I. Background and Goals
II. Audience, Content, and Functionality
III. The Field Trip

I. Background and Goals

Company
Please provide industry descriptions, including competitors, along with a brief critique of their sites. Who will be working on this web project? Who are the decisionmakers?

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?

Is there an acceptable budget range, depending on the level and comprehensiveness of services provided?

Describe any work that has already 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
  
  
• 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, repurposed, 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 webpages,commerce, catalog, applications, etc.)

Who will update these functionalities?

Are there other technical issues or limitations?

Have you budgeted for hosting and maintenance of the site?

Who will maintain the site contents?

How will the site be served/hosted?

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)