By Brandon
Creating a website from scratch can be a very complicated and confusing undertaking. There’s a lot to do and a lot to forget. Luckily there are certain things that can enable you and/or your team to launch a new website with minimal complications. Of course, nothing is foolproof, but hopefully these things can help!
1. Plan, plan plan!
By starting off with a clear and well thought out site map, you are circumventing 90% of problems that can typically arise. Build the site map with everyone’s input. Make sure all parties involved have their voices heard in how the site should be designed and organized and make sure nothing is overlooked. Taking extra time and care in this step will make all the next steps that much easier. A very helpful and FREE service that allows many people to work on a site map for a website is WriteMaps (http://writemaps.com/)
2. Delegate
Once you’ve got the basic structure of the site laid out it’s time to divide up the work. Depending on the size of your team this could be quite complicated or relatively easy. The writers will need to start outlining the copy, the designers will need to work on some design comps, the UI folks (user interface) need to start thinking and planning how the site should look and function and ensure the ease of use, developers need to begin identifying all of the components they will need to develop, and start organizing databases and their structure. Everyone has their tasks to do and now’s the time to do them. Just make sure every one clearly understands what they are responsible for and that nothing is overlooked!
3. Check in
Whether you have a large team or you’re building the site by yourself, schedule checkins periodically throughout the process to check over all the work, ensure that it’s been completed, verify that it’s correct, and make sure nothing is being overlooked. Depending on the size of the site and the length of time you have to build it you might want to have checkins scheduled every day or every couple of days. Definitely once a week at a minimum.
4. Test
As you start nearing launch it’s time to get testing. If you only do two items on this list make it Plan and Test. Test early and often and really step it up before launch. Test on every browser on every operating system and on every device you can get your hands on. Ask friends or coworkers not related to the project to test it. One great thing to do is to find someone who might not be as technically savvy as the rest of your team. Sit down with them and just watch how they interact with your site. Doing this you will find them acting in ways you never expected a user to act. This can give you great insight on how you might optimize your site for users of all experience levels. But the important thing is to test, test, test!
5. Plan for errors
So the project is ready for launch. You’ve planned a great site, delegated the work to the team, followed up with them in checkins and have tested the site. All should be good now, right? What could possibly go wrong? Of course the answer is anything and everything! There’s no way to make sure you’ve eliminated all chances of errors so just plan accordingly. If you’re launching a redesign of an existing site maybe do the launch when traffic is usually low, if you’re launching a brand new site do a soft launch and make sure it’s working for a while before you tell everybody.
With these tips, you should be able to launch a website without any major hiccups and hopefully keep the entire process relatively stress free! Do you have any good tips you can share? Or better yet, any horror stories about disastrous launches?
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Tags: Brandon D Hunt, Project Management, Sitemap, web design, Website Planning, Website Testing
About the Author
Brandon is our Vice President of Digital Communications. When he's not following cutting edge technology or learning the latest design techniques he can be found pursuing his passion for art and illustration or playing with his two dogs.
