Who's To Blame When Your Website Redesign Project Turns Out To Be A One-Year, Or Longer, Train Wreck?

I just finished a meeting with an amazing development director of a superbly well-managed non profit in Scottsdale. It was a phenomenal meeting, so much so that both of us cried when we traded stories. Got to love that energy-in-motion when two people meet and share stories. That's what drives the bond.

Part of the meeting drifted from vision, mission and purpose to the non profit website project. I immediately felt the pain. Please remember, I've just sold my digital marketing services business after failing to scale it to my original vision. So suffice it to say I've been on the front line of far too many website projects over the last ten years. And let me assure you that website projects present one of the most challenging obstacles for any organization, especially a non profit with a limited budget.

I hear the stories all the time because now I'm back to what I do best; strategy, which is knowing intimately well the 10,000 things NOT to do. This empowers focus! Imagine that. (Squirrel! Not.)

As I listened to the story of the website project now going on for far too many months, I had flashbacks to a few of the website projects I got to lead and project manage over the years. I fondly refer to these as the projects from hell. They look like the house in the Shutterstock image. Truly.

In the end, who's to blame when a website redesign or new build goes badly? The bottom line is most often it's the person who strokes the big, fat check.

Here's why ...

A business leader must have firm command of their strategy and plan for execution. Ideally this plan identifies your one, big thing such as the Jim Collins BHAG - your Big Hairy Audacious Goal. It's normal that your BHAG will encompass interrelated goals and objectives defining who's doing what by when. Because if you have successful business practices and fundamentals in place, you have a better chance of executing your plan, which almost always includes a website, marketing automation, lead generation, etc.

What Do You Want?

Ideally when you decide to take on a new website project you want the new website done. But if you're like most really good "vision" people who loves to chase squirrels from your 30,000 foot perch, you probably don't want to be bothered with the details. So, naturally, you delegate. But to whom?

Generally not the right person, but the most convenient person who's brave or stupid enough to step into your trap; wing it, I just want the website done, yesterday.

Also, to make this work well, your website must also be part of a well-crafted project plan, even if you're not into scrums and Six Sigma stuff. That's for the enterprise, or so it seems. But you need someone who knows what they're doing to lead this part of the plan. Or you are screwed.

Ideally this is not the first punk, college kid you get on the cheap from some crowd- sourced job board for $5 an hour. Because that always goes well. But if this is your approach, you deserve to suffer the living hell you created for yourself and your team. And hopefully you learn the lesson from this mistake and make it only once. That's because there are plenty of other land mines that await you. And you don't have the budget of the Pentagon.

Executing your plan and reaching the stated goals, including getting the website to serve a useful purpose, is a team sport. Hopefully you've got the right people on the website bus and there is someone who knows how to help you know what you don't know about SEO, web forms, the automation engine and all the other mayhem that goes terribly wrong in the process. You must have someone who knows what NOT to do; strategy, and can execute the plan by holding the team accountable, especially when it gets ugly. And it will get ugly, especially when you change your squirrel mind 323 times after the project launches.

In a more sane, responsible sense, you avoid this mayhem. Instead, you have an actual process for the project, and it's driven by a clean Statement of Work so everyone knows the how to roll, together, aligned. Your project plan must go far beyond your desire to have your favorite colors and way-to-old pictures of yourself plastered all over it. Truly.

Here Comes the Storm

So what goes wrong, mostly, and who's to blame when the project you thought would take two months takes say, a year, or longer? Most of the time it's you and not the person designing or coding the website. Do you think your website guru would be designing or coding websites if they knew strategic planning, business KPI's, team accountabilities, etc.? Rare, but not impossible.

When you don't what you're doing and you don't care enough to hire really experience people with a proven track record in getting this kind of hard work done, you better have that bunker ready to dive into before that big storm hits you and your team. Otherwise, you're dead.

Why does this happen so much with websites, especially?

1. There is too much for any one person to know, for most projects. The technologies today require specialized talent to stick to the Statement of Work. Otherwise, it's a mess. The SEO guy wants one thing, the branding dude another, your stepson on college break, something else. Therefore, you need a team of qualified people who align to your plan.
2. You as the leader, can't focus. Instead, Mr. Big Cheese wants 10,000 things done, all at the same time. Then none get done well, or at all. And when you don't get all of this wonderful stuff happening, and you don't care to listen to the ball-busting marketing leader you should have hired to call you out on your own baloney dishing, you get what you did not want; a big, freaking mess.
3. You are cheap and wing it. This is the most expensive thing you can do! I know because I've been down this road 500 times. You don't hire the right people because you are too cheap, or too much in a hurry, or thought you do it all yourself, and you end up in the living hell you created by not knowing what you don't know.
4. You're not coachable. This means you don't learn from your mistakes. Your ego is NOT your amigo in this case. Plus, how many creative design dudes, or introverted programming wizards working in the digital marketing realm enjoy crucial conversations as much as I do? Exactly.
5. You loathe change. You are human. Your Central Nervous System has one goal; homeostasis. So when your team tells you have to learn new log ins and work flows, and you can't make the new marketing automation training sessions, and you fly blindly, and you resist change, and you screw everyone over blaming everyone but yourself, ouch. You throw a tantrum, child. Then the law of attraction kicks in and the people who won't scream back at you, quit. They just leave and think you're a dork. Or worse.

Who's Holding You Accountable?

Who's holding you accountable and helping you know what you don't know? Who's on your team who will have the essential, crucial conversations with you, because they care? If it's you alone, good luck. You deserve to get wet in the storm, or worse.

It's not that I love conflict that can result from essential, crucial conversations. It's that I love progress. I love to get paid for results, also. I love to be told my Net Promotor Score is 8, or 9, like when I run your strategy and business plan with you.

But when you do a bunch of dumb stuff and aren't coachable, and you don't stick to the plan, you end up costing everyone money. And that's when otherwise smart, well-meaning people lose their minds. We fire each other, do stupid things like chargebacks to Amex, and lie, all because you couldn't or wouldn't be a great leader.

Unless you have a person who's going to call you out on your own ignorance about what it takes to get a successful website project completed, you're going to blame everybody else, in most cases. Which is stupid because if you look in the mirror you will see the source of the problem. It's you; the fearful leader.

Most Mean Well, But This Doesn't Ensure Success

Yes, there are plenty of well-intentioned providers of service in digital; the SEO dude who insists it's backlinks, the design guy, the coder, the branding chick who pounds the table on brand, and the content marketing person nobody thought to build into the Statement of Work. But again, we only know what we know, and we don't know what we don't know. In digital, this can be a very bad thing, for everyone.

For example, ever say to the website team, "Yeah, we'll provide you with all the content." Sure. When hell freezes over. And this is just one example. Taking on your own content is almost as bad as winging it. Great content people need to know the answers to 28 or more, essential questions, BEFORE the Statement of Work is hacked. Like, what's your target market, primary goal for the site, voice, brand identity, conversion goals, budget, timeline, etc.?

You see, building websites is a very, very difficult thing to do if and when you desire having a website serve a useful purpose, beyond updating it from 1998 when you last hired "that person" to do it on the cheap. Because that saved you a lot of money, didn't it?

Bitter? No. Cynical, Yes.

Yeah, you can tell I'm the classic website cynic now, akin to a reformed smoker who tells everyone how easy it was to quit. But this is only because I was insane enough to get into the digital marketing realm on top of what I do best; strategy, action planning, business development, get customers in the door, make a profit, not lose your mind. I just wanted to help you! But I failed too often, I blamed myself, beat myself up even worse than when I lost the New Hampshire state tennis final to a the opposing, 14-year old kid who smoked his mom's Marlboro's in between matches. (Yeah, that really sucked. I can be my own worst enemy; aka the perfectionist.)

The End Is My New Beginning

After too many train wrecks on website projects over the last ten years, I finally got sick of being thrown under your stupid, digital marketing and website project bus. So what did I do other than think of killing that business so as not to pass the insanity to anyone else? I sold the business to much better man than I. Now I get to help him with strategy, plan, customer acquisition and growth without being the actual bitch you throw under your bus and stiff on the last payments.

In closing, here's a suggestion ... Please don't be a big doofus and wing it on your website project. Hire someone who takes the time to learn your strategy, fine tunes it with you and your team, develops a plan with your people who are actually capable of doing the job right the first time. And please, please, don't be short sighted and cheap by hiring the first person who comes along with the lowest price. Because in the end, that's going to cost you more than you know.

P.S. When you do hire great talent and these cool peeps stick to your plan, love them, pay them a big, fat bonus for getting your stupid website done, on time, on budget. Because these people are few and far between. And they are worth their weight in gold.