What to do if your the one tasked to get your companies web site sorted out.

Have you ever been tasked with getting a website set up for your company? or maybe you just need to get an existing page modified. When challenged with such a task do you ever get that sinking feeling in your gut that your web developer is going to make you feel like an amateur again?

Ok, these are the extremes but as a web developer I have seen it happen a few times.

When it comes to organising and provisioning a business facing website it can be a little concerning especially when you consider that image is everything in the corporate world. After all how many times have you moved off a well ranked page in Google just because it looked questionable.

I have identified some of the difficulties that I have seen on both sides of the fence below:

From the clients perspective

1. Your not really sure what you want and this can be paralysing, but you justify it to yourself by saying "Well i'm not a developer so how am I supposed to know what will work".

2. You have a miniscule budget and the majority of web design companies will charge for the site screens and designs even before it hits the internet. You really can't afford this right now.

3. Your web design company will charge you again if you tell them that you need to update something. Whats worse is that
you think they should have noticed any potential issues in the first place.

4. You don't want to keep paying your web design supplier everytime you require to ammend a new logo or update something you've
already added.

From the web suppliers perspective:

1. You have an impossible client. They don't know what they want. They have given you a brief but when you put together the html they constantly change their mind.

2. Your clients come to you for your design expertise and then disagree with your decisions, as if they know best. Your reasoning is that you wouldn't go to your dentist and tell him what he needs to do to treat you. So why do clients think they can.

What can very quickly happen is you get into a 'he said, she said' situation which can eventually start to turn negative. From a client customer perspective it can start to get costly and push out further your already fast approaching deadline. The usual outcome is that the client will have to make some cut backs in order to get the website out on time.

If any of this makes youqueasy then please dont be. I have seen a lot of successful and very smooth web site
projects in my time but the question has always arisen in my mind. There has to be an easier approach? especially for the small and medium sized companies that just want a fighting chance of being able to market their business online. Startups are the most at risk because they simply don't have the budget and time if things get out of hand.

So whats the solution I hear you ask! Well its really very simple and emoves a lot of the stresses from the equation and that is simply to use a web design supplier that pre-creates all of its website designs up front. There's a few of them out there but the real advantage of such an approach is that you don't need to take the entire design, you can still have it bespoke enough to reflect your company identity, and at the very least you have a something to work with. The other benefit is that you know what your getting straight away and because the design is already created theirs minimal lead
time and cost.

As an extra bonus you don't even have to pay a contract or pay a lot up front if you decide to rent or lease your website. At DriveMySite we do this, we allow clients to pay a monthly fee for their website and if things change and they decide to move on then they are quite free to do so without the notice penalties or sign out fees. This means that your investment is effectively risk free. So if your being held back because of some of the items mentioned above then get out there and give it a try. Whats the worst thing that can happen?