Step-By-Step Site Planner

Resources

• Project Roles. Who are the resources that will be responsible for content management and technical support (include their names, titles, roles, and contact info)?
• Team Skills. What are the technical and content management skills of each resource?

Next Steps:
For each resource, identify any training, software, hardware, scheduling and budgetary issues.

Competition

• Identify Competitors. Identify the sites of competitors and others that may provide direction for your site.
• Important Elements. Identify the important elements of each competitor site:
  • functional features,
  • technologies used,
  • breadth of content and
  • look-and-feel.

Next Steps:

1. Develop a competitive analysis that includes the important elements of key competitor sites and which of these elements your site should match, exceed, or avoid.
   
2. On a regular basis, revisit key competitor sites and update your competitive analysis.

Content

• Functionality. Which functional features should your site offer? Consider:
  • ecommerce/shopping cart,
  • site search,
  • customer service/support,
  • tech support,
  • discussion forums,
  • newsletter,
  • catalog/information
  • order forms,
  • feedback form,
  • member logon,
  • password protected areas, and
  • SSL-encrypted areas.

• Information. Which informational elements should your site contain? Consider:
  
  • About Us page,
  • Contact Us page,
  • copyright notice, and
  • privacy statement.

• Structure. What is your site's hierarchy? For each of the 4-7 (though you can have more or less) main areas of the site, identify:
  
  • each main menu item,
  • all submenu items, and
  • additional content.
  
  Think of a tree-style hierarchy with the home page at the top.

Next Steps:

1. Describe in detail each functional feature. What exactly will it do?
   
2. Identify the resources required, and any technical and budgetary issues associated with each functional feature.
   
3. Provide detail for each informational element.
   
4. Assign content responsibilities to the resources identified above.

Summary

Experience shows that questions raised and answered in one section may engender ideas and issues in other sections. This is a good thing, and reinforces the fact that the Site Planner can (and probably should) be used iteratively. In fact, we've found it useful for periodic reviews of existing Websites.

The more time and effort your organization devotes to this information gathering process, the more likely you are to build an effective, customer-driven and well-staffed Web presence.

For a Web-based version of this questionnaire, use the free 5-page Site Planner here.

Happy planning!