At first It may seem like a lot of trouble to write a website brief, but the better you are able to describe what you want, the more accurate the cost will be on your quote, and the more likely it will be that the website will end up how you want it to be.

A website brief doesn’t need to be a 50 page technical specification—just a simple description of your requirements. There are no rules about how you write it or what headings you must use. The trick is to make sure all the key information is in there somewhere. 

As a rough guide, you should consider including the following information:

Your organisation
Describe your organisation. What is it called? What does it do? What kind of services does it provide? What is its history and background? How is it funded?

Why a new website?
Explain why you are looking for a new site. What are the objectives of the new website? Who will be coming to your website? (your intended audience). Do you have a site already? What’s the URL? What things do you like and dislike about it? In what areas does it fail to live up to expectations or cause frustrations? Do you have trouble keeping it up to date?

Required functionality
In this section you can explain what you want the website to do or it’s “functionality”. Examples of functionality might be things such as: display an events calendar, take online donations, sell merchandise, have a searchable resources area, take event bookings online. 
The format of this section could be a simple list, or a description of what you want users to do:

“When a user comes to the site they should be able to easily see a list of upcoming events and click on one to view more detail. It should check that there are places left on the event and if so allow the user to make a booking by filling out their details before proceeding to pay for the event online”

The important thing is to try and cover everything you want the site to do, and what you want people to do on your site. It takes longer to build a website that can take online event bookings than one that just has a few information pages—therefore this information is important to get an accurate cost.

The second most important thing here is to think about what you really need—and not just mention every technology that you have ever heard of —just because it sounds cool or modern!

 For example, stating “We require blogs, video, forums, RSS feeds and Podcasts’” is a waste of time if you have no-one to write the blog, nothing you want to blog about, no suitable videos, no users that will be likely to engage in a forum, no regular news, and no regular audio content!

The best websites contain features which are appropriate for the site’s objectives, its audiences, and the level of time available to the organisation for generating the appropriate content. 

Try and request functionality that you know your website users will want or that are important to the services you offer.

Websites you like
If you like the way that something is done on a particular website that you know of, don’t hesitate to include it as an example and describe what you like about it.

Other requirements
Mention if you have any specific requirements such as where the website should be hosted, any databases you already have that the website might need to interact with, and any other conditions that need to be met.

Budget
You may feel reluctant to volunteer your budget, but it can save you a lot of time in the long run. A freelancer in their bedroom is going to charge less than a twenty-person agency, but then you will notice the difference in the service level you get and the end result. If you only have a certain budget and you send your brief without a budget to five agencies which all come back with quotes at double your budget – then you have got nowhere fast! 

This does not mean that you can’t afford a new website. It means that you haven’t sent your brief to suppliers who work in your budget range. If you specify a budget in the brief, then suppliers will either work out a solution to meet your budget (perhaps with less functionality or a less bespoke design)  or decline to send a quote and perhaps recommend another supplier. Either way, that’s a better result for you.

Timings
State the deadline for receiving quotes/proposals. Mention the date that you will be selecting the supplier if possible, and any other timings relevant to the selection process. 

Any deadlines for the live date of the website should also be mentioned.

And finally…
Put your contact details at the bottom of the brief and encourage suppliers to contact you if they have any questions.

You are now ready to unleash your brief on the world, and hopefully get a selection of promising, interesting, and affordable proposals from the suppliers you send it to.

What were we proud of in 2011?

• Our clients. They continued to do amazing and wonderful things, from winning awards to appearing on TV and lobbying for change.
• The 22 new clients who chose us as their website agency!
• We took a long hard look at how we could provide better service for all our clients. As a result, we’re changing the way we do support and development, managing schedules, and tracking issues.
• The meeting room got a new light. Only ten years in the works…
• The Fat Beehive e-newsletter made its first appearance in inboxes around the world.
• Our first annual Fed-Ex day was an inspiring success. We’re hoping to update you on our projects from this sometime very soon!
• New staff Rachel, Ash and Derry certainly livened things up in the office!

Not all of 2011 was sugar and spice and everything nice, however.

• We were sad to say goodbye to David who left for pastures new. He was always available to answer ANY James Bond trivia question. We miss him and his mum’s cake terribly.
• As much as we wanted them to, Flash and IE6 didn’t die completely.
• Alberto narrowly escaped injury when the microwave malfunctioned. Okay, there was no chance of injury, but it was quite smelly.

We’re geared up and ready for a new year. But what are we going to do?

• We’re working on some exciting developments for our Beekeeper CMS. As well, we’re offering open source content management systems.
• In response to client requests, we’ve begun Google Analytics training sessions. Our first one is on February 2nd—would you like to attend?
• We’ve reached an exciting time in the evolution of our business where we’re examining new possibilities and ways of doing things. In 2012 we’re looking to expand our research and consultancy offerings, provide more interactive training, and launch an online help centre.
• There has also been talk of restricting our cake intake in 2012, but we all know that’s just not going to happen.

What are you looking to do this year?

The campaign has focussed on tools such as Flash. Even if you don’t recognise the name, you’ll certainly have felt its effects. When Adobe’s Flash came to prominence in the early noughties there was no other way to add exciting animation or create unconventional layout in web design, so naturally eager creatives flocked to it. Some amazing work was created but sadly in the rush to use the tool visitors were subjected to bloated designs that tormented with an almost endlessly spinning wheel that proudly announced the page was ‘loading’ – perhaps by finally stopping spinning it reminded us that we were still in reality. This contributed to its downfall as visitors grew tired of queuing to enter a site but more worrying was the lack of control available over the source code. With the rise of Flash the web was being dominated by a tool that only its creators had full access to and if the visitor chose not to install the plug-in then they would be shunned. This closed system surely wasn’t what we imagined for the world wide web, was it?

In 2011, smartphone sales grew by 63% during the year and shipments of media tablets such as the iPad are already equivalent to 18% of the PC market. It is the emergence of the so-called mobile web with its open-source standards on handheld devices that has proven to be the final nail in Flash’s coffin. Device and browser manufacturers have finally worked together to push common technologies and move towards universal media formats. In November 2011 Adobe announced it was effectively ending support for its tool by focusing on the community-maintained platform, HTML5. HTML5 is a framework for creating websites with rich media such as animation, video and audio and is overseen by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) but any person can contribute to its development. The end of Flash alludes to a future where closed systems strictly controlled by a single company will no longer dominate in the creation of the web. This can only be a good thing because it empowers people to invent whatever they can dream of, not what a company allows them.

Now is an exciting time for the web because emerging technologies that provide a richer user experience have finally come of age. CSS3 and HTML5 allow us to create more fun and interactive websites, @font-face enables a wider palette of fonts and the growth of Javascript has facilitated this in browsers such as Internet Explorer, which is a little slow in catching up.

These rich experiences enable the freedom to share our lives in ever more detailed ways online but how will this affect society going forward? To pay for these advances you could argue we have signed away our right to privacy in those user agreements that hardly anyone can claim to have read. The real business of companies such as Facebook and Google is to gather an ever increasing number of users they can package into demographics to sell for advertising. It’s no surprise that the hottest property of the decade in Silicon Valley has been mathematicians and scientists with their knowledge of data analysis. Offering products that people need to use strengthens their potential sales base. However, in the coming years new companies will emerge that will dethrone these seemingly unstoppable behemoths. Who today remembers Friendster or Netscape? Come to think of it do you remember all those annoying, “please wait while this page loads,” messages of the noughties? Thought not, good bye Flash.

The seeds of the idea were planted last spring by our developer Alberto. He sent Tom, our MD, an RSA animation and talk by Dan Pink on DRIVE, his bestselling book on the surprising truth about what motivates us. Pink’s assertion is that instead of more traditional external rewards, what really motivates us are 3 main internal or intrinsic drives: autonomy over how and when you work, mastery over the task at hand and having a purpose behind the work you do.  Our MD Tom was so inspired by the video, he bought the book, read the book, loved the book and took one of the ideas to allow staff more autonomy (from software company Atlassian) and made it his own.

So on a Thursday in November Tom let the team know that we could work on any personal project we liked as long it could be delivered by the next day, hence named “Fed-ex Day”. The hope was that, unrestrained by the demands of a brief, staff could push the boundaries of their skills and knowledge and perhaps stumble upon something fantastic along the way.

These are the rules that the team played by:

• the task should be out of the ordinary. It shouldn’t be something that we normally do, but one of those things we’ve been itching to do, but we’ve never found time for it.  So we can test out a theory, fix something that’s been annoying, create that things we’ve been meaning to for ages and so on.
• the task should be related to the company, but that is a broad remit.
• Fed Ex day – We deliver. The task must be delivered in one day. It might not be finished or polished, but it has to do something and work to some degree. It should be complete enough for a decision to be made on whether it merits continued development (on company time) or retired.

The day ran from 10am Thursday until 10am Friday. Tom gave people a few weeks to think up some ideas, and from 10 to 11am people introduced their ideas to the group.  If people wished to work past 6pm Thursday on their task, the company provided pizza and (non-alcoholic) drinks. The results of the day were presented back to the group on the Friday at 5pm with beer and cake (the classic combination.)

The results
There was a fantastic buzz in the office on Fed-ex day, people beavering away to deliver something impressive to a rocking Spotify playlist.  It was scary leaving projects and clients on hold for a day, but we think the results were well worth the investment.  Here, the team report back on their projects:

Tom and Matt’s project: Beekeeper Demo Videos
I set out to determine a method of creating video demonstration and help files for the use of Beekeeper CMS. I first researched the various screen capture tools available to determine which was the best option for my requirements. I then set about creating a number of videos that demonstrated various parts of the Beekeeper Pages module. Next I worked with Matt to put a voice-over onto the video to describe what was happening. Finally I uploaded the videos to Vimeo and embedded them into the Beekeeper Help system. Coming to a Beekeeper near you soon!

Duncan’s project: Twig Template Engine
Twig is a modern template engine for PHP. I Implemented my latest website build with TWIG, which enabled easier use of views (separation of logic and layout.) This especially helped creating multiple micro-sites using one central micro-site template. The time to explore this was well used during Fed-Ex day, and I am very pleased with the outcome. I am tutoring other developers in its uses and implementing in future projects.

Alberto’s project: Charity Jobs Board
I wanted to do a job board for charities, a place where all our clients could promote their current job offers from their Beekeeper jobs module. I spent my day learning FuelPHP, a new and exciting PHP framework built using all new PHP 5.3 features. It was a fantastic opportunity to develop and learn something I had in mind for months and… it was fun!

Ash’s project: The Beekeepers Book
Honey produced by local bees can help alleviate symptoms for hay-fever sufferers. This project saw the initial development of a website aimed at helping you find honey made by a bee near you.  Made using WordPress, it allowed us to explore what is possible in an often overlooked but powerful CMS.

Danny’s project:  IE Basher
I built an online stress relief app where the web designer/developer can click aka punch a visual representation of Internet Explorer 6 to ease away those browser-bug-blues. I was well out of my comfort zone with my coding skills so I learned some new techniques. It was a nice change from the normal working day and was exciting to challenge myself to complete the project within the timescale given.

Rachel’s project: Googledoc A-go-go
We use Google Apps for document sharing, including agendas, development documents, policies and plans.  I learned how to use collections and sharing tools to organise and rationalise the mountain of documents we have in there.  I researched and created a staff handbook named “The Beeble”.

Abby’s project: Office Escape Pod
The idea: That we could make use of an unused space in the office to create an escape area. Because the office is so open, there is no place to privately go and “regroup” or get away from computer screens.

The plan: Remove all the “crap” from above the kitchen roof storage area and see if I could transform it into an escape pod with pillows.

The reality: I managed to get all the stuff down from up there (and there was a LOT.) I managed to give most of it away on Freecycle and Gumtree, which was nice. However, I discovered that the ceiling up there isn’t built to support a person’s weight, and would require professional building advice to complete. So I hoovered up all the dust and that was that.

What next?
Two of the projects would be so beneficial to the company and our way of working that they have been allocated R&D time.  The overiding feeling was a sense of fun, achievement, learning and team spirit, not to mention pizza. We will definitely be repeating Fed-ex day in the summer.

Many online services offer an API that is free to use and is generally compatible with most websites. The great thing about having these services speak to each other directly is that you don’t need to manually intervene to export information, key data in twice or reconcile information in two different places. It’s all done for you automatically. It’s faster and more accurate than the manual alternative.

Let’s look at a simple example. Say you post news to your website, but you also manage a Twitter account.  Each time you have a big announcement to make you need to login to your CMS and create the news post. You then need to login to Twitter and repeat the procedure. Using an API to connect the two services allows you create the news post once and have it automatically feed through to your Twitter account. The reverse is also true if you want to be able to tweet something and have it appear on your web site automatically.

Another example might be the contact form on your web site. When visitors complete the form you probably get an email with the information which you then add manually to your customer database. An API-enabled database (such as Salesforce) allows the information to be written directly from the website to the database and sends an alert the relevant person in your organisation automatically.  No more data entry, the customer has done it for you!

Today almost all organisations have multiple social media accounts and a growing number of clients are shifting to web-based customer relationship management (CRM) systems. With so many different tools to manage, API integration saves time, improves accuracy and allows you to make the most of your online presence.

Over the last few years a network of sites offering royalty free images for no cost have sprung up such as stock.xchang and Freerange.  These are limited to a relatively small pool of images to choose from, unless tacky 80’s-style posed images is your kind of thing; but hey, that’s fashionable at the moment isn’t it. Luckily there is an alternative out there, Creative Commons.

If you don’t already know, Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that provides a simple way for people around the world to freely license their work. Creative Commons was invented to create a more flexible copyright model, replacing “all rights reserved” with “some rights reserved”. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of others. There’s a plethora of licences available for images, video, fonts, skateboarding penguins, that last one is a blatent lie, but you never know. The great thing is that high-quality shared content is available without fear of archaic copyright law.

The tool I’ve found most useful when deadlines are looming is Compfight, the alternative Flickr search tool. Tucked away in Flickr’s native search is a way to filter the results so that only images that are freely available under a Creative Commons licence are shown, but it’s not the simplest system to use and can be a bit slow. Compfight takes all the Flickr functionality and makes light work of the arduous task of finding that perfect image. One thing I would say is that some mean spirited people out there don’t license their work for commercial use, but Compfight thought about this providing a tool to filter these out. When using Creative Commons images make sure to credit the creator somewhere. A link in the footer to a credits page listing their details normally does the trick.

Well as they say, the perfect picture is worth a thousand words, but now it doesn’t have to cost £1000. Below are some links to useful free stock image sites and if you’re feeling decadent I’ve included a few pay-for services for good measure.

What we know:

• If your website uses cookies, you will have to disclose that to users and ask their permission to store a cookie.

What we don’t know:

• How you are supposed to ask for permission from your users and what to do if permission is denied. For instance, if you ask a user permission to use a cookie and they say no, yet that cookie is essential for the website’s function, what happens? What happens if that user clicks on to another page on the site, will you have to ask for their permission again?

There has been very little guidance from the EU on how to implement this policy, and so far none of the big movers (like Amazon) have unveiled their plan. Which means most of us in the tech world are sitting tight, hoping for more information.

We don’t want to advise our clients to do costly work on websites, only to be told in three month’s time it’s wrong.  The EU Cookie legislation will not be enforced until May 2012. However, that doesn’t mean you should leave all action until then.  So what to do?

We are advising our clients to learn what cookies your site uses, if any, and add a statement to your website describing how they are used and why. And, of course, we are here to help do this.

In the meantime, keep an eye on our blog and we’ll be updating it as soon as we know more from the EU.

The Chartered Institute of Public Relations PRide Awards recognise outstanding PR work across the UK. The Merstham Ecohouse was shortlisted for best website from over 1000 entries. Well done! Our designers Danny and Derry had a blast creating the illustrations for the Ecohouse. We’ll find out the results sometime before December, fingers crossed!

This is in addition to the Trust’s earlier nomination at the Sustainable Housing Awards for the most innovative approach to green housing, and a nomination in the “Excellence in Carbon Reduction – Small Company” category at the Energy Awards 2011.

We are thrilled to be working with Raven on their website projects. Their ethos and commitment to environmental sustainability resonates with us. It warms our cockles to see such good work recognised.

Bravo!

It ticks several boxes:

• It explains the campaign and why it’s important
• It collects and stores supporter information
• It sends through to a petition
• It converts people from simply clicking “like” to taking action for the organisation

This is a great example of campaigning with social media. Widgets like this can also be linked back to your fundraising and campaign databases, or email newsletter software. This gives you the opportunity to ask them for their support on future actions in a more direct, personal way than through mass Facebook postings.

Oh, I do love a good widget.

If you’d like to ask us about developing widgets for your social media campaign, pop us a comment below!

Stop. Take a deep breath. Now, pick up a pen and a piece of paper. I like big sheets of flip chart paper and coloured markers, but go with what you have.
First, write the name of your organisation on the paper. Now, think about who you are and what you do. Write that down too. Always keep this in mind when you think about social media.

Next, write down all the different types of social media you can think of. Ask your co-workers for ideas.

Third, go and research those different types of social media. Find out what similar organisations use, and perhaps ask them how successful they’ve been. Find out how easy they are to update, whether or not they can be customised with your branding, and if they are free. Learn about who uses each type of social media, why they use it, and how they use it, as this will affect how YOU use it.

Now, go back to your piece of paper. Look at all the different types.  Which ones help you? That is, which ones relate back to who you are and what you do? For instance, if you find a social media platform designed for teenagers and your audience is generally over 50, you probably don’t need to be worried about it.

For each social media platform, try to decide how it would relate to who you are and what you do. What will you be using it for? Who will be updating it? How often will it be updated? How will you measure success? Where will the content come from? How long will it take to update?

By this point, you should have a much better idea which types of social media will work for you and your organisation. I suggest you then take your piece of paper and sit down to type up your social media strategy.

Write down, for each platform, the answers to the questions above. For instance, you may decide to start a Twitter feed and try tweeting about upcoming events to increase attendance. Set a time period, identify who is going to do the work, and how you will evaluate the results. You may have several different types of campaigns going on, run by different people. What is important is that you keep control of the content and evaluate what effect your efforts are having.

That’s it. You have a strategy. Not so hard, right? All you had to do is find out what you could do and write down how you are going to do it. Remember to revisit it every 6 months or so to see what might need changing. You might also want learn more about developing the right tone for social media.