July 26, 2018

You don’t find out a project has gone wrong until the end...

and by then, it's too late to do anything about it.

Written by Cameron Germein

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At the typical web agency, the product lifecycle goes like this:

Gather the requirements
Agree on the design
Build the website
Client reviews and approves
Launch

And in the typical web agency, steps 1 and 2 are quite collaborative, but step 3 is “behind the scenes”. Step 4 is often the first chance the client gets to see the “completed” product, and that is where all of the problems start.

It’s easy to see why this happens; building a website is complex, deeply technical, and it’s part of why the client is hiring a web agency and not just doing it themselves. But it’s also where all of the important decisions get made - and clients are unable to make those decisions effectively without a complete understanding of the project.

This is why at Assembler, the client becomes a part of the project development team. It’s your project, not ours, and we have structured our processes around your active involvement in your website’s development. This means you are in complete control throughout, and by the time step 4 arrives, there are no surprises - you have already reviewed and approved the entire project throughout its entire development!

By being actively involved, you're able to control costs as the project goes. Rather than us spending a few days working on something you don't really care about, we'll skip it and leave it for later. But as requirements reveal themselves throughout the course of the project, you're able to judge for yourself whether you think the increased cost is worth it to get them added to the scope of the project.

There are thousands of tiny decisions that go into making a website, and if you're not involved in the project from day one, then it can often result in an impossible rush at the last minute. By being actively involved throughout the entire build, projects become collaborative, and the end result is far closer to what you really want it to turn out like.

Assembler is a web design agency based in Perth, Western Australia. This blog is intended to be an informal, behind the scenes look into the web design and development industry. If you like our content, please follow us on LinkedIn or Facebook!