The Site Development Process

There are six major stages that you should think through before crafting your final project planning and proposal documents:

• Site definition and planning
• Information architecture
• Site design
• Site construction
• Site marketing
• Tracking, evaluation, and maintenance

Developing a large web site is a process that may have far-reaching budgetary, personnel, and public relations consequences for an organization, both during the development of the site and long after its deployment. The result of poorly planned, hasty development efforts often is an “orphan site,” starved of resources and attention.

Site definition and planning

This initial stage is where you define your goals and objectives for the web site and begin to collect and analyze the information you’ll need to justify the budget and resources required. This is also the time to define the scope of the site content, the interactive functionality and technology support required. If you are contracting out the production of the web site, you will also need to interview and select a site design firm.

Site production checklist

Not every site will require detailed consideration of every item on the lists below. If you are on your own as an individual or small business, you may need to contract with various technology and design vendors to assemble everything you’ll need to create a substantial content site or small e-commerce site.

Production

• Will your site production team be composed of in-house people, outside contractors, or a mix of the two?
• Who will manage the process?
• Who are your primary content experts?
• Who will be the liaison to any outside contractors?
• Who will function long-term as the webmaster or site editor?

Technology

• What operating systems and browsers should your site support?
• Windows, Macintosh, unix, Linux
• Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera; minimum version supported
• What is the network bandwidth of the average site visitor?

Information architecture

At this stage you need to detail the content and organization of the web site. The team should inventory all existing content, describe what new content is required, and define the organizational structure of the site. Once a content architecture has been sketched out, you should build small prototypes of parts of the site to test what it feels like to move around within the design. Site prototypes are useful for two reasons. First, they are the best way to test site navigation and develop the user interface. These prototypes can be used to test the information architecture with users. Second, creating a prototype allows the graphic designers to develop relations between how the site looks and how the navigation interface supports the information design.

Typical results or contract deliverables at the end of this stage include:

• Detailed site design specification
• Detailed description of site content
• Site maps, thumbnails, outlines, tables of contents
• User-tested wireframes and prototypes demonstrating site architecture
• Multiple graphic design and interface design sketches
• Detailed technical support specification
• Browser technology supported
• Connection speed supported
• Web server and server resources

Site design

At this stage the project acquires its look and feel, as the page grid, page design, and overall graphic design standards are created and approved. Now the illustrations, photography, and other graphic or audiovisual content for the site need to be commissioned and created. Research, writing, organizing, assembling, and editing the site’s text content is also performed at this stage. Any programming, database design and data entry, and search engine design should be well under way by now. The goal is to produce all the content components and functional programming and have them ready for the final production stage: the construction of the actual web site pages.

Typical products or deliverables at the end of this stage include:

• Text, edited and proofread
• Graphic design specifications for all page types
• Finished interface graphics for page templates
• Header and footer graphics, logos, buttons, backgrounds
• Detailed page comps or finished examples of key pages
• Site graphic standards manual for large, complex sites
• Interface design and master page grid templates completed
• Finished html template pages
• Illustrations
• Photography

Site construction

Only at this mature stage of the project are the bulk of the site’s web pages constructed and filled out with content. By waiting until you have a detailed site architecture, mature content components, fully tested wireframes and prototypes, and a polished page design specification you will minimize the content churning, redundant development efforts, and wasted energy that inevitably result from rushing to create pages too soon.

Typical products or deliverables at the end of this stage should include:

• Finished html for all web pages, all page content in place
• Finished navigation link structure
• All programming in place and linked to pages, ready for user testing
• All database components in place and linked to site pages
• All graphic design, illustration, and photography in place
• Final proofreading of all site content
• Detailed testing of database and programming functionality
• Testing and verification of database reporting features
• Testing of site user support procedures, answering email, etc.

Site marketing

Your web site should be an integral part of all marketing campaigns and corporate communications programs, and the url for your site should appear on every piece of correspondence and marketing collateral your organization generates. If your web site is aimed primarily at local audiences you must look beyond getting listed in standard web indexes, such as Yahoo! and Google, and publicize your url where local residents or businesses will encounter it. Local libraries, newspapers, and schools are often the key to publicizing a new web site within a specific locale.

Your home page url should appear in all:

• Print advertisements
• Radio and television advertisements
• Lobby kiosks in high-traffic areas of your enterprise or in local libraries, schools, or other suitable venues
• Direct mail campaigns
• Business cards
• Stationery
• Bills and statements
• Product manuals and product packaging
• Response cards and warrantee cards
• Publications and promotional materials

Tracking, evaluation, and maintenance

Your web server software can record an abundance of information about visitors to your site. Even the simplest site logs track how many people (unique visitors) saw your site over a given time, how many pages were requested for viewing, and many other variables. By analyzing the server logs for your web site you can develop quantitative data on the success of your site. The logs will tell you which pages were the most popular and what brands and versions of web browser people used to view your site. Server logs can also give you information on the geographic location of your site users. Detailed logs are the key to quantifying the success of a web site. Your webmaster should archive all site logs for long-term analysis and should be prepared to add or change the information categories being logged as your needs and interests change.