Website projects are notorious for going over time, over budget, and under-brief. Usually because nobody with senior marketing experience was in the room holding everyone accountable. That's exactly what a good website PM brings.
A website project has many moving parts: strategy, UX, design, development, content, SEO, QA, and launch. In most organisations, nobody has ownership of the whole thing. Deadlines slip because responsibility is diffused and nobody is asking the uncomfortable questions early enough.
Full project management from brief writing and agency selection through design approval, development, content delivery, QA, and go-live. Stakeholder management internally. Agency accountability externally. One senior person whose job it is to make sure the project lands on time, on brief, and on brand.
Write a proper brief that prevents misunderstandings six weeks down the line. Agency selection and onboarding. Project timeline and milestone definition. Stakeholder alignment before a pixel is designed.
Weekly agency check-ins. Feedback consolidation so the agency gets one clear voice, not conflicting notes from five stakeholders. Timeline monitoring and early warning when deadlines are at risk.
Thorough QA across devices and browsers. Pre-launch checklist. Coordinating redirects, analytics, tracking pixels, and SEO handover. Go-live with confidence, not crossed fingers.
A website PM who understands brand, SEO, CRO, and UX makes fundamentally different decisions to a pure project manager. The site is built to work, not just to launch.
Conflicting internal feedback is the number one cause of website project delays. A single, senior PM consolidates all stakeholder input into clear, actionable direction. Agencies love it.
The number of website projects that end with a file on a server that never goes live is embarrassingly high. Having someone accountable for go-live changes everything.
The brief is not the boring part. The brief is the whole thing. Get it right and everything else follows. Get it wrong and no amount of talent in the agency saves you.
Jaymes Payten on Website Projects
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Whether you're about to kick off a new build or you're three months in and it's already going sideways, let's talk about getting it back on track.