Jan 7

Written by: Dylan Barber
1/7/2010 11:45 AM 

Let’s say you are a small organization, perhaps a nonprofit or business-to-business, and you are looking to redesign your website. This might include a new graphic design, new content and functionality. As with most small organizations, you do not have an IT department or Web guru on-staff, so you have turned to a Web development company to put it all together.

The question for you now is, what can you do to keep costs low, move the project along quickly and, ultimately, make the site successful?

Outline your website

The outline will illustrate the navigation structure of your current website. A good way to do this is in Microsoft Excel. In Excel, you would enter in each page of the site and where they fall within the site structure. For example:

Home		Brief description
About Us		Brief description
	Staff	Brief description
Services		Brief description
	Services 1	Brief description
	Services 2	Brief description
News		Brief description
Contact us		Brief description

So in the above example, the outline shows that there are (5) “primary” pages: Home, About Us, Services, News and Contact Us. Under About Us, there is a Staff page, and so on.

Now, this is something that could be done by your web development firm—most likely during the quotation phase. However, it may be beneficial to do this in-house. The reason being that in most cases, having taken the time to analyze the current website’s structure, you’re going to make changes.

Perhaps you will move pages, delete others or add new ones. Or, it may very likely spawn entirely new questions for the web development firm you hadn’t thought of before. It also gives a quick, simple guide to the website that can be used by both you and your Web development firm for sharing notes and progress.

Site Design: Custom vs. Off-the-Shelf

Typically, the two major cost items in a website redesign are the graphic design and moving content from the old site to the new (assuming no custom application development).

With the economy as it is today, we’ve seen many small organizations choose off-the-shelf graphic designs, versus creating an entirely new custom design. This can easily save 30 percent or more in the overall cost of the project.

Where to buy off-the-shelf? The short answer is that it depends. In most cases, the Web development firm will be utilizing a content management system for your new website. Each content management system typically has an online marketplace where pre-packaged designs can be purchased for very little cost. For instance, www.snowcovered.com provides over 4,000 designs (also called “skins”) for DotNetNuke websites, which can most often be purchased for less than $100. Once purchased, users can change the colors, drop in a logo and custom banner.

The downside is that you’re using a design that may also be used by anyone else. It reminds me of when I produced a video for an international manufacturing company several years ago. They chose a song from a shared music library. Three months later, we heard that very same song being used in a local A&W commercial.

New Content

If I could stress just one point above all others when it comes to a website redesign, it is this: if you plan to write new content, and you wish to write it in-house, plan for time. This is something I warn each and every client (and my clients will surely attest to this). If there is any one thing that will throw off the schedule for a new website redesign project, it is the time needed for writing new content.

Putting together the site outline is a great start, as you can “flag” which pages need writing and the progress of each. It also will allow you to create a rough estimate as to how many hours it may take (for instance, you may budget two to three hours per page, based on the page).

In addition, prioritize new content pages. You may determine that some low priority pages can go “live” later on, after the new website is completed so as not to throw off the schedule.

Points of Contact

Who in your organization will be the primary points of contact in coordinating the project between you and your development firm? Perhaps it is just one person, or perhaps there are several.

For example, you may have different staff members who are responsible for different portions of the project, such as:

• Graphic design
• Content
• Database integration
• IT

Knowing who to contact for specific questions or coordination will help the Web development firm streamline production and eliminate miscommunication and false-starts.

Search Engine Tip

When migrating your old site to the new, ask your web development firm to integrate what’s called “301-redirects.” Think of a 301-redirect as a helper tool for Google. What this does is assist Google and other search engines in mapping your old pages to your new pages. This way, the search engines are doing less work in re-indexing your website. What this means for you is that you will see little or no “dip” in terms of how your website appears in search results as the new website goes live.