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Website Development, E-commerce Solutions, Research Services, Animation Outsourcing, Web Design Australia Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane |
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Call National Line 1300 795 APD or 1300 795 273
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| Things to know about website
development |
| In today’s business environment,
having an online presence is an essential element of your
business. It brings an unprecedented power to access customers
24 hours a day, seven days a week, anywhere in the world.
The Internet is truly a revolutionary way to reach the
market. Knowing you have a presence round the clock, accessible
from anywhere in the world and at relatively low cost,
is truly an empowering feeling for any small business.
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| While the Internet is much more than
just the World Wide Web, this aspect of the Internet is
where most e-commerce takes place. Therefore, establishing
an effective online presence in practical terms means
building and maintaining a great website, ie. one that
encourages people to use it and works well with your existing
business practices. One of the main advantages of web
communications over printed media is that sites can be
altered and updated as you go – this will give you
the ability to alter offers or information daily, or even
hourly, at minimal cost. This is the power of the internet
at work. |
| Website Brief--
Before you set out to find a suitable web developer for
your website, it is important that you have created a
proper brief which broadly includes what you wish to achieve
through the website, and what will be the critical feature,
including any unique visual elements such as flash animation,
or may be an online newsletter feature. Without a proper
brief, it will be very difficult for any web developer
to provide you with an appropriate quote. You should include
your preferences, and any details that are critical for
the website. Remember, you do get what you pay for, but
without fully understanding both your requirements and
the process to be undertaken, mistakes can be made if
the communications between client and developer are not
adequate. In preparing a brief, start with some preliminary
research, perhaps an analysis of what your competitors
are doing. Clearly, you want your site to be at least
as good as those competing for your market, so a review
of other sites using an Internet search engine will help
you to find out who is already offering your particular
products or services, whether in Australia or overseas.
This comparative review will also give you an idea of
the functionality they offer, for example secure online
payments, ‘shopping carts’, email bulletins,
site search facilities etc. The brief should also include
background information on your business, the overall goals
and objectives, timeline and key performance indicators.
It should be written simply and avoiding the use of business
jargon. Consider everything you can think of (even allowing
for future expansion if you can’t afford to do it
all now), but keep it succinct, clear and precise. |
| References
-- For the developer to be able to understand
your preferences in terms of ‘Look and feel’,
it is advisable that you provide some references. Whether
these are some great looking websites, or even simply
some poster or a calendar that you may have seen recently.
Visual references are important for the designers as these
will be important to align the website design with your
own expectations, in addition to the colours, appearance
and usability of the site. It is an important consideration
in site design and is what gives your site its uniqueness.
The best sites are easy to use, offer good services and
have an appealing, uncluttered, clean look. If you have
an established visual identity for your business, eg a
logo and corporate communications look and feel, your
site will usually integrate that. Your design should also
reflect the type of product or service you are offering,
and it should appeal to your target market. Once provided
a clear brief to the developer, it is best to step back
and let them exercise their creative freedom to develop
a solution that fits the bill. The developer will generally
provide you with a concept with different layout options
(for larger projects) or just a home page design (for
smaller websites). These will give you a preliminary look
and feel of your new website. These design are loaded
onto a test link, so these can be seen online by you for
your feedback. You can then fine tune it as required.
If the designs are approved, the project continues to
the next phase, and rest of the site is developed. While
changes can be made, beyond a certain point they will
be at your expense. The clearer your instructions to the
developer are at the outset, the quicker and less costly
your final product will be. |
| Budget
-- Before you approach a web design or development
company you also need to have an idea of how much can
you afford to spend. Ask friends and colleagues who have
websites, what they believe is reasonable. Remember to
allow for set-up and ongoing costs associated with the
development and hosting of your site. Cost will be determined
by a number of factors including size (ie. number of pages),
complexity and functionality. Industry standard rates
are anywhere between $80 and $200 per hour depending on
the designer/developer. You will also need to allow for
ongoing site maintenance and hosting. A typical small
business website can range from between $2000 for a basic
site including hosting and domain name, to over $40,000
for an integrated e-commerce and business resource planning
tool. If your project has the potential to increase revenues
or reduce costs, then work on a return on investment (ROI)
basis. This will enable you to allocate a budget that
has a payback factor worked into it. Ideally, all commercial
sites should do this. The extent to which they do can
often be a matter of good measurement of returns so be
sure to integrate into your businesses processes a way
of tracking how much business your site is generating
for you. |
| Content--
Your content is vital to the success of your website.
By ‘content’ we mean the text and graphics
on your site. They must be kept fresh if you want people
to keep coming back. They must be compelling if you want
to command their attention and move them to action. This
means you will have to make a commitment to sourcing good
content and ongoing editorial support. You can do this
yourself if you have the necessary skills, otherwise you
may need to subcontract it out. If you prefer to build
the site content over a period of time, it may be more
advisable to go for a ‘content management system’
so that a person without web design skills can edit the
site using plain text or a word processing program. This
makes the insertion of new text or images very straightforward.
However, the cost of website is likely to be fairly higher
with a comprehensive CMS feature. |
| Text
-- Writing for the web is a specific skill. There
are plenty of sites that can give you tips on how to write
for the web, but if writing is not your forte, use a professional
writer. Remember, this is the voice talking to your customers.
Badly written text, obvious spelling mistakes and confusing
instructions will not create good impression on customers. |
| Some of the best sites involve the minimal
use of graphics. The heavy use of graphics can make your
site slow to load and frustrating to use. You should also
clarify with the developer who will own the copyright
to the site itself. The fact that you are paying them
to create it does not automatically mean that you own
the copyright. Generally, in fact, the copyright remains
with the person who does the creating. If this is an important
consideration for you, you should insist that the developers
‘assign’ their rights in the site to you as
a condition of the job. Make this clear at the outset
though, not after the job is complete. |
| Your site should also have a Privacy
Policy. Most users these days are concerned about protecting
their personal information, and you should be too. Good
sites these days always include a privacy statement. Have
a look at some larger sites to get an idea of what is
involved. You may also want to get some legal advice on
this. While you are at it, you should also consider the
Terms and Conditions of your site, and legal disclaimers
to protect you from legal liability, as far as you are
able to do this. Again, look at what other sites have
done and get some advice from a lawyer who knows about
these things. It need not be expensive, but could save
you money in the long run. The Terms and Conditions must
be obvious enough that users will have adequate notice
of them. Otherwise they may not be of much use to you
in the event of a dispute. |
| Hosting &
Domain Name -- In addition to
having a website developed, you also need to more essential
things to get your site up on the internet – Hosting
and a domain name. The Domain name is basically your website
address, which internet users can type into the web browser
to view your website. But for your site to be visible
on the internet, it also needs to be hosted on a server,
so all the website content can be called onto the browser
via the internet links. |
| Once you have got everything organized
as above, you are ready to have your business online.
But wait there is more……!!! Having a business
online does not necessarily mean that the search engines
will find your website when users perform a search. For
your site to work effectively with the search engines,
you will also need to think about how to promote your
website on the internet, particularly among the search
engines. |
| Steps to getting
website developed by Asia Pacific Direct |
- Provide a detailed brief of your requirements
ideally via e-mail, with some references.
- We will contact you to discuss the details
of your project, and will advise you on how
to optimize the use of various features on your
website with minimal development cost. After
the discussion, we will provide you with a written
quote with breakdown of various key features
included in the quote, and indicative completion
time.
- Once the client has approved of the quote,
we will require 50% advance to start the work,
whereas the balance 50% will be due at the completion
of the project.
- Once the advance payment has been made by
the client, we will begin the work on the project.
- We will show you different layout options
(for larger projects) or just a home page design
(for smaller websites) for your approval. These
will give you a preliminary look and feel of
your new website. These design are loaded onto
a test link, so these can be seen online by
you for your feedback. You can then fine tune
it as required.
- If the designs are approved, the project continues
to the next phase, and rest of the site is developed.
While reasonable small changes can be made within
the scope of the original quote, beyond a certain
point changes may incur additional charges.
- After the website development is completed,
and tested, client pays the remaining 50% balance.
- Once the final payment is made, we make the
site LIVE.
- Once the site is LIVE, APD will continue
to provide any correction as per the warrantee
conditions outlined in our terms and conditions.
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© 2007 Copyright www.asiapacificdirect.com.au,
All Rights Reserved
ABN 92 663 551 493
Level 26, 44 Market Street, Sydney 2000 Australia. Ph : 1300 795 273 |
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