The Website Waiting on Your Content

Approved in March, waiting since

The design was approved in March. The templates were built in April. Since then the new site has sat on a private address, with grey boxes where the photographs go and placeholder text where the services should be.

Nobody is idle, exactly. The business is busy, which is why the words have not been written.

Most stalled website projects look like this. They are not waiting on the developer. They are waiting on the client's text and photographs, and the client is waiting for a quiet week that never comes.

Meanwhile the old site carries on, with every problem the new one was meant to fix.

Why content is always late

• Nobody owns it, so everybody assumes somebody else is writing.
• Writing about yourself is harder than doing the work.
• The busy season arrives and takes the evenings with it.
• Every page waits for the hardest page to be finished.
• Photographs need finished jobs, tidy and in good light.
• Approvals multiply when every partner wants to read everything.

The fourth does the most damage. Five straightforward pages sit nearly done while the business wrestles with the About page, and the whole site waits for the one page nobody wants to write.

What waiting costs

A delayed site costs more than time.

The season it was meant for passes. A site planned for spring arrives in the autumn, after the months it was supposed to help with.

The developer's schedule moves on, so picking the project back up means getting reacquainted with it, and decisions made in March get reopened in July because circumstances have changed.

A project that stops and starts also takes more hours to finish than one that runs straight through, because every restart begins with remembering where things were.

And the old site keeps meeting every new visitor in the meantime.

A content plan with dates

The fix is unglamorous: a single sheet listing every page, who writes it, who approves it, a date for the draft and a date for approval.

One person owns the sheet and checks it weekly. Not to chase anybody, but so that a page slipping by a week is noticed in that week rather than in August.

The sheet also needs a launch date that does not move. Without one, every page can always wait a little longer, and the project quietly becomes something to get to in the autumn.

Interviews instead of blank pages

Most owners can explain their work clearly out loud and freeze in front of a blank page. So do not start with a blank page.

A writer interviews the owner for an hour, recorded, using the questions customers actually ask: what does it cost, how long does it take, what happens first, what goes wrong elsewhere.

The writer drafts each page from that conversation, in the owner's own words where they were good ones. The owner then corrects facts rather than composing, which takes an evening instead of a month.

That is how many stalled projects get moving again, and it costs little next to the project it unblocks.

A worked example

A kitchen cabinet maker with a small workshop and two installers approved a new site design in January. Text for six pages and photographs of finished kitchens were due in February.

By April, only the contact page was done. The owner worked in the shop by day and wrote quotes at night, and the services pages kept losing to both.

A writer spent an hour at the workshop with a recorder, asking how a project runs from the first visit to installation and what customers worry about. Drafts of five pages followed within a week.

The owner corrected them over a weekend. The installers got a shot list for three kitchens finishing in May, and a photographer spent a morning at a completed one.

The site launches next week with five pages and three projects. The page on built-in shelving, which nobody had photographs for yet, follows in July.

Photographs on a schedule

Photographs stall for a different reason: they depend on finished work, decent light and somebody remembering to take them.

A shot list solves most of it. Name the job, the angle and what should be in frame, and give it to whoever will be on site when the work is finished.

For the few images that carry the home page, a professional photographer for half a day is money well spent. Phone photographs from a good list can fill the rest.

Launch with fewer pages

A smaller site that is live beats a complete site on a private address.

Launch with what is ready, as long as it covers the essentials: what you do, the main services, who you are and how to reach you. Add the rest one page at a time after launch.

Take unfinished pages out of the menu rather than publishing placeholders. A page that says coming soon tells visitors less than no page at all.

One person who decides

Content also stalls in review. A draft goes to three partners, comes back with three sets of changes that contradict each other, and waits while somebody reconciles them.

Name one person who approves each page. Others can check the facts in their own area, but the final wording is one person's decision, made within the week.

The counter-case

Some content cannot be handed over.

Prices, credentials, warranties and the facts of how the work is done have to come from the business. A writer can shape them but cannot supply them.

Regulated professions, such as health practitioners and lawyers, may need their own review of every claim, and that takes the time it takes.

And a business in its busiest month may reasonably plan the writing for the quieter one that follows, with the date set now rather than left open.

For everyone else: an owner and a date for every page, help with the writing, and a launch that does not wait for the last page.

This week

1. List every unfinished page on one sheet.
2. Give each page an owner and a date.
3. Book an interview for the hardest pages.
4. Write a shot list for missing photographs.
5. Set a launch date that will not move.
6. Drop pages that will not be ready.
7. Check the sheet every Friday.

Step five changes the conversation. With a fixed date, every unfinished page becomes a choice between finishing it and launching without it, instead of a reason to wait.

Settling who writes what before the project starts is covered in writing a brief before you ask for quotes.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.