Fire the Web Committee: A Guide to Executing Successful Website Projects

By Michael Reynolds

When most organizations embark on the task of creating a new website, the first thing they do is put together a committee. Then, that committee gets together and tries to figure out all the ins and outs of a website before choosing a partner firm to make sure they are doing their jobs. This can be very time-consuming and often frustrating. Sound familiar? This book helps make it easier and provides additional education to help you execute a new website project successfully.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456602611

Michael Reynolds

Major General Michael Reynolds CB joined the British Army in 1948, and was commissioned into the Queens Royal Regiment in 1950. In the course of a long and distinguished career, he served in Korea, where he was severely wounded, Northern Ireland and West Germany. On promotion to Major General he assumed command of NATO's Allied Command Europe Mobile Force (Land). In retirement, he became guest speaker on British Army and NATO battlefield tours in the Ardennes, publishing a number of detailed histories on World War 2 operations in Europe. He died in 2015.

Book preview

review.

Introduction

If you are a marketing director, communications professional, or someone in a similar position who has had the pleasure of overseeing a web project, this book is for you.

In the grand scheme of things, overseeing a website project is not the most riveting thing you could be doing with your time. Most of the time, our jobs are focused on the runway-level tasks that keep an organization running smoothly, like creating content, distributing, campaigns, and analyzing data. Oh, and don’t forget meetings. Attending lots a lots of meetings is most likely a big component of your day, so maybe a web project is more interesting.

In any case, it can sometimes be difficult to make the time to properly plan and execute a project like implementing a new web presence, which can take months of planning and execution. This is why so many web projects end in frustration. Though I’m sure this has never happened to you, you’ve probably had a friend who complained of a website project going over budget, past deadlines, and generally being a nuisance of a project. Why does this happen?

There are a lot of moving parts to creating a new online presence so it’s difficult to point to one magic answer that defines where things usually go wrong. Sometimes it’s lack of market research. Other times it’s lack of understanding of how to choose the right Content Management System. Other times it’s lack of content planning. Ok, most of the time it’s lack of content planning.

A web presence combines a lots of complex puzzle pieces, including branding, design, programming, user interface decisions, work flow planning, marketing strategy, security, social media policy, and copy writing. Your website is the hub of your online presence and must work in harmony with your social media presence, which typically act as pods of engagement and lead-generation tools. Every piece of online content strengthens or weakens your brand and must be nurtured accordingly.

The good news is that there is a process for making it all work and that’s what we will be discussing.

We will cover all the components of your project from start to finish, including market research, choosing a web services firm, choosing a CMS, planning your content, website architecture, design, build out process, launch, and setting up an Internet marketing system.

A word of warning: if you are a do-it-your-selfer and you like tinkering with servers and reading books about JavaScript, stop reading this right now and