How to Prepare a Comprehensive Membership Website Plan for Non-Techies

About This Episode
Let's talk about how to take charge of your association's membership website redesign project! It starts with understanding that you — the client — are just as much responsible for a successful outcome as your service provider (your developers). Learn where everyone's responsibilities begin and end, how to pick the right developer, and how to actually launch as close to on time and on budget as possible!

About Our Guest
Natasha Golinsky is the founder and lead project manager at On Purpose Projects. Natasha is an expert at website development project management, project scoping, managing expectations, and preventing project-scope creep that delays and adds costs to your membership site project.

Full List of Questions We Asked Natasha
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do.

Can you share some common mistakes organizations make in planning their website projects?

Very often prospective clients come to us with a project plan that is not what they need to accomplish what they want. What would be your approach to planning a website project?

Can you share your thoughts about RFPs, and how they impact a project versus a workshop or formal project scoping process?

As much as we want our clients to do a thorough job understanding and scoping their projects, most clients don’t have the technical experience or marketing background to do this on their own. When clients are not highly technical, how would you divide the responsibility between you and the client?

You mentioned you work on high-ticket projects with large organizations. With organizations like this, you work with multiple stakeholders and point people. What are some key project roles that the client should take on?

How does the QA process fit into the scope and cost of the project?

In order to make a project successful, we have to put some key boundaries in place. What are some key boundaries you set?

We test and QA and try to imagine every foreseeable outcome and risk, but there are always things that come up after launch that you didn’t predict. How do you handle these QA blindspots?

What if a website is already built and just needs some fixes to improve it. How would the project scoping work?

How would you scope a membership site differently than a regular website?

Audience Questions
How can you get buy-in from leadership that thinks its members don't need an engaging website to join? 

What are some important questions I should ask the developers?

How important is domain knowledge (industry-specific experience)? Eg. working on a restaurant website vs a medical website. Is working with an agency with membership experience important for member-based organizations?

What are the key things to consider when creating a tender document for a membership organization website? What are the pitfalls and the key pointers to achieving a successful outcome?

Closing Questions
What is your biggest takeaway for our audience?

Can you share a personal habit that has contributed the most to your success?

Want to learn more about how to engage your members?
Register for an upcoming webinar or live podcast!