Oh heck - we need a complete redesign!

Not exactly the news you want to hear from your webdesigner (& Chief Technology Officer), just weeks away from the launch of your website.

I think I just laughed!

We met Lee yesterday for an update, and he explained the situation…

One member of his team has spent the last 3 weeks trying to make the last few amends on the site before we launch, pretty much working full time. This work has taken ages because they didn’t design the site in the first place, and there’s certain approaches they use to build websites, design the coding and generally just lay things out, that haven’t been followed by the previous designer/ programmer.

So it’s causing them no end of headache to even make small changes on the site.

There’s nothing else for it, but to completely rebuild the site from scratch. In the long run, this will make much more sense, as we’ll be able to add functions and content to it much easier and quicker in the future.

However, there’s no way I’m delaying the launch now. We’ve done too much, have a great site from a member’s point of view (albeit a bit of a nightmare to work with for our programmers), and we’ll gain nothing by delaying the launch for another month. Plus the fact we’ve got too many promotional events lined up for March now, which will be completely wasted if we’re not live.

So we’re going ahead with the current site, as version 1. And we’ll just rebuild and redesign the ‘back-end’ much quicker than we originally thought we would need to. It will also give us the opportunity to ask our members what else they’d like to see in version 2.

The focus groups thought the site looked great, had superb content and was unbelieveably good value, so I want to get it out there as soon as possible. I had a comment from a reader of my diary the other day that said “The site is everything that a mother will need. I am sure that you know that”. She’s from Luton, and so now we’re talking to her about becoming our Regional Manager for Herts/Beds/Essex – I like enthusiastic people! We also had an email just wishing us luck, from someone who has recently set up their own business, so good luck to Payroll Excel too!

So now over the next day I need to go through the changes that have been made, and check for any bugs/misunderstandings etc.

I finally got to meet up with Wendy, our Travel Editor on Monday evening in London. Had a lovely evening, and I think we’ve really got some good ideas to progress in the next few weeks. She’s sorted out quite a few holidays for her team to review over the next couple of months. We’re trying to get a good spread, in the South, the North and Scotland, Wales and Ireland aswell. Also a mix of hotels, leisure parks, city breaks and seaside holidays.

We finally made a decision about which baby show we are going exhibit at. And we went with the larger one, Bambinos in Harrogate, North Yorkshire on 18/19 March. It’s going to attract over 5,000 visitors, so should be a great opportunity to meet customers face to face! (www.ottimoevents.com)

So now we’re into the realm of planning the stand, and I’ve approached a local college to see if any graphic design students want to design some posters for us as work experience. Another completely new area for me!

We are having a prize draw competition for anyone who becomes a member over the weekend. And so far we’ve already got offers of prizes from DIG (a new attraction in York), some books/DVDs from Magic Wanda, and we’re hoping to get a family holiday and some baby toys aswell! Any offers, please email!!

Also met the Charity Director of TOAST this week, and have agreed that we are going to support their National Obesity Awareness Week in March, to encourage parents to get their kids more active, and away from the TV/computer/games console. There’s a real lack of practical advice out there, and our site can just provide tons of ideas for parents. Hopefully our joint approach will mean we’ll get some extra publicity. We’re also going to be featured on their website every month. We’re collecting a few publications now where we are going to provide regular columns.

OK, off to the library now with Luke to take his books back! Could really do with him having another day in nursery (he’s back to just 2 days a week) because I’ve got so much to do at the moment. But I’m just going to have to organise myself a bit better (and work every evening possible when Gregg’s home!) because he’s getting a bit clingy and I think he needs me around a bit more. Now where are those books.....?

Kirsty