The Working Process for a New Website

It's the official launch day for Bill West Roofing's new site. Actually, we had the new site live a couple of days ago, because we like to beat deadlines, but this is the official milestone day.

In the image below you can see the old site. Above is the "After."

This last image is a mock up from Tom Hapgood, who designed the new site. He thought the guys at Bill West might like something a little edgier.

Be that as it may, the process was fairly simple. Let me share it with you. This is our milestone list from Basecamp:

On April 21st, we collected everything (files, pictures, stuff like that) from the roofing company. Actually, there ended up being a lot more files along the way, but we had what we needed to begin. I started the research the following day. Research, decisions about information architecture, and writing took place.

 On April 25th I finished writing the content. On the 27th, all changes were made and the content was approved, so Tom got to work on the design. Further research and conversation, as well as sending Josepha into tall buildings to take photos, took place.

Tom had mock ups for the two designs ready on May 9th. Conversations and various changes took place, along with sending Aaron West out to take more photos. Tom did the coding. We did some testing, we checked out all the links, Aaron and Bill had a few additional thoughts, and we pushed the button and launched the site on May 18th.

Sometimes you see ads claiming that you can have a good website in minutes with just a few clicks! This is a lie. On the other hand, you can have a great website in weeks, with just a few milestones. If you've been delaying having your site built or redesigned because you've heard that it takes months of arduous labor, you should feel reassured.

Diary of a Website: Launch Day

GraysLland Acres, Steve and Myra Grayson's Oklahoma farm, now has its own website.

Oh, Rosie has some things to check off her list, and Shan hasn't quite pushed the button yet, but by the time you read this, the site will probably be live.

Launch Day is always exciting for all of us. But, like a wedding day, it's not the end, even if it is the day you bring out the champagne. We now will submit the site to the appropriate search engines and directories and tell everyone we know about it.

You don't have to do this, of course. Search engines will notice you eventually. We just don't like to wait for eventually. But we recently saw a quote for "submitting to 200 major search engines" with a price point in the thousands of dollars.

Over 70% of all U.S. searchers use Google. Bing is becoming more popular, especially among the tech crowd, and it recently hit the 10% mark. Yahoo and a bunch of other little search engines divvy up the remaining share.

Do the math, and you'll see that there aren't 200 search engines worth submitting to, let alone paying all that for. Check out "When Your New Site Launches" for the URLs of the big three, plus DMOZ, which is important for other reasons.

Josepha's going to do a linkbuilding campaign for this baby to get it off to a good start. Go over and check out all the cute pictures of llamas and goats!

Diary of a Website: Communicating About Your Website

We're getting to the last stages before launch with the new site for GraysLland Acres llama and goat farm, so there are last-minute things that need doing: captions for the photos, final decisions about information architecture, little changes to the text. I send the analytics code to Tom and he sends the files to Shan.

Even after launch, there are often little things that need to be discussed or changed.

So how do you communicate about them?

I'm not talking here about the kind of language to use. I've written about that before (links at the bottom of this post), but today I'm just talking about the logistics. We have so many options, from Adobe Share to sitting around a laptop at the coffee shop, that it can be hard to know what will work best.

Here are some things to consider:

• Who's involved? While I like email, emailing back and forth among a group of people can become complex and confusing. If you have several people involved in the decision making, consider getting everyone together in one physical location, or with a program like GoToMeeting, so that everyone can see the screen and hear everything at once.
• Where are you? First, where are you geographically, because if you're in much different time zones, that may limit your methods. But there's also the question of where you are relative to the various communication media. Since I work at a computer most of the time, I prefer email, but let's just try a quick experiment. Complete the following sentence: "My email...

* rings when it reaches my phone, and I check it as soon as it's convenient for me.
* flashes silently on my screen, and I see whether it's important -- if I'm not in the middle of coding or something, or if I'm not in a meeting as I so often am.
* goes to one of my many inboxes, and waits till I get around to checking that particular account.
* chirps when it hits my inbox, and I look at it right away.

If some of the people you're communicating with would answer this question differently from you, then email might not work for all of you. I know that texting works best for some of the people I work with, while Twitter is best for others. Find out before getting cross about people not answering you.

• What do you like best? If you're the client, this is relevant. The phone is never my first choice for communication, but I use it with clients who prefer that. I've even had clients who liked to come and physically hang out with me at my desk, and I'll do that, too. I had a client once who wrote letters. If your writer or designer naturally goes with IM but you hate it, speak up. We have so many options nowadays that you can't expect anyone to guess your preference if you don't express it.

Other relevant posts:

• "Freelance Communication"
  
• "Giving Feedback That Gets Results"