Know Your Audience
One of the most important tasks which you will be faced with during the pre-production phase of your project involves forming a clear mental picture of your intended audience. It's going to be important that you have a good understanding of both the type of equipment that they're likely to have and their level of computer literacy so you know how far from the standard HTML feature set you can stray without losing them. You will be forced to make quite a few compatibility decisions during the development of your site, primarily because not all browsers are created equal.

Many browsers, like Firefox and Netscape, offer a rich palette of file handling and productivity features which are accessed by means of plug-ins. Microsoft's Internet Explorer also contains a rich set of features, but they are not driven by plug-ins. For the most part IE features are proprietary, and the site code necessary to call these functions will often crash other browsers, sometimes taking the user's entire computer along for the ride. Internet Explorer once had a whopping 92% of the browser market, causing many developers not to care about compatibility, but the recent plague of serious security holes discovered in IE has sent millions scrambling for the exits toward less dangerous choices. Others run Internet Explorer in a crippled configuration to help shield their machines and their networks from destructive viruses and worms. When it comes to browsers, it seems that the internet is re-discovering diversity, and making sure that sites works with a broad spectrum of browers has once again moved toward the top of the priority list. While cross-platform compatibility is good for the internet as a whole, it can add to the cost of development and maintenance.

There are also a number of applications which are computationally intensive and handle tasks such as the projection of video, audio, and real-time animation. While some of these peripheral tools, such as the ubiquitous Flash, are more-or-less cross-platform, allowing you to produce dazzling effects on your Web pages and manipulate data in new and interesting ways, there are a few caveats...

They are not available on all browsers.

They often require large files and fast computers, which means that they can be painfully slow to load and execute for all but a few power surfers with expensive, high-powered set-ups. Concerns about download and execution times are not limited to Internet sites, either. Intranet sites can also fall victim to poor design. If you are a small company with 300 networked employees, and during the course of the day each one of them must wait one extra minute for Web files to download, at the end of the year you have paid for 1250 man-hours of hourglass staring! A well designed page running on a properly loaded high-speed network should come up almost immediately.

They sometimes require lengthy, complex installation and configuration procedures. This is not a problem if your intended audience consists of computer programmers or fifth graders. If, however, you are trying to communicate with a broad audience, they will quickly become frustrated and move on if they think that they're going to have to spend an hour downloading something and fiddling with "Wizards" before they can see or hear what you're trying to say.

Within the corporate setting, download permissions and security policies are set and enforced by management through the IT staff, leaving office workers with no way to view non-standard features.

Many of the new and more dazzling plug-ins and helpers have only been written and ported to the most advanced of the home computer operating systems or hardware structures, such as Windows XP or Mac's Power PC. Many have only been written for one platform, such as Windows but not Mac. Many more are Browser specific.

Some of them present what we consider to be an unacceptable security risk to the server, or even, in some cases, to the user

     For these and many other reasons, we try to encourage our clients to use non-standard features sparingly, like icing. Making your Web clients wait for three minutes so that they can see your company logo spin around is not likely to leave the impression you intended. Likewise, heavy reliance on page elements requiring access to features like ActiveX will cost you a portion of your audience.

Get Organized
Your ability to organize the construction of your site is going to be one of your most valuable assets during the production process. Like building a house, the construction of a site benefits from a certain amount of linearity. You can't install the roof before you've poured the foundation. You wouldn't order bricks before you'd found an architect, or schedule carpenters to come before you had wood. Likewise, building a site is a step-by-step process. Here are a few tips for getting through it with your wallet intact.....

Develop a Plan....Try to construct a logical development sequence in your mind. The details of the process will undoubtedly change during production, but your plan will give you a skeleton to work from. Once you've begun, keep asking yourself the same question...:What is the very next thing that I have to do to keep this project moving?" Whatever it is, do it. Don't shy away from the hard stuff, or you'll be sorry later.

Stick to a Schedule...One of the things that really causes projects to run over budget is the client's inablilty to let go of an element because it doesn't conform to their vision of how it's supposed to look or work. If you're out of development time for an element which is serviceable but still not to your liking, put it in place and move on. Mark it for more attention later. Sometimes you need to see how an element works with the parts around it before the perfect solution will come to you.

Panic Early...Take a few minutes on a regular basis to evaluate the progress of your project as a whole. Start thinking about any potholes you may see while they're still out on the horizon. This will help prevent you from being blindsided.

Take the Time to Polish Your Ideas
Even though the focal point of your site may be your product demo or your on-line catalog, your most difficult task is still going to be holding the attention of your audience long enough for them to make a decision about your product or service. Virtually every element of the site is going to help or hurt you in this regard. Here are a few tips for dazzling your viewers....

Make sure that your site is organized in a way that makes it easy to navigate..... Unless you're giving away Ferraris, the chance that they're going to hang around long enough to decipher a cryptic interface is pretty slim.

Make sure that you're communicating in a way that's clear and to the point..... Don't just talk. Say something. Remember that you don't have a captive audience. There's nothing else for them to do on your channel. Unlike TV viewers, they haven't agreed to pay attention just because you've caught them between scenes of Will & Grace. Your audience can easily escape your grasp with a single click of the mouse. Keep it interesting.

Don't overwhelm your audience..... Placing a twirling logo, animated GIFs, and blinking links together on the same page, all dancing ceremoniously to a midi sound file of the Star Spangled Banner, is almost certain to have them scurrying for the "Anywhere But Here" button. If you find an interesting piece of Giz, try not to use it too many times on one page. It will lose its impact and become clutter.

Stick with a Theme.... If you're trying to focus your audience on a single thing (like your product or your point), pick a few key elements which will appear throughout your site. It can be a color scheme, a repeated graphic or set of graphics, a navigational element, a layout template, anything to give them a sense of continuity. If your audience feels like they've been dropped on another planet every time they go from one screen to the next, they will find it distracting.

Know Your Budget
Decide how much money you have to spend to develop the entire site. (Note: "...As little as possible"... is not a budget.) Then assign a rough dollar amount for the development of each of the elements. While you may not stick precisely to your budget, the exercise will help you to get a clear picture of your priorities. Are you most interested in smooth, clear, copy? Dazzling graphics? Features that will require a lot of custom program development? Your interests will show up in your budget numbers. In general, the more planning and preparation you do, the cheaper it's going to be to execute your plan. We'll discuss budgets in more detail in the Budget and Project Profiler sections.

And last, but by no means least........

Give Something Back
The Web is not just about commerce. Long before the first web browser was invented, the internet had already developed into a tightly-knit community with a rich history of sharing and cooperation. While this attitude may be seem a bit out of place in a world driven by profit, it is still very much alive on the Internet. If you think that you have something to say that may help someone else, say it. Talk about what you know. Share a bit of your expertise with your audience. Even if it costs you a sale or two, the goodwill created by your spirit of giving will ultimately be good for your business.

     While we're assuming that you're planning to hire a production house to help you with your site, the best advice we can give you for getting through the process with all of your hair is this....do plenty of homework, and know what you want. Spend some time on the web to see what's out there. Visit the hot sites and make a list of the sites you like, bring the link list to your developer along with some notes explaining what you like and don't like about each site. This one step alone can save you a fortune in concept tests. If you'd like some suggestions about where to start looking for cool sites, check out the Surfing the Hit Parade aisle in our Research section. Have fun, and let us know if you find anything fabulous.