Issue #17

September last year I kicked off a new project – the brief was to design and build a new marketing website for a company which was flexible enough so the client could adapt their website if their strategy was to change, but rigid enough so the design stayed consistent as they did this.

To give some context, the project was scoped to take 3 months and cost £11,500, but it ended up taking 7 months (I wasn’t working on the project this whole time).

So what happened to make this project take so much longer? Content!

Even though at the start of the project I was asked, what’s the biggest challenge on projects like these to which I said; content – so start working on it as soon as possible.

I even gave an option in my proposal to work with a copywriter to create content for up to 12 key pages on their website which the copywriter quoted £1,500 (she’s probably glad that didn’t happen).

Digging a little bit deeper though, content wasn’t the problem – it was strategy.

Once the client started thinking about content, they completely changed their minds several times because of how they wanted to position their offering going forward.

But, if I’m being completely honest, I wouldn’t know where to begin to help facilitate a new strategic offering… so this is an area I need to work on (to get a basic understanding at least) and probably delegate if needed in future.

The bigger question I need to ask, however – is this what I want to be doing anyway?

This project took up so much mental energy compared to other projects and it stopped me from taking on new work.

On the flip side, the majority of my clients have some technical knowledge and usually consist of 1 decision-maker – which I find are much easier to work with and sell to.

So going forward, I’ll be more vigilant with projects where it’s clear there are multiple stakeholders and what level of technical knowledge they have.