Designing an exceptional website is not an easy task.  It involves many steps and disciplines.

As is true with most projects, good planning improves the chances for effective and on-time success.  But good planning starts with good information. 

One of the biggest challenges in planning a website development project is that stakeholders are generally not equipped to articulate what they want – or in many cases, know what web options are available.  In a rush to secure web development business, developers propose lofty plans in generalized terms.  Only after an order is secure will developers spend time to educate the stakeholders and develop a reasonable development plan that maintains client expectations and profitability.

The purpose of this article is to short-cut the traditional process.  By informing stakeholders of the most important website development concepts, a basic specification (worksheet in Appendix A) may be developed prior to project award.  With a more complete understanding of stakeholder requirements, website developers can predict costs more accurately.  This results in more timely execution and lower costs.

Introduction
The following article and worksheet (Appendix A) is designed for those not familiar with the website development process.  The article is written in seven (7) logical and sequential steps that take the reader through the design process.  Throughout the article, explanation and guidance are provided so that informed choices may be made.  Then, readers may enter their design requirements on a worksheet located in Appendix A.  In the end, readers will have a more complete understanding of what they want and how to communicate these fundamentals to their web development team.

If you are new to the web development process, consider reading the article all the way through to get a general understanding of the different steps.  Then go back through the article and enter your choices for each step in Appendix A.  If you are more familiar with web development, you may choose to enter your choices in Appendix A as you read the article.
It is common practice for the web development community to establish the purpose of a website.  Perhaps a better term is ‘objective’.  What are the objectives of the website?

The objective of most websites is to serve as an extension of a marketing effort.  Sometimes, the website is the primary marketing effort, other times it is one part of a more comprehensive program that includes more traditional marketing approaches.  
A working definition of marketing is:

COMMUNICATION through various MEDIUMS or VENUES of a STORY that COMPELS the AUDIENCE to take a DESIRED ACTION.  

From a website perspective:

COMMUNICATION is a one-way engagement with an existing or potential customer.  The MEDIUM or VENUE is the website.  The STORY is what is communicated within the website.  The story typically includes:

• Product/service description (features and benefits)
• Price
• Place (availability)
• Promotion (brand loyalty or credibility)
• People (friendly/helpful customer service)

A good STORY can provoke (COMPEL) a website visitor (AUDIENCE) to take the next step (DESIRED ACTION).  Desired Actions may be:

• A phone call
• A form-fill that captures visitor information, from which your sales staff can follow up.
• A sales transaction (e-commerce)
• A sign-up
• A click on an advertisement (publisher / blog / forum / directory).

The Desired Action is the tactical description of the site’s objective or purpose.

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