Background
- Goals. What are your specific goals? Consider:
- company/brand awareness,
- product/services awareness,
- product/services sales,
- community building,
- entertainment,
- knowledge sharing, and
- internal communications.
- Promotional Fit. How should your Website fit with current promotional and marketing strategies and materials?
- Deadlines. What are the schedule or deadline requirements?
- Funding. What are the budgetary constraints?
- Measurement. How will you measure the success of the site?
Next Steps:
- Develop a ranked (from most- to least-important) Goals Master List.
- Create a mission statement for the site.
- Identify how the mission and goals of the site might change from short-term to long-term, given the direction of your organization and industry.
Audience
- External. Who is your EXTERNAL audience? Consider:
- current customers,
- potential customers,
- suppliers,
- professional/trade organizations,
- investors,
- competitors,
- children,
- schools/educators, and
- the sight-impaired.
- Internal. Who is your INTERNAL audience? Consider:
- all employees,
- management,
- marketing/sales,
- operations, and
- IT.
- Sub-groups. Determine all subgroups within the audiences identified above.
- Define. Identify the interests, technical skills and special issues for each audience group and subgroup.
Next Steps:
- Create a ranked Audience Master List.
- Develop an Aligned Master List by matching the Audience Master List to the Goals Master List.
- Create usage scenarios based on Aligned Master List.
Resources
- Project Roles. Who are the resources that will be responsible for content management and technical support (include their names, titles, roles, and contact info)?
- Team Skills. What are the technical and content management skills of each resource?
Next Steps:
For each resource, identify any training, software, hardware, scheduling and budgetary issues.
Competition
- Identify Competitors. Identify the sites of competitors and others that may provide direction for your site.
- Important Elements. Identify the important elements of each competitor site:
- functional features,
- technologies used,
- breadth of content and
- look-and-feel.
Next Steps:
- Develop a competitive analysis that includes the important elements of key competitor sites and which of these elements your site should match, exceed, or avoid.
- On a regular basis, revisit key competitor sites and update your competitive analysis.
Content
- Functionality. Which functional features should your site offer? Consider:
- ecommerce/shopping cart,
- site search,
- customer service/support,
- tech support,
- discussion forums,
- newsletter,
- catalog/information
- order forms,
- feedback form,
- member logon,
- password protected areas, and
- SSL-encrypted areas.
- Information. Which informational elements should your site contain? Consider:
- About Us page,
- Contact Us page,
- copyright notice, and
- privacy statement.
- Structure. What is your site’s hierarchy? For each of the 4-7 (though you can have more or less) main areas of the site, identify:
- each main menu item,
- all submenu items, and
- additional content.
Think of a tree-style hierarchy with the home page at the top.
Next Steps:
- Describe in detail each functional feature. What exactly will it do?
- Identify the resources required, and any technical and budgetary issues associated with each functional feature.
- Provide detail for each informational element.
- Assign content responsibilities to the resources identified above.
