Strategic Website Plan

Integrate your website with your sales process

Accurately scope your website project

Deliver your website on time and on budget

It’s finally time to level up your website

This is not your first rodeo.

You have hired agencies before to redesign your website and it was:

  • Exhausting to get the project across the finish line

  • Annoying to manage scope and deal with change orders

  • Frustrating to get it delivered on time and on budget

  • Disappointing when months later, the website underperforms

And you are left wondering if it was all worth it.

You are not alone.

After running a full service agency for 10 years, I have seen it all and been on both sides.

There are two problems with how most website projects are run.

Problem #1

No Clear Strategy

Without a clear strategy, the chances are pretty low that you will build a website that:

  • Is designed to respond to the needs and goals of your ideal customer

  • Answers the questions and solves the problems of your target audience

  • Is built on a stable and scalable platform

  • Helps the sales team educate and close deals

  • Helps retain clients by being part of the customer service experience

Having a Website Strategy means that before you design and build, you make choices on:

  1. The goals of the website

  2. The target audience

  3. Messaging and content

  4. Technology Stack

  5. Integrations

In other words, to have a high performance website, you need to decide on your website strategy first.

Problem #2

Asking your Agency to scope your website project.

It’s not really the agency’s fault.

They are typically staffed with talented designers, coders and project managers.

So their scoping process typically looked like this:

  1. You send the agency a list of requirements and ask for a bid.

  2. The agency asks for a discovery meeting because they need more details.

  3. The agency holds an internal meeting to determine what you want vs what they can deliver within the budget you gave them.

  4. But, the agency knows that the requirements are still not detailed enough, so they pad their proposal with a 20% contingency fee.

  5. They create a proposal which includes their scope, timeline and cost.

Here is the problem:

Because each agency created the scope, if you try and compare bids from another agency, you will get a very different proposal.

From my experience, you need an independent business analyst who knows how to interview Subject Matter Experts and document both the technical and functional requirements.

The Solution:

Take control of the scope and requirements

In all of my years of consulting for Fortune 500 companies, the business, not the vendor dictates the scope and requirements.

The three requirements that the business needs to have documented and prioritized BEFORE engaging with their web designer and content writer are:

  1. Functional Requirements

    What must the website do?

    This describes the features, behaviors and expected outcomes of the website.

  2. Technical Requirements

    How will the website achieve the functional requirements?

    This defines the technology integrations and constraints.

  3. Page List

    More than a page count, web designers and content writers need information on what each page is supposed to do in order to provide an accurate estimate.

In addition, a website strategy:

  • Prioritizes the requirements along two dimensions of business impact and technical difficulty so that the business can decide the priority and set scope.

  • Includes interviews with not just your marketing department but also your sales, customer service and possibly human resources and other stakeholders to get consensus on the priority and impact of each of requirement.

It’s a lot of documentation, interviews and expectation settings.

This is why I crated the Strategy Website Planning Service.

Here is how Strategic Website Planing Works

  • Stakeholders:

    • Executives

    • Sales

    • Marketing

    • Customer Support

    • Human Resources

    Deliverables:

    Documented and agreed upon goals of the website.

  • Stakeholders:

    • Sales

    • Marketing

    • Customer Support

    Deliverables:

    • Target Audience Demographics

    • Target Audience Psychographics

    • Problem Identification

    • Solution

    • Identification of customer Discovery Channels

    • Identification of Customer Research Channels

  • Stakeholders:

    • Sales

    • Markerting

    • Customer Support

    • IT

    Deliverables:

    • Prioritized Business Requirements

    • Prioritize Technical Requirements

    • Comprehensive Page List

  • Stakeholders:

    • Sales

    • Marketing

    • Customer Support

    • IT

    Deliverables:

    Identification of integration points.

    • CRM

    • ERP

    • Logistics

    • Customer Support

  • Stakeholders:

    • Executives

    • Marketing

    • Sales

    • Vendors

    Deliverables:

    Firm Fixed bid including

    • Timeline

    • Cost

Who needs a Strategic Website Plan

Not every company needs to put this much time and effort into a Strategic Website Plan.

But if you are looking for a website that:

  • Is integrated with your sales process

  • Is aligned with how B2B buyers make purchasing decisions today

  • Educates and influences visitors to do business with you

  • Helps close sales

  • Is built on a stable, secure and scalable platform

  • Doesn’t become obsolete in a few months

  • Integrates your website into your sales process

Then a Strategic Website Plan will help you make sure that you invest in a sales asset that actually works to moves the revenue needle.

    • Manufacturing

    • Wholesale

    • Distributors

    • e-commerce

    • Buyer Persona Playbook

    • Functional Requirements

    • Technical Requirements

    • Comprehensive Page List

  • 4-8 Weeks

  • $15k - Manufacturing, B2B Services

    $25k - e-Commerce