A Direct Marketing Agency - Helping Brands Acquire and Retain Customers

I love spiders. They are quiet and patient. They scare the hell out of some people. They are exceptionally comfortable on the web.

They remind me of myself - except for the quiet part.

Spiders teach us a lesson in good Web project management. The processes they follow when building their webs are (I imagine), much the same as a successful Web project. Here is what I mean.

There are essentially six (and arguably seven) steps to the basic Web development process. They are as follows.

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• Analysis
• Project Definition
• Design & Development
• Content Creation
• Coding
• Test & Launch
• Promotion (the bastard child)

Analysis. The first step in Web slinging is to determine what we are going to catch. Sure, bugs (customers) is the obvious answer, but which ones. There is a remarkable difference between a web designed to catch flies, and a web designed to catch grasshoppers. Defining our audience is a crucial step.

Project Definition. During this phase, figure out what exactly we are going to build. Is it a Web that will require us to monitor it constantly? Is it one that will simply be a home? The idea is to outline what we are building and how it will function.

Design & Development. For the spider, instinct takes over at this point. They inherently know how their web will look. We, however, need to use some very basic tools. These are the sitemap, the creative (Photoshop) document, and the wireframe. It is an amateur mistake to start building immediately after figuring out the project definition.

Conversely, some developers put too much emphasis on creative, allowing it to eat up the budget until all that is left for the rest of the process is a dried out husk. Design is as much about planning as it is about how something will look.

Content Creation. This is where the real work happens. In my world, as in the spider's, the content creation goes hand-in-hand with the coding. A spider is putting together the threads and intersections as one process. In the human world, content can be created at the same time the coding is being completed. It allows the designers, writers, and coders (assuming they are different people), to work in tandem. Each role is boosted by the others', while none are entirely dependent on the others.

Testing & Launch. Spiders have it easy. All they have to do to test and launch their web site is to sit back and watch. However, their concerns are the same. If holes form, or it turns out they are in a different "market", they can make adjustments. As humans, we do this as well. It is just that our lunch is directly dependent upon a test's success.

Promotion. For most spiders, promotion is a bad thing. The last thing they want is for their site to be visible. As humans, however, it is vital. Dyersville is a myth. I've been there, and it wasn't because they built a baseball field. If you build a Web site, it isn't enough to let it sit. It is much more important to be sure it sparkles in the morning dew.

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The final note here is that this process is not linear. It is not a waterfall where one step happens before another. Instead, it is cyclical. You may design one piece of the site while still doing analysis on another part. As changes happen and new hurdles and opportunities present themselves, it helps to fall back on a previous step and reevaluate. Eventually, you will get that juicy catch upon which you can feed for a week.