Technofriends

A few days ago, i was in a meeting with an entrepreneur who had just started her venture which was into the “Handicrafts” industry and dealt with bringing the arts and handicrafts from rural India to the urban India. Over the lunch, she asked me if i can help her get her website up. Well, getting a website up for me is like a daily routine and i am usually pleased to hear customers walking upto me to seek my help (rather the way around). I said yes and began with the question which i ask every customer or prospect of mine, “Why do you need a Website”? I wasn’t surprised to hear her response to this question, “Because every other venture on this planet has a website today and so should mine”. I must confess, she is not the only one thinking like this ( 8 out of 10 customers / prospects i speak to, have the same reasoning).

While, i was able to help her ( and my other customers) with her website development and designing, but, for the benefit of all the other readers of this blog, those of you who are planning to setup a website of their own sometime down the line and still aren’t clear around the why and what of the website, this article will help you define your website requirements and also make it more purposeful.

In this article, i am putting up some crucial questions i ask my customers / prospects whenever they want me to help them with their Website designing or development.

1.) What is the purpose of your website?

Are you planning to get your brick-and-mortar setup online and sell stuff or is your website aimed at creating awareness about your product?

2.) Who will be the target audience of your website?

It very clearly depends on what kind of website you are planning to setup and what purpose it will solve. Is it going to sell apparels for kids? Is it a online community website for students? You must think about the age and gender of your audience when planning a website. Based on the age group, you will then have to think about the color schemes, layout and the content.

3.) Do you have any design consideration and user navigation flow documented?

Its ideal to have a documentation listing down any design consideration and user navigation flow that before you start the work on your new website. If you are developing your website yourself, you can maintain a log of thought processes and brainstorming related to the new website. If you are getting it developed by an external developer, having a clarity of thought becomes even more important. Often, business users, are not able to provide enough clarity to the technical developers simply because there is not much documentation. You can prepare ppt’s ( presentations), use-case diagram or a document, user flow document etc to make yourself even more clear.

In this step you can even document if you have any specific programming languages / CMS ( content manager system) to use (Read: Understanding Content Management Systems)

Believe me, your consultant is going to love you for taking care of this.

4.) Does the website require user login, shopping cart, social networking or any e-commerce module?

If yes, then its important you keep the developer informed about it, right from day 1. Often business users ( or clients in my terminology), tend to provide information in installments, this leads to significant time wastage and also design issues. If you are planning to have the above modules, its important to also discuss open-source alternatives available.

If you are developing a website which has more than an advertising model, do ensure that the performance of your website is good from various parts of the world. As per a report, websites which have a load time of more than 4 seconds tend to lose more than 35% of their traffic in the form of abandoned users ( i.e. users who close the browser before the page even loads).

5.) Search Engine Optimization

Talk to your consultant and have a strategy around Search Engine Optimization. Be very clear on your needs and ensure the designer/ developer understands your requirements. The designer / developer must then take those requirements and implement the needful.

As per a report, most of the present day websites, on an average, get more than 65% ( until and unless your website is aimed only for internal users of your company or club or organization) of their daily traffic from search engines. Its therefore important that you make your website Search engine friendly.

6.) How will you manage Hosting and Maintenance?

Choose a hosting provider which gives minimum of 99% availability. In the end, its no point developing a website and giving your end users a Bad Gateway or a HTTP Timeout page.

Technofriends runs on HostGator and believe me it rocks. I can host unlimited websites and get unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth for just $7.95 per month ( their does exist a package for as less as $3.95 per month).They also offer a VPS and a Dedicated hosting package.

The other hosting provider i recommend strongly is JustHost. JustHost too like HostGator offers quality hosting with unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth for as low as $3.45 per month.

7.) What is your budget for developing, managing and hosting the website?

Its important to know the “higher-end” of your budget because everything right from the developer to the hosting service involves a cost. Not having a budget can either leave a big hole in your pocket. Once you have a budget, you can sit with your consultant and work backwards to see if the budget is indeed good enough.

While the above 7 are the questions i ask every customer of mine, there are some more points like your go-live date and a marketing strategy for the new website which you must consider.

In case if you are developing a website or a web application and would like me to work with you on either developing a strategy around optimization, performance or security, feel free to mail me at vaibhav@technofriends.in

You can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/vaibhav1981

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