Building a website

A key part of my work is to build websites for a variety of purposes and clients.  I read the check list for assessing whether a website ‘sucks’ are not and laughed.  It certainly gives the list of cardinal sins and things are that are NOT DONE on a professional site.  A few of the items, I disagree with and one is the idea that all PDF files need an icon beside the file name.  This is outdated and can be remedied by a brief statement on the page where PDF files are located that notifies the user what the format is of the documents provided on the site and a link for downloading the reader if they need to do so.

Websites are very labour intensive.  Clients are often surprised at what the labour entails and how much of it relies on their input.  A good storyboard, a good understanding of the target audience and a clear description of the business, event, organization and the definition of a clear purpose for the site takes the majority of the time and effort.  Bill Gates wrote in 1996 that “Content is king” and this statement has remained true to the current day.  Google and other search engines reward sites with relevant content that meets the needs and search objectives of the user.   The client must therefore provide the content, which includes the images, the text, posts, and videos, that will fulfill their online objectives.  This ensures that they will be able to draw true customers to their site, keep their bounce rate low and ensure that the visitor stays, browses and ultimately, complete the intended action which may be to call, contact, purchase a product or sign up for something on the site.

I storyboard my websites in a format that can be easily understood and manipulated by a given client.  The client is given a 3 page document that asks them identify their target audience, their objectives, the action or actions they want visitors to take on their site, their budget and their one and five year goals for their business and how they see their site fitting into these goals. Then I use word documents, tables, CMAP flowcharts and graphics to layout a preliminary site and with this outline, the content is developed and then used to modify the layout and menus for the site.  A draft is completed and then edited with the aid of the client and any images or media that we need is obtained through photography or online media and stock photo resources.  Search engine optimization is used to ensure that the proper keywords and content is in place.  In recent years, Joomla and WordPress are the two main structures that we use for sites.  HTML and CSS as well as PHP and JavaScript are still well used scripts.  Flash is no longer a tool we can use given that it will not work on most mobile devices.  New tools like Unity are great ways to show animations and interactive 3D elements and work well in situations where we use to rely on Flash.

I am often surprised at how interested clients become in the management and updates of their own sites.  Intimidated at first, they quickly learn to navigate in the CMS environments and before I know it, they are embedding video, images, making posts, adding pages, asking about widgets and menus.  Their site becomes an extension and a tool for their business rather than a stale page that is updated, at great expense, once or twice a year.   Web 2.0 tools such as Twitter, Youtube and Facebook are all user friendly and can be integrated into most sites which allow a dynamic element to be embedded in the pages.  These can be linked to one another and allow the user to make one entry and update all at the same time.

A few recent sites if your interested in seeing the end result of some of these projects are

Impact Coaching at www.impactcoaching.ca

World Rivers Day at www.worldriversday.com

Stewardship Centre for BC www.stewardshipcentrebc.ca

Woodlot 0007  www.woodlot0007.ca