We’ve supported rather a lot of community projects, but the results are not always up to our usually high standards. So what are the ingredients of success? In a nutshell, some dedicated time, a plan, a desire to get it completed to a timescale and the freedom to decide all help.
Our prescription goes a long way:
- a simple plan or well-formed idea of who you are trying to appeal to and what you are trying to achieve
- some ready made content, perhaps from an existing site or from your own promotional literature, governance documents
- decent quality graphics or your website template will look rather similar to others, but we can help you short-cut that problem
- high quality images or your website will look home-made (which is ok if by design, but you want to avoid amateurish mistakes)
- time to think and time to write – a few hours to do your bit can be a struggle find, so some projects fail before they even start …
- some previous experience of web publishing helps, but not necessarily making html websites and dream weavers need not apply
- freedom to publish – if your committee can’t take decisions or just won’t delegate, your website may never get off the ground
- a small budget – we will ensure a little goes a long way, but if you have a larger budget great plus you’ll be amazed what can be achieved with no budget at all (but expect to do some leg work)
- a willingness to implement your plan on time – we rarely get blamed for delaying a project
What doesn’t help
- lack of time
- fantasies of perfection, infinite functionality or control and enterprise integrations (you don’t have a budget remember)
- covering your site with post its and posters or painting it garish colours – let the template and designer do the hard work
- failure to keep your site alive by adding new content
- forgetting you have a website and treating it like twitter or facebook (but we can show you how to make it into a social platform / network if you like!)
- pretending you don’t have a budget while putting buying newspaper adverts, banners, leaflets …