"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." Anonymous, often attributed to Dan Quayle

Determining if your website project will be a success or failure is tricky. It's like trying to decide if the pizza you're about to eat will be good or bad (which can be a trick question- when is pizza ever that bad?). 

There are ways of measuring how well a site is performing (number of hits, amount of outages, etc.) but most of these techniques are applied after the fact. Is there an assessment one can do at the outset to help minimize failure and maximize success?

Having worked as an IA for a long time (more than ten years) I've seen my share of good and bad web projects. And what seems to be common among those that never really deliver seems to be a slightly misguided purpose to the project. We know context informs expectations and sets our perception. A slice of thin, greasy pizza may disappoint me if I sit down at a gourmet restaurant, but will taste like heaven at three in the morning after a night of debauchery. 

It's up to the project team to judge the client's expectations and frame the deliverables accordingly. When the client's expectation of more visitors, more sales, or more donations are mismatched to the project then it's much more difficult to manage, let alone fulfill. I've listed three causes for potential pitfalls at the outset of a project and their associated symptoms. Keep an eye out for these to help set realisic expectations up front and avoid disappointment or even failure later on. 

1. The client wants to make the site more attractive. Shuffling the same old content around within a new design is like putting lipstick on a pi...er, pitbul...it doesn't work. Your visitors may be temporarily drawn to your new gradients and fancy icons, but once they see nothing below the surface has changed they will move on.

Symptoms:

• Making design decisions based on aesthetics and disregarding your messages, business goals, and content needs
• Choosing colors, fonts, graphics that get noticed before your content does
• Spending more time and internal resources on design decisions than content creation, maintenance, and governance

2. The client wants to reorganize the content. Often times we engage with clients because the content they have has been shoehorned into pages on their site, is difficult for users to find, or difficult for their part-time webmaster to maintain. The hope of a true CMS to solve these problems compels them into a site redesign. But a CMS in and of itself is not a magic bullet.

Symptoms: 

• Rearranging old content
• Implementing a CMS for content that isn't planned for
• Creating workflows for content that has no resources for its creation, maintenance, or governance

3. The client wants technology to support their business plan. Ideas are great; they're the spark that (should) eventually catalyze a business into action. But a site won't attract visitors, let alone customers, with only an idea. And no matter what you plan on selling (shoes, charity services, goodwill, digital downloads) the thing that customers will require first is information.

Symptoms:

• The "we need a website" attitude (as opposed to "we need a medium to get our message out" mindset)
• A budget for development but no budget for content strategy
• A hard and fast deadline for a site launch and no coherant plan for branding, content, or marketing.

If you're a client and are about to embark on a redesign it may be worthwhile to ensure that you're clear about what really needs to happen to ensure success. And here's a clue- it's not about the website. It's about having a strategy that guides you throughout your business (and a website is only a small part of that).

If you're a developer, designer, or agency working with a short-sighted client you'll be doing a great disservice to them if you're not frank about how their project can succeed or fail based on their expectations and perceptions. We are hired as the experts (i.e. wise through experience) and need to recognize symptoms of potential disaster before it strikes. Understanding the client's overall strategy is essential for success. And if the client doesn't have one then it's up to us to help them discover a strategy, at least as it relates to the work we're doing for them.  A bad pizza might give us a little heartburn, but that's nothing compared to an unsuccessful engagement.  Bon apetit'!