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’.

Recently CBG Systems (formerly Colbeck and Gunton),  ATDC (The alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs council), High Performance (including AIM Tasmania), and the newly formed TasBiotech (a division of the University of Tasmania) have all been through our proprietary planning sessions.

A case study of the plans developed for TasBiotech can be found here – http://www.futuremedium.com.au/solutions/view_Social_Network_Plans_15135204/

Larger strategic work has also been undertaken for RACT in the format of a 2012 vision for member (user) engagement.

Future Medium have also developed a number of novel approaches to resolving Agent publicity in the Real Estate segment and have been working with clients to flesh out technical and creative proof of concepts.

The project represents an excellent demonstration of our ability to create a community hub using the open source WordPress technology.  A number of commercial plugins are being utilised to manage secure content for members and shopping cart functionality.

The user engagement strategy is case studied here in our site – http://www.futuremedium.com.au/solutions/view_User-centric_design_15135195/

“I can get someone to make me a website for $120 a month”, says the builder working on my kitchen.  “Good for you”, I thought.

Isn’t it great that the web industry has progressed to the point where traditional tradesmen are now thinking about the web as an important part of business?  More to the point, accepting ‘pay for use’ licensing rather than ‘build from scratch’.

What’s interesting is the level of sophistication you now get from pre-packaged web deals all over the place.

Every man and his dog, or should I say every willing designer working from home, can now offer pretty comprehensive solutions almost turn-key.  Others out in web-land are ready to take care of your hosting, your content management structure, support, and even customer relations issues.  Wow!

So what is this doing to the web market?  As richer core functionality becomes expected rather than a bonus it’s logical that the baseline has changed for web development.  What once was written from scratch is becoming modular and a commodity.  As we’ve adopted the internet, and value it so much, we expect a lot more from it.

Package sites have put real pressure on the price point of custom solutions.  Custom work is now vastly more expensive and the customer benefits aren’t as clear anymore.

So is a package template website going to work for you?  Well maybe.  Think of it this way – is your business unique?  Do you believe you have a unique offering that has to be communicated in a unique way?  If not, then a package is just fine for you.

If you don’t want to be forced into a mould then you’re going to have to think smarter.  I know most marketing people worth their salt will be standing up right now and saying that they want their client to have a unique offering.

So it stands to reason that if you’re really serious about the web then you need a custom built site.  Right?  Well maybe not.  Find a supplier that has a strong base of technology at an affordable price yet also focuses on identifying your ‘real’ needs and then customising to suit.  That’s a smart compromise.

I fear that as the web industry matures all prospective website owners will fall into the trap of judging solutions on features.

It’s not unusual for this to happen.  Look at Plasma and LCD TV’s.  A few years ago you’d be stoked just to have one – but now, how many HDMI inputs, what res., what refresh rate, contrast ratio…. etc. etc.

The market for those goods has matured and hence consumers think they need to know all this techno-stuff.  They’re buying on features under the guise that this equals quality.  That’s just not so in my opinion.

It’s also like the crazy remodelling of cheap sound systems back in the late 90’s.  Gosh!  They started making them look like something out of Aliens, sticking lights and blinking garbage all over them, and to top it off ghastly numbers to tell you how POWERFUL they were.  None of this made them sound any better.  The more discerning customers turned away and went back to proper component HIFI with as few knobs and whistles as possible.  And why?  Because those items did exactly what they wanted and exceptionally well.  Nothing more, nothing less.

So when it comes to effective web design, less ‘is’ more. But there’s a disclaimer around that.  Doing less has to be done better (which is harder) and that means proper strategic architecture to suit users and not the confines of some package.  Buying for features at the back end doesn’t equal a better user experience even if it costs less.

So you’re bound to get a great package website now if you look carefully.  My advice is to focus on what your users need.  This will pay dividends early.

I’m reminded of a dilemma that one of our clients faces now.  A six figure investment in a custom solution that plays to the hearts and minds of his target audience as effectively as it can.  Or, one quarter of the cost for an out-of-the-box solution that ticks all the features he wants.

I ask, if it doesn’t look the part and isn’t tuned to users specific issues, how much damage will it do?  What long-term value should you place on the reputation of your brand?

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.