You’ve just completed a major website update, added a microsite, invested in some SEO activity as part of your ongoing SEM work and now you’re awaiting the results. Over the weeks, sales do increase and some positive comments come in from customers who use your site regularly. But did you get what you pay for?

Increasingly, companies are finding that with Web development shops being so busy, finishing projects becomes a challenge. SEO projects seem to lag and sometimes it’s a challenge to know you got what you paid for. Determining value for websites has been an issue for years. We’ve noted a marked increase in companies that are questioning the value of the work, or just trying to sort out what really needs to be completed. In some cases, but rarely so, we’ve found copied code from other, older projects or coding errors that slow a site down. In other cases, the SEO was tweaked, but would not do much for ranking. Often with SEO projects, we’ve found poor link strategies and questionable linking exchanges and tricks employed that may end up doing more damage than good.

There are many good Web development shops out there, and they are almost always busy. This means they can charge a premium for their time. There are some emerging shops as well, and they can provide exceptional value if you find them at the right time. As well, some Search Engine Marketing companies do well and have good practices; their work relies on consistently delivering good results.

The first step in ensuring a Web project goes well, and that you have a benchmark later, is to develop a solid Scope Of Work (SOW) up front. This should become a living document through the project. As you change requirements, be sure to add them in writing to the SOW. If you are unsure of what work has been completed that you can’t see and your IT team doesn’t have the resources to check, either hire an independent firm to audit the project, or bring in an outside coder to review the work. If you think you’re going to be questioning the company that completed the work, the SOW and Change Agreements can be critical to cutting your bill or enforcing the remaining work to be done.

Any development agency or shop that doesn’t offer a SOW or some form of clear statement of work, likely does not have it’s own best practices in place. So when reviewing a Web company to design a site or implement a new project, take a look under their hood and find out what their Project Management solution is, if they even have one. Ask how they deal with changes and who will be handling changes and work scope additions throughout the project.

These are just some of the things you can do to ensure a good project conclusion and have a smooth working relationship with your development firm. Surprisingly, we’ve seen some fairly large firms have little or no project management, while we’ve seen some firms with good project management.