How to create a great website, pt 1: Introduction April 20

Building a great website takes passion. It also takes great copy, good design and a lot of time. These are all luxury items, so it would be wise to optimize the effort. We've put together a series of articles on this very topic. During the next five weeks, we'll tell you the whole story.

Edicy is a startup, a small and energetic company. Most of our customers are of the same size. Edicy itself is firtstly meant for small companies. That's why we'll talk about small business websites. Not that NGO's, government agencies and enterprises live on another planet. It's just that this advice here is not for those to swallow without chewing.

The themes and dates of the posts will be:

• April 20th: Introduction
  
• April 23rd: Gathering team
• April 30th: Writing content
• May 7th: Creating design
• July 14th: Building functionality
• July 21st: Increasing traffic

In a nutshell, creating a great website goes as follows:

• Build your site quickly, the details don't have to be perfect. In timely world, great is enough. Just get it done.
  
• Decide alone, don't gather a big team to distract your clear thinking. People never agree with each other anyway. Recruit only the best to give you great advice, do not share decision making. Democracy sucks in web creation.
• Content is king. Think like your customers, write simply and shortly. Be visual. A picture is worth a thousand words.
  
• Promote. Get it out in the wild once it's ready. If it's great, it tends to spread. But you still have to work hard. Without promotion no one knows how great it is. And there will always be loads of other great sites yearning for attention.
  
• Congratulations, your job is done. Or... is it? Sad news is that it will never be. Once your attention runs down, your site dies alone. A truly great sites needs updating, developing and caring, forever. But it's actually the fun part. No need to avoid it.