---
title: "Planning, Structure, Goals"
date: 2019-01-08T06:00:00-05:00
author: Sean Smith
canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-2/planning-structure-goals/"
section: Podcast
---
<!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)Guest Penny Olorenshaw
Penny helps businesses develop their online presence, crafting web and marketing strategies to reach clients' most profitable customers.
[ ](https://twitter.com/Bldmktg)[ ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pennyolorenshaw/)[ ](https://www.facebook.com/Bldmktg)
Season 01 Episode 2 – Jan 08, 2019
47:24 [Show Notes](#show-notes)
## Planning, Structure, Goals
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In this episode of Website 101, Sean Smith talks to Penny Olorenshaw about the importance of website planning and strategy. Learn how to identify your target audience, create a site that resonates with visitors, and optimize for maximum impact.
### Show Notes
The website is for the client not for you. It should be addressing what your potential clients are looking for. Take some time to plan your website and online presence before starting.
Your customers are not everyone who breathes. It's important to choose a niche and narrow down your target before building your website and writing copy.
Themes are one size fit all. You can use a website builder and it will get you online quickly but it won't be as effective as a design that is custom to your clients and needs. Themes look like every other site, but a custom site is unique and driven by your content.
Don't get caught up in the tools, use what works for you. Try a couple of different tools until you find one that fits. It's not necessary to use what other people use.
Plan before you build. You won't have to start over and will not regret the extra focus it provides. This is really important to do when you are doing it alone. When working with a professional this is often called discovery.
### Show Links
- [Slick Plan](https://slickplan.com/)
- [Google Drawing](https://docs.google.com/drawings)
- [Google Slides](https://docs.google.com/presentation/u/0/)
- [FreeMind](https://sourceforge.net/projects/freemind/)
- [Mind Meister](https://www.mindmeister.com/)
- [Trello](https://trello.com)
- [Basecamp](https://basecamp.com/)
- [Team Work](https://www.teamwork.com/)
Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology.
**\[00:00\]** **Sean:** Hi and welcome to the website 101 Podcast. I'm your host, Sean Smith and today my guest is Penley O'Learn Shaw and she's going to be talking to us about planning, structure and goals. Penny could you introduce yourself and let me know
**\[00:16\]** **Penny:** if I got your last name correct. Hi Sean. Almost it's O'Learn Shaw and everybody gets it wrong don't worry about it. So I've been developing websites since 2006 my company is build marketing and we build sites for a variety of different sizes of companies from small to medium to large. Excellent excellent and where exactly are you based? We're east of Toronto a couple of our
**\[00:47\]** **Sean:** resists near Belleville. Awesome awesome yeah we've worked together before on a few sites we're working on a really big project now which should launch in early January. Very excited about that. Absolutely and this project has really stretched your skills as a project manager and things like that so I think our
**\[01:08\]** **Penny:** topic today is really appropriate and helpful. I think so. I've done so much work over the years on my own that it's always a little different when I have to involve other people and when I have a client who has a lot of their own
**\[01:26\]** **Sean:** needs and this one's such a big project it really has been a push. Okay so what are the basic things about planning and structure and goals that we should think about when we're working on our website it could be building a brand new website or rebuilding an existing site. What would you look at as the key things to consider at the beginning of a project? Well the first thing to
**\[01:55\]** **Penny:** consider is what it is that you're actually trying to put out there and who it is that you're trying to reach. The thing that most people don't think about is the fact that the website is really for the customer it's not for you it's it needs to help the customer who's looking for what you offer the knowledge that you actually can help them and it's only about you then it never addresses their particular pain and they don't feel that they recognize their issue with you.
**\[02:31\]** **Sean:** Alright so I make my website the website should not be about what I want it should be about what my potential customers or clients want. That's absolutely
**\[02:41\]** **Penny:** right they're the ones who it's all that what's in it for me thing right I mean we all think about our own selves but it's really the customers doing the
**\[02:51\]** **Sean:** same thing. So it's a customer first approach we have to think about how our customers view our site what they're looking for and how we can help them. Yeah
**\[03:01\]** **Penny:** really it comes down to what's the problem that you're solving for the customer and understanding what their problem what their pain is why are they even coming to you in the first place because obviously if they're finding you they're looking for something to solve a problem that they have. Okay so we
**\[03:23\]** **Sean:** understand what our customers want or at least we think we do. How do we use this information to help us plan our website whether it's a small brochure style site or perhaps a very large e-commerce site with multiple sections and
**\[03:40\]** **Penny:** hundreds or thousands of products. Well by understanding what that client is looking for that helps you figure out what's the information that you need to provide to them and how do you need to deliver it to them. You know part of understanding that customer is you know who they are where they are you know what are the things that will entice them to buy and what are the reasons that they might choose not to buy and once you've understood all of those things then you can figure out you know what's the structure of the website what are the you know what what sorts of interfaces do you need to provide to them so that they can move through the site the way you want them to but finding the
**\[04:31\]** **Sean:** things that they're looking for. All right well as a do-it-yourself kind of person how would I evaluate these sort of things like maybe I can't afford to hire an agency right now for whatever reason or the agencies that I have approached seem to expensive or we have a personality conflict whatever I want to do it myself how can I properly plan my website or online present. Well first
**\[05:03\]** **Penny:** of all understand what what is that problem you solve who is it you're solving it for so break it down most you know quite often when we ask people you know who is it you sell to they'll say oh anybody or anybody who breathes you know who's your customer and that's that. Don't tell Jonathan Stark that he'll get upset he wants you to niche down. Exactly and that's what we do try to do with clients is we try to help them understand that you know not everybody is their customer and and to break it down to those those customers who are most likely to buy you might have you know sort of a primary target audience and then some other secondary audiences but truly there is nobody who is selling to everybody so breaking it down because you know if you're sold if you've sold you know who it is who's trying to buy you know if you've done research about what it is you're selling who are the people who are most looking for what you're
**\[06:06\]** **Sean:** looking for. Right and that doesn't apply to just products it also applies to services like for example what we're doing absolutely providing the service of making websites or helping people with their marketing and things like that.
**\[06:21\]** **Penny:** Exactly it's when I say product it's it's sort of service or even if it's assistance right. This is the same thing for an organization that offers assistance to people whether it's a help line or just learning more about a problem that they have or you know just even a social issue. Understanding you're the person who's coming to your website will help you then figure out what's the content you need to provide to them. What are the things that will motivate them you know if you've got a donor site what are the things that are going to convince somebody that you're the organization that they should give their funds to because you do great work but those you know and so that will help you understand you know perhaps what kind of imagery you might need to have that will you know if you're a donor you're you're looking for those those images that will connect with someone and and help them understand you know and empathize with the the people that you help with their donations.
**\[07:32\]** **Sean:** The issue be wanting something that's going to have an emotional connection.
**\[07:35\]** **Penny:** Exactly but even still even when it comes down to just buying a product if somebody is if a business is struggling with an issue and you have a product that can solve that issue for them then there's an emotional connection there too right there there's you know they might be a manager who has a boss that is pushing them to find a solution to a problem and they haven't figured out how to do that yet they're a little stressed because their jobs potentially on the line if they don't find a good solution so there you know there's an emotional connection there to help you know to connect with that pain that they're feeling and to help them understand that you can solve that problem for
**\[08:19\]** **Sean:** them. Alright so we're kind of talking about we start with the customer the pain and how we can solve that customer's pain. Let's say we've got this down we know exactly what we're doing how can I take this knowledge and put it on to my website how does how do I plan it further to make it work effectively.
**\[08:46\]** **Penny:** Right so exactly so so the next thing that you want to do once you have all that information about your customer and of course about your competition what they're doing then you want to figure out what is the best way to deliver the information to the visitor that will you know convey that information that you want them to know so are you an online or an offline business if you're an online business and you're selling services online or products or whatever obviously the you need to have a process by which somebody can actually go through a sales process and purchase. Are you selling a book or a course? Are you a retail location and you need to have people come to you so understanding what is that the way that you deliver that information now helps you figure out what type of site you need so if it's if you're selling a product obviously some kind of e-commerce system or site is required it might be as simple as a couple of PayPal buttons and it might be as full blown as a full e-commerce system. If you're a small local business and you just want people to know you're there you can probably get away with just a small what we call brochure type site. If you've got a lot of content you need people to know if you need if you want to you know if you need to to show your expertise in something you'll probably want to have a blog and post regularly on that. So there's that understanding the customer and then that delivery system is what will
**\[10:27\]** **Sean:** help you figure out what type of website you need to have. Okay so presumably if I if I hire an agency such as yourself or someone like me you know we we can help our clients discover the right approach their website because we have a lot of experience in this area. Let's let's go back to somebody who's more of a do-it-yourselfer. Wouldn't I just pick up like a WordPress theme and look for what kind of matches what's common in my industry and then just use that. Wouldn't that give me all of what I need without doing all this research and
**\[11:10\]** **Penny:** planning? Well you could but what you don't know is whether you know you're gonna hit your target you know you're you're kind of throwing darts in the dark at that point because you know and that's what often will happen. People will say well I need a website so I'll you know sign up with some you know even if it's not WordPress might some host and they have a website builder and I
**\[11:35\]** **Sean:** can have a website by tomorrow and I'll be like wicks or squares Bay exactly exactly
**\[11:41\]** **Penny:** I and I'll be a millionaire by next month you know and that's yeah that doesn't usually happen. No. Something like WordPress gives you a lot of potential but it can also mean that your site doesn't have anything particularly distinguishing about it. You know you could find a nice picture but is it going to actually connect with your audience you know you could throw some text in but is it going to actually tell the story you need them to hear. So basically what you're
**\[12:22\]** **Sean:** saying here is that by properly planning and thinking ahead of time I can come up with the right kind of content that drives my site rather than allowing a
**\[12:33\]** **Penny:** theme to drive the content. Absolutely that because it really is once we understand the customer then the next thing is content and what will you know move that customer forward or that you know that visitor forward to the next
**\[12:49\]** **Sean:** step that you want them to take. Okay so we've got all of this information we've found out what our customers need and want from us we have a plan now how can I take all of this information and help me come up with a structure for my website. Let's pick an example or a theoretical company. For example we have a small business that comes to you and they're running a nail spa where they do manicures, pedicures, things you know things like like that. How can I use all of the information I've gathered to structure the kind of things that my
**\[13:38\]** **Penny:** customers want. So the first thing you want to do is you don't need to figure out what are the you know what what's the most important thing that that customer is going to want to see when they come to your website you know see or read right. Obviously if you're a nail salon you're going to want to have some great pictures of the work that you do. That's going to connect with the person because somebody going to a nail salon wants to see visually what their nails are going to look like. So showing you know showing some examples of of you know nicely manicured hands with beautiful nails is the first thing you
**\[14:16\]** **Sean:** want to do. Yeah because you're going there because you want to look beautiful or make yourself different for the next couple of weeks. Exactly. So then the
**\[14:25\]** **Penny:** next thing you want to do is think about what are the you know what are the words that are going to convince somebody that they should come to you as opposed to the other nail salon that's just around the corner. Especially if you're in new salon people don't always change those sorts of services very often. So why would they you know want to come to you as there's something specific about the products that you use or the the way that you know do your work do you offer a really great environment you know with coffee and and teas and I know a very relaxing situation at the same time or is it a get in get out you know and and that's perfect for somebody who really needs a quick manicure done and they're
**\[15:12\]** **Sean:** not looking for a whole spa experience. So you want your website to reflect the atmosphere and the feeling of your service. Maybe it's a high-end nail spa where yeah it's really expensive but you get a lot of personalized care or maybe it's the quick in and out. I just want I just want to get my nails done so they look okay maybe get a little neck massage or whatever other services are offered.
**\[15:39\]** **Penny:** Exactly. So you're not going to spend an awful lot of but again and this is where that knowledge of the customer comes in right understanding what it is of you know the people that you're trying to reach. So if you're in a business area people may be on their lunch break right. So you might say you know we have you know four manicurists on during you know from 11 to 2 so that we can handle a larger crowd you know and you can be in and out in 15 minutes if you're in a more residential area that's where you might focus more on the on that sort of
**\[16:18\]** **Sean:** more relaxed atmosphere. Okay so I've done this and I've decided how I want to reflect this planning on my website. How do I get the kind of information that needs to be conveyed onto the website in a way like how does
**\[16:44\]** **Penny:** this planning help us do this. Right well by understanding by planning that content I've I mentioned the homepage but there are additional pages that we might be looking at right. So a one page site may be totally sufficient for a small business if in that one page you can offer everything you know tell the visitor everything that they need to know but for something like a nail salon you might want to have a gallery where you can have more pictures of the work you've done and people can see different types of work that you do so if you do really fancy design work on nails as opposed to just plain color then you can show lots of examples of things like that. You might go into additional services that you offer if you do on on secondary pages you'll probably want to provide some you know people with a bit of information about your business who you are what your training is you know why they should come and see you and then
**\[17:49\]** **Sean:** maybe it may be introduced the people doing the manicure. Sure and yeah experience and because maybe they have different skill levels or specialties if that's a thing with spas and manicures. Well and quite often you know it's it
**\[18:05\]** **Penny:** helps the visitor feel comfortable with who they're going to see when they get there that it's not just a you know yet another sort of robot doing your nails that they're actually people and and you'll have a conversation with them right and then of course you want to have some way for them to contact you and
**\[18:23\]** **Sean:** to know where you are right so your location information. Sure okay so we have all of this information here we've built our site it's it's looking good is there any sort of planning involved in keeping the site running or connecting it to our social media whether that's Pinterest or Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or can I just like build my site one and done and you know I'm gonna
**\[18:55\]** **Penny:** have a steady stream of customers. Well we know that you know in the old days perhaps when there weren't an awful lot of websites then you know the likelihood that you'd get found you know fairly easily was pretty high but now that there's so much competition out there you can't just put your website up and expect that people will come you do need to do some level of marketing and that again that comes that brings us back to that customer and where they are right so is your customer on Facebook if you're a business to business offering some kind of business service Facebook might not be the right platform for you to be you know talking about your business on but LinkedIn might be the way that you reach people or Twitter so again understanding that customer and where they tend to spend time and where they you know where where you can get in front of them through either posting or advertising the other thing. That all makes
**\[19:55\]** **Sean:** that all makes good sense to me so our nail spa would do really well on something like Instagram where we're showing off photos of what we can do but if maybe I'm doing B2B where I'm offering accounting services or copywriting Instagram's not the right place it might be more involved in LinkedIn or Twitter where I can link to various articles and discussions like that.
**\[20:28\]** **Penny:** Yeah it also depends on the age range of your customer too right so we know that younger people are not using Facebook at the same rate that their parents are they're they're finding other things. I kids don't use Facebook. No exactly right and a lot of people a lot of younger people are using Instagram or
**\[20:52\]** **Sean:** other you know other systems like Snapchat and whatnot. So again knowing who
**\[21:00\]** **Penny:** you are trying to reach some kind of social media though is helpful because then you can people can refer you right so again our back to our nail salon. They you know someone comes to see to see you and and has great service and then they're going to go and say had a great visit at this new nail salon in town you should check it out their friends then hear about you and you know you can build on that on that great service that you offer. Okay so we've kind of
**\[21:38\]** **Sean:** talked about all kinds of things that we can plan. Are there any tools that can help us plan maybe this is a tool that an agency would use when I hire them or maybe it's a tool that I can use myself maybe it's just a simple checklist app on my phone or maybe something really full and robust that will help me or the freelancer or agency that I hire plan my project. Well in that sort of before we
**\[22:07\]** **Penny:** have gotten into building certainly one of the things that for a for a more complicated site where you might have you know numerous pages and lots of different types of content like blogs or news stories or galleries and whatnot you might use some kind of a mapping tool there is a there's a tool I've used called slick plan that allows you to create what we call a site map which is basically just a visual representation of the pages of the navigation of the
**\[22:41\]** **Sean:** site. So I've also used slick plan I liked it it was easy to use and there's a free version which is great if you're doing it yourself and they have paid versions if you need multiple things like you're you're running an agency when
**\[22:55\]** **Penny:** you have multiple clients or multiple projects. Exactly and you can actually bring people into the you know into onto your team and then you can share that information with them. You know slick plan has has the ability to you know let you add a whole lot of content and information some of your key words and things like that into that stage of the planning so you can actually accomplish a lot and then you can export in different ways out of that from out export that information out in different ways. So you could print it up or you could share it
**\[23:29\]** **Sean:** with other people in your organization and things like that. Exactly if it's a
**\[23:34\]** **Penny:** simple site you know and you don't want to go into something as complicated as slick plan lots of the sort of basic drawing programs will allow you to create boxes and add text and and and move things around Google docs Google drawing does things like that so there's lots of there's lots of options out there for simpler systems. I'm you know what I'm not let's let's not get too carried away with that one because I'm not really certain. I was thinking of something like
**\[24:06\]** **Sean:** really simple not intended for that usage would be like PowerPoint or Google slides you can it's not that's not the intended purpose but you could achieve what you want with some sort of flow arrows and boxes and stuff. Exactly
**\[24:22\]** **Penny:** exactly and I've used those as well and and again if it's again a fairly simple site you can do it with paper and pen and and you know or pencil perhaps so that you can move things around and change things you know it's one of my favorite
**\[24:38\]** **Sean:** tools is a notepad and pen to start and what then after I've got really rough then I go into something like slick plan I like to sit down away from my computer when I start planning. It helps me focus a little bit more. It's true
**\[24:52\]** **Penny:** it's it's so easy to get caught up in the tools when you when you're using you know digital tools and figuring out well what can I do and you get you get go down the rabbit hole of what this tool can do and look at all these cool things that I can do and then you've completely lost you know the direction that you were going in terms of the work you're trying to do. Right and so the takeaway
**\[25:13\]** **Sean:** from that is famous person X says they use this tool I have to use it no no you need to use maybe something similar to that but you need to use something that works for you and that's a matter of exploring and maybe that tool does work so we mentioned slick plan maybe slick plan is the best thing for you but you try it out use Google slick plan alternatives always alternatives and that's a great way to find similar tools or services that do what you want to
**\[25:46\]** **Penny:** get. Exactly because not every tool will do exactly what you want and you won't know until you've had a chance to try them out that's the great thing about free trials with the with the tools that are out there as you can check them out and most of them will have like a free basic version that you can continue to use. There's another tool that I've used called mind mapping there's a number of different systems there's a free version called free mind which I used for quite a number of years and then recently I started using mind master which basically you know it allows me to be a little bit more free form to create levels and and more detailed sections of content so it just without being sort of stuck in a structure of a page outline or you know getting into boxes too early.
**\[26:40\]** **Sean:** All right so for somebody who's got a lot of content that needs multiple levels like for example if you see a website that has a huge drop-down menu these mind mapping, free mind or mind master might help you better visualize ahead of time how you want to organize your content so that you can group it into different content types or groups like your services or your blog or your you're going into service X and then it's got five more categories and one of those has a few more subcategories. These sort of tools help you visualize this easier in a way that makes it better for planning. Well exactly and it's always better to
**\[27:25\]** **Penny:** plan those things in advance because it it'll it will take ten times longer to do it if you just sort of jump in and start building because you'll you'll discover that you know you've gone you know one direction and then you realize oh I forgot about this thing that I need to have and now you have to change things so you know the more planning that you can do before you actually start
**\[27:46\]** **Sean:** trying to build anything the better. So the more planning you can do before you build that makes a lot of sense to me what about planning before you approach your web developer or web agency do you think that this is a good idea to have a plan ahead of time or should you come to your agency as a blank slate and
**\[28:09\]** **Penny:** kind of just listen to them. Well I mean it was certainly starting with the things that we talked about at the beginning right understanding your business understanding your product you know which most people do it's it's but sometimes you know a newer businesses don't have a lot of that information or don't know exactly how you know how well they'll sell or you know who all their customers might be but having you know that basic information you don't need to have it all broken down into you know great detail but understanding you know those those basics about the business so that you can convey that to the agency. One of the things that we do is we do a very detailed discovery process that is actually a standalone piece that we do prior to starting a project and even before we put a whole proposal together which allows us and we spend a lot of time digging into a lot of these questions. What we find is that people will often say you know I never even thought about that and they get new business ideas out of that process. A detail of the discovery process that
**\[29:24\]** **Sean:** sounds kind of expensive like so I'm paying you to do work that doesn't actually do anything on my website we haven't even started building it. Well it's
**\[29:36\]** **Penny:** designing it. What it is is it it it's a process that allows us to understand your business better because you may know your business but we don't. Right so until we understand your business it's pretty hard for us to know exactly what's going to be the best way to you know provide you with a site or to recommend marketing options. Once we've figured you know once we understand the business then we can make suggestions and a roadmap as to how we proceed from there. What we do because we do it as a standalone piece beforehand we actually we provide you with that roadmap. Here's where we believe you should go based on the information that we've done. We've spent and we may put 20 to 25 hours into that process. It's a few hours of interviews but we do a lot of research and strategy. 20 to 25 hours that's a lot of work. It is a lot of work and that's why we you know we can't do it for free but what often happens is if you don't do that work beforehand you know people will come and say I need a website what's it going to cost and well we don't know because we don't know what kind of website you need. Exactly. And so what will happen is that you maybe spend an hour and you kind of you know the person says okay I need this this this and this you ask a few questions and then you pop together a proposal for X number of dollars okay great we like it we sign on the dot line in a way we start and then every as we go along suddenly it's like oh well no I need this. It's like well that wasn't part of the plan that wasn't what we proposed and and you know you find out that the customer you know who thought they could write their own content can't write their own content because they just they don't have time or they don't have the ability there's a whole lot of things that can mess up a project and change the price considerably once you get into it and that's why you know and then it's either you know either the agency is looking like the bad guy because well they didn't figure all that out beforehand but how could they have or or you know or they eat a lot of time because they don't want to go back and say you know this is going to cost you
**\[31:52\]** **Sean:** three times as much. Yeah I've been guilty on that and it's it's an easy mistake to make you everybody wants to please their client and if you don't nail the scope ahead of time it's hard to come back and say hey client X it's now going to cost you $500 a thousand dollars three thousand dollars more because that was out of scope but you promised me a website well this is why we need to do this kind of planning ahead of time and detail what's all involved. Exactly. So with your discovery process you said 20 to 25 hours is that average for you? Is there a minimum amount of time that you put on like for a smaller project? Like say some really tiny company comes to you do you have to do discovery or could it be just like a one or two hour conversation and kind of
**\[32:48\]** **Penny:** figure it out. We have done shorter versions when it when it's a pretty obvious kind of business and and particularly if it's a local business to us and we know the area we know the type of work that they're doing we we will compress it and sometimes we'll ask the client to do certain elements that we might have normally done in a meeting we might just give them a questionnaire and ask them to fill it in that sometimes works and sometimes doesn't but it can it can you know shorten up the amount of time that we have to spend in the in the conversational part of that discovery but we know we still need to understand you know are there five people in this area who will buy this service or are there 50 you know so and where are they so there's there's still a certain amount of work so we might you know on a smaller project put in five you know a couple of hours of meetings that usually end up going longer than we expect and
**\[33:48\]** **Sean:** you know we might go longer than exactly we might still put in you know 10 to
**\[33:53\]** **Penny:** 15 hours it it it really depends on you know it depends on the business sure if it's a small business it's probably not as you know as involved a process you know I've also done them where it was you know eight or 10 meetings because there were enough technical elements required in the site that we needed to nail down in more detail what what was going to be required and because in order for me to then go back to someone like you as my developer and say Sean I need a site that's going to do this this this in this and here's the scope right we're trying to reach a national audience we've got a lot of things we need to put into this site now tell me oh you know you're talking about our current
**\[34:43\]** **Sean:** guild I am I am I am which for the listener is a really really large site and we even before I started working on it we had several me and Penny had several planning sessions that were done after her planning sessions with her client exactly and then we started building this site back in April or May and it was supposed to be finished mid-September but things have grown and there were some delays part of the planning is understanding that there will be lies I think that this site has had a couple of unexpected delays that have taken it longer but we're really really close can't wait to launch it exactly exactly
**\[35:30\]** **Penny:** yeah without that without you know without that discovery process this would have I would never have probably priced it the way I did you would not have been able to price it you know at a reasonable amount we would have all had an
**\[35:46\]** **Sean:** awful lot of surprises I'm there would have been a lot of stress and emotional problems between all parties involved because like things just keep going on like so we had these discussions we had a massive scope document and then your client came to you and you came to me and I said well look that's out of scope that's not included so here's my quote and then they would say yes or no and we'd go on and you'd come back to me with something else and I'd say well I think that's in scope so yeah I'll do it but it might not have been as detailed so having the scope document and planning allowed all of us to feel like we got what we agreed to at the beginning rather than just shaking hands and saying you'll have a website six to eight weeks from now exactly which you
**\[36:40\]** **Penny:** know it is a recipe for disaster really especially on a bigger project you know on a small project that that might work you know but I would say it would have to
**\[36:51\]** **Sean:** be a pretty small project yeah really really really simple the project that we've been talking about is really really really massive I can't really go into details right now but let's just say it's the largest site that I have personally worked on I'm not sure about penny I think it is for you as well it's
**\[37:09\]** **Penny:** it's a pretty it's probably yeah on the largest size okay so let's just talk
**\[37:17\]** **Sean:** about project management tools there's a number of software services that people use for project management where they can create to-do lists and things like that what ones are you familiar with do you have any that you recommend or you know I personally use Trello with my own clients and I've used Basecamp and a couple of others what are your thoughts on that well I
**\[37:47\]** **Penny:** mean you know the project management tool that you should use is the one that works best for you and again it's a matter of trying out different ones and you know seeing what what helps you move through a project smoothly you know it's a matter of being able to set those milestones for what are the you know what are the stages that you need to move through and what are the you know what are the major goals within each of those stages all you know all good project management systems will let you set all of that sort of thing up and then you know add in
**\[38:27\]** **Sean:** your tasks and whatnot so you can assign you can assign tasks to people you can comment on them you can check them off is done and bring them back if they turn
**\[38:37\]** **Penny:** out to not be done as you expected yeah you need to be able to you know it the project management tool becomes that that point of connection and you know it's the it's the thing that everybody can turn to to say where we at you know how much more do we need to do I have a question about this it you know it should allow for some kind of communication system not just a list of tasks but it should also you know allow you to ask questions of each other about the tasks so that you can you know keep being able to check those items off and you know a good project management system may also have the ability to restrict you can't so that you can't move on to a next step until a previous step is completed oh that definitely that's a good idea yeah there are you know there are times when you want to make sure that you know certain things have been accomplished before you move on to another part of the project or it's kind of a control
**\[39:45\]** **Sean:** flow exactly controls your workflow process yeah exactly some some systems will
**\[39:49\]** **Penny:** also tie directly into files systems so Google there's a number of systems that will tie into Google Drive so that all of your files can be stored in one place sometimes the files are stored within the project management system themselves so it really depends on how you want to set up your workflow so the one that I've I've actually been testing a bit I had used it a number of years ago but only briefly and I know a number of people are really happy with
**\[40:19\]** **Sean:** it is teamwork I haven't heard of this one yeah team work is it's sort of one
**\[40:26\]** **Penny:** of the big ones that's used in in the agency industry particularly okay it's it's I think sort of been designed around agency use you can have you know they've got different plans depending on the number of people who need to be involved in a project so if it's just you there's probably you know there's a low and if you've just got a couple of projects I think you can have two projects
**\[40:51\]** **Sean:** for free with one user well that that seems very helpful especially for do it yourselfers or or smaller agencies or freelancers that only take on one or two
**\[41:03\]** **Penny:** projects at a time exactly and then they can archive them and then add a new project once the previous ones are complete and then there's different levels the other thing that that a project management tool can be helpful for is involving the client so you may choose to only work with your developers and designers within the project management tool or you may include the the client in certain aspects so a good tool will have the ability to restrict what can be seen by different people who have access to the site so you might not show the client all your back-end stuff but you might show and you might show your you know only show certain things to your designers and so that they don't have to worry about what's happening on development side lots of you know so so having
**\[41:49\]** **Sean:** that kind of flexibility and that is something that Trello does not have but a tool like Basecamp allows you to set up one or two different groups of people on a project and then when you create a new thread you can hide it from certain groups so you might be talking directly with your your client and they requesting feature X and you get all those details and then you have an internal thread where you're talking about how to approach it or things like that and you can have conversations that the client doesn't necessarily need to be party to it saves them time and you can present it it just keeps things nice and organized so we're hitting the time we're coming up close to the time so I have one last thing I would like to talk about really quickly is with a larger project is it a viable thing to set up your project to go out in phases so that we launch with an MVP MVP means minimal viable product or should I just get everything done perfectly and launch it six eight ten months later well I guess
**\[43:09\]** **Penny:** it depends on how quickly you need to get to market and at what level of detail you need to be there so this project that we have been working on I wasn't
**\[43:19\]** **Sean:** actually talking about that but that is one that that you know the the client
**\[43:23\]** **Penny:** really wanted to have all of the pieces there because it is a big update for them and they really wanted and they're you know they're about to make a huge expansion in their in their organization and they really wanted to have something that was going to appeal to people quickly whereas yes often you know figure out what's the minimum you need to have you know do you need just you know what a homepage do it if you can do enough within a single page to at least get something on the webs onto the web and and then you can start pushing traffic to it and see what kind of response you're getting and then spend more time developing the rest of the site perhaps you need a homepage and a blog and that's a good place to start or service description but you may not need to have you know every possible bell and bell or whistle at the point when you
**\[44:18\]** **Sean:** launch okay so the the short story here is it depends on your organization in my view I think in for larger projects more often it's better to do it in phases you'd get your minimal product which might be pretty large in itself and then add in stuff later that is not mission critical for example this podcast is going out with the MVP when it launches in January I it's gonna have the minimal features that I needed I have plans for the future and I'll add on to them as I find time or I figure out that yeah my listeners actually want
**\[44:55\]** **Penny:** that kind of feature yeah that's that's actually one of the dangers with spending an awful lot of time building something before you ever put it out there is you're not getting any feedback from your users you know the website visitors is to you know what they're finding helpful or not or what they feel is
**\[45:13\]** **Sean:** missing which could happen check your analytics that too reports and see what people actually need in want anyways penny this has been a really really great conversation we got recovered a lot of material it was really great to have you on and I hope to bring you back on in the future so let's tell the listeners where can we find you online your website your social media anything
**\[45:40\]** **Penny:** else that you want to share right so our website is buildmarketing.ca and we are on Facebook Twitter LinkedIn and are handled there on all of those is an abbreviation of build marketing so it's BLD MKTG
**\[46:01\]** **Sean:** all right don't worry about spelling that it all but all the links on your site
**\[46:06\]** **Penny:** yeah but we you know we we do post quite regularly on different aspects of you know web work and marketing and whatnot we do full social media services as well so we're often talking about those kinds of things for businesses
**\[46:23\]** **Sean:** excellent excellent thank you so much for joining me today my pleasure Sean I'm really glad we were able to do this thank you for listening be sure to subscribe and share website 101 podcast with friends and colleagues you can find me at website 101podcast.com on Twitter user name at website 101 pod do you have a question you want to ask a topic suggestion or a guest host recommendation send me an email Sean S.E.A.N. at caffeine creations dot C.A. or visit website 101podcast.com slash contact and fill in the form you can find me personally online at my company website caffeine creations dot C.A. C.A. F.F. E.I.N.E C.R.E.A.T.I.O.N.S dot C.A.A. on LinkedIn with username caffeine creations hope you enjoyed this episode see you next time
Close Transcript
Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact).
[](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 01
- 1 [ Introduction to Website 101 Podcast](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-1/introduction-to-website-101-podcast/)
- 2 [ Planning, Structure, Goals](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-2/planning-structure-goals/)
- 3 [ Web Design Shortcuts You Should Never Take](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-3/web-design-shortcuts-you-should-never-take/)
- 4 [ Websites Benefit from Continual Development](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-4/websites-benefit-from-continual-development/)
- 5 [ SEO 101](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-5/seo-101/)
- 6 [ Unlocking the Secrets of PPC Advertising with Dan Wood](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-6/ppc-101-pay-per-click/)
- 7 [ PR & Marketing](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-7/pr-marketing/)
- 8 [ Designing Effective Landing Pages for High Conversion Rates](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-8/what-is-a-landing-page/)
- 9 [ Accessibility: Why Your Website Should Be Easy to Use for All](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-9/accessibility-why-its-important/)
- 10 [ DIY Vs Bespoke](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-10/diy-vs-bespoke/)
- 11 [ Season 1 Wrap Up](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-01/episode-11/season-1-wrap-up/)
### All Seasons
- [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/)
- [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/)
- [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/)
- [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/)
- [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/)
- [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/)
- [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/)
- [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/)
- [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/)
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