From YouTube to SEO, navigating the web development landscape can be daunting. That’s why our founder, Mike Mann, developed this comprehensive list of best practices for any organization — for profit or not. Scan through this guide to evaluate your current web strategy, for inspiration on how to revamp your plan, or to scout out some new marketing resources.
If you’ve found resources that we haven’t listed in this guide, leave us your feedback in the comments section!
Project management:
1. What special offers are you testing to enhance conversion rates?
2. What are the key metrics you are tracking for your site and company?
3. What are the changes since last period?
4. Where are you tracking the metrics?
5. Where are the metrics deviating? Why?
6. Consider reporting methods (cron reports and automatically distribute)
7. Resources: Basecamp, ActiveCollab, Backpackit or Sharepoint
Going Viral:
8. What is your mission, audience and value proposition or your site or organization?
9. What do you want each person to do when they get to your site? What is the end goal of the visit?
10. Don’t forget the “Ize”: Incentivize, Socialize, Optimize, Customize, Localize, Personalize
11. Are there interfaces you can use to leverage Facebook, Twitter, iPhone apps, Blackberry apps, YouTube, LinkedIn, SalesForce, Digg, etc.?
12. Resources:
Sharing media: YouTube, Ping.fm, Google alerts, Splitweet, Sharethis, Addthis, Tweetdeck, Messagepub.com, Docstoc, docstr Knol.Google, fliiby, and edocs.
13. Email invitation resources: Octazen, Open Inviter, Power.com, Contact Mines, ImproSys, IpInvite, Contact Grabber, ParaInvite
Advertising and Marketing:
14. Look into resources for Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, and Cost Per Action (CPA): Adsense, Adwords, RoiRevolution.com, dynamic banners
15. Develop relationships with Google, Reachlocal, Servicemagic, and other advertising and marketing groups and sites.
16. What more can be tried with PPC? Should you increase your PPC spending?
17. Consider A/B multivariate testing of SEM SEO LPO conversion strategies
18. Are you interested in UserTesting.com?
19. Resources: Google tools: Analytics, Insights, Trends, Searchwiki, Website optimizer, Adwords, AdSense, Index level (ie Pr5/Pr4… and plans therein)
20. Other Tools: Yield Software, BlvdStatus, Quantcast, Alexa,
21. Is your contact management system integrated with the web site, PDAs/PCS? Consider Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, IntelliCRM, HighRise, or Act
22. Are you interested in live chat? Consider Upsellit, LivePerson, LiveHelp, BoldChat
23. Integrate your Blog /RSS/Newsletter/VideoBlog/Web Street Journal/Vbulletin/PHPbb/Blogtv
24. Crowdsourcing: Mechanical Turk, Elance, Rentacoder.com, Crowdspring, Sitebuilder, Sitepoint, 99designs.com, Guru.com, Voices.com, and hire experts on crowdsource
25. Look into Flash tools for flash site tours and presentations, such as Animoto
26. Look into app development tools, such as Codeigniter and Zend LAMP platform
27. Product fulfillment: drop shipping, one vendor or multivendor xml integration with white label when possible; or can you own and white label your own brand(s)?
28. VOIP apps
Customer service:
29. Consider these popular tools: EZ-Ticket, PHP Ticket, Help Desk Pilot, Kayako, and Hdeskonclick, Revelation Help Desk
30. Are there any widgets/middleware/API that you want to develop for your organization?
31. Email management, spam control, MailChimp/Constant Contact/MailerMailer
32. Which Ecommerce tool is best for your organization? Merchant account, Pay Pal, Authorize.net, e-checks, Amazon Payment, Google Checkout, Expression Engine, OSCommerce, XCart, Zen Cart, Miva, Stormpay, Commodo, Magento, RadarBlue.
33. Which content management system should you use? WordPress, Movable Type, DotNetNuke.com, Drupal, Buddypress/bbpress. Study at OpenSourceCMS.com
34. List yourself in E-Directory.com or another online directory, if applicable.
35. Consider social media sites such as Socialengine.com or Ning for customer service
36. If your organization collects any commission, look into Commission Junction, Linktrust.com Linkshare and Tradedoubler or Oddcast.com.
37. Don’t forget professional online groups! Some of the most popular include, Meetups, Boards of Trade, Chambers, online associations, local tech events, MindShare, YEO, YPO, AngelCap, Technet.org, SeptemberThird, Tedco, Mdhitech.
38. Develop a list of bloggers in your market who will carry your RSS
39. If you’re interested in text message marketing, look into Trumpia or other email/SMS marketing services
40. Would GeoIP tagging be useful for your organization?
41. Will using flash cookies/(Local) Shared Objects enhance your visitors’ experience?
Content:
42. What is your content strategy?
43. Content sources to review: Constant-Content, shopping.com, Associated Content, Affiliatesummit.com.
44. Consider other affiliate marketing or content generating ideas with partners, Syndicated content, sources for more compelling content to drive traffic and conversions and cross linking partnerships.
45. What is your multimedia strategy, and what applications do you use for web, email, thumbdrives, pdas, DVRs? (Photo, video, music, voice, radio and texts)
46. Put case studies, called “Success Stories,” on your website
47. Develop customer and partner testimonials
48. Investigate your top prospects for new partnerships. How can you improve old ones?
49. Which sites and email lists to follow for SEO, LPO, Webdev?
Marketing:
50. Marketing sites to work with: MarketingSherpa, MarketingExperiments, Makeuseof.com, Mashable, Marketingprofs.com, Digitalppoint, Webtalkforums, Webmaster Forum, Webmaster Forums Online, Warrior Forums, The V7, 5Star Affiliate Forum, MediaBistro
51. Marketing brainstorming — which tools are useful for your organization?
Conferences , communities, groups, profiles, games, comments, messaging, Calendars of events, News channel/ticker, Video archives, Classifieds, Search of site, Polls/Surveys , Ecards, secret shopper, gift certificates, Widget strategy for us and outside providers and users, iFrames of other sites to converge content, Special offers, Contests, Sweepstakes, Celebs backing site, athlete sponsorships, Gift/Wish list widget, Ad specialty trinkets, Print ads, Bookmarking site, Biz cards with special offers, Wikipedia listings, demographic questionnaires with incentives
52. How can you leverage webinars like Gotowebinar.com, for example? Other online events?
53. Are you following up by phone from web commerce forms that were abandoned before being completed by potential new customers?
Web development plans:
54. Consider: Layout, functionality, wire, framework, ontology, navigation, taxonomy, sitemap, UI, search and browse, administrator modules, control panels, APIs, Widgets, design database, timelines, approval processes and staff assignments
55. Check cross browser compatibility with Internet Explore 6, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, iPhone, etc, with varying speeds and technologies, and keep ping on network services
FAQs:
56. How can you dynamically deliver your site content for varying users and subscribers? Could they see a different home page, and could any components be similarly customized for disparate audiences.
57. In what manner are you deploying LAMP, PHP, Ajax, Flex, Ruby, Dojo, RSS, XML, server side includes, iframes? Other ?
58. Are there Truste/Thawte/Verisign/encrypted pieces of site?
59. What are your long term plans for hosting and bandwidth, network infrastructures?
60. Do you have backups, redundancy, monitoring, code repositories, version control?
61. What is your document testing methodology, functional, load, performance, stress, volume, security, usability, localization, data migration and automated tests?
62. Is the domain up to date? Are there ancillary domains for protection? Is there any other IP dev or protection?
63. Do you have control and backups of all your code and intellectual property, clear title? Do you have the ability to sublicense or reuse for other sites?
64. Look into Spam Assassin and SORBS lists.
65. PC Management: Backups (Acronis True Image/Carbonite/ BESR/Network Backup)
66. For remote access, visit http://www.zolved.com/remote_control or GoToMyPC
67. Do you have Virus/Firewall Control or ZoneAlarm?
68. What are your HR tools? Do you have stable HR, legal and accountantancy departments? New programmers? Establish employee reporting and to-do lists.
69. Do you need other customer communications? What other new documents or info have you developed with respect to your site since last time?
70. Integrate charity and investor logos/text.
Public Relations:
71. Develop a press plan: Clear messaging globally, special messages for each service and notable timely items, current newsworthy events.
72. Develop a list of reporters in your market who will spin your press releases or interview you
73. Develop a vision, processes and control; establish a narrative on marketing, presentation, perception, branding with ties to to-do list and weekly calls
74. Modern PR best practices: Make it clean and easy for consumers to do what they want, find and buy what they want, when they want, from anywhere, for any product or service
75. Plan your success in writing
76. Develop best practices for your team
77. Build a winning sales team
78. Pick pumped up people
79. Contact management
80. What additional documents do you have in your document portfolio about your company/site?
81. Create a flash or Powerpoint product presentation explaining your business to prospective clients
82. Update a PDF “One pager” explaining your business
83. Create flash tour storyboards, flash sites overall, and flash presentations
84. Do you need an investor presentation?
85. Look into a usability review for your website (Benevolabs.com, UserCentric.com, UserTesting, UserVoice)
Wow, thanks Molly! This is
Wow, thanks Molly! This is some powerful information and I appreciate you taking the time to share it all.