Raise your hand if your website redesign or relaunch has been delayed due to website copy modifications, or specifically the idea that 2-3 members of your senior management team need to review site copy before it goes live.
Based on experience, I am certain there are a bunch of you with your hands raised. 4 of every 5 website projects I’ve been involved in veer off track due to delays in the copy approval/revision process, not necessarily the copywriting process (although the initial copywriting phase is a delay candidate as well).
Why so many cooks in the kitchen, you might ask? From what I can gather, the reasons are fairly simple. In a mid-size organization, a Director or Manager level employee “owns” the website project, and may even have a webmaster or marketing manager as a “co-owner”. Then you insert 1-3 members of the senior management team, all of whom (rightfully so) hold a stake in the success of the website. Those members of the senior management team may be involved in the early phases of the website revamp process – they want to sign off on final design, general site structure, etc. But what they REALLY want to get involved in is the copywriting of the website, or at least the critique of copywriting piece of the website.
Right or wrong (and senior management getting involved in copywriting is not necessarily a bad thing), here’s why senior management wants to get involved, and why it always causes delays: Read the rest of this entry »
