In a recent episode of The Geeks and God Podcast we talked about church website pre-production. In this episode you'll hear alot of talk about what you should expect when creating a reasonable timeline for developing your church website. We suggested (as is the policy at Mustardseed) to figure on about 2-3 months of development time. However, a recent project experience shed some more light on this issue, creating a new wrinkle that I never thought about.

The Eye Opening Project

About a month ago we had a contact from a potential client. This church contacted Mustardseed saying they wanted a Drupal website developed and (here's the kicker) they wanted it launched within about 1 week. My initial reaction was "no way." To build a quality website in this short amount of time seemed unreasonable...but I didn't cut him off. I listened further to what they were looking for.

After about an hour of conversation, I was at least open to attempting this project. The reason? To put it bluntly, the client has his stuff together. He knew exactly what they wanted. He knew exactly what they needed. He knew exactly their budget...not to mention, he had proper expectations of the time frame (he wasn't asking that we build something really complex in that week). Basically, by the end of the conversation I was willing to give it a shot, even though it didn't seem like an ideal situation.

So, within a day, the church had approved the working proposal (this process usually takes about 2-3 weeks for most churches) and within another 24 hours I had all the content in my hands that I needed. They were serious about getting this project completed. To make a long story short (which is appropriate for this article) 48 hours later...the site was ready for launch. This timeline was amazing...but what was even more amazing was the quality of the site. It was actually work I would be proud of.

The Lesson

So, you may be thinking that this doesn't sound all that amazing. Oh, but it is. A project like this usually really does take 2-3 months to complete. So what was so different in this case? How did we break all the rules and get a quality site built in such a short amount of time? Here's some of the factors that broke the mold:

• The client was willing to devote total focus to the project. Strangely enough, this rarely happens. Usually, church folks are trying to do 100 things at once...but this client decided that he would devote a singular focus to the project, which allowed us to be in easy and constant communication.
• The client knew what he wanted. But don't all churches know what they want in their website? The surpising answer is 'no'. Most churches don't. Now, this isn't a bad thing...it just means that they need to take time to develop their ideas and make sure they have their priorities straight. This church already knew. When they presented it to me, that was clear...I didn't need to convince them to do something they hadn't thought of, because they had thought of it all. They were not only on top of their needs...they were on top of web technology as a whole.
• In a compressed and organized timeline like this, inspiration could drive us. One of the biggest issues with a longer timeline is loss of excitement, focus, and inspiration. With this project, since the client had everything together and focused, we were able to operate off the passion and inspiration without risking disorganization.

Is it on the client's shoulders?

Ok, so you might have noticed that every reason this project achieved a quick result at a high quality was because of the client...not because of Mustardseed. Is this just our bias? Maybe. But I don't think so. I always tell potential clients that 90% of the timeline on a project is dependent to how quickly they can work, how organized they are, and how much time they can dedicate to the project. To me, this experience proved this theory correct. A dedicated and organized client yielded a speedy and high quality site.

So, I suppose the lesson here, for a client, is to be devoted to your web-design project fully. Spend the time. Do the organization. Clear out the roadblocks so inspiration can run wild. And most of all, do all of this before finding a developer. Remember that, when building a website, you're building something that should last for many years. If you put in the work and commitment up front, you'll find that your developer can work quickly and efficiently, producing a high quality site in a shorter timeline than is typical.