Strategy and planning is an important first step in any web design or redesign project, to ensure that the results meet your goals and deliver ROI.
The website strategy process looks a bit like this:
- Site-wide content audit and analytics review to identify key content to keep, modify, or remove.
- Hold a collaborative kickoff meeting with all client stakeholders and project collaborators.
- Identify key features and map to business goals and buyer persona needs.
- Create a strategy brief, sitemap & wireframes, and software development spec.
- SEO and analytics review of the existing website and key competitor performance.
- Content strategy and messaging development.
- Prioritize features based on your highest priority initiatives.
Here’s what’s considered in a website strategy:
We review your ICP (ideal customer profile) and buyer personas, current and competitor analytics and business goals; your company’s brand attributes and your website goals. Conversation topics include:
- What does success look like for the site?
- What’s working and not working about your current marketing, branding, website, and other marketing materials?
- What market trends can you foresee impacting the way people will interact with your company?
- Who are your ideal customers and what are they seeking in your website, and from you as a company?
- What key messages resonate within the sales cycle?
- What features are must-haves, or nice-to-haves for both users and admin users?
- How does the list change when we consider time and budget?
We hold a collaborative kickoff meeting to discuss your company, website and digital marketing in depth, including overall needs/goals, what’s worked well in the past, and how you stack up against your competitors. Armed with information you share, and our research, we create a practical metrics-driven strategy that makes the best use of available resources.
Delivering a practical, easy-to-follow website strategy
Long before products make it to production, they exist as a CAD file. Think of the strategy and planning deliverables as your website’s CAD file equivalent.
The strategy brief is a first draft overview of how you can improve or optimize your site’s user experience and effectiveness. It includes:
- Project challenges and solutions
- Website information architecture
- SEO-informed content strategy
- Key personas and website audiences
- User Flows
- Goals, metrics, KPIs
After review and collaborative feedback, we’ll flesh out the website planning further with detailed documentation including:
- Sitemap (a document of all website pages)
- Wireframes (webpage blueprints)
- Software development doc (for complex projects) and development planning
Depending on project complexity, we often collaborate on a detailed feature prioritization map using the MoSCoW process, which maps what’s a must-have, nice-to-have, and won’t-have. A separate technical strategy session is often held for sites that integrate with third-party systems, followed with a software development specification document.