Website Development

Most of your website visitors will arrive at your site looking for answers to one or more questions such as: 

1. How much does your product cost? 
2. Do you provide the service I need? 
3. Where are you located?

The job of your website is to provide answers to these questions quickly.  If the site visitor has to put too much effort into finding the answer, they will leave and go elsewhere.  So at the outset of your development, try to capture the overall objective of your website and define questions that your site visitors might be asking.

Website Development is a process that can be broken down into a series of steps and sub-tasks.  If you hire a website developer to help build your website, it is important that both you and your website developer have an understanding of the process and what your involvement is. 

The key to success in any great website development is effective communication between the client and the developer.

Architecture

The website architecture defines the structure of your site and is usually captured in document form.  This includes what pages to include, the site navigational scheme and any applications the site might support.  As with any design project, the more planning you do up front, the better the final result.  So take some time at this phase of the development to make sure all your requirements for the website are being met by the site architecture. 

Your Role:

• define the purpose of your website
• identify questions visitors might have
• make sure site architecture will allow you to answer visitor questions quickly
• make sure navigation scheme and information structure makes sense

Website Design

Website Design refers to the graphics and user interface design of your website.  During this phase, you will be deciding on things like color schemes and layouts, fonts and button behaviors.  Remember to consider who your target audience is.  A web design style may be pleasing to you, but will it impress your site visitors?  Resist the urge to use too much animation or other graphical distractions.  Remember: most of your site visitors have come to your site seeking specific information.  They are not interested in watching a 60 second Flash Introduction no matter how “cool” it is.

Your Role:

• ensure that the “look and feel” of the website is appropriate for your target audience
• resist the urge to add too many visual distractions such as animations
• ensure that the graphics do not distract from your message

Website Coding

Website coding refers to the implementation of your website in one or more of the web design languages available.  These web design languages are run either on your computer (client) or on the web server (server).  Here is a brief description of what some of the more commonly used languages are for:

HTML 
HTML is the standard language interpreted by all browsers to display a web page on your screen.

Javascript
Javascript is a scripting language that runs on your computer.  Javascript is a very powerful language used for many website enhancements such as validating data entered by a site visitor.

PHP
PHP is a scripting language that runs on the web server.  When you request a page that contains PHP, the web server interprets the PHP code first before sending an HTML page.  This allows for web pages to be dynamic.  As an example, you might enter the term “Red Shoes” in the search box of a shoe website.  This request is sent to the server and the server processes the request using a language like PHP to return a dynamic HTML page containing information about “Red Shoes”.

MySQL
MySQL is a database management system.  This is an open source (free) system and as such enjoys immense popularity throughout the internet community.  MySQL is run on the web server or sometimes on a separate machine co-located with the web server.  Using our “Red Shoe” example from above, when a user does a search on the term “Red Shoes”, the PHP language will tell the MySQL database to search its database for anything with “Red Shoes” in it.  The MySQL database returns the information to the PHP and in turn the PHP translates the data into an HTML page that your browser understands.

Flash
Flash is a widely used animation technology found on many websites.  Flash can be used to provide anything from simple animations to entire interactive websites.  When you browse a page with a Flash movie in it, your computer’s browser calls up the Flash player installed on your computer and displays the movie.  If your computer does not have Flash installed, you will be prompted to install it.  If you choose not to, the Flash movie will not play, but the rest of the web page will still work.

Your Role:

• work with the website developer to make sure that the applications being developed meet all your needs and are easy to use

Website Verification

Before any website is put into production, it normally goes through a Website Verification phase.  For small simple websites, this can be as quick as visually inspecting all pages to make sure everything displays correctly.  For more complex interactive sites however, this process can become considerably more involved.  If you have a website that sells shoes over the internet as an example, you want to make sure that site visitors can find your products quickly and ultimately pay for them in a smooth Checkout experience.  You and your web developer should coordinate on this task to cover as many different “use cases” as possible.  For especially large and complex sites, it is recommended to have a Verification Plan to make sure all critical “use cases” are covered before the site is put into production.

Your Role:

• work with your website developer to develop a Website Verification Plan
• check for content accuracy
• test all features and functions