ASIS Chapter Internet Development - Planning and Preparation
By: Steve Duell
Website Committee Chairman - Columbia River Chapter #064
Website Committee Member - San Francisco Bay Area Chapter #006
Introduction
This document is intended to provide an action plan for the development of your ASIS Chapter website. This action plan is modeled on two successful ASIS Chapter websites and the experience gained from setting up these websites. Since one of the websites was for a large Chapter and the other one was for a small Chapter, this document will attempt to define a median that should give large Chapters a firm foundation while providing basic information in such a way that smaller Chapters can easily discard those aspects that will not apply to them.
Developing a Chapter website is a coordinated event and maintaining it requires continued cooperation if the website is to remain a viable tool for the Chapter. "Cobwebs", or websites that never change, do not offer much in the way of use to local members and the web site will soon lose its popularity if it is allowed to stagnate.
There are many decisions to be made about what type of website you are going to offer and whether or not you will be able to keep up with its maintenance. There will be cost factors both for and against the website. And you will need to make potentially hard choices over who will be responsible for the maintenance.
Action Steps
- Determine the goals of the website
- Create a Chapter website committee
- Determine your website budget
- Gather website content
- Secure an ISP account
- Develop the website
- Refine the website
- Test the website
- Release the website
- Maintain the website
- Determine the goals of the website
The first step in any Chapter website is determining exactly what it is that you want your website to do for your Chapter. If you are planning to start off small and then expand in the immediate future, it is a good idea to list all of the intended goals right from the beginning and then split them up into different phases of website development. Having clearly defined goals helps to keep things in perspective and to keep you focused during the website's development.
Create a Chapter website committee
Your website committee should be comprised of no less than 2 active members and no more than 4. It is very important to select members for this committee who are well-informed about the Chapter's activities and who also have access to the Internet. Ideally, all website committee members should be comfortable with using the Internet and at least one member should have enough knowledge in web development concepts to understand what is going on with the website.
You will want to have at least 2 active members so that there is a backup person to continue the process should something happen to the original person. You will not want to have more than 4 members because this will make it too hard to reach a consensus. It is recommended that either the Treasurer or the Hospitality Chairman also be on the Website committee if the website will be used for e-commerce transactions.
You will want to be sure to choose "active" members who are very well informed about what is happening within the Chapter. These should be members who attend all of the meetings and special events. They should be well-informed as to what is happening within the Chapter so that they can convey this information through the website.
Determine your website budget
There are going to be costs associated with the website and they should not be allowed to overwhelm your Chapter's budget. Creating and sticking to a budget will also allow you to begin monitoring the value that you are receiving from your website investment. A front-loaded budget can handle the initial development costs and then the maintenance costs afterwards.
Some of the costs that you may expect to incur in the beginning include:
- The domain name registration.
- ISP setup fees.
- Web development costs.
- Possibly even custom artwork.
Recurring costs will include:
- Web hosting.
- Annual re-registration of the domain name.
- Regular maintenance of the website's content.
Occasional costs will include:
- Additional website feature development.
- Annual transition to a new Chapter administration.
- Special event promotions.
Unlike many types of investments, the return on your website investment will not be as much monetary (although it can be) as it is the value that your local members are able to get from it. Making the adjustment to unconsciously turning to the website first for up-to-date Chapter information takes time to develop and it may take up to a year before your members really begin to visit the website with regular frequency. Therefore, it is not really fair to judge the website's value until members have had a chance to become comfortable with it.
Gather website content
Gathering the website content to be used should be based on your website goals. The website committee members should filter through the gathered information and only provide the web developer with the content that you intend to use. Providing partial or inaccurate information will damage the website's credibility and make it very difficult for your members to trust it in the future.
For the majority of your website content, the information will be relatively easy to obtain and will be textual in nature. However, you should also gather custom artwork or other types of file downloads that are going to be used. You can greatly reduce the website's development time and costs by providing all necessary content beforehand.
Secure an Internet Service Provider (ISP) account
Your choice of ISP will be a major determining factor in the costs of the development and the power that your website will be able to provide. It may also limit the types of development software that you can use for creating your website. Too much web server power is a waste and not enough will prevent you from being successful.
It is recommended that you not actually initiate the ISP account until at least half of the website is ready for deployment. There are two reasons for this; one because it will not be needed before then and two, because you will want to make the beta version available online for review and testing purposes.
Develop the website
Armed with all of the necessary tools and content necessary for the website, the web developer may now begin to assemble the website and prepare it for deployment and testing. During the development process, the website committee should constantly monitor the website to make sure that it is being developed in a way that meets any deadlines and which also achieves the Chapter's goals.
Refine the website
Inevitably during the website's development, it will be discovered that there are some things that just don't seem to work out in real life as well as was hoped for in the planning stages. Whether it is the choice of colors, the methodologies used to achieve a specific goal, or the way that certain things are phrased, there are going to be changes and deviations from the original design plans and these problems should be worked out before releasing the website to the rest of the membership.
Test the website
Naturally, when the website is officially released all aspects of the website should be fully tested and completely functional. To perform a more complete test, the website should be accessed by as wide a variety of computers and visitor skill levels as possible. Each component of the website should be fully tested including any options used to recover from user errors.
Not only should the website be tested for actual functionality, it should also be tested for usability. The website should be intuitive to use from a visitor's perspective and there should be sufficient clues or online help to assist visitors with using the website correctly. Testing doesn't just mean that the web pages will work; it also means that visitors will understand how to use the website.
Release the website
Releasing, otherwise known as deploying or publishing the website, should only be performed when the website has successfully passed all tests and the Chapter is ready to begin with the actual operation of the website. This phase includes any final configuration adjustments and removing the security protection from the publicly accessible areas that had been used to hide the website
Maintain the website
Maintaining your website will depend on the type of maintenance that needs to be performed and the sense of urgency. For instance, changing the background color of your web pages is a low priority that can be applied when convenient. However, a change to the date of your next Chapter meeting is something that needs to be updated as quickly as possible.
Performing the maintenance on your website will depend on what needs to be done and whether or not you have a volunteer to perform the maintenance. If the required maintenance is something that can be performed by your volunteer, then it will usually save your budget to utilize their contribution. If the maintenance is beyond the skill level of your volunteer, then you will need to turn to a professional and request that they walk your volunteer through the process or else perform the work and provide you with the documentation.
It is recommended that you do not "farm out" the website maintenance to too many different consultants. The fewer vendors that know about the internal workings of your website, the more secure it will remain. Along those lines, this same reasoning should also be applied to the number of Chapter volunteers that you use to perform the minor maintenance.
Adaptability
It is not possible or reasonable to expect to please all members and inevitably the Chapter will need to make modifications to the website. These adaptations may involve choosing different buzzwords used in referring to website features (ex. Council vs. Chapter Officers, Placement vs. Job Offers, etc), the website's appearance (ex. color choices, fonts, graphics, etc.), adding or removing features as they are needed (ex. online polls, special event promotions, etc.), and other similar situations. Changing the website to meet your Chapter's changing needs should not be an indication of your website's success, but rather taken in stride as a natural course of events.
Summary
Following the steps described above, you should be able to readily organize the development of your Chapter website. As is the case in almost everything, the more that you plan out your website, the better and stronger it will be.
This document has briefly outlined many of the concerns and considerations that a Chapter should think about when planning their Chapter website. Although not all potential risks and problems have been discussed here, the content discussed within should serve as a good foundation for developing guidelines towards a standardized approach for developing ASIS Chapter web sites.
