How Web Solutions Are Built

Understanding How Web Solutions Are Built:
The Web Site Metaphor

Designing, building, and deploying web-based communications is like designing, building, and finishing a house. We have successfully used the following metaphor with clients to help take the mystery out of how web sites are designed, developed and deployed. Fundamentally this metaphor involves 2 parts: people and process.

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People

When designing and building a house you may work with:

• architects
• interior designers
• landscape designers
• general contractors
• carpenters
• plumbers
• electricians
• drywall installers
• painters

With designing and building a web-based project you may work with:

• information architects
• art directors, and creative directors
• designers, and user interface designers
• developers/programmers (javascript, html, php, ajax, xml, css, java, etc.)
• database programmers (MySQL, PostGRE, Access, etc.)
• e-commerce specialists
• Flash animators, designers, and developers
• search engine optimization (SEO) specialists
• graphics production artists and web page production artists
• project managers

The point is that in order to build a successful web-based communications, you need the talent, skills, and expertise of many different types of people, just as you would in building a home. One person alone cannot do all these jobs well. They may be very good, or even an expert, in a particular area and do much of the work in other areas, but those “other areas” are not as strong as their core competency.

A single person could build a home by themselves just as a single person could build a web-based project by themselves. However, when the scope of a project becomes larger, the need for specific expertise becomes clear.

It is sometimes critical to bring in the needed talent to achieve success which, alas, also means incurring additional costs. However, one should consider the inherent value in paying for expert consultation and weigh it in light of the importance of a successful web project. Expert work can often be a very worthwhile investment, just as it usually is when building a home.

Process

In order to build a structurally sound house, one must have a well developed process. The same holds true for building a successful web-based project. One needs:

• A research process—gathering of information, ideas, preferences, and establishing goals
• A design process—what will it look like, what will it feel like, how will people interact with it, alternatives and possibilities for the finished product
• A building process—the construction of the entire project
• A testing and deployment process—inspecting and testing all components of the project, then making final adjustments or modifications as needed
• An opening (or deployment) process—opening up what you have created to the world

At first glance this appears to be a simple process, and to some degree it is. However, depending on what you are creating–a single story, 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom home, or a multi-story, 20-bedroom mansion–will create different needs and demands within each phase of the process. The same is true with the process of building web-based communications. The more complex and feature-rich they are, the more time, people, and money is needed to complete the project.

What if you are not starting with a brand new home or web-based communication project?

This same process holds true for anyone that wants to modify or upgrade their home or web-based project. They would follow the same steps listed above by first assessing needs and goals. Then proceeding forward along the process presented above.

Conclusion

When someone wants to build a new home from the ground up, or modify the home they presently live in, they contact professionals who specialize in that work. Their homes are important to them and they would not trust their home or the process to just anyone. As we have said many times before, the same is true of web-based communications: websites, email newsletters, blogs, online forums, wikis, etc.

In order to build successful web solutions that not only meet your internal needs but more importantly, serve the people who use it, you need to rely on experts—people that make web sites for a living. That’s what we do here at HamiltonBerchman—help organizations establish or increase their relevance in people’s lives by designing and developing custom web solutions.