Title slide for Episode 31

Five Days of Focus – How Using a Content-First Development Approach Saves Money

Day 3 of our 5 Days of focus 2020.

Okay, so you’ve got your proposal equipped with your master services agreement, and you’re starting to set clear expectations with your clients. You’re almost ready to party down in WordPress Town—or so you think.

 We’ve talked about setting expectations through clear agency-client communication (and, spoiler alert: we’ll talk about it more next time!) Everybody has different responsibilities when it comes to a site’s creation. If you’re going to create a functional site that fits the client’s requests, not only do you have to provide them with a site, but they have to provide you with the content for it. That means logos, photos, copy, etcetera.

Here we’ve got a classic case of chicken vs. egg, and which came first: the content, or the site?

Many people would argue that it’s easiest to create a site and then simply toss in the content when a client gives it to you. At the risk of sounding a little bit harsh, we’re bigger fans of only creating the site after the content has been received from the client—a content-first development approach.

If you’ve never heard of a content-first approach before, you might be a little bit skeptical, but it really is a game-changer for efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability.

It all comes down to these two reasons:

  1.  Time is money.
  2. There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to a site.

When you’re creating a site, you’re creating it with an agency and its imaging in mind. Chances are, if you take the approach of creating a site, then plugging what you’ve got, you’ll spend your precious time adjusting and adapting the site to the content that you eventually receive. And your time is money.

If you’re waiting on a client to send you content, chances are, you’re not taking on too many other projects. That site in purgatory is keeping you from pursuing leads that could be more profitable than this current one, but you’re stuck in the doghouse, with no content in sight.

Anyone who’s ever had a teenager at home (at least, everyone has been a teenager) knows the epic struggle that is involved every time you ask them to do anything. “Clean your room!” Eye roll. “Bring down the empty ups from your nightstand!” Exasperated sigh. At the end of the day, sometimes getting something done comes down to vague (or not so vague) threats.

But do you really want to have to go down that road with your clients, asking, then begging, then creating ultimatums so that they send their content? After all, it’s amazing how time seems to slow down for even the loveliest of clients, the closer it gets to the date for paying the final bill.

Let’s make success—and saving money—inevitable.

 In today’s Can We Talk, we lay down all of the rules successfully implementing a content-first development approach, including:

  • getting an accurate idea of the magnitude of content you need to receive as part of your process
  •  setting standards for content quality.
  •  setting content-delivery incentives and penalties for clients.
  •  creating—and agreeing on—a minimum viable website with your clients.

This episode is loaded with information, and I don’t want to ruin all of the fun. Check it out, and let me know if you’re Team Content-First!

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