It’s no secret – at least not to those of us in the industry – that website design projects tend to vary all over the map in terms of time-to-complete. And only some of that is due to the scope or size of the job; even for similar-scope projects, there’s a lot of variance. Most of it is due to subtle traps that clients unwittingly fall into, often because projects of this type and complexity are simply unfamiliar territory for many of the people who really need to be involved.

Here at eMagine, we’d much prefer to see every website-design project run like clockwork; in fact it’s a win-win, better for the client and better for us. So we’ve put together this little checklist of steps clients can take to keep theirs from becoming like the houseguest that never leaves… or in this case, The Project That Never Ends. [Read more...]

Recently, we blogged about how a poor website can seriously harm your business.  Yet we continue to encounter prospects who give us umpteen reasons why they can’t get started – just yet – on a rebuild they realize full well they must do…

“We have to have a complete interdisciplinary team to do this, but Mr. Yoo is on sabbatical and Ms. Snapple is on a 6-week project in France.”
“Our people are just too tied up until after {the Syapsis ’07 show;  year-end closing;  our worldwide sales meeting; … (choose one or more)} to write our new content.”
“We can’t even start developing our content until Satchem Associates presents our new branding.”

It all boils down to this:  they’re waiting for 100% of the resources to be available to do the absolutely perfect website re-build.  Ah… Nirvana;  if only there actually was such a place!  In the real world, it takes an unusual alignment of the planets for 100% of the resources to become available at the same time;  and absolute perfection is rarely achieved in any case.  Also, by viewing it as one giant monolithic project (we call it the “Big Bang” model), it can look too intimidating to even start on. [Read more...]