You’ve met our sales team, signed the contract and are excited for your new website project to begin. What’s the next step?
The project management role at Conscious
We’re just as excited as you for the work to begin and allocate a project manager, like myself, who will be your primary contact from design through to development and finally the all-important going live date. I have been working at Conscious for over 10 years so have worked on a lot of legal websites of all sizes.
As a member of our Production team, specifically in project management, I liaise not only with our clients but also our designers, developers, and content loaders to ensure that the work on your project is running smoothly - on time and on budget. At the start of the project, I am responsible for providing a schedule of dates to you, highlighting key milestones, and helping you to prepare anything specified within your Service Agreement that we will need, such as staff photos, re-written content, accounts with third-party suppliers for plugins and so on.
Day to day life of a website project manager
I sometimes think that, if I didn’t become a project manager, I would have made a great plate spinner! At any one time I have approximately 30 projects of varying size assigned to me, which involves a lot of multitasking, flexibility and awareness. I start and finish my day by reviewing upcoming tasks and prioritising these. A large chunk of my role involves speaking to different team members to check that their work is on track. We have a fantastic collaborative culture at Conscious where we like to review designs or development work together before a client sees it, plus there is an element of quality control in my job and lots of feedback sorting! I also work on a lot of budget analysis, change request forms for requested amends and generally making sure that my projects are all well-resourced and in good order. But this covers just some of my work as a project manager – one of the good things about the role is that every day is different, as are most projects even if they follow the same tried and tested ‘structure’ from start to finish.
How do we add value to your project?
Our project management team are all keen multi-taskers, expert schedulers, detail-focused and like to ‘own it’ when it comes to efficiency and organisation. We can also spot if a project is starting to stall and aim to stop any delays at that point to ensure that everything continues to run efficiently for our clients.
We’re also a friendly bunch and love to form great relationships with the people we’re working with. Often, once your website is live, we’ll still be working on smaller projects for you when you want to add more ‘bells and whistles', so it helps to be familiar with your project manager and know that they are in turn familiar with your site.
We also add value by keeping an eye on your budgets, providing useful opinions (“No, you really don’t want to add that dated widget to your site!”) and offering you the right tools to get the job done like BugHerd and ClickUp which we use for our larger projects.
Top tips for a website redesign project
Here are my five top tips for a website redesign project with Conscious:
- Confirm if you have a desired live date at the start of the project (we’ll check that too). We don’t want to miss it!
- You’re guaranteed the right team on our side – please make sure you have the right people assigned your end too. I.e., the key people that need to be involved for organisation and sign off.
- Start preparing any new content ASAP – it’s the number one thing that holds up projects in our experience.
- And suppose something is going to hold the project up, keep us in the loop as to your deliverables and timeframes. In that case, it helps us to re-schedule things accordingly, especially as design and development slots tend to get booked up quickly.
- Lastly, don’t panic or feel under pressure – we’re here to help and to make your life easier! If something doesn’t feel ‘right’ on the project, talk to us and I am sure we can get things back on track.
Is it time for a website redesign?
We hope so! Web trends change so often that, if your website is a few years old now, it likely needs a refresh. You can expect the same level of service, planning and collaboration on a website redesign with your project manager. Our Design Director Tracey’s blog “8 signs it might be time for a new website” can provide more information if you’re unsure.
However, if you’re ready to go, give us a call on 0117 325 0200 or contact sales@conscious.co.uk.