Website Planning Makes Sense
Would you start remodeling your house without a detailed plan? Would you trust an auto mechanic to rebuild your engine, when the mechanic has no idea how? Would you attempt to cook your Thanksgiving meal without at least a rough idea of how many guests are attending?
The answer on all three is no - unless you want a disaster zone in your house or a horribly mangled car or starved Thanksgiving guests. Put simply, to do things right, you need a plan that gives you at least a rough idea of where you are going and what you need to know to get there. For more complex things, like building a website, you need a more detailed plan.
When you consider how important a website is to your business, you can't suffer having a disaster zone for a website. Without a plan, websites can go wrong and go wrong fast. Not to mention that planning your website carefully before you begin the project will save you time and money in the long run because, among many reasons, planning will avoid having to redo things that went wrong.
At QW Consulting, we call the website plan the Information Architecture. Think of the Information Architecture as blueprints for your website. Once completed, the Information Architecture will tell you what you are doing with your new website, how it should be developed, how it will look and also will explain how customers will access and use your website.
QW Consulting's Information Architecture is an in depth understanding of your website. It includes a fully detailed scope of work discussing the functionality on your website and the end user experience, a sitemap outlining the pages in your website, wireframes showing what elements the design will contain, an online marketing plan discussing the best online marketing strategy and a technical review, discussing the programming language, server operating systems and other technologies that will be used and why.
A lot of web developers either skip this part altogether or rush through it. Over the last ten years, I have had numerous calls asking for help after their website project went wrong and went wrong for one simple reason: the client hired another developer who didn't have a clear plan but started developing the website anyway.
Unfortunately clients in this situation always end up paying more than they should have and their website always takes longer to develop than they had hoped. Why? Well, like when you hire a second plumber to fix the first plumber's mistakes, repair work always takes longer and will always cost more.
QW Consulting can put together the Information Architecture for your website at a relatively low cost to you and hiring QW Consulting to put together your Information Architecture before work begins can save you thousands of dollars in the long run.
Finally, yes, we do charge for the work that goes into writing, researching and assembling the Information Architecture. Why?
One simple reason: the Information Architecture isn't a sales pitch. Many web developers who offer free website plans do so because they will use the Information Architecture as a sales pitch. That means your requirements will be altered to fit within what they are capable of developing giving you not only a poor plan but also a poor solution. In other words: sales pitches have their place but should plans that are crucial to the success of your business be used as a sales pitch?
At QW Consulting, we will always be objective in assembling your Information Architecture to help you create the best plan that will lead to the best solution. If that includes using QW Consulting in your website project, that is great and we are happy to help. However, if we aren't the right developers for the job, we'll help you find another developer who is.
If you'd like to get started planning your website, learn more about QW Consulting's website planning services or contact QW Consulting today.
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