Whether you’re part of a large corporate web team or a lone ranger building a small site you need a well-defined site strategy. If you’re building a website without a strategy, you’re building a house without a foundation. The site strategy is the most important fundamental component of any successful online initiative. It answers two fundamental questions:

1) What do I want the site to be?
2) What do my users want?

Many web projects fail because no one answers these two little questions up front. A solid site strategy tells you why you’re building your site and will serve as a touchstone throughout the project lifecycle. As Anthony Robbins is fond of saying, “With a strong enough why you can figure out any how”.

A clearly articulated site strategy includes business requirements, an audience analysis, competitive analysis, feature set analysis, and sometimes a branding analysis. This information is critical and helps you accurately define the project scope. All subsequent project components will depend on it. The creative brief, statement of work, information architecture, interaction design, content, creative design and technical requirements will all ultimately be driven by the site strategy.

Often the desire for speed to market draws critics of taking the time to craft an effective strategy. “Just get it up there and we’ll figure it out later” is the mantra of many rushed marketing managers. As the project lead you need to combat this tendency with all your might. Slapping up a website without a strategy is sloppy, ill-conceived and just plain bad manners. Aiming to please an often impatient client does not always serve their best interests. You can still get to market quickly with a site strategy. Take the extra time.

Your clearly defined, client-approved strategy will also help you control scope creep by easily identifying any features or functionality requests that do not directly support the approved site strategy. It doesn’t mean you won’t have to implement these requests – some clients will insist on it, but at least you’ll be able to identify and communicate any extra timing or cost implications.

On any given day it’s pretty obvious there are plenty of sites on the web without a clear strategy. Don’t let yours be one of them. We’re here to build a better web, so start your project on the right foot with a well-defined strategy and use it. Your business will thrive and your users will thank you.