strategy & planning
where are we going, and how are we getting there?
A modern rule of project development is that 80% of a project's life should be in the planning stage. By planning properly, the project will be developed more efficiently, cost less and ultimately produce much better results.
Strategy takes into account the medium of the web and the multitude of unique, often misunderstood factors that will determine how people find your site, how much effort they will put into navigating around it, and how often they will return. For example, a fantastic looking design can actually defeat a website. If it makes it too difficult for visitors to navigate around, people will abandon it before they get to the core of your content., and even if you strike upon a design that captivates your audience it will mean little if none of them are potential customers.
small and big?
Often clients tell us "we're small, we don't need a big plan" ... and they are quite correct. What they need is a small plan, and it is that much more important for them because their budgets and time frames are often much more restrictive. For a large company, mistakenly spending 20% of their budget on a set of features nobody uses is bad, but for a small website this is often the entire "what's special about us" portion of what they are offering.
It is also important to consider that with an effective plan even a small website can grow into a large, effective part of your organization because it lets you prepare for the successes (and failures) over a longer period of time.
why clever?
We have been building websites just about as long as there has been a web to build them on. This in itself doesn't mean much, except that during that time we have also developed our skills as project planners, technology specialists and web gurus. Unlike 'swiss army knife' creative houses, the fact that we focus entirely upon web design and development means that our skills in the specific areas that effect the success or failure of a particular website are well known to us.
The specific skills we offer are:
- IDENTIFYING GOALS: we will help you define strategic goals for your website, and identify methods of achieving those goals
- COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS: we will examine what your local competition is offering on their websites, as well as examine what sites in your industry from around the world are providing
- WEB BUSINESS MODEL: we will look at your business and advise you on how you can effectively move portions of it onto the web to make your operations more cost effective and customer friendly
- STRATEGIC PLANNING: we will examine your business processes and objectives, developing a plan for moving aspects of this onto the web
- ANALYTICS: we can help integrate a website monitoring and revenue measurement tool set that matches your needs
- PROJECT SCOPE: we can develop a complete short- and long-term project outline for your website project
- MAINTENANCE PLAN: we can pre- and post-define a realistic management plan
