Top Ten Checklist for a Website Redesign project
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Some companies conduct the redesign of their website together with their internal Marketing and IT departments, however most of them decide to award the whole project to an outside creative agency, or at least trust them with some significant pieces of the project.  1- Connectivity
Plan for and establish connectivity with the agency early on (VPN, client-to-site, site-to-site / credentials for access to servers, and various environments). 2- Discovery
Make sure you provide them with enough discovery sessions for them to understand your business & the current state of your website (especially the departments, products and the corresponding sections/pages of your website that generate the most revenue). 3- Site structure & Code
Have your internal team review and approve the new proposed structure /sitemap of your website, as well as code architecture or programming languages used. 4- Content
• Make sure the content (copy, photos, videos, PDFs, etc.) is provided and approved early on in the project; in particular, photos may take some time to purchase; • Remember that a minimal amount of content may be needed for Unit and QA testings |
5- HTML reviews
Set up a realistic timeline, with ample time for code reviews, wireframe reviews and approvals by your internal teams; anticipate at least 3 to 4 rounds of HTML reviews.  6- Wireframes
Make sure wireframes are updated with the annotations from your internal teams. 7- Code merge
If new code must be integrated back with your internal systems, ensure delivery of final HTML code is done according to your company's delivery standards. 8- Environments
Have several environments ready for dev, test, stage, and carefully track the various code versions of the new website. 9- GoLive
Split the redesign work into several deliveries, instead of one big delivery: even though it may result in some rework, it allows for better planning of work and ensure respect of time constraint. 10- SDLC and SOX compliance
Get approvals on a timely manner as per the ITLC process, on Copy, Design, Wireframes and Technical Specifications documents, especially if your company has to be SOX compliant.
Remember that PROJECT A LA CARTE can provide you with project management support for any of your IT project, or web design services through our partner WebZwin.
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