I have a reputation for being “pithy” and “no nonsense” with my coworkers. And I firmly believe that cutting through the nonsense is vital to doing better work, especially when building websites. If you’re ready to get real about your project, here is a proven method for improving your website. The best part? It will only require about 5 minutes of your team members’ time. Here’s what you do:
Write up a survey with two basic sections: 1. a section that asks them to evaluate your current website, and 2. a section that asks them about their goals and desires for the new website. You can make the responses for the first section a “like/dislike” with a numerical scale from 1-10 if you wish. You should include questions about each of the following areas for both sections:
- Branding – How well we are represented as an organization.
- Design – How the visual look should convey the branding, our main message, and what we want our website visitors to do on our site.
- Writing – Similar to design, how the language supports our brand, our message, and what we want our website visitors to do on our site.
- Sales and Marketing – How can our web presence align with our marketing? How can it support and facilitate sales?
- Usability – Critical areas where good usability will greatly affect our results.
- User Goals – Ultimately, what will our users expect to get out of using our site? How are we helping them do these things?
Now, send out an email to your internal team members that you are organizing the effort to build a better website, and let them know you are interested in what they have to say. Make it clear you need their help with research to make the best site possible.
Done!
You are already well on your way to getting a broader perspective in creating a website that meets your goals.
Why the 5 minute survey works
As I have discussed many times, the number one enemy of clarity in team projects is the “unknown unknown”. There are many reasons why people don’t speak their minds, yet there is one simple way to alleviate all of it: ask and listen.
We need to strive every day to combat the toxic habit of ignoring or deprecating people’s points of view. Unfortunately, power politics in business settings often give more senior team members a voice, while largely ignoring more junior team members. This is inimical to progress, frustrating to those who are thwarted, and, quite simply, an inefficient way of working. Understanding all of the observations your team members have made is the quickest way to identify many previously unknown elements, and often these bring insights from customer interactions, technical considerations, and other areas of your team members’ specialties.
When you break this cycle, you can actually leap-frog over most impediments and you many learn more in a few days than your team has uncovered in months. It is exceptionally empowering to give each team member a voice, especially if they have had few opportunities before to speak up.
More often than not, there are many ideas and concerns that have just been waiting to come out. With this survey, you will get to see them all at a glance and get the conversation going in the right direction.
But, what if we’re part way through the project?
You might be skeptical about this approach if you are reading this article while in the middle of a project. To this I say, always remember the adage, “There’s no time like the present.” It’s likely that you are also in the middle of some issues that need to be resolved, and there may very well be unarticulated concerns and observations among your team members.
Of course, the sooner the better for a survey of this kind. However, no matter when you do it, it is always worthwhile as a gut-check at least once when tackling a new project. If you send the survey, get honest responses, and find out that everything is cool, well, you have a record, at a point in time, that team members are happy with where everything is going. And if complaints surface later, you have a solid point of comparison, sent from their email address, written in their own words. It protects you and other team members from the scope creep, waffling, and capriciousness that can sabotage a project.
What if the boss says, “no” to the survey?
I have a secret for you. It’s one of the best-kept secrets in business: All relationships are two-way. Your boss is just as accountable for your project’s success as any other team member. So, if your direct report person tries to block this process, you should persevere: “Ok, well, there seem to be some gaps in our understanding of what we’re trying to accomplish with the new website. I am hoping that a short survey will help us uncover these things so that we don’t get surprised later on. It’s ready to go and it is super-quick for team members to fill out and send back, like 5-10 minutes. I think a little time spent now will keep us from wasting time in the future.”
If this still does not work, you likely have three options: do you just tread water while the team struggles, do you hold your boss accountable, or do you work around the blocker? If you decide to tread water, be ready for some heartache. Since the opportunity was not presented to share their thoughts in a organized form, the thoughts will come out anyway, but at unpredictable times during your process. You will spend a lot of your time fielding innumerable criticisms and face long hours revising again and again. Don’t be surprised if you get burned.
Instead, if you have the stomach for it, persevere again and try option two: ask your boss for the North Star document stating goals for the new website, and ask to see a summary of the website performance statistics. If that does not light a fire under your boss, maybe nothing will. This cuts both ways, and both are to your benefit: if those documents do exist, then you have a benchmark to compare to team input later on. If they do not exist, you can reiterate the importance of them. If your boss still refuses, then you can know, in fairness, that you shouldn’t be judged on the new site’s performance if you’re not made aware of how it’s being measured.
Often, though, the best way is the middle way: the third option of working around it. If it’s too political to send a group survey, simply keep the survey in hand during your initial meetings, and reformulate the questions and propose them in conversation as often as you can. You might also ask one-on-one a team member who you trust to share their thoughts. It will probably be much slower, but at least you can still reap some of the benefits.
The actual email and survey format I use for my projects
Now I understand if this seems radical, or you might be struggling with the idea of writing a survey that will get honest responses. That’s why I have included a sample of the email I use, and the survey mentioned above, along with a step-by-step guide on what to do next, all within my book, Building Better Sites.
When you feel burdened by your workload, you always have to ask yourself: how much is your time worth? What if you could gain 15 years of website agency experience, along with proven insights for web design teams into what works and what doesn’t? The best part is, you can read it all the way through in an evening, and keep it on hand as a reference every day. Heck, you can even copy sections directly out of the book to help guide the process. It’s all there.
Building Better Sites is available now for instant download, and it is backed by a 110% money-back guarantee. You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain for the sanity of your website project.
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