We’ve recently launched several projects on behalf of customers. The Beta process, as you can imagine, can have a negative impact on the time available to blog! Anyhow, we should soon be resuming regularly scheduled writing.
Nathan did a nice article on tools and tricks for creating new sites in Drupal. Worth a read: http://bomshteyn.com/2009/12/29/couple-of-things-i-learned-while-creating-sites-in-drupal/
Continued from Part 2 – http://lichtman.ca/uncategorized/whole-life-approach-to-website-development-part-2
In Part 2, we covered some of the stages during development and just after the launch of a website.
I’ve frequently seen websites launch successfully, only to lose steam rapidly, once the obvious difficulties in actually running a web-business come into play.
Operating a successful web-based business can be a lot of work, no matter how much effort is placed on automation.
A website that sells a product can have a major time committment required in order to fulfill orders (i.e. package them up and mail them), or to answer queries.
Content-based sites can be even harder to maintain, particularly when the general public has the ability to participate in the content creation process – large social media sites often have a significant number of staff dedicated to removing content that contravenes the terms of service.
I’ve recently worked with several customers who have partnered with fulfillment centers in order to offload a portion of the order fulfillment process onto specialists. The websites have been designed to integrate with the fulfillment center’s systems in order to keep the order statuses current. I’ll eventually post an update here when I’ve seen how well this works in practice.
Creating a plan – possibly even as early as the business plan stage – for how operations will work, the amount of time needed to keep a website running, and whether any staff are required for this purpose (and particularly how much that would cost), is an effective way of making sure that the resources will be in place to run things after launch. It also gears owners of web businesses up for the long, ongoing task of running an online business.
Image by akseabird via Flickr
Most web developers approach the ongoing maintenance of a customer’s site as a form of additional revenue after a project has completed.
Few owners of websites appear to budget for ongoing maintenance related issues – which could include bug fixing or building additional functionality – before or during development.
For developers, there’s a risk associated with the maintenance cycle, given that an ongoing series of invoices (unless well justified) could result in the customer leaving for another development company.
Ensuring that new owners of web businesses understand what is involved (particularly with regards to costing) in maintaining a website over time will go a long way towards forging a better partnership between developer and customer.
I’ve worked on a number of websites where the site had some initial success, which dropped off over time. Unfortunately some products are faddish in nature, which means that there is a very well defined life cycle for the product.
The products or services sold by a website may not be the only things subject to this inherent life cycle.
A website built today may not work as well in the future. Technologies change, people’s design taste changes, and websites do become outdated over time.
As some point in time, a decision may need to be made to scrap a site and start over.
This often seems to happen on an ad-hoc basis, where a customer becomes infuriated with a developer and leaves for another web development company; the new company will typically try to sell a complete start-over, as opposed to modifying somebody else’s work.
By ensuring from the start that customers understand that there are inherent lifespans involved in a web business (just like any other), developers can potentially develop a longer term relationship with their customers that lasts beyond a single project.
There are a few quick conclusions that can be drawn from all of this:
Continued from Part 1 – http://lichtman.ca/uncategorized/whole-life-approach-to-website-development-part-1
In Part 1, we discussed that websites need to be viewed from the perspective of the business cycle, rather than as a simple project.
There isn’t all that much I can add regarding the design and implementation phases of a web project. This is the technical portion of the project, and the business-owner is somewhat at the mercy of the skills of the people that have been hired to build the site.
Web developers can use this phase as an opportunity to obtain feedback from customers early and often, which may reduce the amount of time involved in the testing and “Beta” shakedown period after launch.
Image via Wikipedia
I know of few web development companies that have a formal testing process in place.
Part of the problem is that testing is labour intensive, and requires a particular nitpicky mindset that developers seldom choose to acquire.
If web projects properly budget for the testing phase (including adequately estimating the amount of time involved), then more options become available, including hiring staff specifically for this purpose, or utilizing a third-party testing company.
This avoids the prevalent (I’m guilty of this too sometimes) practice of pushing a large chunk of the testing process onto the customer.
Typically the launch of a website tends to be greeted with a lot of fanfare.
If the owner has engaged a PR company, there can be a significant buzz attached to the initial launch.
The critical things to bear in mind are that a) the buzz may not correspond to a significant number of sales, and b) there needs to be a committment to work at building the business after the initial buzz wears off (which it usually will).
I’ve seen a lot of sites launch well, only to founder later on.
Its critical not to confuse the big launch with the lengthy hard work of building an online clientelle, which may take years (just like with a regular “real world” business).
Tenacity pays off! Do not be discouraged if things don’t immediately work on launch!
Image via Wikipedia
There are quite a few factors involved in building traffic to a website over time.
A quick point before discussing this important issue: the “conversion” or “closing” ratio of your website – it isn’t any good to obtain a large amount of traffic on your website if you aren’t turning that traffic into sales (or some kind of revenue anyhow).
Keep a close eye on the closing ratio (i.e. percentage of visitors that result in revenue) over time, and don’t be afraid to change aspects of your website if things aren’t working.
I find that tools like the “Funnels” system built into Google Analytics do a great job of showing where a website is losing people.
I’ve seen a decidedly mixed bag of results in the past from both PR companies and SEO (search engine optimization) people. I’ve written a bit in the past on both topics, so I won’t go into a lot of detail here.
Generally the process of building a significant amount of traffic on a website boils down to continually promoting the site over a long period of time; this is particularly the case where a business is looking for so-called “organic growth”, which basically means people just finding the website randomly, due to it being frequently referenced elsewhere.
The process of building organic growth often is a result of “networking” with the owners of other websites. This takes both hard work and a willingness to give and take. Note: I’m not talking about lame “link exchanges”, but rather the more “blog oriented” approach where people discuss each other on their sites. An example would be somebody discussing how much a like a particular site, or how an interaction with somebody at a web-based company went. You can’t beat that kind of press.
As mentioned above, I’ve worked on a number of projects over the years where various PR companies were engaged in order to promote projects.
My experience has been that PR companies tend to have specific areas where they shine, and promoting websites isn’t something that all of them do well. Partially this is because PR is oriented towards short term promotion of products, or finding ways to plug something newsworthy (and hence time-limited).
If you can find a PR person who has staying power, and can keep doggedly plugging away at something long after it becomes boring – stick with them, as they are rare.
Its also been somewhat evident that there are many PR people out there who are primarily good at promoting themselves. I don’t have much ability personally to see through “BS” of this nature; my recommendation would be to get some references for previous jobs that are similar to yours, and take the time to call them.
SEO is also something of a mixed basket.
Search engine optimizers and marketers tend to specialize in particular areas, for instance Pay Per Click, On Page SEO, Organic SEO, Link Building, Social Media Marketing etc. I don’t want to go into detail on the topic of SEO, despite its importance to newly launched websites, since I’ve written frequently on this topic before.
The key with hiring an SEO/SEM company is a) check refences, and b) start with a small, limited scale project first, and don’t be afraid to drop them quickly if they don’t deliver.
As somebody who has worked in this field, I’m also aware that there’s a similar effect at play to PR people – over time the effectiveness of a specific technique may wane, resulting in a loss of interest on the part of the SEO people involved. When this happens, it may be time to move on.
To Be Continued…
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