Know-How Exchange : Website Critique

Time frames are controlled by:

Size of the project
Complexity of the project
Amount of information
Approval process
Personality of those making approvals
Capability of the development team
Personality of the development team
Capability of the development team
Dollars budgeted

I have seen small websites finished in a few days, and I have seen other web sites that too a year because the client had no idea of what they really wanted on the site. It is imperative, no matter what size the site is, to have a good strategy. It helps the timeline.

Three things to say first:

1 The biggest threat to any timeline/project plan is the owner. Projects go south more often because the site owner doesn't deliver what they promise, review what's put in front of them, respond in a timely fashion. In that case the risk is that you head far down the road and then, suddenly, you look and go "No, this isn't what I want" and cost and time skyrocket.

2 When I lay this stuff out here remember that a lot of these elements are parallel processes: they happen at the same time, so you can't just sum time estimates

3 I always add 25% to any estimate I give (for anything) just because that's how life is.

DESIGN--3 WEEKS
This includes initial comp creation (say, three different designs), your review, your response to the vendor, a round of modifications, another round of review, respond, modify . . . some last fixes and then final approval

ARCHITECTURE--TWO WEEKS
This is very deceptive, especially if you have your content already created (or mostly so) and you're just going through a "where it lives and how you get there" kind of thing. Also, architecture unlike design is pretty flexible, so you have some leeway but you don't want to restructure the thing half way down the road.

TECHNOLOGY IMPLEMENTATION--TWO WEEKS
Don't know what kind of site you're building but if it's going to contain any kind of technology (even simple scripts), you have to plan for that as well. Your vendor if you're using one should do that--and then demonstrate that they all work easily together (patchwork functionality is inefficient) and that they are stable.

PAGE/TEMPLATE CREATION--ONE WEEK
Generally speaking you're going to have two, maybe three, unique basic pages (home page and a couple of levels below that).

CONTENT CREATION--3 HRS PER PAGE
The way I look at this is--it takes perhaps an hour to write, review, revise and approve the words on a web page (assuming ~ 100 words per page), and then another two hours to incorporate it into the template, proof and test (on all browsers: remember they don't always work the same). So, if you have 50 pages you're looking at 150 hours (add the 25% and you have 180 or about 5 weeks). This can begin at project start, but it depends on having an approved and constructed set of template pages before they can be incorporated.

SEO--TWO WEEKS
这个页面建设开始前必须开始,年代ince you want your site builder to incorporate the techniques while he's building the site (as opposed to afterwards). So the time here involves up front planning and some kind of document detailing the strategy 9e.g., page title format, CSS structure and so on.

TESTING--THREE WEEKS
Let people beat on it. Things you think are obvious might be pretty obscure to strangers.

So what I've said here in the end is: a 50 page website should take about 18 weeks in work time, and--once parallel processes are accounted for--about 9 weeks from start to finish.

That’s what comes to mind for me. Be interesting to hear others experience.

Dear Cpappas,

Before I chip in my two cents' worth, I'd like to begin by saying
"Michael Fischler? COME ON DOWN!"

Now then. Homepage.

For a moment, look at your website not as a website, but as a bookshop. There you are, standing in “Books By the Boatload”
and you’re faced with thousands of tomes, each on vying for your attention. But you’ve come to this particular store for a specific reason. For a specific topic. Or perhaps a friend mentioned how great this place is. Or maybe you received a leaflet in the mail, a coupon of some kind.

But whatever’s drawn you in, you’re here and you’re looking for something. Do you look only at the layout of the store? Probably not. You probably want to know what’s “IN” the store, where things are, so that you can find the things you’re looking for. So you head for customer service, or you pootle around until you bump into
the section you’re looking for.

The point here is that your homepage is not the be all and end all of your site. It’s what’s BEYOND your homepage that matters. Which means uncovering the things that matter to potential users, figuring out architecture, creating wire framing, connecting links, generating logically compelling paths for people to follow, and targeting all kinds of different users.

It also means figuring out your calls to action and points of action: where you want people to go, why you want them to go there, and what they’re to do as a consequence of having taken that action or having arrived at that point.

Which ultimately means, thinking about your users, not all of the gadgetry that they play with along the way.

Time wise, you need to listen to the advice you’ve received from people that have already commented (and others) because they all know what they’re talking about (unlike, it might appear, yours truly), so I’ll skip your question on how long it takes and vaguely say, as long as it takes to get it pretty much right.

For you to then launch, tweak, survey users, refine, and continue the process as a part of your business model.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA