However, they are going to have to come up with something more damning than that – this is a great example of what can be achieved when money is well spent on skilled, local suppliers to tackle a problem in government which had real buy-in from the client (DHHS) to solve in a meaningful way for their clients (which in the case of DHHS is pretty much everybody).

The fact that all of this was achieved for under $135,000 is laudable to everyone concerned, and in stark contrast to another department we have worked with where such amounts were regularly sent to Sydney and Melbourne companies, frequently duplicating or replacing work that was done just months before.

Our interest of course is in the fact that Future Medium was commissioned to do the initial planning and strategy.  We have a full case study on our website.

We were however disappointed that we didn’t get the opportunity to follow through with the implementation, and feel that some important elements fell short, or missed the mark entirely, but nevertheless considering the budget available it was an admirable result.

While some external expertise was called in (including usability experts Usability One), it was gratifying to see that a local supplier was trusted enough to help set direction for a change rather than just fill in the blanks after a large mainland agency had flown down for a few days at great expense and told us how it should be done.

I’d like to post below a letter we sent to The Mercury clarifying the details of the project and our involvement.

In over 10 years of business in Tasmania we haven’t had many occasions to defend or applaud the actions of the State government but feel we must take exception to the comments by the Liberals regarding the redevelopment of the DHHS Website (Mercury 16/05).  It highlights a fundamental misunderstanding of the ability of the web to deliver services in a cost-effective manner across a diverse range of stakeholders – their assertion that it is merely ‘a slick marketing tool’ shows their out-dated view of its potential.

Our Web Services company, Future Medium, was engaged to develop a strategy for the public website.  This involved extracting requirements from across the entire organisation and trying to synthesise and prioritise them such that maximum service value was delivered cost effectively.  Independent testing and focus groups based on real needs for interaction via the web were crucial in ensuring these requirements were always related back to the end-users (the public, NGOs etc) rather than toward internal process and bureaucracy.

A strategy at this level would normally have been shipped straight to the mainland at 10x the price, so we applaud DHHS for using a local supplier and helping keep these high-level skills in the State.  A full case-study of the process and what was achieved is publicly available on our website (http://bit.ly/mTDlSM).

We weren’t involved in the development of the final website and some crucial items were not implemented, but overall the cost for planning and development of a site of this size were extremely reasonable.  Perhaps the Liberals would have preferred to chop out the planning and simply spend money revamping something that everyone agreed didn’t work?  Or maybe do nothing at all and simply let already overworked staff answer basic questions that could have been answered via a self-help website?

I also note that our work commenced almost 2 years ago and had probably been budgeted for much earlier.

That Tasmania’s largest and most complex public service were able to make a sound decision like this gives us some hope for the future, while the lack of vision by the Liberals bodes badly for this State’s ability to capitalise on opportunities like the National Broadband Network.

Glen Johnson & Patrick Herrera
Directors – Future Medium Pty. Ltd.

Hopefully it gets printed.  There are too many examples of government waste out there, but when there are success stories they deserve to be told.  Positive reinforcement they call it.  I have an 11 month old daughter and that is how I plan to raise her – dealing with government isn’t that different: moody, unpredictable and full of poop.

Interested in learning more about developing a strategy (fancy that!) for your web presence, and maybe getting cut down to size by daring to doing things properly?  Then you need our guide to selecting a digital strategist. Armed with that knowledge you can go ahead and select your supplier knowing that you have a fair chance of succeeding where your competitors have failed…

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.

This article aims to increase your knowledge of the website development process, and the specific roles performed before, during, and after completion of a website. By the end you should have a basic understanding of the development process and be able to identify critical elements required for website (online) success on your next project.

There are three key areas performed in the creation of a website:

1. Strategic - the creation, implementation and evaluation of your website/online strategy.
2. Creative - the conceptualisation and delivery of design elements affecting the overall look and feel of your website.
3. Technical - the actual building of your website, including the functionality to perform as required.

Strategic services occur at the beginning of any web project and will pick up again after project completion. Strategic services are used initially to gain an understanding of your broad business activities. The information collected at this stage is then used to determine your specific online needs. This is a collaborative process, facilitated during a workshop. Your company, competitors, online markets segments, goals and objectives for the project will all be addressed.

Strategic services also encompass techniques to measure the performance of your website (statistical analysis) as well as how to attract more traffic through paid and unpaid online marketing techniques (Search Engine Optimisation and Search Engine Marketing).

Designers will draw upon elements highlighted in the strategy document, specifically knowledge about your company, your brand attributes and user group’s requirements. Their aim is to accurately represent the brand online while promoting an enjoyable online experience through the use of strong visuals that connect with the user and assist them to perform their desired tasks.

Developers perform the complicated task of coding websites, configuring back end systems plus application design and development. Front end coding refers to the implementation of designs; back end development refers to the integration of various external systems into a website e.g. Content Management System or database integration.

The number of people working on your project will depend on the size of the project itself and the scale and resources offered by the company you use. A larger web firm will have separate teams or individuals specialising in each aspect of website creation, whilst in a smaller firm all stages of a sites creation will be handled by only one or two people.

Before starting any design work your web developer should, at a bare minimum, provide you with a document detailing the exact services you will be receiving together with a project schedule and a set of terms and conditions.