After a while, however, my life seemed to be getting busier and busier. I had switched my day job. Additionally, I had decided to go back to school for my master’s degree which had been a personal goal of mine. With the new and added responsibilities and priorities in my life, my blogging efforts took a backseat and were soon non-existent.

Fortunately (I think) my interest in blogging never really went away and has actually continued to grow over the last couple of years. I managed to complete my master’s degree at the end of 2010 and finally find myself with a bit more time to focus on a few of my personal interests.

Here we are at the beginning of 2012. It’s the start of a new year. I see this as a great time to start fresh with a sort of clean slate if you will. I have some lofty goals and ideas and am hopeful that during 2012 I will be able to bring a few of these to fruition.

This website will continue to be my personal journal. Additionally, it will serve as my playground where I will build, test, bend, and break things on a fairly regular basis as I continue to build upon my web design and web development skills.

So, cheers to a new year and starting fresh with a clean slate!

Articles and Resources About Setting Goals

• How to Make the Most of the Fresh Start of a New Year
• A Guide to Goal Setting
• Creating Your Own Deadlines and Setting Aggressive Goals for Your Business
• Realistic Physical Goals Can Make You a Winner
• How to Create a Blogging Plan and Actually Reach Your Goals This Year
• Pursue the Goal Not the Method

Setting Goals is Only Part of the Battle

One thing that has become extremely clear to me is that setting goals and objectives is only half the battle. Actually, it’s a lot less than half the battle. The real battle is in doing the actual work to achieve your goals. I’ll write a post (or several) on that subject later!

Would Love to Hear Your Thoughts

How do you go about setting goals? How frequently do you set goals…weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.? Have you read any good articles or blog posts on the subject of setting goals lately…any that were bookmark worthy? If so, I’d love for you to share them in the comments below!

Website Effectiveness Audit

It is important to take time upfront to determine whether or not there is a real need to redesign your website. What are the issues or reasons you think your organization needs to redesign it’s website? Before you can obtain a budget and approval to get your project underway, you should conduct a website effectiveness audit to build a case for the project.

This first component includes 3 key steps. First, evaluate your internal web capabilities by conducting a SWOT analysis. This is where you determine your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Next, conduct an analysis of  the industry you are in. What are the general website design and development trends in your industry? Are your competitors redesigning their sites? It is important to take the time to analyze and document what your competitors and other businesses in your industry are doing with regards to their websites. Lastly, perform a competitive website analysis of your top direct competitors.

Gain Approval from Your Key Stakeholders

Before you’ll be able to assemble a team and get the project underway, you’ll need to gain approval from the key stakeholders in your organization. Start this process by determining the key success factors for your website redesign project. As you are doing this, be sure to list any risks or contingencies that could affect the outcome of the project. Another key step, and one that is often overlooked, is to develop a website program charter. The program charter should document the purpose of the project, scope, and overall plan. In the plan, be sure to document a start date and anticipated end date for the project, project team, communication plan, project deliverables, and key milestones. Once this is done, you should document a business case for the project that outlines the quantitative and qualitative benefits compared to the costs and risks of the project. You can then utilize the overall business case you have developed to sell your idea to senior management internally and achieve approval for your project.

Define Website Requirements

After gaining approval, it is time to dig in and kickoff the project. With your team assembled define the high-level objectives, target audiences, initiatives, and key performance indicators for your program. Next, gather functional requirements from each of the separate departments within your organization. It is important to include all departments to ensure that everyone has a say and is on the same page. After gathering requirements, take time to prioritize them. Work with your project team to come to a consensus. After prioritizing the overall requirements, it is time to look at your infrastructure requirements. Website infrastructure is composed of people, processes, and technology. This is an important step to help determine if there are any gaps in the existing infrastructure. From this step you should perform a GAP analysis to evaluate the requirements and then determine the feasibility of closing each gap. Be sure to adjust your overall requirements document accordingly. The final step is to perform a buy versus build analysis to determine if you should outsource the development or handle the project internally.

Create a Website Program Action Plan

Once you’ve determined the project requirements, it is time to develop an action plan for your website redesign project. The program action plan should document all of the internal, external, and GAP analyses that you’ve completed so far. This document will outline the gaps that need to be filled in order to move the project forward to completion.

Develop Your New Website

Now it’s finally time for the fun to begin—at least the part that I like best—production. However, before you begin developing your website, be sure you have done a little research and understand what it takes to create and build a successful and engaging website. After you have, you can begin developing your site. Start by defining your target audience and the purpose of your website. Once you have done that you should organize the content and determine the site structure. This is a crucial step to ensuring that your site is highly usable  for its target audience. A focus should be placed on organizing your content in such a way as to minimize the number of clicks visitors will have to use to find the content they are looking for. It is also important when building your website to establish your privacy policy and terms of use. This will help to protect your organization from litigation resulting from the usage of your website. You should also plan to integrate analytics and reporting tools during the development phase. At this point, it is time to hand off the project to your technical staff for development. Your technical web team will handle the construction, testing, and ultimate launch of your website.

Drive Traffic to Your New Website

After the launch of your new site, it is important to have a strategy in place for how you will promote and drive traffic to your website. Here are a few best practices to follow as part of this strategy. Develop an external linking plan. Do you have clients who would happily post a link back to your website? Having many links to your website from external sites will help your website rank better in search engines. Another best practice is to resubmit your website to search engines after you’ve completed your redesign. Also, be sure to conduct search engine optimization (SEO). This should really be part of the development process, however, this is also something that you should monitor on an ongoing basis. In addition to SEO, you should think about pursuing pay per click search engine marketing as part of your online advertising program. This is especially helpful in the beginning as it may take a while for you to see the results from your SEO efforts. Integrate your website address in your other marketing materials. The web has really become the main channel for marketing. So, you should be using other marketing tactics to drive to your website. Blogs are also a great way to drive quality traffic to your website. The bottom line is that you need to develop an ongoing marketing strategy that includes multiple tactics to help drive consistent traffic to your website.

Proactively Maintain Your Website

Even though the hard work is over and your site has launched, it doesn’t mean your job is finished. Maintaining a website is extremely important. Fresh content is what keeps your targeted visitors coming back to your site. You should develop a maintenance schedule to ensure that you are providing fresh and valuable content on an ongoing basis for your visitors. It is also important to monitor your website for broken links as these can reflect poorly on your business over time. As your site grows with new content, you may need to re-organize the content. It’s important to maintain easy navigation for the end user. Lastly, you should evaluate your overall website program on an annual basis. As your business changes, new needs may arise for your web presence. It is important to stay on top of these changes.

What Are Your Thoughts?

The devil really is in the details. So, in future posts I will dig deeper into each of these. In the meantime, what are your thoughts? Am I missing any key best practices? I’d love to hear your thoughts? What has worked best for you when taking on a website redesign project?

We had a great time at the cabin. One of the highlights had to be playing with my sister-in-law’s and brother-in-law’s pet dog, Bella.  Bella has always been a playful dog. Over the past few years, she’s grown a huge affinity for swimming and playing fetch in the water. This weekend was no different. Bella was basically playing fetch all day long with whomever would throw her toy out into the lake. After playing fetch with her for a while and realizing her toy would sink when thrown out into the lake, we also noticed that Bella was getting even braver. She started diving under the water for her toy! It was hilarious to watch. So, I had to grab a quick video of Bella’s diving skills and wanted to share it.

Enjoy!

Components of Successful Online Communities

• A Shared Vision
• Active Leader/Management
• Multiple Channels of Communication
• Website Usability and Accessibility
• User/Member Profiles

A Shared Vision

As with any website, an online community needs to have a vision or mission. This vision needs to be shared amongst the sites target audience. What is the purpose of the online community? What are the problems the website is trying to solve for its audience? What are the ultimate goals and objectives of the website? How does or can the online community fulfill the needs of its audience? In order for the website to be successful, the target audience will need to believe in the mission and vision of the community and see the website as a valuable resource.

Active Leader/Management

A strong vision will only get you so far. Another key component is that the online community needs to have an active leader and/or management. An online community is really a tribe of people that share a similar interest. Every tribe that I am aware of has a leader. The tribe leader holds the community together and helps it to progress forward in order to achieve a shared goal or vision. If an online community is missing an active leader or management, the community will fall apart.

Multiple Channels of Communication

Communication is one of the most important aspects of an online community. Afterall, without communication, you don’t really have a functional community. Not all members of a community will have the same preferences when it comes to specific methods of communication. From social media to RSS feeds and email, there are many channels of communication online. In order to appeal to and engage the audience, it is important to include a variety of communication channels such as opt-in email lists, forums, RSS feeds, and social media. This will help to ensure that the audience has a convenient way to stay connected.

Website Usability and Accessibility

While the design of the online community website may not be the most important element, I do believe that design plays a key role in the success of an online community. Having a solid, professional design will improve the brand image and perception that the audience has of the specific community. Additionally, good design means creating a site that focuses on usability and accessibility. Focusing on these key design issues will help to ensure that the website is inviting and that the audience has a good experience when visiting the online community.

User/Member Profiles

When it comes to creating a community, member profiles are important. To build a solid community not only do the members of that community need to trust the leader, they also have to trust each other. User profiles can play a key role in building trust within a community. It’s been my experience that while participating in online communities, I usually learn just as much from the comments of members as I do by reading the main content or posts. I also often find myself reading the comments or postings from members whose names I know and those who’ve added value to the community over time.

What Are Your Thoughts?

These are just five of the elements that I believe play a key role in whether or not an online community will be successful. I know that I have missed several. So, I would love to hear your thoughts.

From your experience or perspective, what are the key elements to creating a successful online community?

As I’ve become more and more interested in blogging over the course of the last several months, I have a renewed interest in learning more about what it takes to become a successful copywriter. While writing is not my main passion or career interest, it does play a key role in what I do professionally.

Learning to Become a Better Copywriter

There are several wonderful online copywriting resources I have turned to over the last few months. Copyblogger and DailyWritingTips.com are two great resources that I have started to frequent.

Another resource I have been frequenting is FreelanceFolder.com. I have been interested in this blog for several reasons. FreelanceFolder.com is geared towards web designers, graphic designers, copywriters, and really all other types of freelancers. Whether you freelance on the side while working fulltime or are currently a fulltime freelancer, Freelance Folder is bound to be a great resource for you.

Recently, Freelance Folder announced that they’d be doing a series of getting started guides related to different freelance niches. The series will focus on getting started as a freelance graphic designer, a freelance web designer, a freelance programmer/developer, as well as several other types of freelancing.

The first book, which was just released, is How to Start a Freelance Writing Business. The 48 page book costs $12 and comes as a downloadable PDF file. How to Start a Freelance Writing Business was writen by Laura Spencer who is a professional freelance writer with over 19 years of experience in the industry. Over 7 of those years she’s spent as a freelancer.

What the Book Covers

• The skills and characteristics it takes to become a successful freelance writer
• How to create a brand and launch a legally established writing business
• How to market your business and get your first clients
• How to set your rates and negotiate with clients
• How to properly manage your projects and handle the administrative tasks that go along with running your own business
• An much more…

If you are interested in pursuing a freelance writing career, I encourage you to learn more about this book. If writing is not your thing, as I mentioned earlier Freelance Folder will be releasing other getting started guides. So, be sure to check out their website.

What Are Your Thoughts?

Have any of you purchased the How to Start a Freelance Writing Business eBook? If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the book. Additionally, if you are a freelancer, I would love to hear how you got started. Do you have any tips for those of us wishing to become freelancers or start our own businesses?

Related Products

• The Ultimate Freelancer

After checking Steven’s website galleries out, I wanted to share them with you. One of the great things about the galleries Steven has created is that each focuses on a specific niche. When looking for inspiration for a specific project, I am usually looking for a site that serves a similar purpose to the website I will be creating. Many gallery sites are more general in nature. So, I find myself spending a lot of time looking around. While I enjoy viewing these sites, it’s not always the most productive use of my time. Having specific niche galleries is a great way to focus your inspirational search on a specific type of website.

I am also very interested in the idea of creating a network of niche sites. I have some ideas of my own in this area. So, not only is Steven’s work inspirational from a design perspective, but also from a site network perspective. I need to flesh out my plan a bit more, but the general idea is to create a network of niche websites that combine two of my passions.

Here are the gallery websites that Steven created. I encourage you to check them out. Also, don’t be bashful, submit your own sites! Just click on the images below to visit the sites. I hope you enjoy them as much as I have and that you’ll bookmark and refer back to them as I will. Oh, I forgot to mention, each site has a Twitter account as well. So if interested, be sure to follow them!

Blog Design Heroes

“Blog Design Heroes is a web design gallery that focuses on showcasing the best blog designs. Our gallery includes blogs of all kinds, using all different blogging platforms.”

TYPEinspire

“TypeInspire is a showcase of typography. Most of the items that are featured here are the work of graphic designers and web designers. We hope that TypeInspire will provide you with the design inspiration that you need to create excellent typographic works of your own.”

FOLIOFOCUS

“Folio Focus is a web design gallery that exists to showcase excellent portfolio sites. Here you will find the best collection of portfolio sites from web and graphic designers, photographers, and other professionals that use a portfolio site.”

CartFrenzy

“CartFrenzy is a web design gallery that showcases the most well-design e-commerce and shopping websites. While there are many general web design galleries out there, CartFrenzy exists for a specific purpose, to provide design inspiration for those who are creating e-commerce sites.”

Minimal Exhibit

“Minimal Exhibit is a gallery that exists to showcase the best websites that feature a minimalist design style. Minimalism can bring great elegance, beauty, and usability to a website, so we hope that you enjoy the collection of sites found here.”

Do You Know of Other Good Gallery Sites?

I’d love to hear your thoughts or recommendations for other website design gallery and showcase sites. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!