Customer Reviews

Website Owner's Manual

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Paul Boag's "website owner's manual" is a resource for everyone on a website project team. In it, he champions a refreshingly straight forward approach to planning and designing, building and marketing, and owning and maintaining websites.

According to Boag in a recent article on [...], successful websites begin with business objectives, calls to action and a clear idea of user tasks. What impressed me most is how perfect the concepts in this "owner's manual" are for the business owner considering a new website or website redesign, maybe for the first time.

The logical "road map" presented here for managing a successful website project can painlessly add value to any project when team members, especially stake holders and managers are exposed to it before a project begins. I consider the first 2 chapters on planning a "must read" for all prospective website owners.

The "website owner's manual" makes a great recommendation for new clients or even a gift to help them prepare for a successful website project.

Your website can have a dramatic impact on your sales. If your website is working well, your sales can grow but, if not, your site might just be a waste of time and money. Unfortunately, many people who are responsible for the development of their organization's website don't understand the site development process. They also may not understand their role in the process and they often try to delegate all of the work to their web designer. While the designer/developer is certainly responsible for much of the work, the website owner has a number of responsibilities and must be actively involved in the process. Without the owner's active participation in the creation of a new website the effectiveness of the new site is sure to be compromised.

But how do you know all the things you need to do? A new book titled Website Owner's Manual: The Secret to a Successful Website has a lot of the answers. The first chapter provides an overview of the various roles that a website owner needs to play during the development process. According to author Paul Boag these include:
* Visionary
* Advocate
* Evangelist
* Content guardian
* Project coordinator
* Referee

He touches on the tasks the website owner must undertake as part of each role and how to work with others on the website team.
In the second chapter, which is on planning, the author discusses goal-setting at various levels including organizational objectives, website objectives and web project objectives. Author Boag points out the importance of involving the various website stakeholders in the planning process. He also recommends including the web designer in the process of shaping your website vision. I heartily endorse this recommendation. A good web designer will be able to contribute to this process in ways you might not expect. If you don't include the designer early in the process you may close off some valuable options without realizing it. And having the designer on board early ensures that they have a good understanding of your goals and you organization's culture.

Part of the planning process, author Boag points out, should include detailed discussions with your various stakeholders. This not only helps ensure that the site will fulfill all the needs of your organization but also provides a political benefit.
In this chapter on planning, the author also provides advice on reviewing your competition's websites to learn how to improve your own site. Other useful information includes advice on evaluating your existing site such as how to determine what your current visitors are doing on your site and whether they are getting what they need. Links are provided to websites that can help you to understand and critique your site's performance in a variety of areas.

Discussion of the planning process continues in the next chapter, The Perfect Team, which Boag begins by discussing the importance of creating a written document outlining the scope of work. In my experience, this is an important step which most businesses fail to address adequately. This part of the chapter discusses what should be included in the project brief and why. Among the reasons Boag lists for writing a project brief are the following:
* Limits scope creep (in which projects drag on for weeks and months as new features continue to be added)
* Improves budget planning
* Clearly defines tasks--who is responsible for what
* Specifies delivery dates and deliverables--without a clear list of deliverables you and your web designer may not agree on when the website is done!

Chapter 3 also outlines the four major categories of information that the author recommends including in a project brief:
* Context--who is the target audience, some background about your organization, your goals, and your competition
* Requirements--what the website needs to do in order for your web designer to successfully address your needs
* Deliverables--the specific web pages, images, media, documents and other work products or services that the development team must produce
* Information about the developer

And, finally, Chapter 3 provides information on how to interview and evaluate web designers.
Chapter 4 discusses design and how to manage the design process. It also touches on some key design concepts, particularly as they apply to the web. Design can be tricky as certain aspects of it are very subjective. However, the author does a good job of separating out which portions are subjective and which portions are not. For example, one person may like a certain color palette while another doesn't. You can never satisfy everyone with your choice of colors. But you can ensure that the colors chosen provide good contrast for reading text, for example. You can make sure that your high priority marketing campaigns are prominently featured on the relevant pages. These sorts of things are part of the design process and objective criteria can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the design with respect to those needs. Similarly, the design can be tested on sample users and feedback can be obtained. And a small sampling, as few as five users, can be very valuable. Later in the book the author provides good information on how to conduct usability tests.

Chapter 5 delves into the critical task of creating content for your website. This is another area where many website owners fall down. Often, business owners aren't sure what to say or how to say it. Perhaps, they're not good at writing or just don't have the time. If any of these applies to your organization, it's essential to find a way to address the problem because having good content is essential for your website's success. The chapter includes information on what to include, how to organize your content, and how to structure it for the web. (The good news is that one of Boag's mantras is "reduce or remove" by which he means that content written for a website should be brief and concise.)
Ensuing chapters cover the following topics, among others:
* ensuring that your website is easily usable
* ensuring accessibility to the widest range of website visitors
* content management systems (CMS) which allow you to update your website on your own (without help from your web designer or webmaster)
* understanding technical issues like hosting and domain names
* search engine optimization (SEO) -- being found in Google and other search engines

The author goes into some detail in each of these areas but I won't elaborate here except with a brief summary of some of his comments on content management systems. CMSs are very popular now for a variety of reasons:
* they allow anyone with basic computer skills to update a website
* updates can typically be made more quickly than when the process needs to be outsourced
* costs are reduced because fewer technical experts are needed
But CMSs also have a downside and author Boag helpfully brings these to our attention; these include:
* the cost of training (using a CMS is easier than writing HTML but it does require the user to learn some new software and new procedures)
* the affect on quality--without supervision by the proper people and without the help of a writer/editor the quality of the site's content may suffer
* the affect on functionality--by their design, CMSs require things to be done in certain ways; sometimes these limitations can be onerous, particularly if the right CMS is not selected for your needs

Author Paul Boag is clearly a veteran of many website development projects and his experience shows in his advice. Throughout the book his advice is grounded in the real world and is practical. The book is very readable and covers the essentials for any website owner planning a website or redesign. I heartily recommend this book to organizations contemplating a new site or redesign. Reading the book and following its advice will go a long way toward ensuring the success of your new site.
For more information, see the book's web page: [...]

David Salahi
[...]

Though this isn't the most polished book (more the editor and publisher's fault than the author's), it packs a lot of information into easily-digestible portions. I highly recommend it to anyone working with a web designer to develop a site, or whose job it is to grow and maintain a site. For designers and developers, reading this book can improve your understanding of and communication with clients.

In contrast to most web books, this guide takes the perspective of the owner, rather than the developer. As a developer myself, it is worth reading to get that different perspective. I am giving copies of this book to my clients. It will really help them.

Since the development of HTML there have been innumerable guides to web development aimed at teaching the technical skills to construct an esthetically pleasing website. But little has been said, up until now about constructing and maintaining a website congruent with the individual's or organization's goals whether they be political influence, increased sales, or establishing communication with a user community. This excellent and reasonably compact (260 pages) guide is directed at the individual responsible for establishing and building community around a website that meets the owner's strategic goals, whether they will develop the skills to design that site within the organization itself, or will contract with appropriately skilled individuals. The issues addressed here are definitely strategic and project oriented, not Rich Interaction Tools, AJAX, or CMS-based. The author draws on significant advisory experience in enabling organizations to meet their business goals or strategic intentions for a site, in forming a vision for the site, selecting a design consultant, establishing readership and search metrics, setting cost goals, and most importantly in creating engaging sites that satisfy the organization's need.

Each phase of website development is explored from the point of view of the client individual or organization, whether it is establishing strategic goals to be met by the site, preparing a brief for the designer, making design review decisions based upon defined objectives rather than individual taste, interacting with Search Engine Optimization consultants, etc. The aim of this excellent guide is that the individual or group charged with developing an organization's website and establishing a community of users properly meets the business needs or strategic goals for which that website is constructed. Technical experts inside or outside of the organization can meet the goals of the organization once the vision and goals have been established and an appropriate mode of interaction has been established.

--Ira Laefsky
MSE/MBA IT Consultant Formerly Senior Staff Member of Arthur D. Little, Inc. and DIGITAL

This book is helpful for new website owners, but the quality is not great. The author's chatty manner makes it an easy read, but the grammar and style can be distracting.

It is best used by small business owners and not necessarily for web designers.

This is an ambitious book, but I think it falls short of the mark in virtually every respect.

First of all, aesthetically it is a wreck. I think that a big part of putting up a website is design, and this book isn't going to inspire anyone to good design.

Furthermore, a lot of the specific technical advice doesn't make sense. In a chapter about choosing a CMS, for example, the author makes prominent mention of software for a discussion board. While it's fine software, it's not a CMS and looking into it would waste a lot of the reader's time.

I suggest you keep looking, or just read more online. This book isn't the one.

I've been listening to Paul for Years its great to have his great advice in one reference!!!! Thanks for writing this book Paul, I'll be giving it to all my clients.