Building a new website is an exciting venture, but it often comes with unexpected delays. With more than 20 years in this industry, I've worked on hundreds of website builds and identified a few recurring factors that tend to slow down the process.
The top three reasons that delay are website are:
- Stakeholders and Decision making
- Content
- Original Visuals
If you’re more aware of the hurdles, you’re more likely to avoid them! Let’s unpack each of these to help you avoid these pitfalls.
Stakeholders & Decision Making
One of the most significant delays in website development is stakeholder engagement, feedback and decision-making. Many clients underestimate the strength and length of this input. This includes ensuring the right stakeholders are involved at key decision points (such as design sign off, content and testing), that there’s time allocated in project planning for review and amendment points, time to re-consult stakeholders, and of course, ensuring your stakeholders are available to fit your production schedule.
There are situations where stakeholders often come aboard mid-project and without the context of prior decisions, which leads to delays. Their late involvement can shift the scope, affecting the iron triangle of project management.
The iron triangle refers to the three key constraints that can affect a project. These are budget, quality and timeframe. They form what is known as the "iron triangle" because you can rarely change one without impacting the others or damaging the quality of the overall project.
Stakeholders changing their minds is a common occurrence. While it's okay to evolve your vision, remember the impact on the iron triangle. Engaging the right stakeholders early in the project will assist to avoid scope creep. These team contributors can provide valuable input that might alter the course of the project if introduced too late. Likewise, ensure that actual decision-makers are looped in from the start to provide timely feedback. Their late arrival at the decision table can derail even the most well-planned projects.
Content
Content is the cornerstone of your digital presence. Writing the words for your website is no small feat. It's not just about being grammatically correct; your content must speak to your audience, convey your brand's message, be SEO-friendly and be a multi-layered approach including images, videos, and downloads, all crafted to engage and convert.
This is where engaging professional writers can make a world of difference. They can articulate your vision in a way that resonates with your audience and boosts your online presence. Creating engaging, relevant, and SEO-friendly content is often the greatest bottleneck in website development. You need to craft a narrative that captures your brand's essence and speaks directly to your audience.
Website visitors make decisions about your brand and business from what they can see, hear and feel. Awful content, just like awful design, leaves an awful impression on visitors. Content is king.
Content production requires a deep understanding of your brand, strategic messaging, and customer sentiment. Professional writing and design brings this expertise to the table, ensuring that content is not just produced, but crafted to meet your strategic objectives.
Aside from fabulous content, you must also consider how it’s intertwined with design considerations. Writers and designers must collaborate to ensure the content fits the design layout and vice versa. This harmonious relationship between copy and design is crucial for a cohesive user experience.
Website visitors are judging your content within seconds of arriving on your website. Content isn’t an expense. It’s an investment. It’s also not marketing. It’s cost of business.
You might find your content needs falling into three categories:
- Your existing content is out of date, needs to be edited and re-approved.
- Your existing content used to work, but now needs a fresh eye over the top to turn it into multiple formats.
- Any new content needs to be planned, written, designed, put through the review and approval process and THEN published.
None of these options are quick turnarounds. Your website is an investment, so why rush through the crucial ingredients that make it successful?
Original Visuals
Clients often want their websites to look modern and captivating but struggle to provide original images or videos, and the all-to-often-worst-case-scenario of no branding. And no, a logo is not a brand. If you’re also thinking you don’t need a brand, think again. A strong brand identity is essential before diving into design, and that too needs originally. How do you do that? Well, here’s how we approach original design thinking.
Yes, there is stock photography available to buy, and there’s nothing original or authentic about your business when you use stock photography.
Investing in custom photography, videography and animation can elevate your website, making it more authentic and engaging. You should be striving for originality to ensure your website reflects the uniqueness of your brand. There’s nothing worse than seeing your website hero image also used in a bank ad, a telco social post or a tampon website. Yep, I’ve seen all of those happen.
Building a website can be quite easy and straight-forward, if you have all your ingredients organised. That’s a key word – organised. You’ll need to know who the project manager is in your web build and they need to understand these elements and the impact they each have on the success of your project.
We’ve built more than 500 websites as Banter Group. If you're embarking on a website project, consider these factors and drop us a line at any time when you’re ready to chat about your upcoming web dev project and how we can work together.
