Project Planning

This is an area of creating your website that requires some of the most care. Websites can very easily slip from your control and become ongoing projects that never seem to be completed. To help prevent this take note of the following guidelines:

• Lock down design — at an early stage make sure you settle on the design of the site because it can be very time consuming and expensive to make changes later on. Make your mind up early and stick with it.
• Watch out for “scope creep” — this is a common hazard. Be mindful of exactly what you want the website to achieve and don’t deviate from that unless you can identify an overwhelming reason why. Don’t let personal preferences or outside influence encourage broadening the scope of your project.
• Cost everything out — your time isn’t free and neither is anyone else’s. Work out how much the time devoted to your website costs, and roll that back into all the other costs. Only when you do this will you have an honest figure of what the website is actually costing your business.
• Be cautious — there may be companies who oversell and overcharge for their services. Do your research thoroughly.
• Logically plan your project. Think carefully about the order in which tasks need to take place and what precedent each task should have. Prioritise them accordingly.