Before we get more into the nitty gritty details of things, it’s important to cover some key distinctions so that when we communicate about your project, we are talking about the same things. This extra clarity can help prevent time lost to confusion at any stage of the project.
Development vs Design
While these two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, in website project management it’s important to make a distinction as they are really more like two sides of a coin:
Development refers to creating the needed functionality for your website visitors to use (for this reason it is sometimes called “functional design”.) It is objective and logical. Visitors need to be able to easily navigate your content, fill in forms, signup/login to manage their account, and use whatever other custom interface(s) that your site might need. In short, it needs to ”work”.
Design is about creating the desired presentation for your website. It is more subjective and abstract. It includes the styling of your the theme, content and also of any needed functionality, to create the consistent look and feel that you want. In short, it needs to “look good”.
Marketing
The third main aspect to a website is the marketing. You could have the best website in the world, but if no one knows it exists, it just wouldn’t work as a business. It needs to be an integral part of your considerations when it comes to targeting visitors, writing content, and particularly in any copywriting. In short, it needs to “sell” or “convert”.
We recommend for best results, that you consider assigning an equal or greater amount to the your marketing budget as to the project’s build budget. That might seem like a lot! But it comes from experience. If you spend all your budget on a project’s build, and have nothing left aside for marketing, it’s going to be a real struggle to get that marketing going by yourself when you still have the rest of your business to run.
Overlaps
In practice, Development and Design do often overlap, for example in your website’s Theme. But as that’s a more complex and involved topic, I’ll cover themes in more detail a later point.
Marketing overlaps with Design also, especially when it comes to Branding (eg. the logo and the use of branding fonts and palette colors etc.)
Marketing also overlaps with Development especially when it comes to Automation, as there is typically some automated marketing functionality that needs to be developed. For example, following up with a prospect or customer by email, or posting published articles to social media.
Content
Central to all these aspects is again the Content. In terms of Marketing for example, publishing articles and copywriting are forms of “content marketing” that impact conversions and SEO (Search Engine Optimiation.) It terms of Design, it might involve logos, images or other media content, and text sections that need to be styled or formatted. Development involves less content, but there is still usually some need for explanatory text for different functions or user actions.
A Balanced Approach
There’s a lot of different ways to tackle website development, and a huge variety of developers with different skillsets and experience levels out there. Since it’s hard for you to know what you’ll be getting, I want to give you a little rundown on our approach, which has been developed from years of trial and error. I apologize in advance if I get a little nerdy and technical on the project management philosophy! You don’t necessarily need to know this stuff, but as it can make all the difference to your project’s success, I want you to know that I know it! I’ll try to make it interesting… 🙂
A helpful frame of reference is the industry adage of “Best + Fast + Cheap doesn’t exist, you can only pick two!” This is because typically Best + Fast = expensive. Best + Cheap = slow. Cheap + Fast = mediocre. Fortunately in practice there are a few things we can do about this problem!
Obviously, if you have a good available budget, you could just pay a higher rate for prioritized work and get it done Best and Fast. (If you are looking to launch soon by a particular date, this is probably be the right choice for you.) But typically there are some kind of budgetary limits. Of course, no wants “not good enough” or “too slow” either.
If it helps, you could think of it as having 200% to assign to 3 different slots. So the solution I’ve come up with it to strike a balance, to try to push it to an average of two-thirds (66%) on each front… This is a good baseline to work from, but it’s still not enough by itself, as you’d only end up with a “good enough” project result – not the Best! To work around this problem, as we move through each project phase, this balance is adjusted to match what we are trying to achieve at each stage:
1. When tackling priority tasks, as often is needed at the start of a project, there is a focus on Fast over Best, For example fixing anything that’s broken on an existing site. Or on a new site, just setting the website platform up as fast as possible.
2. For the bulk of project development, we aim for the two-thirds balance of Good, at a Medium pace, and at a standard rate. (Good – Mid-pace – Affordable.)
3. Nearing the end of the project, we want to aim for Best and focus on that. This stage tends to require a more careful and slower pace, so it can also be done at a standard rate. (Best – Slow – Affordable.)
4. After a project completion or launch, this moves into a slower development pace, where we might alternate between priority tasks, adding new features/content/design and progressively enhancing existing ones. Depending on the task this would match up to one of the 3 approaches already described above.
And that’s it in a nutshell! This approach gives us the best result at the most affordable rate. Again, we can always fast-pace things at a higher rate to get them done sooner, but this is optional for each phase or task.
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