So You Want A Website, Huh?

You own a business and you woke up one day and thought, "I want a website for my business!". Even just the thought of it, I commend you for the brave move, for you now belong to the modern world. Thank you for leaving the club in the northern Himalayas who are still unfamilar with computers. So you picked up the phone and dialled the first web developer you found in the Yellow Pages. (Hey, I figured you'd dial and not Google. What do you know about search engines at this point, right?)

The person at the end of the line is very accommodating and friendly. You then blurted out "I want a website. Send it now!" That's where the trouble begins. And if not immediately remedied, will cause serious damage.

As a project manager for ICONCEPT, I've encountered clients like the one described above. Some people still look at web design firms like a pizza delivery restaurant. They just order the toppings and expected to be delivered right away. In a nutshell, the procedure is the same but the process is far too different. Web designing is not as easy as layering pepperonis, cheese, pineapples and what-nots to your perfect dough. Duh!

There are only three steps a web design company asks of its clientele. Follow these and we couldn't go wrong.


1. Decide on what you want. A web company usually asks for your color preference, image resources options and the like via their survey form. Please provide them with this info. As you progress, they may ask you about mastheads, banners, footers, favicon and terms that sounded like a lost ancient language to you than computer jargons. Do not, under any circumstances, guess what the term meant and provide them with a questionable response. Admit your ignorance. They will not hate you for it, nor laugh. In fact the web design firm will educate you about it. From your inputs, design firms sends you design studies to choose from, which you may tweak a little to suit your taste or needs. A word of caution though, once it hits development, there's no turning back. Actually, there is. But you've caused yourself and the design team wasted money. In my experience, women clients tend to be fickle-minded than men, who are firm with their decisions. But there are also some meticulous male clients who change their minds as frequent as the tick of the clock. And he is so specific he would know if we moved an element one pixel to the right. Talk about obssessive-compulsive behavior!

2. Don't insist on the impossible. You may ask, though, if what you want is feasible. But don't request something and expect the sea to part in half. The project manager usually confers your requests to his team composed of senior & junior programmers, developers, and artists. If there is a unanimous decision that your request can't be done, more often than not, they will present other options similar to your original request. If none works and you still feel your request can be done, cite an example you stumbled upon while browsing the net. The development team will likely scrutinize this example you set and emulate or even surpass it. Believe me, the team will also benefit from this as this is a new learning experience for them. And in this competitive industry, that'll give them the edge. Not to mention, you got what you requested!

3. Submit your web requirements. Don't just sit there waiting for accomplishments, do your part. Web development is a team effort. After all, what do we know about your business, anyway? If you're an architect, engineer, a doctor or a dentist, provide us a brief summary of your business, for starters. From there, we can play around with a design that will suit your business. Provide us with text contents and images if there's any. You can't just order a website and let us do the rest. Your web pages don't magically populate themselves. We are web developers, and not fortune-tellers. We need the text and image contents from you. Though sometimes, we get accused of typographical errors which is unheard of, since we just copy your text and paste it in the codes. So if there's a mistake somewhere, it came from the source. Incorrect spelling and grammatical errors, we can fix, but technical terms - we'll rely on you. So if the scientific name of an amphibian found mostly in tropical forests is included in your text inputs, be sure to double-check it.

Simply put: the more we know, the better we work. And once the website goes online, that'll be the only time to order a pizza! Extra pepperoni please...