Getting your website projects over the line
Posted in UncategorizedI’ve been on the cusp of launching a new website for 2 weeks now and while it was a very tight deadline it’s always frustrating when you need to push it out.
For websites the 80/20 rule is more like the 90/10 rule. 10% of the project tasks takes 90% of the time – but most importantly though it’s worth 99% of the success of your website.
I wanted to share (and keep a reminder to myself) a couple of things I’ve learned over the course of this website project:
Plan more time for the finishing touches than the actual development
No-ones perfect, particularly not when developing websites. When planning a timeline, allow more time for tweaks, bug fixes and most importantly improvements and optimisation than the core development.
This is the mistake I’ve just made and won’t ever do it again!
Expect that your initial requirements are going to change
In the past I’ve spent a lot of time putting together functional spec docs to communicate to agencies and it just doesn’t work – there’s so many better ways. For any web savvy business this model can’t move fast enough.
I’m now much more keen on the idea of using cheaper dev resources and when you get a new idea after something is done you can actually act on it.
I don’t know much about it but had a bit of a chat to a friend about Agile Development on the weekend and I think it’s something I need to invest some time in learning.
Use as many external sources for testing as possible
When you don’t have the luxury of focus groups or actual user testing, this can be tough. But for testing this website – I’m sending it to as many people around the office as possible that are far removed as well as to some good fellows in Pakistan who are going to spend the hours on testing that we simply couldn’t afford the time or to pay a local agency charging their exorbitant fees.
Don’t lose sight of the results
It’s easy to be burnt out on a project, I’m well over this website but as soon as I remind myself that the most exciting part is seeing the improved results and actually marketing the website I’m excited again.
All of that hard work at the start will go wasted if you don’t give the same attention to detail at the end.
I’m proud to say out of all of the many websites I’ve worked on over the years, this is by far the best. It’s also been the most rushed with the lowest budget and there’s only 2 of us working on it but the fact that we’ve constantly improved it means that it’s something a lot better than we first envisaged.
Plus, doing it so cheaply – with what we’ve saved on development we’ve used on persuasion architecture consulting and marketing.
I’m confident at the end of the day it’s going to be the winning formula. Now I’ve just got to get back to work and get the new site up and running! To my valued 29 subscribers, I will post the link when it’s done.