Website development projects can be loaded with potential issues if not managed correctly. These issues can lead to debilitating scope creep, extended delivery schedules and surprise invoices because of unplanned changes.
To help streamline the process we have outlined the most common issues we’ve run into in the past. By understanding these issues and, more importantly, how to address them when they come up, we can minimize their impact on your website design project.
1. Setting Realistic Expectations
When you hire a web design agency to build you a new website it’s totally understandable to want something that will “wow” your customers. Using terms like “dynamic”, “innovative”, and “ground breaking” to describe your vision seems logical. But there are two huge issues that need to be considered before getting too far into the development process.
Your customers don’t really care about being wowed
In reality, most customers would prefer to not be wowed all. They want a simple, easy-to-use website that allows them to achieve their goals without struggling or problem solving. No one wants to spend time figuring out how to use a website. In fact, 79% of visitors leave a website as soon as they struggle with clunky navigation or cluttered layouts.
Back in the early 2000’s it was cool to employ unique navigation schemes, mind-bending animations and immersive sound effects. That ship has sailed and is never, ever coming back. Simplicity and efficiency is the new gold-standard.
One person’s ‘wow’ is another person’s ‘ick’
What qualifies as “wow” is massively subjective. One person might appreciate a trend-setting colour scheme, while others may be nauseous just looking at the screen.
Every element of every website we build is intentional, nothing is there for aesthetic reasons alone. We design websites with your specific audience in mind, using the end result as our guiding principle. No matter what business goal your website serves, every single element on every page should be designed to guide a visitor towards this goal. To see how we achieve this balance, check out our design principles that guide our web development process.
2. Changing Business Goals
Things change and that’s OK! Whether you’re a thriving B2C business or a multi-national corporation with offices on five continents, nothing is static. Your business priorities, products and services will shift as the market changes.
And because web design projects can often take months to complete, it’s vital to communicate these changes to your web design partners as soon as they happen. We create website designs that are focused on achieving specific goals. If these goals change, the design needs to change accordingly.
This is relatively straightforward in the mockup stage, but once programming has started, these types of changes can blow-up both budgets and timelines.
3. Missing Stakeholders
One of the first questions we ask when taking on a new website design project is who is ultimately responsible for signing off on both the proposal and the website designs.
One of the biggest red flags we run into are senior stakeholders who are too busy to be involved in the design process, leaving approvals to assistants and mid-level managers. This almost always ends up in huge rework once the senior stakeholders become involved, once again blowing-up both budgets and timelines.
We always ensure that your entire team is as involved as necessary to ensure successful completion of your web design project. Senior stakeholders are senior for a reason – they have a broader view of the business (and greater experience) than their junior colleagues. Their feedback is vital to ensuring that a project gets off on the right foot.
Our goal is to deliver a website that meets all stated business goals, is future-proof to service and product changes, and is delivered on-time and on-budget.
Thinking it’s time to upgrade your company’s online presence? We’d love to learn more about your business and project requirements. Contact us to book a meeting today.
