Avoid Common Website Project Challenges and Create a Realistic Plan
You’re booked out for the next six months with incredible clients. Your schedule flows day to day while still having moments of white space for creative pondering. Your amazing clients always provide feedback on time and rarely have edits. It’s the web designer's dream.
In reality, it’s often the opposite with timelines running behind, last-minute requests, scope creep, and a chaotic to-do list each week that makes you question your life choices.
While you may have tried common tips for managing client projects without success, I’m here to promise you that there is hope. This post will cover techniques, common roadblocks, and options from an experienced project manager and OBM for web designers.
Laying the Foundation of Website Project Management
Before we get into ways you might alter your current process, let’s quickly cover the basics so we’re all on the same page as we move forward.
At its core, project management is about bringing structure and organization to your work. Every time you take on a new client, you're starting a new project. And just like any project, your web design work has a beginning and an end, a budget, a schedule, a team (even if it's just you!), and a scope of work that needs to be completed.
Project Management provides a structure for taking control of the process. While every project is different, having a clear workflow process will allow you to make adjustments when needed and to plan for the hiccups.
Once you’ve defined your base project process you’ll be able to manage your capacity, clearly share expectations, see the signs of a problem project, and know how to make alterations.
Workflow Considerations
Timeline
By thinking through the timeline of each offer type, you’ll be able to create a general roadmap. Having a basic structure outlined allows you to clearly see where additions would fit in and how they would expand or change the standard timeline. This would apply if a client adds on two extra pages, wants you to design email sign-up forms, or collateral. You can plan for these adjustments up front and communicate it easily with your client.
Outsourcing
You may decide you want to work with another designer, a VA, or a copywriter. By having a clear project plan, you’ll be able to see what work you want to outsource, how it fits into the plan and it will give you a framework to communicate deadlines to contractors. Even if it’s just for one specific project or a certain timeframe (think summer break or maternity leave), it will be easier if you have a guide in place.
Capacity Planning
When you have a project timeline that’s pretty accurate, think about how easy it will be to see when you have room to take on another?! You’ll be able to see where you overlap projects without overloading yourself. This means you make more money and who doesn’t want that? Talk about feeling confident on a sales call when a lead asks when you could start?! You’ll have a clear definitive date.
Big Picture Thinking
"Streamlining, systematizing, and automating has allowed me the physical time and the mental and energetic bandwidth to think big picture about my business and to clarify my vision for the future of my brand and where we're headed." - Sierra, a Lunimae client
When you have a handle on your projects, you free up space to focus on the big picture. That’s the white space that keeps you from falling out of love with your business. It’s the space that lets you start thinking like a CEO.
Sprucing up your current Plan
Almost every designer I talk to has a general project plan or template they are using, even if they know it isn’t perfect. So instead of starting from the beginning, use the checklist below to make sure you’ve got it all covered.
Do you have a list, in order, of all tasks to complete a typical project?
Can each item be completed in a reasonable amount of time? In other words, do you have it broken down to bit-size chunks of work?
Do you have buffer built into the timeline? While you might be able to create a home page wireframe in one day, you might want your project plan to allow for two days just in case. Or if you work in sprint cycles (very fast projects) you might only have 4 hours.
Do you have your project plan as a template inside a tool that allows you to schedule specific days, skip weekends, and holidays?
Does your plan allow you to easily adjust for custom parts or add-ons? Either by building a plan that covers it all so you can just delete the parts you don’t need for a project or have a trigger to remember to add in those additions.
Your plan covers: onboarding client homework, kickoff, design, dev, all allotted revisions, backend setup tasks, launch process, and offboarding tasks
Common Project Management Challenges
Even if you have a great project plan, it can still easily go off the rails. Built-in contingencies and flexibility can help alleviate the stress. Here are some of the most common project management pitfalls and how to avoid them:
Scope Creep from Original Deliverables
You may have clearly outlined the number of pages included, the level of coding, and which sections would be custom vs. standard but that doesn’t mean a client won’t ask for more. Scope Creep is a common reason project timelines are thrown off. It doesn’t make sense to say no when a client suddenly asks to pay you more because they didn’t realize a page for their freebie wasn’t included. While one minor request might not cause havoc with the timeline, several requests might. While it might take a little time upfront, pointing out specific examples of what’s included and what isn’t might help your client understand and ask for these add-ons earlier so you have time to plan for them. Internally you may outline what and how many requests you can take one during a project. And what you document for a future separate project. You may prompt the client to book a follow-up day (design day or VIP day or week)to knock out some of these items after the original project has been completed.
Communication Flow Breakdown
Miscommunication can derail a project quickly. It might feel like you’ve laid out exactly what to expect, how you’ll communicate, and when they should provide feedback during the project. Only communicating that once during kickoff is not enough. Being proactive in reminding clients of how you want them to communicate and prepping them on what’s coming will help prevent issues later. Example: “Reminder: I’ll be delivering the wireframes next Wednesday, please block off time on Thursday to add comments in Markup by the Friday at noon due date.”
Be consistent on where you want them to communicate. Try to avoid too many places so it doesn’t become confusing. Consider where you want Formal Communication (contracts, signoffs, etc) vs. General Communication (questions, updates, excitement) vs. Feedback (reviewing designs). These might all be the same tool, like email, or you may decide to use tools like MarkUp, Figma, Slack, Asana, ClickUp, a specific client project hub, or Voxer for different types of communication. Whatever you decide, lay it out clearly, and remind/reinforce this standard.
Missed Deadlines by You and Your Client
If you find yourself constantly pushing deadlines back, it might be time to reassess your process. You don’t need to run your projects like other designers. You may prefer a faster timeline so you can focus all your energy on one project for a short amount of time rather than having longer drawn-out projects. For some people the longer project timelines lead to procrastination and it ends up missing deadlines.
Once you know your preference for project timelines, begin tracking your time on each area of the project: visual direction, wireframes, design, development, and revisions. You’ll be able to find averages that can define your timeline. You may find that you’ve been forcing yourself into too tight of a timeline.
Unexpected Events Derail
As we all know, life doesn’t always go according to plan. Once you’ve laid out your traditional timeline, think through potential roadblocks or delays. They may not apply to every project but having a plan or a few buffer days built in might be helpful. Weather events, sickness of you, your client, or kids, power outages, or your client’s client emergencies. All of these can throw off your project timeline and send you into chaos if you’re not prepared.
Using Templates is Key
There are some amazing project management templates available for purchase but that doesn’t mean they are plug and play. You may have become frustrated in the past. A template can be a great start but they will still need to be customized to your project flow before use. No matter if you start with a pre-built template and customize it or build a template for yourself from scratch, it will need to be adjusted. After each project, review what worked and what you had to adjust. This might mean changing dates, adding in missing steps, or adjusting dependencies. While a template is so important to have, you’ll always need to make minor changes because every client and every project are different in their own way.
Post Project Assessment
Project management is not a set-it-and-forget-it situation. Your process will evolve as your business grows and changes. Conducting a post-project assessment after each client wraps up is a great routine to build in.
At the end of each project, pause to assess it from your own end. Consider which parts worked really well and why. Is it possible to replicate that with every project? Think about any bumpy areas and how you might have avoided them. A change to the communication process, timeline, or deliverable could improve it the next time. Take this time to make minor adjustments to the project plan template. Were there any steps that felt unnecessary or redundant? Make sure to ask your client for not only a testimonial but feedback on your process as well. Use these insights to continually refine and improve your project management process. It's not about perfection, it's about progress.
When to Hire a Project Manager
If you're feeling overwhelmed by the idea of creating a plan, building a template, managing all the projects, and making adjustments by yourself, you aren’t alone! Large businesses have full-time project managers so it’s not surprising that it can feel like a second job.
Project management is a skill that can’t be offloaded to any virtual assistant. Doing so may cause more work in the end than it’s worth. Find a VA who specializes in project management for web design and actually has a resume to back up the claim. It might be better to search for a Project Manager, OBM, or Ops Manager who can handle it for you with little direction. While your business might be considered small, that doesn’t mean your projects aren’t complex. The person who is managing them will need to be experienced in the IT or creative field, have a history of success, detail-oriented, organized, strategic, and communicative.
If you aren’t ready to hire a contract project manager, you could also hire a project or operations consultant. They would be able to help you map out your process, built your template, and provide training for contingencies. Often you can sign up for a small retainer or membership where you can get support when projects aren’t lining up with your original plan.
A clear project plan and management will let you focus on web design
If you're tired of feeling like you're constantly playing catch-up and want to take back control of your business, it's time to put project management at the forefront. By implementing the strategies and tools above, you can create a business workflow that provides support rather than chaos.
As an Online Business Manager, I specialize in helping web designers create streamlined, efficient operations so they can focus on the work they love. If you want help, I can support you in a group setting with my SOS Membership or one-on-one with SPARK.
