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Making a website is more then making pretty picture and some sales jargon. You have to fully understand the project, your audience, current traffic trends and the even more important – the business goals before every writing a line of code.
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RESEARCH & DISCOVERY PHASE: PROJECT PLANNING
By James Tryon, Creative Director WP Valet & Easily Amused, Inc.
EACH PROJECT IS DIFFERENT
• Explore the problems
• Challenges
• Goals
We work as a team to:
We define full scope and vision of the project together.
We works in an Agile fashion to make sure your needs are addressed.
INTERNAL REVIEW MEETINGThis is after the first sales call
INTERNAL REVIEW MEETING
We gather all the internal people that are going to be working on your project together and review your Creative Brief, the Client Questionnaire, the current site, current Brand Image and top competitors. !
This is a quick meeting no more than a hour or 2. At the end of the meeting we create a basic outline of what we think is best and the easiest way to attack the problem.
INTERNAL REVIEW MEETING• Review Client Questionnaire
• Review Clients Site
• Review Creative Brief
• Review Competitors
• Basic Brand Analysis
• Internal Analysis
GET SOME MONEYDon’t work for free. Your thoughts are worth more than your code.
GET SOME MONEY
Client should know about how much the project should cost before going into this phase. Or you can use this process to find the real price of a project. !
You can always just do this yourself to fully understand your total project scope.
DISCOVERY
What goes into truly planning a site? !
Understanding
WHAT GOES INTO TRULY PLANNING A SITE?
• Research
• Goal Planning
• Target Audience
• Users Stories
• Competitor Analysis
• Content Strategy - Basic
• Project Audit
• Content Strategy
KICK OFF MEETINGYou want to get to know the project, the business and the
audiences of your client.
OPEN THE FLOODGATESThe sky’s the limit in this meeting and is used to spark creativity and get everyone involved in the project motivated. !Do a group brain-dump. Anything and everything that you could ever want, we just write it down. Then we sort all of them into 3 piles. !1) Needed 2) Nice to have 3) Cool but not really needed now.
HOW LONG IS THE MEETING?
Small project - Half day with client - Half day Internal !
Larger projects get broken up across days not to burn out the client. !
Everyone who is going to be involved in the project should to be in this meeting.
WHO’S YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND WHY
Personas •late 50’s blue collar worker with limited computer use !•Tired single Mother very busy and very tired !•car accident victim looking for pain relief
Facts • in pain so kinda agitated !
• it might hurt to use the mouse !• older demographic
Thoughts • need large buttons to help with clicking !
• very direct messaging to limit on confusion !• Too much text / cluster could be overwhelming
USER STORIESA user Story Defines a use case for Task that you want a user to be able to do on your site. (A user story is one or more sentences in the everyday or business language of the user that captures what the user wants to achieve. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_story
USER STORY EXAMPLE
“As a <role>, I want <goal/desire> so that <benefit>” !!“As a customer representative, I want to search for my customers by their first and last name to find the customer faster.”
QUESTIONS WE TRY TO ANSWER DURING OUR
KICKOFF MEETINGSome of these questions are handled during sales and covered
in our questionnaire.
MEETING QUESTIONS#1: Problem Statement What problem do you want to solve? #2: Stakeholders Who do you answer to? Who is involved in this project? #3: Users Who are you users? !#4: Risks What risks are we afraid of? What is worst case scenario?
MEETING QUESTIONS#5: Assumptions !Examples: 1. Client will provide high quality videos in a timely fashion. 2. Client will provide high quality photos in a timely fashion. 3. Client will provide descriptions for products. 4. Client will provide feedback on layout designs in a timely fashion. !#5: List of Features NOT to be developed if you're used a gateway, make sure the client knows you are not creating it.
STAKEHOLDERS MEETING
When working on large projects with several stakeholders we meet with all of them. !
We like to have some one-on-one time with each stakeholder to be able to pick their brain, Find out what's most important to them without the influence of everyone else in the meeting.
PROJECT AUDITwhat’s in a project audit?
WHAT’S IN A PROJECT AUDIT?• list of Overall Goals
• list any Client Feedback
• Problems with Current site
• Define target Audience
• Current Navigations
• New Site Map
• Question everything
• Review every page
• Review every section
• Have a stand alone page for header and footer
• Overall Thoughts
PROJECT AUDIT PER PAGE/SECTION• list page title and url
• Goals of the page
• Current feature list
• New Feature list
• Current Problems
• Solution per section and/or page
• Feedback from client
• Wish list/backlog/Nice to Haves
• Design feedback
• Other Notes - Any random ideas per page and section
• Client To Do’s per page and sections
WHAT’S IN A PROJECT AUDIT?
• Page outlining any new features sections not on current site
• list any possible or key plugins
• Page for extra Ideas
• List of posable templates needed for theme
LIST OF TEMPLATES NEEDED
Home Shows ◦ archive ◦ category ◦ tag ◦ Show single
Events ◦ archive ◦ category ◦ tag ◦ single event
!• blog
◦ archive ◦ category ◦ tag ◦ single post
• Team directory • 404 • Single page • search results
DISCUSS POSSIBLE CONTENT STRATEGIES
How and when to use tags and categories, along with a starter list of rules when making new category and tag. !
- What Custom Post Types does the project need - What Taxonomies does the project need - What Parent Categories to start with. - Along with setting a game plan for growth.
PHASE #2Things currently out of scope.
OVERALL RECAP THOUGHTSAnd All The Other Things
RESOURCES CREATED• Brain dumps
• Sorted feature list
• Define Goals / user stories
• Create user stories
• Define target Audience
• Site map
• Basic wire frames(paper)
• Lots of sketching
• Stockholder Interviews
• Talk about inspiration
• Basic guides for colors
• Basic guides for layout
• Assigned Client Tasks
• Start content gathering
• Compile assists
WIREFRAMES / USER EXPERIENCE
Not really part of this talk ;c )
WIREFRAMES / USER EXPERIENCE
We Take everything we have created, gather and sketched out so far and pull it all together to product the bases of your site. We are setting up the overall hierarchy, Navigation, Placement of content, the amount of content, defining all the functions of any custom plugins and theme modifications. !This Step is about placement and content not design as in colors and or images. This is key because once we have the layouts and list of functions the Developers can start to work their magic and the designers can start to put on all the palish.
WIREFRAMES / USER EXPERIENCE TASKS
• UX design • Detailed Wireframes • Content Audit • Programmer audit • Design Audit • Usability Testing Round #1 • Final Site Map
THANK YOU ;C )[email protected]://thewpvalet.com
[email protected]://easilyamusedinc.com
!@jamestryon @easilyamused
