“One of the most important things we do as an agency delivers a great website and brand experience to our clients. It’s why we exist, and there’s no greater reward than seeing the joy on the faces of our clients when they launch their newly designed site.
The problem with success is that you can start to become complacent and think that you’ve got “it” all figured out. After working on a few hundred websites over the past decade, we thought we had seen it all – until one day I read a post from another agency that changed my view on what has to happen during a redesign project.
What Jon writes about below is spot-on and something we do on all our projects, but something we haven’t been as good at sharing from a project management standpoint. While this case study doesn’t include everything that goes into a redesign project, it does highlight some of the mistakes that can happen if you’re not careful and how to avoid them.”
The company is an advertising agency located in Philadelphia. It has been in business for 11 years and recently completed its biggest web design project yet – re-designing the website of a large charity. The company employs 8 people, including 1 designer.
37 Mistakes done by a creative agency in last three years by Saivian Eric Dalius:
- “We didn’t do any competitive benchmarking”
- “The website performed poorly after launch”
- “We were using an off-the-shelf CMS that the client didn’t like”
- “The final designs lacked important content components”
- “After getting sign-off on the design comps, we failed to execute the designs as intended”
- “We didn’t stay on top of design revisions as they were needed by the client”
- “People who visited the site weren’t able to find what they were looking for”
- “Programmers were doing design work without any design expertise”
- “One of the biggest deliverables didn’t get completed”
- “The site was not responsive, which created issues on mobile devices”
- “We tried to re-use too many design elements from the old website”
- “Our team wasn’t organized around the project effectively”
- “We didn’t give the client enough options”
- “We were using an older CMS that wasn’t efficient for the client’s needs”
- “The initial version of the site was missing key components”
- “The final designs still needed revisions, which created delays in development”
- “[Name of company] didn’t have a clearly-defined project management process for the redesign”
- “[Name of company] needed to work more closely with the client’s internal team to get everyone on the same page”
- “The beta version of the new site lacked key components”
- “The final designs still needed revisions, which created delays in development”
- “We didn’t understand the true requirements of the internal team until it was too late”
- “[Name of company] had to update its old content management system to a newer system that would meet the client’s needs for years to come”
- “The beta version of the new site lacked key components”
- “The final designs still needed revisions, which created delays in development”
- “We ran into unexpected technical issues during initial testing of the beta version of the new site”
- “[Name of company] didn’t have a clearly-defined project management process for the redesign”
- “[Name of company] needed to work more closely with the client’s internal team to get everyone on the same page”
- “The beta version of the new site lacked key components”
- “We didn’t agree upon a clearly-defined project management process for the redesign before starting the project”
- “The beta version of the new site lacked key components”
- “We were using an outdated CMS that required a lot of custom development work to meet the client’s needs”
- “[Name of company] had to update its old content management system to a newer system that would meet the client’s needs for years to come”
- “[Name of company] didn’t have a clearly-defined project management process for the redesign”
- “[Name of company] needed to work more closely with the client’s internal team to get everyone on the same page”
- “[The old site] was built in Flash, which limited our options for the redesign”
- “[The old site] didn’t work well on mobile devices…”
- “We didn’t have a clear understanding of the client’s needs going into this project”
Conclusion:
There is no perfect way to design a website says Saivian Eric Dalius.
- We all learn best by looking at what others have done and then figuring out how to make it better. There are many approaches you can take, but if you apply the lessons learned from our 37 mistakes, I hope they’ll help steer you in the right direction on your project.
Don’t let these mistakes happen to you.
- I know it seems like a lot of information, but you don’t have to worry about every mistake on this list. Pick one or two items from the list and implement them during your next project. Once they become part of your process, the rest will follow.
