PROCESS

What do you know about you?…

You know your company better than anyone, so the process starts with a questionnaire.  We want to find out things like:

• What do you want to get out of the site?  What’s its purpose?
• Who are you?
• What company persona do you want to project:  Friendly?  Personal?  Formal?  Big?  Corporate?
• What’s the product?
• What does it cost?
• Who will buy it?  How will they buy it?
• What’s the value proposition of your company or product?  (Value Proposition is a formal marketing term that, simply stated, refers to what you do better than the competition.)
• Once they enter your site, what do you want the customer to do? … Order something? … Join a community?

Of course, there are more questions, but once you’ve filled out the questionnaire and supplied us with brochures or other company information germane to the site, we get together over the phone and go from there.

We have found this process to be quite successful.  A website should be an integral part of the business plan, and this process saves both parties an enormous amount of time down the road.

ON WRITING:

Think, then ink…

Here’s a partial list of the tenets we have developed as a result of this process:

• You can’t proof your own work.
  • Corollary: Most websites don’t say what their owners think they say.
• You and your customer may have different ideas about what should be on the site.
  • Corollary:  Invite customer participation in designing your site.
• Humor is a powerful tool
  • Corollary:  Be careful; it has to match the company image
• Brevity.
  • Corollary:  The customer’s time is more valuable than yours.
• Know:  Who is our customer?  What are we selling?  Why will they buy it?
  • Corollary:  On each point, no answer longer than one sentence is acceptable.
• Purpose: What do we want the customer to do at this stage of the process?
  • Corollary: Know the purpose of the website, and have the back end ready.