Even Darrin Stephens had a process, we just never saw it.
Remember how Darrin Stephens in Bewitched was portrayed as an idea guy? He would burn the midnight oil trying to come up with the perfect campaign while Larry Tate did nothing but worry about losing the account. Add in a little witchcraft and everyone is making millions!
We all know it doesn't work that way. For starters, we never saw Darrin doing the hard work - getting to know the customer's business, learning their strengths and weaknesses, understanding their market and competition. The point is: you can't jump straight in to the "fun" stuff - the creative work.
I can't count how many times I've seen projects start with creative, only to find that the project must start over at the real beginning. It's natural for site owners to want to see what their shiny new site is going to look like, but websites (at least good ones) are complex communication tools. Content moves from page to page, e-newsletters point to special landing pages, checkout systems go though a dozen variant steps depending on who is shopping, etc.
If the site owner approves a design before the content is defined, bad things can happen. If the content doesn't fit the design, one must be compromised. Either the design is changed, leaving everyone involved in the project disappointed that a great design had to be scrapped, or the content is altered to squeeze into the design, watering down the message.
For your next website project to succeed, do the dirty work first. You can download our white paper titled "Process for Web Projects" to see how we solve this problem, one step at a time.
Believe me, Darrin didn't become Larry's top account manager without doing his homework.