In the first two parts of the series we covered the basics of what and who your company is and does. We then went on to deal with the look and feel and technical needs your new web site will require. In this the final part of the series, we cover the maintenance and promtion of your spangly new web site to be.
Maintenance
This is a grey area often overlooked when briefing a web site. Most companies believe they can run the upkeep of the web site themselves, however, often this is not a realistic outlook. There is a price to pay for using vital staff resources on an area that is not their core skill, both in terms of loss of staff time, and in delivering the right service to the user.Unless you have a web application built that wholly integrates into your business systems you will realistically need maintenance of some description.
Maintenance is not purely the domain of updating copy of images but it is whole area that needs careful consideration. So consider the following:
- Who will be responsible for the on-going general updating of the web site?
- Who is/will be responsible for the maintenance of the web site? Updating of servers, code, domains etc.
- Being realistic, do you have the skills, resources and time to update the web site in-house?
- If so, what happens if that member of staff leaves the company?
- Would a maintenance plan with your web site supplier be preferable, so they handle web site updates and maintenance for a set fee or agreed hourly rates?
- Consider amount of updating actually required
- Back ups of the system for disaster recovery
- Load balancing for high traffic sites
- What maintenance of code / system updates it includes
Promoting your web site
Along with spending a great deal of time and money on building your spangly new all singing, all-dancing web site you need make sure people see it. And the right people at that. So consider how you promote the web site either on launch or on-going.Off-line promotion
A web site should really be supported by an off-line strategy of promotion and advertising, consider including the following form(s) of promotion:- Direct mail shots to targeted recipients.
- Promotional brochures.
- On-going PR campaigns.
- Sponsorship.
- Complimentary Gifts.
- Exhibitions.
- General/Trade Advertising.
This may mean extra data collection on the web site too. This can help streamline the process of using customer address details by using a central data storage facility. For example being able to apply addresses to the envelopes for your direct mail. In short think smart!
Online promotion
To complement off-line promotion or indeed to replace it you must consider how you intend to promote your web site. Promoting your web site, in terms of getting it listed on search engines and also building links with other web sites, is vitally important to the continued success of your site.It worth noting, that some areas of this type of promotion are the realms of specialist web companies, such as SEM and SEO. Your developers may offer these services but it’s worth some time to fully understand what you really need.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) - is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote web sites by increasing their visibility in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) through the use of search engine optimisation, paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) - is the process of improving the visibility of a web site or a web page in search engines via the ‘natural’ or un-paid (‘organic’ or ‘algorithmic’) search results.
Optimising a web site may involve editing its content and associated coding to increase its relevance to specific keywords searches used on the search engines.
So what areas do you consider important to promoting your new web site:
- Building link partners.
- SEO and submission.
- SEM paid listings (such as the sponsored links you see on the side of your search results).
- Email marketing campaigns / Newsletters.
- Banner advertising on related trade web site or high traffic volume web sites.
- Social Media Marketing.
- What forums or blogs will you join and participate in?
Site mapping
Another useful tool to help make sure the proposal from your web developer is accurate and that you get what you ask for, is a site map. The best way think of this is how the user will access the information in a simple hierarchy (a flowchart). How the information will be grouped.Remember, all the information on your web site is important to the various parts of your company, however, you cannot show all the links to these on the homepage. So your job is drive people to the right place as quickly and easily as possible. So think of a tree and use a simple flow chart to show where each level of your web site resides. But also remember not to overthink the map at the brief stage.
You can refine your initial site map with the help of your chosen web developer in the specification stage. They will have suggestions how to present the information in a user friendly way. They are the experts so use them. For the purposes of the brief create an initial roadmap. This will help you to collate the information you will need to deliver to them and the developer to checklist against for the development of the site.
Conclusion
Finish your web site brief with an outline of what you expect back from the web developers. You may also wish to outline budgetary constraints you may have. This may impact on your wish list for your web site.Depending on the size of the development will depend on the type of proposal you recieve back in kind. For a large complex devlopment for example, you would typically expect feedback to be in the form of a full proposal, including details of how the site would be built, technologies to be employed, a site map, detailed costing with options, on-going costs, any licensing considerations, timescales, deliverables, any assumptions and other conditions of the proposal.
Then finish up with your contact details and expected timescales for you to receive the proposals and you may also wish to outline anticipated delivery of site deadlines at this point. A rule of thumb for web sites is a development period of around 3 months not necessarily including testing. But for larger sites this can be much longer.
In terms of deliverables and timescales, it may be worth considering a planned rollout, rather than waiting and waiting for the whole site to be finished. This can give you valuable time to build up anticipation or capture new audiences.
And finally, always consider your web site as a key component of your business process. A web site should never simply be shoved up just because ‘we just need one don’t we’. Today a web site can, and needs to be, an essential tool in gaining and more importantly retaining customers. Along with all the functionality your company wants from the site, ultimately the web site is a user experience, so don’t skimp on investing in good user-friendly design coupled with fantastic functionality that really delivers value to both parties.
>> Part One - click here
>> Part Two - click here
Don't forget to visit our website www.jcward.co.uk.
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