Grocery stores employ many tactics to influence shoppers' purchases, including eye-level marketing, grouping products, canned scents, irrational pricing, point-of-sale items, and shuffling of stock. It's likely you've encountered and been influenced by these techniques before, especially if you came without a list. In fact, psychologists say that shoppers who plan their trips to the supermarket by assembling a list in advance are more likely to purchase the items they need and stick to the budget they expect. On the other hand, those shoppers who approach supermarket visits spontaneously are likely to buy more unnecessary items and spend more money. Grocery stores plan for the shoppers who don't plan; that's how they make a profit.
In the same way, any web development project should be planned well in advance to ensure that the goals, scope, budget and timeline are appropriate and achievable. The difference is that, unlike grocery stores, web development companies don't profit from clients who don't plan. When it comes to our clients, we're in this thing together, from start to finish.
This month, I'd like to review the steps involved in a web development project, paying particular attention to processes that are often overlooked or underfunded.
Before you continue reading, it might be helpful to take a look at our Project Anatomy document, which specifies all the steps and roles involved in a typical web development project. We use it to properly plan all of our projects at the outset, making sure we've allocated the appropriate time and resources in order to meet everyone's expectations, as well as to track the progress of a project along the way.
Thank you for another thought provoking article. I find myself wondering how you estimate a project if as noted above, "…it's at this point that we can most accurately establish a budget and schedule for a project." It makes perfect sense to me that strategic planning comes first, and it's in this phase that the real scope of the project reveals itself, but I've yet to encounter a client who didn't want a quote BEFORE any work, including planning, was begun???
Regards,
Jeri
Jeri,
Thanks for reading!
We always give a firm quote for the strategic consulting- a flat fee. Once the strategic phase is complete, we will give a firm quote for the project if there is enough defined to do so (assuming we know all the technical requirements to scope out the actual development). If not, we tend to do a firm quote for a prototyping phase, estimate the remainder of the project and then firm up that quote once prototyping is complete.
Best,
Chris
To keep a website current and in the rankings these days is becoming a real professionals job, I am sure outsourcing for webmasters SEO will really take off.
Alice,
You are right about that! We recommend that our client allocate significant internal resources, not just toward managing web content but also specifically for analytics and SEO maintenance. We also frequently recommend our friends at High Rankings for outside expert SEO consultation.
Thanks for reading,
Chris
In a former incarnation it was my job to perform QA on all the software we built. It was especially important for the Help Desk as they had less exposure to irate clients. Funny that I don't do much of it now that we are creating sites for the web. Should get back to it really. Anyway, thanks for the kick in the pants.
Hi Chris, thanks for the feed back, will have to check out your suggestion of 'high rankings'.
Hi Chris, thanks for the feed back, will have to check out your suggestion of 'high rankings'.