When I work on any online project, I always try and apply the same process to it, whatever the size of the undertaking. This process is based largely on one I used at Yahoo! In my experience, the trick to being able to use this successfully is to apply it in such a way that you don’t get bogged down or overwhelmed by process. For example, in some projects one of the stages detailed below could be a conversation, in another, it might be a 50 page document.

Stages of the Process

In most instances, we’d expect prospective clients to come to us with 1 and 2 below:-

1 Ideate

What’s the core creative idea for the site?

2 Define Market Requirements

What are the requirements of the website? (in essence this is similar to what is covered in the miggle.co.uk client briefing form) What’s the market? Who are the competitors? On what criteria will the website be judged a success? What do budgets and timescales look like?

You can find more information on writing your brief here.

Stage 3 and 4 depends on the size of the project. If it’s a straightforward build in a content management system (CMS) and we’ve got a clear idea of content and hierarchy then often 3 and 4 is no more than us knowing the CMS tools comprehensively and squaring off that your requirements are met by the functionalities of the tools.

However, in larger, or bespoke projects, 3 and 4 can each also be extensive pieces of documentation. In my opinion the client should aim to be leading on as much of point 3 as possible – or calling in experts to help.

Point 4 is then the role of the company you choose to do your work. The bit in-between is the process you go through to select your supplier.

3 Define Product Requirements

Scope the product features that deliver on the concept and the market requirements.

4 Define Functional Specification

Detail how the product will work, detailing how and by what technologies the project would be delivered.

5-8 will be lead by your development team – with appropriate sign-off for clients happening during 5-7

5 Define Development Plan

Build this into a plan, which includes full costs and timescales.

6 Build

Execute on the plan.

7 Test

Test the solution.

8 Deploy

Deploy solution on production servers.

Finally, as the client, you need to work out if the project achieved on its objectives. So, there’s often going to be either between stages 8-9, or after stage 9, the plan by which you market your new development.

9 Evaluate

Measure the site’s performance against the criteria laid out in market requirements and get ready to ideate again.

How similar/dissimilar is this to processes you might use. I’d be interested to find out. Also, if you were looking at this from a client perspective, what do you think are the relative strengths and weaknesses of the process – and what would you change? I’d be interested to hear.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

We’ll often get calls from businesses looking for quotes for a website. While they’ll have a good idea of what they want, to define a price and timescale, the devil is always in the detail. That’s why we’ll always ask for a brief. However, often the response we’ll get is, “We don’t have one” or “We don’t know where to start in writing one” – so if that sounds like you, maybe this post will be of some use.

Focus on your objectives

A good web design company will just want to know about your business objectives. From this, they can recommend solutions.

Our briefing form, which is based on one used by Clearleft, with a few other objective based questions thrown in, is all about trying to find out about your requirements, as well as who your audience and customers are, who you compete with and what kind of image you want to create online. Beyond the actual brief, we’re also aiming here for you to tell us all about your business. You know your company best, so that should be an easy thing to do shouldn’t it? Aim to talk to us in your language, not ours, and let us come back to you for points of clarity if we don’t understand some of your objectives.

And really, that’s it…

Is it? Yes, pretty much.

However… listing your objectives alone won’t get your website built. There may be other important stages that need to be covered too – such as user research for example. In any case, your site will only get built once you’ve agreed that the solutions proposed back to you in the web company’s response make sense and deliver on your objectives.

That can be a difficult thing to ascertain, because it may not be obvious to you initially, as the client, how the solution that’s been proposed delivers on your business needs. But the extent to how well your prospective development partner assists you with that stage will be one of the key criteria you use in trusting whether or not they are the company to work with. Then, beyond that, even with the solutions agreed, depending on the scope of the site, more detailed work may need to be done on specifying exactly how your site is built.

So the brief is just the first stage then?

Yes, it is. And its worth is weight in gold.

A good brief is a uniform document you can take to a number of potential providers, meaning the proposals you get back will be something you can compare like for like. Many companies will give you that initial response for free. However, if more detailed planning needs to be done to specify exactly what the solution might look like, then it may be that this in itself becomes a chargeable stage of the project. It really depends on the size of the project overall, but a good prospective provider will always let you know to what extent the planning you’ve done in the brief gives them the info they need. You can read more on planning your web design project here too.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

I’m writing this on the bus. I have to say I left the debate early and thought I’d post my opinion on it all here.

Digital by design was a sort of industry vs academia debate that focussed on the design needs of the industry and the contribution the unis make to generating talent.

It came at the end of a careers fair and portfolio clinic, something miggle.co.uk would have been keen to be involved with. When millions of UK web users engage with content we create every day, when staff of ours move on to the likes of Yahoo! or MSN as their next move, when what we specialise in leaves us fairly uniquely positioned in the town, notwithstanding my own experience in small business mentoring and having written one of the town’s leading colleges first web design course you’d think, from a strategic point of view, we’d be a good fit. But that’s clearly just one way thinking on my part. And it’s slightly unrelated, so rant over…

Anyway, the point I wanted to make was related to Andy Budd, Clearlefts’s Creative Director. He was talking about himself as an example of a generation of web practitioners, who were self-taught, starting as they did at a time when there were no web based courses. I’ve seen some of Andy’s first designs, and they’re a world apart from those churned out by the leading company he’s built up today, so he’s a clear example of someone who’d learnt well on the job. One key point he mentioned was a survey in which 75% of 19 year olds had said their education had been no help in them getting a job – and he was comparing this also with the lack of relevant skills he saw coming out of the unis. I’d be interested to see what the same 19 year olds say in 10 years time by the way.

As a largely self-taught practitioner myself I can definitely see a value in my education – but I think mine came at a time before unis were obsessed with churning out people with what it considered were vocational skills. My education I think was just about giving me a broad all round understanding and interest in the world around me. Those skills helped me to be a self starter and it’s actually those fundamental skills I find lacking in many people we interview. That’s not a fault that can be laid at the feet of the unis – its more the fault of a fundamental shift in what education, even from an early age, is all about.

At the end of the day, great designers will shine through somehow. If the unis can’t churn them out, they’ll find a route elsewhere. One academic guy mentioned that design based courses were hampered because they sat in humanities. If they sat in engineering he ventured it could all be different. That’s a fair point. We currently have an intern at miggle with an Astrophysics degree. He didn’t learn to be a web developer, but the thinking processes he can apply to online engineering are spot on. There are some things the unis will always be able to do better than others – science and engineering I think are good examples.

The biggest irony of the evening to me was that one of the design experts from the industry was talking all about the need for unis to focus students on details, not the big ideas, while sat next to another expert whose Flash based site didn’t work on an iPhone. But that’s just pedantic detail on my part, and I only make it because I see it as slightly ironic we missed out again to be able to make a contribution earlier in the day to the industry body we always do our best to support.

So, if there’s anyone reading this who was at the event who missed out an a portfolio review, please feel free to get in touch with me, I’d be happy to help out.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

‘A clutter-free website is essential to the user experience’ is the fifth of Alick’s website fundamentals.

Just a few years ago, a Flash-based website containing all the bells and whistles a web designer could conceive of after four double lattes was seen as the web design zenith. It was an exercise in showing off, often accompanied by a distinct sense of panic in the user as they found themselves thrown into a pool of whirling effects with no navigational conventions. Designed to ‘engage’, the end result was often a slow moving, frustrating turn-off.

The current mantra in web design is ‘usability’. Most of your visitors will have a specific target in mind when they access your site initially – are you helping them get there quickly, or are they distracted by a slow loading splash page, pop-ups, ’sparkly’ banners and irritating videos or voiceover?

Although you may regard your website as a work of great beauty, every word and pixel honed to perfection, users just want to know where to click to get what they want. When designing for the web – less is most definitely more!

* Optimise your site structure so navigation is clear and logical

* Make pages easy to scan, using carefully chosen sub-headings and bullets to break up large areas of text

* Use white space to guide the viewer to important ‘clicks’ and create an organised presentation of information on the page

* Edit your copy ruthlessly so every word adds value

* Follow labelling conventions – whilst it may be cute to ‘drop us a line’, a busy user will be looking for ‘contact us’.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

peopleperhour.com is a kind of ‘ebay for projects’. Potential customers post projects they need doing and then interested suppliers will bid on them.

How we use it

I’ve been a user of peopleperhour.com (PPH) pretty much since it launched. I tend not to bid for much on it, but I do like keeping an eye on the sort of projects that get requested through it. It’s a great way of staying abreast of what sort of solutions businesses are after.

I also use it for sourcing freelancers for one off projects which require skills we don’t have within our full-time and part-time staff – but I limit that to marketing or copy related requirements. That’s not to say I wouldn’t source design and development through it, but I think to do so ups the level of risk to a project.

While I’ve only ever won a couple of projects through PPH, the contacts I’ve made through the network have generated quite a bit of business in the past. Our two biggest development projects in 2008 came from people who’d found my PPH profile in Google and then gone on to Google my name.

Although PPH aims to limit suppliers providing contact details to providers in advance of a deal being made I think in reality it does (or at least has done in the past) quite a poor job of monitoring this – probably because to clamp down on this is a really hard issue to find a scalable solution to. When they are unable to do this, it creates an unfair playground. I always try and bid by the rules, but I’m often up against others who don’t, and if they slip through the net then this can be in their favour. Thus, I’m quite lucky that there is, as far as I know, only one Alick Mighall (practice singing this as a football chant…) and thus, for those who Google my name, they’ll tend to find both me and my business anyway.

Recently, I’ve had some useful wins with PPH – in that I’ve picked up some good work and found some useful freelancers – so I’ll continue to use the site.

Too many poorly conceived projects and low quality providers

So, what’s the bad and the ugly? Well, its two worst points are probably not PPH’s doing as such – even it does create the environment in which this happens, and those are a) a lot of poorly conceived projects, and based on the number of bids that many of these projects get, b) too many providers bidding at prices, at which I believe, it’s not possible to do a good quality job.

On the projects front, I think the team at PPH have done a better job at filtering out the really stupid requests. It’s a while, for example, since I’ve seen projects like ‘e-bay clone required – budget, less than £250′. However, I do still see a lot of projects, in which the brief details a project which surely can’t be done within time the quoted budget allows. What’s this down to? Project owners knowing that there are people out there who’ll code for food? Or who realise it’s a buyer’s market? Or is it just a fundamental misunderstanding of what kind of time a quality job might take? I think its often the last point. Price competition can be a good thing, I’ve no issue with that. My beef is really about the time it takes to do a good job.

This project here – for a business directory – is a good example. Basically, the client is looking for a business directory to be built, similar to a competitive example, which is quoted, which will have a CMS, so that they can add their own listings, ad serving, so they can monetise it, some static pages and the directory needs to be searchable. Oh, and it needs to be delivered ASAP! The budget is less than £250.

Ok, so lets take PPH’s commission out of that, and that leaves us with £225 which we’ll then divide by the minimum wage in the UK – a rate of pay you’d usually associated with unskilled labour – about £5.75. That gives 39 hours to deliver the project, assuming that there are no costs such as hosting, domain purchase etc. That 39 hours has got to cover the development from end to end, starting with clarifying the client’s ‘brief’ – defining some kind of spec from that and then nailing down in writing what exactly will be delivered, to designing, coding, getting sign off, testing and bug fixing. Why would any developer worth their salt bid on that? Well, as it goes, 20 have. And there are still 11 days left until the bids close.

For all PPH’s good points, I don’t see how having projects like this, or a network of providers prepared to bid at such rates can be in anyway a positive thing for the network, or for the wider industry as a whole. Fair enough – PPH is a network that allows project owners to circumnavigate bloated agency fees. It also allows project owners to consider quotes from providers who are based outside of the UK and thus are able to do things more cost effectively. Both these are good points. But if that’s at the expense of creating a perception where actually web development is easily done, for peanuts, or in an unfeasibly short amount of time, then that’s a bad thing. Buying an online service is like buying any other. You still get what you pay for. But I think many people think this just doesn’t apply to online.

I’d be interested in thoughts on this. I’d be even more interested in seeing similar examples of what a £250 solution looks like to a project briefed similar to the one I’ve quoted.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

‘Any page on your website could be a potential customer’s first experience of your brand’ is the fourth of miggle’s website fundamentals.

If your search engine optimisation (SEO) is working correctly, most new users will find your site via a web search. The page they click through to may not always be your homepage, so every page on your website needs to be able to effectively direct users to all the other important areas in your site if required.

Clear navigation and an ‘intuitive taxonomy’ – a logical method of organising your content in a menu structure – will generally achieve this, but you can further ‘recycle’ your users, i.e. move them through to important pages on your website, by adding links to other relevant pages at the foot of each page and within your website copy. Every time you write a new web page or blog post think ‘What do I want the user to do next?’

Good examples can be seen throughout The Cooden Beach Hotel website – and on this website, in the links within this blog post copy and effective cross-linking within our own website.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

In the third of our blog posts explaining miggle’s website fundamentals, we take you through our thinking on the importance of a website homepage in establishing your online brand and inspiring trust in your users.

Express yourself
If your business already has a strong offline brand, keep online life simple for both your business and your users and maintain consistency within all your promotional activities. It may be tempting when you think about site design to go for a hot new look, but a radically different ‘epersonality’ could hinder rather than help your business. Think carefully before letting your web designer take you off on a path which diverges too much from your existing identity.

Don’t be seduced by flashy effects
Animation rich sites may create a powerful first impression, but return users to your site will just want to be able to get to the pages they need quickly and easily. Your site exists to do a good job for your business and customers, its primary function is not to add diversity to your design team’s portfolio. Remember, the amount of time a customer will spend on your site versus the other sites they use online is minimal – so don’t make them have to work hard to get what they want by making things more confusing than they need to be. And definitely don’t make them have to download any special plug-ins to view the page. Inexperienced users won’t know how, experienced users are likely not to bother. With e-commerce businesses remember people shop online to save time as well as money. Think of your homepage as a haven for users – a reassuring place where it’s easy to find exactly the information needed.

Demonstrate openness
Your homepage should provide easy access to an ‘about us’ section with detailed information on the business, online portfolios / examples of your work and profiles of staff members – all these aspects indicate transparency and openness and can help give your business that ‘human touch’. If you are running an e-commerce business, easy links to returns policies and customer care are also important.

Provide valuable content
A site that reads as a business card or promotional pamphlet gives users little reason to revisit. Thinking about how you can offer advice, tips, news or promotional offers will keep you homepage fresh.

Think carefully about advertising
If you are going to accept any kind of advertising or sponsorship online think first about how the appearance of other brands along side you own will effect customers perceptions of your business. Good advertisers/sponsors will provide good mutual brand association, poor ones will diminish it.

Based in Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

Over the last few weeks I’ve noticed more and more tradesmen’s vans out and about on my walk into work. We’re well into the spring and that always seems to be start of people getting professionals in to get stuff done to their houses. And in that, I’ve seen a bit of a selling opportunity!

A lot of vans I walk past will carry the business name, the trade, a phone and mobile number – sometimes even an email address – but often a lot of these are bereft of a web address. So, it’s a perfect chance to ask the question – “Do you have a website?”

Travelling promotions
The interesting thing is that some of these businesses do, but they don’t promote the fact on their vans, or the banners that hang from scaffolds. This seems to me to be missing an obvious opportunity. As I’ve said before – a functional website is just the starting point to making the most of your business online.

Of course there are those vans that do promote websites – and so, when I see a web address I tap it into my iPhone and check out what’s there. Right now, web access via mobile phones only makes up a tiny percentage of overall access to the Internet, but of course that’s only going to increase as the availability of both phones that can access the web increase, the functionality of the browsing software improves and designers start really thinking about hand held experiences. Here at miggle, we’re also betting on .tel domains playing their part in making the web more mobile.

Think mobile for your website
Even though that slice of users is small right now, I think they represent a valuable niche. If a user has taken the time to access your site on their phone, then it shows that they really really wanted to see that info. Something has created that moment and that’s a powerful impulse. Visits driven on this sort of emotive level are probably some of the most qualified traffic you might get. So, there are two things – one, you’ve got to work hard to try and create those moments. If you’re a tradesman and you own a van, it can act as a moving billboard for your business – so use it as such. And, two, if what’s on your van has the power to make someone act straight away – which is likely, in someway to be facilitated by their phone, then make sure you’ve got a credible experience on hand held devices.

Once example I had today – nice looking van, clean, good logo, clearly a professional job on the branding (as opposed to Comic Sans and some clip art vinyled on to the side), talking up what seemed to be a quality product and service. I tap their address into my phone – and I get no site. Why? Because it’s all been designed in Flash, it has no back up option for people who might be accessing a site on a device that does not support Flash. “So who gives a ****?”, you might say – its hardly like that’s going to make up much of the visits to the site. True enough. But a web design company that delivers a site that ONLY works in Flash is probably not a web design company that’s thought about the challenges of making a Flash site work well from a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or an accessibility perspective, or even a basic user needs perspective. That client’s site probably makes a nice portfolio entry on prettybutpointlesssites.com – but that’s about it.

All that from my walk to work. I’m glad it’s the weekend…

>> Get your business a .tel domain

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

Web design and development for CHAIR: an effective business website with a minimum of fuss.

CHAIR founders Melissa and Sophie came to us with a plan for how they wanted their website to work. We created a simple yet elegant 5-page site, with email, hosting, contact form and an all-important photo gallery to show off their beautiful stock of chairs. Built in the miggleCMS content management system, their new site was up and running within a couple of days.

Sophie and Melissa were chuffed with the results: “We can’t thank miggle enough for their professionalism, creativity, dependability and quick turn-around. They are a cohesive, dynamic group that work together to create precisely what their client is after and we highly recommend them. When starting up a new company, it is important to make key choices financially and we feel that we invested wisely by choosing miggle and look forward to growing our online presence with them. Thanks to everyone on the miggle team!”

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.

Received 9th March 2009:

“Hi Alick, Just had a look at the Cooden Beach website out of interest. I was very impressed with it. I like the way the pictures change on each page. Just thought I would let you know that I thought it was excellent. Love Mum”

Bless.

Fortunately, the miggle team don’t have to rely solely on Alick’s mum for positive feedback. See actual testimonials from our clients on our website design and development, content management and online media services on the main miggle website.

Based in the UK’s silicon city – Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, contact miggle.co.uk for website development, content management and online media services in the UK and worldwide.