Web Site Planning Process: Site Development

This is the fourth in a series of entries on credit union web site planning. The series follows CU Village’s web site planning model that includes six phases: 1) Goal Setting , 2) Strategy Development, 3) Decision Making, 4) Site Development, 5) Site Launch and 6) Maintenance and Growth.

The fourth step in the planning model is Site Development. This phase is about building your site based on the goal setting and planning work you did in the first three steps. It is also about ensuring the development of your site remains on track in terms of time, budget, scope and quality.

Unfortunately, all too many organizations start their projects here and disregard all the planning and pre-work that needs to be done. Organizations that do this typically end up with a prolonged, frustrating and expensive development process. This happens because the decisions that should have been made earlier don't go away. They still need to be made.

For you, because you have done your planning, your Site Development phase will focus on:

• Finalizing site design and graphics: lock down and commit to the look and organization (i.e. site map or site organizational chart) of your site. Changes later in the process will only slow down development and increase the overall costs of your site. Ensure that your site is right the first time. Consider having a small group of members look at your design and organization before you begin building.
• Content development: ideally you should write the content for your site before a single page is developed. If you do, the development process will move much more smoothly and quickly. Plus, this will enable you match your content with your site organizational chart, which will help you identify and fix any content holes you may have before they become issues. Depending on the size of your site, expect to spend as long as 3-4 months developing your content—or longer.
• Programming and development: today, Web sites are becoming larger and more complex. In most projects, at least some programming is required for things such as online applications, content and ad management tools and navigation. Development also includes the actual creation of your Web site pages. The more you have planned and completed by this point, the faster you'll be able to move through this process.
• Content loading: depending on the type of site you create, your content is either added as your pages as are created or once your content management system has been implemented. In either case, the process is greatly simplified and quickened by having your content in well-organized, well-edited electronic documents that are in final form.
• Testing: no one likes to test, but it is critical. While some responsibility to test falls on the shoulders of your Web site developer, it falls on your shoulders too. Test throughout the development process and after for quality, typos, organization, usability, bugs, security, formatting, consistency and completeness. Use your project plan as a checklist to ensure that everything that should have been done was done. Also, strongly consider having a small group of your members test it too.

In my next post, I'll talk about what you need to watch out for and do during the actual launch of your new site.