understanding the context of the site you will most likely get opinions that have little relevance and no value. If you value these peoples opinion get them involved from the very first stage (and make them accountable)
What resources can the business provide?
- Do you need help with the words – you may want to write all the words yourself, or just get the ball rolling with the basics. Note if there is no content at all the site will start being populated with Lorem Ipsum to showcase how text and imagery will be styled
- Relevant images – of your staff, your location, your products
- Note – if you don’t have any imagery or cant provide any imagery the site will have to be built using stock imagery ( or wait until imagery is available)
- Examples of your work – from simple images to full case studies
Our step-by-step guide to the stages of building a new website are shown below
Example of our Website Development Process
Scope meeting
This is for us to get a ‘big picture’ view of what you need and have in mind.
There are many aspects to a website that are often not considered when commissioning. The challenge being you don’t know what you don’t know. After all, most people commission a website about once in their life!
But this stage will be enough for us to understand what you want for your site and a broad view of the budget and time required to build it.
Initial quote and confirmation
At this stage we will be able to give some indicative pricing, based on that broad understanding phase – this will help you know if it’s something within reach or not.
You may have decided you want a 300 page website with the web designer to create content for every page. An indicative budget may encourage you to reduce page count , assign who internally will be responsible for creating content
It will be just that, indicative and subject to us undertaking a more in-depth workshop to better understand all the detail and how it might be used. Functions on websites are what take time – and therefore add to the cost.
In depth discovery workshop
Once you’re happy with the general budget required, the next stage is for us to get a clear understanding of what you want from your website in greater detail. this includes looking at what you want your customers to experience and to work out all the areas of the website.
A sitemap with a list of the functions will then form the site specification and allow us to provide an accurate quotation. It’ll also form the part of the planning document for the designers & developers. For more complex sites, there may need to be a couple of these sessions.
Planning and timescale
What comes out of the discovery stage will indicate how long the project is going to take. It will have different stages to it – scoping, design, development, content inputting and testing – each stage will follow a schedule to make sure every stage is completed properly and on time. A website is most organisation’s key marketing tool so planning is often critical.
Possible Quote Revision?
Sometimes, what comes out of the in-depth discovery phase will be more functions and features than originally planned. We may need to update the quotation at this stage before proceeding – but it’ll become apparent during the discovery stage if that’s likely.
User Interface (UI) / User Experience (UX) design
At this point the project moves over to our creative team. We’ll brief them on the project; making sure to following any existing brand guidelines but to factor in best-practice design principles. The design of the UI (user interface) is vital to make sure the UX (user experience) is just right. They’ll begin with some concept work, usually a few homepage designs to start the process – we know that most homepages contain about 80% of an entire website’s design styles, so it’s a good place too start.
Technical planning
Running concurrently to the design phase is where the developers plan out the site’s framework, how they are going to achieve the specific functions and explore any particular treatments of technical challenges set out in the brief. This planning stage, before a line of code is written ensures that the code that gets crafted is following best practice and is robust. Nobody wants a flaky website that only sometimes works.
Keyword Research
Running concurrently to the technical planning will be the keyword research
During a new website build we hear the following statement quite a lot.
“How long will it take for my website to be number 1 on Google?”
The honest answer is that it utterly depends on lots of variables. Without the keyword research its impossible to answer. We take this time to work out who your audience is, what you think they need from you and how they might search for someone like you and what your budget is.
We then identify teh keywords and amount of effort that will be required to gain organic ranking. Our research helps us and you to better understand how to aim for that number 1 slot on Google
Content curation
Getting content for the website is often the trickiest part of the entire project. Developing and creating content for a multi page website is a complex and time consuming task. Whether it’s just a 9-page brochure site or a 500-page membership site, someone’s going to have to curate all that content.
We’ll help you with how to approach this tricky stage. Planning and the right mindset, are the key to having a very successful website.
Development
Once the design of all the site’s core pages has been completed and approved and the technical plan set out, the developers begin the process of coding the site.
Depending on the system and framework we build WordPress Websites , this varies greatly in terms of how long it will take. We will provide you with a production schedule so you’ll know when this phase is due to start and finish.
Changing functionality at this stage is a challenge – that’s why we have planning stages to avoid the process being halted by changes in functions. It can be done, it just doesn’t make for a slick process.
Testing
We build our sites on a dev site which means you can see the fully functioning site exactly as it will appear on desktop and mobile. That way you can full test and explore the site for any errors / gremlins.
Often overlooked by many inexperienced developers and clients alike. Testing will ensure you don’t experience that post-launch instant panic of finding a page empty or a button that doesn’t work or the email you’re supposed to get from a form doesn’t arrive.
We test our sites thoroughly. But we ask the same of you and your team. After all, it’ll be your site to run once it’s live so it’s as important for you to check it, too.
Making the website live
Making the site live usually, this takes a full day from the point of you approving the site. We always recommend that there’s no big song and dance planned for that exact day.
You don’t know what you don’t know so better to make it live, let it be there for a short while and then, once you’re confident, make your announcement. You’ll have a better experience and nobody likes panic.
Once the site is live the site will be on its correct domain and so an SSL certificate can be obtained ( so that the site displays a padlock ) . Where gravity / data capture forms are used Recapcha is applied ( as we can now use the correct email addresses. All URL’s are checked to make sure they have moved from HTTP://
Someone within the business will be given access to the site CMS so that they can make any simple amends to pages and posts. We can provide intensive on site WordPress training to staff if required
We’ll naturally be here to help you if you need it. We can provide on-going support, security updates if you haven’t the time or just generally make sure the framework software and plugins are all up to date.
3. Discovery
Who are your target customers?
- Why are they interested in what you sell?
- What are their needs, hopes and fears relating to this decision?
- What are the pains that they are trying to solve
How do you sell your products / service to them?
- What benefits are they looking for in their ideal product / service?
- What features are they looking for?
- Why will they choose your product or service over the competition?
So now you’re prepared to start the process of getting your new business website The process will include a briefing meeting (and usually a document, too) where you and your website designer will discuss and agree together what will be done. By working through and answering the questions here will make this a clear and productive meeting.
Resources and templates
Because we’ve done this a lot, we’ve created some templates that you may find useful – please download them and use them – they’re free and will help you get the best out of the process.
New Website Development Preparation
Here’s Blue Dolphin’s guide for preparing to build your business’s new website.
Set this out on paper before you meet with your web designer, agree it amongst the decision-makers, and everyone will reap the rewards.
It’s broken it down into three areas…
1: Context
- Why do you want a new website?
— did you identify a (new) business need…
— is your competition looking more professional than you…
— do you feel your image is outdated…
— or are you just bored with your current site (don’t worry – we hear this a lot) - What is your business?
— what it does, how long it’s been doing it, and where you’re headed - Who are your competitors (direct and indirect)?
- What’s your business plan?
- How does a successful website impact on the business plan?
- What is the hierarchy of priorities for the website?
- including products / services in terms of volume or margin
- and business efficiency, such as customer service management
- What are your personal preferences
- other websites you like – and ones you don’t like
- colours and colour combinations you like and don’t like
- When does the website need to be ready?
2. Process
- Who are the decisions makers?
- the people who need to approve designs, functionality & wording
- Who are the influencers?
- people whose advice you trust
- people with relevant experience*
- What resources can you provide?
- help with the words – you may want to write all the words yourself, or just get the ball rolling with the basics
- relevant images – of your staff, your location, your products
- Examples of your work – from simple images to full case studies
3. Discovery
- Who are your target customers?
- why are they interested in what you sell?
- what are their needs, hopes and fears relating to this decision?
- How do you sell your products / service to them?
- what benefits are they looking for in their ideal product / service?
- what features are they looking for?
- in a nutshell, why choose you over the competition?
New Website Development & More
For more information on Website Design, Web Design Pop Ups and Marketing contact Blue Dolphin or call 01733 361729
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