As mentioned in my last post, creating a strategy and project plan before beginning the design and build of a website or web application is perhaps the most important step in launching a successful website. Most successful businesses start with a business plan, it is our job as web strategists to translate that plan into the ever evolving web.

Documents created from the strategic engagement act as a blueprint for the creative and development teams and ensure the project scope is consistent with client expectations. Discovery, the process of gathering project information, also helps create measurable goals for tracking the website's success.

Discovery is the first phase in this process and can be considered the foundation for a good strategic plan. Discovery consists of a series of interviews to understand the client's business plan, high-level requirements, and measurable goals for the site or web application. It also consists of market research to understand the competition, feature sets, and competitive advantages the client's business.

It is critical to accurately align web strategy with your business plan, audience needs and competitive drivers. During Discovery, we will meet key stake holders to clarify and refine goals and objectives, identify the target audience, and formulate technical requirements. We will review your existing site, web logs and site usage. In addition, we conduct a features analysis of your top competitors and key trends in the industry.

Typical documentation obtained from Discovery includes:

• Executive Summary Summary of the project including information about the business, history, and goals for the project.
• Creative Brief/Spec Overview of recommended project design and vision
• Technical Brief Basic info about IT needs of site including server type, recommended programming language, domain name, email configuration, etc.
• User Task Analysis - A list of all the user types and their primary and secondary tasks.
• Competitive Features Analysis Summary of competitor's web sites including feature comparison matrix.
• Information Architecture A mapping of the site structure divided into three sections:

• Site View outline of all sections and pages on the site
• Page View description of the content areas and elements on each template page on site

These documents, along with a professional interactive team will be the difference between a successful project that gets results and a failed project that becomes a liability rather than an asset to your business.