Top tips: Smooth digital projects - Part 1

As a Senior Project Manager at Pixl8 I work with clients from scoping stage right through to final delivery. Even though each project is different, the same challenges arise in different forms. However, there are simple things that you can do to mitigate these issues and make the most of working with your agency.  

Whether your digital project is small-scale or involves a comprehensive replacement of your existing systems, there are things that your team can do before a project starts to set things up for success.

Here are my first five tips. Watch the video below for more information and keep an eye on the Pixl8 website for more tips on running projects soon.

Have your platform users at the forefront of your decision making process

Write up profiles for all your different member types, give them personas and imagine what each of them wants from the platform and how they are using it. Try and keep this in the forefront of your mind at every stage of the project. Consider the information hierarchy that each user expects to see. What's most important to each user? We can tailor information on our site using conditional content to serve different users different messages, which make the site more relevant and increase engagement.

Try to adopt the most simple technical solutions

This is something to bear in mind at the scoping stage; when you start to work through your detailed requirements with your consultant, simplicity is a key principle of agile project management. Heavily customised platforms might seem like they will deliver convenience, but having lots of customisations makes it more difficult and expensive to keep your site up to date with the latest versions of the technology. Try not to have fixed ideas about how things should work or look - just brief what you want the outcome to be and be open minded about how you get there. Have faith that the consultants and developers will know the best way to approach a requirement.

Select your team

Who is going to help you internally? Carve up the responsibilities. Migrating to a new platform does require a significant amount of time. If you are doing this beside your day job, make sure you allocate enough of your week to helping move the project along, especially if you are responsible for creating the content/pages. In order to work most efficiently the Project Manager needs one key speaking partner from the client side to work closely with throughout the project. Channeling all communication through one individual means there's no confusion or contradiction throughout the process. At Pixl8 we practice agile project management which means frequent delivery of the tech to get early and regular feedback. If it can’t be you, choose a person in the business who has the bandwidth to give the agency that level of feedback and support.

Spring clean your platform content first 

A new platform is a great opportunity to cut some of the dead wood out of your site  content. Look at Google Analytics - what are people looking at most and how long are they dwelling on it? What kinds of content do they seem to visit and for how long? What are they not looking at? 
If we are talking about a new website, imagery has also a huge impact on your audience in communicating messages about your organisation. When was the last time you reviewed your site imagery? Does it reflect the brand? Take the opportunity to refresh/assess your images library and then supply these new images to your Pixl8 designer (and make sure you’ve got rights to use them!)

Cleanse your data

Tidy up your data, merge duplicates and strip out legacy data that you don’t use. Interrogate every data point you collect - what do you actually do with it? If nothing, strip it out of the data migration. If you and your team don’t have time for this, perhaps consider involving third parties that can help you with your data and get you ready to start your digital project.