-Diane M. Metcalf, Web Presence Expert-

Image and Aspect THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

Know What You Want

“Website design and development” is the creative and technical process of building a unique

interface that connects people to your brand. If we’re talking about an eCommerce store, the

site should also provide a convenient and obvious way for customers to buy or order products

and services.

To know what you need for your website, you’ll need to evaluate your business processes. If

you are a seller, think about your product or service and the customer base you’re targeting.

We’d like you to share essential information with us about your business. Understanding your

business by reading your company literature and talking about your business structure, as well

as having access to your logos, branding, special fonts and color-scheme, are important from

the start. We want to have everything we need at the beginning so we’re ready to start working

on your site right away.

A very common approach for clients, is to request multiple concepts (mock-ups) at the

beginning of the project. Clients often believe that this will give them a sense of control over the

site’s look and feel. Inevitably though, there will be elements from each design that you like,

leading to “picking and choosing” various elements from each mock-up for your final design. But

here’s the problem: elements from different designs are not necessarily compatible or even

easily combined, and they don’t always present a cohesive or attractive design. This can lead to

an inconsistent and possibly amateurish-look. We call this the “building Frankenstein” approach.

We don’t use this piecemeal approach. We use a collaborative approach with you instead, to

shape the design as it’s created.

Things can still go wrong if we each have a different understanding of the end goal or who the

target audience is. It’s very important that all parties have a clear understanding of the project

and the expectations of the website, its goals and target audience. Knowing these will help

guide the decisions that will be made during the development of your site.

Producing a quality product takes time. We need to consider all of the above and to think about

different approaches, as well as to actively work on the site itself. This is why active

collaboration with YOU is so important.

There are a few other things to consider before we talk about developing your site. Here are

some of them:

Your Domain Name

When thinking about your domain name choice, remember that a good domain name is

memorable, reflects your brand, and is nearly impossible to misspell. These qualities are

important because combining Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with spelling, and brand-

identity, all in your domain name, can increase the likelihood of your site appearing in a list of

search engine results.

Site Design

Design is subjective. “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder”, am I right? So…. having said that,

we all need to remember that there is no such thing as the “perfect” design. The desire to

achieve perfection leads to “tweak” after “tweak” in order to get it “right”. This isn’t a wise use of

your budget or of our time. You may personally like it, but the site may not achieve your goals or

be as user-friendly or effective as it could be. It’s important that the site look great, yes, but it’s

equally as important for it to function properly, be user-friendly, be mobile-responsive and

achieve its’ goals.

Security

Websites that conduct online monetary transactions, such as ecommerce sites, need

certain security measures to protect customer information. To reduce browser-based

threats, SSL certificates should be used on the site. All businesses should conduct on-

going security checks on their site, or have them performed by a security service.

Content

It’s necessary to have high quality, original content on your site, not only for user

engagement, but for SEO. Content affects your site's ranking in search engine results. Each

web page should have at least 150 words and should include links to credible online

resources and other pages within your website. Your content should be written to echo your

brand. Use a free plagiarism detection tool to ensure that there isn’t accidental plagiarism

in your content. (Google penalizes plagiarism, and they may remove your site from search

engine results.)

Images

Everything on a website is considered to be intellectual property and is protected under

copyright law. If you plan to use stock photos, they may still be copyright-protected and

using copyrighted images can result in stiff penalties. When using stock images, make sure

you have written permission to use them and that you pay any relevant fees.

You can also use copyright-free images, but be sure you’ve read their terms of use

beforehand.

Style

Think about whether you prefer an uncluttered, muted, minimalistic look with lots of white space,

or whether you’d rather have a bright and bold design. Have some website examples in mind for

us to look at.

Website Goals

Determine what you want your website to do. Once you know exactly what you want to achieve

with your site, it will be much easier to design a site that delivers those results.

A goal of “Being #1 on Google” or “getting more traffic” should not be the main goal. That kind of

SEO takes time, effort and dedication. SEO is an ongoing process, best done by professionals

who do it for a living.

By knowing your site’s goals ahead of time, we can create a solution that will provide value for

your business.

Your Timeline

Do you need this project done in a rush? Is there a specific date you have in mind for it’s’

launch? We’d need to know that upfront.

Maintenance

A website is kind of like a car; it requires ongoing care and support. Your site may function

beautifully today and not so well next year. There are ongoing costs for keeping your site fresh

and functional, and there are also costs to you for NOT doing it: like lower readership, sales,

and search-engine rankings, and fewer followers, clients, and customers.

Who will maintain your site?

If you plan to update the site yourself, and do not want to get into the code to do it, then you

need a CMS (Content Management System). A CMS handles lots of the technical aspects of a

website, like allowing non-developers to easily upload and manage their content. If you need a

CMS, your site would be coded for Wordpress.

A CMS can also be used for creating an online community, allowing visitors to create accounts

and have their own pages.

Do you need a CMS? Ask yourself these questions:

What kind of website will it be? Will it be a personal blog? Or a portfolio site with

contact information? A store?

What’s your budget? WordPress is free, though you’ll still need to purchase your own

domain name, hosting, and any commercial “plugins” or templates that you need.

How many users, contributors, or admins are you going to have? How many people

are going to contribute to your site? Do they need individualized

permissions? WordPress allows you define different kinds of contributors.

What are your site-updating needs? Will your site be mostly text and images, or will

you need to support multimedia or interactive components like a shopping cart? How

much control do you need over the look of your site?

The more complex your needs, the more you might benefit from a maintenance plan with

us, or if you prefer the doing the maintenance and updating yourself, using the Wordpress

CMS would be a good solution. We can talk about that in our first conversation.

Hosting

A Hosting Provider is a company that provides storage space for your site on their server,

for a fee. It’s basically where your websites “lives”.

The kind of hosting you’ll need is determined by these factors: will the site be static

(unchanging) or dynamic (interacting with users or changing frequently)? Does the site

require room to grow? (By the way, using a personal computer for hosting is very risky, not

recommended, and it requires a costly static IP address.)

1. Traditional Hosting: With this kind of hosting, the server is housed in a data

center, managed by the hosting company, and requires a subscription to different

standardized packages that suit current or future site-needs. There’s a risk of

paying for more resources than are actually needed, or paying for fewer resources

than what will be needed in the future.

o Shared Hosting: Still traditional, but your website shares server resources

with other websites, depending on the servers’ capacity. How much your

site gets depends on the hosting package you purchase. Because

resources are shared, bandwidth can vary, causing slower page loading, or

404 “page not found” errors. You might be charged “over-usage” fees when

the site uses more resources than the package provides, and you’ll be

required to upgrade your hosting package, moving the site to a different

server and setting it up from scratch; re-uploading all files, photos etc., and

the site being down 24-48 hours during transition.

o Dedicated Hosting: Still traditional, but all server resources are used for

only your website. Much more power, but much more expense. There’s still

the risk of paying for more resources than your site requires, or of not

buying enough resources for what site will require later. Administration costs

can go up too, and “over-usage” fees still apply.

o Virtual Private/Dedicated Hosting: Still traditional, but resources are

shared among sites, but significantly fewer sites. “Over-usage” fees still

apply when the site uses more resources than the package provides, and

you’ll be required to upgrade the hosting package. Again, this means

moving the site to a different (dedicated) server, and setting it up from

scratch; re-uploading all files, photos etc., and site being down 24-48 hours

during transition.

2. Cloud Hosting: Very flexible and highly scalable. Cloud hosting uses multiple

servers that are housed in datacenters around the world. The servers combine as a

total “pool” of resources which scale up and down according to website needs,

creating a virtual server. Resource allocation is not fixed: you only pay for what is

used.

Choosing the best hosting solution comes down to what's “right” for the business right now,

while projecting into the next three years of growth.

Your Color Scheme

Color schemes are important because color has the ability to evoke various emotional

responses. It’s vital to consider your company's niche, target audience, brand, and to

incorporate some very basic color theory. Which colors will your target audience respond

to? Are you trying to convey your brand with an energetic or a calming color scheme?

Integration with Social Media

Social media provides a way for customers to promote your brand, provide reviews, and

stay current about you or your company. Written and visual content, including product

images and video, can easily be shared on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram etc. by

simply including the relevant buttons on your site.

Vs.

Do you want to Rent or Own your website?

By contracting with us to design and code your site, you will OWN your site. Many people don’t

even realize that there is an issue of “ownership” to be considered.

When you own your site, you possess the “source code” that was used to develop the site.

Without these documents, it would not be possible for you or another developer to edit the

pages, or troubleshoot issues in the future. It limits you to the one developer who developed the

site initially. To maintain control over your site, you need to have these source files.

When you contract with Image and Aspect, you always get your source files at the end of the

project.

Renting: You are renting your site when you use a “hosted platform” package-solution, (D-I-Y)

which is considered to be “Software as a Service” (SaaS), and it has lower up-front investment

cost. Examples: Wix and Shopify.

Owning: Owning requires a custom solution, and there’s a higher up-front investment for this

dedicated development. Owning allows for customization and integration with 3rd party services,

provides greater flexibility and room for expansion.

What Renters Can Expect:

Easier for Do-It-Yourselfers Lower cost of entry

Various paid subscription levels (free, starter, pro, etc.)

Add-on modules, plugins or extensions purchased from a dedicated "marketplace"

One combined service for hosting, payment processing and website administration

Maintained infrastructure & automatic security updates

New features introduced on a regular basis

Technical support in articles, tutorials, videos

Wide selection of design templates (some are free)

The Downside of Renting:

No equity. When the subscription ends, the efforts put into building the business are lost

Incremental costs add up. With every add-on, a new cost emerges that is often higher

than the original subscription fee. There will be a monthly fee for that one item for the

rest of the duration of the website.

Possibly little flexibility on the required services for payment processing, hosting, data

warehousing.

Limited customization for design. If you leave the platform, all the investment in

custom design and development is lost. Can’t take it with you when you move to

another hosting provider/web server.

What Owners Can Expect:

Customization tailored to specific business requirements Scalable for future growth Integrates with external services

Open architecture allows for development, the code is portable and not tied to an

organization

Freedom of choice for hosting, payment processing, and website administration.

Important as sales volume increases and competitive processing and transaction fees

become critical.

Accommodates creative innovations as opposed to waiting for the hosted platform to

release updates or fixes.

Open source platforms like Drupal and Wordpress are “use at your own risk”

software, because the software and modules are developed by independent

individuals with varying skill levels. There’s no “real” quality control. No central support

location. These are potential drawbacks, but it really depends on your needs, wants

expectations and budget.

Open Source software utilizes modules that add or enhance functionality, like:

shipping, sales reporting, analytics, automatic email, etc. Some modules are free.

The Downside of Owning:

Higher cost of entry Must be actively maintained - If the site is not maintained through a web developer,

there will be no innovation, no new features, no security patching. Eventually a

website will become obsolete as code and formats change over time.

Time constraints – Requires a collaborative effort and considerable thought and

engagement from the site owner.

Have questions?

CONTACT US

Resources

Best eCommerce shopping carts

Fastly cloud hosting

Shopify

Wordpress.org

Linode.com

Big Commerce

Bluehost.com

Wordpress.com

Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce Platforms

OpenCart

Security Standards, PCI