Building a website consists of several steps, but there is no doubt that the very first step of characterizing the site is the most important step when building your site and it will affect the rest of the processes of building the site from the design of the site through its development to referring to the surfer and the various search engines.
Web site characterization is actually a joint process between the client and his website building company, the process consists of several questionnaires and meetings in order to fully coordinate expectations between the client and the website building company. There is no doubt that it is never possible to cover all the elements of building and promoting the website, but it is possible to prevent repeated mistakes and shorten the development and launch times of the website.
In my opinion, characterizing a website with the website building company is done after the client has done a market test for his website and his product and formulated his idea, checked his competitors and did everything necessary to check his market and his business plans, the website construction company You will not establish these business modules for him, you will build him the website in the most professional and most up-to-date way possible and along the way offer him various elements for the website from technological ideas through design and solutions GUI to promotion of advertising and marketing of his website.
Building a website main characterization steps
The characterization consists of several main steps:
1. First meeting to define goals and deploy the idea – In this meeting, the client will explain to the website construction company where he is aiming to reach and the website construction company will try to offer him and direct the customer to the solutions it knows how to provide.
2. Requirements and characterization document: It is highly recommended that the website construction company write the requirements characterization document according to the first meeting held with the client, usually in website construction projects the wheel is not reinvented and modules are repeated in most websites with graphics and another GUI , your website construction company has already built these modules in the past And you should trust and use her experience for a textual description of these models, of course you will send comments after receiving the initial characterization until you feel that there is full coordination of expectations between you and your website building company.
3. Design questionnaire - Most of the website building companies have ready design questions that are sent to the client if structured and prepared questions such as: What websites do you like? Who is the target audience? Who are the main competitors? What colors will dominate the site? Is there an image line that needs to be continued and more.
These details are passed on to the company's designers and from here begins a ping pong of sending sketches to the client in any image format, which is usually JPG , it is very useful to clarify from the beginning how many sketches you receive from the website building company and what types of sketches, it is recommended not only to get a sketch for the home page and an internal page, but to require at least 5 sketches for different content areas on the site with no limit on the number of sketches.
4. Characterization presentation GUI : After you have characterized all the modules of the site in a textual form and have already discussed all the design elements and before starting the design work, it is highly recommended to request from the website construction company a complete presentation of the GUI of all the main content areas on the site.
You will be surprised to find that in the presentation of the GUI carriers will come up that you forgot or that certain things are suddenly not possible, which is why this step is so necessary, this step will also be very helpful during the website design process and will put order in the coordination of expectations between the client and his website construction company. And it will make it easier for you to arrange the content on the website according to the definition of the menus and pages you defined in the presentation. to veryHandle the preparation of the contents during the construction of the site immediately after the end of the characterization in order not to delay the project in terms of time.
Additional elements to consider when characterizing a website:
A. Reference to upgrades and continued development -
Especially when it comes to very large projects, it is recommended to receive already in the initial characterization stages a reference to the next version and upgrades to the existing version of the website in order not to be surprised by prices or an inability to carry out the next step from a technological point of view.
b. Reference to bugs and speed of response to faults
I don't know of any project that doesn't have bugs and in most cases it is dedicated development there can be bugs, there is no doubt that in a good company most of the bugs are discovered during the development and are solved already in the first stages, however there are bugs that can only be discovered during the ongoing work on the site and to know beforehand what the website building company's policy is regarding handling bugs. Distinguish between acute bugs on the site and marginal bugs - it is recommended to write everything down in order to avoid unpleasantness in the future.
c. domain purchase, storage services and backup services.
When it comes to large projects, it is useful to know what happens in case of loads, both in terms of the server and the databases? Who takes care of the backups? How often do they wipe? What happens in the event of a server failure? What happens during a hack? Who is responsible for renewing the domain and the like.
d. reference to search engines
There is no doubt that today it is impossible to build a website without considering its promotion. If the website building company you have chosen does not provide website promotion services, you should consult with a promotion company or website promoter in order for them to issue an initial document to refer to proper construction for search engines, from personal experience if the website is not built properly, improving it can take tens of hours of development which can put a heavy burden on the client's budget and cash flow.
E. What happens in the event of a carrier switch ?
Most of the time your agreement with the website building company is a Catholic wedding. As studies show that a mattress is bought once every 11 years, the average shelf life of a website is around 4-5 years. To know what happens if during this time you fought with your website building provider and decided to part ways. Do you have the code? What is happening with the site's database? Is the design yours? Is your domain? Who transfers the code to a new server? and more...
These are important questions that need to be answered in the first stages of site characterization.