Your Web Site's Business Plan

10/19/2005

When a group of people start a new commercial venture, one of the early steps they will sometimes take is to write a business plan. This is especially true for groups seeking funding from a third party. Their goal is to sell the funder on financing their venture, but a really effective business plan does more — it imparts to the reader clear understanding of what the venture is about, where it is headed and what the venture's principals feel is needed to get it there.

This sort of understanding is at least as important as getting the reader excited about throwing money at your venture. It lets them make effective decisions about how they participate when they decide they are interested in doing so.

Clearly a document that helps people participate effectively is just as useful within an organization as it is for drawing in new resources. First of all it is a concrete way of laying out the venture's mission and road map. Second, when done in a participitory fashion, it is a way of documenting consensus of what that mission is. Finally it is a good document to share with any organizations you partner with to help you meet your goals.

We prefaced this discussion talking about commercial ventures, but in truth a planning document is useful for any long-term venture, including a web site. A web site is usually a venture within a venture — it must fulfill a goal in the overall mission of the organization that owns it. A plan written for a site is of interest to the principals in the organization, the editors and project managers for the site, and the technical staff who will help build the infrastructure to help the site fulfill its goal.

While a full-on business plan includes a lot of financial projections that are important to think through, that is not really the best place to start your big picture thinking. Nor is it the part of the document that should necessarily get the widest distribution. Below are some web-site centric questions that you should probably condiser answering when drafting a plan for your site. It is not intended that you would restrict yourself to answering only these questions. If you have other concerns or thoughts as you write your site plan, include them where you think them appropriate. Expect to revisit the document you create here every 6 months to a year, depending on how actively you are growing your site.

what is the overall goal of the site?
who do you expect to use the site, and what will they be using it for?
what are the features/components that will help meet the goals for the site?
how are these features and components interrelated?
how do you expect the site will grow and evolve?
what criteria will you use in determining the suitability of new ideas/features/components as appropriate for inclusion in the web site? How will these as-yet unthought-of ideas integrate into the rest of the site if they are determined useful?
how is information that is published on the site gathered?
where else might the information published be useful? other mediums, inter and intra-organizational uses, etc.
plans don't come to fruition overnight. In what order should needed features/components be introduced to your audience? Are there any which ought to be timed to coincide with certain dates/events?

You might already be on top of things and have a plan like this. That's great if you do. Your next step is making sure you're sharing the answers to these questions with people who are responsible for helping your site grow, from the technical level to the conceptual level and everyone in between. Giving all players a clear view of the site's mission and how to achieve it will facilitate work later as everyone can refer to the same map.