1. DOMAIN NAMES
Buy the domain name yourself in a leader supplier such as www.networksolutions.com Domain name is an asset, and therefore should be bought by the SME´s under their names. Do not let third parties to buy your domain name. Keep control of your domain name yourself and this will save you time and money in the future.
2. WEBSITE AND SEO SUPPLIERS
Buy all the related services to one supplier, so your total cost of ownership will be lower, and this will give you piece of mind in the future. SME´s should buy all the following related services to one supplier:
• Internet consulting
• Website design
• Website development
• Website maintenance or webmaster services
• Website hosting
• Website upgrades
• Website SEO services
• Website Google PPC services (www.google.com)
3. TECHNOLOGY
Develop the website with Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) .NET technology. SME´s website Total Cost of Ownership is lower with .NET technology than with PHP technology. There are many papers in Internet that show this fact. .NET technology has much more added value than PHP technology.
4. METHODOLOGY
Your website and SEO supplier should use a classical methodology during the project, with different phases, tasks, and deliverables. Normally these type of projects have the following phases:
• Internet Consulting (these phase will give the three main aspects of the project: scope, time and price). Please visit www.pmi.org for project management methodologies.
• Functional design
• Graphical design
• Development
• Test
• Hosting
• SEO
• Maintenance and upgrades
Each of these phases has different tasks and deliverables that should be reviewed and approved by the SME´s before implementing them.
Both, the supplier and the SME´s should have a project manager or project leader responsable for the whole project. On the SME´s side, this person should be a business person rather than a technical person.
5. STANDARDS
There are not yet ISO standards (www.iso.org) for the website industry, however, the industry currently uses the following two standards:
• ISO 9241-11 for usability guidelines (efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction)
• ISO 13407 for User Centered Design (UCD) guidelines
ISO 9241 (Ergonomics of human system-interaction) has 17 parts containing requirements for hardware and recommendations for software (with a requirement that the applicability of all relevant guidelines is assessed). The procedure of assessing conformity with ISO 9241 consists of checking the conformity of the product with all the relevant requirements and recommendations in the relevant parts of ISO 9241. As there are many hundreds of guidelines, this requires familiarity with the contents of the different parts of the standard.
ISO 13407 (Human-centred design processes for interactive systems) contains guidelines for human centred design processes. It is supported by ISO TR 18529 (Human-centred lifecycle process descriptions) that contains a formalised model intended to be used for assessment of the human-centred processes described in ISO 13407. This type of assessment can either be carried out formally (similar to a CMM assessment) where evidence of conformity is required, or more informally in a workshop, where the aim is to help an organisation improve its processes.
SME´s should ask their website supplier to use these standards.
6. BUDGETS
SME´s should have two budgets for their website and SEO services. One project budget and one annual hosting, maintenance and SEO budget. Depending upon the website scope, the budgets should be:
• Between USD $ 2,000 and USD $ 20,000 for the project budget.
• Between USD $ 1,000 and USD $ 10,000 for the annual hosting, maintenance and SEO budget.
Many thanks for your attention!
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