Launch/Implementation, monitoring and tweaking

The development of your digital product is complete, now it’s time for the project to go live. This is an exciting time – while also a bit stressful. Will everything go as planned?

Create a checklist of everything that should happen when the project is launched and get several people to test the functionality and all other elements once it goes live just to double check that every process has been implemented correctly. If you notice any problems here, be sure to correct them before too many users become aware of them.

It is important to monitor your project’s performance. Using various webmaster and analytics tools you can see how well your website is doing. Set up measurement criteria that will be specific to your project and use these to keep track of the how it is performing. For instance, if the purpose of your project is a website that sells soap online you could look into your website statistics to see how many pages people visit on your site before making a purchase or which page generates the most successful sales.

Monitoring how your project is doing will help you determine what changes can be made to improve the overall performance. Put procedures in place for implementing changes that won’t disrupt the flow of service or cause unnecessary down time. Keep an eye on questions and complaints from people who are using your digital product as these will often give you the best guidelines on how your efforts can be improved.

In our final part of this series of articles we will be looking at what kind of technical support you can receive from your digital agency. Sign up to our RSS feed so as not to miss out.

Project Management

By now you and your agency should have drawn up some detailed objectives. It’s time to set up a detailed project plan. We briefly summarised this in part three of this series but now we’ll be looking at it in more detail. The length of each phase of the project plan will vary according to the complexity of the project. Keeping to the project plan is vital if your project is to remain on schedule, on budget and in line with quality expectations. Project management is essential and would broadly involve the following steps:

1. Setting milestones
Develop a detailed description of functionality and specification for each major objective in your project. Once you have these down on paper, you can break them down into milestones that need to be accomplished to complete the project.

2. Planning activities
Milestones can be broken down into a series of smaller activities. Generally these activities will be monitored on a daily basis.

3. Planning for contingencies
Most projects encounter problems that delay the outcome, so it’s important to incorporate time and cost implications that could come about from delays. Some common delays are the results of having to wait on third party organisations. If you have to work with any companies besides your chosen agency, you should anticipate potential delays and what the cost implications of these could be and then add them into your schedule and budget. Naturally, it’s not feasible to plan for every conceivable problem that may arise but consideration should be given to problems that have a high chance of occurring.

4. Plotting the project timeline
Plot all your major milestones on the project timeline and slot in all the activities that need to be completed for the milestones to be achieved. Include the project members that are responsible for each activity and keep up to date with their progress on regular intervals. Using project management software – that all project members have access to – will allow each person to tick off activities as they complete them and view the progress of other parts of the project in real time without the need of unnecessary emails and progress meetings.

5. Establishing communication procedures
Communication is the key to keeping the project running smoothly. Too little communication and the project will likely fall behind. Likewise, too much or cluttered communication could just as easily slow the project down. Decide from the beginning of the project how often communication will be expected and how it will be done. Link project communication, whether meetings, emails or phone calls, with specific milestones and activities. This will prevent discussions going off topic and will ensure each person remains informed about issues that affect them and their objectives.

6. Quality Control
Each phase of the project should be tested according to relevant criteria to ensure minimum levels of quality and functionality are achieved. Different sections of the project may be examined by different individuals, for instance; design elements may be examined and signed off by the design director while functionality may be examined and signed off by the head developer. The agency you work with should already have standard quality assurance testing procedures in place. We recommend you view these before the project commences and add any items you feel may be unique to your project.

If you’ve followed these steps, your project stands a good chance of being completed successfully within budget and on time. But what happens when, due to unforeseen circumstances, you need to change your project brief after it has commenced? How will this affect your budget and timeline? We will have a closer look at these questions in our next article.

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Choosing a digital agency

So now that you’ve realised how important the digital world has become and what benefits it can bring you, it’s time to make the next wise decision… which agency to use. This choice is going to depend on two main factors, what you want to achieve and how much you’re willing to spend, or rather, invest.

Firstly, what do you want to achieve? We believe that any digital activity you choose to undertake should provide you with some kind of benefit – preferably a measurable one – that can ultimately be given a monetary value.

Coming up with a clear idea of what you want to achieve can be very tricky as there are thousands of possibilities that could benefit your business, achieve nothing or actually waste your company’s resources. It wouldn’t be practical to discuss all the possibilities in one blog post so our advice here is you ask yourself: ‘How can I use digital to motivate my clients or potential clients to do more business with me?’, and take it from there. Here’s a tip: find out what questions or complaints you receive most from you customers and consider whether these can be addressed through some kind of digital application.

The purpose of this blog post is to give you advice about working with a digital agency so we’re not going to focus too much on various digital methodologies. We’ll have a look at those in later posts.

For simplicity we are going to use a general example to explain the process. If you’re not sure of what you need, Chroma will be happy to conduct a digital audit of your company to help direct you in areas that will provide the highest impact on your bottom line. Contact us for more information on this.

In our example, let’s say that you have a website that sells stationery online. You would like to improve the navigation (menus, item search etc.) of your site, speed up the transaction process, integrate your ordering system with that of your suppliers, make it easier to find your site on search engines and improve the general layout and appearance. You’ve also thought about adding a login section for businesses who buy in bulk, an increasingly important part of your business development. The thought of a regular newsletter has also crossed your mind but you’re not sure what it would be about.

Based on this broad idea, you are going to need an agency that can do web design and development, web application development, search engine optimisation as well as being able to build and implement content management systems and integrate database information.

The second major factor that’s going to play a role in selecting the right digital agency is what kind of budget you are able to commit to your digital strategy.

There are a host of digital agencies and deciding which one to use can be quite a challenge. Let’s break the industry down into different players based on the budgets they work with.

Top Tier
Many of the major advertising agencies have digital agencies, often multiple agencies.
In some cases global revenues are in the hundreds of millions but they often do not separate out digital work. Top tier agencies can handle the most complex of digital builds. They often do not take projects worth less than £100k and daily rates often exceed £1,200 per day.

Second Tier
According to New Media Age, in 2008 there were 17 standalone digital agencies in the UK with billables of more than £4m. The second tier of digital agencies have billables of between £2-4m. Leading agencies in this tier often aspire to blue-chip projects while engaging in high-profile media websites to generate a higher profile. They often develop specialist technology skills or sector knowledge, such as e-commerce, booking technology or database management but will often rely on outside companies to provide them with specialist skills. Daily rates average around £900 per day.

Third Tier
Third Tier digital agencies often take web and design work from their local area. Aspiring companies in this tier will often specialise in a sector (travel, music, motoring etc) and rely heavily on the design pedigree or relative inexpensive entry point. With billables of less than £2m, many are boutique agencies. A select few have strong ambitions to move into Second Tier. Some strike it lucky with a big client win, some specialise in marketing or highly technical projects. Day rates vary but are often more than £600.

Don’t simply choose a top tier agency if you don’t require their full set of services and could receive the same services from a second tier agency at a much lower rate. You also wouldn’t want to use a second tier agency in order to save money if you require extensive services that they don’t generally offer, thus putting them in the situation of having to employ extra staff to cover all your needs. This would increase time to completion as well as the daily rate making the project just as expensive as, or even more expensive, than running it through a top tier agency.

Some other factors to take into consideration when choosing an agency are:

• Client lists – What kind of clients do they have and how do these compare to you. If you find your company is fairly similar to the ones that have worked with a particular agency, then perhaps they would be a good option to contact.

• Experience – What kind of skills and experience does the agency have? How long has it been doing business? A company that has been around for many years and has grown over the years at the same or faster pace than the industry would be one worthy of consideration.

• Previous projects – Have a look at what kind of work the agency has done in the past. Keep in mind what your requirements are and try to find an agency that has delivered projects with similar criteria.

• Awards – There are a multitude of organisations that present awards across various categories to digital agencies delivering outstanding projects. Agencies that have received awards from reputable organisations are proud of their work and eager to take on new projects.

• Agency culture – Once you have spoken to a few agencies and examined their profiles, select one that has a culture similar or compatible with yours. Working with an agency you get along with will go a long way in helping fulfil the project objectives on time and on budget.

Here are several ways to locate digital agencies in case you were wondering:
One way is by submitting tenders on various tender sites requesting submissions for proposals from agencies. You can also consult directories such as New Media Age and conduct searches on the internet. If there are sites that you aspire to be like, find out who designed them and add them to your shortlist.

Once you’ve selected your agency, the real fun starts. In our next post we will show you how to set out a clear project brief and objectives. This is a vital part of working with a digital agency successfully and will prevent much confusion and delay later on in the project if done right.

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We’re finally out of the appropriately named ‘noughties’ or ‘naughties’ (with specific reference to certain bankers and MPs) as we move into the second decade of 2000 and look forward to what will hopefully be a much happier year than 2009. As January speeds by it’s difficult to say what kind of year it will be as thus far there seem to be as many good points to the year as bad ones.

It looks as though Britain may finally be out of its recession, the worst since the 1920s, and that’s something to shout about even though experts say it will be a long road to recovery (we’re a bit more optimistic than that). Mother Nature seems to be having her say this year by putting Britain and most of Europe in the deep freeze for the coldest winter in years. But worse than the freeze was the sudden unexpected earthquake in Haiti which claimed the lives of thousands and we’re all deeply saddened by the images and news coming out of the affected areas. Our respect goes to the thousands of aid and relief workers that responded immediately to the crisis by sending food and supplies to those in dire need, even though their progress has been hampered by poor access to badly affected areas. ActionAid is also involved in the relief operations. If you would like to support their efforts by making a donation, just follow this link to their Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

And after another airplane security scare – where some idiot thankfully didn’t blow up a plane but partially burnt his pants – it means those already time-consuming security checks will become even longer and more tedious than before. Soon it will be faster to row to another country than fly.

On a happier note, this is World Cup year! Having recently visited South Africa, things are really looking impressive with most of the stadiums completed and others on schedule. The surrounding infrastructure improvements should also be completed in time to cope with the mass of people attending the tournament. Bring it on.

In our own little world at Chroma, we’re looking forward to 2010. We’re growing, we’ve got some great projects continuing from last year and a whole bunch of exciting new ones we’re starting on.

This promises to be a great year for Chroma and we hope it will be for you as well.