Learn How to Avoid the Ills of Content Delay

Every website development business, every web design firm and every content marketer has likely had an unpleasant experience dealing with content delay. A common scenario runs something like this:

1. A company hires you to develop a new website, completely revamp an existing site or make some other kinds of tweaks to a site. You assign a contact from your team of project managers.
    
2. For budgetary or other reasons, the client agrees to furnish the content for the new or updated site. Your project manager schedules milestone and deadlines.
    
3. Your web designers work diligently with the client to produce the mockups for approval. Once approved, your web developers start coding the actual site.
    
4. All along the way, your project manager checks in with the client regarding the promised content. As the deadline for the content approaches, the client stops replying to your emails and answering your calls.
    
5. The deadline for content comes and goes with no word. Your team of web developers finishes the coding, but the project is stalled.

If this sounds familiar to you, you’ve experienced content delay. Even though you got at least a 50 percent deposit up front before you started the project, by this point, your expenses may exceed that amount. And without a responsive client, the end of the project is nowhere in sight. Welcome to the stress of content delay.

Decision Time for Project Managers

So you have some decisions to make. You can’t move forward on the client’s project. The coding is complete, except for any fixes or last-minute requests that can happen during the testing phase, but the testing phase can’t move forward without real content. It’s a dilemma that has to cause stress, even without the financial aspect.

You may continue to press the client for answers, but it’s soon obvious that your contact has left you in the lurch, had a serious accident, left for vacation without telling you or died suddenly. You reluctantly put the project aside and move onto other things. Your web developers and your project managers get involved in other web projects and forget about the incomplete project. Your team is back on track with a (hopefully) more responsive client.

Out of the Blue

A month or maybe two later, the original client reaches out to deliver the content and ask when the website can be finished. At first, you may feel elated, thinking that now you can be paid for all the work your team has done. And then you realize that your team is booked solid through the next two months.

Now you have to negotiate with the client, telling him the bad news while trying to assure him the site will be ready. All this adds to stress levels that are already high from running a successful small business. Content delay has repercussions for you and your team of web developers, project managers and graphic designers.

Solutions to Content Delay

To avoid the stress of content delays, you need a strategy for dealing with clients who let you down. You need to plan for content before it stops your website project. Some proven ideas include:

• Late fees. Attach fees to each milestone in your project plan. Your project managers will love the idea of added incentives. To get your clients onboard, tell them that the fees apply to your milestones too. If you miss a milestone, the client receives discounts or freebies. It may help prevent content delays when the client knows that he’ll have to pay more if the content is late. You can even make it progressive, so the longer the delay, the more the fees.
• Different pay structure. Instead of 50 percent up front and 50 percent on completion, break it up. Maybe every milestone has a payment associated with it. The deeper into the project the milestone, the less each payment is. It’s incentive to continue with your services.
• Put it in writing. If your client Is preparing the content, put the warnings of tardiness in the contract. You can use fees as incentive, but that may be insufficient. Make sure the client knows that if you have to put the project on hold due to a missed deadline, you can’t pick it right back up when the content finally arrives. In addition to the financial penalties, the project has to go to the back of the queue.
• Prioritize the content. If you’re worried that you won’t get the content on time, make the content a project priority. Tell the client you can’t start the website development until you have the content in hand. That’s certainly a motivating strategy. Introduce your client to a professional writing team to provide the content, if necessary.
• Assume responsibility for the content. Don’t allow the client to write the content, no matter how much he insists. This produces two wins: no content delay and better content for the site. If you have no content team, outsource it to a responsive and talented content writing firm, such as Ray Access.

When you hire third-party professionals to write the content for your client, you not only save time, money and headaches, but you also improve the quality of the overall product your team develops. Effective website content gets noticed by visitors and search engines alike. It also generates more leads for the client, another win for which a smart client credits you and your web developers.

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Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words that empower your business to succeed. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters, and more, with cross-links and thorough internet research.