One of WebMD's Founders to Website Dave: I need a website in 48 hours!

Website design strategies should never be rushed... but they shouldn't drag on forever, either. Tomorrow at 7pm (preferably before), my latest project "goes live" for the world to see. It is a project for one of the founders of the company that would become known as WebMD. His latest venture involves the retail, wholesale and maintenance industries.

I learned about this project yesterday evening... giving me really about 48 hours to put this site up.

If you have ever seen one of those cooking shows, it looks reallyquick and easy. There are bowls full of ingredients, and the chef puts them into a pan in a certain order and does things in between steps, and then they come out with a beautiful and tasty dish.

What they don't show is all the prep time it took to get those bowls of ingredients ready... the peeling, the slicing, the weighing and measuring. They have prep guys do that for them ahead of time.

Building a website in 48 hours (and I'm not talking about "here's a template - fill it in") requires similar steps. Graphics have to be chosen/developed, traditional copy needs to be transformed into copywriting for websites, search engine optimization strategy needs to be figured out, proper internet marketing techniques need to be implemented, etc... and all this needs to be ready to go before building the site itself. It speeds up the process.

...it also helps that I own and have operated businesses outside the internet industry.

One of the things my clients like about me is that I'm not a "computer guy." I didn't just come up in the computer field and learn how to code a website along the way. They like that I've been out in the trenches and understand business needs from the owner's point of view. So this allows me to put together the pieces in a website design strategy that naturally works with a company's marketing plans and operational tactics.

Putting all this together means a lot less time figuring out what to put on the site and more time putting all the pieces of the puzzle into what will become the centerpiece to a company's marketing strategy.