- Have a plan
This might sound commonplace but the extent to which you can succeed in anything depends on your plan. Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. When you decide to execute a project, have a blueprint, create what-if and worst case scenarios then you can begin. You can start by using a scratch sheet. Note how many website page menu’s you want and also the content of each menu.
Set out timelines because work always expands to fill time. For me,I didn’t meet any of the timelines I set because my beloved website designer was just a ………… That’s a story for another day.
2. Know what you want
Similar to the first lesson, you have to have a purpose for the website, know your target audience and have long-term goals yet keep an open mind. Knowing what you want is very important because when you start to build the website, you might be forced to settle for alternatives which could be a detour from your true goal.
One of my biggest recommendation is that even if you have to outsource the development of your site, you also have to understand certain terminologies so that nobody bamboozles you. Concepts like Metadata, CSS, HTML, plugins, Add-ins, themes and template, servers, database, slugs, resolutions, web host etc If you are not careful you would hear things like “The theme you paid for cannot perform such functionality” “We have to upgrade to a higher platform” “What you are asking for needs to be coded”. Many of these phrases are not true. These and many others are reasons why you have to do your own homework.
3. Be excited Stay excited
You need to be excited because when the struggles kick in, you can easily give up or use up more resource that needed.
4. Seek constructive criticism
This is very important. You would be amazed the ideas you can get from seeking honest opinion from honest friends. If you hate criticism and cannot handle blunt opinion you might just unintentionally keep the overt friend away.
- Be ready to pay the cost
Cost does not necessarily mean financial cost. Here am talking about broken links, bugs, frustrations, delays, integration problems, slow servers, unresponsive set ups and even updates.
- Don’t compromise
Hmmm!!! What do I mean? You would be surprised that you could be mistaken for a perfectionist when you just need the smallest detail done correctly. This is not necessarily true. Your viewers are your customers even if they do not generate income for you. Always have that in mind- Strive to give them your best.
- Never be in a hurry.
Quality outcome takes time. Take your time. You might not get it right the first time, but as long as you don’t quit or give up, you would surely get there in due time.
- The job is never completely done.
You must not necessarily wait for a perfect site to release a soft launch of your website. The work is never done. As long as you have a clear message you can proceed to release your web page. Website maintenance can be done when you anticipate low traffic. In that light you would need analytics- Google analytics can get the work done.
- Get your hands dirty.
This is not compulsory but it’s enlightening and fun. You can play a pivotal role in the process of designing your site. You can decide to design one page/ multiple pages.
- Test Test Test
You don’t want broken pages or wrong redirects when visitors land on your page. You have to perform negative and positive test. Navigate all the pages and click all the links. You would be amazed the number of errors you discover- We can take cue from Uber and their recent software bug that exposed a cheating husband to his wife- ROTFLLLL.
