Buying a website can be an arduous task, especially when you have little or no experience with the web industry. You might be a Jeweller, a Builder, a plumber or the owner of a multi-site retail store. You're an expert in your field, but why should that mean you know the first thing about buying websites. You employ accountants to run your accounts, recruitment consultants to help you hire staff and lawyers to go to court for you. They are experts in their fields.
But you CAN get an insight into what is required, and hopefully this document will help make sure the creative agency you choose knows what you want and that their developers know what to make for you.
So why should you bother reading this? Why do I think I know enough to write this? It's simple. I've worked in the industry for eight years and I've seen great projects, and I've seen some disasters, and I think there is a common thread. I've written this document to help you avoid this problem
Firstly, let me introduce you to the people who would be involved. I'm imagining a project that will take 3 months or so from inception to launch and involve a small team of developers, your mileage may vary. I'm imaginging an online retail solution, based on a shop, which might be written against some existing code, or a framework.
The Customer. This is you, the business who has decided they MUST have a website, as their old one is tired, or broken or simply doesn't match your current business objectives.
The Creative Agency. Depending on your own key focus, these guys have either wowed you with their snazzy designs, or impressed you with the way they've built stuff in the past.
The Sales People. This mini-team has liaised with you to ascertain the highest level understanding of the sort of things you want, and the general direction you want to go in, creatively speaking..
The Account Manager. Sort of like Customer Services. Your Account Manager should have an outline understanding of the project, but don't expect detailed understanding. Works closely with several Project Managers for many projects and ensures that any problems are ironed out as soon as possible.
The Project Manager. This is your primary contact within the business. Every decision goes through this person, and if you don't have a direct line to this person, then there's something wrong.
The Creative Controller or lead Creative person. This person is to control within the agency DESIGNING your website, will control the brand, the look and feel and the creative style.
The Production Controller or lead Producer. This person controls the way the designs are turned into the stuff that your web browser reads. This stuff is then passed to the technical people who glue it together with the database.
The Technical Controller or lead Technical person. This person controls the nature of the 'gubbins' that go into your website. This person controls the longest part of your project.
The Hosting People. These people control where your site is to live on the internet, and may well be involved in transferring your old site in a transition phase. These people may work for the Creative Agency, or may be a trusted third party.
The Team. Perhaps the second most important group of people, after the customer. These are the doers of the agency. If they don't understand what's to be built, then NO-ONE will.
Cost Estimate. This is a rough costing estimate of how much the Sales People think your project will cost. This should be approximately correct, but may fluctuate up or down (usually up). If it doubles from this during the project, then the Sales People did not understand your requirements properly. Since they should be targetted against client expectations, they should be good at this part.
Requirements Specification. This document details every single requirement you have of your new system. This is the gospel of how you think your site should behave, and should be a point list of features.
Functional Specification. This document is created by the Technical Controller, and should detail the way every system and subsystem of the new solution will work. Where it is unclear (to the technical people) some diagrams of database structure, data flow etc. etc. must be placed within this document.
Creative Style Guidelines. This document details the creative style rules (imagine what case headlines should be, where borders should run, how close text should be to headings, what colour palette is to be used), and is created by the Creative Controller.
Production Style Guidelines. This document is created by the Prroduction Controller, probably many months beforehand, and should be a standard manual for the company. As a customer you should be aware of it, and you can use this to compare different agencies, to see how high their standards are.
Project Plan. A Gantt chart detailing when key aspects of the project will be delivered. All the major payment milestones should be here, and all the delivery milestones will be here. Where there are not too many, the individual tasks can also be listed here. As with all Gantt charts, you as a customer should be aware of the critical path, or the parts of the project that if they fail or run slowly, will delay the remainder of the project. Bear in mind that things DO go wrong, and sometimes these milestones must change and move. No-one can plan for everything, but ask the Project Manager where the contingencies lie. If your deadline is immovable, then you should be prepared to cross section off the timeline and drop them before launch.
Project Specification. The Contract. This document contains a contractually binding, fully and accurately costed explanation of the whole project, and is the Bible by which all other work is completed. When you sign it, you limit the Creative Agency's responsiblities to those detailed in the document. It is partially comprised.
of the Functional Specification, the Creative Style Guidelines, the Project Plan and the Production Style Guidelines. This is an answer to your Requirements Specification, but anything that is in your Requirements Specification but not in the Project Specification will not be delivered. Read This Very Carefully.
Guideline:The language in this document should be precise. Phrases like "All Functionality", "Every Feature" and "All Browsers" should be avoided. If a non-involved party cannot count the unique features, then this document is Unclear and Wrong.
Change Request Document. We all make mistakes, and sometimes we forget an important details. This document (sometimes called a Specification Variance Document) is a short one containing a miniature Requirement Specification, Technical Specification, Creative Specification and a timeline alteration estimate for a change you want to make, after the main contract is signed. It will also contain a Cost Quote, which you have to agree to in order to continue with your change. This is a form of Purchase Order.
Launch Plan. A step-by-step guide to how to launch the project live, that any technical member of the Creative Agency can follow. This means that in the event of last-minute illness, someone else can get the site launched for you..
Fallback Plan. This document contains instructions for what to do if the project cannot go live on it's live date. Containing instructions on how to reverse each of the steps in the Launch Plan, it is an exact mirror-image. This should also not require project knowledge to enact.. The reversion may have to occur after the launch team have gone to bed.
The first step is to meet with the Project Manager, who needs to get a high-level understanding of what the Customer has agreed with the Sales People. This should involve a complete knowledge-transfer from the Sales People to the Project Manager. You should now have with you a Cost Estimate. The Sales People now Exit stage left. Now the Project Manager has a chance to put some more flesh onto the bones of the requirements you have. The best means of doing this is for you to create a Requirements Specification. This document should go in to a lot of detail about everything you can think of that your solution must do. If it's important that it makes a noise when someone buys something, write it down. If it must integrate with your accounts package, your order fulfillment system, your pet dog then write it here. If it's important that the product images are animated in any way, write it down. As high and low detail as you can possibly think of go in here. Anything that your system requires that is not in this document will not be considered as a feature in the website system, this is your most important input into the solution, and the time when you can make the most difference.
Everyone needs to take a holiday sometime, and your project might not happen to fit neatly after one of the Creative Agency's holiday periods. When you start the project you should be aware of everyone of the actors' holiday plans, and they should be aware of yours. Remember that not every holiday is booked months in advance, but if a holiday that is to occur during the project is reserved during the project, then you must be made aware. Most Importantly, you should be aware of who will be dealing with the work that these people would otherwise be involved with when they are not with you. A Project Manager should have a Project Assistant who is familiar. The Account Manager should be able to help in a limited set of circumstances, and a second Project Manager should be briefed on the project in order to deal with emergencies.
Most of the development will happen on the Creative Agency's premises. However, it is well worth confirming this with them. Some agencies will outsource their work, worst case to a distant timezone. If any complex queries arise during your project, it is much harder to resolve these in the overlapping time periods. Perhaps the cost saving isn't worth it. You should endeavour to have regular meetings with your Creative Agency, if you can at their office to see the progress occurring. You should expect and expect to be open about any issues or disasters that occur, whereupon they can be dealt with in a timely manner. Bear in mind that disasters do happen.. Normally recrimination does not help, only pragmatic recovery plans,
Use of a staging server to demonstrate the final product. This should be an exact replica of the live environment, if your project involves re-use of an existing database, then a copy of the existing database should be used to run the staging server against. All launch processes need to be tested. If you are sending a mailout on launch (although I would warn against this), prepare the list well in advance, and ensure that the format is correct and can easily be loaded into the mail delivery tool you are using. Last minute late-night hitches in this process can cause a lot of damage to your brand. finalise the text for this well in advance, weeks if possible, review the day before launch. If you are wanting to mention the launch date in the message, ensure that you write down in your project folder the number of times this date appears, then if the launch date changes last minute, you have a very quick idiot check to ensure that the correct number of instances of the old date have been replaced with the new date.
In an ideal world, the person who is to launch the project will not have been at work for more than 4 hours beforehand. If you require a launch outside of office hours, ensure that the Creative Agency allow their launch staff to arrive late, but that they have a catch-up meeting beforehand. Remember you don't want someone tired at the helm of your new website in case of messups.
Make yourself, or a trusted member of your staff who is familiar with the project available during the launch window, even if this is 4am your time. This person should have authority to cancel the launch of the site if it plain Won't Work. Failure to perform this simple step can cause project launches to fail, because of a small technicality that the Creative Agency has not got the authority to resolve. Remember that they should be playing safe, so sometimes the best option is to action the Fallback Plan.