Top 5 reasons your Kentico project failed

Fortunately, these problems are preventable, if you know how to look out for them. 

1 Licensing lapse 

First off is planning ahead for where your business is going, while also taking into consideration what it does now. That means choosing the licence that works best for your budget and your long-term goals.  If you know you’re going to need a suite of marketing tools a couple of years from now, it’s worth considering buying the EMS licence from the get-go. That way, you aren’t having to retrofit your CMS site into the EMS version at a later date.   Likewise, consider whether you need a multi-site licence bundle before you buy. You may not need it right this minute, but where are you planning to be a year from now? Two, three, five years from now? A website build takes time, and when it’s done, your business will have grown, and once the website is fully functional, it will grow more! Will it save you money in the long run? You have to run the figures and plan accordingly.  

2 Customisation conundrum 

Kentico has a very robust framework of in-built features that deliver a lot of functionality if used properly. Understanding what is on offer and how it can work for your business is key to making the best of Kentico.   Every website has a bit of customisation, of course. But when clients want to create lots of customisation instead of considering what’s already available within Kentico, they may be taking unnecessary risk. Big customisation jobs will cost more money both to build up front and to maintain in the long run because they will have to be made compatible with every Kentico upgrade and security patch.   The best practice with Kentico is usually to take advantage as often as possible of their own features because they work seamlessly with each other. 

3 Structural snags 

Kentico has a lot of flexibility, which can be very attractive. Applying that flexibility to the variety of content and how it appears makes for an exciting and engaging user experience. Using it to toy with the underlying website structure, however, can result in a confusing user journey.   Locking down certain elements of the website’s layout protects the overall integrity of the website’s design. This prevents the structure from breaking down while still allowing for maximum freedom within content strategy. Planning in advance how to approach a layout lockdown will save some development difficulties in the long run. 

4 Expertise issues 

Choosing a digital agency that has been certified as a Kentico partner is a assurance of a certain level of competence on the platform, and in particular specialisms. At an even higher level, a Kentico Quality Expert is a guarantee of a high level of expertise. As a result, you know what standard you can expect from your finished Kentico website. Going with a less experienced agency may seem less expensive, but it may cost in the long run in tweaks and fixes.   But perhaps even more important is the expertise of your own team. Clients who take advantage of team training on Kentico are able to take better control of their own websites. They become more self-reliant when it comes to content management and problem solving, and that means relying less on the agency to do every single thing after the project has launched. That saves operational and maintenance time. Which is money in the bank. 

5 Project management pitfalls 

Underestimating what’s involved in the process of building a website from the ground up is usually the root cause of project management issues. They can affect any project, including Kentico ones.   In particular, giving the digital agency access to the right people in their organisation can be a real sticking point. When scoping the project, the agency needs to talk to the people who operate the website and populate it with content in order to design something that is fully functional. Not just the department managers.  Another issue is that many clients come to the planning table with just placeholder content. Not having content that is in its final format at the beginning of the project makes planning the design very tricky. It’s a bit like trying to design a house and not knowing how many rooms are needed. At the end, if the finalised content doesn’t fit, the page has to be redesigned or the content does. Either way, it’s time and money.  Now you’ve got a clearer view of what’s ahead. You can start planning!  If you’d like to talk more about your Kentico project, get in touch.