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teams of skilled professionals. |
 July 2000
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How is a big-time website built and why does it cost so much? How does a company decide it needs a professional website and how do they get one? The Client The (imaginary) Wonder Widget Company is a leader in the Widget industry. Having been around for 25 years, they know their business well, but they don't know too much about Internet marketing. They've already had a couple of websites, without much success. There was the site built by Fred's son in accounting that had lots of blinking, spinning things, and never quite worked. Their second attempt failed after hiring a small development firm that never quite finished the project and came in over budget. It didn't look bad, but as near as they can tell, no one ever looked at it online, let alone bought anything. Discouraged with the Internet, the Wonder Widget Company continued doing business the old fashioned way, maintaining their market share and doing quite well. Until the day that everything changed! The Client's Competition Wonder Widget's archrival and competitor, The Acme Widget Company, launched their new e-commerce website and changed the company name to Widgets.com. The website featured Acme's entire product catalog online and was heavily promoted with conventional radio, TV, and print advertising, in addition to online promotion. Within 6 months, Acme had doubled it's market share and pulled ahead of Wonder Widget, well on it's way to recouping much of it's substantial development and advertising costs. Wonder Widget realized it could no longer do business the old way. The Internet had propelled its competitor to a commanding share of the market in a very short time. While both companies were established in their business, the company that used the web first and in a smart way, gained the advantage. Wonder Widget approached the web development firm of Big-Time-Sites.com and asked for their help. This time they wanted to do it right. The Development Company The mythical web development dot.com company "Big-Time-Sites.com" Is typical of today's successful web development firms. They have a full development staff and specialize in custom-built websites for medium to large businesses. They've got a track record of several successful websites that have conveyed the client's message and more importantly generated real business dollars. They've got a good reputation for well designed, functional sites, and even have won some awards. Big-Time-Sites.com takes a team approach to web development that utilizes several specialists to build superior websites and also handle the workflow of several projects simultaneously. Planning and Information Gathering They begin the web development process by sitting down with the Wonder Widget Company and learning all they can about their business and goals for building a website. At the first serious website planning meeting with the client, several members of the development team may be present including a producer, CTO, graphic designer, copywriter, developer, and a back-end programmer. The main contact between the client and the web team is the web producer. As with most of the web team, the producer's role may vary from company to company, and one individual may take on several roles. The producer will usually follow the project through and coordinate the team as the work progresses. The producer or other individuals may be involved in the initial sales effort, planning, and site architecture, but most certainly in dealing with the needs of the client. Many larger development firms will have a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) to advise on initial site planning and architecture. The CTO is the liaison between the technology of the website and the clients' technology people, especially when dealing with a company's complex computer infrastructure. For example, an e-commerce site that connects to an existing inventory system spanning several facilities in different states. The CTO is usually involved more in planning and technology management than actual programming. The initial planning meetings need to come up with a very specific blueprint for the website, often right down to each specific page. The overall marketing plan of the site must be broken down to the specifics of site navigation, look and feel of graphics, copy and information presented, and dynamic functionality. Functionality might include e-commerce, database applications, search functions, or self-administrated pages, to name a few. The plan will be first used to estimate the cost of the project for the client and the development firm and, of course, may need to be adjusted to come into range of the client's budget. Once approved, the plan will be the essential guide to building the website for the entire development team. Design Phase Once a plan is devised, a graphic designer will start to work up some initial graphic designs. Often these designs may be part of the planning process, with the designer taking an active role in not only the look of the site, but also the site architecture, navigation, and page layout. Usually several home page designs as well as secondary pages are given to client for his approval before a final design is chosen. Content Once the site plan and the graphic design is approved, content must be assembled before the actual building of the site can begin. The client should provide copy, photos, logos, and other information. The development team converts this information into a form that can be used on the web, and they may have to create some of it themselves. Designers may have to design or incorporate logos and branding into the design, for example. Copywriters go through the written material given to them from the client, rewrite, and organize the material for the website. Information in a website needs to be presented differently than on a printed piece because of page size, scrolling, and other factors. Throughout the development process, the copywriter will guide the team in the presentation of the many pages of information and the inevitable revisions to come. Once all the planning is done and the content collected, the actual building of the site can begin. First however, the graphics need to be "cut up" into the pieces that will make up each web page. These graphics will also be compressed and saved to the best file format for the web. Web Development The Web Developer's job is to bring together all the graphics and content to build a working website according to the predetermined plan. While the developer's main programming language is HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), he or she is really a jack-of-all-trades. Knowing when to use JavaScript, or Java, DMTML or Flash, Style Sheets, ASP or CGI, or some of the many other techniques in the developer's bag of tricks is the challenge. It is the developer's job to faithfully reproduce the designers layout, but also his responsibility to make the site work well on different computers and browsers, insure all navigation and links work, and generally build the site as efficiently as possible to download quickly over the Internet. Some websites may require e-commerce or database applications to be built. These may be programmed by the HTML developer, but are often done by other "back-end" developers whose skill sets might include ASP, SQL, CGI, Java, or other server-side techniques. Revisions After the website is finished and shown to the client, the inevitable round of corrections and revisions follows. Often this can be extensive. The web producer continues to be involved in this phase by interacting between the client and the web team to get the project finished. Promotion Anyone watching TV can't help but notice all the ads for corporate websites. Were in the late 90's, conventional ads would include a website address, we now see major ad campaigns for such sites as Priceline.com and Yahoo. Many companies are spending as much, if not more, on advertising than on the site development itself. Established advertising agencies are naturally getting into the web development business and can offer their clients a complete range of services. The Result Professional websites today are built by teams of talented professionals, each skilled in their own field. The end result is a website of much higher quality. These top professionals are in high demand in today's hot job market, and command good salaries. A moderate sized website can take many hours to build, even by a team of professionals. While it is possible to build a website a website for under $10,000, the successful online businesses spend much more. Will the Wonder Widget Company be able to gain back its market share? Perhaps, with a sound online marketing plan, a professionally built website, and putting some money into promotion and advertising, but there's no guarantee! Rick Johnson is a web developer at Risdall Linnihan Advertising in New Brighton, MN. He can be reached at rick@risdall.com. iBiz |
