21 Sep How to Sell a Website Redesign to Your Colleagues (3 mins)
Here’s a common occurrence here at Ratio7:
The phone rings and we get someone asking about their plans to redesign their company website. We chat about it, and typically, they like what they hear. But more often than not, something like this will be said to us during the course of the conversation:
“I’m really keen for us to redesign our website. I just need to convince the team here to get on board with it!”
It’s true that there can be resistance within companies to redesigning their website. Often, the person we speak to over the phone appreciates the value of strategic web design themselves. They just struggle to see how they can convince other key decision-makers in the company of this.
As such, we’ve compiled 5 tips to help you earn your boss’s/team’s support. From day one, the key thing is to get them invested in the idea. Here are our 5 recommendations:
1. Outline the Goal
At the end of the day, your company won’t spend thousands of pounds on a website design to simply look prettier. There need to be specific goals that demonstrate the value of the project to the business.
For instance, is the goal to increase your conversion rates? Is it to enhance your brand exposure and credibility? To increase website traffic?
You will also need to outline exactly what work is being done. Are you bringing an existing website up to date? Are you looking to redesign your logo and branding in addition to the website design?
Once the goal(s) and needed work are established, you and your team will be on the same page with regards to what the website design project has to achieve.
2. Establish your budget
A crucial step in the process is getting your budget agreed, and approved. If your budget is only £500 for a total website design, then you’re going to struggle (to put it mildly).
Moreover, if you don’t establish the budget at the beginning, then your team can end up looking at capabilities and designs that are unnecessary, and also outside your price range.
When you lay out the budget at the beginning, then your team have appropriate parameters to look around for your team to do some research.
3. Establish a Timeline and Commit to it
For a typical website design, you’re looking at 6-8 weeks turnaround time. Confirming the various, important dates with your boss and team (start date, deadline of website visuals, launch date) is crucial.
Once these milestones are established, this will give your team more confidence that the project will stay on track and accomplish your goals.
4. Dedicate Team Members
Understandably, your boss or colleagues might be concerned that a website design project will distract team members from their vital work and responsibilities in the business.
It is important to consider the work that would be involved in such a project, who would do it, and how long it would take.
For instance, who will be the main point of contact with the web design company? Who will supply the copy for the web pages? Will copy-creation be spread out among different people? Who will oversee the project?
When it comes to working with Ratio7, typically the biggest task our clients have to do is supply the copy for the web pages. Often work efficiency can be achieved here by giving responsibility for specific pages to different members of your team.
You might also stipulate the exact amount of time each member of the team should spend on copy-creation; to ensure the work doesn’t detract from their primary business role.
All this should give your team and colleagues more confidence that the project won’t be an unhelpful distraction.
5. Ensure participants in the project have their voice heard
This comes back to the key point made at the beginning: that stakeholders should feel invested in the project.
However, this doesn’t simply mean getting everybody to throw ideas into the project. People’s suggestions often get overlooked (often rightly so).
Rather, everyone has got to put in some work to the project. This gives them a sense of ownership over it, and enhanced their commitment to making the project succeed.
One way of doing this, as explained above, is to assign specific, manageable responsibilities to different team members. Not only does this maximise work efficiency by spreading the workload, it makes everyone feel legitimately involved and gives the management more confidence in the project.
As the Marketing Coordinator at Ratio7, Phil is responsible for devising tailored marketing strategies for his clients; generating engaging and informative content; and ensuring brand consistency across all of Ratio7’s communications. Phil has a passion for creating powerful corporate brands, and suffers from a borderline-unhealthy addiction to Google analytics.
In his spare time, Phil can be found training for powerlifting competitions, watching Jason Statham movies, and playing acoustic guitar at open mic nights.