If your "Interactive" agency doesn't do this, fire them!

It should come as no revelation that there’s a cause-and-effect relationship between (1) how well you give your customers what they need and (2) your ability to grow revenue. No brainer, right? Well, for many would-be Web 2.0 entrepreneurs, this is a surprisingly challenging concept. Sometimes they need gentle reminding that if you can consistently grow revenues from the moment you launch your site, you are much more likely to maintain leadership in your new category. At our shop, we are obsessively curious about the people our clients want to reach and what value our clients are offering along the way. While we don’t have hard quantitative data or specific qualitative feedback at the outset of any particular client engagement, the more we can gather along the way then the more the client’s prototype will be productively aligned with the market being targeted. The point here is that everything we do advocates on behalf of the client’s customer, consumer, or target. This is part of what we mean by Customer Advocacy™ . Three Stage Process Face it. Most agencies’ offerings contain “Web site design” and/or “development”, but a client must demand something far beyond design and development of a site. The superior approach has multiple stages. Here’s what I mean: The first stage is about defining the promise you’re making to customers and then drawing a detailed picture of exactly who those people are. What is it you’re selling and why should the person you’ve targeted care about it? This, I hasten to add, implies some kind of identification and assessment of the competitive offerings out there. Do not foolishly assume, or try to delude yourself, that you are free of those pesky things called competitors. Whatever it is you’re selling has some kind of existing analog, some form of present existence today. It’s a truism that venture capitalists reflexively dismiss any entrepreneur who claims no competitors. If what you’re doing does, indeed, constitute a new category you still need to appraise the strengths and weaknesses of like categories and competitors currently out there. The more market intelligence you can provide to your agency, the less work they’ll have to do. As a logical extension of the research, your aim should be to articulate why you can maintain and grow your brand’s leadership. What is the promise you’re making that you can own? This crispness of this “brand promise” solidifies your positioning (relative to other categories and future competitors) and allows you to have a simple organizing principle for everything you do. Okay, now let’s talk about drawing the picture we mentioned earlier. Who are the early adopters that will be attracted to your new thing? While the potential market may indeed be vast, you have to start with early adopters who can, sooner than others can, perceive in your brand something in it for them. Here, you need to make educated guesses and your agency should help you with the research to substantiate your hunches. This kind of targeting will allow you to focus your promotional dollars from the moment your site goes “live” and will also assure that the prototype is consistent with the audience you would like to reach first. It makes it less difficult to find people (who match this profile) who can provide feedback along the way to ensure that your site is effective from day one. If you were to select an early adopter to flesh out as a real person, who would it be? What would be his/her occupation, frustrations, aspirations and demographics? How does your brand promise translate into benefits for this one person (what do they expect to get out of using the site)? When a sample target audience has an opportunity to experience the site, you can solicit feedback from them that will may reveal additional benefits. Yet, many more questions need answering. When people land at the site for the first time, what choices do they experience? Each option should be logical and give visitors obvious choices that immediately pay-off what the brand promise is. For example, you have suggested that they can take a test when they arrive. That might not be their first choice however. They may want to see a short streaming video that spells out what they will get out of this site. They also might want to find what other people like themselves are saying about the site. A range of the most appropriate choices will empower the user and probably make the site more effective at retaining and converting visitors to paying customers. What keeps them engaged throughout the site? There are many all factors to consider in creating a series of experiences that allow people to get hooked at an emotional level. Here are just a few: If they drift away from your site, what would bring them back? If you refer people to sources offline, will they return? How soon? At what point in the process? How can the Web site be part of the overall user experience? Why will they pay you (will they perceive sufficient value in what your brand offers)? If they are expected to pay significant upfront fees, what reference can you provide that will allow them to feel confident that they are not taking a risk? What are the problems that might get in the way your brand keeping its promise? For example, If you are aggregating content, editing becomes very important. If you are creating all the content yourself, you’re obliged to maintain consistently high-quality that will keep the brand promise. Make sure your agency works with you to develop a methodology that is scalable. The Next Stage Stage Two (2) is focused on architecting the content and how it will be experienced. The deliverable would amount to a Final Project Plan, Photoshop files, content and media assets required to move into the technical development. I’ll explain this Stage tomorrow!