Your website is an important part of your Cincinnati-area marketing, and it needs to be refreshed or re-designed roughly every 12 to 18 months to keep working effectively for you. But the process of redesigning can be stressful, especially for office administrators like you who already have a ton of responsibilities. How can you make a redesign go more smoothly?
Make weekly communication a priority.

Establish a time every week when you’ll speak with your design firm’s project manager and ask questions, discuss deliverables and make changes to the schedule if needed. Block out this time on your schedule and ignore the regular demands placed on you during the day.

For many office administrators, the best time to set a website design meeting is a Tuesday or Wednesday morning. This ensures you aren’t blindsided on Monday with an emergency or something that’s happened over the weekend, and you’re not exhausted on Thursday or Friday at the end of the week.

Even if you’ve got a lot on your plate, take 10 minutes before your meeting starts to jot down notes, concerns and questions. It will ensure you cover everything that you need to address during your time.

Keep an updated task list and schedule.

You don’t have to maintain elaborate documentation on the website project, but two sheets of paper (or their digital equivalent) can really help.

1. Keep a simple spreadsheet that lists tasks, the person who is responsible and the date they are due.
2. Make a calendar that covers one month past the expected finish of the project. Note dates when you’re supposed to deliver content or other items to the designers and when they should have reviews back to you. If anything slips a day on either end, make sure it is addressed — either in an email or at your next weekly meeting.

These two things will help keep you organized without a lot of effort.

Accurately convey management input.

It’s easy to think you know what’s best for the website, since you’re the most involved person at your office. You probably play a significant role in all the marketing your business does. But if you’re not getting regular feedback from your manager, or anyone else who has a stake in the final product, you may inadvertently be creating delays.

That’s because when you work with your web design firm, they’ll consider you to be the decision maker who’s conveying the thoughts of all the stakeholders. When you fail to tell them that your manager has feedback — even if that feedback is nitpicky or goes against what you prefer — they won’t address those issues.

Then, the site will get further and further along, but your manager will lack enthusiasm because his feedback wasn’t incorporated. Your design team would much rather know about any issues, even if they’re small, than not have honest evaluation from all the stakeholders on the team.

Staying on top of communication and ensuring everyone’s voice is heard and acknowledged are two of the most important things you can do while managing a website redesign project. Minimizing surprises and mistimed feedback can help your project run smoothly and get done on time.