The Shortlist Episode 75: Five Things to do Before Starting a Website Project

Before you kick off your next website project, take a beat—because there’s a lot you can do ahead of time to make the process smoother, more strategic, and ultimately more successful. To wrap up Season 4 of The Shortlist, Wendy Simmons is joined by Kyle Davis and Lauren Jane Peterson to break down the things you should tackle before your website project officially begins.

They walk through practical steps like confirming your Google Analytics setup, gathering project descriptions and photos, and doing a little web-stalking of sites you admire. Plus, they emphasize the importance of aligning your brand messaging and having up-to-date photography, bios, and team headshots on hand before you dive into the actual website build.

Whether you’re just dreaming about a new website or have your kick-off on the schedule, these tips will help you plan more effectively, streamline content collection, and get stakeholder buy-in. Trust us, your future self will thank you for the prep work.

CPSM CEU Credits: 0.5 | Domain: 2

Podcast Transcript

Welcome to The Shortlist.

We're exploring all things AEC marketing to help your firm win The Shortlist.

I'm Wendy Simmons, and today we're talking with Kyle Davis and Lauren Jane Peterson to discuss five things to do before your website project.

Hi Kyle.

Hello.

Hey Lauren Jane.

Hi.

Thanks for both of you seasoned podcasters coming on The Shortlist today to talk about websites.

That's right.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

This topic came to mind in a Teams chat and huddle because we have a lot of clients who are thinking about and planning for websites that they want to kick off after the summer, after people come back from their vacations.

And here we are at the end of the shortlist season and the beginning of the summer season.

So it seemed like a good thing to just put out there in the world.

Maybe we'll forward this on to some of our clients or maybe we'll come in handy as we're kicking off future website projects.

But there are definitely some things that you can do ahead of time before you get your committee together that might be helpful in kicking off your website project on the right foot.

So that was probably a pretty decent intro.

Either of you have something to kind of add to this since both of you are super hands-on with our website projects.

Leading Discovery, all of that stuff, just kind of, you know, why do you think this would be important for our listeners to hear today?

Yeah, I think before or pre-planning is kind of the key word.

The more you're able to have in place before you bring in an agency or a consultant or a project partner, the better off you're going to be.

It's going to pay dividends down the road as far as saving time, getting organized, getting everything in place so that when you are in the thick of things and you are producing the website, reviewing content, reviewing design, you're not getting held up by some of these more, not necessarily administrative tasks, but the need for photography and pre-planning can really pile up in addition to all the weekly or bi-weekly items.

So the more pre-positioning or pre-planning you can do, the better off you're going to be and the more smooth the process will go.

From a purely fiscal perspective, it's also a lot more efficient.

Absolutely.

We have all these things ready.

We're not spending time and making the rest of the team wait while we pull this stuff together.

So there is some money savings there as well.

Yeah, we have done website projects all different sorts of ways, but you really feel the difference between a client who kind of has their ducks in a row and is ready to go versus a client who's kind of flying by the seat of their pants or collecting data, collecting information within the flow of the project itself.

And I agree with Lauren Jane, the efficiency is noticeable.

On that note of efficiency, when we're having early conversations with an existing client or a potential new client that wants to start a website project, whether it's a light refresh or a full blown new website, they'll often ask, how long will this take?

And there might be comparing between other web developer partners and just trying to understand how long does the process take.

And to Kyle and Lauren Jane's points about the efficiency, the process, and we'll probably dig into some of that today, that Middle of Six takes and is sort of best practices across the industry, is one component, but this huge question mark in the schedule is, how long will it take to write project descriptions, gather photography, update brand photography?

All of these things, the tips that we're going to talk about today, are the factor that stretches a project from maybe three months at its skinniest, smallest, quickest version to six months, nine months a year, depending on the amount of content that needs to be polished, created, whatever.

So, yeah, maybe that is the biggest reason to listen to these things about how you get ahead on is that you're looking at very different lengths of projects.

Yeah.

And when you're adding months, if you start with a target of three and then it stretches to four or five, that's just two more months of e-mails, two more months of meetings, check-ins, gathering data, pulling information from spreadsheets, and it's all very doable, but it definitely adds up from a time and budgetary perspective.

So what can we do to make it better?

What can we do to make it sing?

Yeah, I was going to say, let's put on then to like be all starting from the same spot.

Let's assume that you have approval to do the website project, you have discussed, met with potential vendors and asked questions, and if you're really good about the partner, you've selected, you know, we have other podcasts related to that piece of the puzzle, but you have decided that you're ready to move forward with your website project, but you don't want to kick it off yet.

You, your team has a little bit of space, whether we're talking about because of summer vacation or other factors.

Maybe it's the end of the year and it's, you know, getting into the holidays where it's just not very productive.

You don't have the people there to meet.

So there's an opening, a space of, who knows, six weeks or several months where you can do some prep work.

Kyle, Lauren Jane, what would you start with?

What's the first thing you might say?

Hey, go ahead and do this.

One quick thing to jump into would be looking at your website dashboard, looking at your traffic data and your website analytics.

And if you don't have traffic data or website analytics, it would be great to get that installed, whether it's Google Analytics or going into the back end of your website and finding the appropriate place where you're able to grab that information.

All of that information can inform a lot of strategy right off the bat as far as how many people are coming to the site, how much time are they spending on pages, how many pages per session, what are our most popular or our least popular pages.

And that is valuable in, you may have a goal for your new website.

We hear a lot of the times recruiting, recruiting, recruiting, okay, well, what's the careers page on your website doing right now?

How is it currently performing?

Or maybe you're trying to tell more of a story about community involvement, or you really want to highlight the people of your firm and make sure people are seeing their headshots and their bios and their project experience.

By gathering up that data, we can see if those goals are being met, or if then we may want to start thinking through design changes or areas of emphasis that will then meet those goals with the new website.

It would be nice to have years of analytic data to base some of those strategic decisions on, but you may or may not be surprised how often we find that Google Analytics isn't set up, or they don't have anything to look at and understand what those behaviors are.

So even a couple of months is something that we value to be able to have that information.

I will add another great reason to install or confirm that you have some sort of analytics in your current site is to use them for comparison with your new site.

And those things can come in handy, especially with award submittals and understanding the value of the return on the website project.

Absolutely, totally agree.

And another tool we've seen used in past project is something called Hot Jar, or even a sort of a mouse tracking software, which the output of it ends up being sort of like a heat map, where you can see, you know, darker red areas are getting a lot more activity, other areas that are maybe getting less activity.

And you can literally see in a snapshot kind of where people's mouses are going, what they're clicking on, whether they're using the top nav, whether they're utilizing your buttons, your calls to action.

And that can inform whether you're being successful with your current goals, or if you maybe want to make some adjustments to meet them in the future.

So your partner, your web developer team, design and developer team, will probably recommend these things at the start as well, but they can also help you by getting Hotjar and Analytics set up if it isn't already.

So don't fret.

You don't have to do that by yourself, but it should be an on-the-list thing for early on as you get started.

I also want to add, even if you're not planning on doing your website project anytime soon, these are just best practices.

Go ahead and set it up.

So yeah, couldn't hurt.

This is your nudge.

Just go ahead and get those things set up and they'll be in place whenever you need them.

And more data is always helpful.

Ding ding on that.

Well, then, OK, can we think about what maybe is the next thing on our list or on our mind as we're prepping a client to get ready for their project?

I'm fine with kind of whatever that might be.

You know, what's kind of the thing that nags at you until you've got it started.

Something that can take longer than expected is gathering a list of websites that you like and that feel good to you and that you could use as examples or websites of inspiration when you have that conversation with your website partner.

If you wait too long to think about the websites, it can be hard kind of last minute when you're trying to scramble and find things.

So, you know, in your OneNote or in your Notes app on your phone or something, keep a list of websites that you come across that feel really good.

And it doesn't have to be the entire website, but it could also just be parts of the site.

Oh, I really like how these projects are set up or, you know, the flow of this site.

And something that we encourage our partners who come to us is looking at websites that are out of AEC.

What is the vibe of this non-AEC website?

And how can that translate?

It doesn't have to be in the same industry to get the similar vibe.

You're right, Lauren Jane.

It seems like a simple ask, but oftentimes it can take our clients by surprise a little bit.

Either they haven't put a lot of thought into it, or they know what they like, but they haven't made a list, and it takes a little bit of a scramble, or maybe it's a little bit of a time crunch.

And speaking from the agency or the consultant side, I always find those sites of inspiration or admiration to be extremely valuable.

It can kick off a lot of discussion around aesthetics and user experience, and I totally agree that it can be outside of AEC.

It can even inspire some creativity when you do explore those elements.

And so if it is something that you think, oh, maybe we're going to do this next quarter or even next year, it absolutely would be valuable to keep a running list of, oh, I was browsing the web and I saw this GC site, and I really like A, B, and C, and I was buying shoes the other day, and I really love this site.

And the way that they did the culture page or the way that they showcased their people was really strong, and that will save some time and really get things rolling and get you off on the right foot if you have that kind of information already gathered.

Guaranteed, it will be on the list, on the agenda for the discovery session that we would conduct for any project.

But hearing you both talk about the value of it and how it can take a little bit of time, because sometimes you find some of those brands of admiration very organically as you're just going about your other business, right?

Yeah.

So maybe for AEC marketers listening to this or firm owners, this could be an exercise you do even before you've selected your partner, your agency, because it could help you all internally get alignment on where you want to go.

Understanding a very complicated database-linked map and project sorting system, if that rises to the top is something that everyone is really wanting, that will have an impact on the development costs of the site, or how it would be linked to your database through an API.

So again, it can be an exercise you do round one with your whole team to understand, what are we really trying to get to with this website project?

And then that can be valuable information to hand off to us later on when you're ready to go.

Yeah, it could really help getting that list going of like must haves, would like to have, don't need kind of a thing, and that can really stream on the process for sure.

Well, we are very frequently invited to do a website, and one of the first pieces that we see as an opportunity or we hear from our clients is that our old website just doesn't sound like us.

It doesn't look like us.

There's something about that.

They maybe can't even put their finger on it.

So, that also ends up being some of this very early work to get aligned on.

And I don't know, Lauren Jane, maybe you want to take this one since you have your hands on client branding so often and you hear this piece, but what would you recommend they do related to branding and messaging?

Yeah, start with an internal audit of your site.

What Wendy was saying, does this look like us?

Does it feel like us?

You may have some parts of the site that are very in alignment with the direction that you want to go in and with recent work that you've been doing and there may be pages that you say, gosh, this will use recruiting as an example.

This recruiting page just doesn't speak to us.

It doesn't speak to really who we are.

So start with an internal audit.

You could also ask whatever website team you have going.

Maybe it's you and a couple of principals or whatever internal team you have going.

You could also ask them to do a little bit of an internal audit.

What feels in alignment with who you are, what doesn't.

We have some partners that come to us for website help that have very strong messaging and very strong branding that we continue to work off of in their new site.

And we have some partners that come to us that want to redo all of their messaging and branding because they need a whole new look.

Yeah, and the website, while not specifically a logo or a branding project, is a really good moment to take that pause and to say, okay, we're going to be refreshing our aesthetics.

We're going to be refreshing the way we present ourselves is what we currently have doing the job that we want it to be doing.

And it could be, as Lauren Jane mentioned, it could be our logo needs to be completely redone.

If we're going to launch a new website, I can't imagine launching with this logo that we're all tired of.

But it could also encapsulate areas like your brand colors, your typography, and then into the messaging area.

What is the tone or the voice that you want your brand to convey?

And so there's a whole laundry list there of things that you can assess to say, yep, check, we love it, moving forward.

Maybe we want to rethink or refresh that, or maybe we want to start from scratch.

And all of that is very valuable information when it comes to developing the scope and taking that opportunity to stick with what is working or start to kind of reinvent the wheel a little bit more and start flexing your creativity on how you want things to be in the future.

And from an efficiency stand point, it would be a little unfortunate to redo your entire website knowing that in six months, you want to redo all of your visual branding or your messaging.

Right.

So how can you be efficient?

And maybe you swap the order of your projects or maybe you do them semi-simultaneously, you know, try to get all of that together as one big lumped project.

Yeah, if you're going to do a full rebrand, I would recommend doing it before the website.

Right.

That's something that we talk about in early scoping conversations and then definitely in Discovery.

But it still happens where once we get the larger committee together or people who were not decision makers involved early come in, things can be illuminated.

So don't let that totally, you know, mess up your schedule, your program or take you by surprise.

If you do that audit, like Lauren Jane said, you'll have a better idea of where you're starting from and maybe able to get that alignment from folks who would otherwise weigh in when you're, you think that you're further along or the schedule for the website is, is not planning on that branding piece.

So I guess that's a little bit of lived experience that we've had where even in well thought out projects, there can be this idea or an opportunity that pops in and that's the right time to do it before we get into the website.

Another item that comes to mind that is very important is the gathering up of your project information.

That can be descriptions, photos.

Believe it or not, a lot of the time, we end up having discussions around the market sectors that our clients service.

Maybe they have a website already up, and they've got commercial K-12, education, higher-ed, industrial, on and on and on.

And they're not totally satisfied with the organization or the segmenting of those markets.

And so sometimes it even becomes like a redefining of the bucket itself and renaming things and making sure that our categorization is accurate.

So that would be a very helpful thing to do as pre-work is to take an audit of your project portfolio and say, you know, if we have K-12 and higher ed, are those separate?

Do they go together?

Do we need to split these out or consolidate?

Do we need to rename?

Are we calling something by a certain term and we actually use a different term internally and we want to change that?

The actual larger project database itself, getting those items in order can save a lot of time.

Yeah, this can be a great time to gather all that information and also have some efficiencies.

Knowing that you then have all of that gathered in one place, you could use that for proposals, right?

Just a bit of a efficiency piece.

The work that you do gathering all of the project info for your website can also be used in other places.

If you don't already have a database or CRM or all of that in Dell Tech, this is another great opportunity to get your ducks in a row.

Yeah, and that could include project descriptions, of course, but then things like team members that were involved in the project, the location of the project, the type of project or the delivery method, project partners you worked with, whether it's architects, GCs, engineering firms, all of that could be part of your website portfolio, or it could not be right.

And by gathering it up, it gives you the option to say, yes, we do want to include these three team members worked on this school, and we want that to be a prominent part of sort of the story that we tell about the project.

Or you may decide that you want a more streamlined approach.

You may decide that's way too much work.

We're never going to fill out this spreadsheet, so let's go ahead and move forward with a different direction.

And I would also say it also applies very much to the project photography itself.

We have some clients who have 10 beautiful high res images of every project they want to feature on the website.

And of course, that's sort of like the gold standard, like excellent.

Let's make a beautiful editorial portfolio page.

Let's add a project gallery.

Let's let the photography sort of drive the design behind these pages.

On the other hand, maybe you only have one project photo or maybe you have one or two.

That's not necessarily a deal breaker.

Obviously, the marketers on this podcast are going to say like, heck yeah, all the photos you can get, we love them.

But if you do end up doing this pre-work or this audit, and it is sort of just a reality that, oh, you know, we've kind of got like one really good photo for every project.

That's actually really valuable for us as designers to say, this is sort of the constraint that we're working within.

We can design to that, but knowing it beforehand will actually save quite a bit of time and it will also make the design process a little more streamlined and concise because we know it's a one photo portfolio.

What's the best way to get that information across?

We're not going to lose time or him and Haw saying, Oh, wouldn't it be nice if we had more photos?

Like, no, this is what we've got.

This is what we're working with.

Let's make it work.

Question.

If you have some projects that have zero photos, you know, this is before you've started a website project with a consultant.

What's the recommendation there?

What's the strategy?

Get photos.

No, I mean, I would say from my opinion would be, it would be awesome if we could get a photo, whether that's going out and taking a photo, reaching out to a project partner, like an architect who already had professional photos taken, and finding some agreement, whether it's getting permission to use the photos or connecting with the original photographer who licensed them in the first place, and seeing what it might cost to collect them.

But again, if the answer is, these three or four projects are really important, but we just don't have photos for them, we can work with that, right?

But again, it's really valuable to know that beforehand, because then we don't spend time designing for something that's not going to happen.

We can say, okay, this is the situation in front of us.

How do we feature these projects in lieu of a photo?

And there's a lot of things you can do with typography and storytelling and web design that can handle that type of constraint, but very nice to know beforehand.

And the lack of a photo may be a good trigger for a deeper assessment.

Is this really important enough for our website?

Right.

Sometimes you have no way around that, right?

You have essentially constraints due to the client privacy, you just can't get photos of things.

But other times, it might be a good reminder for you to take a peek at the project and say, you know, we have better projects or we have better photos for other things.

Maybe this one is one that sits out on the website.

Yeah.

And in the spirit of like this pre-work, pre-positioning discussion, maybe it's an opportunity to think about sort of your marketing process for your projects.

You know, is it time now to say, oh, we need to implement something in our closeout process where we do make sure we have photos moving forward.

It can be a good opportunity to just kind of assess your overall workflow and whether you're kind of setting yourself up for future success.

Because at the end of the day, when you finish a project or you're proud of the work you've done, you want all the tools at your disposal to shout that from the rooftops and spread the word about what you've accomplished.

It sounds like a can of worms that we've just exploded here.

And it kind of is, which is why maybe if we were organizing this list, it might have been the number one thing that we really recommend to clients to get ahead.

Because it is the most time consuming on the marketing team side.

And I was, as you both were describing this process and what's important, I was thinking of sort of a reversed funnel in a way that making some decisions about the markets and how what you think, how you would want to show your projects and then build and get this bigger base, eventually you get to whatever that final number is going to be, like whether it's 30 projects or 300 projects, which is possible on a website.

Yeah.

That base item there is going to include so much information and that's a lot of gathering.

So I'm thinking most teams don't want the bad realization later on that like, whoa, this is going to take us a ton of time or resources that we weren't thinking about.

So we would tee it up early and it's good to get it in your mind to thinking about how big of a process that could be to get your project descriptions and all that content in shape to hand over to a developer.

And you mentioned photography a bunch of times in that conversation.

So maybe that's a good one to end on is the importance of photography and what you want to get ahead on because it's not just project photography.

If you have months of time, what's the dream scenario?

Yeah.

You mentioned we could have had this up at top, but we were kind of using photography as an anchor here, which is also appropriate.

Lauren Jane, when we do talk about moving from project discussion into other types of photography, I'm thinking brand photography, culture photography, headshots.

What are some of the key things to think about in preparing those materials?

Yeah.

So again, take stock of what you have.

You might be a firm that has had many opportunities over the last year, a couple of years to have a photographer come in and do shots of your team co-working, etc.

But that is less common in my experience.

So take stock of what you have.

Generally, we see our clients that come to us needing more of that.

You can go about it in a couple of ways.

You can take the initiative and get some brand photography and headshots done before you even start your web project.

But you might find out a little bit into the process that there's something that was missed or something that you would want in addition to what you have already had taken.

It can be a great thing to keep in mind that you will likely have to do once the project is kicked off and to check in with your website team and say, hey, here's what we were thinking.

Is this an alignment with the content that we need?

Maybe it's a hero image for your homepage and you weren't really planning on that, so then you didn't end up getting that or other culture shots or team shots.

I would recommend planning for what you want, but maybe not pulling the trigger on the photography until you can check in with that website partner.

Another strategy could be to get all of your head shots done first and then do other photography later.

But again, there's some efficiencies of having somebody come out and do all of those in one day or in one session.

And similar to the projects, it does kind of start with that initial assessment of, okay, we're going to have head shots on the website.

What's the current state of our head shots?

Does it encapsulate all of the team members that we want to have featured on the website?

How many of those people do we want to feature on the website?

Are they going to get bios?

If they're going to get bios, do we have the bios?

So it kind of evolves from there.

But I do agree that when we're talking about brand photography or culture photography, it doesn't necessarily have to be something that you have to freak out about and get put in place before you start the project.

It can have a little bit more flexibility.

I think that the best pre-work here is just to assess and know if you have that need and then start coordinating with your team and making them aware that this is something that's going to happen.

We are going to ask, say, our 15 person firm to all gather at our office on a given date.

We're going to do culture photography.

Maybe we're going to take head shots, but we are going to take these candid shots of us interacting, performing as a team, give people a flavor of what it's like to be around our people in our office.

And that can be a little bit of a lift, is just getting everybody out from the field and into the office.

And what day is it going to be and what time is it going to be?

So that's good pre-work to kind of get in place.

But then a lot of the time when we're designing websites, we're more than happy to sort of use stock photography or inspirational photography in the initial designs.

So if we're talking about an about us page or a careers page or one of these pages that's very culture specific, I am more than happy to plug in some photos of inspiration.

This is the story we're telling about your team.

This is the story we're telling about your legacy or your history.

And this is a this is a type of photo that would serve that content very well.

And then we've even done it where we show the staging site to the photographer that's been selected to say, you know, here's the ten places where we envision this culture photography going.

And here's sort of a direction that we're going.

Now you can take that and run with it with your own creative vision and the atmosphere and the energy that's at this specific firm.

And so that can happen very nicely sort of in tandem.

Kyle mentioned knowing that you have to bring people in from the field.

And I also want to give a quick plug for the fact that many of us work hybrid and remote these days, or maybe a few of the team members are hybrid or remote.

And if you can have enough foresight into saying, all right, in three months, we have a company, I don't know, picnic or an all hands meeting where everyone has to be here in person.

If you can capture photos or do the photo session during that time or on, you know, flank it on the day before or the day after, it can also be very convenient and efficient.

And something that you can work with your website team on, you know, saying, all right, we have an all hands meeting scheduled in three months.

Does that timeline match up with having a photographer come out and getting you guys what you need in time?

Absolutely.

If you're based out of Seattle, but you've got three folks in Denver, when are those Denver folks gonna be with everybody else?

That could be a very convenient time to make some of this photography happen.

Yeah, of the tips we've talked about today, the things that are on our list for those early discussions about making sure they're in place, this one is the one where, you know, for photography, that you don't necessarily need to pull the trigger on it, like Lauren Jane said, but just mapping it all on the schedule and getting a sense of when it could happen.

If we're just talking simply about the project photography and the fact that we're going into summer, that can be a great time to go out and get those photos.

So don't miss that window if there is going to be something naturally, whether it's seasonality or the people in the right place at the right time to get that done.

And I'd say that actually for all of these tips, the asterisk is that your agency partner should be teeing this up for you too and giving you ideas.

So if you're just thinking about engaging with a partner or you already have someone in place, these things are applicable either way.

But for Middle of Six projects, we're talking about this pretty early so that it can be on people's radar to get it started and to relieve some of the pressure when you're actually in the process of the whole website redo.

Because there's a lot of parts and marketing plays a huge role in having this all come together.

That's a good list.

I feel prepared just reading it.

Heck yeah.

Well, thank you both for sharing these very real world, real experience tips for our listeners as they're thinking about their project.

I think that it comes from having done dozens of websites and just realizing the potential for paying points or just the things that we want to daylight and get it top of mind for folks.

And if you go through this list and get the data and start getting alignment with your team, whether it's related to branding or markets and what you want to show, and then also some of that content gathering, I'd say all of us here at Middle of Six would say, bravo, good job.

You're way ahead of the process and you're going to make for a much more comfortable, efficient, cost-effective website project when you actually get it started.

So thank you, Lauren Jane.

Thank you, Kyle.

I guess we will see you next season, season five of The Shortlist.

Wrapping up season four in style.

Exactly.

Thanks so much.

It was so good to be here.

Yes.

Thank you very much for having us.

Yeah.

Thanks for being here.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Have a great day.

Bye, everybody.

Bye.

See ya.

The Shortlist is presented by Middle of Six.

Our producer is Kyle Davis, with digital marketing support by the team at Middle of Six.

If you're looking for past episodes or more info, check out our podcast page at middleofsix.com/theshortlist.

You can follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram at Middle of Six.

Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode.

Until next time, keep on hustling.

Bye.

See you next season.

Hags.

Have a good summer.

What was that?

Hugs or?

Hags.

Oh.

It's like what you write in your yearbook.

Hags.

Have a good summer.

Oh, that's right.

Have a good summer.

Love it.

H-A-G-S.

The Shortlist is a podcast that explores all things AEC marketing. Hosted by Middle of Six Principal, Wendy Simmons, each episode features members of the MOS team, where we take a deep dive on a wide range of topics related to AEC marketing including: proposal development, strategy, team building, business development, branding, digital marketing, and more. You can listen to our full archive of episodes here.