How to avoid F***ing up your next website/app project

I’m going to apologise first of all, as this is a bit of a rant at our industry, the agencies, the consultants, the clients and everyone who helps to contribute to the collective industry making the same mistakes time and time again. It’s a blog that covers common things we collectively are doing wrong and the reasons why this helps us all to ruin awesome projects and make all of our lives harder. The most annoying thing is it’s relatively simple to avoid the pitfalls, and hopefully what’s written below will help!

Technology selection, before we understand the problem...

We hear all the time that the industry is changing, the landscape evolving, we hear of a fundamental shift in the way consumers are engaging with brands, and what they expect. Yet in the most part, the approach we’re taking to web and app projects is the same as the last time, and the time before that. Over the last two years in particular, the way we can approach a website and app projects has changed, and this benefits everyone involved in the process.

In the most part, third-party tools talk to each other quite nicely. Headless content management systems are getting to a point of maturity where they are a genuinely viable option, front end technologies such as React and React Native have enabled the front end experience to be de-coupled from the CMS. And significant VC funding has gone into specialist tools and services creating best of breed platforms such as Typeform and Algolia. It’s this componentised approach that’s become viable, and it’s time that more agencies, consultants and clients were aware of the possibilities that now exist.

Gone are the days where CMS technology needs to dictate the front-end experience of a website, de-coupling the front-end experience from back end functionality websites and taking a more componentised approach to your website comes with many benefits. By using best of breed technologies to do specific required tasks, you mitigate much of the risk of ‘selecting the wrong platform’ and can swap in and out components as your strategy requires.

Lots of ways you can cut the cloth...

However, there are many ways that different people could and would solve the same problem, and this is part of the challenge. There is rarely just one right tool or set of tools for the job. Being aware of the limitations of the technologies being proposed and assessing the total cost of ownership of a solution, and how you may need to extend it over the lifetime of the solution are the basics of good technology selection. Investing time upfront in assessing the market and possibilities is rarely wasted. Getting a tight brief that enables you to compare suppliers and their proposed approaches on a like for like basis will ensure you’re investing in the right services.

Poor selection, or poor integration of these components comes with risk, both to the security of the system and of the ongoing site performance. This is where you need a team and agency who really know what they’re doing technically, who are conversant in a broad stack of technologies but ultimately ensure that everything they build is to serve the needs of the end user. You wouldn’t for example scrap a car because the exhaust needs replacing, and neither should you need to rebuild an entire website because the front end is looking a bit dated. The concept of design led development is not new, but businesses who are putting design at the core of everything they do are flourishing.

Halting investment post launch...

Once you’ve got a solution in place, keep investing in it, keep developing it, and keep optimising! You should have got your company ahead of the market, so stay there!

This is where conversion rate optimisation (CRO) comes in. It’s a buzz word that has floated around the industry since forever, but what does good CRO require? The answer is a holistic view of everything that goes into planning, designing and building a website. A good CRO team is made up of a strong commercial strategist, an excellent UX professional, a digital designer, a competent SEO and front and back end developers with great knowledge of website performance. I urge everyone to learn more about what goes into conversion rate optimisation, learn the methods and the tools. Understanding here yields measurable results and a good CRO team will without question increase revenue for your business.

No one can possibly know everything there is to know...

There is a massive, and ever-growing knowledge gap… One person cannot possibly be an expert in all these things, and with the tools available to digital marketers changing so regularly it’s hard to keep on top of what’s hot right now, what’s offering great value, and what is going to deliver best value for money. There are some expensive tools and services that offer little benefit over their cheaper rivals, but there are cases where it’s much more effective to pay for the right tool for the job rather than have the team work around their toolset. You need to trust your CRO team here, you’ll often end up investing nearly the same cost, but will end up with much better value from having the right tools for the job.

By adopting a design led development methodology, and undertaking a considered CRO process you no longer need to consider a website or app an asset that’s depreciable over 3-5 years. You can continually iterate and improve, striving to beat your last month/last quarters’ performance.

The interesting thing is, that it’s companies working in this way that are truly disrupting traditional industry. The companies who have put design and the user at the core of everything they do, and who are constantly iterating their approach to make things just that little bit easier for their customers are the ones we gravitate to.

There are teams out there who are getting this stuff right! We collectively need to assess where our knowledge is strong, and where it’s less so and to build our networks and skills to engage with a broad range of specialists who can help us to understand the different ways we can triage symptoms, then make an informed judgement on the best way to do so. There are many good people in our industry and navigating away from the cowboys can be a challenge (though look out for the spurs on their boots, they’re often a giveaway).  

It’s simple stuff, but there is a lot of mis-information out there, and getting references from people who have used agencies, tools, services and consultants can really help. Assess whether their situation was similar or different to yours, but overall, trust your gut. It’s rarely wrong!