Websites - you get what you pay for

 A website is an integral part of your business. Whether just an electronic brochure or means of selling your products or services (eCommerce) it has to be appropriately aligned with your operations.

 

Many business owners and managers do not realize how difficult it is to create a website that delivers their business objectives. Very often the purchasing process is limited to involving someone who is 'clever with graphics' and is cheap. Probably in no other area of business IT is the old saying 'you get what you pay for' more applicable than with werbsites.

 

Let us present what in our opinion should be taken into consideration when commissioning a website for your business:

 

• The first step is to do your homework and define business requirements. What do you want from your website? Will it be a static brochure where your clients can find some additional information about your business? Do you want it to be a live information centre delivering the latest industry news to your clients? Is it going to be a catalogue of your products and an on-line shop? How often you will have to update it? Do you have technical skills to update it yourself?

 

• Based on your requirements you need to think about specific site functionality. You need to list functions available on your site. Here are some examples: site search, enquiry form, will your site be multilingual, do you need a protected area for your clients (extranet), do you need a discussion forum, will you have an on-line catalogue, will you allow automatic on-line payments, do you need back-office order fulfillment system for your staff?

 

• Think about site structure - what is the layout, navigation system, how the menus operate, will you have lose pages that do not belong to structured menus? The best is to research sites of other companies in your industry. Look at what the 'big boys' are doing.

 

• Now is time to select your supplier. But before you do it, keep in mind what the next steps may involve:

• Designing your website graphics (look and feel, livery) - the outcome and the price depends on designer's skills.
• Turning graphical design into a collection of images, stylesheets and HTML pages that will form your website. Remember that the more sophisticated your website is it is less likely that the same person can do both of these activities.
• Implementing any dynamic or back-office functionality. This is called hevy-lifting in website terms and requires specialist database and systems integration expertise if you want to get it right. Definately not a job for a graphics designer. Choosing the right technology is very important. 
• Building and testing the website. Make sure that all user scenarios are tested before the site is deployed. Make a list of those scenarios, in particular those not so obvious obvious.
• Arranging appropriate hosting and site deployment.
• Promoting your website to search engines, catalogues.
• Providing long term technical support and emergency cover.
• Updating your site. Check the cost of that. If you need to update your site frequently  you may be incurring a high on-going cost of having to use an expensive site developer for updates. In such case think earlier on about selecting technology that will allow your staff to do the updates (e.g. Content Management System).

 

If you take all these questions to your potential supplier you will be able to assess whether they can deliver the whole thing. You will also have points for comparing different suppliers. All this will lead to getting a website that satisfies your business requirements, works reliably and is cost effective to build and run.