Custom-designed websites are massive, complex, complicated, and highly technological projects. Extra focus and care in the planning of the project can be managed by anyone. Our digital marketing agency has developed the critical areas. The project manager holds the control to ensure site build success by following the correct plan of action. Here are some tips on managing web development from a design perspective.
Kickoff and Discovery
You’ve sold a large web design project, but how does your project team begin? The initial kickoff and the discovery phase will be the most crucial. The team manager can do to ensure that they set the project’s web design to be successful. A complete and comprehensive exploration phase remains. The project can be filled with a lot of guesswork and a failure to meet the expectations. Play in the background of the client’s specifications. The project manager’s responsibility is to ensure that the gathering of requirements does not take too long and efficiently but also remains organized in a manner that’s helpful to the other members of the team in completing projects and keeping them on track with the schedule of the project.
The keys to the successful kickoff and exploration in taking care of projects
Email to welcome and prior-kickoff
Goal To complete the questionnaire and collect enough information for the Q&A to start a conversation about their business prior to the client’s kickoff.
Provide your client with a design survey, which begins with the basics of information gathering around the design brief. Who is the principal person of contact (POC)? Who are the other parties involved? What materials from their brands do they have to be utilized? What are their competitions? Be sure to keep this at a high level so as to not overburden your customers with a 30-minute questionnaire before even speaking to them.
Create an internal kickoff meeting with your team members first. This will ensure that everyone gets the chance to ask questions that they have to ask about any aspect of the web development project plan.
A kickoff event
Goal A high-level goal for the project from the client, with a feeling that the web development company is a brand and get them talking about the brand and the product/service offering
Let them speak about their business using their own language. They will consider their company’s brand in ways they might not have previously.
Deep dive discovery call
Review your sales process, figure out the key decision-makers on the customer side, and then identify the decision-makers. This will put you in their primary audience(s) and buyer personas.
Client Communications
What time do you speak to your customers?
Does it only happen when you are in need of some assistance from them? Do you only do it when you are required to give them? As a web project manager, ensure they are contacted every week at least regardless of deliverables and regardless of whether they reply.
What is the frequency that your clients get in touch with your company?
If they only receive an email from you whenever they contact you, then you’re not in charge of the task. You should send your clients an email every Monday to inform them of what your team’s doing and what you’re asking of them. Maintain client involvement and collaboration to make sure clients know that they are valued and that you’re in the same position as your team.
Leaning into your expertise
Clients are industry experts. However, as a project manager, you are the expert in the final product that you deliver. Utilize that expertise in your conversations with your customers and use the data to support it. Allow your UX designers to showcase their designs in a way that they can get the information directly from the experts. Your developers should be a part of meetings for development functionality and also be available to clients to establish your business’s credibility as an authority within your industry.
Getting Through Development
Launching a site after the staging site has been completed could take some time due to the intricacy it demands. It is possible to make this process easier and less overwhelming for your customers by using tools for collecting feedback and bugs, such as Bugherd, together with your customers to ensure that they are informed about any new changes to your website prior to up to the launch.
When your clients are placed on Bugherd after an initial transfer of your staging area, you have set up a regular 15-minute meet-up with them to discuss their top priorities for the week. The thing you might not be aware of is the number of internal people your POC has to talk to. You can reduce stress by discussing the most important issues with them every day. If possible, you can have your developer be a part of the team, too, since eliminating the middleman could make things much more efficient.
Other Quick Tips
- The organization is the key to success. Set up patterns to ensure that your team is always able to look for the same data for each project. It doesn’t matter if it’s a templated management board, uniform structures for folders, or even the same style of communication. Your team will be grateful for it.
- Make use of collaboration documents (like Google Drive) as likely as you can, regardless of whether you’re working with clients or with your internal team.
- Have a signed copy of the phases from your clients prior to proceeding to the next phase. Wireframes determine the design; therefore, make sure that your clients are aware that they’re signing off on one stage so that they can inform of the next one, so you don’t get scope creep.
- Examine feedback to understand the motivation behind likes and dislikes. Train your employees to become better feedback providers.
- Accept your mistakes and learn from them. Don’t repeat the same mistakes. Everyone has mistakes, but the most successful and the best partners do not repeat their mistakes.
The management of your web development project doesn’t stop once the design is completed. When your website’s project has been designed, the team responsible for your project should examine the feedback and the general result of your project to be able to apply the lessons learned from it to improve future projects. As project managers, this project’s responsibility is from beginning to finish, and after that, you will be responsible for a few. For more information about other Web Development Services, get in touch with Power Digital today!
