by LansgraphixWhy status reports offer a lifeline to the successful design of your B2B website
As with any relationship, communication is critical to working with a web design agency. From the moment an engagement kicks off to the day your revamped site launches, your B2B firm should have no question about where your project stands or where it’s headed next.
But more than just keeping you informed about your project’s progress, communication offers a window into your project’s overall health. When important information is flowing freely, both you and your design partner can recognize and prevent potential issues before they happen. But when communication breaks down, your project’s schedule and budget are at risk. If one of your stakeholders misses a pivotal update, they could be surprised by a recent design decision. As your project backtracks to correct an avoidable mistake, everything you and your agency have built together is disrupted. Providing a regular status update is the best way your web design agency can set and maintain effective patterns of communication. But given the stakes of your redesign, you should expect more than a simple weekly check-in.
Communication Patterns Are Set at the Start of a Web Design Project
All design projects are built upon trust. You need to trust that your web design partner is doing all they can to help your website improve and better serve your business. In addition, you need to trust that all the concerns and questions from your organization are consistently being heard and addressed. From the start, your redesign’s success depends on a strong relationship between your firm and your project manager. After all, projects that demand as much care and expertise as a website redesign are daunting, especially if you’ve never been through the process. To allay these concerns, your agency partner should provide total visibility into how they plan to approach your project from the very beginning.
At LANSGraphix, we outline what we want to accomplish with your redesign and our plan for achieving it from the first pitch to the kickoff meeting. We get into the nitty-gritty of what you can expect from each member of our team at every step of the design journey. In turn, we establish a sense of accountability with our team and yours in order to deliver a successful project.
Discovery Opens the Door to the Tools Behind Your Project
At the beginning of a redesign, the discovery stage provides a crucial window into your B2B firm’s needs. As we get to know your organization, discovery points the way toward building a strong digital strategy for your website. But discovery also sets the tone for the engagement as we present the nuts and bolts of our process.
Given any project may mark a client’s first collaboration with a web design agency, discovery should incorporate an educational component. From explaining their development process to introducing any new collaborative tools, we will outline how your project will progress through each stage of design and development. At LANSGraphix, we use Basecamp to store project updates as well as any feedback, approvals, and associated files for review. Smartsheet offers you constant access to the full project calendar while also allowing our team to be held accountable for staying on schedule. From the beginning, we’ll communicate the value of these platforms along with training for how to use them. Eventually, every tool will become second-nature to your team while allowing visibility into your project’s status.
Agency Collaborations Are Built on Identifying Potential Breakdowns
Early workshops with your firm’s design partner mark the proving grounds for how well you and your web agency are communicating.
New software platforms may improve transparency and workflow management, but they can be stressful to adopt. Your design partner should remain in tune with how well your team is learning any production tools and understanding the systems at work. The right agency will recognize when members of your team aren’t connecting with the elements of the process and adjust their approach accordingly. Whatever additional support your team requires, your agency should be ready with a solution.
A successful project doesn’t just depend upon a web design agency relaying information to you and your stakeholders. Listening is just as important.
Weekly Status Meetings Outline Progress for Your Web Design Project
As soon as your project gets underway, we set up a recurring meeting between your project manager and our point of contact with your firm. These meetings provide a crucial opportunity to provide progress reports, review the project calendar, and discuss upcoming deadlines. Status meetings are intended to address any questions or concerns about the project to communicate where it stands. At LANSGraphix, we start with a weekly cadence, but we can tailor that schedule to meet any client’s needs.
Sometimes, a firm will prefer two 15-minute stand-up meetings per week for the duration of the project. Whatever level of communication your firm needs, the right agency partner will adjust to accommodate your schedule. No matter how often you meet with a web design partner during a project, all communication should be documented and retained so it can be acted upon. Redesign projects involve many moving parts, and storing the results of these status meetings on Basecamp for later reference provides another level of accountability for both sides of an engagement.
Consistent Email Updates are Critical to a Project’s Ongoing Success
Weekly status updates provide a way for your firm to address any granular concerns with how the design collaboration is progressing. But along with these meetings, your design partner should also send regular email updates that document your project’s progress while listing the new work that lies ahead. Email updates are distributed to you and any additional stakeholders to provide a reviewable snapshot of your project outside of a formal meeting. Recently completed work along with next priorities and action items should be presented clearly in a scannable, easy-to-read format. If any outstanding issues are impeding progress, these updates provide another opportunity for your web design agency to highlight what they need from your team to move forward.
Email status updates should be customized to reflect your project. For example, if a tight deadline has resulted in a recent schedule change, the email update should underscore the impact of those changes so each stakeholder is on the same page. Every update should also link to the project calendar to further align everyone’s schedules. Design engagements demand flexibility, but email updates must be delivered each week of a project. Reliable, consistent communication allows both sides of a project to stay engaged with every step of the process.
Additional Lines of Communication Ensure Design Projects Are Built to Last
An effective redesign demands the interplay of many moving parts to deliver the best results for your business. But keeping lines of communication clear with your agency partner is the most critical priority. Consistent, honest communication with your project manager is vital. But your PM should constitute just one of many contact points with your web design agency.
At LANSGraphix, our communication plan also incorporates regular check-ins with the Director of Client Services, who can speak to any issues you may have with your project. Instead of leaving you to guess where to go with higher-level concerns, we’d rather provide additional options to make sure whatever you need gets done. These meetings provide a way for us to gain a full understanding of how your team is feeling about the project and the collaboration as a whole.
Plus, we’re conducting our own internal check-ins to ensure every detail that could impede your project’s progress gets addressed. Even after launch, we conduct a formal retrospective to identify any areas we could improve for the completed project in addition to any further work that lies ahead. Your website redesign is simply too important for you to be left unsure about any stage of its development. If this level of care sounds like an approach that will work for your business, we should talk.