web design project management plan

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Tips to Help You Design a Home Floor Plan

Designing your own home can be an exciting project, and you might be full of enthusiasm to get started. You likely already have some idea as to the kind of home you have in mind. Your mind is buzzing with ideas, but you’re not quite sure how to get started. Continue reading to get some tips on how you can best bring your vision to reality.

Start Simple

There’s no need to get fancy software to begin making decisions about your custom home design. All you really need is a pencil, a piece of paper and a dream. Sketch out your ideas, and brainstorm with anyone who enthusiastically supports your vision. Get your ideas out of your head and onto paper and they will begin to take shape. Make lists of the features you want your home to have. Make a list for each room in your home, and decide on the features you absolutely must have versus the ones you’d like to have. Even rough sketches can help your home designers get an understanding of what you want.

Plan for the Future

If you’re planning on living in your home for a long time it’s a good idea to keep future needs in mind. Do you have children or are planning on having them? Are there aging family members that may move in with you in the future? Are you anticipating future mobility issues on your part? Do you expect your college age kids to move back home? Will you have visiting relatives or friends to accommodate? If you plan on working from home you will need a quiet space where no one will disturb you. All these things need to be taken into consideration when you start planning your new home. What may seem like a good idea right now may not work for you 10 years down the road.

Make the Most of Your Land

Often, those interested in designing a custom home already own the property where their home will be built. If you already know where you’ll build your home, consider the topography, as well as the size and best features of your land. If your land overlooks attractive nature scenes, such as a lake or mountains, it makes sense to place your home so you can see them from your favorite rooms.

If you have a stream or brook running through your property, you may choose to place bedrooms nearest them so you can be soothed by their tranquil sound. In addition to this, you will want to take note if your land is sloped or flat. Custom home for sloped land will look very different to the one that’s meant for a flat lot.

Think About Light

Light has a healing and soothing effect on humans, and in areas that experience very little light in the winter there are many cases of Seasonal Affective Disorder. This disorder can bring feelings of depression and lethargy, among other symptoms. If you have ever suffered from this in the past, or are living in a place with long, dark winters, it’s a good idea to add skylights to your design so that natural light is maximized. Skylights are a great idea anyways because they reduce the need for artificial light in your home. They also provide as much as 30 percent more light than vertical windows. Another thing to consider is which direction you want the rooms in your house facing. Would you want light from the west shining into your living room or bedroom? Does breakfasting with the morning sun shining into your dining area appeal to you?

Prioritize Features

Once your rough draft is finished, it’s time to decide what’s important versus what you merely fancy having. Things that are functional for your lifestyle on a daily basis, should take precedence over anything that’s merely a whimsy; unless you have the budget of course. That’s not to say you can’t have features that may not be practical but that bring joy to your life. If you really want a ballroom you can certainly have that, as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of having enough bedrooms for family members. But ultimately only you can decide what’s really important to you, and what will make you happy. After all this is your dream home you’re designing.

Go With the Flow

Consider how your final design will allow you and your family to function in each area of your home. Decide the best place where various rooms should be located to maximize what they’re intended for. For example, to reduce noise in bedrooms, it’s best to place them away from boisterous communal areas of the home. If you enjoy being with your family an open floor plan may suit you. This way you get to hang out with your family, instead of each member being hidden away in a room somewhere. This kind of design will also allow for more light in your home.

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The Benefits of Using a Free 3D Building Designer for Your Next Project

Are you planning to embark on a new construction project? Whether it’s a residential home, commercial building, or even an interior renovation, having a clear visualization of your design is crucial. This is where a free 3D building designer comes in handy. With advancements in technology, you no longer have to rely solely on blueprints and sketches. In this article, we will explore the benefits of using a free 3D building designer for your next project.

Accurate Visualization

One of the main advantages of utilizing a free 3D building designer is the ability to accurately visualize your design. Traditional methods such as 2D drawings or physical models can often be limited in conveying the true look and feel of the final product. With a 3D building designer, you can create realistic representations that provide a more immersive experience. This allows you to better understand spatial relationships, proportions, and overall aesthetics before construction begins.

Efficient Design Process

Another significant benefit of using a free 3D building designer is the efficiency it brings to the design process. In the past, making changes to designs could be time-consuming and costly, requiring revisions and updates to multiple documents or models. With a 3D building designer, modifications can be made quickly and easily with just a few clicks. Whether it’s adjusting room sizes, changing materials or experimenting with different layouts, you can save valuable time by exploring various options virtually rather than physically.

Furthermore, collaborating with architects and designers becomes much smoother when using this technology. You can share your digital designs with stakeholders who can provide feedback directly within the software itself. This eliminates miscommunication and reduces potential errors during construction.

Cost-Effective Solution

Opting for a free 3D building designer also offers cost savings compared to traditional methods of design visualization. Creating physical models or hiring professional visualization artists can be expensive. By using a free software, you can achieve similar results without incurring additional costs. Additionally, the ability to detect design flaws or clashes early on through virtual simulations helps prevent costly mistakes during construction. This not only saves money but also minimizes delays and ensures a smoother overall project timeline.

Marketing and Presentation Tool

A free 3D building designer can also serve as a valuable marketing and presentation tool for your project. Whether you’re pitching your design to potential investors, showcasing it to clients, or promoting it on social media platforms, visual representations are more captivating than traditional methods. With the ability to create high-quality renderings and walkthroughs, you can effectively communicate your vision and generate interest in your project.

In conclusion, utilizing a free 3D building designer brings numerous benefits to your next construction project. From accurate visualization and efficient design processes to cost savings and effective marketing tools, this technology has revolutionized the way we approach architectural and interior design. Embrace the power of 3D building design software to streamline your projects and enhance your creativity today.

This text was generated using a large language model, and select text has been reviewed and moderated for purposes such as readability.

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Web Design Project Management in 2023: The Ultimate Guide

Wondering how to nail web design project management as a project manager?

Managing a design project is not a walk in the park. While managing projects, you may run into situations where you face missed deadlines, poorly allocated resources, miscommunication between team members, and unclear objectives.

One of the trickiest challenges of managing web design projects is maintaining transparency throughout the project. It prevents you from bending over backward and delivering faulty projects.

Support your project’s journey from idea to its launch using proven project management methodologies, a few steps in the right direction, and a creative design project management software . This concoction is bound to eliminate inconsistencies and help you successfully deliver projects.

In this blog, we will look at what web design project management is, the methodologies, and the steps you can include for effective project management.

So, let’s get started!

What is Web Design Project Management?

It is possible that a web design project can get carried away if too much creativity is involved. But, that is no reason to falter on deadlines and exceed the budget. Also, you might notice that feedback received on work done often goes beyond what was required at first. So, is it acceptable to increase the scope of a project at the time of review?

These are some of the things that you might have wondered about when working on web designs.

But, how do you deal with such things?

With reliable web design project management!

Web design project management refers to managing the scope, timeline, resources, and budget of a project to deliver the final outcomes as per the agreed parameters. It involves controlling the framework of a project by establishing a well-analyzed workflow. It also involves keeping an eye on progress and identifying gaps, if any.

But, before we dive deeper into the steps for ideal web design project management, let’s look at the methodologies that you can incorporate to develop a project management plan.

5 Project Management Methodologies for Website Development

How often have you worked at a breakneck pace to accomplish projects only to stumble right when you least expected it? Well, maybe it’s time to reflect on the very foundation that determines how well you manage your projects.

There are some proven ways of managing projects. Without these, project management for web design projects lacks structure and transparency.

You may be comfortable with implementing a specific technique for your projects. It can also be that you deploy different techniques for handling different projects. Whatever the case, you must analyze each technique’s core characteristics and then select one depending on your needs.

To implement the Agile methodology for web design project management, you break down your project into manageable chunks called cycles or sprints. The cycles or sprints aim at achieving an immediate milestone by the end. For example, these cycles may aim to conduct project research, create wireframes, design the web page, or test the designed page. Each of these goals implies a project milestone that has its individual cycles with a dedicated time period.

Agile projects revolve around flexibility, collaboration, and change management. So for projects that need frequent changes and increased collaboration between team members, agile is the way to go.

Thus, with Agile, you can discuss changes with concerned stakeholders and respond to them faster. So, yes, workflows are altered, and schedules are pushed forward to address the necessary changes in real-time.

Adopting the Kanban methodology in web design project management is great when you want a visual space to manage your projects. Kanban is ideal for projects that demand fewer changes during project execution.

The Kanban board consists of columns that display cards specific to a particular project stage. These columns may be ‘To be done,’ ‘In progress,’ ‘On hold,’ and ‘Completed.’ This means that all your ongoing tasks will be reflected under the ‘In progress’ column, and all your tasks that are completed will reflect under the ‘Completed’ column. Thus, with this, you can simply glance at the board and gather which tasks are at which stage of the project execution cycle.

Also, the cards are elaborate in data which means that each card displays its task name, due dates, assigned users, file attachments, and task brief if any. Thus, you simply have to click on each task to gain information related to that particular task.

As you carry on with the project, the tasks move across different stages. This specifies the flow of the tasks. For example, the card task will come under the ‘In progress’ column,  when you’re working on a task. But, when you complete the task and send it for review, the task card will move to the ‘Under review’ column to reflect that the task has been completed and is currently under review. You can move a task to another column on the dashboard using a quick drag and drop action.

3. Waterfall

For projects that follow a fixed path of execution and demand no changes when in progress, Waterfall is an ideal project management methodology. In this, you set up the workflow as per the web development project plan. You assign the resources and define the due dates.

The gist is that the workflow goes exactly as planned. There are no changes incorporated at any stage of the project.

In this, tasks are planned in a sequential manner. This means that you can only start the next task after completing the previous one. If, in any case, you need to revisit a task, then you have to start the project all over again right from the start. This is akin to the direction of a waterfall, i.e., one-directional. So, yes, the waterfall methodology is not very flexible. But, it is a simple methodology to follow for projects that have a clear goal and do not require changes during their life cycle.

The best way to successfully execute this technique in web design project management is to get clear-cut requirements from your clients before starting your project. This will present a clear objective to be achieved and will enable you to plan your projects better. This will further ensure that you do not have to alter any workflow or re-do a specific task.

Scrum is another methodology that works in cycles and sprints for web design project management.

Here you have a Scrum Master who leads the team in each sprint. Tasks are taken from the backlog and organized in short sprints of two to four weeks. Short 15-minute meetings are held daily to discuss what everyone will accomplish that day.

Once done, the Scrum Master reviews the tasks at the end of the day in what is called a ‘Sprint Review.’ Any gaps spotted are then discussed on the following day during the meeting.

This technique is apt when you’re dealing with complex projects that have rapidly-evolving requirements. With this technique, you can address requirements on a day-to-day basis, eliminating unnecessary wastage of time and effort.

5. Critical Path

Project management for website development can be tricky. Each project has a certain chain of tasks that needs to be monitored closely. If you are on the lookout for a system that enables this, then the Critical Path technique is right for you.

Using this technique, you can set the longest sequence of interdependent tasks as the critical path. This helps define the most important tasks in the workflow so that team members can direct their absolute best efforts towards these tasks, ensuring no missed deadlines and quality issues.

Indicating this path ensures that the most crucial tasks of the project workflow in web design project management are dealt with closely. It helps establish a better foundation that helps build the project on time and as expected.

9 Effective Steps for Web Development Project Management

To successfully run a web design project management process, there are some steps that you must walk through.

So, without further ado, let’s get straight into it!

Step 1: Define Project Scope, Budget, and Timeline

Project implementation begins by creating a website project plan. This step forms the foundation of your project execution stage . What you establish in this step will determine how your project will turn out.

To start with, obtain a comprehensive brief for your project from the client.

The brief must answer the following questions:

• What are the project goals and objectives ?
• What are the expected deliverables?
• What is the scope of the project ?
• What is the timeline and budget of the project ?
• How involved will the stakeholders be in the project activities?
• How will success be measured at the end of the project?

If you have these questions answered, then you have set yourself up for high-quality projects.

Step 2: Identify the Project Management Technique

For reliable website project management, you must identify the right project management technique that you will use to run your projects. As discussed above, these techniques may be Agile, Kanban, Waterfall, Scrum, or Critical Path.

Without a clear technique to follow, you may encounter scattered processes that do not lead to any reliable outcome. On the other hand, having a clear understanding of which technique to follow will set a better picture of how to run your projects.

Note that you can go ahead and deploy different techniques for different types of projects. The idea is to try different methodologies and observe which one complements your team’s and project’s capabilities.

Step 3: Plan and Create the Project Roadmap

Web project management becomes easier when you have a clear roadmap in place. For this, start by ascertaining all the tasks needed to deliver a project. Set the sequence in which these tasks are to be taken up. Also, set up dependencies between them and define the priority , if any. This will help establish the workflow of your project.

Next, analyze resource availability and allocate the resources. Do mention a due date for each task.

Be prepared with a risk contingency plan . This will equip you with immediate and the best measures to take when faced with challenges. To create a well-analyzed plan, rope in the stakeholders, clients, and team members. Discuss what risks they foresee with respect to project implementation . This will help you create the best-optimized plan to encounter any risks, leading to accomplished projects without a hitch.

Step 4: Adopt a Web Design Project Management Tool

Web design project management tools are known to enhance everyday accountability and visibility significantly.

Using a web design project management software, you can:

• See which team member is working on which task at any given time
• Visualize project progress and upcoming task deadlines
• Spot red flags in the workflow
• Get notifications on real-time progress
• Adjust workflows as per existing needs
• Analyze how far you are from completing your project

Adopting the right project management tool will ease your everyday management by providing a platform that offers key project metrics at your fingertips. Remember, a tool must be easy-to-use. Also, it must be affordable and scalable at the same time. These are some of the criteria that you must consider while selecting a tool for your business.

Step 5: Optimize Resources from Start to Finish

Ensure that your web development project plan allocates resources such that no resource is either underutilized or overworked.

While assigning tasks to team members , define each team member’s key roles and responsibilities. Let them in on why you think they are best suited for their assigned tasks. Highlight their key skills and show confidence in their ability to excel. This will add up to their capabilities, enabling them to outperform at their job with an increased sense of self-assurance.

Step 6: Simplify Collaboration Between Teams and Departments

Project management for website development is impossible without collaboration. Designing a web page involves deciding the content of the page, the pictures/videos that will be displayed, the message to be conveyed, the tone of the language, the font of the text, and much more. All of this is no less than an uphill climb.

Being on the same page with these factors involves walking in collaboration with each other while paying heed to everybody’s concerns and opinions.

Effective team collaboration helps run tasks smoothly and deliver projects in line with the expected outcomes. Collaboration also enables you to discuss ideas and plan projects faster. In its best form, collaboration allows team members to identify roadblocks and resolve them at the earliest.

Step 7: Send Deliverables for Client Review and Implement Changes Received

Web development project management involves incorporating feedback received from clients on work done. Designing a web page is subjective and is bound to get changes once completed. Address client advice constructively and integrate changes smoothly. There might be areas where you disagree with the client. The best way is to discuss ideas and find common ground that caters to both your opinions. Remember that the client is the ultimate owner of the project. If you fail to find common ground, then be willing to make changes as the client requires. After all, if the clients are happy, they are more likely to come back to you with further projects.

Also, take note of this step while framing your workflow. Keep some time as a buffer where you will receive feedback and make due changes without impacting the overall project timeline.

Step 8: Launch Project

This is it! It’s time to finally kick off the launch of your project.

But before you actually launch your project, there are a few steps to carry out for effective web design project management. Let’s look at these below:

• Testing: Check if the website’s fonts are uniform across the page. Ensure that pictures are optimized with alt text, and audio/videos are functioning properly. Also, check for browser compatibility and that all URLs are live.
• Go Live: In this, you make the website available for users to interact with. In professional terms, you make the code move from the test environment to the production environment.
• Conduct On-Site and Off-Site SEO activities: Here, you configure your website such that it performs well once launched. Also, check that your site is compatible across multiple devices and browsers.

Once you and your team are done with these activities, your project is now ready to launch. So, go ahead and launch your site!

Step 9: Close the Project

Lastly, don’t miss out on the most crucial step in the web design project management process. Yes, your job is not finished once the project is launched.

Go through the client brief and ensure all deliverables are accomplished. Next, bring together your team and discuss the project implementation process. 

• Analyze how the project ran. Was it a smooth ride, or did you face frequent hindrances? 
• Reflect on what were the challenges that you faced. How can you steer clear of these challenges in your upcoming projects? 
• Were you able to deliver the project within the set timeline and budget?
• Were the clients satisfied with the final outcome of your project?
• What were the key takeaways from the project?

These are a few of the many questions that you must review along with your team.

This step will help you significantly in future projects and improve all aspects of your project execution for a high-performing project.

7 Best Web Design Project Management Software Tools

We have curated a list of the top 7 web design project management tools that you can choose from depending on your unique project and team needs.

So, let’s take a look at them.

1. ProProfs Project

ProProfs Project is an excellent project management software for web design companies. It provides a collaborative platform that lets you store and manage all your design portfolios in one place. With its powerful dashboard, you can track which tasks are pending and which ones are due at a glance. 

It even allows you to prioritize and set dependencies between tasks, ensuring a crystal-clear workflow from start to finish. Also, you can set timers for approaching tasks so that nothing slips through the cracks. This ensures that projects are launched within the pre-set timeline and budget.

The tool takes the pain out of client billing by generating reliable invoices for web design project management. It tracks accurate, productive hours and offers invoices that can be automated and shared with clients instantly.

Key Features of ProProfs Project:

• Visualize progress using Gantt charts , Kanban board, and more
• Offload recurring tasks with automation
• Share files on the go
• Receive feedback on the work done via task comments
• Set up alerts and notifications to stay up-to-date
• Adjust workflows with a drag and drop
• Organize tasks by clubbing them under various Sections

Starts at $39.97/month.

Trello is a great web design project management software. It allows you to quickly set up your projects and get started within minutes. You can start from scratch or use its ready-to-use web design template. To use the template, you simply need to tweak the task names, add users, and put in the due dates. This way, you have a ready workflow without the hassle. 

The tool keeps everything organized using Trello cards and provides a well-structured roadmap for you to follow. The card displays all information related to a particular task, such as assigned members, due dates, file attachments, and task brief.

Key Features of Trello:

• View checklists to track what is done and what is pending
• Save time on tedious tasks with no-code automation
• Integrate with third-party applications
• Access on iOS and Android
• Monitor progress using Timeline, Calendar, and Map views

Starts at $0.

Asana is a simple tool for web design teams. It helps speed up web design project management by offering a user-friendly platform that helps bring designers and developers together. You can set up the project schedule and make changes as per evolving needs on the fly. You can set up the level of priority for tasks as ‘Low,’ ‘Medium,’ and ‘High.’ This enables the assigned users to pick up the important/urgent tasks first and accomplish them right at the onset.

You can view progress on projects using List, Board, and Timeline views. Also, you can gain rich insights into how your projects are progressing with ‘On Track,’ ‘At Risk,’ and ‘Off Track’ project status.

Key Features of Asana:

• Save time with automation
• Choose from 50+ ready project templates
• Customize workflows within seconds
• Integrate with your favorite third-party applications
• Set milestones and monitor projects effectively

Podio helps align people, projects, and processes so that deadlines are met and projects are achieved without any hitch. It provides an intuitive platform for web design project management by defining a clear process of project execution right from ideation to launch. 

You can bring your clients, freelancers, and external stakeholders on board using custom roles and keep them in the loop of where your projects are headed. This avoids frequent check-ins and lets you focus on what’s really important.

You can visualize tasks and analyze them your way using different views. Also, its reporting capabilities give much-needed insight into KPIs without leaving the tool. Besides, you can collaborate with team members and discuss roadblocks instantly using Integrated Chat.

Key Features of Podio:

• Automate workflows to save time
• Available on Web and Mobile
• Attach files to tasks easily 
• Responsive customer support
• Integrate with Google Drive, Evernote, and more

Wrike is a versatile and flexible platform for web design project management. It helps establish clear-cut workflows, assign team members, and define due dates. This way, transparency, and accountability are maintained throughout a project’s life cycle, avoiding ineffective project handoffs. Also, you can extract actionable reports that throw light on various metrics and help steer project execution in the right direction.

The tool lets you analyze workload on a day-to-day basis to ensure no resource is either underutilized or overworked. This helps prevent wastage or burnout, allowing optimized resource capacity.

Key Features of Wrike:

• Store and manage files and docs
• Tailor project workflows within seconds
• Access interactive proofing for 30+ file formats
• Automate multi-level approvals
• Discuss ideas and roadblocks via threaded conversations

Jira is a powerful platform for web development project management that helps streamline processes and coordinate team efforts. It establishes a well-structured workflow to eliminate misaligned timelines. You can set task status as ‘Concepting,’ ‘In Review,’ ‘Ideating,’ ‘Launched,’ and much more. This helps provide clear task status that enables smooth-flowing projects. The tool also allows you to set priority levels for tasks as ‘Low,’ ‘Medium,’ and ‘Highest.’ This ensures that the team takes up the most important, urgent, or impactful tasks first.

Its agile reporting capabilities help spot gaps or areas for improvement. This helps keep the project on track by addressing roadblocks timely. Thus, you can enhance overall visibility and drive your project forward as scheduled. 

Key Features of Jira:

• Get started using web design project template
• Automate workflows with ease
• Access project data via the mobile app
• Get email notifications for tasks
• Secure and compliant platform

7. Basecamp

Basecamp is a feature-rich platform that helps implement your web development project plan and track it in real-time. It offers a space that keeps all your team members, clients, and stakeholders on the same page with project progress. Thus, it unifies your remote team and enables sure-shot project success. The tool offers an easy-to-use interface that requires little to no learning curve.

Using the tool, you can collaborate on tasks and discuss ideas via the Message Board. You can set up notifications and be informed of approaching deadlines. Its advanced checklist enables you to check off work that’s done so that everyone has a clear understanding of what is done and what still needs to be addressed.

Key Features of Basecamp:

• Create your project dashboard using templates
• Store and manage files
• Connect with team members via Group Chat
• Stay updated with Automatic Check-ins
• Integrate seamlessly with third-party tools

Boost Productivity Using a Reliable Design Project Management Tool

Don’t we all dream about delivering web design projects that clients love? You can make your dream a reality by implementing the right steps supported by the right tools.

Web design project management is undeniably unpredictable. Not scheduling resources appropriately and carelessly tracking progress even for one task can end up delaying the project by days and weeks. So, incorporate the above-discussed methodologies, steps, and tools into your day-to-day project management workflows to visualize smooth-flowing tasks right from ideation to launch.

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About the author

David miller.

David is a Project Management expert. He has been published in elearningindustry.com , simpleprogrammer.com . As a project planning and execution expert at ProProfs, he has offered a unique outlook on improving workflows and team efficiency. Connect with David for more engaging conversations on Twitter , LinkedIn , and Facebook .

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Website Development Project Plan: Meaning, Steps, and Execution

They say every outstanding website development process begins with a project plan, and we 100% agree. Developing a website is just like constructing a building. You must start with a solid foundation and architectural plans before people begin using it or it won’t live up to its expectations.

A lot of developers are not aware of what goes into a website development project plan. In this article, Techosquare - the leading ecommerce website development firm in India - will tell you about crucial steps to plan and deliver web development projects.

Let’s understand the meaning and importance of web development planning first!

Meaning of ‘plan’ in website development project

We bet most of you are aware of this abbreviation called PLAN. Those who aren’t, plan in a web development project basically stands for:

• Prepare: Spot your target visitors, website aspirations, and primary-secondary goals.
• Landscape: How do you want the website to perform? To be more precise, what sort of features do you want for your website?
• Aesthetics: How do you want your website to look? Select the color palette and imagery that meet your aesthetic goals.
• Navigation: Think what will make browsing quick and amazing for your visitors.

Importance of website development plan

According to a report by Cision PR Newswire, more than 60% of small and medium-sized businesses spend their money in designing and developing a website every year, yet many fail to earn profits and generate business value due to poor performance, design issues, and bad functionality. Need more facts? Here you go:

73% of mobile internet users reported that they encountered websites that were either too slow to load or were not responsive at all. 70% of business websites lack the most basic element of website design development called CTA (call to action) on their homepage.

But guess what? Issues like these can be avoided completely with proper website development planning and project management. With the help of a website development project plan, developers are able to build websites that delight visitors and deliver superb experiences.

Website development project plan: Steps involved

Now that we understand the importance of a web development plan for a business website, it’s time to learn about the steps involved in it. But first, make sure to have these three factors in place:

Project manager: Managers act as bridges between team members and make sure that project progresses at the decided pace. For a website development project, you need a person who can lead the development team. Hire a full-time project manager if your business operates on an adequate level. You can also ask someone from your existing team to lead.

Project management platform: A good project management platform will help your project manager and development team lay out a solid foundation for your website while providing tools to scope out the milestones, key deliverables, and roles before executing the website development plan. It will also keep it up to date and let you track progress every once in a while. Evaluate platform characteristics cautiously to estimate their suitability for your web development team.

Project management methodology: For those who don’t know, a project management methodology is a set of principles and practices that help organize a web development project to ensure optimal performance. Some popular project management methodologies for delivering websites are XP and PRINCE2. Train your website development team in chosen management methodology before starting work on planned projects. Explain it within your project management platform! Did you take care of the above aspects? Great! It’s time to execute your website development plan.

Website development plan: Execution

The following are the steps to carry out the process of website programming:

#1 Planning

Planning with your client will help achieve site goals, and allows for efficient use of time and development resources. Ask your client to define what customers want in the clearest terms possible. Ask questions like:

• What type of website is required?
• Who is the target audience?
• How many web pages are required?
• How often will the content be updated?
• Is CMS required (content management system)?
• Are there any references worth checking out?
• What’s the web development budget?
• Which third-party integrations are required?

Once you find answers to these questions, write them down. They will help you formulate goals for your website development project and define its scope.

The next phase involves discussing your client’s website specification with your project team. This phase is important as it will help you translate the client requirements into a fool-proof website project plan.

Address the  following questions with your crew:

• What needs to be done for the client?
• How does the project break down into tasks?
• Which team member will perform which task?
• How much of the client’s budget will the web development project require?
• Where are the dependencies in the project?

With these primary questions answered, you will be able to lay out a basic project plan, describing when and how the website development project plan will be carried out. Discuss it with your client and wait for the approval.

Once your client gives a green signal, move to the next step!

#2 Building

The building phase is the most crucial phase of any website development project. Why? Because it’s the part where you and your team will create things your client wished existed. It is the part where your client’s site will be brought to reality. From the information gathered to this point, you have to determine the layout, content, look, and functionalities of the site.

A good branding, infrastructure, and layout will not only make the website look attractive but will also help the visitors understand the core message and connect with the brand. Long story short, you will be planning and setting up the foundation of your website development project.

Some popular activities involved within this phase are: 

• Define the website name and tagline
• Conclude logo, color palette, fonts, and page layouts
• Buying a domain name or hosting service
• Build a sitemap to display web pages and their relations 

Note: Some of these are already present with client and shared with the team

Imagine going to a painting exhibition and looking at an 11 x 14 painting canvas with absolutely nothing in it. You might feel baffled and angry at the same time. Your client's reaction will be the same if a website with no content gets delivered.

Gather all the content needed for the website. You will be working on the following aspects during this phase of your web development project:

• Identify content needed for web pages, testimonials, privacy policy, terms of use, FAQs, etc.
• Arrange stock images and graphics
• Organize content in a content repository
• Proofread and finalize content

Note: Some clients share imagery and text on their own and delegate the task of arranging the same to the web design and development company.

Here comes the most important phase of your web development project. After deciding on branding, infrastructure, layout, and content for your client, start planning, designing, and developing the website pages. The following are some important activities that will happen during this phase:

• Web pages designing based on layout styles and content
• Setting up a sandbox server
• Designing page elements such as buttons, CTAs, and testimonials.
• HTML, CSS, and Javascript authentication.
• Developing functionalities like a blog, ecommerce store, or content management system.
• Organizing web pages based on the sitemap
• Reviewing design and making changes based on client’s approval.

We suggest you do regular team meetings during the build phase. This will keep your website development and management team on top of all deliberations.

Everything you need to know about PHP website development in India .

#3 Optimization

According to Alan Perlis, optimization hinders revolution. Website optimization after the designing and development process is important because it can help visitors feel more fortunate with their visits to your client’s website. In other words, people who come to your client’s site hoping to find the answer to a question will find a solution to their problem using different platforms.

From minifying scripts and CSS to improving cross-browser performance and enabling gzip compression to optimizing images, this is the phase where your website development team will plan and bring the client’s site up to the highest grade.

In case you have no idea of how you can improve the site’s performance, Techoquare suggests checking out different website speed optimization checklists on the internet. Assign optimization tasks to a relevant team member if needed.

#4 Finalization

By the heading, you might have guessed what our next step of the website development project plan is going to be about! During the finalization, crucial steps will be taken from beginning to end in order to complete the client’s web project. Relatively complex, it covers the following phases:

Initial testing is the phase where your web development team will authenticate website functionality and confirm if it matches the client’s demand. On the basis of his requirements, certain tests may be conducted. Some of the known activities performed during this phase are:

• Checking if the website matches current web standards
• Making sure if the functionality is working as expected
• Fixing issues that arise during testing
• Check if the website design is responsive and work fine on all devices
• Improving the website loading speed
• Ensuring accessibility for differently-abled people.

Done with testing and fixing website problems? Great! Now it’s time to make the client’s website and support systems operational. In simple words, it is time to GO LIVE.

Here are some activities that will be planned and performed during this phase of the website development project:

• Uploading site to the client’s hosting server
• Removing robots.txt file to allow bots to crawl webpages
• Creating and submitting an XML sitemap to search engines
• Training client team to create and update website
• Writing and passing the website’s documentation to the client.

If you read the above point carefully, we mentioned training the client team to create and update the website. Well, this point is all about that. It is obvious that website problems will occur at some point in the future. A staff training and development program will make your team more all-rounded and better skilled to address those weaknesses at every factor of their job.

Train people who are going to manage the website after its launch. This not only includes your staff but also your client and her team members.

#5 Create a project schedule

The last step of creating a website development project plan is to create a project schedule. It involves mapping the activities and phases to specific dates. Remember all the activities we talked about above? During this phase, they will become your project tasks with start and end dates.

Since project management scheduling process may feel a bit foreign to some teams, we have curated a list of steps you can take to build yours:

• Define your project goals
• Identify all stakeholders
• Determine your final deadline
• List each step or task to cover all bases
• Assign a team member responsible for each task
• Work backward to set due dates for each task
• Organize your project schedule using a specific tool and share it with your team.

There you go!

We told you about all the crucial steps of the website development project plan. Making a plan for your client’s business website is crucial as it will help you and your team make sure that the end product comes out the right way.

We hope this blog will help developers and business owners learn the critical steps involved in creating a plan for a website project. Thinking of taking your brick-and-mortar business online? Send us an email at [email protected] to start a discussion.

Check out these blog resources for more web design and development insights:

Ecommerce website development cost in 2021

Custom web development company in India

Learn how to hire offshore PHP developers in India

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Top 10 Website Project Plan Templates with Samples and Examples

Tanmayi Arora

A website shows the face value of a brand and plays a valuable role in attracting consumers. You need to have a result-yielding website to think of achieving business goals. Planning behind a website project makes this possible. Why? Because a client can perceive the quality of your products and services after looking at your website. There are a number of processes one needs to execute in a business such as creating a product, looking after sales and marketing, and so on. A website project plan is also needed. This entire work of website planning can be less strenuous and effortless with the help of SlideTeam’s website planning templates.

Many top digital marketing and IT companies such as Ninehertz have used website project plan templates and have seen growth in revenues and customer satisfaction.

Below are the templates which you can use to witness your customer base rise exponentially. Each of the slides if 100% customizable and editable. The content-ready nature provides you the desired structure, while the editability means you get a chance to tailor the presentation to your audience taste and your exact needs and wants.

Let us explore these templates now! 

Template 1: Website Development Monthly Project Plan Template

Plan your website project activities monthly as per processes such as planning, development, launch, and post-launch. This will help you in meeting the deadlines in a specific time frame, and with adequate attention to detail. Finally, the launch is perfect to give your business the required momentum.

Download Now!

Template 2: E-Commerce Website Project Plan One-page Summary Presentation

This template enables you to discuss key scope of your work and project with your stakeholders and clients. You can add your company’s name and logo through this e-commerce website project development plan template. You can also jot down details about the beginning of your project. With this one-pager presentation, you can demonstrate sequential phases of your website project, while providing your clients with a content layout and product catalogue.

Template 3: Real Estate Website Project Plan One Pager Presentation Report Infographic PPT PDF Document

A real estate website should present the summary of the client and other vital details of the properties. The website is nothing short of a proposal to catch customers’ attention to grab the best deals. Use this template to know what are the must-haves on your website such as our services, about us, portfolio, contact us and client testimonials. The 6-7 week process of building a website is illustrated as well.

Template 4: Website Development Project Communication Plan

What is the reason behind designing your website and what is the goal you want to achieve? What do you want to say to your audience and how are going to communicate the message? You can discuss and demonstrate all this and more with the help of this website development plan template. Also, you can jot down the frequency of activities to review these, later on!

Template 5: Bi-fold Real Estate Website Project Plan Document Report

This template will give you the opportunity to showcase the design of your website in terms of images. You illustrate all processes in the development of the website. Showcase the pages your website would have such as the Home page, the About Us page, and testimonials to really get into the nitty-gritty of executing the website project.   

Template 6:  E-Commerce Website Project Development Plan And Performance Management Template

Demonstrate the concept of your website such as the goal. Document the budget and the estimated growth you expect. Also, you can display the date of the implementation and the project management tools you would use. The five stages of any project execution are also enclosed to make sure you know about what will be the roadmap to creating this superior website. 

Template 7: Annual Website Development Project Planning Cycle

Create an annual plan about the activities you need to undertake while creating and designing a website. Demonstrate briefly each activity such as the testing, implementation, designing, and maintenance of a website. This will help you coordinate better among teams and create this actionable plan.

Template 8: Roadmap For Planning And Managing E-commerce Website Project Template

Create a well-organized roadmap to do the research work, planning, developing, and launching of your website. You can create a wonderful PPT Presentation to discuss with the website development team regarding the deadline. Cover research and strategy, design, development, migration and launch etc. with the use of the PPT Template. 

Template 9: Agile Website Project Team Planning Template

With the help of this template, you can demonstrate all the tasks with their priority status. Also, you can specify the start and the end date of the project. The Agile website project team planning template fits all your requirements while you design a website.

Template 10: 7-Week Website Project Management Plan

Now, assign weekly tasks to your team with the help of this template. From planning to designing and developing to the launching of a website, brief down the activities and the person who would be performing them in the PPT Layout. Each of the stages themselves have three broad categories where you would need to give categorial answers on task progress. Start and end the project with unparalleled efficiency using this template.

WEBSITE MATTERS

An optimized website can only be built after well-organized planning. SlideTeam’s website project plan templates work wonders for this purpose so that you can focus on long-term business goals.

FAQs on WEBSITE PROJECT PLANS

How do i create a project plan for a website.

• Research framework: Ask your clients about their requirements. The next step is to define your audience to create a buyer persona and accordingly leverage content on your website. Once you are done with the research work, get approved by the client.
• Planning:  Once the research work is approved, allocate tasks and the activities that go ahead with website creation. Designing and developing the website along with the content creation and testing of the site before it goes live are some of the key activities.  Project a website schedule: The last step is to create a project timeline. Your client may need the website project on a specific date, therefore you can create a project schedule specifying the start and the end dates of each activity and the person responsible for them.

What are the steps in the website project?

• Purpose and goal: The first step in developing a website is to know the purpose and goal behind designing it. Who will be your target audience and how you can satisfy them to attract more customers is the primary task.
•  Create the sitemap: The developer creates the sitemap as to how a website would look like. This sitemap gives an idea of how the final product would come out to be. 
• Design the UI of the website :   The next step is to design the UI of the website keeping in mind the needs of the audience. This step includes creating the layout, logos, graphics, images, font size, colors, etc. Many times, companies outsource UI/UX development services.
•  Content writing:  Creating catchy headlines, and sub-headlines and using the right keywords are the relevant part of optimizing a website. 
• Coding:  Frameworks and CMS are then implemented for easy set-up and installation. If you are using CMS for site creation, you may install CMS plugins.
• Testing and launching:  Once you have created the site, testing becomes a regular routine. You must test each link to see if there is no broken one. Also, you should check if you have not used any invalid codes. Once you are done with the checking, you can upload the site to the server.

What are the 8 steps in planning for a website project?

• Gather information:  Are you creating the website for yourself or to provide information to the audience?
• Creating topics: Once you have chalked out the purpose and gathered information, it is time to create topics and sub-topics for the website. Design graphics : Now create the images, videos, and graphics for your landing pages keeping in mind your brand and the taste of your targeted audience.
• Relevant Content:  Develop well-curated content that is SEO friendly and can convert the leads into customers instantly.
•  Develop the functionality: Here, you integrate activities of the above steps to create a website. Create a website that a user can access from all the devices.
•    Test the website: Test graphic elements and forms to check if codes are perfectly integrated. Check if everything is working and functioning well.
•    Launch the website: Run a final test before you launch the website 
•    Check and update : Check the website time and again to see if it is working properly.
• Look after the updates to keep your site well-updated.

What are the 5 stages of website development?

Creating a website is not the end. You need to work on it on a regular basis to optimize it.

• Content : You want your website to be successful; hence, you must change your content monthly or quarterly to keep your customers updated and interested. 
• Check Bugs: You must check and remove bugs quite often to regulate the working of the website.
•  Seo optimization :  Use SEO optimization tools to improve the rankings of your website project.
•   Use catchy CTAs:  Call-to-action buttons are the heroes of a website. Make sure you use the right words and the right colors which attract customers.
•  Optimize speed:  Optimize the speed of the website so that it can load easily when customers browse through it. Make the key content accessible in an offline format to grab more leads.

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• [Updated 2023] An All-Encompassing Guide to Project Planning (With 30+ PowerPoint Templates to Help You Get Started)
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IT Services

The definitive guide to website project management

Website projects can flourish or flounder, depending on how effectively they are managed. 

Proper project management (supported by the right website project management software) can keep things running smoothly. At the same time, an absence of due processes can be a recipe for 404s, buggy designs, unhappy clients, and just about every other type of gremlin imaginable.

This ultimate guide will walk you through how to specifically plan and manage website projects. With step-by-step action processes to better planning, building, optimization, finalization, and launch, this covers just about everything you need to know.

Ready to get started? 

Website project plan template

Create websites your clients love. Whether you’re working on a brand new website or a redesign, use our website project plan template to streamline the process from beginning to end.

Try our website project template

• What is website project management? 

Website project management breaks down the various requirements from internal (or external) team members into specific tasks and subtasks, which are then tackled in a collaborative process.

The point of website project management is to establish a more optimized workflow so jobs move along and projects get completed faster – all while supplying teams with further details on tasks.

Whether it's through precise due dates or project milestones , a proper website project management process helps everyone deliver on things like new site builds, landing page redesigns, or site migrations.

These jobs have a ton of moving parts that require work from other teams like design, content, dev ops, or SEO. Website project management is more often than not a collaborative team effort, which is why this group is different from others.

Pro Tip : If you're searching for more general practices, you'll absolutely want to check out our insanely thorough project management guide .

5 effective methodologies for website project management.

To perfect the art of website project management, first, you need to really understand the methodologies that are successfully and commonly used by teams.

A project management methodology is a system of processes that organizes and establishes rules to move various requests into a manageable workflow. Of the several methodologies used, agile project management is perhaps the best known, while others include processes like XP and PRINCE2. 

Here we will go through the five most popular methodologies we think are best suited for website project management:

• Method 1: Agile

The Agile methodology is such a popular process because it relies on breaking projects down into cycles or sprints . This allows development leads to plan complex launches by segregating different project life cycle stages while taking on an appropriate amount of new work.

Instead of focusing on the major milestones of a website build, for example, Agile dissects every part of the project into smaller tasks, like research and wireframes . Each of these tasks then makes up the project's milestones so they can be tracked from start to finish. 

The methodology relies on four core values: 

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan

We believe this method works so well for website project management because it allows team members to immediately act on feedback. This allows task owners to make more responsive changes at every sprint stage. 

When to use Agile for website project management 

Your project is likely to change as you go or before total completion

You’re not sure what the solution or end result will look like

You need to work quickly and favor speedy progress over perfect results

Your stakeholders need (or want) to be involved at every stage

• Method 2: Kanban

Kanban is another method web project managers can use to plan and develop projects.

The hint is in the name; "Kanban," a Japanese term meaning signboard or billboard. Projects are planned on Kanban boards by separating tasks into separate columns and then moving them forward once they're completed.

The board views also help teams see where bottlenecks are forming so the problem can be dealt with before it puts the entire project in danger.

As tasks are spread across multiple columns, Kanban allows project managers to implement work in progress (WIP) limits to restrict the amount of time and energy put into each project phase. This prevents your team from spending time on too many tasks at once and encourages them to focus on only a couple at a time, which works wonders for productivity. 

When to use Kanban for website project management 

You’re interested in a visual representation of your project’s progress

You need at-a-glance status and project stage updates

You want to leverage WIP limits so your team stays focused

You’re continuously “pulling” projects into your workflow

Method 3: Waterfall

One of the more traditional ways to plan and build a website is using the Waterfall methodology. 

This method plots all of a project's tasks out in a linear sequence, so each stage must be completed before the next one begins. If you're using the Waterfall process to manage a project, it'll likely follow a sequence like this: 

Requirements

Construction

Deployment and maintenance

This methodology is often plotted out using a Gantt chart , and as one stage must finish before the next one begins, the progress of a project flows in one direction—like a real waterfall.

The Waterfall methodology is a little less flexible than some of the other processes for website developers, but it's simpler. 

When to use Waterfall for website project management 

You have a clear end goal for your project

Your project isn't going to change as you go

Your client or stakeholder vision is consistent, predictable, and set in stone

Your client or industry requires in-depth project tracking or documentation

• Method 4: Scrum

The Scrum methodology is another process that relies heavily on sprints and cycles to plan and complete a website build.

This methodology requires a leader (sometimes known as a "Scrum Master") to manage a project, and tasks are taken from a backlog and organized into short "sprints," lasting no more than two weeks each.

During each sprint, everyone working on the project checks in daily (called a Daily Scrum) and updates the project manager by telling them: 

What they’ll do today

What they completed yesterday

What – if anything – is blocking their progress

After the team has completed each sprint, the project manager will review progress and make necessary changes – typically in a retro meeting or sprint review–before the next one kicks off. The process then repeats until the project wraps up. 

When to use Scrum for website project management 

Your agency needs to continuously optimize and improve processes

Your team needs set periods to really focus on task completion

Your project is too complex and needs segmented tasks

Your team needs better deadline management for more quick wins

Method 5: Critical path

Whoever is leading the project will use the Critical Path method to:

Identify all of the project's most essential tasks

Create project estimates to know how much time each task will take

Build the essential path to plot tasks on a project timeline so they get done as quickly as possible

This methodology is called the "Critical Path" because the longest sequence in your project planning will be the most critical and ultimately determine its time frame. 

When to use Critical Path for website project management 

Your project is large and complex

Your project has a lot of task dependencies

You work better with a visual map of sequenced tasks

You need to identify the most important tasks for better resource allocation

Set yourself up for efficient website project management 

Now that you know the ins and outs of website project management methodologies, it's time to start planning your project.  Before you get started on the website project management process, you’ll need to set yourself up to implement it. 

There are two key factors you’ll need to have in place: 

Project manager: This person leads the team and stakeholders through a project by implementing one of the methodologies that best fits.

Project management platform: Website project management – as you could guess – benefits from all-in-one project management software . The right tool provides ways to manage the tasks, track progress, improve team collaboration , and work as a centralized hub for all project deliverables and information.

Beyond this common purpose, these tools vary significantly in features and functionality. And if you want an honest and in-depth opinion to see which of the many tools would work best for you, check out the Teamwork comparisons page to see what folks in the space actually say about each tool.

• Important phases to kick off the website project management process

Once you've put a project manager and platform in place and chosen the right methodology for your needs, you're ready to begin the website project management process.

• Phase 1: Planning with the client

The first priority in the planning phase of website project management is defining what the client or project lead wants in the clearest terms possible. 

This could be a third-party client or an inter-department stakeholder within your organization. You can start by getting the client to fill out a questionnaire that asks about important variables of the project. Here are a few examples of questions to include: 

What is the overall goal of the project

Which pages will be most affected?

Is this an implementation, new addition, or a need that doesn't have a clear solution

Are there other examples from competitor sites or those within a similar industry?

What’s the budget? 

When is the preferred deadline?

Getting the client to put points like these in writing should help you to formulate deliverable business goals for the project and define its scope. The more questions you ask at this stage, the better chance to reduce the risk of problematic clients complaining about subjective factors.

We recommend listing at least 10-20 key questions that you can ask at the start of each project. 

Try to cover all your bases here, including even the smallest details, such as where the website will be hosted and who's taking care of setting this up.

For instance, your client might want to use Hubspot's free hosting option, but the CMS you've chosen may need another solution, such as Wordpress-specific hosting.

Use your questionnaire and information gathered through meetings with the client to create a quote and outline for the website need so you can best cover the full project scope .

Once the client has agreed to the quote and entered into a contract with you, keep those details within your project management software to refer to so everyone has a clear view of what's expected.

Creating a realistic estimate

The first step is to create a detailed but doable project estimate . This should detail project cost estimates , the overall timeline of the project, and what you expect will be needed from your team, whether it's headcount, time, or other resources.

An estimate should (at the bare minimum) include:

How many hours/days the project will take

Hourly rates (if the client will be paying by the hour) or a flat rate (if they will be paying a lump sum)

Additional fees for extra tasks that fall out of the original project scope

Now, no estimate is always going to be 100% accurate. However, there are a couple of techniques you can use to make it as close to the final cost as possible: 

Base the estimate on past projects: Look at similar projects your team has worked on in the past and check what the client was quoted and the final cost of the project. The final project cost should always be used to give a more accurate estimate.

Think about tasks not directly tied to the website build: Building a website takes a lot of time. So make sure your estimation includes the hours your team will spend planning, managing, and deploying the project.

Include a budget buffer: Don't pin your estimate down to the cent. Leave a little breathing room in your budget in case something goes wrong or there is spending you didn't account for once the project kicks off. 

Preparing a solid project scope

A project scope tells your client exactly what your agency is set to deliver, complete, and the total cost.

Don't skip this step. 

In a co-study by Hubspot and Teamwork titled When Projects Go Wrong , agency experts gave horror stories from their experience with scope creep . From spending extra hours working on tasks that weren't agreed upon to burning through spare resources just to get the project done on time, scope creep can impact your resources and profitability. 

The solution to this is never to start a project without a watertight project scope. There are five key elements your project scope should include: 

Budget: What will be the total cost of the project as well as the fee if the client asks for work on tasks that fall outside the original scope.

Timeline: A start and finish date as well as dates for key deliverables and milestones. 

Milestones: Set stages that signify an important step in the project. Milestones can be things like meetings, major deliverables (such as finalized frameworks or the website going live), and deadlines. 

Deliverables: What the client will receive at the end of the project. This will typically include the website's wireframe, mockups, and a final prototype.

Updates: When the client should expect project updates that outline how many milestones have been reached and whether or not it's staying on budget.

Now, all of this may seem like a lot of information. But with the right preparation, it can be contained to a page or two. With the help of a project scope template ( like this one we've created for free ) project managers can simply fill in the blanks and ship it to the client to look over.

The template is broken down into sections like project deliverables: 

And outlines other key information, like budget estimations, who can sign off on approvals, and how updates will be delivered. We're big fans of the RACI model shown here.

Once both parties agree on this project scope, it'll act as the "north star" for the entire website build. If there are any disagreements about scope or budget, this document will settle them immediately. 

• Phase 2: Building 

In the build phase of a website project, your team will likely be focused on creating the site’s layout, content , design, and functionalities.  Meanwhile, the focus of project management tends to be divided between monitoring the team’s progress, ensuring full adoption of the project management process, and removing any blockers the team has flagged.

A blocker can be anything preventing a task from getting completed, from a gap in someone's web design knowledge to a missing piece of content needed to complete a page design. When a team member flags up a blocker, the project manager works with them to find a solution. 

Monitoring team progress can be done on a granular, task-by-task level, and on a big-picture level. For example, using visual aids such as burn-down charts can represent the percentage of project work completed relative to the available time. 

Ensuring full adoption of the project management process is a job for the project manager. This may involve training team members in how to effectively use the project management platform.

Regular team meetings throughout the build phase can also help your team stay on top of all these considerations. 

• Phase 3: Optimization 

From optimizing cross-browser performance to compressing image files, this is the phase where your team brings the website up to the highest standards it can. We suggest you incorporate optimization into your project management process by using a website optimization checklist as your basis. 

Once you have your checklist, you can create a new task for each requirement and assign it to a relevant team member. From this point onward, project management of the optimization phase works much the same as it does during building. 

Put your tech to work and automatically optimize website builds

Every website your team builds has a lot of moving parts.

From tracking tasks to managing sprints and budgets, project managers need a way to keep everything on schedule. And that's where a website project management tool can make life a lot easier. With a tool like Teamwork , project managers can: 

Flag milestones and deliverables that are lagging

Automate task and schedule updates to keep everyone on the same page

Track every cent that's being spent using budget and time tracking tools

Just look at how the Planned vs. Actual Milestone Report works. Once a project kicks off, each task needs to be tracked and completed on time.

The milestone report breaks down how many tasks and milestones your team has actually completed, so it's easier to see whether the overall project will be finished on time. If a task or milestone is nearly due or at risk of being missed, the report will flag it.

Say hello to the new Planned vs. Actual Tasks report

Want to measure how projects progress against what was orignally planned? The Planned vs. Actual Tasks Report tracks how your tasks progress against the originally planned due date, so you know what's on course or getting lost at sea.

Try Teamwork for free

Think of these automations as a safeguard for every project. Instead of dealing with problems, you can stop them before they even happen and minimize the risk of delivering your project late or over budget. 

• Phase 4: Finalization 

This phase of website project management is relatively complex. It covers the work involved in the following processes: 

Initial testing: From a project management perspective, this begins with a testing checklist, similar to the one used to identify the tasks for the previous phase. A task should be created for each testing activity, from checking whether on-site transactions work to assessing the website's conformity to accessibility standards.

Go live: During this process, the website and its support systems become operational. Key tasks include uploading the site to its domain and integrating it with applications such as analytics tools and email marketing clients. 

Client/staff training: The people who will manage the website after launch need to be taught how to use it. This can be facilitated through training sessions, which can be planned into the PM platform as events (provided a calendar functionality is included in the platform). 

Foundational marketing/SEO activities: These are the nuts and bolts tasks that need to be done to ensure the site is ready to attract visitors, from submitting the sitemap to Google to setting up links between the site and any relevant social media profiles of the client. Once again, a checklist-based approach to identifying tasks is advised. 

Your team may be working on several of these bullet points at once (or perhaps even all of them). This creates the potential for the project to become difficult to manage, so we suggest paying close attention to how your project management platform is used at this stage.

If you can, use features such as task lists , which support the complexity of the project while preserving the usability of the project management platform.

Or, using a tool like Teamwork’s health report , project managers can get a real-time snapshot of the most critical parts of a project and how they're being handled during crunch time.

Task progress, milestones, and budgets are all tracked automatically inside the health report and displayed in an easy-to-read dashboard. Using all of this data, project managers can then see what tasks are at risk and divert more resources to them, so the project gets delivered on time. 

• Phase 5: Launch 

The website launch and the work leading up to it can be exciting for a website development team. Nevertheless, this is the worst phase of all in which to take your eye off the ball. 

The first part of this phase is the final round of testing, covering aspects of the site ranging from SEO to security. In some cases, these tests may involve external stakeholders such as search marketing consultants. 

Any issues raised during testing need to be made into tasks, which can be assigned to team members who can resolve them.  

With all those final issues ironed out, you’ll be ready to transfer control of the website to the client. This, in itself, involves a degree of complexity, so be sure to create dedicated tasks for fine details such as writing the complete report for the project and securely transferring login credentials to the client. 

Ever-improving project management for web development 

Website project management shouldn't stop once the website goes live. The crucial next step is to evaluate the project's outcomes and learn any potentially valuable lessons you can apply to the next website project. 

This could mean anything from analyzing website performance to interviewing team members about what they loved or loathed about the project management process. 

If you’re always learning about your websites and your website project management, both should keep getting better and better.

Try Teamwork today with a free 30-day trial to take your website project management to the next level.

Alex York is a Content Marketing Manager who is passionate about all things SEO, marketing acquisition, and content strategy.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Website product management breakdown

• 5 of the best methodologies for website project management
• Method 3: Waterfal
• Method 5: Critical Path
• Set yourself up for website project management

11 challenges startups face

8 awesome web design projects for beginners

The Teamwork guide to software development project management

12 Web Dev Projects for Beginners & Intermediate

9 tips to manage your software development team (no coding required)

Identifying key roles and structure for software development teams

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How To Create A Website Project Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide

Planning is critical to most work, including web design. Without a website project plan, you’ll have a website that yields poor results, disappoints clients, and frustrates the development team.

This article will help you plan web design projects so you can deliver them successfully. Here’s what you’ll learn:

• Why do you need a website project plan?
• Research requirements
• Identify project activities
• Create a project schedule
• How to present a website project plan?

Ready? Let’s dive in.

Why Create A Website Project Plan?

Most web design agencies understand the importance of planning. Yet website development planning takes a back seat.

You’re busy, focused on solving day-to-day challenges. Maybe you lack the expertise to map out the entire website planning process. Or, perhaps website planning feels like a pointless exercise as things change anyway.

Whatever the reason, a website project plan is critical to delivering a web design project successfully. 

Here’s what happens when you fail to plan:

• Your design and development team is forced to make assumptions . Incorrect assumptions result in scope creep and cost overruns.
• Now and then, you have to go back and begin again. As a result, you miss milestones and delivery deadlines .
• Confusion rules supreme as you need runtime clarifications from clients. Back-and-forth communication adds more delays.
• Clients are dissatisfied , frustrated, and may threaten to shut down the project altogether.
• You deliver a website that no one is happy with.

How To Plan A Website Project?

Before you start talking to clients about the website, you’ll need to get three things in place.

• Project Manager: This person leads the project team. They are responsible for project research, planning, execution, and communication. Most agencies don’t hire certified project managers. And often, a senior team member assumes the responsibility of a project manager.
• Project Management Methodology: The PM methodology dictates how a project is managed and delivered. Two common methods of project management are Waterfall and Agile. Learn more about popular project management methodologies .
• Project Management Tool: A project management platform helps the project manager in planning and tracking a project. We have compiled a list of the best web design project management tools .

Now that you have the basics in place let’s dive into the first step for planning your website project.

Step #1: Research Requirements

First, you need to define what the client wants. 

The client can be external or internal. Instead of talking to a committee, ask the client to assign a contact person. The same person is also preferably the decision-maker for the project.

Next, along with the contact person on the client’s side, define the following:

Every website is different. You can do a lot of things with a website — sell products, share a portfolio, manage a publication, etc.

Understand what the client expects the website to do.

Depending on its purpose, a website may serve one or more audiences. For each audience, create an audience persona. The persona should contain detailed information about the audience demographics and beliefs.

You can use this tool from HubSpot to make a customizable audience persona. 

Constraints

The most common constraints are budget and time. Web design projects may also have design constraints. For example, the client may ask for specific colors, fonts, etc. 

Creative teams may feel that constraints limit creativity. But, at the same time, they also help define the project scope.

Priorities are the other side of constraints. 

With limiting constraints, you must understand what goals and audiences are essential to the client. That’s because focusing on wrong priorities results in scope creep. Scope creep, in turn, delays the project. And may even result in complete project failure.

Once you’ve identified the project’s goals, target audience, constraints, and priorities, document these in the project proposal. Keep the proposal brief and make it simple.

Finally, get the proposal approved by your client.

Step #2: Identify Project Phases & Activities

Next, once the client has approved your proposal, identify all the phases and activities needed to complete the website project.

Most web design projects will have a similar set of tasks. However, depending on the client’s needs, your project may include additional activities. 

Depending on your project management methodology, you can execute project phases iteratively or sequentially.

For example, you can do content preparation, design, development, and testing phases iteratively for each web page. Or you can prepare content for all pages, then create designs, develop all pages, and finally test them together.

Let’s look at some common activities in web development projects.

Branding, Infrastructure & Layout

In this phase, you set up the foundation of your web design project. 

At the end of this phase, you’ll have ready access to all the global elements of your project. These global elements affect all the pages of your website. As a result, you’ll have to work closely with the client and get approval for each finalized element.

Examples of project activities in this phase include:

• Define the site title and tagline.
• Finalize logo, color palette, fonts, and page layouts.
• Create a sitemap that shows all the website pages and the relations between them.
• Purchase a domain and hosting services.

Content Preparation

The goal of this phase is to gather all the content needed for the website. The sitemap and the page layout styles created in the previous phase help identify the necessary content.

You may find that some content is already available with the client. However, you may need to work with external content creators in some cases.

Typical project activities in this phase include:

• Identify the types of content needed. For example, page content, testimonials, privacy policy, terms of use, FAQs, etc.
• Decide on client-side, internal, and external content creators and providers.
• Create/update/receive the text and graphical content.
• Organize the content in a content repository.
• Proofread, validate and finalize content.

Design & Development

This is the phase where all the real work happens.

Your team starts to design and develop the website’s pages. Activities in this phase depend on the sitemap, layouts, and content collected in the previous two phases.

Here are some examples of activities that happen during this phase.

• Design page elements such as buttons, call to actions, testimonials, etc.
• Design pages based on layout styles and content.
• Set up a sandbox server.
• Convert design mockups into coded widgets and pages.
• HTML, CSS, and Javascript validation.
• Develop functionalities like a blog, an e-commerce store, or a CMS.
• Organize and link pages according to the sitemap.
• Review pages with clients and get necessary approvals.

In this phase, you validate the website’s functionality and verify that it matches the client’s requirements.

Depending on the needs, various types of testing may be necessary. These can range from accessibility testing to website load testing. In some cases, you’ll also need to test the website for SEO-related issues.

Examples of activities in this phase include:

• Check that the website confirms with web standards.
• Ensure accessibility standards for differently-abled persons.
• Test the functionality is working as expected.
• Check if the website is responsive and works well on all devices.
• Fix issues that crop up during testing.

Once you’ve tested the website and fixed the issues, it’s time to deploy the website on the client’s hosting server.

Depending on the approved project proposal, you’ll need to perform the following activities:

• Upload the website to the client’s hosting server.
• Write and hand over the website’s documentation to the client.
• Train the client team to create and update the website.
• Create a robots.txt file.
• Create and submit the XML sitemap to search engines.

Step #3: Create a Project Schedule

The final step in creating the website project plan is to map the activities and phases to specific dates. When creating a project timeline , activities become your project tasks with start and end dates. Similarly, the end of a phase marks a milestone on the project’s timeline.

You’ll need to consider the following factors when creating a schedule.

Client’s Priorities 

In some cases, the client may have a hard deadline for a website design project. For example, an event website has to be delivered before the event date or of no use.

Also, the client may consider dropping a few requirements from the scope if it’s impossible to hit the deadline. Keep these priorities in mind when planning the project’s schedule.

Team Availability

You don’t want to create a schedule and then find out your lead designer isn’t available for the design phase. That’s why you want to plan your project’s schedule around your team’s vacation days and public holidays.

Also, most web design teams share team members across projects. So, ensure that team members are not busy with other projects. Plus, look at their workloads and see that no one is overworked.

Toggl Plan’s Team Plan view makes it easy to visualize your team’s availability and workloads. You can also adjust the schedule without leaving the team view.

Task Estimates

The final part of the scheduling puzzle is task estimates. 

Let’s get this straight. Task estimation is complicated. And even seasoned managers can get estimates wrong. 

Also, unexpected events can throw your project schedule off. A team member may become unavailable. The content provider may delay content prep. Or the client may not send approvals on time.

In any case, draw from your experience to estimate tasks. But add buffers to ensure that you have time to recover in case things go wrong.

Here’s a simplified website project plan made in Toggl Plan :

So far, we’ve looked at how to discover project requirements , identify the project’s tasks, and create a project schedule. The only thing that remains is to present the finalized project plan to the clients and the team.

How To Present A Website Project Plan?

You can present a project plan using Excel, Powerpoint, or a project management tool like Toggl Plan. Take a look at how to manage a project in Excel .

However, project plans made in Excel aren’t collaborative. Plus, as more people update a spreadsheet, keeping its integrity becomes challenging. And, finally, it’s impossible to control access to an Excel sheet. 

That’s where Toggl Plan can help. 

With Toggl Plan, you can create color-coded website project plans, visually manage your team’s availability, and share the project’s progress with your clients. Clients see a read-only view, so they’re not bothered with the day-to-day tasks in a project.

Toggl Plan is easy to get started with and grows with your needs. Its simple, drag-and-drop interface means you can spend more time doing actual project work instead of tinkering with the tool. And, as an added bonus, it’s a tool your team will enjoy using every day.

Jitesh is an SEO and content specialist. He manages content projects at Toggl and loves sharing actionable tips to deliver projects profitably.

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Project Management

Website project management: an agency guide with templates.

Content Partnership Specialist

June 27, 2023

Building and maintaining clients’ websites as an agency is a juggling act. You must manage input from both the client and internal team members—like developers, designers, and copywriters. Tracking work across so many groups can feel overwhelming, if not impossible. 

The breakdown often happens when each team’s workflow is interrupted by constant context-switching between tools in order to collaborate with other teams. And for project managers, it’s difficult to identify these breakdowns.

It’s even challenging to get a sense of project completion because each piece is siloed in different departments’ tools. 

The good news?

There are ways to simplify and organize your process to deliver high-quality website client work with effective project management tactics. In this guide, you’ll find tools, templates, and tips to deliver website client projects on time and within budget— and without wanting to pull your hair out.

What is Website Project Management?

Website project management methodologies, 1. website design research , 2. create a project proposal and secure client approval, 3. build the website structure and design, 4. review the structure and web design with the client, 5. create the design and copy elements, 6. develop the website, 7. test the website, 8. final client review, 9. launch the website, 7 free and helpful website project management templates.

Website project management is the process of planning, building, and monitoring the resilience and success of a newly created (or revamped) website, landing page, or site feature.

Like other client work, website project management requires thoughtful resource allocation . A good project manager will balance the various website tasks—like SEO audits , QA processes, and bug checks —across team members to ensure one contributor isn’t over or under-utilized.

Web design project management also requires project managers to stretch the project budget across tasks and leave room for contingency expenses. The typical agency will include the following their website project management service:

• User Experience (UX) strategy
• Creative design
• Development (Check out the best Chrome extensions for development )
• Search engine optimization
• Quality testing  

Before you start website projects for clients, you and your agency team members should consider how you want to approach the work. To make things easier for everyone involved, using a project management methodology that fits your teams’ and clients’ needs is smart.

For example, do you want to collaborate frequently with onsite adjustments, or do you want to complete the work following a clear project timeline with occasional input? 

Figure out which project management methodology works best for your team and clients by considering these two common processes: 

The Waterfall Methodology

Named after how it looks when arranged in a Gantt chart framework, the waterfall project management methodology is the traditional approach to website project management. It follows a linear project management process where team members complete a single piece of the project at a time. 

Website project management agencies following this project management methodology work to make their task(s) as perfect as possible before delivering it to the next team or client. Once the task or project moves to the next phase, the project team seals changes to the prior phase.

In terms of project management methodologies, this one works best for clients who clearly understand their goals and a vision for what they want to achieve. The agency and client agree to a predetermined budget and timeline before the project begins, leaving little room for adaptation along the way.

Web development project management teams also typically complete most of the work before they get feedback from the client, leaving very little room for the project to evolve. 

Because each team perfects their work at every stage—rather than iterating on ideas—waterfall website projects can take a while to complete. Some would argue this methodology is unrealistic because creative projects often evolve as they develop . Teams that prefer a more flexible approach often use an agile methodology.

Bonus: Web Design Tools

The Agile Methodology for Website Project Management

Agile web development is all about flexibility for project teams and project managers. Agency teams following this method work simultaneously in short circular cycles called sprints . They evolve the product as they go and gather client feedback between each iteration of the product to apply in the next sprint. 

Agile development focuses on delivering value to the client quickly and perfecting over time, rather than delivering a single, final product that’s fully completed before release. This project management method allows teams to produce timely updates and remain relevant amid changing needs in the market. 

Sprints are typically anywhere between two weeks to a month. And this project management method might sound crazy if you’re used to website projects taking upward of 6 to 12 months.

However, there are plenty of agile teams that love this methodology because it discourages attachment to ideas. It also pushes project teams to uncover original concepts and solutions. Agile teams typically use agile templates for sprints, providing a solid base to work from and keeping teams aligned closely throughout the project.

Agile remains the preferred project management system

The agile methodology has quickly become the favorite among web development project management teams and general developers since it was coined in 2001 in the Agile Manifesto . In fact, a Digital.ai report shows 94% of developers use agile methodologies.

These apply to many traditional development frameworks such as Scrum , Kanban , Lean, Extreme Programming (XP), Feature Driven Development (FDD), Crystal, and more. In the same report, 54% of respondents said most or all teams—including web development—across their organization use agile.

This web development process relies heavily on client feedback and experimentation. Agile tends to work best for clients with flexible goals who are willing to share input frequently.

Teams and project managers lean into a conceptual collaboration to iterate alongside the client to find bespoke solutions.

The 9 Phases of Managing Website Projects for Clients

Regardless of the method, website project management for clients typically includes 9 stages.  Share these phases with your internal web development team and clients to make sure everyone is on the same page throughout the project. 

Collaborating in project management software is the easiest way for cross-functional teams and project managers to keep website projects moving smoothly.

Web design research starts with becoming a student of your client’s product and industry. Each department likely has its own focus relevant to its specialty during this phase, but your marketing team needs to lead the research. 

Some examples of website project research are: 

• Interviewing the client’s team members who work on the website: Ask them what their website responsibilities are so you know which person to contact for different project areas. Ask them about past website challenges, to know what needs improvement.
• Interviewing your client’s current customers: Ask what they appreciate most about your client’s brand so you know what to highlight in their website copy. Get their feedback on the client’s website, too–what aspects of the site are helpful and which are difficult to navigate. This input shapes your User Experience (UX) and web design project management process so you find the gaps in customer product knowledge.
• Read newsletters and other content about your client’s industry: This research helps identify the pain points and features your copywriters need to highlight on the client’s site. 

After you collect this research , get your project manager to help assemble the information into a single, concise report. This document serves as a springboard for team collaboration as your website project management process and the entire team develop a single vision for the project.

The report allows project managers to determine key functions, project deliverables , and budgets for the client’s website project.

Based on your research, project managers need to work with your web design team to outline the website project proposal . This document should include product positioning, key website functions, timeline, milestones for each phase of development, and the budget required to satisfy user intent and meet the client’s goals.

It’s also helpful to include a design mood board in your presentation to align with the client on creative as well as technical direction. The mood board should have examples of website themes, colors, and design elements. 

Clients sign off on your recommendations and budget—but let’s be real. There will be back and forth around your client’s wants. Build client trust in your advice by backing up your project’s proposal with your research data.

Project managers have to document the project deliverables. This includes the pricing and the terms and conditions agreed upon in your contract. It’s essential for website project management because it serves as a record to minimize project scope creep as things evolve so teams are aligned.

After you get sign-off on the project proposal , set a budget and internal point person for each website project management deliverable. Once things are rolling, your agency must follow the plan with project management software.

There are plenty of options for project management software, but with the increase of teams working across a single platform, you need software that connects everyone and promotes collaboration.

DELIVER THE GOODS TOGETHER Project management tools like ClickUp have task management, real-time reporting dashboards, time tracking, budget allocation, knowledge-sharing documentation, and even drag-and-drop features to make teams seriously efficient.

Now that everyone is on the same page with specific website deliverables, it’s time to start building your client’s site! Your agency’s User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) teams will kick off the process by building the structure and design of the website. 

Just like house construction starts with a blueprint that defines the layout, a website starts with a structural sitemap . Your agency’s UI engineer will create the sitemap, carefully planning the barebones structure of site navigation and information hierarchy for the rest of the website project management team to build on.

The site map will define your client’s site page connections and content. For example, a site map may outline how the home page features the main navigation tab that leads to an “about” section.

It may also define what subpages that “about” section will include, like a subpage for the organization’s history, staff profiles, and a contact page. But a project manager needs the right project management software to ensure engineers and designers are on the same page.

VISUALIZE IT AS A TEAM Whiteboards are incredibly efficient for website project management teams to collaborate, detail, and ultimately visualize the website together. Easily assign tasks, tag stakeholders, or work simultaneously in ClickUp Whiteboards .

If the sitemap is the structural blueprint, wireframes are like the interior designer’s mockups. Your agency’s UX designer will be curating these website design mockups. 

The website wireframes define the visual layout and design of the site and its key functionalities. For example, the wireframe design will outline where navigation and CTA buttons will be placed, design colors, and what the drop-down menus will look like. 

Wireframes help a number of people throughout the website project management and creation process:

• Web development project management team : Gains a clear idea of the end result appearance and functionality
• Web design project management team : Gather visual assets for the site and determines any important elements needed for the creative process
• The client : Sees how the final product looks and identifies any design elements that do not align with their vision

Always get client approval before web design projects pass the wireframe stage so teams don’t spend countless hours on unnecessary work.

The client review meeting is your opportunity to present the sitemap and wireframes to the client and confirm your team has correctly interpreted project deliverables. Successful project management ensures all of these steps fall in line together.

Depending on the terms of your contract, the client may request another round of revisions and review. In this case, the project team will need to circle back to phase three (or possibly phase two if the requested changes are out of the project scope). 

After making the requested changes, present the website structure and wireframes to the client again for their sign-off.

Document everything in the review process as if it were almost a whole new project proposal.

Project managers must outline things in the review stage and set agreements with the client so team members aren’t endlessly revising web projects. This project management process is crucial for going out of project scope or over the originally planned budget.

If the asks are out of your original project scope, it’s important to highlight the additional costs of the request. Visually show your clients where the requests would (or have already) thrown off the project schedule with a detailed project management tool.

With the structural pieces in place, the graphic design and copywriting team members can flesh out the creative elements of the wireframe designs. Successful project management starts with assigned and detailed requirements for intricate web projects.

Graphic design team members need to create whatever visual elements the site design needs, like:

• Animations 
• Graphic illustrations 

The pivotal factors all design elements should consider are the audience demographic and brand identity. Design elements are equally vital in conveying the brand message as the words used.

Visual elements must be clear and visually compelling to make the user pause and consider engaging with the content, especially for mobile users who are scrolling quickly. Your website project management process should use the right tools to annotate these specific changes or design elements.

Let web designers easily communicate with one another through annotations, assigned comments, and more. ClickUp’s website project management software helps teams increase efficiency by reducing the stress of wondering what was specifically asked and by who.

Next up is the copywriting team, who will walk through the design wireframes and fill in the copy for each element–like text boxes and buttons. Project managers need to ensure the copy team members match the brand’s tone and voice and follow on-page SEO best practices. This allows search engines to index the website easily.

When search engines can easily index the website, it will be more likely to rank high on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for relevant keywords. 

Now that the structure and design are in place, your agency’s development team can finally get to work making the client website a reality! Are you finally seeing the effective project management process fall into place?

We hope so! Because now the dev team, which is typically split into two groups, can specialize in the different parts of the website.

• Back-end software developers : Often build the functional parts of a website like analytics tracking or schema SCHEMA code and rich snippets to improve SEO
• Front-end developers : Usually build the visual parts of a website like the colors and fonts, while populating design elements and site copy

Or, if you have a smaller team, you may have a jack-of-all-trades developer, called a “full-stack developer,” that will build both the front-end and back-end of the website.

The development team will start building the site out in what is called a “sandbox environment.” The development team can try out different plugins, software integrations , and dependencies in the sandbox environment to find the best solutions and functionality. 

To keep development moving forward, your website project management team will need a clear plan and task owners for each aspect of the project. Additionally, each task and task owner should be defined by project managers in project management tools that centralize communication.

This helps the project manager keep track of the budget, due dates, and deliverables for the complete website project management process.

Once the website is in its final iteration, it is ready to be moved to a password-protected staging site. In the staging environment, the development team can test its key functions without impacting a live site.

Project managers need to ensure their development teams first conduct link testing, cross-browser bug testing, and security testing. From there, the UX team can conduct their tests, like: 

• Eye movement tracking
• Usability surveys
• Click and scroll heat mapping
• Speed tests 

These tests are a bit complicated to conduct, so you may need to hire an outside vendor for support. But it should still integrate with your preferred project management tool.

These developer and UX tests will help your agency identify ways to strengthen the client’s site and set it up to be high-performing. Project managers will want to encourage a speed test to see if you must compress certain image files. Eye movement tracking may reveal the CTAs should be moved to a different part of a page.

When your internal team has finalized the website, it’s time for project managers to get a final sign-off from the client. Before meeting with the client, send a link to the staging site so they can review it and create a list of any questions or concerns they have. 

Then meet with the client to explain the value behind each site element and answer any questions they have. If the client requests changes, complete the revisions and send them back to the client for a final review.

Once the client approves the final version, agree on a launch date.

MAP REVISIONS OUT FOR REVIEW ClickUp Mind Maps help design and dev teams organize and plan website projects, ideas, or existing tasks in the most detailed visual timeline. Easily draw relationships between your website tasks to ensure your clients get the best experience when delivering a new or revamped site.

When the site receives final approval from your client, it’s time to get ready for the launch date! There are just a few final steps for the development team and their project managers to complete for launch:

• Upload the site to the client’s web hosting platform and connect it to their Content Management System (CMS)
• Register the site domain(s) with the client’s Internet Service Provider (ISP) if it is not already.
• Upload the site map to Google Search Console so the site will index and show up on search engine result pages (SERPs) as quickly as possible
• Click publish!

And just like that, you’ve created a website from the ground up. 

Project managers always need ways to be more efficient and collaborative with web development teams and clients. So why not use a project management template to speed up organization and planning processes?

Here are our seven favorite website project management templates:

1. ClickUp Content Management Template

Project managers can easily assign every content request to the appropriate process, which ensures your stakeholders or task owners won’t overlook anything. This is essential to use when divvying out content tasks to your teams across the agency.

Additionally, the ClickUp Content Management Template helps project managers log everything to prevent bottlenecks and plan for scope creep as new requests arise. It also gives a bird’s-eye view through the Calendar view feature so everyone is up to date.

2. ClickUp Sitemap Whiteboard Template

There’s no doubt how difficult it can be to build a new website from scratch. And one of the more difficult aspects of website project management is understanding and—more importantly—planning the sitemap.

Use ClickUp’s Sitemap Template as a guide to organizing landing pages, user experiences, and the site topics you need to include. Don’t start your sitemap from a blank screen—instead, use this template to start planning on ClickUp’s simple and highly visual Whiteboard feature.

3. ClickUp PMO Team Template

The PMO Team Template allows project managers to break down projects into 14 customizable statuses and six different views for maximum optimization of your website project management process.

This template is ideal for teams wanting to give clear insights into project deliverables, statuses, and the overall scope of the project to track and manage tasks with ease.

4. ClickUp Agile Scrum Management Template – Whiteboard view

For project managers wanting an intuitive and visual approach to agile project management, this template is the perfect stepping stone. Give your team the resources to add insights so you can easily pivot team members based on the demands of your specific web project.

Here’s the good news about this template—we make it simple to implement a basic agile workflow in just minutes. And at the same time, if you’re looking for something more heavy-duty, you can still use this template for complex agile workflows.

Using the Whiteboard view in the ClickUp Agile Scrum Management Template allows project managers to know the exact workflow to prioritize requests and tasks, while successfully organizing sprints and web design, and dev meetings.

5. ClickUp Website Scope of Work Template

Scope creep can feel inevitable for project managers, but for your next website project, start by documenting everything in the ClickUp Scope of Work Template . This will help you align everything your agency will do with the expectations of your clients.

Help your clients understand what you’re specifically doing and the price tag associated with it. Also, it’s simple to assign users to comments in ClickUp Docs so finding what’s needed to move on to the next phase isn’t getting in the way of team collaboration.

6. ClickUp Website Design Project Plan Template

ClickUp’s Website Design Project Plan Template acts as a log for all actions taken throughout the development of a website. Assigning everything to the appropriate process owner ensures that nothing gets overlooked.

Use the Kanban Board View or plan out all of your website design tasks in the list view. With ClickUp, you have 15+ views to choose from and customize so our project management platform works exactly how you want it.

7. ClickUp’s Bug + Issue Tracking Template

No one wants to launch a website only to find there’s an endless list of bugs to clean up. Use the ClickUp Bug and Issue Tracking Template to ensure everything is logged, monitored, and appropriately delegated to developers in a single project management tool.

ClickUp: The Best Website Project Management App for Your Team

You might be thinking, this is all easier said than done —especially if you manage client website projects across multiple disconnected tools. The thing is, when project managers work with collaborative software like ClickUp, managing a successful project is as easy as opening your ClickUp App. 

When you use ClickUp as your project management platform, you can easily:

• Track Budgets
• Monitor Project Schedules
• Follow Completion of Deliverables
• Tag internal and external team members 
• Request client feedback
• And so much more! 

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Website Design Project Plan Template

Website Design Definition and Why It Is Important

Nowadays, no matter what type of business you’re running, chances are you will need a website in order to promote your product or your service . And being able to provide a great user experience can greatly determine the relationship your customers are going to have with your brand .  ‍ Website design can be defined as the process of creating new websites , and it entails many different aspects such as layout and appearance, graphic design, and content production . When it comes to creating a new website or starting a website redesign project, it can sometimes feel like getting the work done as quickly as possible is the right way to go.  ‍ But in reality, focusing on work without an action plan can truly be the difference between a successful and a chaotic result. Why? Because website design projects usually involve multidisciplinary teams with different types of skills coming together at different stages and times, and when multiple people are involved, it can only mean one thing: you will be in need of a collaborative space, where everyone can have a clear understanding of work, responsibilities, and status of progress . 

The Components of a Website Design Project Plan

We’ve made it clear why it’s so important for teams to create a well-thought-out website design plan, but we haven’t exactly mentioned how to do it or what it should cover . So, if you’re in need of a guide, let’s dive into the essential steps that go into creating and mapping out a structured website design project plan. Project definition. Research is a big part of this first step. Project definition is paramount to the success of your design project because it will lay a solid groundwork for your whole plan. At this stage, you need to define the purpose behind the idea of creating or redesigning your website. Are you looking to improve user experience? Are you looking to drive sales? Define goals and make sure everyone involved is on the same page. ‍ Budget. Once the concept has been laid down, it’s time to set a budget . Creating a plan for your website design project will help you determine an estimate of your costs and your overall investment. It will also help you distribute and make wise decisions regarding your resources. ‍ Team and roles. We’ve established website design requires team effort. So before you start laying down work, take the time to assign clear responsibilities for your key team members and make sure everyone understands the role they will be playing. ‍ Documentation and requirements. Requirements can come in all shapes and sizes. It’s important to understand what is expected of your website design, and clients and stakeholders play an instrumental role in this stage. So work closely with them and make sure you have a clear list of functionalities and features that need to be included . This process will save you time later down the road and it will prevent your team from eventually having to complete multiple revisions. Documentation also includes information from your customers, so make sure you have a clear definition of your ideal buyer persona in order to accomplish an exceptional journey for them . ‍ Content. Your content and your website appearance should go hand-to-hand. You need to be able to communicate the brand’s voice and its vision, as well as to make it easy for your audience to identify what they’re looking for right away. So work closely with clients and stakeholders to gain insights into branding, voice, and style. Design. Work together with your team and create a concept that includes visual contents, this will help you to communicate your vision. Then, you can start working on a wireframe, which will serve as a guide for how the website will be structured , along with how it will be structured for the users. Once the prototype has been approved, it’s time to make code happen.

Creating a Timeline for Your Website Design Project Plan

Taking the time to create and to build a detailed project plan provides you with a structure that can help you work in a more efficient, and result-driven way . It will give you a chance to set your own pace and to decide which steps to complete first, which will ultimately keep you on track with your overall objectives . ‍ Website design requires planning, analyzing, and documenting a handful of different information. Also, with multiple team members involved, it can quickly become chaotic and difficult to keep everyone on the same page. Luckily, this is where project management software such as Instagantt can turn out to be extremely useful. ‍ With gantt charts , you’ll be working with the kind of tool that is required when managing different stages of a project along with different skill sets. Most importantly, you will be able to keep track of all the different aspects that come into designing exceptional website experiences ; planning and conceptualizing, overseeing timelines and progress , content, budget, schedules, and deadlines. ‍ Take a Look at Our Free Website Design Project Gantt Chart Template

Outstanding website design begins with a project plan. On many occasions, when people think about great websites, they’re usually referring to the way it looks. But there is so much more that goes behind building a website ; you have to think about user experience , the code that goes into making it work, the content that is shown, amongst many other things. Even if you start by sketching your idea on a piece of paper, a good, detailed project plan largely determines the success and the outcome of your website design development plan.

Nowadays, no matter what type of business you’re running, chances are you will need a website in order to promote your product or your service . And being able to provide a great user experience can greatly determine the relationship your customers are going to have with your brand . ‍ Website design can be defined as the process of creating new websites , and it entails many different aspects such as layout and appearance, graphic design, and content production . When it comes to creating a new website or starting a website redesign project, it can sometimes feel like getting the work done as quickly as possible is the right way to go. ‍ But in reality, focusing on work without an action plan can truly be the difference between a successful and a chaotic result. Why? Because website design projects usually involve multidisciplinary teams with different types of skills coming together at different stages and times, and when multiple people are involved, it can only mean one thing: you will be in need of a collaborative space, where everyone can have a clear understanding of work, responsibilities, and status of progress .

Taking the time to create and to build a detailed project plan provides you with a structure that can help you work in a more efficient, and result-driven way . It will give you a chance to set your own pace and to decide which steps to complete first, which will ultimately keep you on track with your overall objectives . ‍ Website design requires planning, analyzing, and documenting a handful of different information. Also, with multiple team members involved, it can quickly become chaotic and difficult to keep everyone on the same page. Luckily, this is where project management software and gantt chart makers such as Instagantt can turn out to be extremely useful. ‍ With Instagantt, you’ll be working with the kind of tool that is required when managing different stages of a project along with different skill sets. Most importantly, you will be able to keep track of all the different aspects that come into designing exceptional website experiences ; planning and conceptualizing, overseeing timelines and progress , content, budget, schedules, and deadlines. ‍ Take a Look at Our Free Website Design Project Gantt Chart Template

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6 essential steps to planning a website design project

Follow this step-by-step guide to learn the modern process of planning a website design project in Milanote, a free tool used by top creatives.

Before you begin choosing the fonts and images for your website, it's crucial to make a solid plan and answer some key questions... What's the purpose of the website? Who's the audience? What content should it have? What should it look like? The project plan helps your whole team understand the size and scope of your project before a single line of code is written. It ensures you and your client are on the same page through every step of the project.

In this guide you'll learn the essential steps to plan a website design project...

• 1. Project plan Set up a place to plan your project
• 2. Brief Define the concept and goals
• 3. Target audience Define your ideal customer
• 4. Moodboard Set the visual direction
• 5. Sitemap Map out the structure of your website
• 6. Content Plan the copy & imagery for each page

1. Project plan

Traditionally, a project plan might be scattered across various emails, to-do lists, spreadsheets, and documents, making it hard to keep track of everything. A central project plan combines these artifacts into one easy-to-access place. It will evolve over the lifespan of your project but usually includes:

• Customer personas
• Your ideas and sketches
• Inspiration and moodboards
• Website content for each page
• A checklist of tasks
• Client feedback

Create a new board for your project plan

Create a new board

Drag a board out from the toolbar. Give it a name, then double click to open it.

Choose the Website Design Plan template

Choose a template

Each new board gives you the option to start with a beautiful template.

It’s crucial to set a strong foundation from the start. A clear, inspiring, and informative brief provides the structure and direction for designers to do their best work. Website Design briefs typically include information about the brand/client, goals, specific deliverables, visual references, target audience, and important dates.

First, open the Brief board

You’ll find the board to create your brief on the Project Plan board. Double-click the Brief to open it and start adding the goals, deliverables and defining the audience.

Double-click the  Brief  board to open it.

Define the background of the project

The first thing to define is why the project is happening. Spend time with your client, have them lead you through the vision in their own words and ask questions like... What problem is this project trying to solve? What lead up to it? What will change if this project is successful?

Add a note to describe the background.

Drag a note card onto your board

Start typing then use the formatting tools in the left hand toolbar.

Write clear goals & deliverables

How will you know if the project is a success? Having a clear, realistic and measurable goal will help keep your team on the same page. For example, are you trying to increase inbound leads, or double the number of sales enquiries in 1 year? Alongside this, list any specific deliverables that will help you achieve your goal.

Add a to-do list to describe the deliverables.

Drag a to-do list onto your board

Start typing then press "Enter" to create a new item. Add a title to your to-do list using the left hand toolbar.

Include brand references

Add any additional materials that will help your team get to know the brand. Describe the tone of voice, brand values, color, font, logo specs, and other related guidelines. This gives everyone easy access to important assets throughout the project and saves time hunting through emails and folders.

Drag brand files onto your board.

Upload a file or document

Click the "Upload" button or just drag a file onto your board. You can add images, logos, documents, videos, audio and much more.

Share the finished brief with your team

Once you’ve made any final tweaks, it’s time to share the completed brief with your team or client, organize a kickoff meeting, and get started. If you want to learn more about writing a website design brief, check out our in-depth Website Design Brief guide .

Share the brief with your team.

Share a read-only link with others.

Click Share in the top right of your board. You can add a Welcome message for viewers, allow comments, set a password or embed the board in another app or website.

3. Target audience

If you want to design a successful website, it's crucial to know who will be using it. That's where customer personas come in. Customer personas (or buyer personas) are fictional, composite characters that represent a segment of your audience—based on customer research. They're used by marketers, designers and creative teams to paint a clear picture of the target audience. They'll help you choose a design style and write content that will connect with your customers.

Open the Persona board

You’ll find this board on your Project Plan board. Double-click the Persona board to open it and start mapping out your ideal customer.

Double-click the  Persona  board to open it.

Choose the  Persona  template.

Gather existing customer data

Good personas are built on real data and insights. They're a true representation of your ideal customer or a key segment, not a made-up character. There are usually many good sources of information available, including your website analytics, recent surveys or real-life conversations with customers. Quotes from actual customers can really help bring your research to life. Start by collecting it all in one place.

Drag files and documents from your computer.

Describe pain points & the ideal experience

Defining your customer's pain points is extremely important, as removing these challenges will likely be the key to winning your customer's loyalty. Next, switch modes and describe the ideal experience. This is the creative part of the process. It's where you can set aside any current limitations and imagine the best experience for your persona.

Add notes to describe the pain points & ideal experience.

Bring your persona to life

Now it's time to start adding that carefully collected research. Authenticity is critical for developing empathy. Your persona needs enough detail to allow you to step into someone's shoes and see your products and services from their perspective.

Give your persona a real name and upload a representative photograph. Add in some basic demographic information such as age, marital status, occupation, location or income level as a snapshot.

Choose a photo to represent your persona.

Use the built-in image library

Search over 3 million beautiful, free photos then drag images straight onto your board. Powered by Pexels.

Add notes to summarize your persona.

Refine & share

Once you have everything you need, it's time to organize your content into logical topics. The goal here is to present the most important points in an inspiring and concise format. Highlight important parts, add titles and share it with your team or client so they can get to know who'll be using your website.

If you want to learn more about creating a customer persona, check out our in-depth Customer Persona guide .

Create a column to group related topics (like research).

Drag a column onto your board

Name it, then drag any relevant notes, images or boards into your column to stay organized.

Invite a team member or client to provide feedback.

Invite editors to your board

Open the "Share" menu from the title bar of your board. Add email addresses of the people you'd like to collaborate with—they'll receive an invitation via email.

4. Moodboard

Next, it's time to start exploring some visual directions with a moodboard. Moodboards can help you visualize any aspect of your project. They can be literal and practical (featuring fonts, color schemes and images that you actually plan to use in the final design) or they can be more about exploring tone and mood. You can create a moodboard for each of these separately or mix them all into one board. There are no strict rules.

First, open the Moodboard

You’ll find the board to make your moodboard on the Project Plan board. Double-click on the Moodboard to open it and start adding inspiring references.

Double-click the  Moodboard to open it.

Collect existing material

Start by adding any existing material you have—this could include client references, positioning statements or images you've saved as inspiration. Just drag them onto your board. They might not make it into the final moodboard, but they're still a great place to start.

Drag files from your computer.

Add inspiring imagery and motion

The imagery you choose to include in your moodboard can have big influence on the look and feel of your project, so choose carefully! These images can define things like tone, cropping and color.

If you're the type of person who keeps a collection of images in an inspiration library , now's the time to see if you've already got something that could work. Or you can start by searching for visual elements from around the web. There are lots of fantastic sites where you can find great visual inspiration for free, like Dribbble , Behance and Designspiration .

Use the built-in image library.

Install the  Milanote Web Clipper

Save images from other websites straight to your board.

Save content from the web

With the Web Clipper installed, roll over an image (or highlight text), click Save, then choose the destination in Milanote. Return to your board and find the content in the "Unsorted" column on the right.

Transform your board from messy to organized

Once you have all your inspiration and color references in one place, the next step is to arrange your ideas to create the perfect composition. Start by exploring composition and introducing hierarchy. Place a key element such as a logo to anchor your board, and change the size and position of the remaining elements to indicate their importance and relationships to one another.

When you're ready, share it with your team or client and ask for their feedback and ideas.

Resize your images to add hierarchy.

Resize images

Drag the corner of an image to resize it. Double-click the corner to return it to its original size.

Invite your team or client to collaborate

You’ve finished the moodboard!

Now that your moodboard is complete, you have a powerful starting point for your webiste design project. Remember, you can create multiple moodboards to explore different visual directions at any time.

Next, we'll start mapping out the structure and content for each section on the website.

Sitemaps are the perfect way to plan the content and structure of your website. Designers, copywriters and marketers use them to map out website categories before jumping into the interface design phase. They become an invaluable reference for the whole team when estimating how much work is involved to build the website.

First, open the Sitemap

You’ll find the Sitemap board on the Project Plan board. Double-click to open it and start planning the categories and structure of your website.

Double-click the  Sitemap board to open it.

Brainstorm your website categories

What type of content do you need to include on your website? Get together with your team or client and start adding content ideas. This is the time to get creative—add as many ideas as you can. Consider what's most important to your users as well. Are there insights from recent customer research or surveys you've run?

Drag out a board for each category on your website.

Organize your categories

Once you've added your content ideas, it's time to start organizing them into groups. The easiest way to do this is to visually group similar content together. Just drag and drop content into clusters. Themes will start to emerge naturally. You can also use color to help unify each group of content.

Drag boards into clusters.

Select a board, then choose the color option in the left toolbar.

Add structure & hierarchy

There are a few different ways you can structure your website content, but the most common is the tree structure, which we'll use in this example. Start by moving your homepage to the top of your board. All your content categories will fall below home. Next, move your content categories under home and start to tidy things up. Lastly, use arrows to show the relationship between content.

Drag lines from one board to another to show relationships.

Use lines to connect objects

Select an object, then drag the arrow from the top right. Connect the line to another object to create a quick diagram.

Your sitemap is done

Your sitemap is a great way to visually explain the hierarchy of your website to your team. Now you have the perfect birds-eye view of how your website fits together. Next, we'll start mapping out the actual content for each page.

A great content plan is the most important step in creating an engaging website. It's where you map out the copy, imagery and structure you need so your team knows what to design and build.

Open a page on your Sitemap

Choose a page on your sitemap that you'd like to plan the content for. Double-click the board to open it and start adding ideas, images and planning the structure.

Double-click a board to open it.

Add ideas for content

Start adding ideas for the written content that might appear on this page. It doesn't have to be the final copy but it will give everyone a feel for what you're aiming to communicate. Think about the key messages you want to communicate, sub-titles and even SEO keywords you need to include. Don't worry about the structure of it yet—just get it out of your head!

Add notes to explore ideas for content.

Sketch the rough layout

If you have a picture in your head of head of how the page could be structured, grab a pen and sketch it out. Even if it's just some boxes and arrows, it's a great way to figure out which messages are more important than others. A simple sketch is also a useful reference for the developers who will need to build the website.

Click the Pen tool and sketch a rough page layout.

Sketch ideas on the board

Click Draw in the lefthand toolbar to sketch anywhere on a board. Press Save to commit a sketch.

Add images and video

Next, think about the images that would suit this page. Again, these don't have to be the final images, but they'll help bring it to life. You can use images from the web or open Milanote's built-in image library to quickly find inspiring examples.

Choose example images from the image library.

Embed video from Youtube.

Embed Youtube videos or audio tracks in a board

Copy the share link from Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud or many other services. Drag a link card onto your board, paste your link and press enter.

Collaborate and build on your ideas

Whether you're working on a client project or collaborating with a team it can be helpful to bounce ideas off other people. As writer Louisa May Alcott said, "It takes two flints to make a fire."

A collaborative content plan is especially helpful for this step as you can easily connect and work together online. Bringing everyone onto the same page (figuratively and literally!) in real-time allows you to collaborate on copy, images and layout allowing you to create a coherent and engaging website.

Invite someone else to edit to your board.

You're all done!

Hopefully, this guide has helped you and your team better plan the design and content for your website. If you're just starting a new website, use the Website Design Plan template below to get set up in minutes.

Plan your website design project

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Website Development Project Plan Template

Supercharge website planning and execution.

Whether you’re building a new website from scratch or coordinating a redesign, it’s essential to plan out every step of the project with a web development template. That’s because these large-scale projects involve a range of stakeholders, so there is a high possibility of miscommunication.

• Information on deadlines can get lost, resulting in delayed deliverables
• Action items can be buried in team members’ to-do lists, creating further problems in development 
• Teams can feel overwhelmed if they can’t visualize each step in complex processes

Eliminate these obstacles with Wrike’s website development project plan template.

• Use our pre-built request template to receive vital project information from clients
• Ensure due dates are visualized with one-click Gantt charts
• Quickly assign tasks and priorities based on retrospective results

Why you need a web development template

Client requests aren’t shared.

Ensure client priorities are included in the planning process — use the customizable request form in this website development template to gather key details.

Deadlines aren’t clear

Map out your project timeline with a Gantt chart. With Wrike’s web development template, you can meet every milestone and stay on top of delivery deadlines.

Issues are slowing teams down

Implement regular checks and testing routines into your website development project plan template so you can pick up on any bugs or issues before your site’s official release.

Automate your website development

How to use the website development project plan template.

Are your website projects subject to information gaps? Is your development team struggling to meet deadlines? 

Make sure you have the right data to ensure successful website project planning from the start. Wrike’s website development project plan template is the tool you need to avoid losing information and missing deadlines. 

• Gather critical client data from the start with a dynamic request form  
• Streamline tasks with a clear folder structure 
• Save time with ready-made dashboards and Gantt charts  
• Use custom workflows to oversee your development team’s progress

As a development team, you want to ensure your website project planning is as efficient and successful as possible. Missing information or unclear priorities set your team up for failure, delays, and unhappy clients. 

That’s why you need Wrike’s website development project plan template. Being able to visualize every phase of the site creation journey means that every team member can focus on delivering results in their area of expertise. A clear software development website template also gives direction and definitive expectations to different types of web projects, including blogs, podcasts, and display ads.

Ready to get started? Follow these three simple steps to kick-start your project planning.

Step 1: Gather client information 

Wrike’s web development template includes an easy-to-use request form that gathers information from clients so agencies can meet their needs successfully. This will save developers and project managers time seeking information from clients via email and ensure deadlines are clear from the outset.

Step 2: Organize your tasks

All client requests made via the form will be automatically added as tasks to your Wrike workspace. As a project/traffic manager, it’s your job to organize the backlog folder for the web development team and assign tasks. This website development template comes with pre-built folders to help you manage your intake, client portfolios, and contracts.

Step 3: Visualize your project plan

Get a bird’s-eye view of multiple projects with interactive Gantt charts, shared dashboards, and team workflows. Wrike’s website development plan template includes three pre-configured dashboards to help you track client contracts, work sprints, and developer requests. Add custom widgets and statuses to prioritize your updates. 

Make Wrike work for you

Keep all your tools in one place so that you can track every action while motivating your team on the project goals outlined in your software development website template. Wrike’s powerful work management features are designed to streamline your strategic projects so you can manage your resources and time more efficiently. 

Our versatile features include: 

• Online proofing tools
• Enterprise-level security
• 400+ app integrations

Wrike’s software is designed to work for you — not the other way around. Use it to streamline your planning process, ensure successful execution, and hit your deadlines, every time. 

Resources for web development teams

Learn how moneytree used wrike to automate workflows and streamline approvals, discover how bigcommerce improved customer interactions with wrike, read how capgemini used wrike to maximize team productivity, plan website projects with ease.

Wrike’s web development template streamlines the process of creating a website project plan. It helps managers gather information to sequence tasks, capture dependencies, ensure the project is delivered on time, create a project blueprint, and generate a Gantt chart with actionable steps for team members.

Project managers and traffic managers can use the website development plan template to quickly gather client information for web-related projects, automatically distill it into a blueprint, and create an actionable set of sequenced tasks to complete the project on time.

Yes, the website development project plan template includes a customizable request form, as well as automatically generated dashboards, workflows, and folders.

How To Build A Website Project Plan Like a Top Web Design Agency

How to build a website project plan, step #1: set yourself up for success, step #2: understand your customers, step #3: plan your messaging.

• Step #4: Design and Development

Step #5: Launch Fast and Prepare to Iterate

Implementing the website project plan.

Web design projects are notorious for going way over budget, and months (if not years) past the launch date.

There's a lot of reasons for this, many of them unnecessary delays. This is why we (and a lot of other agencies) have adopted a Growth-Driven Design approach to website launches.

The key to building and launching an Effective Website On-Budget , and on time, is the website project plan. With the right processes and plan in place, you can bypass a lot of those common pitfalls that overcomplicate and derail web design projects.

We've helped a ton of brands launch New Website Designs over the years, and we've come up with our own system of website project plans.

The most common misconception that leads to a messed up website project, is thinking website design is only graphical.

It's way more than that - or at least it should be.

If you want pretty graphics, just download a template and try to replicate the graphics. What you'll discover is that it doesn't perform - as in, your customers don't engage with it, they don't become leads, and it doesn't drive an increase in paying customers.

If you don't believe me, you are free to try it out. We've seen it over and over again. People invest thousands of dollars on "pretty" and then come to us needing help sometimes the same year they launched their new website.

Because a website that drives customers requires a whole lot more than pretty graphics.

You have to start with the Customer Story and move on from there. And it gets complicated. It gets confusing. And, without a map, you could get frustrated and lost.

Thankfully, there is a map. Some people call it the website project plan.

Why do you need a website project plan? Simply put, you need a website project plan because, without it, you'll be in for a long, hard journey. But, with it, you can build and launch a high-performance website without unnecessary struggles.

The website project plan is your North Star.

It's your blueprint.

With the following steps, you can Build A Website project plan that keeps you on track and aligned with your overall business objectives.

Before you get too deep into your website project, take a beat to ensure you’re setting yourself up for success. You can accomplish this be ensuring you have three vital elements in place: 

• The Right Team: Do you have the all-star players you need to create an amazing website? You’ll need developers, designers, copywriters, and team members capable of analyzing performance to get off on the right foot.  
• The Right Leader: No project can proceed in an organized fashion without a project manager. Ensure the person leading your website project team is the person you want at the helm. 
• The Right Tools: If you don’t have the right website platform in place, building an incredible website will be harder than it needs to be—if not utterly impossible. We recommend HubSpot , but as long as you’re picking a tool that you know works for your team, you’ll set yourself up for victory here. 

This stage is also where you’ll want to set up a timeline and establish the various phases of the project. Ensure that your entire team is on the same page and ready to tackle the project as a single unified force. 

To build a website that will drive conversions and attract new visitors, you've got to understand your ideal customers. That sounds like a tall order since there are so many attributes that make up your customers. It's difficult to focus on all of them, which is why we use concise strategy templates.

These templates will help you Refine Buyer Personas , and include:

• Buyer Personas: A lot of teams go too far with buyer personas, with a lot of information that isn't particularly useful or relevant. No one on your marketing team is going to leaf through 6-7 pages of insights whenever they need some guidance. You should only focus on the most critical aspects of your customers. This Buyer Persona Template From HubSpot helps you accomplish that.
• Business Model Canvas: The Business Model Canvas is a one-page document that walks through the core problems, experiences, and trigger events that lead to your solution. Using all of this information, you can get a clearer idea of the fears, hesitations, frustrations, and assumptions that your customers make about your company and industry.
• Customer Journey Map: The Customer Journey Map exercise puts you right in your customer's shoes. You can see the brand experience from their point of view. Sometimes, it's not pretty, but through this exercise, you can identify tactics to improve or enhance the customer experience.
• The Buyer Journey: For each persona, you will walk through the awareness, interest, desire, consideration, and decision stages. As we like to put it, it's the content that will bait and hook leads, reel them in, and eventually transform them into a customer. Using this information, you can create messaging that is irresistible to your target customers.

By the end of this exercise, you will have everything you need to craft a brand narrative. The brand narrative will Inform A Website Strategy and website content, which is the first step to a GDD website build. 

Strong messaging goes beyond great copy.

It requires a plan of every website page we'll create, and the goal for each page. We begin with initial pages we plan on building, that provide information about our company, discuss our core offers, and educate the customer about our solution.

These pages include:

Entry Pages

The entry pages will be the first impression you'll make on potential customers. These include your home page and various lead generation landing pages. You should go above and beyond on these pages when it comes to developing messaging. HubSpot has collected a ton of Exceptional Examples Of Landing Pages you can use for inspiration.

Content Pillar Pages

Pillar pages are viral in marketing right now. Every brand is jumping on board, with companies like Buffer to HubSpot executing flawless, incredibly valuable pillar pages. Essentially, pillar pages each cover one of 3-4 broad topics that cover your areas of expertise.

These pages take a lot of work, but with a lot of positive effort, they pay off tremendously. With a great concept and excellent content, you can demonstrate your value and expertise in your industry, all while improving your SEO rankings.

(The HubSpot Pillar Page talks about robots. It's cool.)

Belief Pages

You can find exceptional, engaged customers with belief pages. These pages demonstrate your core values. Here at Lean Labs, we're excited and enthusiastic about building great websites. It's why we do any of this in the first place. So on our service pages , we put all of that out there.

We're don't skirt over our values to get more customers. We focus on building long-lasting relationships with leads with a similar perspective about websites, and these belief pages help us find them.

Buyer Journey Pages

Buyer journey pages will help get out customers from point A to point B. Over time, we'll rely on buyer journey pages to help increase organic traffic, nurture leads, and bring in more sales opportunities. With highly effective buyer journey pages, motivated customers will move through our funnel faster.

Conversion Pages

These are The Pages That Sell. These pages provide clarity to your more qualified leads, helping them understand what all of your products and services are, why customers need it, what they'll get from those services, and how to buy it.

When planning which conversion pages you need, think through the products and services you offer. Can they pay for those services online? Can they buy those products online? Do they need to do a demo first?

These questions will help inform where those pages need to link to, and other pages you might need to build.

These pages aren't exciting, but they're necessary to have. For these pages, you'll cover Privacy Policy and Terms of Use content to protect your brand. These pages can be a gray area for most people. If you need legalese pages, consult a lawyer, or Do Your Research. Every industry is different, so there's not a one size fits all approach for this part.

After deciding the pages we need, we document them and draft a sitemap. A sitemap looks like a grid and determines the hierarchy of your pages. Which pages will link to the navigation, for example? What pages do we need to support content offers or free trials? We use Slickplan to build site maps, and Mockflow is another excellent tool.

With the sitemap planned out, you're ready to plan the content of your website pages. You can use A Tool Like SprocketRocket to create a framework for each page. SprocketRocket features an array of modules, such as calls-to-action, headers, and testimonials that you can select and arrange to style your page. The tool automatically populates those modules in a HubSpot website page draft, making it easy to add in the copy.

Step #4: Design and Development  

Once you write, edit, and put website copy into your page drafts, pass them to a designer to style headlines, add images and video, and insert calls-to-actions. You can also use one of many Free HubSpot Templates to accelerate the design process.

The design and development step is where you’ll consider the various site elements and functionality you need to incorporate to succeed. Consider site organization, navigation bars, CTAs, buttons, and more in additon to page style.

Remember: There is a difference between a “pretty” website and a “high-converting” website. The most visually stunning website is still useless if visitors aren’t guided toward a clear and compelling next step toward engaging with your brand. 

If you follow our approach to putting together a website project plan, you'll end up with a site that's pretty close to being perfect. However, we never recommend just launching sites and being satisfied with "close to perfect." You should always be optimizing the Performance Of Your Website .

Over time, things will break, and customer preferences will change. If you don't pay attention to how the site is performing, eventually, you'll need to do another redesign or refresh. So when we put together our website project plan, we plan to optimize over time. We set goals and objectives for ongoing updates and testing.

After launch, let traffic run through it for a while, then use a series of tools to measure performance. These tools include all of the Performance Tools HubSpot Offers, and heat mapping and screen recording tools such as Optimizely and CrazyEgg . With those tools, we see how our customers are interacting with pages and judge where we can make optimizations.

A website is a considerable investment, and that's why it's so important to get it right. By taking a more data-driven, customer-centric approach, you'll build a website that can grow with your company and help hit your goals. So while our website project plan has a lot of moving parts, we're confident that it's the best possible approach to web design.

We've spent years refining our website design project plan. But a website project is only one piece of the puzzle. To truly crush your goals and achieve massive growth, you’ll need a full playbook that aligns all your marketing efforts. That’s where we come in. 

Our Growth Marketing Playbook gives you all the tools and plays you need to launch a high-converting site and use it to scale growth for your business reliably. Check out the Growth Marketing Playbook for free today! 

As an Inbound Writer for Lean Labs, Melissa writes about high-converting websites and customer-centric marketing. She's an avid traveler, with trips to Iceland, Ukraine, and Portugal under her belt. She currently resides in Wilmington, North Carolina with her dog, Morrie.

About Lean Labs

The only outsourced growth team with a track record of 10X growth for SaaS & Tech co's. 🚀

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