Project Profiler
Designing Sites
Clients need to think about their needs very specifically, and contractors need to evaluate whether they can provide that service. An active search means walking around and sitting on the same side of the table as the contractor looking at the relationship, not the price.
The project profiler can help both clients and contractors to join forces by helping clients focus their needs and the scope of the project. At Ashrava Internet Services, we update and modify the project profiler to suit the client. Use this general outline as a starting point, and then create something that works best for your situation. The project profiler is comprised of three parts.
Use can this general outline as a starting point for any website design project, and then create something that works best for your situation. In many cases this profiler can take the place of a request for proposal (RFP) by providing the exact information that internet professionals need to successfully deliver your web site.
I. Background and Goals
Company
- Please provide corporate and industry descriptions, including competitors, along with a brief critique of their sites. Include contact information and a description of the group who will be working on the project.
- Who are the decision makers?
- Who else would be contracting?
- Who's responsible for what?
- What human resources do you have for various stages of the process?
Project
- What is the mission statement or summary of your project?
- What are the basic goals of this project? (e.g., branding/identity reinforcement, improved access to information, direct sales, corporate communication, etc.)
- What outcome will make this project successful? How will you measure success?
- What are your schedule requirements?
- What is the budget for this project? Is there an acceptable budget range, depending on the level and comprehensiveness of services provided? Please explain.
- Describe any work that has been done toward designing/redesigning a new web site.
- Will the web site reinforce an existing branding or marketing strategy? How?
- Discuss any identity/branding assets (logos, other artwork, and fonts) or issues.
Rank the following, in order of importance:
- A web strategy that fits with our corporate strategy
- A web strategy that fits with our marketing strategy
- Re-purposing existing content
- Creating a community of dedicated visitors
- Quality execution (graphics, writing, navigation, etc.)
- Time to market
- Ease of maintenance
- Doing better than our competition on the Web
- People bookmark the site because they get so much out of it regularly
- Staying within the budget
- Sending the message that we know the Web and use it appropriately
II. Audience, Content, and Functionality
Audience
- What types of visitors do you want to attract?
- What are your goals for each type of visitor? What are the products/services involved?
- What are your goals for these products/services?
Content
- Where will content come from?
- Will it be new, re-purposed, or both?
- How often will you add new content?
- Who will update the content?
Functionality
- What functional requirements do you believe to be necessary? (e.g., download areas, database-driven web pages,commerce, catalog, applications, etc.)
- Who will update these functionalities?
- Are there extraordinary security issues?
- Are there other technical issues or limitations?
- Have you budgeted for hosting and maintenance of the site?
- If so, what is your budget
- Who will maintain the site contents?
- How will the site be served/hosted?
- What types of legacy systems/databases are in place?
- What is your long-term plan for the site?
III. The Field Trip
This part of the profile is very important. The more work you put into it, the more your project will benefit. Find the three highest quality sites (more is better) on the Web that relate to your project in the following categories:
- Branding in a similar situation to yours (new company, new brand, established brand, etc.)
- Appeal to same target group of customers
- Whether or not you would build the site if you were in a different industry
- Colors, look-and-feel, user interface, layout
- Size of site
- Size of project
- Publishing model (frequency, novelty of content, etc.)
- Attracting new people to the site (newsworthiness, giveaways, impact, etc.)
- Your competitors' sites
- Quality of content
- Quality of graphics
- Functionality (things sites do for people)
- Community, special features, responsiveness, other categories important to your project
- Overall favorite sites (for whatever reasons)