3. Design: separate information into page-sized chunks; connect
pages along routes of use and users thinking; provide information, context, and
navigation cues; create a consistent look and feel.
4. Implementation: create an extendible directory and file
structure; use HTML tools where helpful; use templates for supporting consistent
look and feel; check implementation in various browsers.
5. Promotion: target publicity releases for general Web audiences,
potential users, and current users; follow online community norms and practices;
innovatively connect with users to meet their needs.
6. Innovation: continuously and creatively work for improvement
to meet user's needs; use testing, evaluation, and focus groups to shift and change
web's content as user's needs changes.
Discussion
Planning: The process of choosing among competing opportunities
for communication, so that, overall goals for the web can be set. These goals include
anticipating and deciding on targets for the audience, purpose, and objectives for
the information. Planning is also done for domain information through a process
of defining and specifying the supporting information that must be collected, how
it will be collected, and how the information will be updated. A web planner anticipates
the skills called for the web specification as well as the skills needed for constructing
particular parts of a web. If a specification for a design calls for using a forms
interface (a feature supported by HTML), for example, the web planner must identify
the need for web implementers to have these skills. The web planner also anticipates
other resources needed to support the operation and development of the web. If user
access statistics will be gathered, for example, the plan for the web must account
for the need to procure and install a web statistics program.
Analysis . A process of gathering and comparing information
about the web and its operation in order to improve the web's overall quality. An
important operation is one in which a web analyst examines information gathered
about the audience for its relevance to some other elements or processes in web
development. Information about the audience's level of technical interest can have
a great deal of impact on what information should be provided to a user about a
particular product or topic, for example. Similarly, analyzing the web's purpose
in light of other new developments, such as the contents of a competitor's web,
must be an ongoing process. An analyst weighs alternatives and gathers information
to help with a decision in the other processes of planning, design, implementation,
or development.
Design . The process by which a web designer, working within
the web's specification, makes decisions about how a web's actual components should
be constructed. This process involves taking into account the web's purpose, audience,
objective, and domain information. A good designer knows how to achieve the effects
called for by the specification in the most flexible, efficient, and elegant way.
Because it relies so heavily on the other processes and elements in web development,
however, the design process is not more important than any of the others, but it
requires a thorough grounding in implementation possibilities as well as knowledge
about how particular web structures affect an audience.
Implementation . The process of actually building the web
using Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML or improvements on it). The implementation
process is perhaps most like software development because it involves using a specific
syntax for encoding web structures in a formal language in computer files. Although
automated tools and technology are available to help with the construction of HTML
documents, a thorough grounding in HTML as well as an awareness of how designs can
best be implemented in HTML enriches the web implementer's expertise.
Promotion . The process of handling all the public-relations
issues of a web. These include making the existence of a web known to on-line communities
through publicity, as well as forming business or other information relationships
with other webs. Promotion might involve using specific marketing strategies or
creating business models.
Innovation . The process of making sure that the other development
processes continue and improve. This includes monitoring technologies as well as
employing new technology for new innovations that might be appropriate for the web,
as well as finding creative or unique ways to improve the elements of the web or
engage the web's audience in its success. Innovation also involves seeking to continuously
improve the usability and quality of the web and exceed user expectations.
Although methodology outlined here for developing a web won't work
flawlessly in all situations, it can serve as a basis for looking at many issues
of web development. The actual processes and elements used in web development for
any particular project might be a variation on these. Being aware of what elements
and processes can be involved in web development is the key; developers, once aware
of what they might face, can most flexibly grow successful webs.
In today's scenario outsourcing information technology has created a lot of opportunities
in the field of web development as well as in software development in India. The
need is to follow an optimized approach to accomplish the outsourcing requirement.
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