Tips 1 and 2
Think like a carpenter
There's an old saying that carpenters measure twice and cut only once. And according to Scott Holmes, managing partner of United Future, the interactive division of the WONGDOODY agency, marketers and their web designers need to think like carpenters before the first mockup is made or the first line of code is written.
"Oftentimes the client and web designer/developer do not have a clear understanding of the objectives, nor enough details of the requirements needed to achieve those objectives," Holmes explains. "The largest expense is change of scope; if the vision is not thoroughly understood upfront, you have to tear down part of the house and rebuild it."
QA yesterday, today, and tomorrow
Whether you've overseen the builds of a dozen website or none, you've probably heard that the quality assurance (QA) process comes at the end. That is, once everything is built, you spend some time making sure it works before you officially launch, right? Wrong, says Holmes, who believes that it's more cost efficient to check work (to the extent that it's possible to do so) throughout the process.
"In many cases, clients and agencies alike check the quality of the code after it's completed," Holmes says. "Most challenges, bugs, and overages can be addressed much sooner in the process if quality management is implemented throughout. Companies generally cut QA to save money, and oftentimes find themselves spending much more to fix what could have been avoided earlier in the development lifecycle."
