Setting up a web project takes time, skills and budget. Entrepreneurs and marketing managers have probably already been faced with the difficulty of setting up (successfully) a web project. Here are some tips for planning your project without failing.
#1. Choosing a web agency
It is often the first stage of the project: the choice of a provider. In principle this should not be a problem. But in reality, what are the criteria that you use to choose a web agency?
Often, the criteria are:
- A specialized agency of a particular technology (WordPress, Drupal, Magento…)
- The nearest branch geographically
- A creative agency, which will produce high quality models
This is a recurring situation, and can be for projects of up to several tens of thousands. In any case, the conditions are met to fail: soliciting several web agencies will present all the tools in which they are specialized (CMS, proprietary tools etc…). You will then lose a lot of time trying to understand what are the strengths and weaknesses of these tools. You will look at what your competitors are using. In short, the tools are not a problem, they have to adapt to your project, provided that the it is a tad thoughtful.
On the ‘fun part’ of the agency, this is an important but not sufficient criterion because you’re going to team up with the agency for a successful project. Regarding the geographical aspect, with nowadays modern tools you can work remotely without any problem. Finally, the creative side is often highlighted when selecting the provider. Even if it is not important if your website will be green or blue in reality, what matters is that it achieves its objectives. And to do this, it is the content of the website that will have a crucial role.
#2. Using your entire budget for creating a website
This is one of the most common mistakes! You have a budget of 10k to create a website. You will spend 9.5k on the site and you’re satisfied you’ve done everything you can to succeed. You actually just put a stick in the wheel of your project.
Once posted, the website is delivered. And that’s it. After a few weeks or months, you will discover with that “it does not work”. It’s just normal. It’s like having a Ferrari without fuel. You stay in the garage! Then there is the huge job of creation and optimization of your site content,
#3. Do not work in collaboration with your agency
“It’s normal, given the price of the service to create your website, you’re not going to spend more time with the provider”.
This phrase we have heard so often and yet it is a serious cause of failure of your web project. Your site will be a blank page if there is no interaction with your provider and without work on your part in the creation of website content. Or with low-quality content. Therefore, it will not be visible on the web and not effective.
#4. Advertise on AdWords
Often, when we put a low quality site online with little content, we realize after a few months that traffic does not take off. This is normal, and then we look for options like paid search. Again, this is doomed to failure because you will have to pay to be seen. But users can doubt the effectiveness of the approach if they arrive at low-quality content. You will significantly increase your bounce rate and the quality of your AdWords against your web pages will be low. You will be obliged to pay more than your competitors to position yourself at the same level.
As for buying clickthroughs with advertising agencies without targeting, of course this approach is doomed to failure. You will see an engulfed budget and the expected number of clicks, but do not expect any effective ROI.
#5. Redesign your website
You created your site with a web agency, choosing the wrong criteria and you put your entire budget towards the site, without collaborating with the agency and therefore: this does not work. Rest assured, it remains a common approach but sometimes, the company has the bad idea to redesign the website. On the grounds that it does not work, so often we will change the CMS, or change the design. But again, the main question stays: is it a problem of tools?
In most cases, no, the tools can adapt and it is mainly the content that will make the project a success.
How to make your web project correctly?
To do this, it is necessary to conduct a small reflection on your business:
- Who are my prospects? What is my target?
- What is the functional purpose of my website? Meaning, “what I expect from my site” And not “what I want my site to look like”
- What are the expectations and problems of my target market?
- What content production is needed to address these issues? Articles, images, videos, tutorials…
- What levers are used for the dissemination of this content? Emailing, social networking,
SEO … - What are the goals of the site?
As soon as you are able to realise these ideas you can write functional specifications to give to your web providers. You will have a clearer idea of what to expect from your site and not what it should look like. Technology, tools and design will adapt to these expectations.
Finally, you have understood, that once the project is launched, and the site is live, the hard work begins: to support the project, update the content regularly, disseminate via the appropriate channels, and train daily to understand the evolution of web marketing.
Images: “Digital Online New Office Working Concept/Shutterstock.com“
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