twelve steps
to a happy site
May 18, 2016
written by
Greg Ciro Tornincasa
What does it take to build a website? Building a site requires a team of people and multiple steps to make sure that every aspect of your site meets not only your needs, but the needs of your audience.
The first part. You, the client.
After you’ve done your homework on the RFP, you should be all set in terms of knowing your needs and wants for your project. Your job from here on out is to fill out the project brief, partner with your team, ask questions, and keep to the timeline.
Planning your project.
1. The first step in any project is the strategy. Reviewing your industry standards, your competitive set, and plan out your project to make sure that it meets your expectations and your budget during the kickoff.
2. From here, you’ll meet your project manager who will be with you every step of the way. They will set up status meetings, timelines, and be your voice in internal meetings.
Design
3. Next up is to review your branding. Do you have or need a brand to create your identity- from the basic naming and logo to an elevator pitch, this rabbit hole can go as deep as your wallet will allow.
4. Assuming you have a brand, design uses these first two steps to create the user interface and user experience, the look and feel of your site, and the functionality of the pages. Design can also create a cohesive look and feel for your banner ads, newsletters, social media pages, offline print pieces, business cards, etc.
Content
5. If you don’t have images, a good photographer can bring your product, property, or headshots to life online.
6. Over the life of your project, you’ll use a copywriter to create a tone and voice (sometimes falls under brand) and then write page by page copy from headlines to footers. Ideally in conjunction with your SEO strategist who will supply keyword phrases to be incorporated into the copywriting on each page. A comprehensive content plan should also roll out how you communicate with your clients in multiple formats – website, newsletter, blog, social media, etc.
Marketing
7. Another project cycle job is search engine optimization. Your SEO will make sure that you appear on google, bing, yahoo etc. This means keywords, meta tags, etc. Please remember there is no magic bullet here, there is no such thing as a money back guarantee for first page placement. But we’ll do our best to get you there using a combination of programming, content, and research.
8. Digital Marketing for adwords and retargeting. This person purchases and manages the bidding process for your online advertising. You can also hire a team of specialists to manage your blog, social media, online reputation management, and email newsletters.
Development
9. Back end coder who will build the core of your website. This person will set up your content management system, server and backups, creating a base for the design to flow in. If you have specialized forms, password protected systems, third party integrations, and automatic processes, this is where they get built.
10. Front end coder who makes sure that the design interfaces with the back end code. This person manages the CSS and HTML that shows on the website. This team sometimes also functions as production and creates the site pages while flowing in the content.
11. Quality assurance can be conducted by one person or an entire team and will review the desktop, tablet and phone version of all the pages. We look at functionality and design before we release the website to the wild.
12. Lastly, the website will need a system administrator. Someone to manage your server space, make sure your DNS is current, purchase any certificates, and manage your email and IT.
Good websites take a team of people and expertise. This is a moderate sized team for a small (20 page) to medium (200 page) website. The bigger the site and the more complex the interactions, the bigger the team and the steps needed to create it.