Basically, I tried to express that there should be a philosophy behind his work and that he needs a body of evidence regarding that in terms of an expression of applying that philosophy.  It was a pretty heavy set of advice but I had hoped to get him on track at a root level.

Anyway, after chatting for a while he mentioned a new group that had been forming in the north of Tasmania for Web Professionals and that the group had asked “are there any real web strategists in Tasmania”?  To which my young associate had said “yes, I know one”.

It reminded me that we’re thin on the ground here in Hobart.

Considering the designer in front of me and how he’d arrived at calling himself ‘a designer’ it occurred to me there’s a number of ‘web strategists’ or ‘digital strategists’ popping up too.  And, I’d argue with a great weight of evidence in my pocket that these self-proclaimed ‘web strategists’ suffered from the same founding issues as the designer in front of me.

It sounds cool to be a digital strategist doesn’t it?

From http://bentremblay.com/en/category/social-media

Sums it up pretty well really.

The emergence of web strategists / digital strategists

This is not a new title.  Go back in time to big tech companies of the last decade and they’ve been around for ages.

I remember meeting with a director of a recruitment firm 4 years ago and said to him “keep an eye out for the emergence of a new role that will become very important in the crossover of marketing to digital – digital strategists”.  I stated that there would be few but they’d be of high demand as media convergence became common place.  I expected a bit of gold fever by the end of last decade.

Where there’s a gold rush the mining experts (or should I say hopefuls) emerge.  And, with there still being limited web education processes I haven’t seen a Web Strategy Degree being offered at Uni.  We have to piece the role together through specialisation in certain areas.

Is web strategy and digital strategy just gobbledegook for online marketer?

There are plenty of people around that have been commercially involved with the web for some time now and the role is often bandied about and usually in the context of marketing.

But is a digital strategist just about marketing?

What I’m observing at the moment is this:

1. Ran a website before
2. Been involved in planning a website
3. Taken a website from concept to go live state
4. Done a bit of digital marketing i.e. ran a few SEM campaigns in Adwords
5. Created a facebook page or similar
6. Maybe worked in or ran a project team

Done those things more than once and you might call yourself a digital strategist.

Well to the low end of the market you’d clearly know much more than the average bear.  But you’d fall well short of my view of a digital strategist.

What characteristics and experience do we look for in digital strategy development people?

Strong depth of knowledge of the following:

1. Business process, business models, and business fundamentals including budgeting and financial flows
2. Marketing process, brand development, brand strategy, path to market, value propositions, productisation and product / service segmentation, market trends, direct marketing, digital marketing, and convergence of media platforms.
3. Creative direction, visual differentiation, market relevance, marketing platform integration and cohesion
4. User behaviour, usability testing, demographics, recruitment of test subjects, focus group management and unbiased processing of user feedback
5. Technical development, web technologies, mobile technologies, understanding the software development lifecycle
6. Systems integration, database development, data warehousing, and back-end platforms such as CRM and core business software.
7. Project Management, stakeholder management, methodologies such as agile, communications strategies, risk management, and governance.
8. Social Media, influence, viral, and touch points.
9. Conversion methodology, persuasion architecture, design optimisation.
10. Reporting metrics; not just traffic and conversion but behaviour interpretation, and how to leverage this
11. Consulting frameworks and processes for extracting organisational needs and converting them to digital roadmaps.
12. And more I’ve probably looked over…

And if you really want to set all that apart: 

1. Innovation capacity, ability to distil concepts into commercially applicable but boundary pushing results, an ability to step back and see the big picture and the trends
2. Hands on experience in architecting, designing, developing actual solutions
3. Leadership capacity to drive multiple stakeholders, teams, suppliers, and resources to common goals.

Lastly, how much experience is required?  How did the ‘web strategist’ earn their title?  What body of work shows their credibility?

That’s up to you to decide.

So is digital strategy all about marketing?

In many ways I’d have to say yes as sales drive organisations BUT sales don’t equal profits.  Profit comes from so many other areas such as effectiveness of support, service costs, consumer relevance, transactional and operational flow awareness etc.  And, whilst digital strategy work may be seeded by marketing types I believe a proper digital strategist is a helluva lot more than a marketer.

How can you be a master of all these trades I mention?  Won’t they be jack of all and master of none?  Potentially yes.  More likely you’ll find strength in only a handful of the areas I look for.  The ones that can cover all areas well are incredibly rare.

…so, coming back to my young design friend.  He can ‘do’ design but does he have what it takes to put together a design with a rationale and strategically justify how it will work for the client and hence minimise their risk in releasing it?  Not really, and this is what worries me about the emerging ‘web strategists’.

“..if your experience is mostly in offline marketing and you’re about to deal with the web then you need to understand that it’s a platform, it’s like an investment in software, and it needs plenty of work that you may not be used to.”…

Remember the agile approach: test and learn, tweak and try again… Well it’s back on the agenda this week with a new angle.  Sadly the throw away society mentality is ripe in so many organisations. 

Blame the platform rather than the users of it.  Sound familiar?

Point in case : Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra

After more than a year of agreeing to sponsor the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (TSO) at significant cost to the employees and shareholders of Future Medium, and not to mention the scheduling delays our paying clients experienced while ‘we did good’ for Tasmania, the website has gone out to redevelopment because it doesn’t meet its targets.  See case study.  Incidentally we won’t be bothering to respond and wish the future supplier good health and prosperity.

So back to an old chestnut: selection criteria for web projects and specifically in this case ’being realistic about expectations within your budget’.  This might seem like a rant and a rave  (ooh a party…) but hopefully this comes across as a coherent reaction to this recent experience.

What makes someone throw a functional website away?

Working with the TSO and witnessing a change in marketing management after site release and seeing some ongoing gaps in terms of utilising the platform (that we built) has given me a very close and unfortunately negative experience with sponsoring an organisation’s web needs.  As sponsors we wrote the brief ourselves and did what we thought mattered (validated of course by TSO staff and external marketing consultants…)

So why does a project just go in the bin after such hard work?  I’ve seen this many times before but typically in state government (possibly because there’s a strange detachment from budgets and commercial return backed with a number of I.T. egotisms)… don’t shoot me for saying what we all know to be commonplace.  Private sector tends to view expenditure as an investment, not a bucket that needs emptying each 1/2 FY.  So where does that leave a charity / not-for-profit in terms of asset development?  Somewhere in between or worse than public sector?

Anyway, witnessing this ‘throw-away’ has reiterated the importance of setting criteria and project goals and building a staff and supplier relationship to keep adjusting outcomes towards emerging / previously unknown goals rather than:

STOP, THROW AWAY, and START AGAIN.

So getting back to setting website project expectations

How do we quantify our selection criteria for a website if we’re a traditional marketer and the web has forced upon us new demands as a business?  And, how do we convert that into a logical and reasonable brief for our suppliers?

I’m not going to to claim that any of this thinking is tested, definitive or even logical but merely a bunch of thoughts about the inside of a ‘marketers’ head when it comes to web criteria.  Notice I haven’t said ‘web-marketers’ criteria:  I’m questioning “what goes through the mind of an old school marketing person when they think web”?

First of all let’s pretend we know nothing about technology, have no grounding in the complexities of data storage, end user devices, or any idea at all how to build a website (‘cos that’s someone else’s issue) but we have been charged with the responsibility of pushing out products & services through the web as one of our channels.

What would our agenda be?

Image (right content, product, and style) + flexibility (ability to change at will and in any way my marketing heart desires)

If we get those right (and our product is desirable) and we use our traditional thinking of getting people to look at it then we’ll get a financial return right? (well maybe not…. but bear with me and assume so)

How important is ‘image’ to my market segment?

Let’s question the ‘image’ criteria; it brings all sorts of things to mind:

• Brand,
• Photos,
• Style,
• Content,
• Copy-writing,
• Dynamism, and
• Interactivity

What does our market segment want? Or what will they accept if I can’t give them all the bells from Christmas or the lights of Las Vegas?

I like to work on continuum’s when I conceptualise something and let’s work from ‘trash-to-great’.  What is acceptable for our market segment?

How much flexibility does my market segment need?

I need to be able to be up-to-date and changing.  My market will typically expect that – remember this is the web - it’s the saviour of all print’s failings in terms of currency of data.  But I’ve got a problem…

Image and Flexibility are inextricably linked

You can’t have a progressive web image without changing to align with market needs, inspiring the market etc., and of course this means flexibility. But poorly managed flexibility will probably damage your image so what’s the right balance?

The Axis of Greatness

So if image and flexibility are inextricably linked and I’m certain that these criteria will drive my marketing effectiveness, and thus financial/economic return, then all that needs to be considered is my investment:

(yes it looks like a penis … I meant that).

So in this line of thinking the more I invest (resources: cash and people time) then the more flexible my solution can be and the better my solutions image will be … OK.  Seems fair.  So really it looks like this:

The website challenge: injecting the right resource skill and commitment to achieve greatness

So if money were no option and I could buy all the resources I needed and commit them to the project could I achieve greatness because I could have a great image and be flexible?  Yes probably, in fact no reason why not if you know how to manage them to that outcome … but for most of us money is an issue isn’t it.

OK so I’m not Microsoft, GE, or Coke … boo hoo.  but there has to be a sweet spot right?

I believe in the law of diminishing returns (heck, I do up classic cars for a hobby and no - the last 1 extra BHP isn’t worth chasing), so somewhere on our continuum from ’shit’-to-’awesome-infinite-love-and-happiness’ (which of course has a relationship to resources) I reckon we can find a way to balance out our suppliers and internal capabilities to get a good compromise … I mean result … sorry.

Defining the sweet spot in resourcing our project to achieve greatness on the web

I want brand integrity, quick time to market, good cost/return ratio and great user interactions.

At this point I’ll switch out of being the marketer looking for a website solution and tell you specifically what drives each of these:

Integrity: comes from being consistent and of course ethical and transparent - which would involve being ‘on message’ and not pushing other agendas than the one I’m known for.

Quick time-to-market: comes from systematising all known characteristics of business needs using tools, processes and matched resource allocation (maintenance and burst capacity).

Return on investment: is driven by so many aspects and I’ll assume that traffic is being generated, social media is being harnessed to drive qualified leads, and that offline media is busting its unquantifiable, expensive balls to throw a wide net (full of holes),and that with all those things being sorted my ROI focusses squarely on production effectiveness and management prowess.

With all other ducks properly in a row then we get left with the supplier relationship.  It’s a plant in your organisations garden and it needs the same water and nutrients that all your other plants (staff etc.) need.  If you feed your plant (supplier) different food, only some of the food, or give it less light and less water then it won’t be as great as it should be, it certainly won’t be harmonious and well … you get the picture.  You might even create a weed (certainly something you don’t value).

If you want a mushroom then stick it in the dark and feed it poop …  Presumably you don’t want a mushroom so focus on cultivating something greener and more attractive!

Great user interaction is going to need MORE THAN all the market knowledge you’ve got in your office filing cabinet.  It needs the experiences of all your customer-facing staff, it needs independently verified external opinions to give objectivity, yes it needs management input and it needs a committed approach to building the right tools (functions) and keeping it in tune.  This will never be right first time but you can tweak it and keep testing and learning.

Also great user interaction isn’t solely the job of your supplier.  The supplier gives tools to work towards this but if you truly want customer engagement then you’ll need to push your staff to keep this on the boil. Or engage someone to do that as an outsourced channel manager.

So how good are your staff at fulfilling that role?  Remember you’ve got to allocate someone to the job and if you don’t ask a supplier to specifically do that you’ll get a weak outcome.

Summing up

Is it fair to expect image and flexibility to create results or did we miss out on the solid process, planning, supplier relations, and investment required to create a great result?

My point here is that if your experience is mostly in offline marketing and you’re about to deal with the web then you need to understand that it’s a platform, it’s like an investment in software, and it needs plenty of work that you may not be used to.

If you’re aware of your skill gaps then you need to trust your suppliers.  Obviously back to the example of our sponsorship deal with the TSO we didn’t get that bit right.

Anecdotally, in closing, what can we expect from spending little if we’re a not-for-profit?

The grass is always green ‘there’ isn’t it ? Even if you are for-profit?

We all want to love the outcome but are all limited by cost; unless you’re a charity and get sponsored.  If someone sponsors you and gives you the solution you’re in a rare situation and presumably you ‘needed the help’.  Ironically those who don’t pay tend not to value and in this case an investment in the web may not be seen as a platform from which to build on.  Does sponsorship give rise to the luxury to throw it away and ‘dream again’?

When you wrote your project brief and criteria did you think ‘this is the be-all to end-all’ or did you think this is ‘a journey I’m starting on and I’ll keep investing, testing, tweaking my people and my processes to the outcome I want’?

How far does the agile methodology have to reach to get commercial results?  I’ve learnt from this sponsorship deal that both the client and the supplier need to embrace agile from the start.  Not in part or on one side.  And, trust has to be the basis for the working relationship.

Disparate units all working from one common framework and lacking the individual attention they need to provide an efficient web offering to the Tasmanian public was an immensely confronting problem.

Concerns about who the target audience was ‘really’ comprised of and how they wanted to interact with DHHS, we engaged a specialist usability firm to undertake focus group explorations for needs, wants, and behaviour. This was supported by a mix of online and moderated testing for information architecture to build and assess the effectiveness of a new content structure.

Combining months of research Future Medium presented a strategy which clearly addressed the following issues:

1. What users wanted and their behaviour online
2. What business units needed and how to match this to user expectations
3. A rationale for a revised design
4. A revised information architecture, content authoring process, and stakeholder management recommendations
5. Comprehensive use cases and associated wireframe design plans; and
6. A structured management plan for the next 12 months.

Nobody’s actually asked me that in the last 6 months but this issue has stopped almost every commercial social networking project in its tracks.  I’ve lost count of how many businesses have come to me with dubious enthusiasm to push their product or service and gone home sour after picking apart the fundamentals.  Now hopefully this isn’t a reflection of my character and more so a reflection of the relatively intangible value and uncertain path to leveraging social networking for commercial outcomes rather than individual benefits.

So what’s the problem?

I think the need for fundamental mindset shifts are coupled with marketing challenges to form two significant barriers.  That and of course the wad of cash needed to build something like a Facebook application.

When people group together to derive value from one another online I think there’s a point where a critical mass must be realised.  There’s a point where the return is clear and self sustaining – I call it social momentum.  Facebook has done it, but just because there are lots of users doesn’t mean they want anything to do with your business.

I’m concerned about how we get through this phase of web interaction from a commercial standpoint.

There’s a broad spectrum of ways of taking advantage of this movement.

• Some people want to build Facebook-style functionality into their sites to hold richer member or customer profiles and let them do status updates, blogs, comments, and ratings… but do people really want this?  It can look great for you i.e. ‘you care’ and want to give ‘freedom of speech’ to your members or customers – but – how many of us users really want to have accounts across tens or hundreds of sites in order to contribute?  I don’t!  And so I wonder what business value is there in simulating functionality that exists all over the place anyway?
• Another example would be a brave commercial entity devoting effort to setting up a simple forum – knowing very well that this could be a political and media nightmare that damages them.  Well is that where the customer is going to put a complaint (or maybe praise) or will they vent it through rating a Google search result or some other highly visible and highly trafficked area?  In this case the brave organisation may end up with a disused forum that has moderation staff allocated to it…  It is tough to know where you’ll get the value from.
• If you were a real estate company you could build a Facebook application that let prospective home buyers display and rate properties they were considering from you.  But I don’t think these things work for commercial entities because the data is so limited and consumers don’t work in such narrow channels – they’d want to list properties from multiple agencies.  So if you were a real estate company you’d be better off investing in building a universal application that showed your competitors too.

So we hit on a nerve here.

To do something successful you may have to shift your thinking and be open to abuse, criticism, supporting your competitors, sharing secrets and so on… and maybe give benefit to someone other than yourself.  But that’s kind of the essence isn’t it?  If you’re doing something in the social sphere then you need to play to the need of the masses and not that of your organisation.

Will the brave be the ones that are rewarded for their risks in this open new world?  I think so.

If I could give you advice on this problem it would be to play to your own strengths as an organisation and not fear competitors working alongside you.  Use your brand credibility to build something interesting and of social value and the seemingly intangible return will be channelled via increased exposure and association with something hopefully cherished by your customers.  But what that is exactly will need great consideration and advice.

Considering that blogs, forums, and feedback tools are cheap functions to buy then it has to be worth a punt at face value.  Just don’t expect it to work without a serious marketing push, a well seeded base from which to operate, and some ongoing investment.

Great!  But who uses it, and how?

The number of times we come across poorly functioning websites that don’t meet user expectations is far too common.  There are some real shockers but some can get away with it.

If you’re selling a Widget online and it’s red or yellow, and does ‘stuff’, then you promote how ‘cool’ those colours are, explain ‘stuff’ and ask for the cash.  Easy right?

But what if you sell a ‘Widget’ and then an unrelated ‘Service’ alongside it?  Well your delivery is unclear.  Your users wonder what you’re really on about.  Do they trust you?  Will the Widget sell as much as it would in a dedicated site?  Probably not.

And, what if you have 10 different Services from different business units and each of these has a range of Widgets they also need to push?  How effective will that be?  There’s an overarching issue in having lots of users with contrasting needs and behaviour patterns.

We end up in a game of ‘steering chances’ as we’re not solving one problem, but many.

We can only aim to serve a balance and try and appeal to the triggers of each group of users.  We have to find a balance otherwise we’d be building 10-20 sites instead of one; creating a whole host of other problems.

So how do we try to do this?  We have to profile users, match products and services to their needs, understand how they want to interact and what they expect.  On top of this we need to understand if we can stick it all in one bucket without overly compromising on the delivery.  If we mess this up the whole site will be poor at delivering everything.  Oops!

Consider a commercial organisation with a range of business units.  These are sometimes well marketed and understood by the user even before they press enter.  So maybe consumers know your offering – in most cases, they have some brand association, some recognition in the back of their mind – if it’s a great brand it will be front of mind… Organisations that are well known offline have a much easier time dealing with their users online.

But sometimes a brand is not well known.

Take a large government department as an example.  They are often delivering multiple business units that sit together for ministerial reasons rather than consumer reasons.  What does a user expect of those sites?  They provide so many different services and products.  Consumers just won’t get it.

Government department sites commonly aren’t marketed clearly to the consumer in offline media either.  The user expectation isn’t set.  When the user lands on these sites they need the story to be told, there’s a message to deliver, they will be faced with so many different business units and initiatives all fighting for attention, and worse, there’s usually a bunch of policy and stale information that the government is obliged to push to them.  How on Earth can sites like that be effective?

The only way to get a result with a large and broadly complex site is to architect it from the ground up to meet user needs and behaviour, not those of the organisation or how it functions.

These large and cumbersome sites have often become so hard to manage and so distant from user needs that the only path forward to is take a lot of steps backward first.

Start with usability analysis, scope business needs and user needs, profile the users, develop a plan to service their needs and have a rationale in place to test EVERYTHING against it all the time.  When you’ve built it – go and test it – and then get ready to go back through it all over again whenever something changes in your organisation.