Is your website due for a long overdue refresh in 2021?

With the increase in new web projects due to the pandemic and the lockdowns, Curtis Williams, Marketing Manager, Digital Storm, on the components that go into a successful web project.

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There are crucial things you should consider when looking for a company to work on your web project, in addition to the more technical and creative aspects.

Planning, planning, planning…

The most important stage, by far, that will outline the long-term success and return on investment of any website project is the upfront planning.

This is the biggest issue with websites that get built on a budget.

When businesses are looking to drive down the price of a website sale this stage is often the first to go.

A website is a marketing tool.

When producing a website, a conversation needs to be had about the goals it needs to meet or it can’t possibly meet them.

• Where is traffic going to come from? Does it need to rank highly in Google or will you be directing people to the website later as part of a sales process?
• What’s your wider marketing look like, does the site need to integrate with a CRM, invoicing system, email marketing client…?
• Who is your target market and thus what tone do we need to take with the design to engage with them?

Those are just three questions that could drastically change the direction of a web project.

The planning stage should be undertaken with, and led by, your chosen supplier.

Doing so will reveal numerous additional benefits, features and changes.

It’s a case of “you don’t know, what you don’t know”.

More often than not at Digital Storm, we recommend clients additional features during this stage, along with providing more experienced direction on aspects such as the sitemap and content.

What else will help increase the success of a website project?

Good project management.

A good project manager takes control of a web project from beginning to end.

They ensure that your requirements are met on time and on budget and that quality is upheld.

Project management is far more than simply tracking deadlines, it is the process of leading the work of a team and ensuring that the initiatives and goals are strategically aligned.

I would recommend that if you are looking to start a new web project, you ask early on in the sales process to meet the person who will be project managing.

Don’t rush, and look for a clear process.

Following a detailed website design and development process will mean that the project runs seamlessly and that any nuances of a particular project will be well-considered.

Tackling a project with distinct stages gives it the best chance of long-term success with the finished product being a polished sum of all these stages.

The process, as above, should start with a planning stage where foundational items are addressed and the tone and goals are set.

The foundational decisions are then followed by the creative design stage. During which flat visuals are produced for various pages and elements of the site.

Through this stage, you should expect to see consideration of device sizes, and operating systems.

Development should only start after these two stages have occurred.

Development is where your website will get built to closely match the designs. During this stage, any desired functionality will get created and the site will be made content-manageable. (meaning the site is made to be editable via an interface rather than code).

Depending on the agency/business delivering the work, the development stage would then be followed by testing and QA stages as well before finally going live.

In closing

Obviously, it goes without saying that there is a lot more that goes into making a project successful and a lot more decisions that need to be made, such as the technology that you will use (CMS’s, off-the-shelf vs custom functionality).

Design is also a very important stage in any web project, getting the visuals right for your brand and target market. But also considering and mapping out clear user journeys for how your customers will interact with the finished website.

It would be wrong to say that any one person or any one stage is more important than another.

However, I wanted to focus on the three areas above as these are lesser talked about and often overlooked when seeking out a web development company to work with.

• Digital Storm and its team of marketing, design and web development experts can be contacted on 01202 298392.