W75p - Web Site
Plan and Specification Project
Details for Part
4: Success Criteria
Success
Criteria - How will you measure the
success of the site?
When your work
is done, how will anyone know if the Web site is doing its job? It's important
to know what your client thinks about the true measure of success for the site.
The key to this is brainstorming with the client about what they want the site
to do, and how much of that is measurable.
Here are some typical
goals; these can be suggested to clients in order to gauge their reaction...
- Lower costs
for activities like distributing information and answering phones
- Increasing the
number of customers (for non-profits: visitors or members)
- Increasing the
number of leads to potential customers, visitors, or members
- Improving service
to customers or members, as measured by email and other types of feedback
- Polishing public
perception, as measured by comments, positive comparisons with competitors,
links to the site from other sites, and mention of the site in the press
- Performance
of the site, as shown by number of site visitors ("hits") and its
trends over time, including new visitors
- Numbers of repeat
vs. new users
- Usability testing
Measuring everything
is not necessarily a good use of time or energy. Rosenfeld and Morville* suggest
creating a form with various measurement possibilities, and asking members of
the client group to rate them. The decisions about which measurements to perform
can be carried out later, but knowing how success will be measured is a powerful
way to focus the design team's effort.
*See
"Measuring Success", pages 138-139 in Information
Architecture for the World Wide Web (Rosenfeld & Morville, 1998)
Example:
Goals and Measurement Opportunities: SCHM Web site
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Lower costs
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| advertising costs lower |
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| cost of answering questions by post |
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| time spent answering routine questions on the phone |
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Increased number of visitors
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| ratio of visitors to advertising costs + Web costs |
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| number of visitors who come after emailing for information |
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Improved media coverage
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| number of articles in publications that mention the Web site |
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Site performance
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| number of hits on the main page |
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| number of new visitors |
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| number of search engines that can find the site |
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Volunteer performance
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| number of times volunteers have to be called to remind them of
their commitment |
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This
document is part of instructional module
W75p: Web Site Plan and Specification Project
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Copyright © 2001 Laurence
J. Krieg, Washtenaw Community College
