Make your goals specific, make them measurable, and keep the whole project team accountable
In short – without goals, how on earth will you know if your website design or development project has been successful? You need goals in order to measure the success of the project – but also as a crucial yardstick to keep the whole team accountable. Here’s what I mean:
Video transcript
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Okay, establishing goals for your website. It’s a key part of any design or development project, but it’s often overlooked. Essentially, it asks how will we know if the work we’ve done is a success? And without solid goals, website redesign projects can end up being a purely aesthetic change.
The organisation leadership has a new vision maybe, or there’s been some revised branding, new messaging, and it’s decided that a new website is required. And that’s fine, you can have that, but without goals, you don’t know whether it’s a success or not. And the goals could be, maybe it’s an increase in traffic, or an increase in enquiries, in donation conversion, and secondary donations.
Whatever it is, whatever it needs to be, needs to be specific and measurable. And having goals does a couple of things. First of all, it keeps our own work accountable, whether that’s in design or development.
It means if we’re suggesting a design change or a new design pattern, we need to be able to say, this change serves this goal. And in doing so, it allows both the client or ourselves to push back on a suggestion, if needed, or to embrace it. It also helps keep everyone focused during the course of a project.
We can all refer back to the goals and ask if a specific piece of functionality serves them. And if not, well, maybe it should be a post-launch piece of functionality. Most importantly, though, at the end of a project, we can gauge whether or not our work was a success, whether the project as a whole was a success.
And beyond the new, nice-looking website, how has it supported the organisation and the organisation’s goals? So take a bit of time to set those out, establish them with your agency up front, and you know, you’ll be really glad you did.