Presentation on things you need to know about website builds including how to approach website build ideas and how to pick a website agency

1. Briefing Website Design
Briefing a website design is a fundamental action you take when you want to create your own website and the
website design brief is vital in making sure your site matches your needs. Creating your brief provides a focus for
your website and helps to identify the services you are likely to require from your web development team.
What to consider/include when writing your brief
1. Your organisational profile
Help your website developer(s) understand your requirements by providing a brief outline of your company and
what it aims to achieve:
 Mission statement and vision
 Services and products
 Key audiences
In addition, identify other organisations that:
 Have a similar relationship model
 Cater to the same audiences (but may not provide the same products or services)
 Provide similar products or services
 Provide peer and partner organisation website addresses if you can
2. The role of your website
Identify what you want from your new website and what you want the website to do for your audience. Do you
want it to:
 Inform - provide access to product catalogues, promotions, media releases, annual reports, etc.
 Provide Services – through E-learning, online tutorials, document generation, etc.
 Process Orders - online transactions, credit card payment, order-tracking, etc.
 Support Operational Activities - field enquiries, process applications, etc.
 Support Community Interaction - staff intranet, partner extranet, forums, group email, etc.
 Facilitate Events - distribute program schedules, process bookings, etc.
3. The look of your website
Establish guidelines of how you want your website to look:
 What are your brand guidelines?
 Is the website trying to build the brand or be transactional?
 What other sites do you like/dislike and why?
4. Measures of success
How will you measure if your website is a success? Through:
 Public awareness, search engine ranking
 Website traffic
 Customer/client/stakeholder enquires
 Sales
 Email subscriptions
 Bookings/reservations
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2. 5. Updating your website
In order to establish how you will manage your sites content and what kind of content management systems and
systems integration you need to think about:
 How often the different types of content on your website will be updated? E.g. products updated daily,
prices weekly, customer service information annually, etc.
 Is the website to be updated internally, externally, automatically, a combination of all 3?
 What level of staff training will be required?
6. Project constraints
What constraints are there to your project that the developer must bear in mind?
 Technical constraints – e.g. we use X internal system to hold our product data and Y to hold prices and
these are the systems that will need integrating into the site.
 Budget constraints – highlight any budget limitations you may have but don’t scale back the brief based on
them. An experienced developer is likely to offer alternative solutions to more expensive development
work.
 Time constraints – if the website must go live in 2 months state this as it may have implications on the
scope of the project.
 Resources – if you only have one member of staff who will manage all updates this could impact on the
whole of section 5 for example.
I have my brief, what next?
1. Tender
Once you have created your website brief, tender the project to several web design companies of different sizes.
 Provide the brief
 Discuss their process
 Request references
 Request client websites
 Determine ballpark costs
2. Review and select
When making your final selection bear in mind the importance of the developer’s role in putting an online face to
your brand.
Take all outcomes of section 7 and produce a pros and cons list for each provider. If you’ve any specific
queries/issues with a preferred developer, contact them again.
When all your concerns/queries have been addressed select your developer and move on to phase 2, the website
build.
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info@indiumonline.co.uk