• Figure out what the focus of the website will be.
• What specific features do you want in the website.
• Create a list of sections for your website and give them a hierarchy of importance.
• Write out your content and finalize it.
• Find a style / look that meets your website’s and your industry’s requirements.
• Build the website.
• Evaluate the website and make the required changes / updates.
• Go live – register a domain, find a host, upload the website.

1. THE FOCUS OF THE WEBSITE

This is the first thing you want to define clearly before any other step is taken. You need to decide what the main purpose of the website is – what you want to focus on in terms of a subject.

It is important that you define this step as clearly as possible because a website’s focus has a major impact on the whole project; this is the ‘foundation’ of the site.

For example:

• A web store.
• Information hub for established clients.
• Branding website.

2. SPECIFIC WEBSITE FEATURES

This builds off of the first step, where now you look at actual features that you need to implement. For example:

• A shopping cart for an online store
• A password protected section of the website

Again, the more detail the better.

3. MAP OUT THE MAJOR SECTIONS OF THE WEBSITE

With the first two steps completed, you’re ready to actually start mapping out the major sections of the website; drawing out quick diagrams of the website is a useful way of doing this.

A diagram can easily show the hierarchy of a website and how the various sections are related to each other.

4. WRITE OUT YOUR FINAL CONTENT

This part is usually left to the end … then people wonder why they have to go back and rethink the structure of the site.

All websites are driven by content; it’s the content that makes a site effective and successful. As such, this part of the process is arguably the most important, so you need to pay attention to it.

5. FIND A STYLE / LOOK FOR THE WEBSITE

At this stage of the process, you are ready to start looking at the visual aspect of the site – the design. You have a few options:

• Hire a graphic designer / web designer
• Come up with your own design – I’m assuming you have some artistic and design experience.
• Buy yourself a website template and save time and money.

6. BUILD THE WEBSITE

Yes, I know it seems impossible but you can finally start building the actual site at this point!

With the above questions answered and steps completed, you’ll find the process of building the website (actually writing out the code,) is much easier and you will have reduced the chance of having to go back and redo things.

7. EVALUATE THE WEBSITE, MAKE THE REQUIRED CHANGES / UPDATES

Once you’ve built the website, you should walk away from it for a day or two. This will allow you to come back and evaluate it with fresh eyes. It might also be a good idea to get someone who has not worked on the site, to take a look as well.

Here are some of the things you should be looking for:

• Clean easy to update design/structure.
• Good usability in the design – and all that implies.
• Fast loading ‘light’ pages.
• Intelligent use of technology – using Flash when it makes sense not because you want a ‘cool’ intro!
• The website’s ability to convey the meaning/message of the website quickly if not instantly.

8. GO LIVE – REGISTER A DOMAIN, FIND A HOST, UPLOAD THE WEBSITE.

If you’ve passed steps 1 to 7, you know you’re ready to show the world the website. All that is left to do is go live:

• Register a domain
• Find a hosting company
• Upload the website

NOTE: You could actually register the domain and find a hosting company after you’ve completed the first 4 steps. Sometimes it makes sense to register your domain name before you design the website; this is because you may want to integrate the domain name into the design.

CONCLUSION

If you follow these steps, and not let pressures from your clients (or anything else) sway you, you’ll find yourself working more quickly and under less stress, while delivering a better website for your client – everyone wins.

Thanks!

Stefan Mischook

From http://www.killersites.com/articles_2005/techniques/theEightStepsOfWebDesign.jsp

(this is from wikipedia) A role as an entrepreneur in residence (EIR) with a venture fund is a very coveted role for many entrepreuneurs. The role of an EIR varies from fund to fund (and entrepreneur to entrepreneur), but typically it involves an individual that wants to start a company. The entrepreneur may enter the position with an idea at various stages of development. Sometimes an entrepreneur has already spent a great deal of time on the idea and is leveraging the EIR position for office space and mindshare with VCs.

Another EIR role is to act as a “partner” and help VCs evaluate potential deals where the entrepreneur has a particular expertise. An EIR might also spend some time with an existing portfolio company to provide his or her functional expertise. In this scenario, the EIR will sometimes enter the company as a full time executive (typically CEO or some “C” level role) if the company and the executive feel there is a good fit.

It is rare that a venture fund will place a job listing for an EIR position. Typically, these positions are filled based on existing personal relationships that develop over long periods of time. An EIR may be an entrepreneur from a past portfolio company of the fund or a well known CEO that has delivered solid returns for the investment community. Sometimes EIRs are chosen from large public companies such as eBay, Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. Most often the individuals chosen are at the Vice President level and up, but it is not unheard of for someone at the Director level to be chosen (although it is rare). As a rule, the EIR positions are so coveted that they are only available for “brand name” entrepreneurs, highly visible public company executives or the very well connected.

Some entrepreneurs who are looking for funding advise against sharing info with the EIR, one account states: “As a general rule, the moment a VC brings an EIR to your pitch, he is saying, “You seem like a smart guy with a nice idea. I’m going to replace you with this guy who went to Stanford or Harvard Business School who worked in giant technology company X in Silicon Valley for the last 5 years so he must clearly be qualified to run a startup. This is the point at which you shut up, give away no information, and realize that the VC is trying to screw you over. Just don’t deal with this kind of BS. Come back on the Funded and mark down which VC did this to you. We should all avoid such VC firms.”

Another EIR himself was heard saying the following: “I disagree. Generally speaking, you’re more likely to be screwed over by a traditional VC than an EIR. EIRs have been on our side of the table and usually have some compunction about stealing ideas. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, but you’d be “safer” avoiding VCs than EIRs in my view. As a disclaimer, I should say that I spent 9 months last year as an EIR during which time I saw close to 200 businesses. In January I started a new company. ”

I am facing two issues at this moment, (1) many books and advice I received talk about teaming up with a partner or two, and (2) what do you do when you keep getting conflicting business ideas that all look great to pursue.

For issue 1, I don’t think it’s a necessity to have a partner. Partners will come along. What really I need to do now is talk to business people and get their feedback about the idea. I must go to my target group and see if creating such marketplace on the net would be of interest to them. I need to also speak to technology

Increasingly VCs love to invest in entrepreneurs who have a developed product, have tested and proven the market with some initial sales, and have the potential for substantial growth with additional funding.

Rapid Development:

The mantra in software and Web Development today is get it built fast, get it out to the market so you can recoup your investment quickly. In the business plan, show how you can develop the product quickly and how the product can be scaled up to meet market demand later.

Since I have started two such businesses already, here are thirteen tips from my own experience.

What to build
1. Build for someone specific

It’s very tempting to create a product for the widest audience. “Everyone can use our product, therefore if even a tiny proportion use it, we’ll be rich!” Beware the generalised product. If your product is not built for anyone in particular, it will not be good for anyone in particular. The worst possible market for a product is “small businesses on the web”.

On the other hand, if you build something that is directly useful for even just one real human being, chances are there will be others like that user and your product will have some success.
2. Don’t be afraid of targeting a narrow niche

Niches have numerous advantages. There’s less competition in niches, which means that your marketing dollars will go further to get you new customers. It’ll be easier to target likely buyers since there are probably already channels (blogs, magazines, trade shows) targeting that niche, that you can make use of.

Niches also tend to be very badly served in today’s world. If you look into almost any niche you will find a plethora of awful products that are just begging to be replaced by something better suited. Being able to build great products cheaply is a fairly recent development, and most pre-existing businesses have had to make do with duct-taped, poorly conceived solutions that are begging to be replaced. The smaller the niche, the lower the bar to success.
3. Solve a real problem that costs money

As DHH pointed out, the way to realistic profitability is not through gathering an outrageous number of eyeballs, but through creating a product that people are willing to pay for. The easiest way to get someone to loosen their purse strings is to convince them that using your product will pay for itself.

This can be either by enabling them to do something new to earn money or by saving them time and effort (and hence money).

How to build it
4. Test the market with a working prototype as soon as possible

To win in this game, you need to build a great product. The problem is, no one on your team can tell you what the best product is — only your users can do that. You need a vision to get started on a product, but that vision is critically flawed in ways that you can’t see. User feedback is the most powerful force to point out those flaws, and until you have users (whether free or paying), you cannot use that force.

For this reason, it is important that you release something, anything, as embryonic as it might be, to people who can start to use it and let you know what you’re doing wrong. Listen to your users — and, to do this, give them a chance to tell you.
5. Develop iteratively

Your product is ambitious. It will solve many great problems for your users. However, if your product never gets finished, it will solve nothing. Be ambitious in your dreams, but conservative if your immediate goals. Aim for the result of each iteration to be useful in and of itself, but keep each iteration as tiny as possible.

Developing something small does not mean giving up your dreams, only delaying them. Cut every feature and every part of a feature that you can cut, but keep it on a list to work on later. If there is any way you can do it later, do so. Often, features that you thought were essential turn out to be unimportant when you have more user feedback.
6. Get things right, and be decisive in correcting the wrongs

As your product takes off (if it does), you will have less and less time to make up for earlier mistakes. As users pile on, it will become more and more difficult to make big, drastic changes. However you make your bed, that’s how you’ll sleep. As much as possible, take hard decisions early rather than letting problems fester. Don’t delay necessary change just because you’re already committed into a different direction.
7. Don’t spend the time correcting until you know what you’re aiming for

At the same time, it’s easy to end up spending all your time refactoring the codebase every time a new feature is brought in. Refactorings must be done to maintain development speed and build a scalable, clean product. However, a refactoring effort should consist of two parts: 1) figuring out what to refactor to, 2) doing it. The first part can take weeks, the second part is often a mere few days long. The first part should never be an excuse to stop work completely.

This applies to design changes too. If you realise that you need to change the direction of the product significantly, figure out your new goals for before implementing the change.
8. Don’t let your programmers design the user interface

I’m a programmer, among other things. Like many in this profession. I suck at designing UIs (though sometimes I believe I don’t). When you let programming-focused people like me build your user interface, you will get things like this.

Some people are naturally gifted at user interface design. They feel physically sick about adding a button that clutters the interface or messes up the user’s workflow. Make sure you have a gifted UI designer on your team (whether or not he or she doubles up as a different role — including programmer). It will make a world of difference when you get your first users — the difference between a lukewarm response and “Wow, it’s great! I love it!”

Who to build it with
9. Make sure every member of the development team is passionate about the product

Your development team is to your product like parents are to a child. If they do not care about your product, it might turn out well anyway — but the overwhelming likelihood is it won’t. Anyone who’s not passionate about building your product should not be involved in building your product.

For this reason, it is very unlikely that outsourcing your product development will be successful. Build your product in-house, and make sure the team is fully bought into the concept and committed to make it a success. It is better to give up 50% of your equity for a great product team than to give up 5% for a poor product team. 95% of nothing is still nothing.

In yesterday’s world, this was very hard to achieve, since even a relatively simple web application required a fairly large team to implement, and the larger the team, the harder it is to remain passionate. With today’s web development technologies, it is possible for a team of 2 or 3 to build an entire business within 3-6 months, but those 2 to 3 must be passionate and dedicated.

It is very hard to make up for your team’s lack of passion through your own passion.
10. Be sickeningly elitist about your development team and sickeningly inclusive about your users

No one should be considered too stupid to use your product. For each person who you know had trouble using your product, there will be many more who had the same trouble but never told you. It’s never the user’s fault, it’s always your product’s fault for not being clear and intuitive enough.

At the same time, your development team needs to be the best. You cannot create greatness out of mediocrity. These days, elitism is regarded almost as a flaw. Actually, it is the only way to greatness. If you want to create the best product, you need the best people.
11. The best hiring strategy is to hire no one

Hiring employees is a nightmare. There are a lot of legalities to be considered, and it is a lengthy, time-consuming, and expensive process. Fortunately, you don’t need to hire employees. You need to recruit a development team to work with you, not for you.

Your development team is like the heart and lungs and brain of your business. They should be as committed and passionate as you are. For this to happen, you need to treat them as equals, not as subordinates.

You don’t need job adverts, you don’t need resumes, and you don’t need contract negotiations. What you need is to network in the right communities, whether online or offline, to recognise the people you need, and to bring them in not as employees but as partners in your vision.
12. Include at least one target user on the development team

By development team, I mean the team involved in the day-to-day or week-to-week iteration meetings. If you fail to do this, it will cost you a lot to readjust when a real user finally approaches your application and, inevitably, finds it lacking. If you’re a small startup on a tight budget, this extra cost can kill you. Survival is worth giving up equity to get a target user on your development team.
13. Ensure everyone on your development team understands the problem they’re solving

Immerse your development team in the users’ environment for a short period of time and let them see for themselves just how bad the current systems and processes are. Presumably, you have some contacts who work in the niche that you are targeting (if you don’t, then it’s probably not the right niche for you). Convince them to let one or more of your development team sit in their office and experience the pain points for themselves.

This is the opposite of embedding an end-user in the development team. Embed your development team into the end-users’ environment — at least for a time.
Conclusion and Bonus Tip: Break any and all of these rules rather than do something stupid

Creating a new, successful product is like writing a book, creating a movie, or raising a child. It’s a fiendishly complicated task that requires great adaptability and creativity. Rules can only get you so far. No amount of advice can guarantee you success. Sometimes, the rules fail, and you need to adapt to those situations and do what needs to be done, even if it flies in the face of accepted wisdom. For every rule of product development, there is a dozen examples of teams which did it differently and still succeeded.

Good luck!

As ever, please do share your thoughts and additional tips in the comments below, or on your own blog (I have trackbacks enabled).
http://www.inter-sections.net/2008/05/07/13-tips-for-creating-a-successful-new-online-product/

Wikipedia explains an elevator pitch as being an overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The name reflects the fact that an elevator pitch can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (say, thirty seconds or 100-150 words).

The term is typically used in the context of an entrepreneur pitching an idea to a venture capitalist to receive funding. Venture capitalists often judge the quality of an idea and team on the basis of the quality of its elevator pitch, and will ask entrepreneurs for the elevator pitch to quickly weed out bad ideas.

It is said that many of the most important decisions made on the floor of the United States‘s House or Senate are made “within the span of an elevator ride” as a staff aide whispers into a Congressman or Senator’s ear while they head down to the floor to cast their vote.^{[citation needed]}

A variety of other people, including entrepreneurs, project managers, salespeople, evangelists, job seekers, and speed daters commonly use elevator pitches to get their point across quickly.

Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union), he moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1991. He received his bachelor’s degree in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1997 and co-founded two companies that made Internet-tools, NetMeridian Software and SponsorNet New Media. In 1998, he founded Fieldlink with John Bernard Powers, which was later restructured to become Confinity and eventually PayPal.

PayPal went public in February 2002, and was subsequently acquired by eBay. His 2.3% stake in PayPal was worth approximately $34 million at the time of the acquisition.[1] He is primarily known for his contributions to PayPal’s anti-fraud efforts[2] and is also the co-creator of the Gausebeck-Levchin test, one of the first commercial implementations of a CAPTCHA.

In 2004, Levchin founded Slide[3], a personal media-sharing service.

He also helped start Yelp, an online social networking and review service.

I found a nice website today that offers great templates for Business cards:

www.uprinting.com