Website projects fail to solve the original problem when goals are undefined or undocumented, when the diagnosis is skipped in favor of immediate execution, and when assumptions about the problem substitute for evidence. If marketing goals are not specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound, the project has no target to hit.
A proper pre-project audit confirms three things: goals are documented and known by both teams, current performance gaps are quantified against a single source of truth, and key processes are documented accurately. When buyer personas exist on paper but are not referenced during content creation, they are not actually guiding the work, and the project reproduces the same misalignment the old site had. Projects often assume the answer is more traffic, more content, or more ad spend, when the real issue is clarity, proof, friction, or next-step alignment. The pattern repeats because the gap between "what we think is wrong" and "what is actually wrong" is never closed with data before the project scope is finalized.