When you want to have a website built (brochure site, inter-company platform, e-commerce), common sense dictates that you should write a project brief to clearly define your expectations and your needs.
Put that way, it sounds like an unshakable truth. And yet, in practice, it is very often the source of many problems and deep disappointment.
The reason? Most people who want to get started on the web have no experience and few skills in the field. They certainly have desires and dreams, but have no idea what is expensive, what is effective, or what will make the difference in their market.
Here are four typical project briefs that very often lead to failure.
The optimistic project brief
My favorite. You can recognize it by the gap between unreasonable expectations and a desperately low budget.
Example:
“We would like to set up a video management system where users can watch in real time the videos viewed by other users. Paid videos will be offered to visitors……”
Budget: 500 euros, an extra amount is possible for certain additional features.
YouTube for 500 euros, with a tip at the end.
The naive project brief
A godsend for unscrupulous service providers.
Example:
“the service provider will ensure good ranking in Google, the site must be pleasant to look at.”
After all, it’s only a matter of interpretation. How are you going to explain, as a professional, that there is SEO and SEO, and that the visual identity represents, at best, only 20% of the price of a project?
In the end, offers will therefore be compared on price, since everyone will claim with a straight face “the site will have good ranking and it will be pleasant to look at.”
The biased project brief
Choosing the tools before even thinking about the need.
Example:
“The service provider must implement a content management system of their choice, preferably Joomla.”
Never mind that Joomla has hundreds of security flaws while the site is intended to store confidential information: the IT manager’s son likes Joomla.
The never-finished project brief
A classic, especially in multi-company organizations. People try to create an ideal system on the first try to satisfy all stakeholders. Since everyone has different ideas and little perspective, discussions drag on for several years. When a document finally comes out, technology and usage have evolved, and the group has been dissolved. At least no one will have wasted time responding.
So what should be done…
- State your operational objectives: I am aiming for X visitors, Y quote requests and Z revenue via the web.
- Have several service providers produce a budget estimate on this basis, with an action plan to support it.
- Select a partner based on their ability to demonstrate that they can achieve the objectives within the budget they propose, and not on the very pretty Flash sites they created in the past, even if there are 2350 of them.
- Let the project mature with the selected partner, define the performance indicators to monitor.
- Place an order that includes bonuses tied to objectives, and offer the partner a long-term service contract.
But for YouTube at 500 euros, I have no solutions.
