There are many ways to fail when launching a new website. Just as anything else in life, the Internet is a massive place and you are just a tiny speck on one of billions of radars.

The trouble starts when you, being so close to your own project, see your website as much more than it actually is. And I’m not only talking about finding a niche and all that fun stuff, but you have to take yourself and your project with a pinch of salt because that is exactly how the rest of the world will be taking it, too.

If salt is not your thing then you may just have to substitute it with a dash of failure because, perhaps unfortunately, the Internet is very salty indeed.

Being close to your project is not a bad thing – indeed you can be the driving force behind it and thrust it upon the bleary-eyed and unyielding world. But the measure of success comes from afar. You simply cannot march head-first into a new web venture with guns blazing and developers flanking your left and investors flanking your right; for a start, success comes, ninety-nine per cent of the time, over a long period of that thing we call time, after many sleepless nights.

However, a project often falls into disarray when certain procedures aren’t adhered to. I’m going to list five things here that I think are of such great importance that it could form part of a check-list by which to measure the success of many an online venture. I list them in no particular order and the list is by no means complete.

1. There’s no rush
   Really, there isn’t. If you’ve come up with a brilliant idea, a true light-bulb-ping moment, get it all noted down, research it and talk about it (a lot) with people in the know. They can advise you of what is out of scope, what might be better and what is so good or bad about your idea. Don’t rush to a cheap freelance developer and hope to get it done and be reaping the rewards by Friday.
2. Do a “soft launch” if you have to
   If you really want to get your project out there ASAP, there’s usually no problem with doing what the industry dubs a “soft launch”. That is, launch your project warts-and-all and hope to gather a decent enough following to continue after you update to full-launch mode. A soft launch doesn’t just mean slapping a ‘beta’ tag next to your logo, it means carefully informing users what’s going on and what might change. It is also a great opportunity to gather feedback from Joe Public. Remember that openness is so sacred on the Internet that if you don’t inform people that you intend to start charging, you may face a backlash as soon as you flip that big ol’ switch.
3. Don’t hope for an instant crop from a single seed
   As I’ve already alluded to above, it’s so important to be careful not to hope for too much from your project. I’m really not trying to put a downer on any project, I completely believe that more Facebooks and more Googles are hidden in the back of peoples’ minds in random exotic places around the world. I just think that keeping a cool and level head, working really hard and speaking a lot with people who know what they are talking about is much more successful than blind hope. They don’t talk about crops with regard to success for nothing; a crop takes time to grow and, often, people can only afford the time, money and effort to start that crop with one tiny-weeny seed.
4. Don’t panic when something goes wrong
   Things do go wrong, FACT. It’s not always one person’s fault and it can, almost always, be fixed. But the most important part, before fixing what’s broken, is to not panic. Remember, you are close to the project so it’s difficult to see it from a more reasonable, and indeed a more real perspective. Seek help, calm down and have a tête à tête with your developers, designers and anybody else involved. Not only are you more likely to get the problem fixed, but you will probably get it done a lot more quickly than if you ran around like a headless chicken first. If a project completely falls over, you don’t need to follow it like a sack of potatoes; cool it to the extent that you could shock an ice cube, roast your chicken and potatoes with your pinch of salt, then get things sorted. It’s also worth noting that, if you use an agency, they will have factored-in (I hate that phrase) some contingency time in case of such an event.
5. Enjoy the process!
   It’s one thing to be good at it. It’s a completely different thing to enjoy it, too! If you enjoy the whole process, you will find that you are able to handle a lot more problems head on, with fingernails intact. Things run so much more seamlessly if you choose people who you like working with to help build your project into something important. Gifted with the choice between a person/people/agency who are very good at what they do, but are lacking in the personality department, and another person/agency who aren’t as good but can get the job done and are fun, engaging, interactive and proactive with you then, hands down, the latter is the better choice.

I’ve tried not to be too negative in my five points up there. I think that the Internet would be such a cleaner and more successful place if people just stop falling over each other trying to find the next big thing and just relax, sit back and take things one step at a time! And if things don’t go according to plan, pick up the pieces and keep going with your head stuck firmly on your rigid shoulders.

My boss (@elliott_king) told me something today that resonates well with this article. He said, “don’t worry if there’s something that really can’t be done, or that goes wrong; there’s always a work-around”.

Indeed.

Lets ask a few people.

Joe Bloggs – Programmer Extraordinaire
Q: What do you think makes a good web designer?
A: A good web designer is one who makes websites simple, semantic, structured properly and without lots of frilly bits. None of the bells and whistles. Brains above brawn.

Hmm. Interesting.

Jane Globs – ABC Corporate Company Limited
Q: What do you think makes a good web designer?
A: Aah, that’s easy. They must listen to our brief exactly. We know all about web design. We know how to speak to our audience on all other media – why not web design? In fact, a good web designer is one who doesn’t design at all. They should take our design and build it. Yes. A good web designer just listens and gets the job done. On time of course.

Indeed.

John Smith – Little Small Tiny Business Shop
Q: What do you think makes a good web designer?
A: I don’t really know. I’m scared of web designers. I like to have as much control over it as possible. They must design a good website that speaks to my potential customers. Or maybe my current customers. Can they do that? I don’t really know. But a good web designer does need to be cheap. None of this way-too-many-grand lark.

Expected, no?

Sam Simms – Go-Between Web Design Wannabe Outsource Company
Q: What do you think makes a good web designer?
A: A good web designer not only has to make my clients happy, but me too. I must like their work before I decide that my client will like it.

Oh dear.

Jack Frost – Web Design 1-2-3
Q: What do you think makes a good web designer?
A: A good web designer is one who uses trends to highlight non-specific parts of a web page. They must design unique and effective sites that speak to the proposed audience and they must be on time and on budget when they do.

I hear a sigh.

Mr. Bhigschott – Public-Funded Brilliance Limited
Q: What do you think makes a good web designer?
A: Lots of AJAX. Cool animations. Trendy. Trendy. Trendy. Shiny logos, reflections and hand-drawn typography. AJAX some more. Rounded corners and whatever else our focus group tells us.

—

So what makes a good web designer? Well, it depends on who you ask.

What’s even more startling, exciting and daunting is the fact that it will all change again in six-to-twelve months.

This template is for any website that uses a lot of text. The point of it is to display text in a beautiful and simple way, with clean key lines and crisp edges.

I’ve worked hard to create a fully-legible website with little clutter and limited dark space.

You will also find one or two neat little features, such as the CSS drop-down navigation and the JavaScript ‘Feeds’ menu.

Feel free to download and customise as freely as you like; the template is free and you don’t have to give me credit for the design. Please don’t sell it, though, because that’s not fair.

Live Preview or Download Now

It was almost a year ago that I started working for MintTwist, a web design company in London. My role when I started was to code up websites that were designed by the lead designer and lend a hand to any design odd-jobs that needed doing.

As the year has progressed I have been entrusted with more and more responsibilities and have since been given my own projects to manage. A part of that is meeting and speaking on the phone with clients. For anybody who isn’t used to dealing with people in a business environment this can be a very unnerving situation.

There are two distinct environments in which I must speak to a client: over the phone and in a meeting. Some meetings are more formal than others but the environment is more or less the same. Personally, I find speaking on the phone a lot more difficult than speaking in person. For a start, you cannot gauge a client’s thoughts nearly as effectively over the phone as you can face-to-face.

Speaking over the phone initiates in me the fight-or-flight mechanism, I think. That is, I panic, sweat profusely and stutter and trip over my words. The most annoying part of all of that is that I know I have the ability to speak with professionalism and panache; I just can’t seem to bring myself to let it through.

You see, I have an innate fear that I am not adequate [cue the violins]. I don’t mean I have a personal flaw of feeling inferior. I just mean that, I’m forever worried that I simply am not as professional and knowledgeable as the person on the other end of the line expects me to be. They may criticise the new website I have just sent them but the fact is that a lot of the time they are simply looking for direction. They are eager to hear what I think about what they think!

But the panic and fear that I don’t know what I’m talking about grips my throat and getting the professional opinion past my lips is a nightmare. As a result, the client is left with the view that the company I work for don’t know what they are talking about and that they will take their business elsewhere next time. And that’s where the vicious circle begins because with that in mind when I’m on the phone I panic more and more! Nightmare!

The other environment, the meeting, is a different ball game altogether. I find this a lot easier than speaking on the phone, mostly because it is so easy to take a client at face value in relation to what they say. They make it easier for you because what they say is backed up (or flat-out denied) by their facial expressions, their physical actions and their up-front appearance.

Not only that, but meeting somebody in person who is generally cool, easy-going and happy can make you feel at ease. I understand that this is my role, too. I need to convey a façade that is cool and professional; that is made a lot easier when it is reciprocated at the client’s side. This is a good circle. It’s not so vicious.

The trouble starts when the client is too friendly; they speak about things that are not related to the matter at hand. This makes me feel too comfortable and I start to panic that if I relax too much I’ll lose my cool and make some error or faux pas that sticks with the client and causes a tension from that moment onwards. Cue the sweating, panic and need for large amounts of re-hydration!

Over the course of the past twelve months, I haven’t totally got a hold over my anxieties when it comes to speaking with clients, especially over the phone. However, I think that structure is important when it comes to a business conversion. For example, making a few notes before making a phone call can help greatly when it comes to clients’ questions. It helps if you are mentally akin to the clients because you will have an idea of the sort of questions they might ask. Therefore, you are less likely to be taken off guard by a question you might need to think about.

And in essence, that’s all the panic stems from. The fact that you need to think on the spot puts pressure on your nerves and that’s the precise moment you lose your grip on the conversation. If you don’t know the answer to a question the client asks, the key, I believe, is to just be honest. Tell the client you will get back to them because you need to discuss the matter with your colleagues. Bluffing your way through the conversation not only leaves the client unconvinced, but it also means that you, as a designer looking for some kind of critique from the client, get very little out of the conversation. The result: the client doesn’t get what they want and either asks the question again later or simply takes their business elsewhere in the future.

Keeping your cool is important. It makes the client feel at ease and conveys the image, well, the fact that you know what you are talking about. Once you’ve had a few conversations like that, where you can answer each question concisely and effectively, your confidence in yourself and your professionalism will increase and you will be entrusted with more and more responsibilities within your company.

An ambitious challenge if ever there was one. I set myself the task of re-creating the BBC News Web site.

My first point would be that I don’t want to create something that is completely different. I just wanted to do something that, had I been asked to re-create the site, would make an impression.

The BBC News Web site is one of the most important sites in the country and indeed the World. Being given the task of re-designing such an important Web site is not something that I could have done without unenviable panic first!

But, it’s no secret that when the BBC re-vamped the News Web site, there were just as many people who didn’t like it as there were who did. I, however, was torn.

I hated the fact that they introduced two mastheads for one, because it pushed way too much content below the fold. But that’s obviously not going to change as it is part of a wider design for the entire network of BBC sites, so I’ve made my peace with it.

Besides a few other niggling little points, such as the busy mid-section, I love how clean and more effective it is now compared with the older version.

With my design, I aimed to put a couple of improvements onto that. I’ve taken most of the ideas from the current design and simply put it in a slightly different way. A lot is the same; too radical a change would certainly upset the millions of people who visit the site.

Later I’ll be posting a point-by-point explanation of my design but, for now, I just want to push it out there and see what people think.

Do you like it? Do you hate it? Most importantly, what would YOU do to improve my design, or the BBC’s current design?

Click the image above to view the full-sized visual.

Later, I’ll also be posting the PSD and Fireworks PNG so people can take it away and edit it the way they’d like. Maybe you’ve made one already… Care to post it here? I’d love to see other ideas too!