Importance of End-to-End Web Process

EI visited London yesterday for a meeting with a new client for web development work. Although we won the business, it was interesting to take note of what they were looking for in their chosen web supplier; it wasn't someone to only produce a nice looking website and make it functional.

Foremost in their mind was that they needed a company to take on and manage the whole web process, within guidelines and to work with them to make sure that their website becomes part of their marketing mix and meets its customer's needs.

This kind of thinking from a customer might start to ring some alarm bells around clarity of scope and open ended contracts and if managed wrongly it can lead to problems. However, knowing and understanding how your supplier (and indeed client) wants the relationship to evolve is a great way to ensure that what you are doing for them now has a place in their long term thinking. It also helps to avoid the horrible master/slave relationship that benefits neither party particularly well.

For our part, we left with a full understanding of their business and that we were to lead the process with them contributing whatever was required in terms of direction and content. So, try to talk outside of contract terms and get to know your client in order to provide them with great long term, appropriate, service.