About having a website

Some personal observations

Approached by someone wanting help with a website¹, one of the most valuable things I can do is simply to share some basic lessons I’ve learned from over a decade of building websites. What follows, in this and associated articles, are some of the most important of those lessons.

My thoughts are influenced by some very good thinking on the subject published by experts in the field, but what follows is decidedly and intentionally my personal perspective. Differing points of view exist on all major assertions I offer here.

Why have a website?

I see several very good reasons, and they’re not at all mutually exclusive:

• To support and/or promote your human services business.
• To display and validate your skills and knowledge (which can lead to your becoming more useful to the clients you already have, as well as producing new clients).
• To provide a kind of “online filing cabinet”, in which you put material of interest to prospective, present, and former clients. (I do this, and it’s a REALLY useful idea – I love it – clients can’t lose stuff I give them because it’s always also online!)
• To have fun. A website affords one a fine public arena for writing and expression – an opportunity to work on ones writing, to write about interesting things, to learn about and play with website creation and support technology, and so on.

It’s very important to be clear, with yourself, about your motivation. Websites are expensive, one way or another (in time or money – and often both). Cost control should be in your mind from the beginning. At the same time, poor quality will not serve your purposes. You must find an effective balance, and all in the service of your (hopefully) clear objectives. The importance of this cannot be over-stressed.

The four basic aspects of a website

These are PURPOSE, CONTENT, TECHNOLOGY, and DESIGN.

Your PURPOSE for having the site

Creating and maintaining a website is not a weekend project. To get through the obstacles and finish the project well, you need clear objectives and enduring motivation. Without these, your site will is likely arrive on the Internet late, poorly focused, and with a weak message, which is probably not what you had in mind.

Purpose matters – a lot. It drives the other factors.

The writing or other CONTENT you want to publish on the site.

This has to come from somewhere. If you don’t write as a part of your life or professional practice, having a website is not likely to turn you into a writer. In fact, it’s likely to give you a serious case of writer’s block.

If you’re going to write your own content, get started early, and keep at it. Get feedback, from objective reviewers. Keep rewriting. Your skills only improve when you work at them. Also, what made sense a year ago may well need real revision this week, for multiple reasons.

Alternatively, pay someone to develop it for you. A skilled writer can work wonders, and if they’re a copywriter (someone who works with other people’s material, rather than their own), they’ll know how to develop material from your interests, skills, and work activities.

The TECHNOLOGY employed

“Technology” here means skills and knowledge directly relevant to website production.

You must create, publish, and maintain your site. Do you know how? Many human services professionals (HSPs) do not, and do not have the time or interest to acquire these skills. For such individuals, others will have to do this.

Site creation

Website creation involves a number of distinct and complex skills. You either have them to a sufficient degree, or you do not. If you do not, it likely will be fairly obvious to your site visitors (even if it isn’t to you). A site which displays your inadequacies is surely not your goal. This is not to say that you cannot go forward with doing it yourself, but rather that you need to be cautious, and respectful of the fact of your limited knowledge. It is a comforting fact that some of the very best sites are the simplest.

Here, and throughout the rest of this article, are some hard questions which you simply must face – because when you go public you will be evaluated:

Can you write? Coherent, well ordered, focused writing is rarely the product of amateurs. Beyond that, writing for the Internet places some special demands upon content producers. If you have no familiarity with this topic, you’re in more trouble than you know. Somehow, you must get your knowledge (and skills) updated.

Can you structure your writing clearly? Some HSPs are published writers, or have a track record (say, in college) of reasonably successful writing. Others have skills they certainly can develop, if they’re willing to do the work. All of these individuals will still need to learn the special requirements of writing for the Internet. Print-format writing, taken directly to the Internet, simply doesn’t work – and this is the published opinion of the experts.

Do you understand the basics of text formatting? Some very well-known HSPs can barely operate a word processor (seriously!). They type, but don’t understand layout or formatting. Their idea of a section header, when used at all, is to type a phrase and make it bold, or underline it. Copy prepared this way is NOT ready for a website. It’s not even close. If you don’t understand text styling in a word processor, you have no hope of pulling it off with a website.

Do you understand the basics of webpage and website structuring? Good websites are planned, and reflect knowledge of some key basic principles, such as the need for clear and consistent navigation, for webpage structure which will look more or less the same in all modern browsers, and for the inclusion of web page elements which help a site visitor rather than assault them in subtle ways. This is specialized knowledge, not commonly possessed by most HSPs.

Site publishing

“Publishing” involves getting material from the content producer to the consumer, and with a website it’s a two step process. How will you get new or revised material onto your site? You can’t simply fax it in! Then, how will the computer where your website lives get the material onto the site visitors (where they view it in their browser)? There are two basic ways, and one is more flexible, but also more expensive, while the other is far simpler and also good enough for most situations.

Both of these concerns, which are distinct, involve resolution of some technical questions which are likely to be handled badly when one has little or no prior experience with websites.

Site maintenance

This is quite possibly the most neglected area of website ownership. Many sites are poorly maintained, and few individuals even think of the problem when they are working up their first website.

Virtually all websites need to be refreshed, and relatively often. How will you come up with new material? Because few people address this question until after they have a site, they usually find themselves in the awkward position of facing a problem they simply cannot quickly solve. If you don’t have some kind of maintenance plan for your site, before you launch it, you’re may be headed for a small catastrophe.

New-content generation, old content pruning, and periodic site purpose review and reconceptualization is essential to a successful site.

The structural and visual DESIGN of the site

How will you lay out your pages, visually, so that they support your visitor’s purpose in coming to the site? How will you tie the pages of your site together? How will you make this known to your visitors? These are all unavoidable website design questions.

Do you understand the rather unique design constraints inherent in all webpages – issues of font choice, variable screen resolutions, management of contrast, color palettes, and so on? Will you be able to lay out a page which is pleasant to the eye, rather than irritating, awkward, and distracting?

In the early years of website construction, we had much to learn about how to structure sites whose visitors didn’t become confused, or worse, lost. We also often didn’t understand the uniqueness of the webpage as a palette for design and content presentation.

To a large part, those dark days are over. Some commonly recognized general principles are available (if not always followed!), but knowledge of them must be acquired, else old mistakes will be made again, to no ones benefit.

Note

¹ I do not actively solicit website construction projects. I have some rather serious other work to do, as a psychotherapist. I do accept such projects when they come to me uninvited – if they sound interesting. This website – DirectPathDesign – began as a response to a request from a colleague for help in developing her first website. I wrote much of it as a way to collect my thoughts, then realized that the material had additional uses.