Many people want a website - and their perceptions of them are wildly differing. People with innocent intentions have asked me for simple little sites - “I just want something basic, you know, like Amazon.com” or “Just do something cool like Facebook, that is all I need - a Facebook for me and my fellow plumbers”.

The dream is that these simple little sites can be built for a few dollars and that they are very easy and quick to do. Never mind that Amazon spent almost $1M before they sold their first book and have plowed many many more millions into development since then. Never mind the vast hardware requirements needed to do some sort of Facebooky thing, or the social contact the website owner needs to have to get it off the ground (what is the price of user generated content, anyway?). This dream is flawed of course, and the person with the dream gets a sad look in their eyes when you crush this flawed little dream………

What can be done quickly and easily are the free website options that I have previously discussed. These are functionally more limited, but still better than nothing. This website is done with Wordpress and is not too shabby for the limited time I have invested into it. But what to do if you want MORE? What do you do if you want something with greater capability and you have the budget to pursue it? Well, then you need a development map.

The Development Map

A website is a project, and to do succesful project management you need to understand what you are trying to do, what you are not going to do, and what time and money you have ready to invest in it. DO NOT lie to yourself, or pretend that you will figure these things out later - remember whatever your estimates are, they are likely to be too low (for money) or too quick (for time). If you lie to yourself on top of that, you are doomed to fail.

Make a list - simple bullet points are fine - like this:

  • Have blog
  • products listing, with image thumbnails
  • newsletter signup
  • customer review section
  • blue background with white lettering
  • needs video section
  • English only, no other language option needed
  • does not need twitter box
  • does not need forum
  • does not need link to Facebook fan page

Your functionality will be different from this list, but you get the idea. The more closely you can define your project and what you want/don’t want, the better your web developer can do the work. If things are ambiguous or you succumb to feature creep - don’t be surprised if your project does not come out as well as you wished.