Planning for web development and promotion

Developing or Re-designing a new web site? How are you going to promote it?

What's the plan?

Every day developing and promoting a web site gets more complicated due to new technologies and Social Media tactics your web site must support, not to mention business support. The only way a web site can be developed and promoted effectively is with effective Project Management and Planning.

What must your web site do?

Determining what your web site must do to support your business's online activities is the first step in the development process.

Defining clear objectives is necessary, these objectives will be used to build the program, bring the team together and business objectives are used to evaluate the projects performance. Without goals and objectives businesses are constantly chasing a moving target.

What is the budget for the project?

Determine a realistic budget, carefully consider the various professionals you require and build the development/promotion teams. Once a team has been defined and pricing begins, discussions with the various professionals will uncover both additional skills required, and new opportunities. When this process has been completed you now have some solid estimates for consideration. Don't hesitate to make revisions and prioritize tasks by perceived business benefits.

What's the project's time frame?

On time and on budget, there's good reason for that saying. Defining a Project Schedule is an absolute must do task. Scheduling ensures you are not wasting financial and human resources. The handover of development material on time to the next professional in-line is accomplished by all team members being aware of their assigned tasks and due dates. When scheduling begins to break down the project goes "off the rails" and is only brought back through additional human and financial resources.

Meeting deadlines and accomplishing identified tasks requires a defined project schedule. This is applicable to not only the web development/redesign but also for ongoing promotional activities such as Organic Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing and Paid Search Marketing. In the planning process set a realistic time frame for measuring and achieving the identified business goals.

There many more considerations

Before you even begin your budgeting there are some other issues which need to considered prior to finalizing budgeting, team development and scheduling. One thing to keep in mind is it's not necessarily a linear process, many tasks can be active within the same time frame.

Business objectives and market competitiveness evaluation must be evaluated at the outset. How competitive the niche is,and what you hope to achieve will influence web strategies. You have to know the lay of the land.

Decisions regarding the Development Platform / Content Management System need to obtain the balance between functionality, and the impact the CMS has on the web site's Search Engine Optimization.

A Content Development Plan needs to be developed. Content provides the foundation of your web site development and promotion. Where is the content coming from? Staff and management Bloggers? RSS feeds? Investigate the content options you're able to manage on a regular basis, in addition to this consider other content resources you can draw upon such as Article Submission or News sites.

Web Site Benchmarking must be completed to determine progress. In the case of a redesign some basic performance data should be recorded. Page views, site referrals and bounce rates are some of the metrics used to compare past and current web site performance. It ia also a good idea the Benchmark a number of your competitors or keywords so you can begin to see trends from your own perspective.

And there is more

There are even more tasks which must be completed in the early stages of any web site design or promotion project. There are Developers, Graphic Artists, Social Media and Search Professionals. All will have their priorities and needs. To make it happen takes investigation and planning from the outset of the project.

The Last Word

The last word today is Project Management.

Project Management is a must have in all development and promotion projects. There are too many tasks and specialists required on-time and on-budget, to leave team development, budgeting and scheduling to chance.

What issues caused the most difficulty in your development/ promotion project?