So, you think you want a new website?

By Jeff Komlos, Information Technology Project Manager

Often times, this can be where the knowledge train ends. Quite frequently, a client will profess their desire or need for a website, but have no idea where to take it from there. Rest assured, you are not alone. With the presence of the Internet growing at an incredible rate, this trend is only going to continue. It becomes increasingly cheaper to run your business virtually. To help you along this course, I have put together two groups of questions that should help you answer two things: 1) Do I need a website? 2) What do I need to provide and what needs to happen to move forward?

1) Do I need a website?

This one is pretty easy to answer. Read through the questions below:

--Am I sharing a message?
--Am I sharing information?
--Am I selling something or is this for a business?

If you have answered "yes" to any of these questions, you are probably in a good spot to explore having a website developed. At this point, several options are available to you. You can go with a templated approach or you could go with a completely custom-built website. Using our company as an example, we provide solutions for both the templated sites and for the custom-built sites. With a templated site, there is a lot more structure to the look and feel, as well as what functionality is available. One advantage to a  templated design is that it is usually more geared for the budget-conscious consumer. If you are on a tight budget, this is the direction I would suggest looking first. You get a quality site, with a smaller price tag.

A custom-built website tends to be more expensive since we are not able to reuse work we have done in the past. The benefit of a site like this is that it can be built to meet your every single need, no matter how complex or unique. It can also have a completely unique and custom look and feel that no other site has. These types of sites can involve integration to a back-end database or set of information that you may already have in place. The options are limitless.

Now that you know you need a website.........

2) What do I need to provide and what needs to happen to move forward?

Here is a list of questions that you might consider or be prepared to answer when moving forward with a development firm. This will help you minimize the amount of time required in the "Analysis and Discovery" phase of the project.

--Do you have an existing website we can explore?
--Roughly, how many pages do you anticipate this site having?
--Do you currently have hosting for this site arranged?
--Do you have any logos, pictures, etc. or will we need to provide all artwork/images?
--Will this require a shopping cart or the ability to accept credit cards?
--Will this require secure access or any type of account access?
--Will you be storing/passing any sensitive information?
--Does the client expect to create and modify their own website content?
--Do you currently own a domain you wish to use for this site?
--Do you have a timeline for this project?

This list is ever-evolving based on current practices and capabilities of the Internet. However, this will help you and your new development firm get the project off on the right foot.