If you could save your company money, complete projects ahead of time and increase profits, where would you need to focus? Do you know where your biggest bottlenecks or pain points are occurring — and better yet, how do you fix them?
According to the Project Management Institute:
— Organizations waste $109 million for every $1 billion invested in projects and programs.
— In 2014, only half of projects finished on time and 55 percent finished within their initial budgets, according to the 2,800 project management leaders surveyed.
Whether it’s developing a website from scratch, project management, or even creating written content, we invite you to learn from leaders in each of these fields.
Enjoy the below Q&A, part one of this interview series.
Q&A with Tyler Woerner, Founder/Owner of PixelBrush, a web development agency based in Lafayette, Louisiana
Q: At the end of last year, you launched a new service called Daysite, a more streamlined approach to web building and design. How did you come to this idea?
A: Building a marketing website is just sort of a pain for many of our clients. Technology is advancing so rapidly across the web, and yet the process of doing a website professionally was an antiquated process. No one had really revisited that workflow since the beginning of websites. When I came into the industry in 2008, I did it like everyone else did. I designed a page with placeholder copy, then built in a content management system. Once all of the backend was done, the client would fill in the content. And, that’s when things would fall apart. After a couple years of pretending the problem was on the client’s end, I thought, “There has got to be a better way to do this.”
Q: Where was the breakdown occurring?
A: I took an honest look at the workflow. Where we may have only spent 10–12 man hours on an actual site, it could still take three months to get completed. The traditional web design process degraded the product. The design was compromised as soon as the content came in, and so forth. By the time the project was done, we didn’t have anything that people were excited about. So, we flipped the process on its head with Daysite. We literally build and launch a site from scratch in one day. When a client is with you all day during this process, you get instant feedback.
Q: What are the main bottlenecks or pain points you were hearing directly from customers?
A: Companies know they need a website, but they aren’t sure about what to put on it. You may be surprised that many small to medium businesses don’t have a formal marketing plan, and it’s not uncommon for a smaller business to have never thought about how to present themselves. You can even have a fairly well thought-out plan and still run into roadblocks with messaging — lack of direction or trying to serve too many masters. It’s our philosophy that your website should be a reflection of your marketing plan, so we help businesses strategically develop this.
Q: How exactly does Daysite work (i.e., can you truly build a site in a day)?
A: We can do this around the country. We have an agenda we set, and then every Daysite gets better. Ronny Wiltz is both a web developer and a graphic designer, and she takes the lead with preparing the client for the day. I also play a role, but she facilitates the entire day. There are various problem solving tools depending on the client, but the integrity of the experience is the same. However, not every customer is a good fit for this service.
This article originally appeared in the January edition of our e-newsletter, Beyond the Keyboard.
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At Shift Key, we make communication capital. We are journalists who know how to create original content, the foundational layer of digital marketing. We understand audience and the information your audience wants – whether you are an agency, brand, company or non-profit. Content is the bedrock of digital marketing. Shift Key creates unique and informative content that feeds marketing activities across a mounting number of channels, generating buzz for brands and leads for products and services.