Website projects can be laden with obstacles.

Even the most organised of folk can have their projects derailed and delayed by curveballs. And those curveballs are often related to content.

Enter the kick-off meeting! These can make or break a project and when successful they can ensure you get started from the best position possible. The purpose of a kick-off meeting is to ensure all of the project team are clear on the objectives and deliverables of the project, as well as the process for achieving that. These meetings are also chance to get all stakeholders in the room and to ask (and hopefully answer) anything about the project.

This is the perfect opportunity to start getting content onto the project agenda. To give your next website project the best chance to stay on track, launch on time (and budget!) and to keep stress levels to a minimum, we’ve created this handy checklist for you to take to the kick-off meeting or to discuss during the discovery phase. Use this checklist as an agenda for discussion, ensuring all stakeholders are present.

• Who is involved in the project and what are their responsibilities?
• Have you defined a workflow to get content done?
• Where will you be creating the content?
• What CMS will you be using to publish your content? (and who is tasked with getting content into the CMS?)
• Do you have a content style guide to ensure content is consistent and on brand?
• How will you measure the effectiveness of your content (analytics, KPIs etc)?
• Do you know what content you have, what new content you need and what you can archive?
• Who is going to write the content?
• What channels will you be creating content for outside of the website? (social etc)
• How does content need to be structured for the CMS?
• Will the content and website be published in stages or all at once?
• What technical requirements need to be considered such as responsiveness, accessibility, and browser testing?
• How will you migrate the content into the CMS? (and who is responsible for doing so?)
• Does someone have overall responsibility for content quality during the project and beyond launch
• What will the process be for managing and governing content once it is published?

Working through these questions will result in:

• Better collaboration between silos/teams
• Projects staying on track
• Engaged stakeholders and subject matter experts
• Ensuring content is considered early enough in the project
• Teams are prepared for key stages of a project such as production, migration and governance of content

There’s a lot to cover so you may decide to break this up into separate meetings, and you’ll need plenty of snacks to keep everyone energised, but answering these questions will help you be as prepared as you can at the start of your next website project and allow you to take your projects content-first.