Daily Archives: November 26, 2013

How to Assess Your Website Needs

In my last two Tuesday posts, I described both the typical website as perceived by the casual visitor and something of their hidden life.  To make a start, you need to assess your website needs.

You need to understand website structure if you’re responsible for your own site.  Even if you pay a designer to create and look after your site, the more you understand site structure, the more productive your relationship with your designer will be.  The amount of help you use will depend on your budget and your aims for the site.

Four Things You Need to Consider

  1. What do you want your site to do? How will the site save you time and further your aims?
  2. You need to decide how you’re going to carry out your plans.  Use a content management system (CMS), such as WordPress, because then all the functionality you need is available to you.  You really don’t need someone to reinvent the wheel on your behalf.
  3. You might need (1) an email list, (2) some means for customers to pay you or make purchases, eg a ticketing service, (3) you will need to monitor your site, back it up and be sure it is secure.  There are many WordPress plug-ins and on-line services (paid and unpaid) that do all this and more.  I’ll cover these in the technical section of this blog.
  4. You need to decide how much you can do yourself and the support you need.  No-one has all the skills they need to do everything.  There are online forums that might help (this blog is one of them) but you will almost certainly need to purchase some services.  You need to manage these relationships and  I shall cover this in the Purpose category of this blog.

I can help you assess your current website or your plans for a new website.  An assessment will show you what you can do within your budget, how much you can do in-house and what you will need to pay for.  Details of this service are on my website, Web Consultancy Offers.

How did you decide how to implement your website?  What platform did you choose?  Did you seek advice or explore online?  Do the results satisfy you?  I’d be interested to read your reasons and so would many others.