What Does A Website Involve?
view printable versionOne of the free services that our ICT project, based in a CVS, has offered over the years is short-term website consultancy. Most small to medium sized voluntary organisations want their own website but are unlikely to have someone on-board with the right web design skills. A volunteer might have offered to help or perhaps the organisation can afford to pay a designer to create a site, but they may still need advice on how best to buy a domain name, commission a site, brief the designer and get the site noticed. Our project aims to help them gain the knowledge and confidence to take on these tasks.
How we work
In the past our website consultancies were fairly unstructured: they might have been a single two hour chat or an ongoing, on and off series of visits. We also occasionally held “Website Ownership” events to which we invited voluntary organisations from across six boroughs (the West London sub-region).
One event brought 28 attendees together, some of whom had built their group’s site themselves, were still in the process of planning a site, relied on a volunteer or had engaged the services of a designer. We would demonstrate some software and put on a few presentations, but it was in the group discussions that the attendees learned the most from each other’s experiences.
Recently we embarked on a series of consultations with refugee community groups in Hammersmith, some of which have websites, some of which don’t, and for these sessions we are following a more defined, but still flexible, structure.
- On the first afternoon’s visit we tend to discuss domain ownership, the website’s audience and purpose, who will design it, who will edit it, accessibility issues, what software could be used and how the site will be promoted. We help the group to decide a set of priorities and an action plan.
- In between visits we might act as a liaison with a website designer or volunteer or help to resolve domain issues. Sometimes we offer practical assistance and make alterations to the code on their website, not usually to alter the look or style of the site, but to ensure it meets W3C standards for coding and is properly accessible.
- On the second and final visit, typically a few weeks after the first, we might provide one-to-one or small group training in Contribute or Dreamweaver or blogging; or teach them techniques for site promotion.
What advice might we give?
Ensuring that organisations have control over their own domain names is an important first step. We find many organisations either don’t own their own domain names or can’t find the passwords for them. We’ve seen domain renewals lapse, ownership disputed and in one case the website designer died unexpectedly and took the passwords to his grave: it took three months of pleading for the hosting company to transfer ownership to the charity.
Whether the organisation plans to pay a designer or engage a volunteer to design a site, we advise them that they should have a written brief (one or two sheets of A4 will often suffice) that explains, in the appropriate jargon, exactly what they want done.
For example a brief might insist that:
- html and css is designed to W3C standards;
- that the Georgia font is used throughout;
- font sizes must be variable;
- Dreamweaver templates need to be created for both one column and two column layouts;
- and css not tables should be used to place content on the page.
Given this level of jargon, one of the most helpful roles a consultant can fulfil is to collaborate with the group on the writing of this brief. This brief should form part of any contract and performs several functions: it instructs the web designer on what needs to be done; it gives the organisation a means to judge the quality of the work; and perhaps most usefully, it can help to divide the skilled designers from the chancers. There is no central registration body for web designers, anyone can do it and many designers are not capable of doing the work to the required standard. A detailed brief, coupled with some tricky interview questions, will help to weed them out.
Who should do the design work - a staff member, a design company, a volunteer, someone’s nephew who’s doing a school project on web design?
If a staff member has the appropriate skills that’s a viable option; if they would need to learn web design then it probably isn’t: a comprehensive course in Dreamweaver could take 30 hours’ training. The exact same goes for a volunteer with the added uncertainty of whether they will complete the job before they leave; we recommend that groups check out the www.iT4Communities.org.uk website to find experienced ICT volunteers.
Professional web designers should be able to show groups a portfolio: call up a couple of their prior clients and ask them how happy they were with what they got. But a charity should never ever ask an ICT student to create their website: the very fact they are studying means they haven’t yet learned how to do it properly.
One of the most useful bits of advice we give is that groups should always be able to edit the content of the site themselves and not be reliant on a third party for updates. We often recommend that organisations use Macromedia Contribute 3 software for directly editing the html content of their sites: it takes about an hour to teach someone to use; it only costs about £60 on a charity discount; and the interface is particularly clear and unencumbered with menus. Some organisations have workers who have already learnt Dreamweaver in which case we can help brush up their existing skills. Less commonly, if groups intend to base their website around a content management system such as Drupal, we can assist with installation and help them to customise its look and style.
Maybe the organisation does not even need a fully-fledged website; for example we once advised a group campaigning against airport expansion to write a blog instead as this was the quickest, easiest way to get their point of view out to their readers.
Often a forgotten aspect of websites, we always offer to advise groups on the best means to promote their websites. We impress upon them the importance of looking at their visitor statistics and help them interpret the data; we tell them simple strategies for getting high placement on search engines; and we let them know about services such as Google’s Grants which can help them publicise their existence. Even if we don’t have time to discuss this in detail, we always leave them with our PowerPoint presentation on the topic for them to read in their own time.
What makes for a good website consultancy?
There are a number of factors - some to do with the consultant, some to do with the organisation
and some to do with timing - that we’ve found make for a productive website consultancy.
It helps enormously if there is a person in the organisation who takes responsibility for the
whole project, putting aside enough time for meetings and who can make decisions. That person
needs to be a regular Internet user, aware of the benefits of online ways of working, but with a
practical outlook. Because it’s easy to get carried away with technology for technology’s
sake, ideally they will mix open-mindedness with a touch of cynicism. It isn’t necessary for
them to understand html or the mechanics of web design.
The consultant needs to be able to practice what they teach, in other words to be able to
create standards-compliant websites; they need patience and to be able to reduce complex issues to
simple explanations; and whatever solutions they suggest, they must not make the organisation
reliant on their continued involvement because they should aim to make the organisation more
self-sufficient.
The consultant’s role is to advise, not to dictate to the organisation. However, it is in everyone’s best interest to be able to argue the case where important issues are at stake. Accessibility is one area where a consultant should stick to their guns because there are legal implications but in other regards we need to be prepared to lose an argument occasionally. Flexibility is called for and although it’s tempting to stick to what’s tried and tested, other approaches should always be considered without prejudice.
We always appreciate being asked for advice while a website is still in the planning stages because we can help the group avoid many potential pitfalls and have much more impact on the planning of the whole site. If a group has already got a well-designed site but just wants help to expand or promote it, that’s also a good time to be involved. It can, however, be more difficult to intervene successfully if an organisation has just had a site badly designed (and that happens frequently) because in that situation we are frequently asked to do time-consuming corrections on their sites for which we simply don’t have time.
Above all, what matters most is the need. If the organisation’s clients need information or services, if the organisation believes that the Internet can meet those needs and if the consultant knows how they can be met, that is the best possible start to a consultancy.
Jason King, ICT Website Developer / Designer
www.kingjason.co.uk