“Make It The Best Website, For This Amount, Fast!”

Dayna Imam is a Senior Business Analyst at Piehead

Hubspot’s chief marketer Mike Volpe posted on the company’s blog today “Why 1/3 of Marketers Are Not Happy With Their Website Design [New Data]” and we felt compelled to follow up with some additional insights as this is a great opportunity to talk about how important requirements and success criteria are for any web effort.

Oftentimes in a battle of pleasing your stakeholders and doing “the right thing” for the end user, key steps in a life cycle of redesign projects are missed. By the time the project gets in the hands of the executors the typical  instruction is: “Make it The best, for this amount, FAST!” In timelines that allow for little elaboration, the best solutions are overlooked just to get the new site out the door. And the results end up being a rebranded site that is prettier but generally offers the same (if not lesser) functionality. Shortly after the “wow” factor wears off, the clients’ pitfalls remain.

The solution is simple but requires a doctor-like approach and discipline. Listen to your users. Do not jump into design without analysis. Each stakeholder will have their own idea of what the best solution is but without detailed competitive gap analysis performed new solutions may be as good as the existing ones. If the budget allows for it, usability tests can be highly beneficial. This is not to say that the creative is less important, but let’s face it there is much more than what meets the eye when it comes to .com.

I agree, while it is good to have clearly defined goals, having measurable solutions is even better. Oftentimes, the stakeholders don’t get to see the end product until it is too late (or almost too late). Involve your sponsors in the reviews, get buy in before QA, and both of your audiences (internal and external) will be happy.

Lastly, use the analytics tools for more than  just reporting and allocate resources for ongoing enhancements. In this ever-changing industry the competition is brutal, so even if you are the best today don’t get too comfortable because by morning someone will do it better.