Building and maintaining a website is just like building a house or your office. It’s a big investment in time, personnel, and financial resources. At the very least you should think about your website the same way you think about your physical office, but with greater global implications. If you value the security, cleanliness, proper functioning of your office for the local community or clients who come into it, then you should think about your website similarly but for the local and global community. Your website tells the world who you are, your values and mission, how to make people’s lives and the world better. It tells current clients how you value them and potential clients or funders how to get involved in your organization’s mission.
We believe that developing a global presence on the internet is a partnership between you as the content owner and Raatior Design as your consultant, architect, contractor, builder, and trainer. It should be a contract for success with the appropriate level of financial value for our services. When your website is completed and launched, it becomes your virtual office presence for the global community. Unlike your physical office which perhaps opens at 8 am and closes at 5 pm (Monday – Friday), your website is open and accessible 24/7, 365 days a year. Therefore, it is vitally important that you understand all aspect of the web development and the responsibilities that come with maintaining it. We’ve learned over the years that a client that has not allocated financial, time, and personnel to their website development and maintenance tends to fail. Their website becomes stagnant and eventually shuts down due to security breaches or billing lapses.
There are many approaches to web development, but the following is Raatior Design’s 6 C’s, or 6-step process of working with our partners (clients) to launch their website.
Consult
Raatior Design invites you to take our free, no obligation consultation via our online Consultation Form which provides some questions for you to consider before committing to the actual website development. Once we receive your online submission we will be in touch with you via email, phone, or in person to help you answer or clarify these questions. You are NOT obligated at all to move ahead to step 2 with Raatior Design.
Contract
Once you’ve answered the questions in Step 1 and IF you decide to move forward with Raatior Design, then we will email to you a contract containing the proposed services, deadlines, cost, and the final launch date. You will review that and ask any questions, make any adjustments until we have a mutually agreeable contract of services. That final version is signed by you and sent to Raatior Design with the first payment installment of 60% of the total contract amount. Once the first payment is received, then we will initiate the design phase.
Content
This is the phase of the process where the content of each webpage is written up. Writing up the content of the website is truly the most important and time consuming part of the web development. It can take one person to put it all together or it might take several people to pull together that information. This is where you get to put on paper what you want to share on your website, shoot or select the photos you wish to use, determine what information you wish to ask on an online form, proofread write ups to ensure accuracy, etc. We will work with you to guide you through the process, but in the end the client is fully responsible for what goes into a website. [Note: We recommend you do this to keep your cost down. In some cases, Raatior Design can also handle the collection and write up of the content but it will cost the client as we require roundtrip airfare, hotel, and per diem to come and meet with the appropriate people or teams, shoot the photos, interview staff for their bios, research the history, etc)
Customize
Once the content has been collected, then Raatior Design begins to customize a website specifically for you. We utilize the WordPress platform as a content management system (CMS) to enable you to manage your own website after it has been launched without having to buy an expensive proprietary software. All you need is a computer and access to the internet to manage your website. Design may include, but not limited to, table-based layouts, PHP and MySQL, CSS-based layouts, static and dynamic menu navigation, Javascript coding, photo galleries, blog and community forums, search engine optimization, W3C compliant code validation, traffic tracking, and much more.
Celebrate
This is the official launch of your website so people can visit it on the internet. The launching of your website should be a day of celebration to bring awareness to your cause, drive traffic to your website, and develop a following of your news updates. We suggest you announce the launch date for your website far in advance through your social networking services (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc), newsletter, word of mouth, posters, fliers. The more traffic that your website generates the quicker your website moves up in the all important search engine matrix. It’s also just good publicity for your cause. You might even schedule a launch party to introduce your supporters to your new website.
Coaching
At Raatior Design we are very familiar with the challenges faced by many organizations and companies in Micronesia; lack of tech support, slow internet access, frequent power outages, and in my cases lack of trained local staff dedicated to technological needs. Therefore, we provide ongoing staff development opportunities for our clients. We are also open to being retained with a monthly fee to provide ongoing webmaster duties to develop new content, communications, and site updates.