Strategy Worksheet

Your Company

• Provide descriptions, including competitors, along with a brief critique of their sites.
• Include contact info and the group who will be working on the project.
• Who are the decision makers?
• Who else would be contracting?
• Who's responsible for what?
• What human resources do you have for the project?

Your Web Site Project

• What is the mission statement or summary of your project?
• What are the basic goals of this project?
• What outcome will make this project successful?
• How will you measure success?
• What are your time schedule requirements?
• What is the budget for this project? Is there a range?
• Has any work been done toward designing a new web site.
• Discuss existing identity/branding assets (logos, artwork, fonts).
• Rank the following, in order of importance:
      _ A web strategy that fits with our corporate strategy
      _ Repurposing existing content
      _ Creating a community of dedicated visitors
      _ Quality execution (graphics, writing, navigation, etc.)
      _ Ease of maintenance
      _ Doing better than our competition on the Web
      _ People bookmark the site because they get so much out of it
      _ Staying within the budget
      _ Sending the message that we know the Web

Your Audience

• What types of visitors do you want to attract?
• What are the products/services involved?

Your Content

• Where will content come from? Will it be new, repurposed, or both?
• How often will you add new content or update?

Functionality

• What functional items do you believe to be necessary? (e.g., download areas, database-driven webpages, e-commerce, catalog, applications, etc.)
• Who will update these functionalities?
• What is the budget for hosting and maintenance of the site?
• Who will maintain the site contents?
• How will the site be served/hosted?
• What types of legacy systems/databases are in place?
• What is your long-term plan for the site?

The Field Trip

This part of the profile is very important. The more work you put into it, the more your project will benefit. Find one site for each of the following categories, as it relates to your new site:

• Image/branding in a similar situation to yours
• Appeal to same target group of customers
• Colors, look-and-feel, user interface, layout
• Site with similar size
• Attracting new people with news, giveaways, impact
• Your competitors' sites
• Quality of content
• Quality of graphics
• Functionality (things sites do for people)
• Community, special features, responsiveness
• Overall favorite sites (for whatever reasons)