Making Good Decisions

Making Good Decisions

Paul Langtry | 6/12/2010

Last week the Wiliam blog looked at making good decisions regarding website construction. The key relationship in this dynamic is between the client driver (usually a marketing employee) and the Producer. The challenges of being a Producer have been described elsewhere in this blog. The client – producer relationship governs the success of the project.

Beyond the project your website requires updates, maintenance, changes to reflect new initiatives or products, and rebranding. A good relationship with your Producer will add enormous value to your website. It will also reduce costs in the long run as time and energy is saved when a Producer “knows” innately what a particular Client expects.

Producers want your project to succeed: no Producer benefits from late, overbudget projects. Help them help you.

Here are three tips for extracting and maximising the returns on your website investment through your Producer:

1. Insist on milestones based on progress, not time. Producers usually are required to demonstrate that projects under the Producer’s control are generating revenue. This is business. A Client who insists upon progress based milestones will synergise the Client’s goals with the Producer’s goals.

2. Brief your Producer on the project weaknesses at your end. If you have a key stakeholder stuck in the stone age of web you need to communicate this immediately (in confidence of course) to your Producer. Remember the maxim: “forewarned is forearmed.” Your Producer will have extensive experience in reasoning website requirements with difficult stakeholders. Use that experience. 

3. Share your projections / forecasts / targets with your Producer. Clients who announce a month after launch that the website has not met (previously unpublished) expectations will not generate a close future relationship with a Producer. If the aim of the website is to generate brand awareness, the Producer will organise resources and assign tasks differently than if the primary aim is to process transactions. Producers know their resources; but that knowledge is useless without a real feel for the client’s forecasts.               

tags: Web Design