When is the right time to start a website project?
You’ve found the agency, agreed the scope and there’s space in their diary. Time to get started? Maybe.
One thing we’ve learned from years of designing and building websites is that agency availability is only half the equation. A successful website project also needs time and attention from the business it belongs to. That doesn’t mean clearing your diary for months. It does mean being realistic about who needs to be involved, what they’ll need to contribute and whether they actually have the capacity to do it.
Your business isn’t the only team that needs availability
Website projects are collaborative, even when you’ve hired an agency to take care of the strategy, UX, design and build.
We still need access to the people who understand the business. There will be questions to answer, decisions to make, information to provide and work to review.
That internal resource really matters. In research by website intelligence platform Lumar, almost half (49.29%) of surveyed website professionals said ‘not having the right people, or enough people, to work on website projects was holding back website improvements.’
The strongest projects tend to have somebody within the business who has the knowledge, authority and capacity to keep things moving.
Don’t choose the busiest weeks of your year
This sounds obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy to overlook when everyone is keen to get started.
If Christmas accounts for a significant part of your annual sales, November probably isn’t the ideal time to throw a website project into the mix. The same applies if your team is preparing for a major event, opening a new premises, launching a product or heading into its busiest seasonal period.
You don’t need a completely empty diary, you just need enough room to participate properly when the project needs you.
Put the right person on the project
The best person to lead a website project internally isn’t necessarily whoever has the most space in their calendar. It’s someone who understands the business, understands your customers and what the website needs to achieve. They also need enough authority to gather information, coordinate feedback and make or facilitate decisions.
Sometimes the sensible answer is to temporarily move some of that person’s usual responsibilities elsewhere. If your marketing manager holds most of the knowledge we need, giving them some breathing room to focus on the website is likely to be much more productive than assigning the project to someone who has more time but far less context.
For larger organisations, agreeing who has final approval matters too. Several stakeholders can contribute valuable perspectives, but somebody ultimately needs to bring those views together and keep decisions moving.
Work backwards from the date that actually matters
If the website needs to be live for something specific, start there.
Maybe you’re opening a new venue in September, exhibiting at a trade show in March or need your online shop ready for Christmas trading. That date shouldn’t also be the day the website build is scheduled to finish.
Allow room for content, feedback, testing, final changes and the unexpected things that crop up in most substantial projects. And tell your agency partner about any immovable dates from the beginning, so the project can be planned around them rather than discovering them halfway through.
Remember that content needs time too
Copy, photography, product information and other content aren’t things to think about once the website has been designed — they’re part of the project from the get go.
If you’re writing your own website copy, allocate proper time for it. If you’re commissioning professional copywriting or photography, bring those people into the project early enough for their work to inform the website rather than trying to squeeze it in at the end.
The same applies when replacing an existing website. Deciding what stays, what changes and what you no longer need can take more thought than expected.
Don’t wait for the mythical ‘quiet period’
There’s another side to all of this: businesses are busy. Managing a website build or redevelopment is planned capacity.
Know who will own the project internally. Protect some of their time. Work backwards from the date you need to launch and make sure the people who need to contribute know when they’ll be needed.
A good agency should take responsibility for managing the project and making the process straightforward. But the strongest websites combine our experience of strategy, UX, design and development with your knowledge of your business, customers and ambitions.
So, when is the right time to start a website project? When both sides have enough space to do it properly.
