Let's make a website.

What goes into making a website?  Boiled off to brass tacks it's:

• Functions
• Interface
• Content

Let's do this.

Function

What does the site do?
We want the site to produce business, ROI, cash, clams and bananas, etc.  To do this we address your source of income (customers, other businesses) with a range of things that make their interaction with your business easier.
Small businesses for example, can benefit a great deal with a simple site with a few forms and bright shiny pictures.  Larger companies need a psuedo ecommerce and customer management system.

What can my site do?
A question not often enough asked by those shopping for a site, the range of functions through Drupal is immense.  A good developer will ask you how you envision things be done and translate that into a recipe for success.  The concept should be collaborative so you as the visionary can get that vision put into a framework of functions.

Interface

Cross Eyed
The layout, flow and aesthetic behind your site should always be a straight forward affair, easy to follow throughout.  When you stare cross eyed at the concept, you should still be able to see where you should click and the contrast of the colours should represent the importance of the click.

Design!
If you have existing branding, your web colours and layout should incorporate the palette and style thereby.  No question.
If you don't have existing branding, then give me a call and let's fix that.
It's almost summer, what are you doing?

Thick stock, round edges, satin laminate with gloss mask.  I do good work.

In designing your site, your developer will talk to you about your vision then map the layout in a concept.  The entire design of the site hinges on the understanding of the function in the site.  If you need a newsletter, the design should include a newsletter sign up form and subsequent thank you page.
Sit down with your developer to review it.  Pay attention, ask questions, get interested, it's similar to buying a car.
There are a lot of controls on a website and your developer can walk through the interface to demonstrate how and why the route mapped is the most effective.
Talk about your audience and how you want to approach them.  Study other sites and provide examples.  The most expensive words in the industry are, "I'll know it when I see it."  Take the time to realize what it is you want and heed your developer will have suggestions as the developer has the experience in translating visions to web developments.

Content

Keyword Research
It's important to draw a road map of the current search terms being used in your industry.  You can do this using a range of free tools, the biggest one being Google's.  By researching your keywords you're discovering which ones have more importance, more competition and generally more effectiveness in drawing the crowd you want.

Visual Hierarchy
Your page hierarchy is an important facet of the site and should be considered with care.  Let's call your lead generator or feature gallery the primary pages of your site.  They don't have to be the in the root of your menu, in fact your primaries should be present on the front page as photos and contextual blurbs, followed after by blurbs about your company and tertiary information thereafter.

Your primary functions can be nested within your main menu because the real attention grabber is your front page slideshow and grid of content below.
People who know what they're looking for will use your menu; search engines will index your menu; folks who have no idea what they're doing on your site, need a big billboard.  So that's the first thing they see when they arrive.

Redundancies of important content, simple page urls, meta tags throughout and alt tags on everything, title tags, cross links and iconography to draw the eye.

Page Content
We typically write the page content for our clients, so as to ensure seo viability.  In some cases clients take to the quill and produce the prose that we post to their pages.  We are going to assume you have your keyword research in hand and in selecting the keywords you write the content to include those keywords, adding images and cross links that use those links, and generally incorporate the keywords once or thrice amidst the range of content on each page.  Think lightly sprinkled for taste.

Endgame

So we've built a website have we?  Remember that the real work begins when the website is finished.  Now that you're online, it's time to market your creation as hard as you humanly can.  Social networks, newsletters, blog posts, etc.

It takes consistent work to keep a site active and alive.  Daily, weekly or monthly updates with new products, specials, promotions, or just new graphics to keep things interesting.  Make it hot!

What's a site cost?

What do you want it to do?  My quotes come out per function and training per site.
Fire me a request here: https://tco.so/company/contact/quote

If you don't have a site ready for this summer, talk to me and let's get you a spanky new website before the season swings.

873 Words; not bad.  If you liked this article, let me know down below.  Sound off about topics you think I should cover.  Tutorials, concepts, technology or rants about the industry, etc.
Thanks for reading!

Dooley is El Presidente for Life at TechnoCraft Online and lead developer at Digital Forge Studios.  He is described as a road warrior in the technical field and has been freelancing through the Okanagan Valley for over a decade.