Technology Tips

4 Tips for Working with a Website Vendor 

Note: This is the second article of a two-part Tech Tips series. The previous article "Four Tips for Choosing a Website Vendor" was published in the November 2006 Tech Tips. 

Our last TWN article focused on choosing a good website vendor. This time, we'll discuss ways to help you work more efficiently with your new partner - in other words, how you can be a good client.

Please remember that your first project with any new vendor will always be your least efficient as far as time is concerned. Clients and vendors who have worked together over the years have built a level of trust with each other. They also have an understanding of their partner's communication structure that allows them to work more quickly than two organizations that have never completed a project together. It's wise to plan a little extra time for explaining things, and realizing you might have to go over a point again in the future.

1. Compile your resources.

You can work on this before you've even made a vendor selection. A good partner will want to get their hands on anything and everything you have that might be pertinent to a new website. There can never be too much information - printed materials, images, a b-roll catalog, and FTP passwords to your current site are all great starting points.

Also identify potential candidates that the vendor can contact and interview. This could be key stakeholders who can help explain your mission, background, or target audience from a unique perspective.

Any brand identity guidelines, such as logo or tagline usage rules, corporate fonts, color palettes, or manual of style preferences, is extremely valuable.

2. Mind the schedule.

Nothing is more useful to gauge project progression than a schedule. Tack it up where you'll see it every day. When a schedule is created, carefully review it to ensure you're able to hold up your end of the bargain. Do you need to sign off on a milestone on the 15th of next month? Verify you're not at a trade show or on vacation that week.

Make certain any presentations, which require your sign-off, include a period for revisions. This is a very common error in website scheduling. It's easy to plan a project schedule for a project that goes perfectly - unfortunately, there's no such thing as the perfect project.

Finally, don't be intimidated by Gantt charts. Gantt charts are a popular type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule by comparing the duration of tasks against the progression of time. A dirty little secret of website project management is that Microsoft Project and its Gantt charts are much less useful tools than you'd expect.  Microsoft Project is great for creating the initial schedule, but it's not ideal for managing smaller, nimble projects. If your vendor chooses to use a Gantt chart, be sure to take a few extra minutes to orient yourself with it.

3. Don't reinvent the wheel.

There's seldom a need for customized application development if there is already software available that is built for the same task. Off-the-shelf software is almost always cheaper, more reliable/stable, more secure, and updated more frequently.

There are also standard web conventions that should be followed unless there is a compelling reason not to. For example, navigation is frequently in a column on the left and/or in a row at the top of the page. The designer building your site wants to use a wheel in the bottom right corner of the page because it will look "cool?" Wrong answer.

4. Beware of the impossible task.

Some programmers will block changes or ideas by claiming something is "too hard" or will take "too much time." They may disagree with the request, don't know how to perform the work or just not want to do it. Their technical abilities give them the perfect cover.

The best programmer I ever worked with said that anything is possible; it's just a question of resources. Since programmers are not typically the people you want making workflow or design decisions, you have a couple options:

Ask for specifics. There are certainly things which are prohibitively expensive, but hearing a task will "take too long" doesn't help you - get a ballpark range of hours, and more explanation. The answer you want to hear is, "We can do that, it will take about X amount of hours, and here are the reasons we think this isn't the best approach." Be prepared to dip your toe in the technical waters just a tiny bit. If you have access to an independent expert, get their opinion.

David Dickinson is the author of this two-part Tech Tips series on finding and working with a website vendor. Before joining Tourism, David project-managed dozens of websites for clients including Mattel, Rayovac, Target, and Trek. If you have questions about the article or need advice on finding and working with a website vendor, reach him at ddickinson@travelwisconsin.com.