Top Website Project Problems and Solutions for Success

We all know that websites are not just fillers for upholding the brand image of the companies. The websites are a means to an end – to be the first way of introducing yourself in 2024. It is necessary to know the leading website project problems and solutions for a successful launch.

Especially now that businesses have understood the importance of websites, things are unfolding to many exciting prospects. Moreover, the websites help you in building up a reputation. They are the building branch for selling your products and services to the users. Websites also give you the desired results in terms of engagement, retention, and upselling.

Nowadays, it is not just about making an attractive website. This makes the undertaking of a web project very exciting. Let us round-up on some of the very common website project problems and solutions for ultimate success.

What type of website to build and features to include?

In an ideal world, knowing this should be an easy thing. What are the requirements of the website? On the surface, you want a website that looks good, has easy-to-use features, and gives you traction. Yes, you will desire the website to have more functionalities.

But this is the basic feature-set that every website must possess. Always look to elaborate website project requirements into specifications. This makes us deviate towards how all the above must-haves will be converted into a formal notion for development.

Let’s give you an example of the registration feature for your website. You want to easily onboard the customers. How to make this possible?

• Filling up a form and then registering them through their email addresses
• Single-Sign-On (Social login integration)
• Or another solution

These are some of the options you can select from. It makes project requirements not just a broad-level thing but something more specific to your business use-case. Then, somewhere down the line – you would probably have changes in those requirements.

At times, these requirements can be accommodated but sometimes that means you must increase the project costs. This is not an ideal scenario for a start-up company or a small-scale business. Because they are already under a lot of pressure to launch their websites.

Solution

Being upfront about what you need is the best approach. That means starting the right conversation with the relevant stakeholders. So, you must get constructive in your way of leading the requirements gathering sessions.

• There are a lot of techniques to sort out requirements either through brainstorming sessions, interviews, feedback, and even focus groups. All these techniques are dependent on your way of working. Also, they dictate how comfortable other stakeholders are in being engaged in any of the activities.
• By controlling requirements, you have a distant chance of sorting the website project problems and solutions for your business. That means unnecessarily causing a change in requirements will only waste time and exercised efforts in the project.
• Getting the buy-in or sign-off approval is so important. But it is often the most sidelined aspect of requirements and scope. Without this approval in place, the integrity of requirements can be questioned and any change can creep inside the scope.

There are only very few reasons when such changes should be accommodated. Particularly when you have conducted proper requirements gathering and elicitation sessions to lock the scope.

In a scenario, you have the capacity and scale to accommodate changes. Then, it is always best to plan the changes in upcoming iterations. Instead of having changes happen too quickly in the existing set of tasks.

The incremental approach for design and development is always a smarter way of working. As it helps to keep tabs on what’s needed, studying the market, and embracing the changes as per your requirement. There are a lot of software methodologies for helping in this regard as well.

This is best to do an impact analysis and evaluate how much of the work done earlier can be utilized. It is an important conversation between web developers to sit together. Thus, they can see how existing efforts can still be put to use for future releases of the software.

Read more: Tips for making high-converting Websites

Do we allocate a budget or not for creating a website?

The majority of companies want to know all that is going to cost in getting website development for the project. Nevertheless, that means they want a budget in mind which they will maintain for the entire project. Usually, a 5-10% buffer is added to bear any additional costs that may come along the way.

What if there was a lack of transparency in the estimations? However, what if the project costs more than that? What if something were completely overlooked like how the infrastructure costs would be? Or the QA costs that increased because automated testing was not added initially but then became a very necessary requirement.

Getting the cost of the project right the first time can be tricky for smaller companies. It can be quite a cumbersome challenge for them. Because they are tight on budget and may struggle midway through the project.

Solution

These are some of the things you should do.

• Have a rough budget figure in your mind that you cannot cross in any way. Then cut your budget to 10% from that amount to announce it to the team as the final limit. This way you have a 10% reserve for any critical activity or need that may come about. Trust us, this always happens to the best of projects. Without a reserve, you will be cutting corners to compromise on the quality of the product.
• Be thorough in your project requirements. This means getting your requirements clarified and then prioritized to make sure you only have what you need. At least, do it for the MVP or first few iterations of your website. Until you are making good money, it is important to have only what you need in the feature set. This way you know what will cost you through a proper understanding of your requirements.
• Estimate wisely. Website developers can play a vital role in helping you estimate the time required for developing a feature in man-days. So, each resource probably costs in terms of their daily wage multiplied by the man-days required to complete a feature. Since they are the technical experts, you allow them to be part of the estimation process. So that you get their buy-in and a more realistic estimation cost of what you will be paying for.

Why are costs of developing websites going haywire?

Probably, among the website project problems and solutions, this is a pain point for any project at a certain point in time. Initially, it is all rosy. Everything seems to be properly planned, estimated, and scheduled.

But as the project initiates; things tend to spiral out of control. Even the sure-shot cost of development, and infrastructure tends to pile up. It becomes extremely stingy with the risk of the project getting out of budget.

This is the breaking point of any website development project. As it makes companies even question why they took up the excursion in the first place. The questions that tend to be asked at this stage are the following.

What went wrong? Why wasn’t there a risk mitigation plan? Did you put in place a strategy to ensure things don’t spiral down so quickly?

Solution

Trust us when we tell you that solutions are manifold for this problem.

• Did you consider all the aspects before jumping the gun? Had you put up proper procedures and processes in the project pipeline? Did you practice working on a formal set of protocols based on a software development methodology without proper planning? For example, you used scrum, waterfall, Kanban, etc.
• The idea of a risk-free project is completely imaginary. You have to promptly deal with a lot of setbacks that are happening now and then. That means consistently monitoring the project in terms of scope, time, and cost. To see what the progress is really like and then come up with a workable strategy.
• Often not the ideal choice but let’s face it: not everyone is cut out for doing project development work. At best, not many companies even have an in-house capacity to take up tech projects. So, this calls in for hiring experts to do their job. You can completely outsource a project to a third-party company with complete expertise in developing projects from scratch. Even, they can upgrade your legacy system to a newer migrated platform.

Where is the progress for website creation endeavor?

So, the scope is locked in and the design is ready. You are happy with all that has happened so that things can go full momentum and development takes over. But then there is radio silence.

Now, you are rooting for high visibility and transparency of your development activities during 2024. But all you get in the end is nothing. The progress is unsatisfactory or falling behind and the level of communication is inadequate.

This makes you eager to continuously follow up with the development team. Likewise, you get hold of the project manager, and transition into a micro-management role that is not doing any good. Essentially, it makes you question everything and cause a project to go through serious setbacks.

Solution

Being upfront is so important. That’s why you have to make sure you set the tone right from the very start.

• Set up a communication model where you appoint responsible resources. They must follow up on their agreed ways of communicating with you as per the decided schedule.
• Once again, buy-ins are important on the level and way of communication.
• You can achieve transparency through dashboards, reports, and other reporting tools. So that everyone is on the same page regarding what is the progress, the hindrances, and way to remove impediments.
• It’s all about an incremental approach in your work structure. Sometimes, we are too occupied with seeing the bigger picture. That we tend to forget how we can set in motion the smaller chunks of work.
• Value the daily progress and figure out a visual representation of burn-down or burn-up charts. This will enable you to see how much work is covered in the set amount of time.
• It is also important to break down work into smaller sizable components and have the team focus on achievable goals. Make sure you use the INVEST criteria so that all team members align on what you need to achieve. Realize them how it can be managed in the time that is decided for the tasks to be completed.
• You need to be in a problem-solving mode. So, you can assist developers in removing roadblocks. This will ensure everyone works together for the greater goal.
• On occasion, it is also a good idea to not re-invent the wheel. Have you considered working on a platform or technology that takes lesser time forgetting the tasks done?

How to solve Deployment and Post Support Ops concerns?

Recall that web programming and development are just one side of the picture. At last, you want to deploy your website, so that it is easily accessible to the end-users. Yet, at times the infrastructure is poor, the servers go down frequently, and the website becomes unavailable.

You want a proper setup so that the service breakdown is minimum. Especially, once you have launched your website and you need to make frequent changes or updates. Thus, you still want it to be easily accessible to users with minimum upgrade time.

Solution

• Work with a sound technical team that advises you on the kind of technology, platform, and infrastructure you require.
• Build your product in a way with a modular approach instead of being monolithic. So that it allows easy upgrades, without online system crashes. Make sure that changes deployed don’t affect the overall degradation in the services to the users.
• Have you ever heard of DevOps? These are specialists in ensuring that your product is quickly adaptable to any upgrades without interrupting users from accessing it.
• Also, have a support contract if possible. So that you can hold the Development services company accountable for managing deployment-related concerns.

Conclusion

Website development is fun or cumbersome depending on the route you take amid 2024. Remember that it is never going to be ideal. The learning curve for reaching your dream website can be a tough road to take.

Nonetheless, each problem can have a solution – only if you are willing to organize yourself that way. Addressing the website project problems and solutions is compulsory. We have highlighted some very common and recurring aspects that the majority of companies face in their web ventures.

Are you looking to build a serious online presence? Then one last piece of advice is to take the assistance of a reliant third-party software development services company. This can lead you to greater success. Interact with Techliance today for a free chat on ways you can refine your website idea. Hence, you can become a serious force for your competition.