Studies have shown that up to 30% of web site projects fail. What can be done to avoid this?
When creating a new or updating an existing web site, marketing professionals have a tough role to play. They have to understand the web site owner needs and translate those needs into specifications that web developers (the techies!) can use effectively. Web site projects fail often because of a lack of clear communications of owner expectations and constraints due to technology limitations.
A great solution is a written web site project plan. By writing a plan, marketing has a document that the user community has to approve and sign off on before any programming starts. The written web plan is an iterative process. Once the plan is written and approved, the web development team can use the written plan to develop a comprehensive and detailed proposal and technical specification for the project. The web development team can use the document to identify any technology issues and new solutions that should be communicated back to the site owners. Any issues or problems need to be negotiated so that solutions are found. Once the web developer’s proposal and specification is accepted, the web plan can be updated with appropriate changes so that everyone is on the same page.
What are the elements of a good web site project plan?
Like all marketing projects, the web site plan should discuss how the web site will help the site owners achieve business objective and goals. What are the critical success factors, and how will we measure them? Do we need to generate new leads, create awareness, better support existing customers, build a user community? How many leads, how much awareness, what satisfaction level, how many users, what level of engagement? How will we accomplish these goals and objectives?
The plan should include a discussion of the web site audience. Who are they? What are their demographics (age, income, gender, etc.)? What are their psychographics (lifestyle preferences, purchase habits, affinities, hobbies, etc.)? What colors do they like? What colors will they have a hard time reading (some seniors have difficulty reading red text)? What images will appeal to the audience? What images should be avoided?
What kind of structure and navigation will the new web site have? If there is an existing site, how will the structure navigation differ? Here diagrams embedded in the documents help tremendously. A picture paints a thousand words. You can embed a simple hierarchical chart using Microsoft Word 2007 SmartArt. I’ve also used SmartDraw and MS Visio to generate web site diagrams. I show one chart for the old navigation and a second chart to show the new navigation.
What is the objective of each page on the site? What kind of content, graphics, images, forms or other features will each page have? The web development team can review these detailed requirements and recommend new technology and solutions where possible.
Web site plans are not foolproof. Basically, if the plan is not comprehensive or lacks important information, it won’t be effective. Garbage in means garbage out. In one situation a client firm insisted on included Macromedia Flash in their web site update. We explained that Flash is not easily recognized by the search engines and could impede the firm’s search engine performance. We negotiated a solution: the site pages would be programmed with part Flash and part HTML. When the site was 90% complete, one of the firm partners noticed that when navigating through the site his back button didn’t work. The web developers on the project didn’t think to bring up this technicality: the back browser doesn’t work when you use Flash on a web site. They assumed the site owners knew this. The site owners didn’t know what they didn’t know. It turned out there are work-arounds for the problem, but it would have been better to identify them up-front and avoid the surprise at the end of the project.
Do you have a story about a web development project? Do you include other elements in your web development plan for marketing? Please use the comments to share your story.
