How to Make a Website
I'd like to share with you the big picture of my approach to
designing and developing websites. My hope is that after reading
this you will understand what you are getting yourself into, you
will be able to articulate your requirements, and you will feel
confident when talking to potential vendors.
Five Tasks
Building a website involves five tasks:
- Server Administration
- Keeping the website online and available
- Software Development
- Building features like e-commerce or content management
- Graphic Design
- Visually communicating your messages
- Training and Support
- Helping you and your audience use the website's features
- Internet Marketing
- Promoting your site through search engines, etc.
As you can see, this represents a wide spectrum of skill sets. However, not every website is equal. For example, a corporate intranet may not need very much graphic design work or online advertising, but it will probably need a good deal of feature development and training. Understanding the specific requirements of your website can help you ask the right questions when shopping for vendors.
Ok, Six
Actually, there is a sixth task: project management. You see, website projects can be quite risky, for a number of reasons, e.g.:
- Requirements change
- Technologies change
- Computer systems don't always talk to each other
- Project team members don't always talk to each other
- Budget and time expectations can be unrealistic
The agreement between client and vendor is basically an alliance formed to conquer a project's inherent risk. The problem is that knowledge is what minimizes risk—knowledge of the project's true requirements; knowledge of what other team members know or think they know—and knowledge costs money. Management, therefore, means doing two things:
- Efficiently acquiring necessary knowledge
- Making decisions based on the knowledge at hand
So it is not enough to simply write software or do graphic design. The actual construction tasks must be orchestrated in a way that minimizes project risk.
Conclusion
Before you contact vendors, write down what you can about your project's requirements as well as your project's risks. (If yours is a large project, you probably already have a formal project specification process.) Then when you talk to vendors, you should ask them what their experience is both executing and managing projects like yours.
