Which Adobe Products for Website Launch

[Guest]

We have many different corporate websites that need to be built for financial services and consulting. We want to launch live proof of concepts and then migrate to a more full featured platform in parallel, there are four groups of websites however have not yet decided whether to separate the installs or group them all together, it depends on the product. We were thinking the live POC Muse and production AEM, but the question is the themes and content integration times, we are looking at apple.com quality however on speaking with partners it is all over the place, so really don't have a lot of confidence in their honesty. Regards.

[pziecina]

What little information you have provided does not help us to help you.

What should the site actually do?

Do you know how to code using modern standards?

Who is your intended audience, (simply saying financial services, is not enough)?

[Guest]

Sure, corporate sites for products and services, some one page, others multipage, single language, high def images. We're not developing it you must be joking, next step will be to find reliable designers. Intended audience depends on the site, some will be accredited investors (for hedge fund), others will be C-Suite execs (for Mckinsey), some will be hedge funds (for fintech), some will be institutions (for strategies), and a few will be retail (similar to ETFs).

Standard lifecycle, proof of concept on simple platform then redeveloped in to larger platform such as AEM. The problem we're having is the creative and which platforms, we're going to need 7-10 themes (sites) and if the turnaround time is 3mths each it's not going to work. So the POC can be hybrid off the shelf, but quality is more important along the lines of apple.com, it's financial services, cost is secondary, time to market, maintainability, adaptability, and 4K institutional quality are primary.

And ultimately trust, we don't care how it works as long as it is Awwwards quality, we need to go from zero to the best in an exponential cycle, maybe needing more than just two POC to AEM cycles, so far we need to go through four different agencies at each step to get to the end result. Which is why we still haven't launched an online presence because we haven't found a suitable product lifecycle and designer skillset to accommodate a full end to end with parallel iterative development cycles across parallel entities, everyone just wants to do one launch in one cycle taking 3mths each time.

For example, one of the entities needs to be similar to Quintessentially split across five topics, but as it will deal with UHNWIs if it's not Apple creative quality we step back. Very simply, we provide the summary, the conclusion and someone needs to do the hard work in the middle filling in the gaps, but agencies don't like that approach and no one yet has said, you need x why and z, so the nearest we've come to is Muse as POC and AEM as full release, what happens in the middle such as theme design, other products is still completely vague.

On a conference call with Adobe a simple question was asked, how long to design a corporate theme on AEM for a multi-page website like Accenture or Apple, the answer from the architect you can have one built in hours. So we just dropped it six months ago and kept everything offline, looked at Kentico instead but decided we need the best, but now we actually need to launch some sites and want to see if there are any individuals who are smarter and more creative than the agencies and Adobe themselves, because so far their responses have been completely uneducated.

[pziecina · Accepted solution]

First, your time scale is completely unrealistic, unless you intend to pay lots, and I do mean lots.

There is no off-the-shelf solution to do this, so it is all custom code and development. Don't even bother with Muse, though your initial layout ideas could be done using Adobe XD -

http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/experience-design.html?sdid=19SCDRPP&mv=search&s_kwcid=AL!3085!3!18...

But you could not use the code generated in actual production. You will require Photoshop and Illustrator for images and illustrations, (these are the industry recognized professional programs for such work).

As for the rest, you will have to decide exactly what features you require the site to implement, and how they should work, before I can give any real advice, but do NOT use Muse or Adobe Animate, for corporate quality sites.

Your first objective though would be to actually create a list of objectives, quality, functionality, features, usability and exit criteria, this is often called a 'design brief' though when it comes to the web the normal 'design brief' is too limiting This is normally done as a team effort, and involves talking to those you consider to be a typical user profile, (which you also have to define). Don't expect anyone to even look at the project until this is done.

Also don't forget to plan for the future, and decide now how the sites(s) will be updated and improved, (modular construction vs all-in-one-go construction) as anything corporate style, will be an ongoing project for years. Not a build and forget for a few years.

[Guest]

Thanks for that, not Muse, makes sense. Here's the situation, we need Agile, Adobe have implemented it but apparently no one else uses it even though that is what growth companies are doing, none of the agencies and apparently none of the internal Adobe staff have caught up.

[Moderator Note: Graphic deleted at poster's request]

Four categories, ten entities, each needing a template. We know the input, we know the output, the part in the middle we don't care about hence Agile. As we plan to throw away the POC and rebuild we want out of the box functionality, no development unless it's cross entity.

Advisory UHNWI

- Reference Sites: Quintessentially, Amex, Kuoni, NetJets

- Functionality: Corporate, Blog, CMS

- Quality: Apple.com

Someone needs to go away and make mistakes, try new things, think outside the box, we work from the top down, but start from the bottom up. Then you have something like this.

Alternative Micro Fund

- Reference: none exist

- Functionality: Onepage, RegisterForm

- Quality: Off the shelf with awards

Think of a multi-national multi-disciplined enterprise running on one platform all launching at different times, no one has done this before and apparently no one wants to. We want platforms that transition from the smallest to the largest, there's no point in putting the Micro Fund on AEM with a multi-month development cycle, the ROI just isn't there for first launch, but putting it on the Advisory UHNWI proof of concept with potential to upscale later, that works.

Ultimately going from a concept in days to a poc in weeks to a production launch in months throwing away each time, ie. WordPress -> Joomla -> Drupal the only problem being the quality was not there, perhaps that's a better way to go with custom design, because so far it looks like it's AEM for everything and still have no figure how long it takes to design a corporate template for an AEM site, Adobe only said hours which is idiotic.

[pziecina]

birzos  wrote

Four categories, ten entities, each needing a template. We know the input, we know the output, the part in the middle we don't care about hence Agile. As we plan to throw away the POC and rebuild we want out of the box functionality, no development unless it's cross entity.

Agile is useful, and many companies use it, but it is not a simple process to implement correctly, (does save on manpower though) as it often throws up problems that small development groups cannot cope with.

birzos  wrote

Someone needs to go away and make mistakes, try new things, think outside the box, we work from the top down, but start from the bottom up.

Start with an overall plan, break it up into small pieces, and think about what will also be required in the future. Don't just create for now, if it is not easily changed or expanded on, ditch it.

birzos  wrote

Think of a multi-national multi-disciplined enterprise running on one platform all launching at different times, no one has done this before and apparently no one wants to.

Wrong, we have been doing it since 2002. You will not see examples of such sites though, as these are always, (as far as I know) closed to 'the public' sites.

It's not that different to developing a small 5 page site that changes its content every time someone visits the site.

birzos  wrote

perhaps that's a better way to go with custom design, because so far it looks like it's AEM for everything and still have no figure how long it takes to design a corporate template for an AEM site, Adobe only said hours which is idiotic.

You may be able to adapt open source CMS's, but don't expect it to save you a lot of time. Development takes as long as it takes, you may be able to launch an initial 'concept' site within a few months, but then you have to develop the concept into what you, (and your users) actually require, which is never ending. Web development and what users expect is not static, web development and the possibilities of what one can do never stops, (what I work on, started 15 years ago, and what we developed then has no resemblance to what is now, except in name).

As for Adobe saying hours. Remember that Adobe is talking 'designers' with little, (at best) but normally no experience at custom corporate web site development, (or often how the web works).

[Guest]

Perfect, many thanks for that. It seems like we need to go known timelines open source with custom or just buy AEM and find designers for what we need via trial and error. From experience always found when those agencies did not provide a direct answer it's because either they don't know and want you to pay for them to work it out or they are trying to squeeze as much out of you as possible.

The problem is that it makes the whole process inefficient, which defeats what we are trying to achieve, it's not about cost, it's about efficiency. We actually don't want to develop any 'concept', everything has already been done we're just much more streamlined in our operations. We have some ballpark ideas of 3-5mths for a Quintessentially site and one to two weeks for a landing page site on AEM, we'll just have to go with that and if we launch on AEM see if it matches reality.

I do see the problem however, we need corporate levels of quality and structure with minimal resources for efficiency, probably need to find an ex-lead designer for Apple or equivalent who's gone freelance and can farm it out to the relevant parties for peer to peer implementation, the agencies are too inefficient. Appreciate your time in responding to the question, it's been very helpful exploring the options.

[pziecina]

birzos  wrote

probably need to find an ex-lead designer for Apple or equivalent who's gone freelance and can farm it out to the relevant parties for peer to peer implementation, the agencies are too inefficient. Appreciate your time in responding to the question, it's been very helpful exploring the options.

Any time.

Remember to keep a small team that you can call on for any future development though. Once a team is disbanded, it will take time and cost money to bring others up to speed, on what is required.

[Nancy OShea]

Tools do not make good products.  People do .