“1,16,234 businesses in USA use Drupal. “
Target Audience:
Non technical as well as technical user base. Knowledge of programming languages or coding experience is NOT required.
Ongoing discussion text will NOT span multiple CMS softwares, it is strictly about Drupal, so if you are planning to establish Drupal based eCommerce website to sale any commodity, or already own a kind of web shop, this will be helpful and give useful inputs.
Why “PLANNING” is first place
Much of homework and calculations are done by you as customer before you plan and elect an eCommerce site’s software, as this will affect your expenses, ongoing maintenance and ROI.
We all know that money is hard earned, it goes out easily but it takes time to make it.
Already hundreds of people are complaining for complexity of software and web industry.
We have listened cases where they hired web designing team just a couple of years ago but now it is not affordable to pay them as support period expired and at the same time, hourly rate is high enough which self business cannot rely on, that is, revenue model of hourly rate is only good until period of free support.
Non-developer people are NOT able to handle and manage it properly on their own, except doing few limited things that are achievable through UI based simple drag and drops like we do in cPanel, CMS UI etc. And this is natural.
Until date, 7,32,330 live websites are there in records that consume Drupal modules for one or more purposes.
Even minor changes like adding a new slide in slideshow of particular webpage have proven as headache task for end users until the date.
Sometimes only looking into different elements in a CMS makes trouble. Take for example, if internet goes down during simple writing in a WYSIWYG editor and we came back, we see that nothing is saved after refreshing.
All these lines convey need of a reliable and impeccable CMS cum eCommerce software that will NOT be turbulent once implemented.
And most importantly, you want to make sure that for silly things, you don’t have to raise tickets to pay more and earn less income in hand.
“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. “
Fast Facts:
8% of websites in the world use Drupal as CMS software.
Stake of popular brands is as follows.
WordPress 48%
Other 43%
Drupal 8%
DNN Software 1%
CPanel 1%
Adobe CQ 3%
BigTeams 0%
Google Search Appliance 3%
vBulletin 2%
Joomla! 1%
Blogger 1%
(Source: builtwith )
Technical and Administration aspects to keep in mind while planning Drupal site
While a comprehensive book is more suitable for this purpose, we will take a quick and fast tour here.
Emphasis will be on early stages of executions.
Objective is to efficiently estimate and setup your project that cannot distract afterwards in later stages of SDLC.
- Break down project goals
Find out criteria about your clients, your business goals, and how this investment will be fruitful outcome that drives you to go down further.
If you are NOT sure for granular level objectives and related thresholds, web designing vendor and his team will NOT be able to make for you as they delve deeper into technicality as per your wishes; support, ideas provided by them are good but they can NOT read or absorb business plan resided in your mind without your word of mouth saying.
Also, create a set of documentation yourself for the project including points down the line to defend your design choices.
This should help you out to avoid too many “just one more change….” statements during the process.
- Don’t become passive absolutely, engage with comfortable web development team whose resources have courtesy to explain technical stuff in non-technical language and who are willing to take time to talk with you regularly like on SkyPe, Join.me or like video conference
You should be informed by them about milestone tasks completed.
From programmers’ side, they generally talk with each other in DrupalSpeak, should levy expert techniques to draw outcome that is near to what is in the mind of customer right from beginning and try to avoid design deviation, i.e. execute idea based product instead designing typical site every time.
For this matter, they can apply techniques such as
- User Personas
- User Flows
- Mind mapping
- Functional Breakdowns
- Screen Sketches and Wireframes
- Wireflows
- Keep a document of Drupal modules that will be used
Again, from, Drupal developer’s perspective, before starting out prototyping, if team has sorted out Drupal module names along with their practical applications in precise format in word or notepad file, this would be a lot of help.
Owner of product can submit this file to any other freelancer in future when he wants to do re-designing with different vendor in a different location. While this kind of file is certainly not required, surely recommended.
- Possible or NOT, and within what budget, how many hours
For you as customer, know the process for decision making within the organization.
You will be dealing with one-on-one approach with the main decision maker, or does everything have to go through many layers of red tape before final approval?
When you ask “I want logo at slight upper corner than its current place” you can estimate that it will not take more than 2 hours mostly even without possessing a bit of software engineering knowledge.
If you are billed abnormally high in each transaction, probing is necessary.
In few cases when UI designer cannot alter according to your instruction, you may need to change idea.
This happens in situation where readymade theme is bought and changing one element position disturbs multiple other elements in row and thus may require high maintenance to adjust pixels of all.
Explore more with us
Bliss Web Solution Pvt. Ltd. is a top-notch web development company specializing in optimization of Drupal modules for high traffic websites. To delve deeper into technicality, you can freely attend weekend discussions held at our office in Ahmedabad, just drop an e-mail to us at enquiry@blisswebsolution.com