5 Ways To Avoid Delays And Additional Fees From Your Website Project
When you’ve appointed an agency to build and design your website, the last thing you want is to be hit with a delayed launch date or worse, additional fees from what was originally agreed. Our job as your hotel website agency is to do everything in our power to avoid these things so that you get the website you love, at the cost you agreed without weeks or even months of delays. This article will explain the things you can do at the start and throughout the project to avoid them.
1. Delegate, don’t abdicate
Our first piece of advice is to see us as partners rather than suppliers who you’re working with to achieve the desired outcome. Amazon is a supplier – you pay, and they deliver. Whether the package arrives on time, in good condition and as advertised is completely down to the supplier.
A creative project is very different; only by working together will it be possible to achieve the end product in the time that was agreed which is why you should view your website project as a delegation, rather than an abdication. That is to say that whilst we’re going to be doing most of the work, your feedback, guidance and steer is an integral part of the process.
2. Collate feedback from all stakeholders
Arguably the most important advice we can offer is to avoid exceeding the two rounds of revisions as this may incur additional costs. We certainly don’t want to have to bill any extra time so we strongly recommend you take the time to collate your feedback with all members of your team before sending across and discussing with your project manager.
Obviously if we haven’t got the design quite right we’ll be flexible and rework it but the key thing to avoid will be if members of your team are requesting new design elements four or five weeks into the project that hadn’t been previously discussed. To that end it’s worth having all stakeholders on board with the project from the offset to avoid any delays.
3. Put your feedback slots into your diary
The kick-off call with your project manager will involve discussing the roadmap which we’d have created in advance of the meeting. This is an opportunity for you to review the feedback deadlines and suggest amends for any that are inconveniently timed. You may know you’ll be particularly busy one week or they could fall during scheduled annual leave for example.
Once the feedback slots have been agreed, it’s worth scheduling these into yours and your team’s diaries. Feedback on website design can take time so you’ll want to be able to give it the time it requires to give us as much feedback as possible so we can create the website you’ll love.
4. Don’t rush the Compass Document approval
The Compass Document is our way of collating every detailed part of the specification of your website. Your project manager will ask lots of questions to ascertain what you want, what you don’t want, other websites you like, how you want users to feel etc. All the tangible and intangible details will be collated into this document and shared with you before it is sent over to our design team to start bringing your thoughts and ideas to life. A common pitfall we see is clients rushing approval of this document so we advise asking yourself the following questions when reviewing:
On a scale of 1 to 10, how close is the compass document for your vision of the website? If you’ve scored it 8 or below, what would make it a 9 or 10? Is there anything missing? Can you think of anything that’s not been included?
5. Be honest!
Probably the most important piece of advice we have is to be honest. It’s not uncommon for the first draft you see to not be quite right. Design is so subjective and it’s our job to get the website you love so whilst it’s rare, if you hate it, please tell us, we won’t be offended. The creation of a hotel website is really the translation of your thoughts and ideas into a digital design – it’s a process of fine-tuning and tweaking with honest communication to get the website you’ll love.