why bother writing a plan?

It's astonishing to me just how many web sites get started without a clear idea of goals or priorities, not to mention business models. You hear it all the time: Companies announce web initiatives without specifying what's being built, hire designers without telling them what to design, plan launch parties without knowing what will launch. Honestly, it's a wonder anything gets built at all.

No matter how pressed you were for money or time, you'd never break ground on a building without a blueprint. Same goes for web sites.

You wouldn't stand for this foolishness in other arenas. Consider architecture: No matter how pressed you were for money or time, no matter how much you prized innovation, you would never break ground on a building without a blueprint. It would be sheer folly to begin such a complicated and expensive project without a diagram of what you were building and assurance that it would at the end of the day remain standing.

Same goes for web sites. The product plan acts as a blueprint, describing the goals and purpose of your site before you begin building in some cases, before you're entirely sure what you're going to build. It forces you to make decisions and confronts you with any inconsistencies or impossibilities before you waste too much time, money, and credibility.

By establishing goals from the outset, you'll help your development team focus its energies only on those initiatives that support the site's main goals while deflecting the distractions that inevitably arise along the way.

Why write a product plan?

• It facilitates communication by getting the whole development team on the same page and keeping them there.

• It describes what you're building before you start building it.

• It clarifies your goals so you'll know when you've achieved them.

• It keeps you focused as you move further into the development process.

• It confronts you with unsolvable problems before you waste too much time, money, and credibility.

• It forces your boss (and her boss, and other co-workers) to sign off on the vision behind the site or express concerns at an early stage, when they can still be efficiently addressed.

So now we agree: You need a plan.

the basic plan

The product plan is your site's backbone. Written before you start development and updated along the way it outlines your site's overarching purpose, as well as its specific features and strategic goals.

The product plan

• Identifies who's in charge, whether it's a producer, project manager, or company owner.

• Identifies the team of people who will work on the site.

• Explains the site's purpose.

• Declares the site's goals.

• Identifies the target audience.

• Describes the site's features and how they'll work.

• Projects traffic and revenue.

• Outlines a promotion plan.

• Identifies potential competitors.

• Estimates the schedule and costs.

• Outlines assumptions upon which the plan is based or dependencies within it (If X doesn't happen, then we can't do Y).

The product plan outlined on the following pages is a close cousin to the standard business plan. If your background is in business, marketing, or product management, the structure will be old hat. The challenge for you will be integrating ideas about the online environment, which may run counter to the conventional wisdom in your field.

But if your background is, well, anything else, all the analysis and segmentation may be new to you. I assure you, as I'll assure you many times over the course of this book: It's simpler than it sounds.

And if you're short on time, remember: Anything is better than nothing. Even if your so-called plan contains only a few key sentences, it can make a big difference on the finished site.

don't get paralyzed!

Many producers skip the formalized planning process for fear it will expose too many unknowns. Not knowing exactly how things will turn out, they avoid writing anything at all. They become paralyzed by the uncertainty.

But the point of the product plan isn't to set things in stone, but to get your best guesses in writing. No web producer is 100% certain of what they're doing or where they're going at the outset of a project. The important thing is to capture your goals and your assumptions, so you can recognize when and if they change.

So relax. You're not expected to know everything. This is an emerging industry. You don't know enough. You'll never know enough. Just write down what's in your head and move on.

"Congratulations phase one of naming this project's first phase is complete."