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

Have you ever been tasked with getting a website organised 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 gut wrenching sensation in your stomach that your designer is going to make you feel like a noob 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 public facing website it can be a little worrying 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 poorly designed.

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 100% 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 tiny 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 supplier 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 strapline or update something you've
already added.

From the web suppliers perspective:

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

2. Your clients come to you for your design experience and then argue about your decisions, as if they know better. Your assertion 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 take place is you get into a 'he said, she said' situation which can sometimes start to turn a client sour. From a client customer perspective it can start to get expensive and push out further your already fast approaching deadline. The common 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 youuncomfortable then please dont be. I have seen a lot of successful and very clean web site
projects in my time but the question has always arisen in my mind. There has to be an easier way? especially for the small and medium sized companies that just want a fair chance of being able to market their company online. Startups have the most to lose because they simply don't have the budget and time if things go wrong.

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 company 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 method is that you don't need to take the entire design, you can still have it bespoke enough to accomodate 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 up front and because the design is already created theirs minimal lead
time and cost.

As an added bonus you don't even need 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 wish 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 essentially zero. So if your being restricted because of some of the items mentioned above then get out there and give it a go. Whats the worst thing that can happen?