Communicating with Your Development Team

March 24, 2007

In the article, 11 Tips to Ensure a Successful Web Design Process, the author (Peter F) outlines some goals from the designers perspective about how the client can help a project run smoothly and be successful. I would like to discuss how clients can help themselves in this process to achieve more happiness with this process.

What makes a successful development project? Is it the design? The programming? The results? The sales made in the end?

I have found, more and more, that the success of the project hinges not on the actual end result, but in the client’s happiness with the process. And happier clients tend to be the ones who had the greatest communication and the least preconceived notions throughout the project in order to let us do what we do best so that the design flourished and the marketing goals were met.

When starting a design project, where do you begin? I often ask first-time customers about 3 things: their business plan or model, their marketing plan, and their target market. I would say that most of our clients either haven’t thought about that yet, or they are still in the process of forming their base. While it is fine to refine your market as you are starting out (we did this ourselves!), you will often incur greater development costs this way from retooling the site once you have made your decisions.

So, to get the most impact with the least amount of money, I highly suggest that you:

Write your business plan.
(Learn more about this here.)
Write your marketing plan.
(Get some help here.)
Write some goals for your website.
(We can help with that!)

While we have helped out clients along the way with all 3 of those things, it does help us tremendously if you come to the development table with at least some idea of what your web needs are. We give a lot of our customers the following questionnaire in order for them to do some thinking about their company and where they want to go with their website:

What are five (or more) adjectives you want your site to say about you?
Are there certain sites you like? What is about them? Or, are there certain features/colors/graphics you like?
Are there certain sites you don’t like? What is it about them? Or, are there certain features/colors/graphics you don’t like?
If you had endless budget, what is everything you want on your site? Can you prioritize those things or put them on a release timeline?
What is the purpose of your site? What is the end goal? What do you want to promote the most?
What is your 3- to 7-second message?
What is your target market?
What are you going to provide for them? What reason do you give for them using you?

These same questions can be used by anyone, at any stage of their business, to decide if their current site or website plan is doing what it needs to do for their business.

In summary, communication is the key to any successful project, and it never hurts to jump into a project fully prepared.

Link: 11 Tips to Ensure a Successful Web Design Process

Filed Under Points of Interest, Technology and Websites
Tagged: