Defining
Goals
In early meetings, it's always easy to jump the gun and dive right into
juicy discussions about possible information architectures. Sometimes you will
need to ask everyone to step back and spend some time exploring bigger picture
issues like mission and vision first.
It's good to begin by brainstorming on mission
and vision. To get these sessions going, you might ask some of the following
questions:
•
What is
the mission of the organization?
•
How does
the web site support that organizational mission?
•
Does the
new medium of the Web force you to reconsider the organization's mission?
•
What are
the short-term goals with respect to the web site?
•
What are
the long-term goals?
•
How do
you envision the web site one to two years from now?
Once you've had a good opportunity to
brainstorm, you can lead your colleagues through the exercise of writing a web
site mission statement, which might look something like this:
The mission of our web site is to create new customer relationships
and strengthen existing customer loyalty. We see our web site not only as a
promotional tool, but as a customer service tool.
Of course, it's easy to make fun of these
touchy-feely mission statements, and they may soon be forgotten. However, the
exercise of writing a mission statement can help a group to focus on the goals
behind the site.
Towards that end, it's often useful to probe for goals not currently
included in the mission statement. If the mission statement emphasizes sales
and marketing, ask about customer support or the provision of new, innovative
services. Use this exercise to explore the full range of possibilities before
moving on to more practical matters.
1. Measuring Success
While it's definitely a good idea to address
ideas like mission and vision directly, it can also be useful to take a more
subtle tack by exploring opportunities for measuring the success of the web
site. In these early meetings, an interesting and informative exercise involves
challenging everyone to think into the future, about how you're going to
evaluate whether the web site is a success or failure. The following worksheet
presents possible goals and measurement opportunities.
You can ask people to rank these goals and
measurement opportunities in several ways. For example, you might ask how
important each factor will be in obtaining additional funding from senior
management after the site's launch. You might also ask how difficult each
measurement opportunity will be to implement.
You can pass out this type of document and
then encourage the group to brainstorm about these and other ways they might
measure the site's success. How important are hard measurements that show
return on investment compared to soft measurements that demonstrate customer
satisfaction and public perception? In performing this exercise, it's important
to realize that many of these ideas for measurement might not be practical and
that decisions regarding measurement don't need to be made at this time. It's
really just an exercise to get people thinking about these issues early in the
process.
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