There’s a substantial disconnect when businesses outsource their Web projects. Here’s the problem: in general, the agency is oriented towards discrete projects (y’know, where there’s a start and a finish), while any business is ongoing and ever-shifting. Maybe for initial designs and site redesigns this works, but quality Web sites are more organic than that — they require constant watering.
Many business people I speak with complain about being abandoned after a site is launched. “I paid them for the work, but now I can’t get them on the phone,” I’ve been told.
Meantime, agencies are constantly trying to distill business needs into discrete projects — because, frankly, that’s how you make a profit (and avoid project overlaps, scope creep and other scheduling nightmares).
What you risk is the roller coaster of Web sites: it’s great when it’s launched, then it grows stale, then it’s great again when the redesign is rolled out, then it gets stale again… and so on…
A lot of Web designers and project managers at agencies ignore the ongoing needs of the business, either choosing to ignore the issue or assuming that once things get bad enough, the business will come back for a “redesign.” (Do they really need a redesign? Maybe not. Maybe what they need is a process where the site can be regularly cultivated.)
More on this, including solutions, in future posts.
