In these days of tight schedules and high workload demands, efficiency is critical. The better you prepare your end of the web project, the happier your IT counterparts will be – and the quicker you can get your joint project completed.
When you’re working on a joint project with your IT folks, here are some tips gathered from things I’ve seen Marketing folks I’ve worked with do to help things go a lot smoother:
- Gather everything in one place as early as possible
The time to do this is not a couple weeks before the project is scheduled for completion – this needs to be done way ahead of time. If you think you need an image, grab it. If you need some copy for a web page, write (or copy) it. Get everything you need in one place. You might want to make a special folder for each web project on your computer. - Label EVERYTHING
Give all your images unique names and put them in subfolders to organize them better. If there is a caption or text to go with an image, put them into a document file and make sure to clearly match the file name of the image to the text which goes with it. The more “copy and paste” you can make things the better. Don’t make the IT folks guess at what you want or what you mean, unless they work with you a lot they probably won’t get it right. It would be great if you would arrange your “repository” with subfolders with the names of the folders for the web site. Inside you can name the document files to correspond with the pages the text will go on. You might also create more subfolders to hold the images I refer to above. In the end, the easier you make it to find things the more efficiently the project will go. - Don’t Leave Anything Out
As much as you possibly can, include everything that needs to go with the web site in the final package you deliver to your IT folks. Every time something turns up missing and they have to ask for it, momentum is lost. Sometimes, if it takes too long for you to respond, they might get to other tasks which could delay completion of you project. Of course, sometimes things are going to be forgotten and left out. The more you minimize this the less frustrating it is for your IT counterparts. Make sure you keep tabs on your email and phone in case they call. If you did forget something, get it to them as quickly as possible to avoid losing that precious momentum.
Organization is key. The more organized you are when gather and assemble your materials the easier it will be to replicate what you envision for your web site.
Web Site Update Tip
One marketer I know came upon a great idea when specifying updates for her web sites. She does screen shots and pastes them into PDF documents and puts them into a network folder shared with the IT folks. She uses the text markup and notes tools in Acrobat to show the changes she wants made. When the IT folks have questions, they can leave them on the PDF pages using the sticky note tool so she can respond. This is not only a great way to organize, it helps keep the communications flow going smoothly as well.
One Last Tip
You might also consider using Google Wave as a communications tool for collaboration. In a recent project, I found it to work quite well in organizing communications among a disparate and distant (geographically) group. I wrote an article last year which will help get you started in Wave. I highly recommend you give it a try.
What ideas do you have to help make joint Marketing and IT projects go more smoothly? Please feel free to share some in the comments.
photo credit: @davestone
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