Sometimes you get passed over for a job or a project and you regret it. Other times you realize it was the best thing that could have ever happened to you.
The other day I got an email from a company unveiling its brand new website. I quickly realized it was a project I bid on (with a partner) almost exactly a year before. A year. To do a website.
This was not some far-flung global enterprise with a need for some super-complex platform encompassing e-commerce and other capabilities. It was a small firm with one office and less than two-dozen employees and a need for maybe 50 pages of content.
In one of this project’s many ironies, the company’s original RFP prescribed an expedited schedule: bidders had one week to respond to the RFP, interviews would be conducted the following week, the project would be awarded by the end of that week and the winner would be expected to commence work immediately.
(And if you’re ever asked to respond to an RFP for creative work, run quickly in the other direction.)
In any case, a project that had no business taking more than three or four months took several times that long.
Here’s a tip: if it takes your small business a year to redesign its website, you’ve got much bigger problems than your website. And if you’re spending that much time on your website, how long is it taking to get the really hard things done?
Speed. It’s not everything — but without it, you’re nothing.
