The Signoff – When is Done Done

It is Done!

NOTE: This the eighth segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website. If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. Step 8 involves approving the final product for implementation.

During the testing phase, you should have accomplished the following:

1. Resolved all glitches and technical issues that prevent your visitors from using the site as ‘intended’.
2. Updated the website to resolve any user interface (layout, functionality) issues that are critical to your site’s success. For example, if during the testing phase, you learn that the most of your test users had a difficult time finding or using your website navigation area, you should definitely resolve this issue before ‘going live.’ These are the issues that cause your visitors to leave the site (due to confusion, error or annoyance).
3. Developed a listing of potential future enhancements. You are certain to receive feedback on features that are not included in this initial implementation. Create a “wish list” containing these items and plan to revisit them when you begin to plan for your next website enhancement.

Now that you’ve completed the testing phase and received valuable feedback from your test group, it is time to signoff on the project and schedule the launch date. The signoff process will vary depending on your website team or developer. However, you should always state in writing that you approve of the final product and schedule the actual date that you would like to “go live”.

NOTE: “Go live” is basically a phrase to state that you’re ready to launch the website and make it available for public viewing.

Resist the urge to launch the site if there are “loose ends” or other items to be completed. “Loose ends” should either be completed during the development and testing phases or considered for the next phase.

It is done. And it is not perfect. Sounds weird, but it’s true. If you’re having trouble checking the completion box because of the pesky wish list of cool & suggested features, you will be happy to learn that most successful ventures are works in progress. And if you’ve performed the following tasks, you’re ahead of the curve and on the path to success:

• Documented realistic goals & objectives for this phase of the project. This will help you target your marketing efforts more effectively.
• Resolved any technical glitches or issues that prevent an effective user experience. You want to maintain a high level of quality.
• If you have stayed within or close to the original scope of your project, you should be within your budget and near your expected deadline. This is important to ensuring that you’re not borrowing resources that could be used during the next enhancement phase.

Once you’ve issued the final signoff, you have stated that the project is complete. The next step is measuring the outcome of your project. Congratulations! It is done.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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Your Web Project: Testing & Customer Feedback

TESTING & CUSTOMER FEEDBACK

NOTE: This the seventh segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website. If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. Step 7 involves testing your final product.

Testing is an important phase for technology projects. The testing phase ensures that everything is working “as expected” and as identified in your project requirements. The technical team responsible for developing (coding) your website will test their code and interfaces for glitches and other issues. However, you should also perform some testing of your own. Be sure to carve out enough time to review the work completely. Revisit your requirements document to ensure that all requirements were met.

Since the visitor experience is the most important, you should also enlist a small group of people to review the site. Ideally you would include a few current & past customers. During Step 1 (Do Your Homework), it was recommended that you “survey your current and past customers regarding the features that they feel are most important to include on your future website or similar websites in your industry”. If you performed this step, you should enlist the same group to review the final product. Be sure to provide your test group with a brief document describing the site, as well as descriptions of any features and enhancements. This will give them some perspective regarding your intended final product. You will want to ask questions regarding:

1. Their overall experience using the site (layout, look & feel, functionality).
2. If they experienced any technical issues or glitches while accessing the site.
3. Their feedback on each new feature/enhancement.
4. Their recommendations for future enhancements.
5. If they feel that the new site or new site enhancement is an improvement and if it increases their ability to do business with you.

Compile your feedback and the feedback of your test group and submit it to your website team/developer. For this phase of your project, you will want your technical team to focus on feedback received on user experience (question #1) and technical glitches experienced while testing (question #2). Issues related to questions #4 – 5 are for your records. You should use this information to plan the next phase of your project. If your test group requests future enhancements, don’t make the mistake in trying to implement the enhancements at this time unless you’re willing to utilize additional resources and time to implement the new features. If you decide that new features identified during your testing phase are important and should be implemented before you “go live”, meet with your website team to develop a new budget and timeline for implementing the new items (See Preventing Website Project Headaches & Frustrations).

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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Managing Your Progress

NOTE: This the sixth segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website. If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. Step 6 involves managing your progress.

MANAGING YOUR PROGRESS

Once you have documented your website development goals, established the resources needed to perform the work and decided on a deadline, you are ready to start your project. Here are a few tips for ensuring that your project is progressing smoothly:

1. Identify milestones for your project. Your project milestones should represent the completion of a task, event or set of activities. You should work with your project team to determine the most appropriate milestones for your web development project.
   

   Here is an example of potential project milestones using the sample project from Step 5:

   Project Goals: Create a new company website to provide information about the company and classes available. Allow customers to contact the company via email, web form, etc. Advertise promotional products/special sessions. Allow customers to subscribe to company newsletter

   Milestone	Description
   1	Finalize Website Content.
   2	Requirements Gathering – Gather/Identify design and user interface preferences.
   3	Approve/Finalize website design/layout
   4	Discuss and approve the eNewsletter provider/vendor and signup for the appropriate package(s).
   5	Development/Design Phase – Complete programming all web files and scripts.
   6	Review and Testing – Complete the review & testing of the final product.
   7	Website Implementation – Go live! Implement/Copy the new/updated website files to the appropriate web servers.

2. Define Projected Completion Dates for each Milestone – For each milestone, work with your website team to identify a projected completion date. It is important that the individuals involved with each phase of the project have input in determining the projected completion dates. If you determine the dates without consulting your team, you may find that you have over or underestimated the level of effort required to complete the tasks. Also, if you are outsourcing the work, you want to find out if your team is dedicated to your project or juggling other projects as well. Your team members should be able to articulate the level of effort and project completion dates. Be sure to articulate your overall deadline for completing the project. You will want to ensure that your timeline allows you to complete the project AHEAD of schedule.
3. Milestone Kick Off Meeting – Schedule a meeting with the appropriate members of your team to kick off each phase. During this meeting, you want to ensure that the team members have the information that they need to start that phase of the project. For example, if you’re approaching the development phase, you want to ensure that you’ve approved the design and provided all of the necessary content before that work begins. There are certainly instances where project phases can run in parallel, but in general you want to ensure that you’ve completed all of the preliminary work prior to moving on to the next phase. You can build inefficiencies into your project by skipping steps. If you step the website finalization phase and move on to the development phase, you may find that you’ve added items to your content that requires that the design be modified or revisited entirely. This adds to your timeline and could potentially increase your final website cost. (See Reducing Your Website Project Costs and Headaches)
4. Milestone Check In – Schedule a quick follow-up with the appropriate members of your team shortly before each milestone’s projected completed date. This follow-up can be made via email or a quick phone call. The purpose of the follow-up is to determine if the milestone was completed on schedule. If the activity is behind schedule, you will want to modify your timeline for each of the subsequent tasks. You could certainly attempt to keep the subsequent phases scheduled as planned, but this tactic is generally a failed effort … that is unless you enlist additional resources (people, time) to ensure that you can stick to the original schedule.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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Identifying Your Website Resources

NOTE: This the fifth segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website. If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. In step 1, we covered the research and discovery phase. Step 2 involved focusing and prioritizing your website development tasks. Step 3 involves identifying your goals for your website. Step 4 involves identifying your barriers. Step 5 covers identifying the resources that you will need to complete your project.

IDENTIFY YOUR RESOURCES

Once you’ve defined and prioritized the goals for your website project (step 2), you will need to decide if your project should be covered in phases.

1. What is your budget?

Once you’ve stated your project focus, identified your goals and strategies for overcoming your barriers, you will need to identify the resources that will help you complete your project. You will first need to determine your project budget. Unless money is no object, all website projects need a budget. The project budget is the TOTAL amount that you’re willing (and able) to spend to complete the work within your desired timeframe.

2. Who‘s on your web development team?

You should determine if you have the resources in-house or if you will need to outsource some of all of the project work. Draft a listing of people and organizations that can assist with your project. You may start by asking for recommendations from other people in your network.

3. What’s your deadline?

As a small business owner, tackling a large website development project with limited time and resources will often create much frustration as you wait for ‘everything to be finished’. As you define your deadline, be sure to determine why you’ve chosen your selected deadline. Is your deadline based on a trade show or industry event (i.e.: you’d like to have a website enhancement completed before the event)? Is your deadline based on an upcoming hosting contract expiration? Avoid picking deadlines for “kicks and giggles.” Make sure that you have a deadline that is realistic and allows for an appropriate development timeline. The team that will assist with your project will provide feedback if the deadline can not be met (based on your budget, people resources and project scope).

4. Define your project.

Depending on your budget and available resources, you may decide to only focus on the high priority items first, while covering the lower priority items in subsequent phases.

EXAMPLE - Here is an example web development project plan for a technical/IT training company.

Primary Objective: Create a website for a technical/IT training business.

Website Goals: TIP: The website goals should be those that are most important to creating an effective user experience for your customers and potential customers visiting your website.

In this example, the organization is creating a new corporate website. If the necessary resources are available (time, money, people); the organization may decide to implement all of the desired website goals before the initial rollout. However, if time, money or resources are limited, a phased approach may be necessary. Since the desired features are already prioritized, the organization can use this listing to determine what features are most important to be completed during phase I. Ideally, during phase I development, the organization will identify additional resources, so that the remaining phases can be scheduled shortly after the initial phase.

Use your website goals and objectives listing to: a) Decide if you will tackle your project in smaller phases and b) Define the first phase and potential subsequent phases. Using the example above, the training company may decide to tackle their project in four phases:

1. Phase I: All priority 1 items will be completed – these items are related to ensuring that the company has a web presence (since it’s a new site) and that the basic information needed for their customers is provided on the new site.
2. Phase II: Enhance the user experience. Perhaps the company will decide to complete 2 of the 3 priority 2 items. One of the items is related to ecommerce (pay for courses and purchase other products online). The company may decide to create a separate project for implementing the ecommerce component.
3. Phase III: Enhance the user experience with an ecommerce implementation. This is the remaining priority 2 item “allow customers to pay for courses and purchase other products online.”

This is a simple example of how you can evaluate and prioritize your website goals. Once you’ve made a decision on what items will be completed during phase I, you should document your budget, your desired time line and your project goals. This is the document that you will provide to the team of people that may assist with the implementation and development.

Using a phased approached to your website projects is very helpful in determining if you have the necessary resources for completing the project. This also helps to define very clear and focused goals for your project; which will help combat “scope creep”. A phased website approach and well defined project resources and goals will ensure that your website continues to evolve as your business evolves. You will be aware of your progress as you move forward in implementing your ultimate vision for your website.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Subscribers will receive a FREE eBook containing extended versions of Steps 1 – 9, as well as accompanying worksheets for managing your project. If you would like to receive the FREE ebook, join the Websmith Group Facebook Page or subscribe to our eNewsletter.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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Barriers to success

NOTE: This the fourth segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website.If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. In step 1, we covered the research and discovery phase (See Step 1: Do your homework). Step 2 involved focusing and prioritizing your website development tasks (See Step 2: Identifying your focus).Step 3 involves identifying your goals for your website (See Step 3: Identifying your goals). Step 4 involves identifying your barriers.

IDENTIFY YOUR BARRIERS

Once you’ve identified your specific goals, identify HOW you will reach those goals. It’s not enough to build a new website and declare that you will increase website traffic by 30% within 90 days. How exactly do you plan to do that? You can start by identifying your current barriers to meeting your goals (ex: not enough website traffic). Once you’ve identified your existing barriers, you can begin to identifying the resources (products, people, services) that you will utilize to help you overcome those barriers.

Goal: Increase my website traffic by 30% within the first 90 days of this implementation.
Barrier: The website currently receives 2 hits per day
Strategy:

1. Use Google Ad-words to increase my paid/sponsored search engine visibility.
2. Hire a consultant to ensure that my web pages are optimized for organic search engine visibility (this could take some time)
3. Ask existing customers and relevant partners to link to my website and/or provide referrals.
4. Place links to my website on brochures, business cards, email signature line etc.

You will notice that in order to complete this step, you will need to have a baseline for measuring your progress. For example, if your goal is to increase website traffic, you should already know your website traffic statistics. If you are not monitoring and are unaware of your website statistics, then you should go back to step 1 and refocus your project. In this example, we would recommend that one of your high priority items is to implement a process for tracking your website statistics. This will require that you revisit your stated goals as well. In the example used above, the goal indicated is to “increase website traffic by 30% within 90 days”. That goal is no longer realistic given the new high priority item of implementing a website statistics monitoring process. You will first need some time to determine your existing traffic rates before moving forward. You may learn that you actually get more traffic than you think, but perhaps your bounce rates are high (this is the % of visitors that arrive on your site and leave without clicking on any other pages). This discovery could change the entire direction of your original plan.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Subscribers will receive a FREE eBook containing extended versions of Steps 1 – 9, as well as accompanying worksheets for managing your project. If you would like to receive the FREE ebook, join the Websmith Group Facebook Page or subscribe to our eNewsletter.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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Identifying your goals

NOTE: This the third segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website.If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. In step 1, we covered the research and discovery phase (See Step 1: Do your homework). Step 2 involved focusing and prioritizing your website development tasks (See Step 2: Identifying your focus).Step 3 involves identifying your goals for your website. This is a “broad” purpose for building or enhancing the website, such as:

• Increase sales (or donations)
• Reach more prospects and leads
• Increase awareness about the company, the entrepreneur, the organization etc.

Once you’ve identified your goals, you will need to define measurable objectives for your website. This is how you will measure the success of your new website or website enhancement.In step 2, you ranked your project tasks into high, medium, low and no priority categories. You will need to select the tasks that are most important (i.e. the high priority tasks), then begin to document your measurable objectives. For each of the ‘to do’ items selected, identify a measurable outcome. Once the project is completed and implemented on your live website, what is your desired outcome or return on investment? Be specific. Examples of specific, measurable objectives are:

Website Feature or Enhancement	Measurable Outcome
Addition of a Frequently Asked Questions area.	Within 6 months of completing the website, reduce the amount of time spent responding to calls and emails from existing customers on basic business questions such as item return policy, membership cancellation fees, office hours etc.
Addition of an online membership application and renewal process.	Reduce the amount of time and resources required to process membership applications, membership renewals and payment information.
New shopping cart for accepting credit card payments online.	Increase business revenue and expand customer base by selling products/services online.
Addition of a DONATE NOW button	Enhanced fundraising opportunities by accepting online donations.
Distribute company/organization information, mission, team bio and products/service offerings	Increase the number of new site visitors to build awareness of the company/organization.

If you can not think of a measurable goal or objective for the enhancement or feature listed, perhaps you should rethink the priority of this item. This step is important because this is how you will define and measure the success of your website enhancement and website marketing efforts. Also, identifying specific goals and measurable objectives reduces the opportunity, during the development/design phase, for the project to grow and expand beyond the intended purpose.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Subscribers will receive a FREE eBook containing extended versions of Steps 1 – 9, as well as accompanying worksheets for managing your project. If you would like to receive the FREE ebook, join the Websmith Group Facebook Page or subscribe to our eNewsletter.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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What's your Primary Focus?

NOTE: This the second segment of a 9-part series on how to create a successful small business website.

If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success. In step 1, we briefly covered the research and discovery phase (See Step 1: Do your homework). Step 2 involves focusing and prioritizing your website development tasks.

STEP 2: IDENTIFY YOUR PRIMARY FOCUS

Websites evolve and change rapidly. Even the most successful business websites maintain a revolving “to do” list of new features and content for enhancing their web presence. You should always identify a focus or scope for your website project. The project scope details the projects deliverables and major objectives. The most successful website projects have a well focused scope. Less successful projects have a poorly defined or nonexistent scope. A nonexistent and poorly controlled scope is the root cause of “scope creep”, also referred to as “feature creep”. Scope creep occurs when a projects’ focus and requirements grow and expand without making the necessary adjustments to the project budget, resources and schedule. This is a recipe for failure and frustration for all involved participants.

When you decided to create a new website or start a new website enhancement project, you probably created a listing of desired content and features to include. Also, in step 1 of this series, we covered researching website trends on competitor and industry related websites, and obtaining customer feedback. Compile your initial listing of desired content/features with the information that you’ve gathered through customer feedback and research. This will create your laundry listing of potential website features and content.

Review the listing carefully. What were the items that most of your customers listed as important? You should have a “customer focused” approach to your website, therefore you will want to weight the importance of these items heavily. Your website should provide your existing and potential customers the information that THEY need WHEN and WHERE they are looking for it. Are there differences in what YOU and YOUR CUSTOMERS indicate as important? For example, many small business websites will designate a great percentage of the home page for information about the company, the business owner and/or staff. This information is certainly very valuable to build credibility and trust with your customers. However, depending on the nature of your business and your target audience, this information may not be needed on the front page of your website. For example, if your business is Widgets R Us, your primary objectives is to sell widgets, therefore home page would highlight information about your products and you would place the website elements that promote products sales in the high priority category.

Also, remember to consider your findings from reviewing your top competitors and other industry related websites. Are there obvious trends in content and functionality that you should consider for your website? Your website is likely one of millions in your industry, therefore you want to make sure that your website is within the standards of your top competitor websites.

Next to each item on your website to do list, prioritize the items using the following scale:

1. High priority – these are items that are critical to your success (ex: a secure shopping cart process, an online contact form etc.).

2. Medium priority – these are items that must be completed in the near future, but are less critical than the high priority items. These items add value to your website, but are not critical or do not require immediate implementation.

3. Low priority – these are items that you’d like to incorporate into your website eventually, but they are not critical to your business success, aren’t necessary to complete in the near future and shouldn’t be implemented until all High Priority and Medium Priority items are completed. You would start implementing these items, once there aren’t any high or medium priority items on your list and you have the resources available to implement them.

4. Wish List – these are items that you’d like to consider at a later date. You wouldn’t assign a priority level to these items until you have performed further research, have discussed (and debated) the proposed items with your team and have made a decision to move forward.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Subscribers will receive a FREE eBook containing extended versions of Steps 1 – 9, as well as accompanying worksheets for managing your project. If you would like to receive the FREE ebook, join the Websmith Group Facebook Page or subscribe to our eNewsletter.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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Creating a Successful Small Business Website

If you’re planning to create a new small business website or enhance an existing website, this series will help you improve your chances for success.

STEP 1: DO YOUR HOMEWORK

Before you start a new website project, always allow time for research. Who are your competitors? What are the features available on the websites of your top competitors? Who will benefit the most from this website or new website feature: your target audience, your existing audience, your staff etc?

Effective websites are planned with a target audience in mind. The most successful website projects involve the target audience in the planning process. If you are unfamiliar with the opinions of your target audience, now is the time to survey your current and past customers regarding their experience while using your website. Don’t be afraid to ask your customers for feedback. You may find that the new and cool flash animation that you ‘had to have’ is an irritant to many of your best customers.

If you don’t have an existing website, survey your current and past customers regarding the features that they feel are most important to include on your future website or similar websites in your industry. This will provide valuable insight on how your website could enhance your level of service to your customers. You may also learn the content, features and functions that are attractive to new customers that are not familiar with your company.

When you survey your customers, be sure to keep the questions short and include both open and closed-ended questions. Also, gather some demographic data about the customer such as age, technical/internet experience and their past/current involvement with your company (i.e. services used/products purchased). Compile your results into a single document or spreadsheet. This data can help you begin to build a “profile” of your target website visitors. This information will serve to be very valuable once you begin to focus and prioritize your website development tasks.

ANNOUNCEMENT: Subscribers will receive a FREE eBook containing extended versions of Steps 1 – 9, as well as accompanying worksheets for managing your project. If you would like to receive the FREE ebook, join the Websmith Group Facebook Page or subscribe to our eNewsletter.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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