I. Background and Goals
Company
Please provide corporate and industry descriptions of your
company. Name your competitors, along with a brief critique of their
sites. Include your 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 is 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
Repurposing 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
1. What types of visitors do you want to attract?
2. What are your goals for each type of visitor? What are the
products/services involved?
3. What are your goals for these products/services?
Content
1. Where will content come from?
Will it be new, repurposed, or both?
2. How often will you add new content?
3. Who will update the content?
Functionality
1. What functional requirements do you believe to be
necessary? (e.g., download areas, database-driven Web pages,
commerce, catalog, applications, etc.)
2. Who will update these functionalities?
3. Are there extraordinary security issues?
4. Are there other technical issues or limitations?
5. Have you budgeted for hosting and maintenance of the site?
If so, what is your budget?
6. Who will maintain the site contents?
7. How will the site be served/hosted?
8. What types of legacy systems/databases are in place?
9. 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)
