A website redesign is extremely labour-intensive. It’s essential to clearly communicate your company’s philosophy and business processes; there are bound to be a number of misunderstandings, and so on. Yet it’s possible to get it done in just a few hours – all it takes is trust. Don’t believe me? Let me compare two similar projects.
- Company A took a project manager’s approach – they wanted to control everything down to the last detail and actively participate in the development at all times. In total, they spent 115 hours on communication.
- Company B decided to hire an agency as professionals, placed their trust in them, and only monitored key parts of the project. In total, they spent 30 hours on communication.
Today, both websites are meeting their objectives. Put simply, both websites are equally successful. Meet Company B – 1 st SOS and its CEO, Peter Mendez.
How to save yourself work? You need to understand each other
1st
SOS supplies trained staff to 5-star hotels in the Miami area. A top-tier hotel is a demanding client for a recruitment agency. They often want staff on a seasonal basis, but they must be highly trained. 1st
SOS therefore trains employees according to the hotel’s needs for specific roles.
Peter expected the same level of service from his digital agency. He didn’t want his staff to spend time discussing the website. In short: the next time you work with a digital agency, focus on one thing – making sure the agency fully understands your business objectives
.
If you want to assign tasks effectively and avoid making a fool of yourself, follow these 3 steps:
- Carefully prepare the project brief for the agency
- Check
- Evaluate the results
It is important to realise that no company needs a pretty, modern or even designer website. It needs a website that delivers business value. Expect the website to help you achieve your business goals. You must know your target users well and work strictly for them during the preparatory phase. Pass these goals on to the agency.
Describe your business model to them and leave the rest of the preparatory phase to them. This will allow you to verify that the agency has understood. Sometimes just two meetings are enough – in one you present your goals and expectations, and in the other the agency presents its proposed solutions.
The 1st SOS agency mainly employs immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. It turned out that many of them speak only broken English, so the website must be simple and clear, as they do not understand certain words.
When the agency presents the preparatory phase to you, ask how the proposed solution meets your objectives. The most common question we heard was: “Look, guys, can’t we make this simpler?”
That’s why, for example, we jointly designed the perfect form for job applicants. In the Czech Republic, this would be a real nightmare for users. In our case, however, this form perfectly fulfils its purpose. It is structured very similarly to a visa application, which all immigrants have filled in and are familiar with. It is often the only formal document they have ever filled in in English. For our users, it is clear, understandable, and the large volume of data is not an obstacle for them.
Forget the general rules; the only thing that matters is what the user appreciates.
When it comes to wireframes, graphics, text and technical solutions
,
keep your goals in mind and view the solution through your users’ eyes. For communication set up in this way to work, you must trust your agency’s professional expertise and relinquish precise control
. Otherwise, you won’t save yourself any work.
One more insider tip: acknowledge the agency’s good work; it will keep them motivated and costs you nothing.
Keep a close eye on milestones, deadlines and, where applicable, the budget. Believe me, it isn’t necessary to meet in person for everything. We met with Peter or his colleagues five times:
- At the first meeting, they presented their project and objectives to us, and we discussed the terms of our collaboration.
- At the second, we went through our questions and clarified any ambiguities regarding the business model.
- At the third meeting, we presented our initial designs.
- At the fourth meeting, we presented the marketing strategy, structure and sketches.
- At the final meeting, we clarified the finer details, handed over the project brief and launched the website development.
- Note: The actual development of the entire website was then completed without a single meeting; approval via email was sufficient, and the final touches before the website launch were handled via Skype.
When redesigning a website, it is essential to find a high-quality agency you can rely on. Jan Kvasnička and Jan Řezáč presented how to choose such an agency at WebExpo. Make sure you understand what you need from the website. To ensure there are no misunderstandings, let the agency propose a solution. Then simply trust your choice and just check that the interim results match your objectives.