Building professional websites since 1997

Building a Website

There are some essential steps involved in conceiving, creating, and launching a web presence. Critical are some basic understandings of content on the Internet.

IT'S FOREVER: Once it's online, there's a good chance that it's there forever...or at least it will be until civilization and technology as we now know it becomes archaic, the information residing on the Internet discarded or irrevocably destroyed. Barring some great catastrophe or even greater revolutionary transformation, the chances of that happening--of what's placed online becoming irretrievably lost--isn't very likely. Archaic versions of websites are available at numerous archival resources a click away via any good search engine, even though the owners of that content and their domains have long since vanished. So, remember, if you put it online, then someone, somewhere, will have it squirreled away. (This does not apply to content stored behind securely, password protected gateways.) Make sure that what you decide to put online in an unsecured form isn't something you'll later regret having publicly exposed.

IT'S WORK: Owning a web presence will add an additional burden of work to your day. There's electronic correspondence that must be answered in a timely fashion. There's content updates (All of it must be original, owned by you.) that's critical to securing a strong web presence and search engine ranking. Then there's fulfillment obligations, whether you're offering products, services, or just promoting yourself, your enterprise, or your event.

BE PREPARED: You and your enterprise must be prepared for both failure and for success. Failure happens because of unfavorable conditions (those within your control and those beyond it), bad luck, and/or lack of preparation. Success, on the other hand, occurs when favorable conditions combine with effort and preparedness. Of those, preparedness is the one area over which you have the most control. Unfortunately, preparedness is also where most website owners fail because they aren't ready, with infrastructure in place, when opportunity presents itself.

In the rest of this article, I'm going to lay out what I consider to be important general steps necessary for successfully launching a web presence. I'm not going to go into detail, since most of them are self-evident.

First the Purpose, then the Goals

You must know why you want a website and what you expect that website to do--your website's purpose and its goals, long term as well as short.

Planning and Infrastructure, Local and Online

Once you know your website's purpose and goals, the planning stage begins. This is the stage of website development where the webmaster becomes intricately involved in working with you to prioritize primary, secondary, and tertiary services and functionality for your website, with an eye for both present and future needs and requirements. This stage is also when you will need to address processes and infrastructure as they apply to yourself and your enterprise, setting up schedules and procedures for handling communication and fulfillment responsibilities once your website becomes an established presence on the Internet.

Design & Development Considerations

Determining how best to facilitate your website's purpose and goals with function and design is the next step in a website development. A webmaster will look at your needs along with those of your target audience and/or market, matching applications--software and programming--and architecture. Design considerations include seamless integration between applications and sections of the web enterprise with your local, in-house processes and with website visitors' ease-of-use. Navigation and page prioritizing are, of course, integral.

Constructing the Website

Once design is agreed upon and software and programming decisions are final, installation and set-up of the applications commences. Once the software is stable on the server, then content can be secured and uploaded. Only then does presentation (theme and style)--the aesthetic part of a website's design--move forward.

Approval and Launch

Once the web team has completed function and form, the website owner is given access and a tour. This is the time when adjustments and changes most frequently happen, even though, usually (at least with me), functionality and design are usually presented well beforehand with a mock-up or early access. Still, last minute changes, large and small can happen, setting back launch anywhere from a few days to even weeks and months, depending on how drastic a tear-down and rebuild those changes demand. Once the website owner has approved the website, the launch date is agreed upon and, subsequently, occurs.

Getting Ranking and Traffic

Substantial content, search engine optimization, link building, as well as time are all necessary for an excellent web presence. Advertising can also play a significant part. Basic search engine optimization is always included when building a website, but its effectiveness depends on the website owner continually supplying content and, especially in cases of market saturation, money to secure good link relationships, even more content, and effective advertising. More about search engine optimization, ranking, and securing traffic can be viewed here.

Fulfillment

Fulfillment means you doing your part when visitors communicate their needs and desires to you via your website. If this fails, the website fails, regardless of how well-built, well-ranked, and well-designed it is. If you're going to have to take a leave-of-absence from responding to communication from your website, please have your webmaster place a message prominently notifying your website visitors of this temporary hiatus, disable the communication forms and applications, and install an "out-of-the-office" email auto-responder.