Mastering a Website Build Project

How to get it right

A website build project done well, delivered on-time and within budget can be a game-changer for your business, your brand, and your customers. However, selecting a website partner can be difficult. It is a large commitment in terms of time, energy, resource, and cash.

The biggest problem with website projects is balancing the buyer’s need for clarity of budget, with the web designer’s need to understand the scope of the project well enough to quote accurately.

At the start of the journey, both the buyer and the seller often have little idea of what is required to significantly improve website performance, but the buyer often needs a budget figure for the project.

This presents a real problem for the website designer. No house builder would quote for a house build without an architect’s drawing, proper specifications, a quantity surveyor’s report (detailing the materials required), and a project plan. Yet too often, website companies leap in and provide a quotation without first:

• Understanding the clients challenges well enough
• Taking the time to check the digital data and facts properly 
• Applying experience and quality thinking to design the solution required
• Agreeing on a detailed specification for the work
• Understanding what content needs to be created
• Understanding the desired business outcomes.

Getting to a detailed specification requires business acumen, digital marketing experience, strategic marketing thinking, and project management skills. The technical and design skills required to build a website are far more widely available than the business skills required to know what to build, and why.

 

Start with a Chemistry Session

Conduct a no-commitment chemistry session to explore the scope of the project and your budget expectations with your potential website partner.

You should be looking for somebody who challenges your thinking. You need to see evidence of value being added.

If you can agree that your budget broadly aligns with your expectations, you may both decide to move forward – if not, back out gracefully and respectfully explain why.

If you do move forward, do so on the explicit understanding that – unless you have detailed blueprints for your new website already - neither party knows exactly what you need at the outset. There is more work to do to establish that.

To read intergages Five Phases of Website Design and Build,
visit our
Blog breaking down each step
or

Dowload our Website Design Whitepaper Here