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Internet World June 1996, pp.96-97by Joel SynderWEB LESSONS LearnedCreating a Web site requires assembling up front four unique talents and settling designand management issues up front.IF YOU'VE EVER LOOKED AT MY COMPANY'S HOME ....... WELL, don't bother. Trust me on this one. You'd figure out pretty quicklythat I'm not in the World Wide Web development business. Sure, I can slap together some HTML and write a program to gobehind it, but that's the easy part of designing a Web site.To remedy this obvious shortcoming ('Have you seen Snyder's home page? Looks like a tornado hit ), Opus One has beensearching for a designer to enhance our Web presence, and I'm going to share the lessons we're learning along the way.LESSON 1Designing a Web site is a team effort. If someone insists that he can do the entire job alone, pass him up. Every Web site requires atleast four team members. First, you need the overall architect and designer, the team leader. This is the person who has thegrand vision for the site. He should be drawing out big storyboards, making expansive motions with hishands, and asking lots of questions. What's the message? How is it going to work? How is it going to fit together'? What's the purpose?(Hint: Save some time and start answering these questions now, before you start interviewing designers.)Next, your team will need a programming member. This is the person who understands RTML and whatever programming interface (CGI, Java. APIs, etc.) is used to give life to your site. The programmer is responsible for implementing the broad vision of the architect. After all, no self-respecting site has only pure HTML documents anymore. Everyone is adding forms, search engines, and other data-driven pages to make each site as useful and informative as possible.(Important hint: If your potential designer isn't talking about back-end scripts, you're talking to someone who's a year behind in Site design. Keep looking.)Every site needs graphics, and the third member of your team is a graphic designer. Whether they're your corporate logo or navigation buttons, some custom graphics are always going to be part of the big picture. You need someone who not only has artistic talent, but also knows the tools that computer-based designers now use.Be careful here. Many graphic designers are being pulled into Web development beforeacquiring a real understanding of the medium. What works with 3,000-dpi screens and high-quality printers or presses is notgoing to work on a 640x480 screen with 8-bit color.The fourth team member is you. A designer can lay out the storyboard, a programmer can build your RTML, and a graphicdesigner can create eye-catching logos, but without the content md guidance you provide, the site is just someone else's idea ofyour business. No one knows what you do and what you need as well as you do, and that insight is crucial to guiding the teamyou hire.You also have to provide the content. Remember that your site should revolve around its content, not the other wayaround. A Web site is a way of packaging information, and if you're building the site before you have the information, you'redoing it backwards. Plan ahead.The design team you work with should start by asking you questions and gathering content. If someone comes in the doore _ _and wants to sell you his one-size-fits-all site outline, remember your last experience with one-size-fits-all clothing.Your potential designer may not come to the door with all three team members in tow Often, small companies have aseries of stringers they hire to handle the graphics and programming parts of each site. Be wary if it's the programmer orgraphic artist who's knocking on your door, though. Sure, there are multitalented people out there who can do all three jobs. Butthey're the rare exception.You don't want to end up with a graphic artist architecting your Web site. Similarly, knowing how to program in HTMLdoesn't make you a site designer, just as knowing how to fix an engine doesn't mean you can design a car.LESSON 2Understand the costs and fees up front. This includes any costs for hosting your Web site (see my third lesson below). Designersshould provide a quote for your whole site that is based largely on the number of hours it will take to create it.Be cautious of anyone offering "price per page" quotes. A Web site is an integrated repre sentation of some aspect of yourbusiness, not a bunch of pages stuck together. Page-based pricing may be sufficient if all you want to say is, "Hey, we've got apage on the Web!" It isn't going to work for the design of an integrated complex site.Also be wary of a price too good to be true. A good Web site takes time to create, and timeis money. If you're paying between $50 and $75 an hour, you're offering a good wage for expert work. Prices per page will varywildly, but you can estimate that it's going to cost from $100 to $500 for each Web page. If you've got several dozen pages onwhich you can reuse graphics, the cost will be lower.If every page requires meticulous design, $500 may be just a starting point. For major sites where each page is really ascript generating a new page on the fly, be prepared to go even higher.I prefer to buy services like this by the hour. That lets me know how much brain power I'm getting for my buck.Obviously, you want to put "not to exceed" limits into your contract, but the idea of scaling the cost of the site by the effort ittook to build it makes a lot of sense to me.Some designers will want to package the site as a fixed-price deal. That's OK, to if the designer also can immediately tellyou approximately how many hours that price represents. If someone gives you a fixed-price quote quickly but has to come backlater to translate that into hours, you're not dealing with a business that knows what it's doing.Every site requires maintenance. Information has to be updated and the site has to have a fresh face to entice users torevisit it. Make sure maintenance responsibility and costs are agreed upon at the beginning. Maintenance costs may evenexceed the cost of the original site within the first year. Budget for it and build it into the contract.If your designer is out of this world, he'll be so busy he won't have any interest in going back to do the unexciting work ofkeeping your site up to date. Protect yourself by signing a contract that guarantees you'll get a piece of his time to keep thingscurrent.LESSON


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