How long does it take to develop a website?
An afternoon. A week. Two months. Two years. It all depends.
Stratecomm can take a concept, flesh out the navigation, add content
and images, and incorporate back-end functionality for an average 20-30
page site in three or four weeks. But, that rarely happens. Why? Because
there are many timing factors that can delay progress. Honestly, most
of these delays occur on the client side. Many are too much part of the
business process to be easily evaded. These include:
• Delays in developing Client-side
content. Often it turns out that several departments have to approve certain
key pieces of text. The process of coming up with a mission statement
sometimes creates questions within an organization that must be resolved
before moving on.
• Vacations, sudden priority
shifts, and having one of the key client contacts get buried in other
work are all common occurrences.
• There are also those scope
changes. When the process begins, a client suddenly sees new potentials,
or changes the target audiences of the site. This usually involves redesign.
Pre-planning and careful specification of a website will greatly reduce to likelihood of delays. As will clearly a clearly delineated process for content creation, client site review, and approvals.