Web development, design, and site optimization

For the past 2 months I have been working within the Custom Web Design industry, getting my first tastes of dealing directly with end customers in getting their custom designed online presence. Wow, what a roller coaster ride! But that is a post for another day.

There are many elements to getting a website online. Basically though you can break things down into 3 stages. This is what you can expect when working with my company and likely many others out there.

1. Comp/Mock-up stage: This is where we play with various ideas taken form the customer input and our own and come up with a Photoshop-made mock-up. Depending on the complexity, turn-around time on this is anywhere between 1 and 2 days.

2. Content gathering and site build: This is where we move ahead on an approved comp and build the website. We also look to the client to feed us as much content as possible. The site build takes anywhere from 5-7 business days. Getting content takes anywhere from hours to months :).

3. Site publish and ongoing maintenance: The website is published live with no less than 75% of the content. The site is then only requiring random maintenance on a monthly basis, content changes mostly. Clients can contact us pretty frequently on a monthly basis, any changes that are requested will be applied within 1 to 3 business days depending on complexity and how much is already on our plate.

My target for all my clients from start to finish is 30 to 45 days for the entire build cycle. That is from our first call to the site being online.

A non ecommerce website will costs you $785.00 up front and then $99.00 per month. Ecommerce cost you $985.00 up front and then $195.00 monthly. The monthly fee on both packages takes care of your website, hosting, domain name, privacy protection, and up to 10 email accounts.

Admittedly website usability and visual sparkle is something that is far from a perfect science. But there are a few basic things that you should keep in mind when designing or having someone design your site. Especially if your website is a business website. As a business website you likely want one, all, or a combination of the following: provide product(service) information, provide contact information, allow users to buy products(services), acquire feedback from your clients and potential clients. To do this you want to make sure your information can be found and once found is easy to navigate while remaining professional looking.

Here are some quick pointers to get you started as you determine where to go with your site:

1. Keep in mind that many users these days are potentially viewing your site on any number of devices at any number of screen resolutions. The one sure thing is that they will all see the top left of your site. Whether they click through the rest is another question. It is for that reason that when looking at a layout for your site you should prioritize and place your content so that the key items to your business and the site start at the top left working your way down to the least important which should be found at the bottom right.

2. Visual sparkle is nice. You do want to draw your users in. However, it can cause issues if you go overboard. Images and flash add load times. Users are on your site for content or to buy from you, you can still look professional with a toned down graphical site. Also you should avoid under all circumstances building a completely flash based website. Partially because of load times, but most importantly because you are killing the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendliness of your site. Use flash components where they make sense. A perfect example of flash being used simply as a component is with YouTube.com. Video is served up via flash but the rest of the site is HTML. Load times are fast and SEO is taken advantage of.

3. Navigation menus are a must. In fact I would recommend you play around with having multiple ways to get you your various pages and content. Avoid flash menus as again they hinder your SEO capabilities. Navigation is key to a successful site, if a user cannot find what he is looking for in the first few seconds he is on your site, he is likely gone forever.