Pop quiz! What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear “website redesign project?” It’s doubtful that your mind just jumped to piece of cake or walk in the park. Unless, of course, you were thinking of things you’d rather have in your day than the classic headache of managing a website redesign project. Fear no more, because there is a better way to design websites—a successful website redesign is within reach and the key is agility. Why do professional athletes focus on agility training? Because it’s fun? Nothing better to do?
Not likely. Being agile is important to athletes because they know that to execute a successful play, they must account for change. What’s the player across from you thinking? What will they do next? Should I go right? Or left? Regardless of how much planning or predicting goes into a game plan, there is only one thing that should be expected, and that’s the unexpected. While Bill Belichick might not be your first stop when looking to redesign your website, we can still apply this agility concept to improving our web design process.
Traditionally, website redesign projects are approached with the waterfall project management technique of print design: plan and write, design and tweak, fine tune and proof check… Okay, now that we’re pretty sure it’s perfect, PRINT. Done. It’s logical to put all your energy and resources into a perfect-as-possible finished piece because changing a brochure after it’s been printed means reprinting the brochure.
But websites are innately versatile. Changing a website after it’s launched is as easy as click, click, click, type, type, save, and publish. That’s hardly doubling your production costs, like you would with a printed brochure. But if you’ve already used the traditional web design process to get the site up and running, you’re likely outside your scope, over budget, and past due, which makes continual improvements on your site very difficult.
With an agile approach to web design, your preliminary launch website is just the beginning. By focusing your initial efforts on producing a complete, core functionality site, you’re able to commit resources to educated improvements over time, bringing your website growth potential to new heights.
The sky is the limit when you have the resources to grow.