You have finally decided to give your business an online presence. You are not sure if you need a web company or if you can just get one of those software packages. Before you decide you should know there is more to your online presence than just putting a website up on the internet. You want to make sure it helps grow your business. For your website to be a successful business tool it must pass through five phases of development. It doesn’t matter if these phases are carried out by an individual developer or a team. What is important is that none of these steps be overlooked in taking a project to completion. So before you hire your nephew, who “seems” to know something about the web ,to put up your site consider whether or not he has the following expertise.

1. Strategist – The strategist is the tactician of the team. He determines what kind of approach to take and what things to consider first before starting the design process. Strategists are important because they can save you time and money as they set and help the team meet deadline, create the overall message, and target the right audience for your website.
2. Designer – The designer implements the strategist’s visions. The designer is the one that provides a website interface for the user. The designer must see to it that the design is pleasant and the content is well delivered to the target audience. The designer usually works on the physical lay-out of the website such as the images, graphics and animations (if needed).
3. Developer – The developers are the one in-charge of the functionality and the additional features of the website. The developer’s tasks involve providing the necessary plug-ins, widgets, modules, forums and different tools to improve the usability and performance of the site. The developer usually creates codes that will integrate social marketing or networking site to the website or code a program to optimize the website for the search engines.
4. User – The user decides the fate of the website. When developing a website, the team must always put themselves in the place of the users. The team may think that they have the best strategy, design an “eye-candy” site or developed a ground-breaking widget, but if it doesn’t appeal to the user, then it is a waste of time and effort. It is a good practice to always remember that the website is being built for the user’s purpose and not for your own satisfaction.
5. Marketer – The marketer is the strategist’s partner. The two must always collaborate on their plans of the site. The marketer’s works usually starts when the site is live and running. The marketer is the driving force after all the phases or the roles performed their tasks. He continues the SEO plans, links the site, improves the traffic, creates landing pages or in short – drives traffic to the site.

Each role must be performed skillfully to move a project forward through to the next stage. If the strategist comes up with a weak strategy then the designer will come up with a design based on that strategy and obviously it will be a faulty design. If the marketer fails to drive traffic to the site then no matter how well the other phases were carried out, it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack.