Website Relaunch Project Plan: 4 Tips for Your Project Plan

1. Website Relaunch? What does that mean and when should you consider doing it!
2. The project plan as an efficient roadmap
3. Why is a project plan useful for your website relaunch?
4. What challenges are there in creating a project plan for a website relaunch?
5. What should a project plan for your website relaunch include?
6. 4 Tips for building a project plan for your Website Relaunch
7. Two website relaunches - two different experiences
8. Where to find your experts and the right tools
9. Conclusion

"Website Relaunch", a term that promises not only renewal and improvement, but also a lot of work, change management, stress and perhaps a bit of frustration. Okay, please scratch the words 'sometimes' and 'perhaps' before frustration. Because that is almost 100% guaranteed for you. Fortunately, there are tips, tricks and tools like awork, which I would like to introduce to you here, to keep despair as low as possible so that you can focus on the essentials - your creativity, the design and perfect implementation. All you need for this is actually just a proper website relaunch project plan.

If you're not exactly sure what a website relaunch is, let me explain it to you in a few simple and short sentences.

Website Relaunch? What does that mean and when should you consider doing it!

To put it simply, a website relaunch is the complete overhaul of your website with the goal of a homepage optimization. Be it visually or functionally, but especially from the point of view of the so-called "User Experience (UX)", i.e. the experience of your website users. The aim is to switch live to a new, better version, for example to generate more traffic and achieve your or the company's marketing goals and offer the users the greatest possible benefit in terms of their needs or abilities (keyword accessibility, such as visual impairment).

The areas that are mainly affected are web design, content and usability (usability). There are many reasons for a website renewal: whether due to structural changes in the company, new products or services, a change in the company's design or a stagnation that needs to be broken. However, one of the most frequent is certainly the adaptation to current standards in the rapidly changing times of today, especially in the digital sector. The best example is the rapid development of mobile phones. Nowadays, more people than ever are using their mobile phone for surfing, checking data and shopping. Accordingly, your website also needs to be constantly and optimally adjusted to the user experience, visibility, data protection and reach.

In summary, the following points should be included in a website relaunch:

• Renewal of the design
• Adaptation to current standards, especially in the digital area
• Content optimization
  • Texts 
  • Media (pictures and videos)
• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Improvement of user experience
• Adaptation to data protection regulations
• Improvement of accessibility (e.g. visual impairment) and inclusion (e.g. multilingualism)

Let me guess, looking at the above points, you're starting to breathe faster and feeling slightly panicked? Don't worry! With a well-thought-out project plan for your website relaunch, you're definitely on the safe side and what now seems like an impenetrable jungle will soon have a path you can easily navigate through.

The project plan as an efficient roadmap

The term 'project plan' makes the hearts of those people beat faster who like to be perfectly organized and like to have every step thought through and fixed in time. In short, organization freaks, like I am for example 😉.

A project plan is nothing more than a red thread that runs through your entire project and allows you to see at a glance where you are currently in your project, what things still need to be done, who still has what tasks to do, how much of your budget has already been consumed and what your website relaunch costs were in the end and most importantly, whether you are still within your fixed timetable.

So that you do not start skidding or, to stick with the previous metaphor, you do not get lost in the jungle, the project plan is in a sense your map or route description. It is the basis of your project and should by no means be neglected. This is where important information and milestones are set so that you can stick to your website relaunch schedule.

You can create the project plan using an Excel file or through pretty cool tools that are already on the market for modern project management that allow you to communicate easily with all participants and stay up to date at all times:

• Asana
• Trello
• awork

I would recommend that you create a project plan for the smallest projects but definitely for your website relaunch.

Why is a project plan useful for your website relaunch?

As already mentioned, many things come at you all at once in a website relaunch. Many of these require perfect coordination as they can only be done when other tasks have been completed beforehand. For example, imagine you want to change the content of your page. Here you need new texts and that in several languages, as you also offer your homepage in English and Italian. In order not to delay, it is thus advisable to precisely define in the project plan which texts are to be written by whom, when they should be finished, which of them are to be translated and when the translators have to start their work, so that you can integrate everything before the due date, the day you want to go live, into your new website.

By this set timetable you can therefore recognize early enough whether everything is going according to plan, or if you need to intervene or follow up somewhere to stay on track. Furthermore, the project plan offers you a certain assurance that you won't miss anything. If you only realize after completion which feature your homepage must still contain, it is often associated with considerable costs and a huge amount of time to integrate this afterwards. Under certain circumstances it can become very elaborate as it could mean an intervention in the whole website structure.

In short, the project plan summarizes the most important points for your relaunch website planning that need to be done to achieve your project goal.

What challenges are there in creating a project plan for a website relaunch?

Too many cooks spoil the broth!‘ This sentence unfortunately also applies to project planning. It is undisputed that you need a team to implement the website relaunch. Therefore, it is particularly important that you not only precisely state in your project plan who will take over which tasks and who will have the project management, but also define a clear role distribution. Otherwise, absolute chaos will ensue and in the end nobody will understand anything anymore and nobody will feel responsible for anything. So go through each task in detail and assign each one with a name and date by which and by whom this point must be completed.

So the devil is in the details here too. When creating the plan, you need to make sure that you add all tasks, define them in terms of time and plan all resources, but it also needs to be so detailed and understandable that a stranger can understand exactly what is to be done next when reading through it. Changes in the team can unfortunately always happen, especially since the realization of a new website can take several months if not over a year.

But let's be honest, the biggest challenge is probably to keep the project plan always Up to Date . So make sure your plan is stored in a place where all participants have access. However, remember that your team does not only consist of people who work in your company and have access to the same server, but also of external people (programmers, web designers, etc.). So you need to find a solution that is optimal and easily accessible for all. Believe me! It will be hard enough to remember to always mark their points in the project plan as done or to note any delays. So don't make it any harder for them by hiding the plan somewhere.

What should a project plan for your website relaunch include?

To make the website relaunch as smooth as possible for you and the whole company, it is important to integrate the following points into your project plan:

• Project start and end
• Project contents and determination of the individual sub-projects, work packages, milestones and deliverables
  • Website concept (how should the individual pages and the structure look like)
  • Programming
• Texts
• Media
• SEO (creation of title and meta description)
• Definition of tasks and their distribution - project organization chart
• Resource determination
• Budget
• Risk analysis
• Test phase

4 Tips for building a project plan for your Website Relaunch

I know, I know! The whole thing sounds mega complicated and complicated now. But it doesn't have to be. Just follow the following 4 tips for building a project plan and you will see that it is much easier than you think.

1. Take your time

In order to create a proper project plan and make your work easier later on, it is important that you take enough time in advance to think everything through carefully and calmly.

2. Be precise

Even if it seems too exaggerated at the beginning, include everything as detailed as possible in your project plan. Better too much than too little is the motto here and only then you will keep track of your project and can solve any arising problems early enough.

3. Set realistic goals

This is probably one of the most important tips that I can give you. Especially if you have superiors who you have to keep informed about the website relaunch. It helps no one, if the goals are set too tight and unrealistic, like a too early set website go-live date. This only leads to frustrations and unnecessary meetings and discussions later.

4. Distribute the tasks

You do not have to do everything alone and especially not be an expert*in in every field. Leave things that you cannot do yourself, like giving them to someone else. This also means that you can involve your team in setting up the project plan.

Two website relaunches - two different experiences

I had the chance to take care of several website relaunches in the last years and especially in two projects the experiences could not have been more different.

We implemented one homepage without a previous project plan. The motto from the top was also 'We do as much as possible ourselves and what we don't know, we learn!'. I don't think I need to mention here that the whole project ended in total chaos, frustration and unnecessary, endless meetings. The relaunch should have been completed within a few months, but in the end it took us over a year. Without project plan the tasks were not clearly defined and in the end everybody seemed to be doing everything. As we had not set any interim goals (milestones), we missed the opportunity to schedule the programmers in time to go live on day X. A lot of time was then also wasted in getting into things we had no idea about. In the end, for example, I was responsible for the entire SEO topic. I had never heard of it before. But from one day to the next I had to know how to create perfect meta descriptions and titles, how to set up Google Analytics correctly and use the search console. Another topic that is often underestimated is the adherence to the corporate brand (CI). Sounds super easy, but it is harder than you think and so more and more new colors crept into the individual pages, which had nothing to do with our CI.

On the second homepage I entered the whole project crosswise. The rough design and structure of the website had already been created with an external graphic designer and the programmer and the project plan had also started to take shape. Nevertheless, I spent a whole day just working out the project plan, precisely noting what the next tasks are, when I have to finish which text and when we are finally going live. In the next step, I communicated this plan to all involved, so that everyone could schedule their time accordingly. In addition, I went through with my superiors exactly what needs to be outsourced so that we stay on schedule and especially that everything could be set up by experts, keyword SEO. Of course, not everything went 100% according to plan here either. But it was much easier to find solutions before the problems became insurmountable obstacles, so that we could go live on time and on the day.

Where to find your experts and the right tools

Every beginning is difficult, especially when looking for the right tools and experts. But luckily, today there are many sites that can help you with recommendations and reviews. For website creations and construction kits, such as Wix and Jimdo, OMR Reviews has many good tips and tools on their site:

• STRATO SmartWebsite
• Wix
• Webflow
• EASY2
• Squarespace

Another huge help is to first ask around in your own circle of friends. For example, for our SEO experts, I asked my friends and acquaintances from the web/marketing environment for their recommendations and opinions on various companies.

Another great platform, which is still underestimated today, is LinkedIn. Especially when you have no idea where to start.

Conclusion

A website relaunch can be frustrating and exhausting, but also exciting, thrilling and, in a positive sense, challenging. To make your life easier, it's definitely worth creating a Website Relaunch Project Plan first. This not only gives it a structure, or a route description to the goal, but also a certain assurance that you won't get lost in all the tasks and time windows.

So I can only advise you to invest your time in a proper project plan and with my 4 tips you will definitely succeed.