#business
your responsibilities for your web project
one of the most common misconceptions about hiring someone to design and program your website is that there’s not much for you to do, except review mockups and say “take this website live!”.
this just is not true.
content
unless you’ve hired someone to do the writing for you, content is going to take you just as many hours (or more) to write as the website will take to design and program. even if you have hired a writer to do all the writing, you’ll still need to review, revise, and approve everything from each page’s content to the naming of menu bar, the footer, and the sidebar. think about how long you assume content will take to write, then double it, then add a couple more hours to that. that’s actually how long content will take.
client assets
before a web design project can start, a designer will need a lot of details from you. have handy items on your end that they will need (see the “be prepared” section on this post): your logo in vector format, any/all photos (in high screen resolution), your username and password to your domain registrar, your username and password to your hosting account (both the server and the control panel), and your list of what elements go on what pages (or wireframes).
approvals
for most projects, you need to be available to approve every step of the process. so if you’re going on a 10-day meditation retreat half way through the project, you’re holding the project up for 10 days. be there to review and make change requests on wireframes, typography choices, colour schemes, mockups, navigation nomenclature, user flows, programming, and functionality.
testing/debugging
prior to launch (see my launch guide), you’ll need to go through and click everything to ensure things are hooked up, linked up and flowing correctly.
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on many projects, i’ve finished my deliverables before the client has the content ready. in writing this i’m hoping to drive home the truth about what you need to do, as a client in a web design project, in order to get the site from concept to launch. so before you plan out and hire someone to create a new or redesigned site – ensure you’ve got a lot of time on your end to make the process smooth and timely. and the more wisely you budget your time, the better you can get to the amazing thing known as “launching”.
i’ve written a guide to “a client’s responsibilities for a web project” – pjrvs.com/project-respon…
— paul jarvis (@pjrvsWP) January 10, 2012
a non-tech guide to launching your website
the most important part of any website project is actually launching it. here are a few tips for you (an owner of a website) to have a successful website launch.
you need a plan
set a launch date, and make sure it is reasonable with your web designer/developer. check in with them throughout the project to ensure everything is on track. and make sure you are keeping your end of the deal (i.e. making time to review items, give feedback, test things, etc). keep a list of things that need doing and refer back to it often – and if something needs to be added to this list, make damn sure it’s important and doable within the timeframe.
you need content
most web design projects don’t include content – so make sure you’ve written (or have had written by a professional) all the words required for every part of the site. this takes more time than you’d think, so budget for double the time you think you’ll need. if your website has a blog, make sure you’ve got at least a couple blog posts in there before launch – this will give visitors a sense of what to expect in the future.
you need social media
have you setup your twitter account? facebook page? linked in profile? ensure all your social media lines up with the new site (colours, logo, design, etc) and that they’re all connected. feel free to tease your social media followers with the launch date, and get them excited about it and make yourself accountable to the date.
you need third-party services
all sites need some additional services to be as awesome as possible – like feedburner (for RSS/email subscriptions), google analytics for stats/tracking, disqus for more intelligent commenting and/or a newsletter program to collect and send out emails to your subscribers (like aweber, mail chimp, campaign monitor, etc). cloudflare is another amazing (and free) service that speeds up your site by doing some DNS and caching magic. these services all need to be tested and working before launching your site.
you need to test everything
you are relying on your web designer/developer to build you a kick-ass site, but it’s also your responsibility to test everything they’ve done. click every page and link, fill out every form, proofread every sentence, test your RSS feed... do every single task a visitor to your site can or will do to make sure it works correctly. it’s better for you to find bugs before launch than have visitors do your bug-testing for you, publicly.
you need to launch
on launch day (congrats, you made it!) – start your promotion engines and get promoting. tell your friends, family, followers, subscribers, everyone (but don’t be annoying). offer discounts or freebies, if applicable. have some ephemeral and/or fun thing going on for the launch. look at your stats and mentions and personally thank folks who are promoting and talking about your new website. do a little dance (it makes your website load faster, i promise).
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everything else that needs doing, your web person can do for you – like setting the DNS, making sure the site is index-able by google/search engines, generating a sitemap (as a page and as XML), creating a favicon (the little icon beside your URL in the browser), as well as a myriad of other tech details. you are relying on them to do the nerdy bits, so keep up your end of the launch by taking care of all the other above tasks.
happy launching.
here’s my non-tech guide to launching your website, pjrvs.com/website-launch…
— paul jarvis (@pjrvsWP) January 6, 2012
deliver
when people ask me what my secret is for being successful at what i do, i typically tell them it’s almost stupidly easy – i just do exactly what i say i’m going to do.
and that’s it.
what i learned from launching three websites in a single day
the first thing i learned was that i should be ok with being a little bat-shit crazy. once that was out of the way (which happened far too easily), i could go about the task of making three websites go live on the same day – one of which needed to go live at a specific time (hadn’t done that before).
the sites i launched yesterday are:
yourbigbeautifulbookplan.com – a site for danielle laporte + linda siversten’s new book, which is hot as all get out (and the stats for the site after a single day prove it).
bookmama.com – a site for linda siversten’s editor and proposal work, plus writing retreats. she’s a regular “book-baby-birther” (say that three times fast).
pacificelements.ca – when my favourite yoga teacher needed a website for her yoga classes, teacher training and workshop work, how could i say no? the result is a very nature/tofino inspired palette infused into a clean and functional site. basically – if i taught yoga, i’d want a site that looks exactly like this.
what was learned
although i had never done it before, i like the idea of launching at a specific time. it gives the feeling of a grand opening of a new store or pulling the curtains back and revealing a new product. to do this, the DNS/domain needs to be set a day or two in advance, since that can take a while. so i now think it’s better to have a brief “coming soon” page on the live server and deal with all the domain stuff earlier. that way when the site is ready, i just flip a switch to make it public, and there’s no waiting for DNS propagation.
the next thing i learned was that i like being under the gun (for brief periods). in order to pull of 3 separate sites launching i had to be 100% focused on everything i was doing – i only took a tiny break to eat some pancakes (for energy purposes only). now that they’re launched and done properly, i can take a breather. so i’d rather have a lot of work to get done in a set period of time, then take some time off, rather than drag out work over days/weeks/whatever. deadlines are a good tool for focusing.
having a good team in place would be the next thing i think is a key factor – since two of the three projects had a group of phenomenally-talented-folk working with me behind the scenes getting the content and other misc bits sorted out.
it’s also good to manage expectations of what can (and better yet: what cannot) be done on launch day with clients. thankfully this was not the case yesterday, but it has happened in the past. so make certain everyone involved has done everything to ensure the site perfect at least a few days before your launch date. just as i (as a developer) test the site in all browsers and make sure all the bugs are worked out – have the client make sure all content, photos, nomenclature is exactly the way it should be too. so when the launch date comes around, the only things required is to make the site live and have a glass of champagne (or sparking fruit juice).
and now, since yesterday is over, i’m having a sparkling fruit juice.
why i killed jarviswp
i’ve removed the jarviswp website, and will not be taking on any new clients for the service. i will, however, continue to host/manage/backup all existing clients, and do the projects i’ve already promised that i’d do.
what was jarviswp (for those who never saw or used the service)? basically it was a much cheaper version of my design/programming services that was based on a wordpress framework i created, so i could (in theory) create and launch sites quickly, for a lot less than the typical budget i work with – as it only included 5 hours of customization. and each site was hosted on a server i built and included updates, backups, maintenance, and monitoring.
jarviswp was doing well, making money, and had a 2 month waiting list when i decided to stop doing it. so why kill something that’s profitable? because it wasn’t measuring up to my definition of success.
the impetus for creating the service was so i could create sites for solopreneurs who otherwise couldn’t afford my custom services. and this happened, and that aspect of things was actually pretty fun, since i got to create some pretty awesome websites for some pretty awesome people.
what wasn’t working (for me) was that i’m a perfectionist. i can’t just spend 5 hours doing design and customizations for clients, since i want every site to be perfect. so exactly zero sites had under 5 hours of my time... and most had more like 20-30. so there’s no point in offering that as a service, since my company already offers custom design and programming for wordpress sites – and also has a month or two waiting list at all times.
the decision didn’t come down to just money though – it came down to the fact that i’d rather be doing projects that are fully custom... much more than doing a productized version of that. i tried to productize my creativity and it wasn’t working for me. the service i offer through twothirty is what really makes me happy – since it allows me to creatively explore the best solution for each person or company.
so, jarviswp is going to become a managed hosting platform for existing clients and new twothirty clients (and stay exclusive to those groups), since i’m quite proud of how that’s built and think it offers great value, past cheap shared hosting plans. but as far as designing and building websites go, it’s back to being 100% through twothirty.
thanks for the ride,
paul